There is too much focus on short-term results in business today. Investors in the capital markets are driven by quarterly earnings, and this puts tremendous pressure on CEOs, especially those who run publicly-traded companies, to develop short-term strategies to return quarterly profits at the expense of sustainable solutions that are in the long-term interest of all stakeholders.

Because of this pressure, many CEOs fear for their jobs if short-term results do not meet expectations and stock prices fail to grow. Unfortunately, this pressure to deliver quarterly results is often in direct conflict with the necessity of long-term investment in initiatives that will support global sustainability.

The better course would be to find some degree of balance between short-term earnings and long-term investments. Finding this balance requires courage on the part of CEOs and business leaders, who must communicate with shareholders, bankers and other investors about the importance of ensuring that their investments are sustainable in the long run.

Paul Polman, the CEO of the consumer products giant Unilever, has shown that kind of courage. On the day he became CEO, he abolished quarterly profit reporting. “If we do the right things then we do them for the longer term,” Polman told me. “We have to get out of this quarterly rat race, this expectation management versus reality. And that’s a business model that’s not run by quarters; that’s a business model that’s run by years.”

Polman has undertaken difficult conversations with Unilever’s investor base in recent years about the critical importance of investing in long-term sustainability. Certainly some investors have abandoned ship as a result, but Unilever has also attracted a new breed of investors who understand the importance of sustainability and are willing to accept a longer-term outlook. These investors understand that current investment is required in order to build momentum for long-term prosperity, and that this will have an impact on short-term returns.

Polman said that he has some investors challenge him because Unilever had a “bad year” since short-term sales and profit growth were just half of what a competitor reported over the past 12 months. But that’s where he says you need to adjust your expectations to the longer term.

“If you believe in a long-term sustainable model, then why don’t we look at it over five years or ten years?” he asked. “You might have connected with five hundred million more consumers, improving their lives and livelihood and encouraging them to become your loyal consumers in the next year or the year after. They will be your future consumers, and they won’t forget you. So we take a long-term perspective. If we invest in training, if we invest in information technology, or if we invest in factories that only pay out five or ten years later, why shouldn’t we invest in the future of humanity? And if you do that in a way that is relevant to your business, perhaps that year was a very good year.”

And that message has been well received by investors who have seen Unilever’s share price climb 12 percent in the past year—it’s up 30 percent if you include dividends. “We are not short-circuiting anybody,” says Polman, “and increasingly, the financial market understands that. We also encourage and incentivize our senior managers to invest short-term compensation into the long-term so that they become bigger shareholders and put their money where their mouths are.”

In rethinking the balance of what might be a good investment today versus what might pay off over the long run, Unilever has undertaken a number of groundbreaking initiatives.

For example, Unilever began working with Ben & Jerry’s, one of its subsidiaries, to replace the ice cream freezer cases we see in supermarkets and convenience stores with newer cases that rely on environmentally friendly technology rather than hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). In 2011 alone, according to Unilever’s website, the company rolled out twenty-two thousand of these new freezers in non-US markets, resulting in a reduction of twelve thousand tons of CO2 emissions. And the eventual goal is to eliminate HFC freezers altogether. “What we are trying to do here is put the right groups of people together,” Polman says. “And by doing that, you can create that tipping point on anything.

Another example and perhaps Unilever’s most ambitious and potentially far-reaching sustainability initiative is also its simplest: handwashing. The simple act of washing one’s hands with soap for twenty seconds does more than just about anything else to curb the spread of disease. Through its Lifebuoy soap brand—and in partnership with various governments, The World Bank Group, and a host of NGOs, including Save the Children, Oxfam, and UNICEF—Unilever is conducting a public-health-education campaign designed to prevent the 1.1 million preventable diarrhea-related child deaths that occur across the developing world each year.

“For Unilever, our overarching measures are our positive social impact and the decoupling of our growth from our environmental impact,” says Polman. “For me, sustainability is when our love for our children is stronger than our greed for our own well-being.”

 

I think we should face the fact that most of our efforts at leadership development have failed. Although billions of dollars have been invested over the last 50 years and tens of thousands of books written to promote better leadership, there is virtually no evidence that leaders are any better today than they were five decades ago.

