Wednesday, February 19, 2014
How to resign and "leave 'em smiling" (brace yourself, this is controversial)
So you have found a new company and a new job, you've accepted and now the really hard work: how to leave your current employer gracefully. And if you think that's not important, you're naive...Life is short and the technology community is very SMALL. It seems massive when you're in it, but believe me, after 20 years in the business, it's just not anywhere near as big as you think it is. What goes around does, in fact, come around. So make friends, and keep them wherever you can.
Carol Bartz was a terrible CEO for Yahoo (unless you give her credit for Ailibaba), but she had an awesome quote: "Be careful of the toes you step on on your way up, because they're connected to the butts you have to kiss on the way back down." Something along these lines. Get the picture?
Here are 10 things to do and a few things NOT to do weaved among them, when resigning:
1. Do NOT make it personal, even if it is.
2. Once you resign, tell them early and often that you're not open to a counter, even if you think you are. And let me talk about counters for a second. If they counter, and you stay...
a.You're weak
b. People WILL find out that they had to "buy you back" and they'll resent you for it.
c. Trust cannot and will not return to the relationship
d. Statistically speaking, you are 70% likely to be gone within 6-12 months anyway, and now you're the wishy washy person who jerked them around, took a counter and left. You've now fully trashed your reputation, not to mention piss off a search firm and the company and everyone associated with it, permanently. Is it worth the extra money? Absolutely not! In other words, if you resign, then LEAVE QUICKLY and have strength of conviction. Move on.
3. Don't reference people by name or be specific about what didn't work for you, unless you're certain the information will be kept in a vault somewhere, and only one person, maybe the CEO or the head of HR, will ever see the feedback. Give them constructive feedback on the way out and reinforce what you think is right about the company or what it can do to be more successful. Give them data they can use that's positive, and while you owe it to yourself and to them to at least describe why you're leaving, couch it in terms that aren't too harsh because they'll take it as an indictment of them (for not changing things quickly enough to keep you), or as a general indictment of the place where they work, which makes them too foolish or too weak to change jobs themselves. No one wins. The truth does NOT set you free here. It just breeds bad blood. The recipient of the data will then decide they didn't want you anyway, and it becomes "mutual." References in later years won't be as good as you deserve, in all likelihood, unless you handle these situations with great care.
4. Give them plausible deniability that it's their fault somehow. Give them reasons attached to other things, events, dynamics, what have you. But let them go tell the Board or whomever else, that it wasn't their fault that you left, even if it was....
5. Remember, this blog is for YOU, not for employers. It is about karma. It's about self preservation ultimately, over the long haul of your career.
6. Smile during the exit interview. You have a cool new job you're going to! But don't be smug. Don't look bitter.
7. Clean out your desk very early in the am and get your box of your personal stuff out way before anyone shows up to work. And don't linger around. Just makes people feel uncomfortable!
8. Don't be a jackass and blog about the company, or do Glassdoor. People can find out what they want to know in other media. You don't need to be a social media superstar trashing your employer. Again, bad karma.
9. Make the change about things you wanted out of life. Shorter commute, bigger job, money was something you couldn't refuse, wife/husband really wanted you to have a fresh and new scene, change is good, you didn't want to stagnate. Anything that doesn't attach to someone.
10. Give your boss something to remember you by, positively. Bottle of great wine, something funny like a bobble head. Again, leave him/her laughing, smiling or at least not frowning and frothing at the mouth to get revenge of some sort.
Good luck!
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Do I use a specialist search firm or not???
Our answer? Tough call. We'll be really balanced here.
Some Pro's:
Our CFO specialist, Steve Popper, has built an amazing business and he and our #2 person in that practice, Jeremy Levin really know the market cold. Know every CFO out there in every space, who are the best people, who came from the best companies, who made money for people, who are their number two and three people, etc.
So why are most of our people generalists?
