This interview with Bing Gordon, a partner with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. Were you in leadership positions early on?
A. I ran the high school newspaper and was in student government. I played sports my whole life but was never picked as captain. But even as an 18-year-old, I had to grow comfortable with my leadership style, which is that I was really impatient with under-motivated people — extremely impatient, to the point where I was counterproductive as a manager of underproductive people. And that hasn't really changed. If people need to be motivated, I'm no good.
Q. What happens?
A. I get cranky. I stop being polite and I stop looking for win-win opportunities. It's just: "What? You're doing this thing and you're not trying to do it really well? I just don't understand." As you grow up, you become more comfortable with your own peccadilloes, and I'm bad with people who aren't self-motivated. And now, when I see them coming, I run the other way.
Q. Tell me about the first paid management job.
A. The first time I had a secretary, I was sheepish about being demanding or even asking questions. A woman was assigned to me named Sandy Fitzgerald, and she said, "You don't know how to manage an exec assistant, do you?" And I said, "No." And she said: "Well, I'm going to teach you. You have to ask for this, you have to do this and you have to do this." So it was like Secretary 101. So it's actually a lesson for management. It's hire people who can teach you how to be their manager and to be real explicit. I think what a lot of managers know is that you're owned by the people you're responsible for.
Q. You were the chief creative officer at Electronic Arts. Now you're in a different kind of leadership role as a venture capitalist. Can you talk about the differences?
A. Early on, I learned that I'm better with influence than power. And, in fact, I'm not power-hungry. My sense is that to be a good operator, you need to be power-hungry. You need to care more about power than prestige, and probably more about power than money, and more about power than intellectual stimulation. And people who are good operators tend to want power so they can get stuff done. They want to wield it. And there's a cost to having power, which is that the people you have sway over actually own you, especially if you're in a business where there are more jobs than there are good people.I like having influence. I like being with interesting people and helping them become better and being part of the flow of ideas. And that's a little bit uncomfortable, as a boss. It doesn't make sense to people that the boss, who is kind of a figurehead and maybe a confidence-giving parent figure, just wants to be an experienced helper. As a person of authority, I'm kind of teacher-consultant more than wielder of power.
The fitness function of a venture capitalist — meaning the metrics of performance, the report card — is pretty pure. You show up with money, and one way or another more money has to come back than goes in. So I just do stuff I've learned over time and work with people who I like who are really motivated, who want to listen to me most of the time and take feedback and then make it their own. And I work in areas that I want to learn about, areas that are fascinating, because fascination is a good thing.
It's better to work with people who you would pay to be able to work with. So if you're working with someone in an area that fascinates you, with people you can add value to and have good conversations with, who are capable and really motivated and you would pay to hang out with them, I'm pretty confident good things would happen.
Q. What were some other important leadership lessons?
A. One is, test yourself at extremes as early as possible.
Q. What do you mean by that?
A. The interesting thing about team sports is that it's hard to win all the time, so it's kind of a true test. Even Michael Jordan couldn't win all the time. You can take yourself all the way to the extreme and you start finding out that with billions of people on the planet, no matter how good you think you are, there's always somebody better and you can't bring it equally every day. So sports is a good real-world test. I think that living in cities is a good real-world test. Trying to make it in business is a good real-world test.So I'd say, first, be tested somehow in a way that feels legit. And I don't think being tested by grown-ups is a legitimate test. I've seen people go to certain universities and get kind of a stamp and that gives them confidence. I'm not sure that that's a sufficient test.
Second, for me, I became a commercial fisherman and it turns out you can die as a commercial fisherman. And it was at a time for me when boys tend to feel invulnerable, so running up against Mother Nature is kind of the ultimate test. I mean, commercial fishing is just a factory job, but you can die.
