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Corner Office: Penny Herscher of FirstRain: What Parents Can Teach a C.E.O.

Posted by Unknown on Saturday, September 27, 2014

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Business Day |Penny Herscher of FirstRain: What Parents Can Teach a C.E.O.



http://nyti.ms/1pjlFx7







"The things you learn raising a child are great skills for nurturing a team and bringing a project to life. You take obstacles out of the way, encourage them and set goals that are tough but can be achieved." Earl Wilson/The New York Times


Corner Office


By ADAM BRYANT






This interview with Penny Herscher , the chief executive of FirstRain, a business analytics firm, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant .


Q. Tell me about your parents.


A. My parents were both engineers and mathematicians. My mother was actually the second woman to ever major in engineering at Oxford. So I was raised in an environment where anybody who was anybody did math, and the expectation was that I would go into technology, because that’s where all the excitement was.


So you had a clear idea what you wanted to do in college.


I studied math at Cambridge, and I thought I was going to be in technical roles my whole life. I worked for a year in England as a computer programmer, and then my husband and I got on a plane and came to California. We had no health insurance, and no money. But we were confident we could get jobs.


I did get a programming job, but after a couple of years I wasn’t terribly happy being a software engineer because so much time is spent in front of a screen, and I’m an extrovert. I got discovered by the sales and marketing people in the company because I was good at doing product demonstrations, and they recruited me to the business side of the house. I’ve never looked back.


What were some early lessons you learned as a manager?


I have a strong personality, and early on I definitely didn’t know how to let other people blossom and thrive. I was sure I was right all the time, and I was probably bossy and autocratic. I learned that the hard way. I had people who didn’t want to work for me — some of them told me, and some of them just left.


Even so, the company’s leadership above me appreciated what I was doing, so I had to learn this balance between being a strong personality that could solve a hard problem while creating enough air and light for the people who worked for me. That took some time to learn.


How else did your leadership style evolve?


A huge lesson for me was having kids. I was the most important person in the universe until I had kids. Then you have children and suddenly you’re completely humbled and you’re not the most important person.


That was very helpful for me as a leader and a manager. I just evolved very quickly to realize that this was not all about me, and I took those lessons and applied them to the workplace. The things you learn raising a child are great skills for nurturing a team and bringing a project to life. You take obstacles out of the way, encourage them and set goals that are tough but can be achieved.


Important mentors over the years?


I had a strong mentor for a long period. He was the C.E.O. of Synopsys, and then when I went to do a start-up as C.E.O., he was on that company’s board. He was very candid with me along the way about what I was doing well and not doing well.


He was one of the only people who would hold a mirror up to me and say, “O.K., that wasn’t good.” I needed somebody who would tell me the truth. Many leaders with strong personalities never hear the truth because their people are afraid to tell them. The people who will tell you the truth are the most valuable people in your life.


Was the reality of being a C.E.O. for the first time different than what you expected?


I was 36, and I was completely unprepared. I walked into the job thinking I knew how to be a C.E.O., and after six months I realized I had no clue how to be a C.E.O. I just kept finding myself in situations where I didn’t feel like I had the experience and the tool set to know what to do, and I kept waiting for permission.


One of the best pieces of advice I ever got in my career was from one of my board members, who said to me: “Look, you’re looking to the board for permission and you need to understand that we’re going to give you advice, but you have to make your own decision. Because if we give you bad advice and you follow it, we’ll still fire you. So you are it. You have to make the decisions. You can collect advice, but nobody is going to make a decision for you, so just get on with it and make the decisions. If they’re right, you’ll be fine, and if they’re wrong, you’ll be fired.”


It was very clarifying for me to realize: “O.K., this is it. The buck really does stop here.” That was a huge inflection point for me. I just had to grow up all at once. As C.E.O., you cannot blame anybody else. You own it.


How do you hire?


I look for I.Q., integrity and energy, because you can’t teach those. You’ve got to have the I.Q., and you can often read integrity in the meeting. And then you’ve got to have the energy for the job.


I’ll ask questions about their career, but then I’ll say: “So, what makes you really special? If you were writing 500 words about yourself, what would you say?” You also learn an enormous amount by the questions they ask, and the first two or three questions are what they really care about. “Tell me about your culture,” and, “How do you grow your employees?” are great questions.


How would you answer the question about what makes you special?


I’m really driven. Once I set my eyes on a goal, it might take me nine years to reach it, but I’ll keep going after that goal.


Another C.E.O. I interviewed likes to ask people, “What’s your natural strength?” How would you answer that?


Public speaking. I did two years of competitive public speaking in high school. If you can do it, it’s a very powerful skill in business.. Even if you’re scared to speak in front of a group, just do it until you’re not scared.



Each week, Adam Bryant talks with top executives about the challenges of leading and managing.




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