Simple: the market has wanted us to be generalists. Our clients think of us as individuals, and then they think of the firm. Many have gotten to know us well enough to have this conclusion "If I can get anyone at SPMB, I'm happy because there really aren't any weak links there." This is our primary goal as a firm. But until this is universal, here is why you should possibly worry about specialists and may consider using search people you really trust, whether they're deep in a given function or not.
Con's:
1. Candidate contention/conflict. Specialists are always doing 5-10 of the same projects at the same time. Most won't admit this, but they're parallel processing a lot of candidates. We do this occasionally, but not as a matter of daily practice. We do it to maintain mind share with awesome candidates. Specialists do it because it's easy and they can make fast money. How do you know that your candidates won't get vultured to another company by the search firm you're currently paying?!
2. Network saturation. There's no incentive to be creative, to go outside a crowded market, go national. Specialists rarely invest in research. The network becomes too easy to mine, candidate lists get replicated over and over again, the cash is unbelievable, they can look awesome by filling a ton of searches and they can get lazy. And inevitably, they hit the wall with clients who pick up on this. Our team is paid and highly motivated to uncover new people all the time. We invest over $1M a year in research and tools to make positively sure that our clients get maximum coverage in a given market.
3. Limited aperture. There is no way that a specialist can get meaningful references. By being generalists, we can get the true story, which is the only story that matters, on a candidate. Because we know the head of sales, the head of engineering, the head of marketing, Board members, the CEOs, the CFOs. We have meaningful relationships with a broad spectrum of people who can tell us what's really up with a given candidate in a specific functional area. Without the broad view, how do you know what you're really getting unless you, the client, really knows the candidate's references and are willing to do the heavy lifting to get to that story? Isn't that what you're paying a search firm to do?
4. Massive hands-off lists. Take a look at the specialists' client lists. They're 10 miles wide, and only an inch deep. This is a problem. Where are they supposed to go to recruit your candidate? Their client lists are just too big. We make sure not to go TOO deep in a given function or a given domain, because we need inventory. We need people to pursue. This is a key issue for specialists, though they do a great job of marketing around this reality.
5. Narrow mindset. Generalists are more intellectually curious. A generalist wants to understand a space fully, they want to understand companies more completely. They want to understand various functions and how they relate to one another. How do you pick a VP Eng now, when people really want deeper technical domain and product and engineering are more tightly coupled? The functions of marketing, sales, engineering, finance--everything is different now. CFO's can't be CPA's. They need to be FP&A oriented. Marketing people have to be ultra analytical now, slaves to demand gen, frictionless selling, etc. Sales people have to nail efficiencies, conversions, be very operational, drive spectacular growth and build inside sales machines. These are new challenges, new realities. Functional specialists will miss the changing landscape, and they're not typically wired intellectually to truly "get" the changing landscape in the context of the big picture. Lastly, generalists are who you call multiple times over a decade. Specialists are who you call if you think you have a one-time problem and aren't interested in building a long term relationship with a search firm, or professional, with whom you can have a meaningful relationship over a long period of time.
So why us?
We're interested in those relationships, but will still take your call and show you 100 searches we've done in engineering, any day of the week. Or marketing. Or sales. We're turning 25-30 a year, in just about anything you can want. And the firm shares 100% of its information, so our people are interchangeable, as are our networks, within this firm that has now become a serious institution of excellence proven over several decades...It's a gimmick-free, candidate generating, search closing machine and we all think of ourselves as greasy mechanics underneath a very elegant exterior. We're not the people who are selling the used car, making it look and sound new.
Want a specialist? We're all specialists: in technology. In retained search. We're not messing around in contingency, not messing around doing staff recruiting at low levels. Not messing around looking for fast bucks. We specialize in retained executive search for technology executives.
So we recommend using technology generalists, unless you're looking for a CFO ;-).
Yours,
Andy Price
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
10 must-cover topics when you're kicking off a search
1. Why was this role created or what led to this search? Good and bad events, as balanced a version of things as is possible without airing too much dirty laundry.