When I ask business audiences today how many great leaders they have enjoyed working for over their career the highest number I get is two. That’s exactly the same number audiences were giving me 35 years ago when I started working with Stephen Covey.

Perhaps that is not because developing great leaders is futile, but because the challenges of leadership are expanding faster than our ability to help leaders improve. Also, maybe we’ve been investing in the wrong people to develop as high potential leaders.

I believe this because I am convinced the gap between what’s needed and what’s happening is getting worse.

It is because the technology and social revolution has changed the way value is created, the way work gets done, and the very nature of the workforce.

Here are the main points:

1. Organizational hierarchies are relics of the industrial age.  They are in the way of success. They are designed to maximize the productivity of routine work and minimize risk.  These authoritarian cultures reward overly aggressive, hard power personalities whose drive for status and power are seen as admirable ambition.

But consider this. When General Stanley McChrystal took over the Special Forces command over a decade ago it took 96 hours to plan a Special Forces operation. Within two years he was able to reduce that time to 2 hours. He transcended his ‘tell-everyone-what-to-do’ past and created a scalable way to collaborate.He did this daily with thousands of intelligence experts, soldiers and support staff. I said daily! He did it by converting the Special Forces command from a hierarchy to a network.Leading networks is a very different skill set than leading a chain of command. And most current business leaders are very, very bad at leading networks.

2. Competence is measured by strategic velocity. That is the speed at which strategy is decided upon and executed. Most leaders today are still relying on old tools of PowerPoints and annual budget cycles. That is leadership malpractice–a vestige of bad business school training. Today there is a huge gulf between what must be done and what gets done.

3. To be competent, leaders must be open-minded enough to constantly evolve strategy, and agile enough to stay engaged in the details of execution. This requires the expertise to create strategy that is responsive to constantly changing trends, opportunities and threats, and the social intelligence to work with teams of people as a peer to execute it.  The great leaders I have worked with were emperors in terms of strategy, but teammates in product development and execution. In my experience most leaders don’t have a clue on how to do this. This is why I am so insistent that more women be elevated into senior leadership. Their gender-based brain and social strengths are far more likely to develop customer-centered innovations, and their operational intelligence makes them more able to execute cross functionally. (Yes, General McChrystal made the change, in fact so did Steve Jobs, but most hard power men need intense coaching to see how they can use collaborative skills in a disciplined and inclusive way.)

4. The workforce has changed. Not just women and millennial’s . . . everyone. Employees used to give their best efforts because they had the security of long-term employment. They also felt they had a stake in the organization’s long-term success. No more. Research reveals that 80% of employed people constantly search the Internet for a better job. Global surveys that determine the level of commitment employees have to their employer’s success reveal that 70% are not very committed. This is unsustainable. For a network to thrive people must be focused, creative, collaborative and absolutely committed to results. Creating that requires #5.

5. Human purpose is not optional. Since virtually all employees feel like they are simply hired guns it is impossible to create high-performing teams without genuine shared purpose. Survival and success on their own are not shared purpose. Shared purpose is working together to improve the quality of life of customers’ in a distinct way. This is not just corporate social responsibility. It is not simply sustainability. It must be your reason for being in business. Real value-driving-purpose has to be at the core of an organization’s money-making business model.  Research from the Purpose Institute makes the evidence-based case that clear purpose drives all the success drivers. It’s simple. Clear purpose drives:

Innovation, product development, pricing, brand, culture, advertising, hiring, technology investment, market segmentation, supply chain management . . . everything.

Purpose makes hard decisions easier and faster.Most important, human purpose connects people directly with their job and the enterprise. It increases commitment and reduces friction. Purpose is the inspirational glue that keeps networks working at very high rates of innovation execution. Shared purpose was the essential reason General McChrystal was able to create and lead a giant global network. Everyone knew that people’s lives depended on how well they did their job.

6. One more thing. Purpose is necessary but not enough. You also have to know what the hell you’re doing. Leaders must have extremely high levels of business acumen and competence. Purpose is no substitute for competence. Passion alone can put you out of business faster because you mistake your good intentions for good outcomes.

That’s my brief explanation of one reason why old models don’t work, employees are disengaged and once great enterprises will fail if they are not led in radically new ways.

