Despite their amazing foresight, I always thought the founding fathers were just slightly off when they wrote…we are endowed by our “creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The problem is that I believe we get confused when we pursue happiness itself as a goal. Typically we imagine some state of being – for instance being accepted to a certain school, living in a beautiful home or attaining a certain financial status as being synonymous with happiness. It rarely is.
By contrast, working intensely on an interesting project, using your hard-earned skills to build something you are proud of – that can feel really good. Doing it as part of a team of similarly skilled, committed people – that feels even better. Sure you are pursuing a goal, hopefully a very worthy one – that makes the work even more gratifying, but you are not pursing the gratification itself. Most of us typically find our gratification and reward in the work and the process. That is what I mean by the “happiness of pursuit”. Beyond family, this is what I believe truly leads to happiness.
Last week, at SugarSync I witnessed and participated in this pursuit. Both the technical and business teams came together to prepare for an important demo for a prominent journalist. The timeline was extremely aggressive and it was a real push to be fully prepared. The team actually added components to make the goal even more challenging. I couldn’t help but notice the buzz and excitement in the office – it was about working hard and seeing those results turn into something tangible and cool. Interestingly this way overshadowed the specifics of how the meeting went.
I believe the best part of working in a startup is this happiness of pursuit. The work is challenging, the contribution everyone is making is visible, the team is tight (no room for slackers) and the goal is clear. Of course we want that work to be rewarded with a great financial outcome for the team but the day-to-day motivation has got to be from satisfaction and happiness in the pursuit of that outcome.
I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to be a member of the WSJ Task force on Women in The Economy – we’ve been meeting the last two days. There have been so many great ideas and speakers – certainly enough to provide blog fodder for a bit.
The conference opened with some interesting data from an extensive study conducted by McKinsey. They examined the pipeline of women in the Fortune 500 from entry level professional to CEO. Women comprise 53% of entry level professionals, 37% of early to middle management, 26% of VP and senior management, 14% of Executive Committee members and 3% of CEO’s.
Generally, women are entering the professional work force – they are just not making it through the funnel in great enough numbers. In fact they leak out at every stage. There are myriad reasons – women opting into support roles, exiting completely when perhaps they could stay if there were part time or more flexible work during childrearing times, lack of desire to be in the C-suite not to mention bias in the system. Focused programs can help – there were a significant number of companies within the survey with better results keeping upwards of a 30% female participation in the C-suite.
Interestingly, the technology firms in the study had a quite different profile – their pipeline had a very different shape. They had relatively fewer women in entry level (30%) but more consistent participation throughout. Top of funnel was low but the funnel leaked less. The message for us in technology is quite clear – encouraging women to study technology fields and to recruit women business students into the technology world.
There is improvement but the rate of change is slow. For instance, at the current rate of improvement in the federal legislative branch we’ll get to parity in 500 years. The percentage of women on the boards of F-500 companies is also relatively stable at a low number (after some improvement in the past). I learned that one reason for this is that the average tenure of a F-500 board member is 14 years. That certainly slows the rate of change.
Overall I found this data eye opening. The US is behind the top 10 OECD countries on metrics of women participating in the economy and government and the improvement is simply not happening fast enough. On the positive side it has been incredible to be here. Being in a room full of successful women executives, professors and political leaders – all of whom have incredibly busy calendars – yet took time to focus on this issue makes me optimistic about the future despite the numbers showing slow progress. That attention and focus and commitment to give back to others inspired me to think about what more can I do, both through my role at SugarSync as well as in the community at large.
It’s been an exciting week in the Cloud business. Microsoft and Google both entered the market to compete directly against SugarSync with new products. I wrote about the Google Drive offering here.
Despite being physically tired from the wedding I worked late the last couple of nights writing the blog post, responding to questions, and talking to everyone about the state of the cloud market from journalists to board members. I reflected on it as I went to bed last night and I realized how competitive market challenges are energizing to me. This is in contrast to the typical big-company, political people challenges that consumed lots of my time earlier in my career – those seemed to sap my energy while this one sparks it.
I think we had some of our most thoughtful, creative and strategic discussions at SugarSync in the last few days prompted by these competitive actions. Maybe this is obvious but it points to why competition is good and why the wealth of competition has led to so much innovation in the technology industry. When an industry has many players all trying to out-innovate and out-perform each other we are kept on our toes and it is the customer who wins.