2. Who does it report to and what does that person expect out of this hire? Or in CEO cases, what does the Board really want to get done in 12, 18, 24 and 36 months. Concrete deliverables.
3. Who needs to be involved in the selection and search process and why? Who are key stakeholders and influencers? What are they thinking about, and where are bottlenecks and disagreements likely to come up (does the engineering team really not want new leadership, for example, because they don't want structure? Do management and Founders not want a new CEO but feel the Board is forcing that person upon them unfairly? Why do people have this view and does their argument have merit?)
4. How many employees do you have, cash on hand, revenues, margins, basic expense line, growth rate, capitalization structure, capitalization strategy, Board makeup, management team backgrounds.
5. History of the company. Why was the company invented, what was the thought process, what is the driving core innovation of forming the enterprise in the first place and what does it aspire to be? "We want to be the THIS of the THAT SPACE" should be covered in some detail.
6. Key challenges and barriers to success?
7. How the organization will change and evolve over the near and medium terms, and how those evolutions will affect the company and this role?
8. What are key opportunities in the market place, key challenges, market dynamics, philosophical camps, various approaches to the problems you're solving, etc.?
9. How do you typically hire people? What's worked and not worked? How do we best work together to ensure success in a reasonable timeframe? What is your hiring philosophy and it is consistent with other key players?
10. Discuss the process. Map out the strategy for identifying the key people, getting them to the table and expediting it so that the process is an advantage in recruiting, and not an impediment.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
10 ways to close hard searches in 90 days
This is a crazy fun space, but like a lot of technology categories, you have the dinosaurs and you have the newcomers, and not a lot in between that would be your sweet spot hunting grounds, which I would define as "companies who grew solidly, delivered great results and exited or developed enough leadership talent that it's worth exploring for CEOs." You don't want people from the old world dinosaur companies like GE, and the newcomers are usually too under developed for a bunch of experienced leaders to be running around and mobile. And they're trying to do what your client is trying to do half the time, get religious about their approach, or are flaky enough to jump from one situation to another before it's an appropriate time to do so. So what do you do? Classic conundrum in a growth space in technology.
Here's what we did:
1. Map the market. No, really MAP IT. No one else in our industry can map markets as fast as we can, because our research arm is LOCAL, not outsourced to India, and they're all Stanford, Cal, come from great schools, MBAs, etc. A client once told me she was impressed by Heidrick's ability to map the market, so I got ahold of one of their maps. It was hard not to laugh out loud. Our maps are vastly more detailed, more thoughtfully developed and rendered, etc. Who are the people who develop this data? People who would have otherwise gone into Financial services in another era, have now figured out that our industry is a better racket than other categories and we successfully recruit and develop these people. We spend 10% of revenue on research. Not a single other firm in our industry does that. And we think it's money well spent.
2. Who are the M&A's that are nine figures and above and who were the top 3 people in those companies? Who IPO'd? Who made money for investors or outperformed peers and were really clever, hustled, took nothing for granted and above all, grew shareholder value. Track the lineage of the out performers and track the people down who made it happen. They could be anywhere. In PE firms, living overseas, about to hit the ejection button after getting acquired, etc. You can't fake this work. It's a grind and these spaces need to be DRILLED hard to get to the "gems" underneath what can, at times, look like massive lumps of coal.
3. Network like crazy. You can't delegate this to junior people as many search firms do. Killer people want to hear from senior people who are genuinely interested in them. The project leader and other senior people need to do this work personally. Talk to everyone you can, as fast as you can, get to the thought leaders out there, the well-known professors on whom the smarter leaders in a given space will lean for advice, get to VC's and investors in the space, find out who they liked, convince them to work with you vs compete with you for this talent, etc. This seems obvious but way too many people in our industry do this in a half-assed way.
4. Your client cannot sit around in "shop" mode for very long. They have to be in "buy mode" where, if you have a tight spec, and you deliver really interesting candidates to that spec, they know they have to MOVE FAST.