My experience, which is now confirmed by research from Women In Technology International is that women are much more likely to be engaged and motivated by purpose.  Their neuro networks are lit up by solving non trivial human problems.

Bottom line:

Common purpose drives disciplined collaboration, which is the essential quality of an effective 21st century leader.

The good news is that there are lots of women and a few good men who are interested in this new way of leading and working.  If you are, lead with purpose. If your organization isn’t interested . . . find or start a new one.

Life is short. Invest your talent and energy in ways that inspire you!

 

During the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri riots in the U.S. after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, only one news presenter bothered to ask a protester why they were burning down their own buildings.

Benn Swann (pictured above), founder of the Truth In Media project, believes that many media outlets are not interested in telling the truth, and are too guided by business and political interests behind the scenes.

Picking on mostly controversial topics, the two-time Emmy Award winner believes in digging deep and asking uncomfortable questions. He believes that journalism in its purest form is a higher calling and at its worst is nothing more than propaganda and a distraction for the masses.

He’s been a reporter, photographer, bureau chief and anchor for KFOX-TV, Fox 19 News and RT. Now an independent news reporter, Swann has adopted social media and online video, including Netflix and Hulu, to get his message out. His 10 million views in 140 countries indicate there must be some truth in what he does. He spoke to us about what is wrong with the news and how it’s being reinvented.

Is Internet broadcasting the future of news?

Absolutely, I don’t think it’s the future of just news; it’s the future of all media. Eventually we’re going to see a convergence of television and cinema. I think most of the traditional TV broadcast news stations around the U.S. realize that’s happening as they’re watching their viewer numbers drop every year. Cable news knows it’s happening; they haven’t seen growth in around 12 years. No one’s really sure about what it will become over time, though.

Because of the acquisition of so many different media types and their bundling into just one or two corporations, I think there’s a danger of seeing online media becoming limited. We’re going to see some major shifts around who’s posting content and how viewers, listeners and readers are able to access that content. The future of the Internet is very unclear and might unfortunately become what the big media companies decide to do in this space.

Social media has a huge influence on how we receive our news. How are you approaching social media in a unique way?

In the past, media outlets essentially created content with a shotgun approach to try and hit as many people as possible that might be interested. With social media, you can target groups of people who have already expressed interest in certain subjects, and in very specific geographic areas.

To what extent should governments and large corporations dictate what we hear and see?

It’s more a question of what you do about the fact that they do control what we hear and see. I don’t have a problem with governments putting information out to people because governments also have a point of view and access to information that the rest of us don’t have. My issue is when there is collusion between governments and media organizations to frame or shape a story. Throughout history, governments have engaged in some form of propaganda but that doesn’t mean it’s always a bad thing. Unfortunately the term suggests that it’s all negative but it’s not always bad when a government expresses itself or tries to inform the public about something.

Are the people who foot the bill the people who dictate the agenda of the news we hear? What alternatives are there?

We have sponsors who pay for some of the work we do and I have no problem with that. Someone has to pay for all of it, whether it’s a government, corporation or advertiser who places its products on your channel. They obviously have a focused point of view that protects and builds their brand. For example, an apparel company is not going to pay to create content around sweatshops that may be associated with them, so the challenge for media outlets is how independent they’re prepared to be.

A solution is to have transparency about who owns news corporations, who is connected to these media entities and the influence they have.

When you do a story, how do you approach it in a way that is as open-minded and balanced as possible?

Many times you hear people use the word balance. Fox News is responsible for how many Americans use this word because they see “balanced” as getting someone from the left and someone from the right and hearing both sides of the story. Both sides of the story is a disingenuous phrase because it indicates that there are only two sides to a story when virtually every story has multiple sides.

We have a slogan “humanity is greater than politics” and with every story we do we look at how people are being affected. You can find 10 different individuals who are affected in 10 different ways and those are all truths. One is not more truthful than the other.

How do you choose your stories, what type of criteria do you use for that?

We don’t follow what other news channels are doing. We also look at bringing clarity to stories that we consider misrepresented because the story has become trapped in that left-right paradigm that I mentioned earlier. We believe strongly in activism but not necessarily for us to direct it, which some media platforms try and do. We’re not trying to control how people become activated; we just want them to become activated
in some way. 

