Counter Cliche:  Good Choices Are Made From Good Options

The Counter Cliche to Fred’s VC Cliche of the Week this week, the Walk Away,  is that Good Choices Are Made From Good Options.  Fred’s right — sometimes you do have to walk away from a deal where you’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and emotion.  But as an entrepreneur, you can mitigate the number of times you have to Walk Away by developing good alternative options to a particular deal.  That way, if one option doesn’t pan out as you’d hoped, another very good option is waiting in the wings.

There’s a very business school-sounding term called the BATNA, which stands for the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.  Quite frankly, it’s just a fancy way of saying Plan B.  I wrote about the importance of the BATNA once before in How To Negotiate a Term Sheet with a VC (item 3). 

Dying to get a deal with a good VC?  If you negotiate with one of them, you may or may not end up with a deal you like, and it could suddenly change on you at the 11th hour.  If you negotiate with two or three of them, you’ll have a great backstop and won’t let the emotional investment in the deal get the best of you.  Trying to sell a company?  You’d better have a couple of acquirers in mind to maximize price. 

Sometimes, developing a good BATNA, or Plan B, can take as much time as working on Plan A.  But it’s well worth it if it ensures that you will have multiple Good Options at the end of the process — which will invariably result in a Good Choice.

I think the lesson of the BATNA is more broadly true in life, not just in business, although it may be a little bit less universally applicable to VCs looking to put money to work unless there are multiple strong companies in a sector all looking for VC around the same time.

Playing Offense vs. Playing Defense

I hate playing defense in business.  It doesn’t happen all the time.  But being behind a competitor in terms of feature development, scrambling to do custom work for a large client, or doing an acquisition because you’re getting blocked out of an emerging space – whatever it is, it just feels rotten when it comes up.  It’s someone else dictating your strategy, tactics, and resource allocation; their agenda, not yours.  It’s a scramble.  And when the work is done, it’s hard to feel great about it, even if it’s required and well done.  That said, sometimes you don’t have a choice and have to play defense.

Playing offense, of course, is what it’s all about.  Your terms, your timetable, your innovation or opportunity creation, your smile knowing you’re leading the industry and making others course correct or play catch-up.

This topic of playing defense has come up a few times lately, both at Return Path and at other companies I advise, and my conclusion (other than that “sometimes you just have to bite the bullet”) is that the best thing you can do when you’re behind is to turn a situation from defense into a combination of defense and offense and change the game a little bit.  Here are a few examples:

• You’re about to lose a big customer unless you develop a bunch of custom features ASAP –> use that work as prototype to a broader deployment of the new features across your product set.  Example:  Rumor has it that Groupware was started as a series of custom projects Lotus was doing for one of its big installations of Notes
• Your competitor introduces new sub-features that are of the “arms race” nature (more, more, more!) –> instead of working to get to parity, add new functionality that changes the value proposition of the whole feature set.  Example:  Google Docs doesn’t need to match Microsoft Office feature for feature, as its value proposition is about the cloud
• Your accounting software blows up.  Ugh.  What a pain to have to redo internal system like that – a total time sink.  Use the opportunity to shift from a new version of the same old school installed package you used to run, with dedicated hardware, database, and support costs to a new, sleek, lightweight on-demand package that saves you time and money in the long run

I guess the old adage is true:  The best defense IS, in fact, a good offense.

I Love My Job

The picture below is a picture of my dress shoes in my closet at home.  You may note that they all have dust on them.  That's because I didn't put them on once for six weeks.

When we started Return Path back in 1999, we sat down to write our employee handbook, and all I could think was "what things can we add in here that will make this company a unique place to work?"  And one of them was a six week paid sabbatical after 7 years.  It didn't occur to me that we'd even exist after 7 years.  Then for good measure, we said, "7 years and every 5 years after that."

I'm happy to report that everyone who has hit their 7 year anniversary has taken the time off.  Some have traveled around the world, some have rented a house or villa somewhere, others (like me) did a "stay-cation."  Although my sabbatical was delayed (and quite hard to schedule), it was a fantastic experience.  I completely unplugged from work.  Cold turkey.  No email, no calls.  Spending time with Mariquita and my kids, which I never get to do much of, was completely refreshing and energizing.  And everything went fine at work, as I expected.  Business is in the best shape it's ever been in, and my amazingly talented executive team and assistant handled everything without missing a beat.