5. Sequester the time to do it right. Too many search people just bill everything in sight. You have to have the capacity to do CEO projects the right way. If the search person is overloaded, they won't make that extra call to the candidate between various interviews or events, and they might miss something. Every candidate in a tight spec search is a precious asset and needs to be treated as such.
6. Be prepared for hard conversations, weekend conference calls, late evenings, etc. If you let your calendar have no gaps or aren't willing to chip in a little "free time" to make it happen, you won't make it happen.
7. Be aggressive in comp. Understand it's a buyers's market, get over it and be ready to invest in people.
8. Don't mess around with silly things like change of control on second trigger. You've sold the company, Board voted for it, be aggressive here. And don't get cheap on stuff like relocation. This is where people get angry. The core offer will be what it is. But don't shoot yourself in the foot messing around with the "trimmings" of a deal.
9. Keep your interview team and search committee, small, tight, influential and empowered to act.
10. Resolve that any serious candidate will be "resolved" within 2 weeks max. First interview to final interview. You don't have a month. You might not even have two weeks.
Groupon just grabbed a killer engineering executive from one of our clients who really wanted the guy. A very senior, A player. GROUPON! Yes, the same one that is a spectacular flameout. How? They moved from first conversation to close in 7 days, went "yard" with the deal, focused like crazy and grabbed the guy. That is how you close people. You move fast and you be aggressive. Be focused. It's really not rocket science ultimately, but far too many people are living in a dreamland that there are lots of candidates running around. There really are not great candidates running around. You have to RUN THEM DOWN.
The Interview 2.0
Companies:
1. Read your own job description. Everyone who meets the candidate should have a copy. Read the resume fully, and suspend judgment until after you've met the person. You'd think this is 1.0 but man, so seldom do people in an interview team actually read the job description. They think life is moving too fast. That's just being lazy. STOP. Do your homework.
2. Don't walk through the resume. That's old school. Interview 2.0 is, "here is what we're trying to do. These 3-5 things REALLY matter to us. Can you do it, and have you done it, where, and how might you approach THIS situation?" This is the core of the interview. Asking stupid, demeaning Google-ish questions like how many black cats are in Nebraska is immature, silly and arrogant. Not to mention unproductive.
3. Take a few minutes on the front end to capture the essence of why your company rocks. And then go back to it at the end of the meeting. Re-cap why your company is awesome, a great place to work, could enrich everyone personally and possibly financially (be balanced here, don't set crazy expectations), etc. Offer to answer questions the candidate might have. Talk about your views, if you're possible, about why they could make sense and make an impact, be embraced by the team, etc. If you don't think they're a match, keep that to yourself or defer to item 4.
4. If you're the CEO, tell them if you don't think it's a match. Too many Californians are nonconfrontational and want to "kick the can" down the road saying "this is good, let's keep going" when they really mean "this isn't a fit. I don't want to jerk you around or waste your time." If it is anyone other than the CEO, or a key Board member in the case of a CEO search, then keep your opinions to yourself, tell the hiring manager what you think and leave it to that person to decide whether to agree with you or not. Breaching this rule can cause a lot of internal problems.
5. Talk about next steps and process. What you think the person needs to do to reach conclusion.
6. Stay close to your search firm, because if you're saying different things, the candidate will lose altitude as they lose trust, or they're think you or the search firm aren't paying attention.
7. Sell for the right to buy...You can answer a LOT of questions in referencing.
Candidates:
1. Come prepared. Read the website, read the job spec, and be humble. No matter how bad ass you think you are, be humble.
2. Bring ideas to the table. Be bold with your observations about the space, market, company, etc., as long as it's constructive stuff. You don't want to present like you know the situation better than the person interviewing you, you just want to appear as someone who has thought about this meaningfully.