What is your opinion on Julian Assange and the other whistleblowers that have exposed secure information? Is this treason or transparency?

I certainly don’t see it as treason. I believe that whistleblowers are some of the most important people in any society because their role should be to hold governments accountable. The problem is that there’s such a disconnect between the government and the citizenry and between the rights of the individual, media and government. This has resulted in most media treating whistleblowers as if they are terrible people or traitors. What Wikileaks did was open up an entire generation of people around the world to the idea that you don’t need gatekeepers in media to get information anymore.

How do you make this profitable? There’s so much free information available online – how do you turn this into a sustainable business model?

Part of the struggle is finding a foothold that becomes financially viable within the context of traditional channels of media. As much as we can micro-target and reach people easily online, one of the difficulties is finding advertisers who want to connect with it.

We’re connecting with some traditional media channels to raise our value online, because even though everything is shifting online, we’ve still got a long way to go before all the advertising dollars follow.

People have been trained to view traditional media as being more legitimate, even thought most people don’t watch or read it. If there’s a story that runs in The New York Times, it’s considered more legitimate than if it was found elsewhere. It’s a strange paradigm to try and break through.

Who inspires you?

U.S. lawyer, journalist and author Glenn Greenwald has done some great work on civil liberties. Despite hearing some negative personal things about Julian Assange of Wikileaks, I don’t think any of that matters. I think you need to look at the fact that he figured out a way that was bigger than himself to change the way people receive information. I’m very inspired by that.

‘Bird’s eye view’ or big picture thinking and Worm’s eye view’ or detail orientation are terms that are often used when we talk about leadership.

A leader is expected to see things from a bird’s-eye view so that she is strategic in her approach and to see things from a worm’s eye view to demonstrate strong attention to tactics and details. Usually, a leader’s ability is judged by her ability to move between these two views. But in my view this is not sufficient. What a leader needs is a ‘Dolphin’s-eye view’.

A dolphin serves as a better analogy to me as it is important to recognize and capture the dynamism as we move between the big picture and the details. This dynamism affects how we see a problem. A leader needs to not just move between these views but also between contexts since the contexts change the nature of the problem. With a dolphins-eye view, a leader may be better positioned to achieve the following:

1. Capture the inherent dynamism: Problems are not static. They move as it goes through the eyes of different stakeholders and also, with external factors in time. It is important that a leader travels with the problem and most importantly, stays in sync with the problem to understand the dynamism and make sound decisions.

2. Understand and Adapt to contexts: A Chinese proverb says ‘A fish doesn’t know the water that it swims in’ and it is often true in work environments where we get caught in the details without realizing the context in which we are operating. A leader needs to jump out of his context like a dolphin, see the big picture and most importantly, avoid staying there for too long. Jump back quickly and deeply into this context and this motion needs to be cyclic to stay aligned to the changing realities.

3. Synthesize and Reorient in real time: When you are inside water, you don’t realize the turbulence on the surface. When you jump out, you realize that your whole context is in motion and it becomes very important how you process information while in motion. Leaders need to synthesize in real time and be so agile like dolphins that they can maneuver between the different dynamics in different situations.

 

Cultures emerge to ensure the dominant class stays in power.  Culture is permeated by unexamined beliefs, norms and expectations that favor those who make the rules. That’s why leaders are so powerful. They actually create the culture that will determine your opportunities, achievements, and in time, your health and happiness.

There are not many corporate cultures that are psychologically healthy places for people to work.  This came up yesterday when a senior leader of a former client informed me that she was beginning a career transition caused by the poor leadership of the once great company that is currently losing the battle to stay relevant to its customers. She asked me if I knew of any good places to work.  As my mind quickly swam through my mental Rolodex I came up with exactly one possibility.  I said to her, unfortunately the quality of work-life has precipitously declined over the last 30 years.  Everywhere I go I see people battling with toxic levels of unnecessary stress caused by poor leadership.

Mostly the stress is caused by the superclass of authoritarian leaders who undermine their talented work force. You see today’s typical corporate cultures emerged to favor the goals and motivations of highly competitive, white males. These are the people who are making the rules.