Competition also adds energy and even growth to the market. Yesterday was our biggest day of signups in our history. Game on!
This headline caught my eye last week: “The Marriage Plot: Single CEOs Make for Riskier Investments”.
The article, which appeared on CNNMoney summarized a study conducted by two Wharton professors and released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study tracked 1500 public companies and found that the stocks of companies headed by executives who are single are riskier than shares of companies run by married CEO’s. “The companies with an unmarried CEO tended to spend more money on things like R&D, acquisitions and other investments that could more rapidly increase the size of their businesses, but also had a higher chance of blowing up. The result was a more volatile stock price.”
At first I found myself smiling reading this – after all, being married for 27 years and seeing a study that has data showing that marriage is tied to positive business results was appealing. Even the thesis that tied that better performance to a steadier, more spendthrift and less impulsive hand at the tiller felt good.
But I stopped myself – doesn’t this pose a risk of leading to the same bias issue I’ve written about? Where does one go with a study like this – should a board of directors therefore give preference to married CEO’s in their hiring? The problem, of course, is it focuses on a demographic label rather than the person’s individual characteristics. The board needs to assess the appropriate degree of growth through acquisitions, investments in R&D and other types of leadership that are needed by the company. They should combine this assessment with the other objective factors in their CEO selection and chose accordingly.
Furthermore, the best CEO’s will modulate their propensity to take risk to be appropriate to the company and it’s situation. Those CEO’s skills will be flexible for the situation. For instance HP today requires different strategies than those required of Meg Whitman at EBay in 1999. Maggie Wilderotter (CEO of Frontier Communications) is leading a >$4B market cap communications company while she previously lead a venture back startup – Wink Communications.
Timing also affects these assessments. When I worked at Check Point, pundits would often criticize the company and its CEO Gil Shwed for not being aggressive enough either in terms of marketing and R&D spend or acquisitions – and as such comparing the company unfavorably to Cisco or Juniper. A quick check of the Nasdaq shows how temporal these views can be. Check Point was able to cleanly weather the economic downturn and is now well positioned for growth significantly outperforming those company’s stocks over the last 5 years.
As I look back on my three years as CEO of SugarSync I believe that in the first year, stabilization and conservative management were particularly important to build employee and customer confidence. In hindsight, during the following two years I think we probably could have handled a bit more risk and aggressiveness and I am changing some of our strategies accordingly. How correct this assessment is won’t be known for some time.
Early on in my career, in my first sales position, I was coached by my experienced boss to avoid the topics of politics and religion. Stick to business, or when socializing and building relationships with customers outside the workplace, stick to safe topics – sports, travel, food or, if all else fails, local news and weather. I have generally tried to apply this advice to business.
In my role as CEO I want all employees, regardless of their political and religious views to be comfortable in our work environment. Frankly, I want them to be focusing on work and not be distracted by discomfort based on their views or the views of others. The reality of a startup, however, is that when you work long hours with people over an extended period of time it becomes forced to not to even acknowledge these topics. We need to find a healthy balance of communicating naturally but still keeping the work environment comfortable for a diverse group.
A couple of incidents recently reminded me of this issue. The first is my own. In my office, in a corner between my computer screen and whiteboard, was a small Barak Obama poster. This poster has a Hebrew/English double-entendre on it as it says “Yes We כן” where or “כן ken” is Hebrew for yes so it is both supporting Obama as well as a two-state solution for peace in the middle east. I bought the poster, admiring its cleverness, and had it shipped to my office (intending to bring it home) and I forgot about it. A few weeks ago I had a business meeting in my office with someone I had just recently began working with. We have gotten along very well so far but the reality is that the relationship is new. He noticed the poster and commented on it. We didn’t argue politics – he told me his views – absolutely the polar opposite of mine – which he held quite strongly. I couldn’t help but think that I moved down a few notches in his esteem and even if that were not the case – probably half the time for the meeting was taken up by this discussion rather than the more important planned agenda. I was kicking myself for even having the poster there – frankly I had forgotten about it and this carelessness was unfortunate.
