Start at the top
Maheswaran realized he alone couldn’t change the culture of a global company with nearly 1,000 employees, so he decided he wouldn’t.
“For the leader, the No. 1 task is to put into place a management team that can get the job done,” he says. “I can do all the talking and waving and define the vision all I want, but if I don’t get the management team to go execute it, it’s nothing.”
If you have a vision of a culture that can drive itself, you have to have self-starting managers. Finding those people is twofold. They have to share your vision and then you want to make sure they have the winning attitude to carry it out.
“That winning attitude can drive high motivation even in downtimes,” Maheswaran says. “So the people with the can-win and can-do attitude, despite the environment, are the ones that differentiate themselves.”
How do you find that attitude? It starts with a passionate person who matches your drive and has values.
“Give me a passionate individual, someone who really wants to work hard and wants to achieve something, (someone) not looking for money, not looking for recognition, they just really want to achieve and do something great and different,” Maheswaran says. “The second thing is somebody with values. If you have somebody with a lot of integrity who is a good team player, they look to motivate rather than demotivate people.”
Since resumes and interviews can be misleading, you have to tune your ears in for some keywords to make sure you get what you ordered. Here’s a phrase to look for: earning it.
“Some people think that rewards and bonuses and equity are entitlement,” Maheswaran says. “Well, in my world, they are not. I find it amusing when I see all the news out there on executive bonuses and I see people getting massive bonuses when the company is in dire straits. I sit back to myself and say, ‘How would I feel if I got a bonus and the company is not making any money?’ That doesn’t make any sense to me. So I want people who come on board and say, ‘Look, if we perform well and deliver results, we want to be rewarded. If we don’t, we don’t want to be rewarded.’”
For the record, these people don’t come in any one shape or size. Maheswaran’s executive team is from all over the world and is composed of people he’s worked with before, executives already in place at Semtech and new hires. But he says you personally need to spend time doing interviews to ensure that each one meets this leadership litmus test.
Maheswaran also refused to take second best, getting permission from his board to do broad searches, extensive interviews and give the incentive-based compensation models that would befit the person he wanted.
“It’s the only way,” he says. “If you settle for anything less than that, you are really saying to yourself I’m going to have to not be as aggressive in pursuing the vision.”
Once he brings these people in, though, he doesn’t just trust that they’ll be 100 percent there on day one. He has them work directly with him during their training to share the culture of empowerment at Semtech.
“If I made the decision to bring in an executive, it’s my job as their manager and their leader to give them the tools and show them the way,” he says. “What I find is that when people have spent some time with me, they develop that passion and that culture because I have it and people who work with me develop it.”
