Corner Office, New York Times; Interview with Cristóbal Conde, president and C.E.O. of SunGard: Structure? The Flatter, the Better:
"Q. What are your thoughts on collaborative versus top-down management?
A. Collaboration is one of the most difficult challenges in management. I think top-down organizations got started because the bosses either knew more or they had access to more information. None of that applies now. Everybody has access to identical amounts of information.
Q. Why did that shift occur?
A. I would say two things. One is just the massive information revolution. But equally important is the fact that before, while there were global companies, they were really just a collection of very local businesses operating independently from each other. Now a global company means a company composed of teams that are themselves dispersed. So every team can be global in many senses, not just the company.
But with the explosion of information, and flattening technologies starting with e-mail, I think that a C.E.O. needs to focus more on the platform that enables collaboration, because employees already have all the data. They have access to everything.
You have to work on the structure of collaboration. How do people get recognized? How do you establish a meritocracy in a highly dispersed environment?
The answer is to allow employees to develop a name for themselves that is irrespective of their organizational ranking or where they sit in the org chart. And it actually is not a question about monetary incentives. They do it because recognition from their peers is, I think, an extremely strong motivating factor, and something that is broadly unused in modern management.
Q. How do you create that culture?
A. One thing we use is a Twitter-like system on our intranet called Yammer.
Q. How long have you used it?
A. About seven months. By having technologies that allow people to see what others are doing, share information, collaborate, brag about their successes — that is what flattens the organization. I think the role of the boss is to then work on those collaboration platforms, as opposed to being the one making the decisions. It’s more like the producer of the show, rather than being the lead.
I think too many bosses think that their job is to be the lead, and I don’t. By creating an atmosphere of collaboration, the people who are consistently right get a huge following, and their work product is talked about by people they’ve never met. It’s fascinating.
Q. What kind of things do you write on Yammer?
A. I try to see a client every day, and because of my title I get to see more senior people. And so then they’ll tell me things — you know, what are their biggest problems, what are their biggest issues, what are their biggest bets. All this information is incredibly valuable. Now, what could I do with that? I’m not going to send that out in a broadcast voice mail to every employee. I’m not even going to write a long e-mail about it to every employee, because even that is almost too formal. But I can write five lines on Yammer, which is about all it takes.
A free flow of information is an incredible tool because I can tell people, “Look, this is one of our largest clients, and the C.E.O. just told me his top three priorities are X, Y and Z. Think about them.”
Q. Have you always tried to pursue a collaborative management style?
A. Early on, I was very command-and-control, very top-down. I felt I was smart, and that my decisions would be better. I was young, and I was willing to work 20 hours a day. But guess what? It doesn’t scale.
Q. How far can it scale?
A. Hundreds of people in a good business.
Q. Beyond that it breaks down?
A. Beyond that it was beyond my ability. Now, there are plenty of incredibly successful companies run by micromanagers, and that’s a different story. The last year I did that, I was away from home 302 nights, not including day trips. I had to fly around all over the place making all the decisions. And I would walk in, make an uninformed decision, get on the next plane, go somewhere else and repeat the process. I look back at that year; I don’t think I got anything done...
Q. What is some of the best feedback you’ve received?
A. A boss once told me: “Cris, you’re a smart guy, but that doesn’t mean that people can absorb a list of 18 things to do. Focus on a handful of things.” Very constructive criticism, and the way I’ve translated that is, when I do reviews, everything is threes.
So, “Look, Charlie, these are the three things that are going well. These are the three things that are not going well.” Now, that’s very important because then people know that everybody’s going to get three positives and three things they should do differently. Then they don’t take it personally. I’ve found that to be an incredibly valuable tool.
Q. Let’s talk about hiring. What questions do you ask?
A. I care a lot less about the individual skills. I look for drive and a sense of somebody’s intellectual curiosity.
Q. How? What do you ask?
A. I think you can get a lot of those questions in small talk. You might say, “What do you think of this table?” We’re a technology company, so most people are engineers. I expect something interesting or unconventional. We have tended to make more money with people who are willing to buck conventional wisdom.
Q. Give me an example.
A. I interviewed a guy the other day, and he said, “Well, you won’t believe it, but I thought about taking the train and going back home as I was coming here.” I loved that answer.
Q. Why?
A. I love that answer because it means the person is trying to think for themselves. That’s what I want.
Q. And why did he think about turning around and taking the train home?
A. Because he was thinking about the company’s position and other considerations. The specifics are not the point. He was trying to come up with kind of a rational process for weeding out the bad ideas from the good ones. And he looked at me almost like he was embarrassed to admit this. And I loved the answer. It takes incredible self-confidence to say that.
I love it when people show healthy skepticism. I think the more an organization is diverse that way, the healthier it is, and better decisions will come out. We have made more money by bucking conventional wisdom than by following it. And I think that in an interview, I look for ways in which people demonstrate that they are thinking about things rather than just accepting conventional wisdom."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/business/17corner.html
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