But back to the subject line of this post.  I figured a few things out while I was away.  One was that I haven't actually become a workaholic over the years despite working hard.  I *could* unplug without feeling aimless.  Another was that it's really nice to be untethered from the Internet, but it's near impossible to go through life now without some minor usage of the web and messaging.  But by far my biggest insight is plain and simple:  I love my job.  It's not that I didn't know that before, but I had more thoughtful time to break that down while I was away:

1. I love what I do:  I consider myself extremely fortunate to love the substance of my job.  The diversity of experiences that I have within a given week or day as a general manager, the interactions with people, shaping the business strategy, travel — it's all right up my alley. So many people out there don't have that match between interest, passion, skill, and reality. 

2. I love who I work with:  I have to admit that I stack the deck here since I do the hiring and firing, but the reality is that my colleagues at work are also my friends.  Not working was one thing.  Not talking to one particular subset of my life for six weeks was something else and just plain weird.  I just missed them and the interactions we have, which always blend the professional with the social. 

3. I love what we are working on:  We have an incredibly interesting business at Return Path.  It's very intellectually engaging, sometimes to a fault.  The spam problem is incredibly complex, and we're coming up with some extremely innovative approaches to reduce its impacts and hopefully someday eradicate it.  We're not curing cancer as I always say internally, but we're also engaged in some high impact problem solving that I just love.

So there you have it.  My work shoes are now dusted off and back in action.  It's great to be back.  We'll see how long I can stay in "mental vacation" mode, how much more time I can try to make for my family now that I'm back in my work routine, and whether the fresh perspective translates into any new actions or decisions at work.  But the best thought of all is that my 12 year anniversary is only another year and a half away!

Yiddish for Business

Contrary to popular belief, Yiddish isn’t “Jewish slang” (I hear that a lot).  According to Wikipedia, Yiddish is a basically a High Germanic language with Hebrew influence of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages.  It is written in the Hebrew alphabet.

I don’t speak Yiddish.  Like many American Jews whose families came to America in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, my grandparents spoke it somewhat, or at least had a ton of phrases they wove into everyday speech.  Presumably their parents spoke it fluently before coming here and Americanizing their families.  My own parents have a handful of stock phrases down.  My brother and I have even less.

What I like best about Yiddish is that I find it to be a very descriptive and also onomatopoetic language.  I can never verbally describe a Yiddish word without a lengthy description and some examples, and usually some level of gesticulation.  I’ll try to be more succinct below.  But in the end, words mean a lot like what they sound like they should mean.  A lot of New Yorkers who aren’t Jewish end up knowing a handful of Yiddish words because they’re pretty prevalent in the City, but many people outside New York don’t.  So I thought I’d have a little fun here and do something different on the 6^th anniversary of launching this blog (today) and list out some of my favorite Yiddish words and describe them with a business context.  In no particular order…

–          Schmooze – to chat someone up, work them, frequently with some kind of hidden agenda in mind.  Business application:  “She showed up at the charity event just to schmooze Alice, who was a potential client.”

–          Chutzpah – nerve, as in “wow, he has some nerve.”  My dad always said the classic description of chutzpah was the kid who murdered both of his parents, then pleaded with the judge for leniency because he’s an orphan.  Business application:  “He missed all his goals this quarter and asked for his full bonus and a raise?  Now that takes real chutzpah!”

–          Spiel (pronounced schpeel) – a monologue or lengthy pitch.  Business application:  “I’m raising money, so I have to really organize my spiel before I go talk to the VCs.”

–          Schtick – someone’s standard song-and-dance.  Business application:  “I stood up in front of the room and gave my usual schtick about our values and mission.”  Kind of like Spiel.

–          Schlep – to make a long, pain-in-the-ass kind of trip.  Business application:  “I had to schlep all the way to Toledo for a meeting with that guy, and he didn’t even end up signing the deal.”

–          Mazel tov – literally means “good luck” but usually used in regular conversation to mean “congratulations.”  Business application:  “You got a promotion?  Mazel tov!”

–          Noodge – someone who inserts himself into a conversation in a somewhat unwelcome manner.  Related to Kibbitz – to give unsolicited advice from the sidelines. Business application:  “Sally is such a noodge.  She kibbitzes about my unit’s strategy all the time and just stirs up trouble.”

–          Maven – an expert, even a self-styled one, in a very niche area.  Business application:  “You want to figure out what smartphone to  buy?  Ask Fred – he’s the maven.”

