Market Mine

FirstRain and The World of Digital Business Intelligence

Tag Archives: leadership

5 Leadership Keys for Women

Posted on by
Reply

Do women lead differently than men? Yes, usually. Do women face more barriers than men? Frequently. But do women often hold themselves back ? Yes.

I gave a leadership talk and Q&A, at a tech company in Silicon Valley a couple of weeks ago where I was meeting with female leaders in a hardcore semiconductor company. Because it’s hardcore it was a small group, and because I grew up (professionally) in a hardcore technical environment like that I spoke to the things I have seen women do that hold them back as leaders – and how to flip these challenges around and turn them into advantages.

Here are the 5 keys to leadership as a woman (although not exclusively…) and each one is the flip side of a common weakness:

1. Embrace making decisions – they are fun

Companies need people who are decisive and courageous. A common issue with new entrepreneurs and young managers is that they hesitate to make decisions. It’s tough when you don’t know what to do, but it’s better to make a decision quickly and decisively, and be ready to change it if you are wrong, than to hesitate, hash it over many times, or wait for someone else (your board, your team, your boss) – or even worse time and delay – to make it for you.

Making decisions gets easier when you learn to trust yourself and your judgement – you can feel in your gut and in the tips of your fingers what to decide. Never underestimate your own intuition – it’s not a myth, it’s real.

I simply did not understand or trust this until I read Blink (the voice is my head is uber-critical) but now I love the feeling. I am not always right, and I definitely need and value advice, but I learned to trust, move forward fast, knowing that if I am wrong I’ll also figure that out quickly, or someone I trust will slap me.

2. Never ask whether, ask when

This is a mindset that many men are good at. They come out of of the womb asking when they’ll get that raise, when they’ll be promoted, when they’ll go kill that bear, not whether. Women so often talk about whether. Should I push for that promotion, should I ask for more money, will I get funded, will they promote a woman, will they like me?

Working with mostly men, and a few women, I see a pattern in the successful women. They don’t ask whether they have a right to what they want, they assume they’ll get it. They don’t particularly care what other people think of them, they care about getting the job done. They act like they are competent, it’s in their future, they are going to get it, and there is not any question of whether, just when.

3. Hire your betters

The fastest way to build a great team is to hire people who are smarter and more experienced than you in their field, and if you are technical these are probably mostly men today.

It can be intimidating to interview people who are senior to you – I know. It can be downright frustrating when you talk to men who, when they meet you, talk down to you because you are blond and forget that you are interviewing them (can you tell I’ve been through this?). Remember, you don’t need to be “the man” – you need to get the job done better than anyone else.

Stay focused on your vision for your team. A group of people who work for and with you, all of whom are smarter than you in some dimension but who want to climb the hill with you. Plan to grow into being their leader and if they are good people they will give you space to do it. Give in to fear of being usurped and you’ll fail because you don’t hire a strong enough team.

I confess I used to always try to hire my “elders and betters”. As time goes by the first becomes more difficult, but thankfully the second is still easy!

4. Speak up and be sure you are heard

I have often heard the complaint that a woman will say something in a meeting, not have her idea acknowledged and then a man will say the same thing and everyone will jump on a agree. There are even TV ads that make fun of this reality.

Given that this does happen, develop some tactics that help you be heard, and help you confirm that you have been heard. State your input and then ask a question that causes your co-workers to engage in your idea. Repeat yourself in different words. Go to the white board to sketch your concept – whether it is a process or a product idea – it’s really hard to ignore the person at the white board. If you are in an online meeting call on a co-worker by name to get their direct input on your idea. What does not work is speaking your piece and then waiting – that is the easiest way for you to be dismissed.

5. Put the company first and get results

And finally – the playing field is not level. Fact. Deal with it. To lead men and get ahead in a man’s world you need to work harder, be smarter and be more ambitious than the men around you.

The CEO lives in the place where the company and it’s results are all that matter to her. So practice that. In everything you do put the company first, ahead of your needs. Ahead of office politics (I wish I had known this from day one – I had to learn this one). Drive to results, be sure you get recognition for your results, and you will get ahead and become a leader.

Male dominance of tech is not going to change quickly so don’t complain, or hesitate, just get on with it. And if you are a leader – men, and women, will follow you. When you look over your shoulder you will know.

Are you an energy source or energy sink for your coworkers?

Posted on by
1

Everyone interacts differently in the office, based on their role and personality, but most people sort into one of two types with respect to their impact on other people: energy sources and energy sinks. The CEO has to be open to all, and to motivate and energize all, and so I become very aware of the net gain or drain of interaction with my coworkers – and everyone at all levels of the company is consciously or unconsciously impacting the energy level of the people around them.
Energy sinks:
- Bring you problems for you to solve. They’ll arrive with a problem, dump it on you and ask what you are going to do about it. Particularly sink-ish when they phone you up with the problem on Friday afternoon and get it off their chest so you can worry about it all weekend.

- Have a negative outlook. Every solution you come up with they shoot it down without chewing on it first, and they drag down other people in the discussion who are trying to find a positive solution. Some people are consistently negative – about movies, about food, about their spouse. It’s exhausting!

