You won’t see Patrick Brandt slap together a PowerPoint about
culture or talk about it at the annual meeting and not hear anything about it
again until the next year. Culture is far too important at Telligent Systems to
pay so little mind to it when business is constantly changing.
Instead, as CEO of the software company, he focuses on
aligning his 100 people under common values to create a culture that embraces
change and moves the business forward.
“If you have good corporate culture, you have smart people,
and you create an environment where change is welcome rather than actually
feared and you’re adaptable and flexible, you can take advantage of really good
opportunities,” he says
Smart Business spoke
with Brandt about how to create a culture that embraces change by hiring more
effectively.
How do you get people to embrace change?
I use the phrase, ‘Only a wet baby likes change’ — it’s not
one of those things people necessarily welcome all the time. What I’ve done
that has been successful for me in getting people to accept change is putting
people in unique positions or situations and letting them rise to the occasion.
A common theme of the people that I’ve worked with is they all enjoy challenge
and working with others. They tend to be driven and people who I would say have
high expectations of themselves. When you put that together it’s almost like
you create inside your culture an ‘us against the world,’ underdog mentality.
Then you can welcome change. You don’t really look at change — you look at it
more as opportunity. It doesn’t work for everybody. That’s why the culture and
how you figure out who you want to join your team is so important.
How do you find people who will embrace that mentality?
It starts with how serious we take the recruiting and
interviewing process. I’m the final interview, and I interview every single
employee that we hire. I don’t actually make the decision for the department
lead or the department head. I’m merely showing the importance of the
investment in people as well as the culture — is this person going to thrive in
our environment, not usually judging their skills and talents. I usually leave
that up to my managers.
A lot of people spend more time trying to justify the $5,000
server than they do hiring a six-figured employee. When you look at the
software business in particular, it’s all about the people. At the end of the
day, the assets make up so little of what we do; it ends up being all about the
people. If it’s your largest investment, you’ve got to treat it like it’s your
largest investment. And so we do that. Sometimes candidates get unnerved by the
number of people they have to meet and the number of steps we have to go
through, but we like to do a lot of investment of the front end because we
think it pays off in the back.
What tips could you give other leaders for making better hires?
Don’t underestimate attitude versus aptitude. It’s too easy to
look at a resume and look at experience, pedigree and all those things are
important. I’m not minimizing those, but what you can’t underestimate is
someone’s desire to learn, desire to grow, their ability to interact with
others, their ability to listen and take advice.