I had a pair of situations recently with executives from two different companies that reminded me what a pleasure it is to work with A+ people. I won’t single them out by name in order to not embarrass them, but they know who they are. Both demonstrated what I call “an unexpected display of class” in completely unnecessary, but appreciated ways.
Case 1: This person was promoted from controller to VP Finance. She had been with this company from their inception, is an incredibly hard and diligent worker, and is extremely capable. Her reaction to a quick congratulation note regarding her promotion can be summarized as “thanks, but a title change wasn’t necessary – I’ve been here since the beginning – I’m extremely committed to the team and the investors – I’m excited about the future.” I had to reread the email a couple of times, not because I was so surprised by her response (it was completely in character), but it stands out in stark contrast to the endless discussions I have had over the past 10 years about title inflation, desire for more “external recognition”, and general noise from execs about how important it is to have the right title to position themselves “properly.”
Case 2: I was at a board meeting recently and the CEO voluntary requested that he not be paid his 2004 bonus because it was the difference between the company being profitable for the year. We had acrued for his bonus throughout the year and the company had outperformed at the EBITDA level (they were solidly EBITDA positive), but just barely missed being Net Income positive for the year. This CEO had decided – prior to the board meeting – that it was more important to him to post a Net Income year for 2004 then to get paid his bonus. After some discussion, we agreed to his request, but insisted that we have a separate mid-year bonus test for 1H05 performance that is independent of his 2005 bonus plan and that the board reserved the right to grant him a discretionary bonus mid-year.
In both cases, these execs acted in a humble and selfless way – clearly putting their company ahead of their own ego and financial interests. Fortunately for me, this is not unique in my portfolio – as I’m really proud of the group of people that I have running the companies I’ve invested in. However, these two examples both felt like great object lessons that were worth singling out.
I personally try to regularly have “unexpected displays of class.” It’s obviously one of those things that is very hard to “self measure” – I hope I compare to the two folks above.
My friend Ron Schmelzer – the CEO of Zapthink and co-founder of Channelwave – pointed out an upcoming MIT Enterprise Forum (Cambridge, MA) conference called “Rated R for Revenue: Selling and Marketing Your Next Great Thing.” The conference is on Saturday February 12th at the Newton Marriott and looks super. My frat brother Colin Angle (iRobot CEO) and his iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner are the morning keynote speakers and the day is finished off by Reid Hoffman, the CEO of LinkedIn. The agenda looks great and is full of strong entrepreneurs and – ahem – a few venture guys.
My favorite line from Colin is “15 years running a robotics company plus my MIT education and I’m just a vacuum cleaner salesman.” If nothing else, Colin is worth the price of admission. If you are interested in this conference, you can register here.
I had a great board meeting today at Quova and a near perfect board meeting at Rally last week. While it’s a pleasure to be involved in both companies since they are both performing very well, the structure and tempo of each board meeting really turned me on.
I had started to notice a disconcerting rhythm to some of my board meetings. On the positive side, several of my CEOs have done a spectacular job of putting together comprehensive board packages that we’ve replicated throughout much of our portfolio. As a result, we have substantial, detailed board packages that come out around a week prior to the board meeting. This gives me plenty of time to read through the board package, ask specific questions of the CEO in advance of the board meeting, and study the financials carefully. Since most of my companies are working off the same board package template, the information is predictably organized, easy to follow, and comprehensive.
However, I’ve noticed recently that a lot of the time being spent in the board meeting was being squandered by effectively reading through the board package in real time. This is often disguised as “functional updates” where each VP goes through his part of the business by simply rehashing the information in the board book. Given that the typical board meeting is three hours, I started to notice that most of the meeting was being spent reviewing the board book (which I’d already read and gotten 90% of the information from) and a minority of the time was being spent on non-operational (e.g. strategic) discussion.
I’d subtly made this comment to several of my CEOs (as subtle as I’m capable of being – visualize a bull in a china shop) during board meetings in Q4 where I realized that while it was exciting to rehash what was essentially solid performance for 2004, I was much more interested in spending time looking forward and talking about what we needed to do to drive asymmetric business value in 2005.
