[This is part 1 of a 3 part series on the evolution of leadership theory—the history, most recent thinking on the topic, and what to look for when trying to identify it, including a look at charisma, executive presence and their contributing roles to successful leadership]

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As retained executive search consultants, we are constantly interviewing and assessing executive talent for our clients.  After interviewing these candidates, our clients often reference key characteristics they found (or didn’t) in an executive that are not found in their resumes—charisma, executive presence, or other purported leadership behaviors that are generally thought to be important to success.

But clients continue to ask questions about these traits that sit in the invisible spectrum.  Is charisma an essential ingredient to leadership? If so, for all sizes and types of companies?  Are there other types of leadership where charisma isn’t present and are they successful and in what types of circumstances? What about management versus leadership?  How do we define the differences, and when is a manager better suited than a leader?  And what’s up with “executive presence”? Is that just another term for leadership, or is it different? How? Are these differences important?

All great questions.   And—although we won’t be able to answer them all here in appropriate depth and breadth—we’re going to try to lift the curtain a bit.

With the book and now movie, “Moneyball,” the question of what to look for and what to measure in picking leaders for organizations should be rethought.  In “Moneyball,” the fulcrum of the book is based on a different way of measuring the potential and future performance of pro baseball players.  In the book, the Oakland A’s general manager turned upside down what had been considered the gold standard for sports talent assessment by baseball scouts in favor of a much less obvious and intuitive set of statistics.   Pro baseball would never be the same.

So, adapting this concept, it’s worth reviewing some popular (mis)perceptions of what makes a leader.

First principles—What does an organization need: Leaders or Managers?

Leaders/leadership by its own definition indicates the following situational characteristics—

Where one is now is not where one should be.  Rather

1) One should “follow” someone or something to another place, in theory a “better place”

2) This “better place” is both NOT self-evident (convincing is required), AND

3) It requires effort to get there, and is not frictionless, calorie-free, or zero-cost.

Managers, on the other hand, are most often those who create efficient operating systems once the “better place” has been reached.

Charisma as an essential ingredient to successful leadership—True or False?

The world “charisma” comes from the Greek word for “gift.”  Charisma is better thought of as a skill that enhances leadership effectiveness by dint of a superior ability to influence others to change their initial positions, perspectives, or opinions.

I was first offered a deeper insight into the concept of charisma in leadership by the teachings of Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School.  Dr. Khurana has done extensive research and writing on the topic, from articles in Harvard Business Review (“Curse of the Superstar CEO”, HBR 2002, http://hbr.org/2002/09/the-curse-of-the-superstar-ceo/ar/1) to complete books on the topic (Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs http://www.amazon.com/Searching-Corporate-Savior-Irrational-Charismatic/dp/0691074372).  More popular business authors like Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, wrote about “Level 5 Leadership” and addressed charisma in relation to this “top leadership level.”  Collins has been quoted as saying, “Being charismatic and wrong is a bad combination,” and “I’d go so far as to say that [The Level 5 leaders Collins chronicled in the good-to-great success case studies in his book] were uncharismatic for the most part.”  (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/0066620996/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_0)

Regardless of good or bad use of charisma, there is still a great deal of additional research and writing on the topic.  Clearly we associate the effects of charisma with enhanced motivation, inspiration and intellectual stimulation it engenders in the listener.  But can it be taught?  One branch of research surrounds this argument.   If you read the works of Professor Robert House at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he deconstructs “how” charisma works.  From House’s work, one could infer that charismatic behavior may be both “born in,” but also taught with enough study and practice (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/674.pdf).

The Dangers of Charisma

What are the pitfalls of charisma in the corporate context?

• Charismatic executives tend to suppress individual thinking and leadership development in subordinate teams.  Leaders with charisma can create a culture of “followers,” rather than young, budding leaders and the next generation of a company’s executive team.  Narcissistic tendencies don’t allow others to flourish instead creating dominant monolithic thinking, “I don’t even argue with him anymore because I always lose.”

• This in turn leads to challenges for succession planning.  Often charismatic leaders leave a vacuum of next generation leaders, having created instead a strong set of followers.

• Life of the party isn’t always “engine of achievement.”  Charisma can be used to achieve personal goals as the primary objective, at the expense of organizational goals.  There is no question it is always best to have alignment of personal and organizational goals so that by achieving one, the other is also achieved.  However, this mandates that the charismatic leader be programmed to strive for a “win-win,” vs. a “win-lose.”   In fancy organizational behaviorist language, this ends up being the difference between those leaders who have “higher activity inhibition” and those who have lower levels.  If a leader has lower activity inhibition, they tend to seek win-lose outcomes with the “win” side being the individual over the organization.

What can the charismatic leader do to counteract negative repercussions?

The charismatic leader needs to ensure that they either surrounds themselves with others who have strong self-confidence and ideation, or that the charismatic leader makes a great deal of effort to cultivate an environment open to sharing other opinions, perspectives, and ideas rather than defaulting to “the charismatic boss.”

As referenced earlier, charisma is really more situationally valuable.  Typically, charisma is most valuable when change is the goal.  Innovation, revolution, new paradigm adoptions are the best projects for the charismatic toolbox.