3. Be an open book. Let them get to know you. They'll open up more, the more they know about YOU. Yeah this is a "candidate's market." But always sell for the right to buy as I mention above. Give them a narrative story. Who you are, where you come from, how you've architected your career and most importantly, highlight where you made maximum IMPACT.
4. Be 21st century! Talk about "marketing 2.0" or "sales 2.0" or "leadership 2.0 for a CEO". Disruptive business models, best practices. Frictionless selling, freemium, digital demand gen, social, how to build a killer product company, etc. If you talk about old school practices, YOU'RE DEAD. And you're irrelevant so just retire now, is my advice. Get smart, get current, or just join silly and tired companies where you can fake your way through, thinking and acting like an old school executive. Growth companies want cutting edge. If you aren't interested in re-inventing yourself and really making an impact in an insanely fast changing landscape, don't even try. Because short stint job hoppers are not en vogue. Never have been, never will be.
5. Put yourself in the job mentally. "I think I'd approach this THIS way," or "this is what I'm hearing so far, what do you think about THIS strategy or THESE priorities."
6. Tell them you're interested, if you are. Tell them if you aren't, and be gracious. It's a small world of technology people who actually matter. And people talk. Be the class act, someone they wish they had, no matter what you think about the situation.
7. Follow up. That one's a basic.
8. Be on time. That one's a basic.
9. Stay in front of the search firm. Don't be aloof.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
The secret to Citrix's success
Citrix is run by an entrepreneur, vs a corporate animal. Mark Templeton is disdainful of the big company corporate culture, way of life, entitlement, ego's, etc. And this is why he cannot be caught. They just move faster than the herd because it's in their DNA to concentrate on speed of movement vs sheer size, and they certainly don't waste any time talking about how great they are. How big a weapon is humility?
Look at the organization and the bio's of the key players. Do you see a big company in their backgrounds? Not many, and anyone who does, had it some time ago, vs recently. Most are people who came from startups, or were home grown. Mark has an uncanny eye for talent, and he's collected an interesting cast of characters around him, including some "nobodies" who came in through acquisition and are now industry stars, like Mr. Payne. These people were not usual suspects, not "obvious" choices. These people, over the last 5 years, were hungrier than the guys at VMWare and the billions of other players like Cisco with whom they compete. This team just outruns people who are busy pointing to the size of their "P&L" (it's the kiss of death when people start to point to size as a measure of success or relevance). I talk to guys all the time who are more proud of this stupid, irrelevant subject and the Citrix guys would never think like that. Their driving thought? Their standard? Their goal?
WINNING. LEADING. PIPELINE. OF PRODUCTS. AND TALENT.
These guys are tireless, they're hungry. You can see the fire in their eyes. But they're level headed and thoughtful at the same time. And Mark is a horse. The guy operates with the energy of a 20 year old but the wisdom of statesman. He is the most underrated CEO I've heard of in years, probably because he operates out of Florida.
More later. This company continues to amaze me.
Monday, January 7, 2013
How to pick a search consultant
My advice is to really step back and think: "this is going to be a grind and a dogfight, so whom should I use to get this done?" The usual suspects aren't always the right answer in picking a search person, though as a "usual suspect myself," I would hate for clients to stop thinking about me!
Here is how to think about hiring that killer up and comer VP for either a small startup or a public company looking for people several layers below the CEO:
- Use younger, hungrier search people for these projects. They're about DIGGING and CARPET BOMBING, and begging people to talk to you, not taking no for an answer, and being clever about getting in front of people. Higher level projects are much more strategic and require, typically, a senior search person to navigate Board dynamics, convince successful CEOs, or CFOs, or what have you, to talk to your client and ultimately accept your offer because, in part, they trust the judgment of the search person as much as their own judgment. I'd like to believe that my partners and I possess this unique ability and credibility to impact senior people. But the junior VP project is a different animal altogether...When in Rome...