–          Kosher (a Hebrew word as well) – completely by the books, originally referring to dietary laws that religious Jews follow.  Business application:  “Ask Marketing if it’s kosher to use our partner’s logo like that.”

–          Verklempt – choked up, overcome.  Business application:  “When I got my review and promotion and raise, I was so verklempt that I couldn’t speak for a minute or two.”

–          Schlock, Dreck, Chazerai, Bupkis – all have slightly different literal meanings (apparently Bupkis means “goat droppings”), but I use all of them somewhat interchangeably to mean junk or something of limited or no value.  Business application:  “That presentation was nothing but chazerai.  What did I get out of it?  Bupkis.”

–          Kvell – to beam or burst with pride, related to Nachus – warm “gooey” feeling of pride.  Business application:  “I had so much nachus when my company won that award for being the best place to work, I was just kvelling.”

–          Mishegas or Bubbamyseh – craziness or self-imposed silliness.  You might have heard the word Meshugenah before, which means crazy.  Business application:  “I can’t get all caught up in his mishegas.  I’m going to make my own decision here.”

–          Kvetch – either a noun or verb meaning complain, in a harpy kind of way.  Business application:  “Frank is such a kvetch.  He is just never happy.”

–          Mensch – a good guy.  Business application:  “Michael is such a mensch.  He always helps his colleagues out even when he doesn’t have to or doesn’t get credit for it.”

–          Fercockt (pronounced Fuh-cocktah) – crazy, messy.  Business application:  “John’s project plan is totally fercockt.  No one can follow it even when he tries to explain it.”

–          Mishpochah – family.  Business application:  “Welcome to the company – we’re happy to have you in the mishpochah.”

–          Tsuris – heartache or sadness.  Business application:  “Boy that’s one client that gives me nothing but tsuris.”

–          Tchotchke (pronounced chach-kee) – a trinket or little toy.  Business application:  “What kinds of tchotchkes are we giving away at our booth at the upcoming trade show?”

Pull one of these out in your next meeting – see what it gets you!

From Founder/Builder to Manager/Leader

After I spoke at the Startup2Startup event last month, one of the people who sat with me at dinner emailed me and asked:

I was curious–how did you make the transition from CEO of a startup to manager of a medium-sized business? I’m great at just doing the work myself and interacting with clients, and it’s easy for me to delegate tasks, but it’s hard to have the vision and ability to develop my two employees into greater capacity…

I’d be interested in reading a blog post on what helped you make that transition from founder/builder to manager/leader

It feels like the answer to this question is about a mile long, but I thought I’d at least start with five suggestions.

1. Hire Up!  The place where I see most founders fumble the transition is in not hiring the best people for the critical roles in the organization.  Sometimes this is for cash flow reasons, but more often it is either due to subconscious fear (“will I still be able to control the organization if this person is in it?”) or due to bravado (“I can do engineering way better than that guy”).  Lose that attitude and hire up for key positions.  Even if you COULD do every role better than anyone you’d ever hire, you only have so many hours in the day.
2. Learn the magic of delegation and empowerment.  You can never get as much work done on your own as you can if you get work done THROUGH others.  Get comfortable delegating work by setting clear expectations up front in terms of timing and quality of deliverables and giving your high level input.  And never be a bottleneck.  If people are waiting on you for decisions or comments, that means they’re not working…or at least that they’re not working on the highest value or most urgent things they could be working on.
3. Don’t fear some elements of larger organizations.  Larger organizations require some process so they don’t fall apart.  Make sure you pick your battles and accept that some changes, even if they feel bureaucratic, are critical to ensure success going forward.  I still get a queasy feeling in my stomach half of the times I see a new form or procedure or a suggestion from a lawyer, but as long as they are lightweight and constantly reviewed to make sure they’re having their intended impact AND ONLY their intended impact, some are inevitable.
4. At the same time, don’t lose the founder/builder mentality.  Your company may have grown larger, but if you’re still running it, people will naturally look to you and other founders for much of the energy, vision, and drive in the business.  You will also likely be more inclined to be scrappy and entrepreneurial, which are good traits for any business.  Don’t lose those qualities, even as you modify them or add others.
5. Look to the outside for help.  In my case, I’ve consistently done three things over the years to learn from others and to prevent myopia.  First, I have worked on and off with a fantastic executive coach, Marc Maltz from Triad Group. Second, I have always had one or two “CEO mentors,” e.g., guys who have built larger businesses than Return Path, on my Board, at all times, as resources.  Finally, I do a lot of CEO peer networking, some informal (breakfasts, drinks meetings), and some more formal (a CEO Forum group that I established) to make sure I’m consistently sharing information and best practices with others in comparable situations.