A company in our industry has been having a dramatically negative consequence from its involvement with politics. Carbonite has been a long time advertiser on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. I suspect (but have no real data) this was not politically motivated and simply a desire to acquire customers. Advertising with him is particularly attractive for direct marketers because it is not just a regular ad – he recommends the products that sponsor him and that recommendation is extremely powerful with his listeners. Rush has always been somewhat controversial and probably turned off some potential Carbonite customers but clearly they concluded that the net was positive. His recent extreme statements against the Georgetown law student alienated even many conservatives. Carbonite was then in a no win situation. Keep the ads and suffer the backlash or cut the ads and get some backlash from the other side while likely losing sales. They faced a “damned if you do damned if you don’t” scenario. They, like most others, pulled the ads and while they got some positive feedback on their blog their stock took a tremendous hit. It’s not clear the net effect for them and won’t be for some time but it leaves a bad taste for many.
These are tricky waters to navigate. I want employees, business partners and customers to feel comfortable with SugarSync and trust us to be fair and professional. Yet I want us to have a human side as well and humans have opinions, political affiliations, religions and views on sticky social issues. We want to be true to ourselves at work yet not offend others when the main focus of our interaction is professional. Like many tricky topics, the most important first step is awareness and consciousness.
Last night we hosted the 16th Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner, and we had a blast! The first Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner was hosted in 2008 at Google, and ever since they have been organizing great events focused on giving women in the Silicon Valley a place to meet, network, and discuss the topics that are facing women in technology today.
As many of you know, I have a deep personal interest in the presence of women in technical fields and the advancement of women in the workplace. I started my personal blog – The Kitchen Sync – as a place where I can openly discuss these topics, as well as tackling subjects like work/life balance, travel, and other passions of mine.
So when we had the opportunity to host the Girl Geek Dinner, I jumped on it! I was excited for a couple of reasons, but primarily:
I believe that women in the Silicon Valley need more venues where they can meet, network, and support each other – so I applaud the mission of Girl Geek Dinners in making this happen.
I have been extremely fortunate in my career, and have learned a lot along the way, and I value the opportunity to mentor people whenever I can.
And, from a company perspective, SugarSync is growing like crazy and we have a ton of open positions we are trying to hire for, and I viewed this event as a great way to meet a bunch of smart, qualified women.
We were asked to speak to the group, so after I addressed the crowd, I invited Paula Long one of our Board members and the co-founder and VP of Engineering of EquaLogic (acquired by Dell) up to share her thoughts on how to build your career and be successful as a woman in technology. Overall it was a spirited conversation. The group had a ton of great questions, and I feel like we all got to learn a little more about each other.
We had over 110 attendees show up for the event, and we had a great time speaking with and getting to know you all. Thanks again for attending, and we look forward to hosting more geeky events (regardless of gender) in the future!
Here are a few pictures – the full event album will be on our SugarSync Facebook page soon.
I’m enjoying reading “Good Boss, Bad Boss” by Robert Sutton. He is well known for his book “The No Asshole Rule”. There is a new chapter in it that was excerpted on Fast Company. The basic premise is that the very fact of being in a power position for any length of time amplifies our tendencies to be blind to our weaknesses and dehumanize others who do not have as much power.
I remember thinking about this a lot during the Mark Hurd and Elliot Spitzer scandals. I found the Mark Hurd situation so surprising because he had a long-standing reputation for strict policy adherence, conservative demeanor etc. while at NCR. The WSJ had a great article at the time on this topic. It’s not that the people in power started off Machiavellian or unethical. In fact the research shows the opposite. Nice, ethical people are more likely to rise to power. But, unfortunately, those traits that helped them accumulate power, tend to disappear once they rise through the ranks.
Why is this and how can we counter this tendency? First the why. According to the psychologists one issue is “feelings of eminence” e.g. while others shouldn’t speed, they are important people with important things to do so it’s ok for them to speed. Power makes people myopic and less empathetic – it’s harder to imagine things from another’s perspective. And of course, the people surrounding those in power may contribute to these trends – telling them they are right and important.
Given the very real negative business and personal consequences of this power poisoning it’s worth thinking about how to counter this trend. I love the findings of Stanford researcher Hayagreeva Rao that “bosses who still are married to their first spouses (rather than a “trophy” husband or wife) and have teenage children are less prone to such delusions, because no matter how much their underlings kiss up to them, the people at home don’t hesitate to bring them down a notch when required”.