- Senior search people who would take on a junior VP project are not likely good, because they're not highly sought after for higher visibility projects. If they were highly sought after, with great respect for the junior VP stuff, they'd be doing more senior work. It's that simple and basic. Like any profession, the search profession is full of people who are ambitious to climb higher, vs stall out. You work your way UP, not down. Having said that, it is always fun to do the occasional "crazy" project and we all love to mix it up a bit. Sometimes you find an entrepreneur, or they find you, to whom you just can't say no for anything. I'd do a janitor search for Jyoti Bansal, for example.
- The talent at the VP level are typically now a next gen, Millenial or Gen X crowd. Match the candidate population with your recruiter, and you'll find they'll get great results. Again, want to be a Roman (young, well trained commando)? Your search consultant should be able to look/act like one.
- The next generation talent will work 80 hours a week to prove themselves. My partner, Lee Schweichler, still works harder than many 25 year olds I know, and none of my partners play any serious golf. I don't even have a handicap. But we are the exception. None of us were hugged enough as kids, or maybe we're just adrenaline junkies who are paranoid of failure and love a challenge. Most of our peers are playing more golf than working, spend more time selling vs doing projects, etc. If I were choosing a search consultant for an up and comer VP, I wouldn't select myself. I'd select Eamonn Tucker, Mike Doonan, Sean Lucq, Nicole Freitas, Mike Dempsey, Jeremy Levin, Melissa Taunton, etc. It's a dog fight out there. Hire the rabid, hungry dog to win a dog fight.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Internet radio: a conundrum
I was an early Pandora enthusiast, and then became a big Spotify evangelist and early user. I've got subscriptions to both, because the thought of my music being interrupted or unavailable at any time is appalling to me. I've got sound cloud, sonos, all kinds of stuff. I'm "that guy." And proud of it.
Long ago, I decided not to steal music and not because Jobs told me not to. It just didn't feel good to rip off music and then try to enjoy it. It's just not cool.
So I love these services and feel immensely indebted to those who create the music I enjoy. But I'm beginning to wonder whether these services help or hurt musicians. I can't get this topic out of my mind, so I thought I'd jot down a few pro's and con's to get this thought out of my mind and into the world, in the hope that someone will step in to help sort this out.
Why these services help:
1) exposure of course. Mass distribution at low cost. Easy.
2) you don't sell your soul to a label. The indie movement lives. No cheeseball LA bonehead music executive determines whether you're relevant to the world. Yes, I saw Rock of Ages. Hated that bald guy....
3) a lot of bands who would have spent their lives in obscurity now have a shot at stardom. What's not to like about that?
4) you feel as though you're discovering people all the time. That's gratifying. And then you share your discoveries. Feels great to share good art.
Users, of course, music fans, etc. all benefit immensely. This explosion of music: what does it mean? Were there always this many bands around to delight us? Did digital music services and Internet radio give rise to massive numbers of new musicians, or just amplify their presence? Hmm....
Why the services hurt musicians:
1) musicians make no money now. The only way for musicians to make money is to tour and sell merchandise.
2) we're swimming in music now. Is the super band a thing of the past? You can love a few bands, but when was the last time you felt like part of a cult? Was Cold Play the last mega smash hit multi platinum band? Where is the next U2? the next Zeppelin?
Do we have too much choice? Is dilution a threat to quality? Are we drowning in this delightful and vast realm of sound, that is suddenly such a big part of or lives?
Ultimately I'm happy for all of this but have to admit to a little guilt over the plight of the modern musician. Life on the road can be rough. I hope it's worth it and that the art lives on. But you wonder: like everything, is too much of a good thing actually a bad thing?
Monday, June 25, 2012
EU Salvation=Germany, which=disaster?