Any other entrepreneurs who have made the leap have other advice to offer?

Powerpointless

We tried an experiment last week at a Return Path Board meeting — and not just a regular Board meeting, but our once-a-year, full-day (~9 hour) annual planning session attended in person by all Board members, observers, and executives.  First, a little background.

We have been driving two important trends over the years at our Board meetings:

1. Focusing on the future, not the past.  In the early years of the business, our Board meetings were probably 75% “looking backwards” and 25% “looking forwards.”  They were reporting meetings — reports which were largely in the hands of Board members before the meetings anyway.  They were dull as all get out.  This past meeting was probably 10% “looking backwards” and 90% “looking forwards” and much more interesting as a result.

2. Focusing on creating a more engaging dialog during the meeting by separating out “background reading” vs. “presentation materials.”  We used to do a huge Powerpoint deck as both a handout the week before the meeting and as the in-meeting deck.  Then we separated the two things so people weren’t bored by the Powerpoint.  Then we started making the decks more fun and engaging and “zen.”  This meeting took the trend to its logical conclusion, which was that we sent out a great set of comprehensive reading materials and reports ahead of the meeting, and then…

…we didn’t have a single Powerpoint slide to run the meeting.  We thought that the best way to foster two-way dialog in the meeting was to change the paradigm away from a presentation — the whole concept of “management presenting to the Board” was what we were trying to change, not just what was on the wall.  The result was fantastic.  We had a very long meeting, but one where everyone — management and Board alike — was highly engaged.  No blackberries or iPhones.  Not too many yawns or walkabouts.  It was literally the best Board meeting we’ve had in almost 10 years of existence, out of probably 75 or 80 total.

I’m not sure this would work for all companies at all stages at all times, and we had a handful of graphics “ready to go” in case we wanted to shoot something up on the wall, as we likely will always have.  But I can’t say enough about how this evolution in meeting setup and execution changed the dynamic.

Book Short:  Sloppy Sequel

SuperFreakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the original Freakonomics, either.  I always find the results of “naturally controlled experiments” and taking a data-driven view of the world to be very refreshing.  And as much as I like the social scientist versions of these kinds of books like Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Blink (book; blog post), there’s usually something about reading something data driven written by a professional quant jock that’s more reassuring.

That’s where SuperFreakonomics fell down a bit for me.  Paul Krugman has described the book in a couple different places as “snarky and contrarian.”  I typically enjoy books that carry those descriptors, but this one seemed a bit over the top for economists — like a series of theories looking for data more than raw data adding up to theories.Nowhere is this more true than the chapter on climate change.  It’s a shame that that chapter seems to be swallowing up all the public discussion about the book, because there are some good points in that chapter, and the rest of the book is better than that particular chapter, but such is life.

As with all things related to the environment, I turned to my friend Andrew Winston’s blog, where he has a good post about how the authors kind of miss the point about climate change…and he also has a series of links to other blog posts debunking this one chapter.  If you’re into the topic, or if you read the book, follow the chain here for good reading.  My conclusion about this chapter, being at least somewhat informed about the climate change debate, is that the book seems to have sloppy writing and editing at best, possibly deliberately misleading at worst.  (Incidentally, the reaction in the blogosphere seems highly emotional, other than Andrew’s, which probably doesn’t serve the reactors well.)

But I’ll assume the best of intentions.  Some of the points made aren’t bad – there is no debate about the problem or the need to solve it, the authors express legitimate concern that current solutions, especially those requiring behavioral change, will be too little too late, and most interestingly, they show an interest in alternative approaches like geo-engineering.  I hadn’t been familiar with that topic at all, but I’m now much more interested in it, not because it’s a “silver bullet” approach to dealing with climate change, but because it’s a different approach, and complex problems like climate change deserve to have a wide range of people working on multiple types of solutions.  I met Nathan Myhrvold once (I almost threw up on him during a job interview, which is another story for another day), and it makes me very happy that his brilliance is being applied to this problem as a general principle.

As I said, though, beyond this one chapter, the book is good-not-great.  But it certainly is chock full of cocktail party nuggets!

Stuck In Legal, Responses

Well, I certainly struck a nerve with my Stuck In Legal rant/post last week.  As of now, there are 32 comments on the blog — my typical post generates 0-1 — and I've picked up between 50 and 75 new followers on Twitter, probably mostly because Fred tweeted about the post. 