According to decades of research, the prime motives of these dominating leaders are

personal and professional status combined with financial success.  I can confirm this. When I interview new senior-leader clients I ask them “What gets you up in the morning?” The vast majority answer by talking about . . . obliterating their competition, market domination and personal recognition.  Very, very few have a first response that includes making their customer’s lives better or their employees more happy and secure.  (I find that a focus on customer and employee satisfaction is much more prevalent among leaders of small organizations, but very rare among large ones.)

Lately I have been giving a presentation titled “Think Like a Goddess and Work Like a Genius” to women who work in large organizations.  The talk is in high demand because many women find it extremely challenging to succeed in white male-dominated cultures.  It’s not surprising that most of the mentoring women receive is to adopt the behaviors and beliefs of status seeking, competitively wired white males.  It’s ironic that large sums of money are being spent on diversity and inclusion programs for organizations whose leaders want to homogenize their workforce.

My experience is that if the dominant corporate culture supports work priorities and behaviors that are inconsistent with your personal values and goals you have to create a psychological fortress of habits and standards that will enable you to create a work life that keeps you blooming in a garden full of weeds.

Thinking Like a Goddess begins with the recognition that you have many other aspirations than career promotions, status and money. Gender experts have long noted that when most men are asked how they define a well-lived life, they respond by talking about career, money and things.  Most women respond by talking about the quality of close relationships, family, health, security and happiness. Most women simply think about a lot more things that produce deep satisfaction than most men. I call this difference Thinking Like a Goddess because for the Greeks the woman warrior goddess Athena must find harmony with the life nurturing goddess Hera to have inner peace. This is a much more complicated test than the typical male heroes journey.

So the first thing I suggest to women is that you are aliens in your work culture and you will find not peace by being assimilated. You must be strong enough to create an inner culture that enables you to contribute your greatest gifts without losing your soul.

The Work Like a Genius part of the presentation is based on the avalanche of research over the last two decades about the daily habits that produce happiness and optimism, health and loving relationships, and creativity and productivity. Now is the first time in human history where we can apply the scientific evidence of physical and psychological health and happiness to our daily lives. What’s particularly attractive to professional women is that the daily schedule of high-performing people actually requires you to invest in your most important relationships, your health, energy and personal growth. The science of human thriving reveals how to create a daily rhythm of work, love and play that makes you stronger and more effective at work and living the life you really desire.

The bottom line is . . . Do Not Surrender!  You are not insane.  The fact that the rules, norms and expectations of your workplace may make you feel crazy may actually be a sign that you have retained a higher wisdom.  The old world is crumbling. A new world is emerging.  The birthing pains are awful but I am convinced a smarter business world will emerge as more women who lead like women create cultures that human beings can actually thrive in.

 

Maintaining your psychological balance is difficult. Human thinking is loaded with land mines. Our thoughts about our significant relationships and life experiences constantly churn in the daily whirlpool of trivial events, superficial relationships, personal moods and the sharp edges of minor frustrations. 

It’s not easy to keep your balance if you’re roller skating through life in a rain storm of emotions on a potholed path littered with falling trees and broken glass. It’s especially hard if the other skaters are throwing elbows as they try to speed past you.

Both ancient philosophers and modern psychologists have recognized that women  (and high–empathy men) have distinct sociological challenges when it comes to keeping a robust inner balance of daily contentment and drive for a better life.

Greek philosophers describe women as having two primary goddesses, Athena and Hera. Athena is the strong goddess. She is the leader.  She is highly motivated to right wrongs and to ensure social justice.  She is loyal, dutiful and persistent. She fights for fairness, equality and moral virtue. Athena is the energy that drives the suffragette and modern-day women who are fighting to educate the tens of millions of girls who are being actively deprived even a basic education. (A large number of men also have Athena energy but they’re typically recruited by women who see the tragic consequences of inequity before most do.)

The second primary Greek Goddess is Hera. She is the nurturer. She embodies mother energy. She is also the wise woman who guides powerful men while staying in the background. She is all the female COO’s, CMO’s, CFO’s and CHRO’s in large corporations ruled by a male CEO. Hera has powerful practical empathy. She understands problems at the human level. Most importantly she sees multidimensional consequences of the painful mistakes caused by competitive men who go to war, make reckless decisions, and ignore or exploit people. More than anything, she is the self-sacrificer. She is what most men want and expect from women because she empowers the male drive for status, power and money.