Q. What were you fishing?
A. Salmon, albacore and shrimp for four years. It was in my 20s. I got out of Yale, I acted in New York for a year and then I commercial-fished and paid for Stanford Business School. So, more broadly, I think, you want to test yourself against Mother Nature or something that's as believable as Mother Nature. So my advice is to test yourself against a metaphorical Mother Nature — try to do something and bring people along.
It turns out that people want leaders who give them confidence. In a start-up company or in a creative process, there's turmoil. Every day feels like you're looking into the maw of a black hole, and you want somebody around who's confident, who you think is competent, who can kind of create a floor and say: "Don't worry. It's not going to get worse than this."
Every leader learns that, especially in turmoil, your No. 1 job is creating confidence, and nobody teaches that. I think that involves learning on the job. Once you decide you want to accomplish something in an organization, you kind of get a sense that you're in a room and people are looking at you and you kind of bear a mantle of responsibility.
Q. Let's talk about hiring. How do you do it?
A. In hiring, I like in-person meetings for chemistry and I like references for truth. But, you know, the best predictor of performance is going to be past performance. I will always ask about your learning practices, who are your heroes, what do you read. I want to know your hobbies, what's the personal arc you see for your career, where are you trying to get to. I've also come to believe that if somebody's going to be great, they're going to have a great first week. And let's be real explicit about what a great first week is. My experience is that people who become revered in an organization over the years started really fast. In the real world, the only leaders who have institutionalized fast starts are U.S. presidents. You know, they show up and they clean house. They come in with an agenda for the first 100 days. They start with a bang. I've seen that with people, when they're promoted to positions of authority, like C.E.O.'s or presidents — the more experienced they are, the faster they learn to make a transition.
You also learn, as an executive, that if you compromise on the quality of the people you have, you're signing your own career death warrant. And once you realize that, it's like, O.K., sorry, it's just business. If they can't get motivated on their own, I can't work with them.
Q. This notion of people being motivated on their own is obviously important to you. Is that something that you get a pretty quick sense of with people?
A. In my world, I read résumés upside down, so I start with personal interests. So if somebody doesn't have believable, interesting interests, they're not going to work in a creative business. You know, you can't have a creative organization without individual peccadilloes, so if somebody's not copped to something interesting, and if they aren't passionate about something in life, they're just not going to be able to bring it. So I start with that. Then I'll scan for pattern of achievement.My sense is that people who are used to achieving will keep achieving. And most people on their résumés report task and process — "I held this job, and I was responsible for this. I held this job, and I was responsible for this." It's like, O.K., you're telling that you don't measure yourself by achievement. If you don't even measure yourself by achievement, how are you going to set achievement levels for other people?
So I tell kids: "You know, I think you're pretty cool. What have you done that's any good?" And strip out all the history stuff, just tell me what you're proud of and how you think about it.
So the point is to hire people who look generally competent, who are fun to be with, who kind of have some sense of the ground rules of life and then be really explicit about how to have an opportunity for a really fast start.
Q. I've heard a lot of C.E.O.'s say that they like people who come in and just watch, listen and learn for 90 days or so.
A. I think differently. I'm not a chess player, but I think life is a little like chess. In chess, every move counts, so every move has got to have offense and defense. And if you waste a move, you're increasingly likely to lose. A thing that I like about the Internet is that stuff moves quickly. We're kind of in the fruitful, high-paced natural selection, and that's appropriate for me.
But I don't agree with a slow start. I've seen it in boards. If a new board member doesn't even open their mouth in the first board meeting, they're kind of not an element. And it's like, dude or dudette, you're here because we think you're really good, and right now you've got a silver bullet. I mean, we're invested in you. You mean you showed up and you're not doing anything?
And I tell people, you need to add something to every meeting you come to. The risk is blathering, but you need to add something, and you know something that nobody else knows. And can you share that in a minute? Don't take a half-hour, but share it in a minute. If you're in a meeting, offer something. I don't believe that companies that do a slow on-ramp are going to keep up.
Thanks to Adam Bryant / NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/business/05corner.html?_r=1
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