A Superb Company Culture

November 7, 2010 1 Comment

A couple of years ago I went to a reunion celebrating the 20th anniversary of the founding of Object Design, Inc. (now part of Progress Software).  I joined ODI as an intern in 1991 while at Babson because a friend at The Weber Group (Larry Weber’s PR firm from the 90′s) told me I should take a job there scrubbing the toilets if I had to because it was such an amazing company.  I only had to work in the mail room, (no, I’m not joking – I literally stuffed and mailed out collateral) but I got my high-tech start there and left in 1996 after product managing the launch of the ObjectStore ODBMS for Windows.

ODI, as we called it, was a rare company.  The intellectual talent across the company was as good as you’ll ever find (and I’ve yet to find since).  Any one of the engineers at ODI would be the “guru” at 99.9% of other software companies out there.  The stuff they did was just mind-numbingly great.

More importantly, the culture there was just as amazing.  People would go out of their way to help each other be successful.  The sales people and engineers and marketers all worked together to build a great business.  While the management team was part of that, the culture at ODI was more from the bottom up than top down.  You saw it in the hallways, when people went into their colleagues’ offices (we all had offices – very few were in cubes and often just temporarily), and in the lunch room.  Nobody was disrespected, and very few honest disagreements turned acrimonious.

The culture stayed that way until just after ODI was named as #1 on the INC 500 list of fastest growing private companies.  Oracle offered $100M or so to buy the company, but the management team turned it down (I was not on the mgt team).  We were going to crush Oracle, certainly!  Oh, the arrogance.  You know what happened next… we started missing our quarterly numbers.  Eventually the investors took over and kicked out the old management team, cut salaries and let go a good portion of the company.  The culture was gone then, but not forgotten.

Looking around that night I saw many familiar faces.  Sure, we all looked a bit older, but most were still looking great after all this time.  Funny how all of our stories to each other last night were about all the good times… the big early deals, the technical breakthroughs, the demos at OOPSLA, etc.  A lot of people came out last night – more than I expected.  One of the ODI Germany sales guys even tried to find a flight in but couldn’t afford the 1,000 Euro airfare from Frankfurt.

The number one refrain I heard was how nobody had landed somewhere that special again in their careers.  Someday I hope to be in a situation where I’m surrounded by so many awesomely talented and truly great individuals.

Filed under People, Startups

The Great Talent Displacement Opportunity…

November 14, 2008 Leave a Comment

We all know that this economy really stinks (sorry John McCain, but the fundamentals are not strong).  As expected, layoffs are accelerating, with Sun, Fidelity, Citi and thousands of other companies shrinking their staffs.  In a booming economy, the people getting let go are often the ones with less value to add.  Marginal performers, no matter how people try to spin it, are the first to go in     any group.  Watch the next 10 days — a lot of layoffs are going to happen before Thanksgiving.  Then watch the first 2 weeks of December as more companies take headcount off the books.

Jobless_ap200When the economy falls off a cliff the cuts go deeper.  Goldman Sachs is projecting unemployment at 8.5% by the end of next year – and that number under-reports the real level of unemployment because a lot of people stop looking for work and don’t get counted.

Now you’re into muscle and bone – and even great talent starts finding themselves out of work.  Further, there are fewer great jobs for them to transition into.  Sure, really great people can almost always find a job.  But it might not be the kind of interesting, game-changing work that they had been doing previously.   Think about it — a whole lot more people will lose their jobs this year, and more still again in 2009.  So many of them will get frustrated in their searches and be looking for anything to keep them in the game.

This is when the creative ones start companies, or join others who are getting a new idea going.  If you can live without steady income for a few quarters while you build out your new thing – perhaps contracting (good luck finding projects) and doing the start-up in the evenings and on weekends – you might find that you both enjoy it more and potentially have a big payoff when the market recovers.

If  you  happen to be in a company that’s still growing and looking for people – raise your standards.  You no longer have to settle for someone else’s second best.  This is the time to build truly great teams.  In some cases you can even use the talent displacement to “upgrade” your team by letting go of the bottom tier of your company and hiring in the great ones looking for work.  It may sound harsh, but if you’re running a business, division or department, you have an obligation to make your team as strong as possible.  It’s getting a lot easier to make that change now and the window won’t last forever.

So, what can you do?  Get behind the wheel and drive if you have the the personality.   But fasten your seatbelts – it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Filed under People, Startups

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