(Of course I am speaking in sociological generalities. There are many men who are psychologically balanced with healthy levels of empathy and drives far greater than their self-interest. They view women as fully capable partners and leaders. Unfortunately few of these kinds of males run large corporations.)

The reason I am telling you about Athena and Hera is that the inner life of women who work in authoritarian organizations has more challenges than then simply adapting to it. Authoritarian organizations may offer maternity leave and flex time, but they don’t want to. What they want is your single-minded focus and one hundred percent of your waking hours dedicated to achieving whatever the goal of the moment is. The design of an authoritarian organization is that of an army whose only goal is victory, and is willing to accept a high number of casualties to achieve it.

The more that work can be replaced with artificial intelligence, the more excited the barons of Wall Street get. Many senior executives over the course of my career have said that work would be wonderful if it could be done without employees. I am not telling you this to depress you, but rather to make it clear that in many invisible ways virtually all workplaces are hostile to your health and happiness. The power in understanding this is that you can take full responsibility for creating your own inner workplace, your personal great place to work.

Here are my work rules.

Whether you’re a man or a woman, think like a Goddess. It is the source of core human integrity.  Use your Athena strength to fight for the interests of your customers. (If you don’t, you’ll find yourself doing work that exploits them. Just consider what mid-level employees at Wells Fargo were forced to do to “meet their numbers.”)

Use your Hera empathy and desire to help collaborate so you can innovate and invent new ways to improve the future.

Keep advancing. Don’t let daily events upset you. Reframe your life as a purposeful learning and development experience designed just for you. Don’t waste any disappointment by not learning from it and moving forward.

Put your energy into the things you can control. Use worry like an alarm. Listen to it, shut it off and get into action. If you can’t fix something focus on your work-around and make things better.

Treat your life like it’s sacred. Keep these daily rituals. These are the science-based anchor habits proven to help amplify your effectiveness and keep your inner balance.

Greet each morning with gratitude. Before you get out of bed think of something you’re grateful for and put a big smile on your face and feel the joy of it. This morning ritual will trigger neuro-connections that strengthen the “positivity circuits” of your brain. It stimulates optimism.

At noon leave your desk and go for at least a 20-minute walk. Focus your thoughts on what you do well that you enjoy. This is called the “Flourish” exercise. It boosts your confidence and trains you to look for opportunities in which you will flourish.

Before you walk in the house tonight, sit quietly for a few minutes and think positively about your loved ones. Focused your intention that the people you love, wherever they are, experience happiness, health, wisdom and every good thing that humans hope for. This will change the psychological energy of your presence when you see the loved ones you live with and your desire to connect with those whom you don’t.

Feel fulfilled. Before you go to bed put all your attention on something good you did for someone today.  Realize that your act of thoughtfulness matters. Accept your own goodness. You will feel fulfilled.
I realize that these four rituals may seem like just another set of things to do among a million other things you should do. But I’d invite you to consider them in another way. Brain science has absolutely confirmed that mindfully meditating in certain ways rewires your brain to be healthier, stronger and happier. The science has moved beyond simple mindfulness to fine-tuning ways of meditating and makes you more resilient, more stress resistant, more creative, patient, optimistic and loving.

Just try these four “Think like a Goddess” rituals for 21 days. Keep a journal and see how much your inner life improves. It will.

 

Dave DuPont is the CEO of TeamSnap. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, TeamSnap has taken the organization of youth, recreational and competitive sports into the 21st century.

Eleven million coaches, administrators, players and parents use TeamSnap’s web and smartphone apps to sign up, schedule, communicate and coordinate their team or club for the season ahead. In 2015, they were awarded Outside Magazine’s “Best Company to Work For” and named “Best Company Culture” by Entrepreneur Magazine. With their millions of users and a steep revenue-growth trajectory, they are leaders in their industry. Led by a humble and determined leader, CEO Dave DuPont (pictured above), their success has as much to do with solid leadership as it has with letting go of ego.

Tell me a little about your company: what’s unique or distinct about TeamSnap?

