Parenting and Corporate Leadership Let me be clear up front: I do not think of my colleagues at Return Path as children, and I do not think of Casey, Wilson, and Elyse as employees. That said, after a couple weeks of good quality family time in January, I was struck by the realization that being a CEO for a long time before having kids has made me a better parent…and I think being a new parent the last three years has made me a better CEO. Here's why. The two roles have a heavy overlap in required core interpersonal competencies. And doing both of them well means you're practicing those competencies twice as many hours in a week than just…
Category
Entrepreneurship
Jump Starting Start Ups
As I mentioned in some recent posts, I’ve really enjoyed sharing the Return Path story with the tech start-up community in New York through groups like the NYC Lean Startup Meetup . Next week I’m taking the Return Path story on the road to Silicon Valley where I’ll be presenting to Startup2Startup. Startup2Startup is a group of Silicon Valley geeks, entrepreneurs, and investors dedicated to educating and helping the next generation of Internet startups. They meet monthly over dinner to discuss relevant topics in technology and entrepreneurship, connect with new people and companies, and share our knowledge and experience. You’ll not only get to hear about Return Path’s 10 years in business but I’ll also be sharing…
Learning How to Stop
Learning How to Stop This is my last post about thoughts I had coming out of the NYC Lean Startup Meetup that I spoke at a couple weeks ago. Being lean, the discussion went at this event, means not doing extraneous things. While it’s true for startups that it’s important to make great decisions about what to do up front, it’s also true — especially as companies get larger and more important older — that organizations and individuals have to be vigilant about stopping activities that become extraneous over time. This is HARD. Once things — product features, business processes, reports, ways of communicating or thinking about things — get ingrained in an organization, there’s never a natural impetus to…
Innovating in New York City
Innovating in New York City Last week I wrote about speaking at the NYC Lean Startup Meetup. One of my other key takeaways from this, which I’ve known for a while and have been meaning to blog about, is just how vibrant the tech startup community is here in New York. I know others have been blogging about this like mad – Fred has some thoughts here, here, and here, and Charlie has some here and here. Chris Dixon’s seminal post on this is here. (I even blogged a bit about why NYC is a good place to start a business back in 2006 here.) I’ve had a little more time for networking and speaking in the past year than…
Pivot, Don’t Jump!
Pivot, Don’t Jump! I spoke last night at the NYC Lean Startup Meetup, which was fun. I will write a couple other posts based on the experience over the next week or so. The Meetup is all about creating “lean startups,” not just meaning lean as in cheap and lightweight, but meaning smart at doing product development from the perspective of finding the quickest path to product-market fit. No wasted cycles of innovation. Something we are spending a lot of time on right now at Return Path, actually. My topic was “The Pivot,” by which the group meant How do you change your product idea/formation quickly and nimbly when you discover that your prior conception of “product-market fit” is off? …
A Perfect Ten
A Perfect Ten Return Path turns 10 years old today. We are in the midst of a fun week of internal celebrations, combined with our holiday parties in each office as well as year-end all-hands meetings. I thought I would share some of my reflections on being 10 in the blog as I’ve shared them with our team. What being 10 means to me – and what’s enabled us to make it this long: It means we’ve beaten the odds. Two major global economic meltdowns. The fact that 90% of new small businesses fail before they get to this point. Probably a higher percentage of venture backed startups fail before they get to 10 as well We’ve gotten here because…
If this madness all ended tomorrow, I would do…almost nothing
If this madness all ended tomorrow, I would do…almost nothing (This post originally appeared on FindYourNerve on October 21) I don’t know what you call the last 12 months of global macroeconomic meltdown. I’ve taken to calling it the Great Repression. In part because it’s somewhere in between a Recession and a Depression, in part because it’s certainly repressed the wants and needs of startups and growth companies the world over. And it makes for good cocktail party chatter. Someone asked me a question the other day, which started off with “Now that the recession is over…” I can’t even remember the end of the question. I got lost in the framing of it, mostly because I’m not convinced it’s…
The Gift of Feedback, Part III
The Gift of Feedback, Part III Last week, I posted about my new development plan. I thought I’d also share a “team development plan” that we crafted this year for the entire Executive Committee at Return Path (basically me and my direct reports), coming out of all of our 360 live reviews taken as a whole. Push each other harder and be continuous in our effort to provide the team and each of us feedback and further develop: Improve ability to handle conflict as a group; Drive this work deeper into the organization; “Eyes/ears/mouth open;” Explore how to better serve as role models to the rest of the organization, especially our direct reports/the next level of management; How do we…
Another Only Once Moment, Sort Of
Another Only Once Moment, Sort Of I’ve never handed over the reins of a company before (no, I’m not leaving, and we aren’t selling Return Path). But I did the other day, for the first time. As many people know, last year we reorganized the company to focus entirely on deliverability and whitelisting and spun out Authentic Response, a company in the online market research business, into a completely separate entity. Since then, I have been CEO of both companies. Although Return Path has had more of my focus — Authentic Response had excellent day-to-day leadership under Co-Presidents Jeff Mattes and Rob Mattes — I’ve still been working in both businesses. Today, we officially announced the hiring of my replacement,…
The Gift of Feedback, Part II
The Gift of Feedback, Part II I’ve written a few times over the years about our 360 feedback process at Return Path. In Part I of this series in early 2008, I spelled out my development plan coming out of that year’s 360 live review process. I have my new plan now after this year’s process, and I thought I’d share it once again. This year I have four items to work on: Continue to develop the executive team. Manage the team more aggressively and intentionally. Upgrade existing people, push hard on next-level team development, and critically evaluate the organization every 3-6 months to see if the execs are scaling well enough or if they need to replaced or…
Scaling Frustrations
Scaling Frustrations Two things have come up in spades lately for me that are frustrations for me as a CEO of a high growth company. These are both people related — an area that's always been the cornerstone of my leadership patterns. That probably makes them even more frustrating. Frustration 1: Worrying that I don't get completely candid feedback from deep in the organization. I've always relied on direct interactions with junior staff and personal observation and data collection in order to get a feel for what's going on. But a couple times lately, people had been warning me (for the first time) when I've relayed feedback with comments like, "Of course you heard that — you're the CEO. People…