Rally’s board meeting last week nailed it. The board package came out five days prior to the meeting so everyone had plenty of time to read it. We had a typical three hour board meeting that started on time. The meeting then occurred as follows:
I left the meeting feeling both excited by where Rally is at, delighted by the dynamic among the members of the leadership team, and satisfied with the direction the board gave the leadership team.
Today, I had a very similar board meeting at Quova. While we covered very different topics – especially since we celebrated Quova’s five year anniversary today (with a fun event at the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design) – the preparation was equivalent, the tempo was similar, and the I walked out of the meeting equally excited about where Quova is and how the leadership team is interacting with each other.
The CEOs of Rally and Quova reminded me how a well-executed board meeting early in the year is a great way to set the tone for the business for the year to come.
Ed Sim from Dawntreader Ventures has a good post on selling software into the enterprise and the difference between a pilot / trial that matters and can turn into revenue vs. one that is just play time for developers.
Amy and I spent the week in Miami with our friends Warren and Ilana Katz. Warren runs a very successful software company called MaK Technologies that builds software simulation tools that are widely used within the military. Warren is on a holy quest for acquisition reform and we had several discussions about how government procurement of software works (or doesn’t work), what needs to change, what Warren is doing about it, and several reasons why I should actually like Donald Rumsfeld.
Ironically – and sadly – MaK’s biggest competitors for their products are DoD funded projects to create custom versions of the COTS (“Commercial-off-the-shelf”) products that MaK sells – a blatant violation of numerous government regulations and a huge waste of money. Government programs competing with COTS products is apparently a deep and well known problem within the government. Warren pointed me to a great, short book called “Quotations from Chairman David” which is “a brief and humorous examination of some issues related to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products in DoD and government systems.” The author – David Carney – a senior member of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon – used the “Little Red Book” popular in China in the 1960s to discuss COTS related issues.
Interestingly, the ideas in “Quotations from Chairman David” are applicable to any software development / system integration effort. As the boundaries between custom software, system integration activities, and packaged software continue to shift around, one would be well served to meditate on Chairman David’s thoughts.
Ah – two of my favorite topics – running and entrepreneurship. Lucy Sanders – the executive director of The National Center for Women and Information Technology – sent me an article on a study from Ball State University that found entrepreneurs who ran regularly were more successful in sales, external goals, and internal goals. The study also found that regular weight training was positively correlated with success on external and internal goals (but not sales).
Time for a run.
Amy gave me an awesome coffee table book yesterday called Family Business. I devoured it last night after dinner. She told me it was a Christmas present – if all Christmas presents are like this I might actually start liking Christmas.
Family Business is a story by Mitch Epstein of the Epstein Family businesses (retail furniture store and real estate) in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Mitch tells the story in both words and amazing photographs of how the American Dream ultimately failed Mitch’s father Bill Epstein. It is simultaneously heart warming and heart rendering and probes family, business, and a father-son relationship in unique ways.
As I read the book and looked at the pictures, I kept being reminded of my dad’s father Jack Feld. Jack was the patriarch of our family as I grew up – our own personal Jewish Archie Bunker. Jack died a few years ago but I could easily see Jack in Bill Epstein.
As a kid, we used to trek down to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on a regular basis to visit Grandpa Jack and Grandma Pauline. I was the oldest of the grandchildren (there are four men – me, my brother, and my two cousins) so as the oldest, I got the best and the worst of everything. Last weekend when I was in Aspen with my Uncle Charlie, his kids (Jon and Kenny), my brother Daniel, and our wives, our talk turned to Jack Feld stories one night. My contribution included reminding everyone how – when Jack got home from work at his clothing factory – he’d always kick me out of his chair, which happened to be the one comfortable chair in the living room.