- Take cheap shots up. Some people think it’s OK to be positive down their organization, positive to peers and attack up. The logic is something like “well you wanted the job so you just have to take it”. Very negative to other people in the room and, inside, very tiring for the leader. Equally draining are people who are obsequious – also does not move the business forward.

- Are non interactive. They sit silent in a problem solving discussion. Especially frustrating when you know they are smart and have ideas to contribute so you work extra hard to help them participate and overcome whatever inhibition is holding them back.

In contrast energy sources:
- Bring solutions with the problems. Even if they don’t have a good solution to some killer problem you are facing together, they try get the brainstorming going until the team comes up with a reasonable idea.

- Bring smart, out of the box solutions. The people who are willing to listen to an issue, think and then take the risk of an unusual or creative solution are particularly energizing, even if half their ideas are bad ones. They open up the solution space for everyone.

- See issues as bumps in the road, not roadblocks.

- See you a fellow traveler on the road (whatever level of management you are at), working together to move the company forward. They don’t take cheap shots or kiss up.

- Have a positive outlook. Some people know how to look for the silver lining – it’s in their nature – and these people often become leaders of their teams, whether they have an official manager role or not.

- Understand that executives are human. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone gets stumped at times and energy sources know that and detect when to be demanding and when to offer an ear to listen. As CEO you can never expect support from below, you need to be self reliant, but it sure is helpful sometimes when it’s offered no strings attached.

Think about which are you in what circumstances – and is your behavior and impact on your coworkers conscious? And if you behave differently with co-workers who are at or below your level in the org chart than you do with coworkers above you why is that and is it justified or helpful to your company?

The top image is of Centaurus A which is two colliding galaxies around a super massive black hole. The bottom image is our Sun.

Ben Horowitz: CEO Psychology

Posted on by
Reply

Terrific article in TechCrunch last week by Ben Horowitz – What’s the Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing your own psychology.

Managing inside my own head is by far the most difficult thing I do as a CEO and I appreciate Ben being so out and candid about what’s going on inside. As he says “Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it, and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.”

Ben covers classical psychoses like “If I am doing a good job why do I feel so bad?”, and the cliche (and truism) “It’s a Lonely Job” – especially when you are facing a crisis and you have to make the decision to cut staff which impacts the livelihoods of the very people you are working so hard for and care about.

The piece of advice I liked is “Focus on the road not the wall”. It it so easy to stare at all the things that can kill your company – and at any moment in time, even terrific times, any number of things can wipe out a small company. It is this single difference that makes being a CxO in a large company feel so emotionally different than being a CEO of a small company and I have done both. Large companies have mass and momentum – you have time to recover from mistakes most of the time. (A good example is Cadence Design Systems (CDNS) which crashed and fired it’s entire executive team on one day – it’s coming back because of the resiliency of the installed base and the R&D leadership team’s commitment to great products.)

The aspect Ben writes about that I have had in my head many times in the last 15 years which I can testify never goes away is A Final Word of Advice – Don’t Punk Out and Don’t Quit As CEO, there will be many times when you feel like quitting. I’ll add though that the most effective management tool I have found for this personal challenge is to get in the pool and pound the laps until my head is clear – which can be anywhere between 1 and 2 miles before I am calm.

If you have an ambition to be CEO one day read the article very carefully several times.

On stage twice in one day:
CMO Club and Astia

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday I had two opportunities up on stage – but talking about very different subject matters in the two.

First was on stage with our customer – Kevin Bailey from Symantec – talking about how Symantec uses real-time intelligence and FirstRain monitors to provide unique, instant customer intelligence to their sales force – and how FirstRain is integrated into their SymBrain portal. Great fun – and I get a huge kick out of customers talking about FirstRain. More to follow on this – we’ll put up some video from his talk shortly.

Kevin Bailey, Snr Director Global Market Analytics and Strategies, Symantec

One example: FirstRain powering the competitive matrix pages in SymBrain



Second was on a panel at Astia in San Francisco – speaking to a group of young women entrepreneurs about leadership. It is always both humbling and energizing to be asked to talk about my experiences and views on leadership. This panel was part of week long event for 43 women to help them get their businesses started and connect them with people who can help them raise money.

Three terrific women on the panel with me:

  • Robin Edwards who is a partner at SNR Denton,
  • Renee Knee who is WW VP/GM Commercial Sales and Growth Initiatives at HP,
  • Karen Riley who is a member of the Angels’ Forum
  • Greg Ketchum of Talent Planet (Panel Moderator)

It was fun and inspiring to talk about leadership with a hungry, smart group of young women – although as usual I was the most controversial. I do enjoy being provocative — but I was also the token CEO on the panel so I had some fun with that.

I really enjoyed listening to Robin, Renee and Karen’s perspectives. All such different backgrounds and yet we had many shared opinions on how to grow into being a leader. We talked about the importance of being confident, of setting boundaries and acceptable behaviors, of not needing to know it all yourself, how to manage stress (my input: work out and great red wine) and how to build executive teams who compliment your skills.

The most helpful for me was hearing Karen talk about how she took two years to care for both her parents as they fell ill – she cared for them herself in her house for the last 6 months of their lives – and she applied all her leadership and operational skills to make the end of their lives as comfortable as possible. As I navigate my way through the murky waters of ill parents it is comforting to realize I have skills and resources I can bring in to help make their lives easier.

Renee, Karen, Robin, me and Greg