Most of the comments on the blog were cheering me on; a couple were from lawyers, one well reasoned and another just a counter rant against stupid business people that had one or two good points buried in it.  You can certainly click through the link above if you want to read them.

But two comments didn't get put on the blog, which I thought I'd post here.  Keep the good thoughts coming on this topic.  It's an important one.

First, Jonathan Ezor (a professor of law and technology) posted his response — not a rebuttal — on the Business Week blog here.  He makes some very good points about how both sides, businessperson and counsel, can work better together to eliminate a bunch of the hassles I noted in my original post.

Second, Joe Stanganelli, a lawyer, emailed me the following, which was too long for my Intense Debate comment software to handle:

In defense of my profession…

EXPLANATIONS:

•Why companies' legal departments or outside counsel aren't directed to be as efficient in doing their work as their other departments

How exactly do you mean?  I'm not sure this is true.  Given the average amount of hours our profession works as it is, we *have* to be efficient.

I can tell you, however, that a huge pet peeve of us lawyers is when our clients essentially say (typically when they’re being billed hourly), "Gee, I want an answer to this very complex legal question that will require a lot of research because no statutes or case laws are directly on point, but don't spend a lot of time on it."

This is a bit like saying, “Look, don’t spend a lot of time on this transplant…I’ve got a meeting in an hour, and I’m trying to save money besides."

Also bear in mind that lawyers are not widget-makers or assembly line workers.  We aren’t even (usually) executive decision-makers.  We are in the knowledge and information industry.  We read, we think, and we write.  If you can provide us with some tips as to how to read, think, or write more efficiently, we would be delighted to hear them.

•Why companies insist on using their standard form of agreement if they're going to staff a legal department to review contracts anyway (this clearly wouldn't work if everyone in the world behaved this way)

The standard form of agreement has already (presumably) been determined by the company’s legal department to be the best form for the company's interests as part of the legal department’s careful legal analysis (i.e., the job they are paid to do).  Often, however, other companies, clients, etc. don’t use the standard form, or send their own form, or modify the standard form, or any number of other idiosyncrasies can happen with the execution of a contract.  All of these things have legal ramifications and have been the subject of past litigation.

•Why lawyers insist on answering questions with "because that's how all our contracts are" instead of applying their brains and logic to situations

(I'll try not to take too much offense at that last part.)

This generally happens because the answer “because that’s how all our contracts are” is a lot easier to say than to give the CEO a crash course in contract law.  It’s not fair, but it’s true.

A good lawyer, however, should at least be able to explain to boil it down to a few bullet points without being arrogant about it.

•Why business people seem to have no leverage with their legal departments, especially in larger companies, therefore surrendering the negotiation of business terms and the timing of relationship launches, technology usage, etc. to lawyers

This criticism is, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, a bit mind-blowing.  It’s not a matter of “leverage" at all.

Companies have legal departments as a preventative measure because they recognize that the best time to hire a lawyer is before you actually need one.  Most of law practice, in fact, is this “preventative law” and compliance work.  It saves the client (in this case, the company) time and money down the road by staving off lawsuits and liability.

These lawyers are in the business of protecting their clients from themselves – which the clients willingly pay them for because the clients (usually) recognize that they did not go to law school, pass the Bar Exam, and gain years of experiencing practicing law.

So when a company wants to launch a potentially harmful product via a distribution agreement that allows the distributor to get more money than he should because of a technicality, the legal department has to step in and tell the company, “YOU WILL GET SUED IF YOU DO THIS AND LOSE X AMOUNT OF DOLLARS!!!” or they aren’t doing their jobs.

A lawyer is a counselor – an advisor.  Any leader who totally disregards his advisors is not a good leader.

Again, this is not a matter of not having leverage with legal departments; it is a matter of not being able to change the law.

Please don’t shoot the messenger.

•Why in-house lawyers make the same dumb changes to wording and formatting that lawyers who bill by the hour make

The law is the law is the law; how the lawyer gets paid does not impact what the law is.  Those “dumb changes” are tried and true terminology that mean certain things in the courts and (usually) all the lawyers and judges know what they mean.  If the lawyers left it alone, your document or contract would potentially (perhaps even likely) mean something totally different.