Basically, our people. We started out with a core group, that had a certain outlook and set of values. We’ve managed to retain this group as we’ve grown and reinforce the values as we recruit new people who mirror them, and quite frankly, eliminating those who didn’t. It’s resulted in an organization that is for the most part very smart, and mission-aligned. Around 70% of our employees work from home, which means we have to be very communicative, and although this has resulted in many introverts, we have to develop effective communication within a dispersed team.

We have smart people who are very capable with good communication skills and we consciously strive to ensure the work environment is without big egos. One of our values is: “Big ideas, tiny egos.” We have no prima donnas.

What do you do that helps stamp out the egos?

I make a point of de-emphasizing where an idea came from. In many organizations, employees take a lot of pride in stating, “I started this” or, “This is my idea.” What we care more about is that great ideas get developed and that we execute them. Where they come from doesn’t matter. We solicit ideas all the time from all levels, but it does become harder as you grow.

We pride ourselves on being very pragmatic and will experiment with different angles. We try not to hammer people for championing unsuccessful efforts because as I constantly say, “If you don’t fall, you’re not skiing hard enough.”

All of us help with customer support. In the early days, we did this because we didn’t have enough people, but now we do it because it gives everyone a better appreciation for what support does and a better connection to our products and customers.

Another example is our diverse approach to work. We don’t care where you’re based, we don’t care when you work, as long as you can work with your colleagues and get the work done. One of our customers contacted us and said, “Love your products. I’ve worked in IT before and would love to help out 5 to 10 hours a week. I’m a stay-at-home mom. Can we work something out?” She now heads-up a support team of 10 part-time moms and four of those moms have gone on to full-time positions in other parts of the company.

Adopting an analytical approach also helps eliminate ego. We’re in a data-driven industry and we’ve always tried to use data to make decisions. This eliminates a lot of personal opinions and provides a lot of humility as the data informs you, rather than an individual. It also made me realize that I knew nothing about consumers and that we needed to test, refine, and then test again.

Tell me about your background, and why the ‘no ego’ approach is so important to you?

Everyone is a prisoner of their history. I had the good fortune to work in companies where there was a lack of ego and I saw the benefits. My childhood upbringing within a military environment also taught me about teamwork. I was maybe 17 years old before I began to think of civilians as normal people. When I got out into the world, I realized the benefits of freedom, creativity and the more positive aspects of a less authoritarian structure. I was constantly getting into trouble in school and naturally resisted methodologies being imposed on me. I met people later in life who taught me that whatever everyone else is doing, you should do something different. This was less about rebellion and more about innovation.

If you have a big ego, you want to accomplish big things, but I’m smart enough to realize that trying to do everything alone can actually prevent me from reaching my lofty goals.

How would you define a great leader?

Someone who motivates and inspires his team to do great things. One who can assemble a great team and help them extract the most from themselves. Importantly, it’s someone who gets great satisfaction from the accomplishment of the team, not himself, and strives for the greater good of the organization as a whole. Nobody likes the king of the hill, everybody wants to knock him off, your goal is ultimately to make everybody feel like a king (or queen).

There are an infinite number of things to focus on as a leader. Where do you put your focus?

My people and how I communicate with them. But there’s a conflict. On one hand, I tend to be very task-oriented and want to get things done. On the other, I need to strengthen relationships and keep channels of communication open. My approach is to make time for both of them. I also spend a lot of time making sure everyone’s on the same page. At most large organizations, people put together finely-honed presentations and spend a lot of time on them. I have found that being engaged with our vision and mission long before the press release or presentation is even written is critical to aligning with our message.

I want to see bullet points on a whiteboard or a hand-drawn sketch before anyone does any work. I want to see early ideas in rough format first. If I get in early, then I can disappear shortly after and leave the team to get on with it.

What are some of your weaknesses as a leader?

Many times one’s weaknesses are just the flip-side of your strengths. I’m very transparent and people know how I feel. This can be negative if you’re not thinking positive thoughts about an individual or situation. One way to get things done is by being impatient, but one of our major values is respect. I want to hear from everyone, and it’s okay if ideas are half-baked. Airtime for the sake of airtime, however, is just wasting time.

What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned in your life as a leader?

Humility. The one thing I wish someone had taught me in business is that nobody can do it alone. It’s ultimately your team that will be successful, not you, so make sure you assemble the best team you can – that works with you, not for you. Your people will make you successful.