This correlation or causation is well and good but obviously not every person in a position of power will be in this family situation and we need other tools to buck the poisoning trend. One tool that I believe in is the “360 Review”. Scott Weiss wrote about this on his blog. It’s something I’ve been doing yearly since joining SugarSync. The key is anonymity – staff members can tell the third party what they really think. Hopefully they can tell their boss to their face but in case not – there is another mechanism. Of course there is no guarantee of action or change from the 360 but it’s a very useful tool.
Ultimately we need to consciously encourage dissent and feedback and not punish it. When a conclusion is forming, solicit the perspective of the other side. Highlight the importance of the contribution of the dissenter. I often think of our nation’s practice on the supreme court – minority views are highlighted even though they are not the law of the land.
Finally, I don’t mean to imply by this blog post that I think I have so much power :-). SugarSync is a fast growing but still small company. That being said, there are 55 people who are investing a big chunk of their life in SugarSync and I want to be sure not to drink the poison so that I can help their jobs be as productive and enjoyable as possible. So to that end, to my friends, family and team here I ask you to keep me honest.
Several months ago I wrote a post about Performance or Potential. It was a response to a research report finding that women are promoted based on performance, and men based on potential.
I believe we’re seeing a corollary to that type of thinking in a recent NY Times article about Sheryl Sandberg. While a good chunk of the article was positive, the following section had a decidedly negative tone:
“Some say her aim-high message is a bit out of tune. Everyone agrees she is wickedly smart. But she has also been lucky, and has had powerful mentors along the way. After Harvard and Harvard Business School, she quickly rose from a post as an economist at the World Bank to become the chief of staff for Lawrence H. Summers, then the Treasury secretary. After that, she jumped to Google and, in 2008, to Facebook.
She is married to Dave Goldberg, a successful entrepreneur and the C.E.O. of SurveyMonkey, which enables people to create their own Web surveys. She doesn’t exactly have to worry about money. Or child care. (She and her husband have two young children.)
To some, Ms. Sandberg seems to suggest that women should just work harder while failing to acknowledge that most people haven’t had all the advantages that she’s had… ‘“I think she’s had a golden path herself, and perhaps does not more readily understand that the real struggles are not having children or ambition,” Ms. Hewlett continued. “Women are, in fact, fierce in their ambition, but they find that they’re actually derailed by other things, like they don’t have a sponsor in their life that helps them go for it.’”
The Atlantic had a great article that pointed out a double standard – why is luck even brought up here when it is rarely mentioned in similar articles about successful men in business?
In addition to agreeing with the content in theAtlantic article, I started thinking about all those “lucky” women (including me) who also went to Harvard Business School. What has become of them? How many of us are there and what are we doing now?
I went into the HBS alumni directory for my class -‘88 (Sheryl is ‘95) and did a bit of informal research. The class of ‘88 is about 25% women. It’s hard to know exactly but judging by how many list a job in the directory it appears that about half of the women are working outside the home. The next question is how many of that working group have children. This is tricky, as it’s not listed explicitly. For my husband Steve and my two sections (where we know and are in touch with many of the people) it seems to be that approximately half of the “working half” have children.
What can we conclude from this? Well it turns out that the “luck” of going to HBS does not alone make one worth $1.6B while being married with two kids. In fact, and on a very serious note, it is a minority of those lucky HBS attendees that are even in the demographic category of doing what she is doing – working full time while raising young children, not to mention achieving her extraordinary level of success.
Given the fact that so many of the HBS women graduates are not working, I believe the messages she has been delivering at TED and in the Barnard commencement speech are highly relevant to this group. Be proud, be ambitious, stay in the game. I also can’t help but wonder about her point that the successful women are less well-liked then successful men as many of my career-oriented female classmates are not married. We need to work to change this in our society.
Another sore point for me in this NY Times article is the implication that having a high income means that you don’t have to worry about childcare. Of course, the challenge is even greater for the working poor and even middle class but I know of no mother, regardless of income level, who does not worry about childcare. Finding the right childcare, dealing with transitions, worrying if all is ok at home. Managing a high-powered career while parenting young children is simply hard work leaving not a lot of free time or sleep for Sheryl or anyone else. That’s why I believe that changes in business and government policies such as parental leave for both parents are so important. Plus, role modeling, showing working new moms that it can be managed and our children can thrive, is critical as well.
In her Barnard address Sheryl said that our generation of women hasn’t broken through to the CEO level in great enough numbers despite the good fortune of education. The HBS class of 1980 was 20% women and they are at prime CEO age. We certainly do not have 20% penetration in the large company CEO ranks – for instance only 18 of the Fortune 500. What needs to change to increase these numbers? That is a huge topic and inevitably will involve many elements both individual and societal but the suggestions Sheryl makes in her speeches can only help.