There is only one solution to the EU's problems--to create a super state with a common financial framework, including a one-size fits all fiscal policy, thereby lowering the cost of debt and bringing financial order back to the region. Without this, more bailouts may be possible for awhile longer, but they won't actually fix anything. The systemic problems of high unemployment which accompany necessary but pain-inflicting austerity in a downward economic death spiral will persist as no one will lend to a country not committed to austerity. Then you have cultural blowback, as we've seen in France, where socialism is firmly back in power, imperiling France's ability to attract foreign capital and bring balance back to its state-run economy. People don't like pain. They avoid it and seek pleasure. This is humanity 101. Get over it. So ultimately, this merry go round of awarding bailouts for austerity which leads to blowback and political upheaval will end poorly, in chaos. The solution? A central bank with teeth, and a central governing structure with fangs--led by Germany.
But don't hold your breath, because the architect of this superstate would of course have to be its strongest member--Germany. And this is the same country that sought world domination less than 100 years ago--twice! Germany, ironically enough, is treading lightly here, clearly hoping that the PIIGS will proactively pursue this superstate, not wanting to suggest this idea too strongly given its checkered past. Problem here? The other states are led by clueless politicians who are more interested in re-election for their own basic survival, than the harsh financial realities they're facing.
So make no mistake, Germany's terrible past will come up again, overtly or tacitly as the rest of Europe grapples with this simple reality: consolidate around German leadership or dissolve the EU and wither for a generation while emerging markets and the US gap you by a mile, relegating you to second world status. Because that's where the weaker EU member states are headed in a hurry. No natural resources, an uncompetitive work force and most damning, a lost generation of unemployed young workers reliant on the state for basic survival. Which will take another generation to unfold. Game will be long over by then.
Good luck to all!
Monday, April 2, 2012
Quick update on what we're seeing
Andy
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Competition for People-tips you might not have thought of
Friday, February 24, 2012
Interesting CEO profiles: Myths vs Realities
Everyone's frothy right now, like a bunch of rabid dogs chasing a bone truck. There's money to be made, gold to be mined, in technology right now. It's a risk-on environment for sure. But classic mistakes are being made in hiring, or at least contemplated, daily.
My advice for CEO recruiting? Don't fixate on "big personality/big resume" CEOs thinking they'll make the difference for you. Focus on what your candidates say they'll do for your company as they get close to it, and that will drive your decision process. Don't get hung up on style or even resume. The best CEOs, in my view, behave like level 5 leaders, are calm and measured, mature, and seldom come into the success stories armed with a big resume and gaudy track record. They come in with a plan or at least an approach that makes sense. Ready to listen, to understand the work, develop relationships with Founders, management and Board. The ones to watch out for are the heroic, "get out of my way and let me at this thing" types, the ready-fire-aim strategy. And if anyone asks "what about Steve Jobs," please stop reading this, refer back to history, and many of the points here will be made for you...
Examples of solid CEOs who were not "big personality/big resume" profiles before their last success (this list is a mixture of current CEOs and a couple of big notables from history):
1. Fusion IO ($2B market cap, 2011 IPO); My firm ran a CEO search there and talked to a bunch of veteran CEOs with big resumes, ultimately recommending that the Board stick with Dave Flynn. He had a great plan and management was behind him. We're glad the Board made the right call. Because sometimes, the right call is a non-call!
2. 3Par ($2B acquisition after IPO); Dave Scott is a solid engineering type guy, not a lot of hype. They plugged away and outlasted competitors stuck to their knitting and never took their eye off the product vision. Solid execution drove value here, even though they burned too much VC money en route.
3. Data Domain (2B acquisition after IPO); Frank Slootman is a competitor. He’s very polished but hard nosed, serious minded and holds peoples’ feet to the fire. Working for him is a labor of love. And I consider Frank a good personal friend, so I say all of this with great respect. He is NO hype, NO handwaving. Hired young, unproven people with just OK track records and made them work like animals, focused them, didn’t let anyone BS him, ever, especially not sales people. Slootman would say “execution, not sales nor even strategy, drove us. The strategy became apparent as we executed.” Frank had a so-so resume before DDUP.
