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Victor Allis Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Q. When you were a kid, were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things?
A. I was a math prodigy, and I learned early on that I was better in math than anyone in my primary school and high school in the Netherlands. I was also on a basketball team, and when I was 14, our team was the Dutch champion. My leadership experience came later. I was about 20, and teaching computer science to adults. You have to find ways to make people listen to you.
And how much of a math prodigy were you?
I was second best in the country, and I represented the Netherlands in the yearly International Mathematical Olympiad when I was 18. Every country sends six people, and of the 186 people from 31 countries in Paris that year, I ranked 14th.
That’s impressive.
I was good, but the No. 1 student from the Netherlands was way better than I was. So even though I was near the top, I was still humble because it was no contest; he was so much better than me.
Any leadership lessons from your parents?
My dad was in the air force, and then became a plant manager at Fokker Aircraft. He had 600 people, and he would say, “Everybody is equal. Everybody deserves respect.†He saw too many cases around him where people got into leadership positions and became not such nice people.
Did you plan to be an entrepreneur?
I was going to be a full professor in math. But I started doing work for a consulting firm, and I wanted to make a software product. Then five of us started Quintiq. I had had some management experience, so I was the logical choice to be C.E.O.
How did your culture develop?
When we started hiring, one of the accidental decisions we made is that our shareholder meetings among the five founders became companywide meetings. We said, why not share everything with others? We still share everything every quarter with all 800 employees, including our cash position. We don’t share compensation data, but we do have profit-sharing, and everybody gets the same amount.
That’s a bit unusual.
At the end of the year, 15 percent of our profit is shared among all employees. The receptionist gets the same as I do. There are big differences in market pay between different roles, of course, but I want everybody to feel that if at the end of the year we’ve done well, then we’ve all done well.
What else about your culture?
We tell people, “Don’t try to figure it out all by yourself.†We have a five-minute rule. If you’re sitting at your desk for five minutes and you can’t figure out whatever you’re working on, go ask someone. There’s always someone who’s more senior who may know about that. Even if they can’t help you, they’re probably a good sounding board, and may be able to point you to someone who says, “We already solved that, and you can find it here.â€
Other thoughts on culture?
The way I select leaders within the company is a very simple process. What I tell everybody is: “Don’t try to have lunch with me. Don’t invite me to play golf. Don’t try to always wander past my office when I happen to come in, because here’s the thing: It doesn’t count.†What happens instead is that when we need a leader, I’ll send out an email, which is called an R.F.A. — request for assignment — to the whole company, with a deadline of one or two weeks.
I might say, “We’re going to open an office in Kuala Lumpur, and I need two people who want to go there and spend at least two or three years there to be the directors of our new Kuala Lumpur office. Anyone who’s interested can apply, and here are the three things I want to hear: One, why would you want to have the job? Two, how long can you commit for? And three, tell me all the key things that you’re thinking about for this job.â€
You take the serious responses and you conduct interviews. What I’ve found is that the people I choose are not necessarily the best people on paper for the job. I tend to choose the people who are the most motivated to do it.
How do you interview job candidates from the outside?
First, I always go get people and then walk with them back to my office. During the walk, one of the first questions I’ll ask is, because I’m typically not the first interviewer, “Who have you met with so far?†After they tell me, I’ll say, “And now that you’ve met with a few people, what’s your impression of the company?†That can go anywhere and you get good feedback from that. And depending on how they’ve answered that, I’ll typically smile and say, “O.K., and why would you want to work here?â€
I really want to figure out their personality. If someone has left a few jobs, I’ll ask why they left. If people are complaining too much, then you start seeing either an attitude of, “When things happen, it’s not really me; it’s the world around me.†Or maybe they’ll talk instead about things in a way that clearly says, “Listen, there are always circumstances, but you make your own destiny; you make your own choices.â€
I’m looking for someone in a leadership position who feels that when someone deals you a hand, sometimes it’s a good hand, and sometimes it’s a bad hand. But it’s not about the hand. It’s how you play it.
It takes a little while to figure it out, but you’re trying to understand, at their core, how they behave in life. Will they be a team player? Will they be the person who can handle some adversity and actually likes the challenge? Those are the most important characteristics.
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