I hope I have the humility to appreciate my good fortune and the friends and family who have helped me along the way. I’ve talked about many of those people, in particularly my husband and parents, in this blog. My education was a gift from my parents – I hope they know how much I appreciate it. My husband has truly been a partner in all aspects of my life. SugarSync is a team effort by all of the employees, investors and executive team. But nobody but me walked out the door in the morning and returned to work with a six week old sleeping sweetly at home. Nobody was in my head as I lay awake figuring out how to solve a business problem or woke up with an early alarm to finish a project before getting the kids off to school. I take pride in what I have done to bring SugarSync to the place it is today and will be proud of us achieving even more success in the future. I’m even prouder of my children and the people they are. I hope that the lens through which these accomplishments are viewed will be less biased than the lens trained on Sheryl now.
It is a privilege, and perhaps even lucky, to have professional parents, a great education and generous mentors. What the numbers and common sense show, however, is that what is noteworthy for Sheryl Sandberg and what is deserving of coverage in the NY Times and elsewhere is not her luck, but her hard work, talent, drive and contributions.
When we talk about entrepreneurs – a certain image comes to mind. This person we imagine usually has a few common elements. She takes a tremendous amount of initiative, is willing to take risks and embodies the leadership to bring together the capital and resources for the organization and the management skills to see the initiative through. They will pursue their goal without regard to the resources they currently have yet they must be practical and action-oriented.
With the success and attention garnered by several highly successful entrepreneurs who dropped out of or barely graduated from college to start their companies, we begin to think that that is the typical entrepreneurial model and that, given their youth and relative inexperience, their success was inborn.
The reality though is that – while these young, apparently inborn entrepreneurs are exciting – the data show that they are still rare exceptions, as opposed to the norm, and that in fact entrepreneurs are created by a life full of experiences.
Yesterday I was lucky to be able to do something I had never done before – we took our Stanford alum son, daughter-in-law to be and Adam and Margot to the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix. Unfortunately for Derek and Jess they needed to get back to Boston but the rest of us had a fun family experience. It started with a road trip to Phoenix from Newport. We rented a minivan for the occasion – I must say minivans have come a long way since we owned them when the kids were little. Satellite radio, DVD player, syncing with iPad – the works! Being at the bowl game (my first ever) was an experience – huge crowds, bands at the tailgates, the stadium was intermittent seas of Orange (Oklahoma St.) and Red (Stanford), marching bands, cheerleaders – lots of excitement.
But of course the most exciting part of this outing was the game. It was high-scoring, dominated by two great offenses. The score was tied at 38-38 with seconds to go. Stanford had a chance to win the game in regulation, but a field-goal attempt by freshman Jordan Williamson was wide. He also missed a 43-yarder in overtime. My iPhone video of the attempt is here.
The obvious focus after the game was on the kicker – he had the chance to win the game and didn’t. Of course Andrew Luck took the high road in media interviews – “The media tends to want a scapegoat or a hero and that’s just not the case in any football game” after all it was a full game of plays that put them in that situation. I am certainly no sports expert. Truth be told, I couldn’t name all the positions on the field in either offense or defense despite being a loyal fan of my three son’s many years of football. But I know enough to know that the coach had a choice – he could go to his experienced quarterback to make either a passing play (he completed 27 of 31) or run the ball (average gain of 5 yards per play) or ask an inexperienced freshman to go for the field goal in front of a stadium full of screaming people.
A big part of leadership is knowing not just what to do but who to do it. There are many difficult and risky tasks we need our teams to do. In the case of SugarSync it might be to make a change to a database that manages critical customer data, move datacenter equipment, meet with an important customer, review financials with an investor, or speak with a journalist to name a few. All of these actions can have dramatic consequences for our company. It is my responsibility to make sure the right person is doing those tasks. Invariably they are assigned to our most experienced, proven and consistently performing employees. Not the young hotshot new hire (who by the way hopefully will be the experienced, proven contributor soon). Why go with the proven performer? – they are likely to be successful in the crunch times as they have been in the many events that got your there. We are lucky at SugarSync to have a great team of such experienced players.
Laura Yecies | The Kitchen Sync 