Jeff Kupietzky is surprised that some employees may be intimidated to talk to him. After all, he was one of them not too long ago.
He was only named CEO of Oversee.net last year, a year after he became president and joined the board of directors at the Los Angeles company, which specializes in monetizing, registering, selling and developing domain names.
But he knows the new title means a big change in how his 150 employees relate to him.
“You no longer can count on relationships to be the same as they were,” says Kupietzky, who came on board as an executive vice president in 2006 after serving in several management positions at other technology giants. “You have to have everyone respect you; they might not all like you. And that’s a big challenge, especially when you’ve tried to have a lot of good relationships with people.”
To bridge the gap, Kupietzky tries to be as accessible and as transparent as possible — not just to facilitate bottom-up communication but also to keep employees aligned as information trickles down.
“You try and be available anytime anybody needs something, to have them understand the business issues, to give them the context of why we have to make certain decisions,” he says.
By striving to maintain a level organization where information flows freely between the CEO and employees, Kupietzky has led the company, which has more than $150 million in revenue, to new heights. Everyone is working together toward common goals and pointing out issues that might prevent the company from reaching its objectives.
“You really are in a glass house, and it’s very easy to throw stones before you sat in the chair,” Kupietzky says. “So I try and have people understand those tradeoffs even if they’re not sitting in my chair and giving them all the same information I have so that they realize decisions are not as black and white as it appears.”
Here’s how Kupietzky gives employees a glimpse into his world to keep them aligned.