Overall, please recognize that lawyers – at least in the legal department / “preventative law” context that you discuss – are in the risk management and compliance business.  They don’t make the law (at least, not the ones who work for you); they’re simply the guides who are navigating you – the layperson – through the legal system (one that took us years to understand).

After all, if you were blind, and you had a seeing-eye dog, would you get mad at the seeing-eye dog for not letting you cross the street when it’s a green light and a Mack truck is coming down the road?  Would you think that seeing-eye dogs were conspiring against you to not let you cross the street?

I will say this, though: Joshua Baer makes a great point.  A good lawyer should be able to provide you with a list of options, and explain (at least in a rudimentary fashion) the dollars-and-cents consequences of each one.  As J.P. Morgan said, “Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do.”

Book Short:  Bringing it on Home

Drawing the LineWe are having a bit of a debate at the moment internally around our Sender Score deliverability business about how to handle clients who are in businesses that are, shall we say, not exactly as pure as the driven snow.  As a company that provides software and services to businesses without a vertical focus, we are often approached by all sorts of companies wanting our services where we don’t love what they do.  Examples include:

Gambling
Tobacco
Neutriceuticals
Guns
Adult content or products

Our challenges are along three dimensions, each of which is a little different.  But common threads run through all three dimensions. 

Dimension 1:  Our deliverability technology platform.   Our basic technology is used by mailers of all shapes and sizes to preview their campaigns, monitor their deliverability, and analyze their reputation metrics.  It doesn’t deploy campaigns.  Do we care who the users are?

Dimension 2:  Our full service deliverability practice that comes with consulting and high-touch account management.  This service offering has an additional layer of complexity in that our employees work closely with accounts and their web sites.  We already allow employees to opt-out of accounts where they find the work objectionable.  But is that enough?

Dimension 3:  Our whitelist, Sender Score Certified. This one is even trickier.  On the one hand, our program has fairly clear, published standards.  We do a thorough qualitative check of the client’s web site and email program to make sure, among other things, that the program is opt-in.  We monitor the client’s quantitative reputation metrics in real-time to make sure its complaint rate is low, signifying that its customers like (or at least don’t mind) receiving its email.  On the other hand, this program is supposed to signify the best of the best for email marketing and newsletters, which is why it’s used by so many ISPs and filters as their standard for defining “good mail.”  And yet on a third hand (perhaps there’s some sort of herbal remedy that can help me with that problem), for many ISPs, our program is their only whitelist, so clients who are above board, even if in a grey industry, may have no other option.

So is it our place to legislate morality, or should we just focus on what’s legal and what’s not legal?  How much accountability do clients bear for content that shows up in their emails from advertisers?  For example, and I’m making this up, what do we do if a men’s health magazine that’s a client has links in its email newsletters that are placed by an affiliate network that click through to a pornography site?  What if the pornography in question is legal in one country but not another?  How much time and energy should we spend vetting clients before we take them on?  Or monitoring them around these issues once they’re a client?  Does it matter which product they’re using?

I’d love feedback from the outside world (or the inside world) on how we should think about and handle these issues.

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 doing one – and in different settings.  It's like cross training.  In no order, the cross-over competencies I can think of are…

Decisiveness.  Be wishy washy at work, and the team can get stuck in a holding pattern.  Be wishy washy with kids, they run their agenda, not yours.

Listening.  As my friend Anita says, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason.  Listening to your team at work, and also listening for what's not being said, is the best way to understand what's going on in your organization.  Kids need to be heard as well.  The best way to teach good verbal communication skills is to ask questions and then listen actively and attentively to the responses.

Focus.  Basically, no one benefits from multitasking, even if it feels like a more efficient way of working.  Anyone you're spending time with, whether professionally or at home, deserves your full attention. The reality is that the human brain is full of entropy anyway, so even a focused conversation, meeting, or play time, is somehow compromised.  Actually doing other activities at the same time destroys the human connection.

Patience.  For the most part, steering people to draw their own conclusions about things at work is key.  Even if it takes longer than just telling them what to do, it produces better results.  With kids, patience takes on a whole new meaning, but giving them space to work through issues and scenarios on their own, while hard, clearly fosters independence.

Alignment.  If you and your senior staff disagree about something, cross-communication confuses the team.  If you and your spouse aren't on the same page about something, watch those kids play the two of you off each other.  A united front at the top is key!

I'm sure there are others…but these are the main things that jump to mind.  And of course one can be great in one area without being in the other area at all, or without being great in it.  Are you a parent and a business leader?  What do you think?