Jack ran a clothing business all of his life. I don’t remember what it was like when he lived in New York (I was too young), but I visited his factory in the worst part of Miami several times. His company was a wholesaler – he made the stuff with sequins and pleats that was bought by clothing manufacturers to turn into retail goods. We used to joke that it was the crap you bought off the rack – he’d remind us that it was “real clothing by the big guys.” His factory was in a warehouse on a run down block that I was scared to walk down alone. There wasn’t a machine in the building made after 1960 (“I don’t trust anything that was done after 1959”) and the air conditioning consisted of a series of huge exhaust fans hung at the top of one wall. Jack got up every day of the work week (Monday to Friday), drove 30 minutes from his house in Hollywood Hills to his factory, worked until 3pm, and came home by 3:30pm. Every day. No matter what.
I was always surrounded by business as a kid. Jack had a company. My father was a doctor who had his own medical practice. He and my mom created a number of companies – Feld Properties (to manage their real estate investments, including a bunch of rental houses my mom managed), Feld Investments (presumably to manage their investments), and other “Feld X” companies I can’t remember any more. It’s probably no huge surprise that my first company was called Feld Technologies (named after my dad – of course) and my Uncle Charlies’ company was named The Feld Group.
Jack always loved to give advice. He lorded over us and encouraging us in his own special and unique way. As a 15 year old, his advice pissed me off, although I never had the courage to say some derivative of “Grandpa – leave me alone” (e.g. “go screw yourself”, or our family favorite “go shit in a hat.”) As a 25 year old, I remember sitting in full attention, soaking up every word about his business, what he did,what he learned, and what I should do.
At some point, his son the doctor (my dad) and the typhoons (me and Charlie who had our own businesses at the time – we were never tycoons – always typhoons presumably something to do with hot air) became the center of his business attention. He was endlessly proud of us, which was often motivating but always endearing.
Growing up, the idea of a family business was central to my way of thinking. I was surrounded by self-made people who created businesses out of nothing but ideas and hard work and who dedicated much of their life to the success of their work. When I started my first company at 19, it never occurred to me to get a job – I just did what seemed to come naturally to me. Twenty years later, as I turned the pages on Family Business, its easy to remember where this came from. As I read, I could hear Jack’s words. As I looked at pictures of Bill Epstein, I could almost see Jack if I squinted just right.
Mitch Epstein – thank you for creating this wonderful book and giving me these amazing memories. Amy – thanks for the Christmas gift. And Jack – I miss you.
Charlie Feld’s latest leadership article for CIO Magazine is about How to Inspire Your Team. It’s a quick read that explains the value of trust (table stakes – you’ve got nothing without it), hope (fuel for achievement), enjoyment (sustenance for high performance), and opportunity (individual growth is required for people to work at peak levels.) It’s well worth reading and sending around to your leadership team.
In my first company (Feld Technologies), we wrote customer software for medium sized businesses. This was back in the late 80’s / early 90’s – pre client/server (remember dbase, Paradox, Access, Clarion, and DataFlex.) It was hard – and our goal – as I’ve said before on this blog – was to suck less.
I just had an email exchange with one of my companies where I said “if this takes ZERO engineering on our side other than packaging and support and ZERO licensing fees” then I’d support chasing after a specific opportunity in the near term. The answer back was “there is potential for SOME engineering.” The debate ensued.
At Feld Technologies, I used to walk down the hall and ask folks “how things were going.” The most common answer from our consultants and engineers was “OK.” After a while, I realized OK could mean anything from “it’s great – I’m on plan, on budget, kicking ass, and feeling good” to “my life sucks, I just broke up with my boyfriend, the client is a shithead, the last build is completely broken, and I want to kill Joe because he’s such an asshole when he gives me feedback on my code.” SOME is similar – it could mean “all I’ve got to do is spend an all-nighter and all is well” to “it’ll take our entire engineering organization the next 12 months.”
At Feld Technologies, we outlawed the word OK. Whenever someone used it, a sit-down meeting was generated to find out what was really going on. SOME – and plenty of other words – are the same. Outlaw them – don’t make decisions based on vagueries.