Review GoodData C.E.O Interview-Write 150-300 words about what you think about the interview.
This interview with Roman Stanek, chief executive of GoodData in San Francisco, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. You’ve started more than five companies. Did you have the entrepreneurial itch when you were a kid?
A. It’s funny, because the likelihood of me sitting here today and talking about these companies was exactly zero when I was a kid. I lived in Communist Czechoslovakia, and when I was 15, I was sent to vocational school to study accounting. When I was 18, I decided to study computer science, but we didn’t have access to any computers. So it was more science than computers. The first time I saw a computer or had access to a PC was when I was almost 25.
Q. Tell me about your leadership style.
A. A big part of my leadership approach is about confidence, and confidence comes from understanding. If you have a deep understanding of the industry you’re in, and of the problem you are solving, and you are ahead of everybody else in your space, then you can give your team the confidence to trust you. So if people are questioning what you’re doing, and the task looks impossible, you have to give them the confidence that we have a vision, and we understand the space better than anybody else.
The second thing is the importance of communication skills. Having a vision and having confidence doesn’t mean anything unless you’re able to communicate it to your team, investors and customers. The ability to communicate well didn’t come easily for me. I always assumed that everybody would see things the same way I see them, and now I understand it takes a lot of time to get people aligned.
Q. What about the culture you’re trying to foster?
A. The No. 1 thing for us is openness. It’s about trust — people can trust me, and I can trust people. So we have open calendars, for example, and certain rituals. Most Thursdays, I get in front of everybody to answer questions. Leading up to that, people will put questions online and then vote on the most interesting ones.
Q. And the open calendars?
A. Anyone at the company can see my calendar. Sometimes I’m surprised by how many people ask me what a particular meeting is for. You can never underestimate how curious people are about the C.E.O.
A. You can never be out of your role as a C.E.O. You always have to be careful about how you carry yourself and how you act with people because, again, it’s about confidence. For me, any start-up is one big, giant mood swing — every bit of news is extremely bad or extremely good and that’s what makes it so difficult for some people to work in that kind of environment. That’s why the C.E.O. has to demonstrate confidence, so they can say, “Here’s the bad news and here is what we’re doing about it.”
Review GoodData C.E.O Interview- Q. Anything you have a particularly low tolerance for in your organization?
A. I have a really low tolerance for people making comments, especially managers, without actually positioning them.
Q. What does that mean?
A. Somebody might say, for example, that our competition has a new product. But is it good news or bad news? Should we do something about it? I always expect my managers to have an opinion and they should not be just messengers. A manager is not a messenger. I don’t like my managers essentially talking to their people without being able to express their opinion and position what they’re discussing.
Q. Anything else?
A. People know that I hate long e-mails and that all of the e-mails they send me, with a few exceptions, should always be short enough to fit on the screen of my iPhone. If you send me an e-mail, and I need to scroll down to read it all, you’ve lost me.
Q. Let’s talk about hiring. How do you do it?
A. I’m usually the first person to meet with a new candidate, because I’ll do the selling. People have options, and when they come to us, we’re not the only company they look at. We want them to be extremely committed to the process, even the process of hiring. They have to come and interview with 10 people and do homework. The best way to do that is to get them excited about the company and for me to sell them the vision and talk about the culture and why we will win. Then I’m usually the last one who sees that person again and then it’s a real interview.
Q. And so what are you looking for in that interview?
A. Raw I.Q. is No. 1, but the second quality is the ability to be part of the team. So the question I most consistently ask people is, “Tell me about a time in your career when you felt in the zone, where you felt you performed the best. It doesn’t need to be the most recent experience. It doesn’t need to be the most high-level job. I just want to understand when you were most excited, and at the top of your game. Who helped you to develop that? What was the environment? Why did you feel like that? What was the company? What was special about the company, about the product, about the space, about you?”
I usually focus on that moment because I want to understand how people got there and whether we can replicate that with this person.
Q. What is your very best skill — the thing that sets you apart from others?
A. I’m not a developer, and I don’t write code, but I have the ability to see where technology is going to be in five years. I can see it ahead of most V.C.’s and most analysts and most customers. If you look at all of my companies and my track record, the results show that I was more right than not. My secret thing is that I can see stuff that nobody else can see.
Q. And where do you do your best thinking?
A. Part of working in the big mood swing of a start-up is that you have to somehow get out of it. So every Saturday and Sunday, I’m on a bike for at least a couple of hours. I bike alone because those are the moments when I organize my ideas. Being alone is very helpful for a C.E.O. and I have very few of those moments. I also like long flights.
Answer Preview-Review GoodData C.E.O Interview
