Stephanie DiMarco doesn’t want to hear how great Advent Software Inc. is doing. Sure, as founder and CEO, she likes to know about the
wins at the investment management solutions organization, but she doesn’t want to celebrate the good stuff at the cost of omitting the
bad. That’s why, when she travels, she keeps a list of customers with her, so if she gets extra time, she can squeeze in a meeting to get
feedback on how the company is doing. That desire to get to the heart of anything that isn’t working at Advent is the driving force behind
the company’s boom to a record $184 million in revenue in 2006 and is the philosophy that DiMarco constantly drives home to her 850
employees. Smart Business spoke with DiMarco about why you should put problems under the spotlight and how important it is to
challenge your employees.
Don’t hide the bad news. There’s nothing like
adversity to get you motivated. We had
some problems to fix in 2003, but it was a
very energizing time because I think that
people felt for a couple of years we ignored
our problems, and there was enough good
news that you could hide behind.
So there was a sense of relief that we
were going to be very bold about the
issues that we had and correcting them. It
was extremely energizing for people, and
we also learned from that experience that
it’s OK to put the problems under the
spotlight because they only fester if you
try to ignore them.
Keep your employees challenged; keep your
employees. If great people are challenged
and excited about what they are doing,
they’ll stick around. Financial compensation is one component of why people
stay at a job, but in lots of cases, it’s the
smallest component — as long as you’re
competitive and fair and people feel well
compensated.
Being excited about what you do is
more important to most people, and having that shared vision of where the company is going is really critical to keeping
people for the long term.
Clear up the fog for your staff. We try to be
very clear about what our objectives are
on a quarterly basis, an annual basis and
on a three-year plan. We communicate
the vision for the year, and then on a
quarterly basis, we update those.
I just sent out a mid-year update to the
whole company describing where we
are, and the opportunity and the challenges for the year, so there is no mystery about what our goals are and how
we are tracking toward those goals.
Clarity is a lot better than fog, and most
people are a lot more successful when
they understand the objective, so they’re
not just taking an order, they have a
holistic picture of what we’re tying to
accomplish. They’re much more motivated when they see the bigger goal
we’re working toward instead of just
seeing it as an individual task.
It’s very important that it’s a shared
vision, and I think it’s kind of a myth that
leaders create visions and push them
downhill. I know that’s certainly not the
case in our company; we develop a mission, and if you develop it properly,
where you have the buy-in from all your
constituents, then it’s really about the
clarity of communication so that everyone understands it.
Keep an honest workplace. You really have to
have a leadership style that is very open
and honest and fair because smart people have other options, and they aren’t
going to be interested in working someplace where they don’t feel like it’s an
honest place.
People want to feel like they are in control of their destiny. Part of that is having
access to the CEO and being able to give
the CEO your opinion. And I’ll listen to
it, so they feel like they can impact the
objectives of the company. I don’t think
anybody likes feeling like there is a hidden agenda or they don’t have access to
the top, so an open door is a big part of
knocking out that mentality.
We typically do a lot of rounds of interviews when we hire people, so they have
a lot of access to people around the company, so that gives them the opportunity to get that feedback directly from their
managers but also from people who will
be their peers. And I think that new
recruits really appreciate that because
they get a pretty candid view of the company, and the open-door policy is something that people do indicate to new
recruits. And it’s much better coming
from a peer than my saying, ‘Hey, this is
a great place; we’re really open.’ It has a
lot more credibility coming from them.
Now, I can’t make them say that, but
it’s true of our culture, so it does kind of
permeate.
Recruit right and hire right. The most important thing that any manager does is
recruiting because the quality of the
company is directly related to the quality
of the people. So it’s very important that
you never compromise, and when you’re
operating in a competitive environment,
where the best talent is scarce, it’s easy
to compromise.
But my mantra is never compromise,
even if we have to work twice as hard to
get the right candidate, I’d rather wait it
out than hire the wrong or lesser person.
Find things that stir up your passion. Being passionate about what you do is the key to
success. So certainly for a CEO, who has
a big job, that’s really, really important.
It goes back to enjoying what you do,
and I find our business really satisfying
and rewarding. And when I talk to a customer that is really happy with us, that’s
energizing for me.
Or when I talk to a customer who was
one of our early customers, and they’ve
been with us for a number of years, and
they weren’t so happy with our situation,
that’s also energizing because I’m very
motivated to make sure this long-term
customer gets turned around. Knowing
that you can turn a situation like that
around and make them happy again is
really energizing, and you have to find
things like that to keep you going.
HOW TO REACH: Advent Software Inc., (800) 685-7688 or
www.advent.com