Q. Tell me about your approach to leadership.
A. I think that one of the most important things in working with anybody, whether you’re the boss or the person being managed, is that you have to have mutual respect. I’ve always been very open and down to earth. I’ve never taken myself very seriously. I show self-confidence, and I think that if you don’t show self-confidence, no one is going to buy from you and no one’s going to want to work with you.
I’m transparent, and I ask people on a regular basis what they like about their job and what they don’t like about their job. What can we be doing better? In your previous job, how did you do it? What worked better and what worked worse than what we are doing now? I’m constantly asking people for their opinions.
A key thing is surrounding myself with people that, No. 1, I respect, and No. 2, I like. Then I ask their opinions and really listen to them. Two-way conversations are an important ingredient for building a company. Nowadays, I hear that so many younger people who are starting companies are so used to working on the Internet that they tend to send only e-mails and communicate with their screens more than they communicate with people around them. You need to interact with people and not just your computers.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved over time?
A. I’m more self-confident now, and I make decisions faster. I know what information I need because I’ve been there, done that before. I’m also more willing to change the decisions and modify them so that we get to the end faster.
I don’t run after “shiny objects.” That’s a mistake that a lot of people make in running a company, especially in starting one. They tend to get a lot of opportunities from people who want to partner with them. And these are just shiny objects, because there are very few partners that end up being right for your company. So I’m much more selective. If I hear something, I’m very quick to think, ‘Hey, that’s a shiny object; let’s get back to work.’ I think that’s what’s so distracting to a lot of companies — they see a big customer or some other distraction, and they spend too much time on it and they lose their way.
Q. What else?
A. I’m willing to take risks. If you don’t have some fear of failure, then you’re not taking enough risks. I probably was much more conservative the first time around.
But I am conservative in hiring. I don’t over-hire. The reason is that you can get a lot more work done with fewer people. If you have a lot of people, you have to give them something to do, and you have to give them something to manage, and then you have to manage them. You can get a lot less done. So you want to have a core set of people while you’re really trying to discover your product, your direction, your market. And the more people you have, the more difficult it is to take risks because it affects a lot more people.
I’m also at a point in my life where I like to choose customers I want to work with, because if I don’t like working with them, we’re not going to be very good at it. And we’ve actually fired two customers. That’s something that I think is important and might be very strange and surprising to people. We had some customers when we first started and we were trying to make our way and figure out the market, and not all of them were ultimately right for us.
Q. How do you hire? What questions do you ask?
A. I would certainly ask people: “Why are you here? What do you know about our company that made you want to interview for this job?” If they haven’t done their homework and don’t even know why they’re there, then that’s a real red flag for me.
The second thing I’ll say is: “Why do you want to leave the company you’re at right now? Looks like you’re doing a pretty good job, and you’re doing well. What is it that you don’t like there?”
It’s always very eye-opening to know whether they don’t like it because of politics, because I always think that people can create their own politics to some extent. So that sort of makes me nervous. They’d better have a pretty good answer to those two things. Otherwise, we’re near the end of the interview at that point.
Q. Tell me more about your point that people can create their own politics.
A. If they say they don’t like the politics at their current job, I’ll ask them, “How’s that affecting your ability to do your job?” Then I would evaluate whether I think that they should be able to handle that and get around it, or whether it really is a serious political situation.
I interviewed somebody and he was telling me all about the politics within the company. The longer we talked, the more I thought he was the one creating the politics.
Q. What qualities are you looking for?
A. You hire people in your own style. If you hire people in your own style, they will in turn hire people in their style. So I want somebody who I feel is open and smart. I’m not saying I’m that smart, but maybe I am a little bit smart.
And I want people who are self-deprecating, who don’t take themselves too seriously.
And are they willing to work hard? If they have just too many outside interests that are going to take away from their ability to focus on the job, then I’m probably a little less likely to hire them.
Q. In those cases when someone doesn’t work out, what’s usually the problem?
A. They’re just in over their head. They painted a picture in the interview that they know certain things, but they really aren’t up for the task. And you can never demote somebody. Sometimes the people that you hire are good, but they’re just not good at the job they’re in, and a demotion doesn’t work. So you have to move on.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/business/sandra-kurtzig-of-kenandy-on-keeping-companies-focused.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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