Friedrich Nietzsche said,
“He who has a why to live
can bear almost any how.”
And that’s why Scott Raskin,
CEO of Mindjet Corp., spends a
lot of time getting his employees to understand the ‘why’ of
their jobs to help grow his company.
Mindjet, a software developer
that helps users take a visual
approach to project management, posted 2006 revenue of
$33 million, up from $13 million
in 2003. And Raskin says that
helping his employees understand the big picture is essential to maintaining that kind of
growth.
Smart Business spoke with
Raskin about how to make
communication equal understanding and why a leader
needs to be a chameleon.
Q. How do you approach
leadership?
Take an approach that’s right
for the situation. It’s important
for any CEO to be a chameleon
from that perspective.
I try to operate from a transformational perspective. I
believe in inspiring the team
and giving them a shared
vision of the future. Leadership is all about not having
confidence but instilling confidence in those in the organization — which allows them to
do things beyond what they
think is possible.
I like to delegate responsibility wherever I can. I like to be
in the back pushing the team
forward. It’s really about giving people confidence to do
the things they might not
believe they’re capable of and
driving them toward that
shared vision.
Q. How do you inspire that
confidence?
It comes down to what obviously is our No. 1: making sure
they know what the vision is,
where are we going, why is it
important to get there. Make
sure that’s constant and consistent and that they know
what’s in it for them.
You’ve got to engage them in
the part of the process of
what it means to be successful, so that they’re part of the
process of what needs to
get done.
Make sure they’re part
of the process and
they’re using their creative ideas, they’re
allowed to be heard and
respected in the process,
then encourage them to
go out and take risks. I
strongly believe in quick
decision-making. I appreciate a culture where
people do take risks,
knowing that if they do,
they’re not going to get
beaten up for it.
Q. How do you create a
culture where people are
comfortable taking
risks?
You have to walk the talk. It
can be difficult, but it’s really
important to give people the
freedom and set the expectations that it’s OK to make a
mistake. I’d rather make a
mistake trying something than
not try something at all.
What that means is if people
take risks, there are always
successes and failures. There
can’t be a backlash. You have
to make sure that somebody’s
not getting lambasted for making a mistake or going out on a
limb or taking a risk.
There needs to be encouragement to try new things, to
be creative, to step outside the
box — as long as it’s in line
with where we’re headed.
I grew up on the sales side,
and I used to say, ‘Salespeople
tend to be lone rangers.’ You
can go out and win something
by yourself, but if you lose,
you never want to lose by
yourself. It’s OK to go out and
take those risks and do what
you need to do, but bring the
organization along with you.
Q. How do you communicate
your vision to employees?
One of the things every CEO
hears in their organization is,
‘We need more communication.’
Especially in a high-growth
environment, when things are
really changing pretty rapidly.
The first phase many CEOs
move into is this overcommunication mode where broadcasting all this information out
to people is apparently communication. What that doesn’t
take into consideration is that
people are overloaded with it.
So even though they want
communication, what they are
really asking for is a better
understanding.
To accomplish that takes a
little different effort and a lot
more time on the CEO’s part.
We’ve been going through
massive growth, we increased
the employee base, we’ve
opened up new offices, we’re
working on new products, and
there’s been a ton of communication about this. We had a
social last night, and I was
talking with two key folks in
engineering. Sure, they’d seen
the e-mails, they’d heard me
talk at the big meetings, but
they really didn’t understand.
I hadn’t spent the time personally to really know whether
people were really understanding what was being communicated to them, and the management level below me didn’t
either. Everybody was running
so fast, and we were comfortable with, ‘We’re doing a great
job communicating. Look at
all the e-mails we’re sending.’
The need to help people
understand had to come at a
much smaller group level,
almost an individual level. We
established more of these
small group interactive scenarios, and we’re really getting
that feedback. So, communication and more of it is not the
solution.
HOW TO REACH: Mindjet Corp., (415) 229-4200 or www.mindjet.com