4. NetApp (huge hit, still public, industry leader); Dan Warmenhoven: engaged the Founders successfully, has the scratchy voice of a smoker, has a sort of nervous energy to him, was fired in his previous role but was a steady, no-nonsense hand on the wheel. He was anything but the glamorous hire when Lee Schweichler found him for NTAP...
5. Cisco; John Morgridge. He was frugal, and humble. He had a great eye for talent. He’d been fired from his previous company and was pretty measured stylistically, though driven (people see "measured" and think "low energy." Huge mistake far too often). He hired John Chambers. Another great Lee Schweichler discovery (both Morgridge and Chambers).
6. Microsoft; Bill Gates. Geek. Founder/CEO...Maybe Andreesen Horowitz is onto something here? People should think twice before taking out the Founding CEO in some cases.
7. Mark Zuckerberg. Geek. Founder/CEO...hates being on stage. Didn't even HAVE a resume coming into FB...
Let me illustrate an example of where big personality/big resume loses. A few years ago, I hired a CEO who’s a huge personality, very compelling, extremely articulate. Big, gaudy jobs in a globally recognized company mixed with a couple of interesting startups. He took a 20 person company worth almost nothing to an IPO worth a billion. But it hit the wall and is now worth a fraction of that because this person is a victim of his own success as a salesman and didn’t line up execution with hype. The company will be acquisition bait, ultimately, and declared a success. But it could have gone a lot farther had he dialed back the hype and focused more on quiet, focused execution--managing investor expectations and outperforming them, vs going for huge valuations which wouldn't ultimately hold up. To be sure, this guy has done more with the company than anyone could have dreamed, but it could have done a lot more. Ironically, he'll probably be a much better CEO the next time around!
So in my opinion, the difference between flash in the pan startups and those who really make it big is about walking softly and carrying a big stick. Staying quiet until you are ready to knock someone out and punch big companies in the mouth with a brass knuckles equivalent product and business plan. It isn’t about the resume, nor is it about the big personality of the CEO…And history will easily show this when/if people get around to doing their homework to reach the same conclusion...
Enjoy!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Reference your references
- I'm running a high profile CEO search. My target is a CEO whose company was acquired, returning about 100% to investors over 4 years. A spectacular performance.
- I called the former COO, whom I know very well, and consider a good professional friend.
- My source had been part of the former regime, which was replaced by my target.
- Reference was highly negative. My source gave me anecdotes of what other team members complained about.
- I almost eliminated the target from consideration. But I stepped back and asked "how objective was my source?" This guy was passed over by the Board for the CEO role, and the "old guard" was clearly unhappy about it. So it was impossible to get a balanced read on the target from this particular source. His "followers" would naturally complain about the new regime and leadership in general.
- So I and my client ran about half a dozen other informal references, and then looked more analytically at how the company performed under my target's management. It was stellar. References were stellar. But they're binary: old guard unhappy, new guard ecstatic.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Chasing stock price=recipe for disaster
One interesting thing to do is to watch the inevitable wall-hitting that occurs when companies go public. You can almost set your clock to it and they get crushed within 2 years as key people unload the stock and go cash in not just shares but resumes for bigger jobs they're usually unqualified for. Then a bunch of piled up work gets undone and BAM! You miss a quarter and are smoked. Analysts don't trust you anymore, investors are mad and dump you, etc. Hard to recover from this. In my view, it's all rooted in the go-go mentality of jacking up stock vs focusing on building a long term winner.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
HP
Friday, August 26, 2011
Founders=soul of a company
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Oil prices lower=big windfall
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
State of the market
Monday, July 11, 2011
Prescription for success for CA and U.S.
Friday, July 8, 2011
End of the week notes
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Notes from the field....
Friday, May 6, 2011
CEO Success Factors
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Building a Board
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Health care I/T=overlooked?
Friday, February 25, 2011
Flash=huge hardware megatrend
So what's the next hardware breakthrough? Just when you think a category is quiet...