Some popular examples of positively and negatively directed charisma include the following:

Good = Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the failed Antarctica expedition he saved | John F. Kennedy | Martin Luther King

Bad = Hitler |Jim Jones and the 909 deaths in the Jonestown massacre in 1978 where Jones as dogmatic cult leader got all his followers to commit mass suicide

A few additional interesting links to resources on charisma and leadership

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/01/15/207161/index.htm [lighter reading]

http://www.aom.pace.edu/amj/february2001/waldman.pdf [heavier reading]

How & What Growth-stage CEOs Are Ending 2011 & Planning for 2012

Below is the hyperlink to take the Q4 CEO peers speed-survey, exclusively for growth-stage CEOs. This survey focuses on “How & What Growth-stage CEOs are Ending 2011 & Planning for 2012″

This shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes of a busy CEO’s time–

We here at BSG Team Ventures periodically take the temperature of the markets we serve. The survey is no more than 15 questions, most simple multiple-choice.

These surveys are created and compiled by BSG Team Ventures as a courtesy to our executive ecosystem with the belief that knowledge is power. Aggregated peer-provided knowledge is “actionable power.”

To compare how you’re feeling a year later with the survey results from Q4 2010, titled “CEOs Plan for 2011”, go to http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/q4-2010-ceo-survey-of-growth-stage-companies/

We make an effort to survey only those who fit the category (in this case, sitting CEOs or board member/founders of technology/science-driven growth-stage companies). [Note, if you don't fit the aforementioned description, please refrain from responding.]

Feel free to forward to the qualified CEOs in your sphere of influence. The more data generated, the more accurate the trend lines.

All responses are anonymous due to the web-based survey technology employed.

We will forward the survey results within the next two weeks to the email address on file. Please let us know if there is another email address you wish us to send the results to as well.

Planning for executive staff additions or replacements seems to be higher on CEOs’ New Year’s resolutions again in 2011. Just a year ago, in December 2009 and January 2010, CEOs broke out of their executive hiring deep-freeze and search activity showed unprecedented momentum.  CEOs had been holding their breath for all of 2009, witnessing Wall Street carnage, plummeting consumer spending, and massive macro-economic uncertainty.  Just as consumers in the 2010 Christmas season finally decided to spend more,  boards of directors and CEOs are counting on better economic conditions in 2011 and executive hiring is again back on the corporate shopping list (see recent growth-stage CEO survey, Q4 2010, http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/q4-2010-ceo-survey-of-growth-stage-companies/)

So, what to be aware of when looking at executive talent acquisition this year?

Here are 5 tips:

1)     Candidate shelf-life is shorter than you think

Just as the warning on automobiles counsels that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” a similar mantra exists for talented executives.  Recession is a great retention tool, and has allowed many CEOs to keep their executives with little fear of their departure.  However, today’s market for executive talent is heating up.  We’ve read the articles about companies poaching Google talent, but this is not exclusively in Silicon Valley, or with the big tech behemoths.  Talented executives may be willing to consider a move, but they are savvier than ever, will look to try to identify several opportunities to evaluate in parallel, and pick the best perceived fit in a narrow time window.  Companies who in 2008 and 2009 had the luxury of interviewing twice as many candidates as normal due to temporary supply/demand imbalances no longer have that extra time on their side to interview more, or take longer to make decisions.  Candidate shelf-life is finite.  And the market window is shorter than we might think for any given talented executive.

2) Q1 2011 bonus payouts make candidate resignations difficult

Candidates may have a hard time giving notice in Q1 due to pending 2010 bonus payouts.   There are often 2 options—

a)     The finalist candidate will accept the new company’s offer, but won’t give their notice until after bonus checks have been cut (sometimes coming as late as February or early March)

b)     Finalist candidates will ask that their new companies include in the offer a signing bonus that helps to “keep them whole” on any bonuses they are walking away from.  This can quickly get expensive for the new employer, with numbers ranging from $50,000 or $100,000, to $.5M or more, depending upon the position, the compensation package, etc.

3) Relo has always been hard, but today’s real estate values make it much harder

Many executives are upside down in their residential real estate.  Again, this creates a two option decision for the new employer—

a)     Increase the boilerplate relocation package to include relief on any equity deficit the executive faces in selling in a down market.

b)     Be more flexible on where the executive can live.  Yes, there is no question that a best practice is to have the executive live within an easy drive of corporate HQ.  However, with ubiquitous email access in trains, planes, and automobiles, there is an every growing body of evidence that “local” isn’t the only choice for executive domicile.

4)  Equity is often no longer the great equalizer

When the public markets allowed IPOs more readily, and there was generally more liquidity for fast growth and mature companies alike, the tradition of 10-20% base salary increases  in moving from one company to another became subordinated to “how much stock/equity can I get?”  That popular refrain has been replaced by a much more pragmatic and balanced approach to executive compensation, where cash is again king.  Except in rare circumstances, executives want to have some of their incentive on a cash basis, balanced off with an equity upside. (for example of CEO Equity Compensation Calculator, see http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/ceo-equity-compensation-calculator/)

5) Executives know now more than ever what their peers earn

Whether it be due to frequently published executive compensation surveys, unprecedented numbers of databases providing comparables earnings info, or newly imposed Sarbanes-Oxley disclosure rules on public company executive compensation, executives are much more sophisticated about what their worth on the open market may be.  They also share much more readily with their peer group.  Employers in 2011 should be cognizant of this when crafting a package, and care should be taken to engage the executive in what they feel their worth is, and the data/information they are using to establish that value. (for example, see http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/venturebacked-executive-compensation-study-vp-levels-west-east/)

6)     [bonus tip] International is more important than ever in ‘11

Yes, China and India may both represent great offshoring opportunity and new revenue markets, however talent from these markets are an equally or more important asset.  Just sending US citizens abroad as ex-pats doesn’t cut it anymore.  Hiring foreign nationals with experiences in certain international target markets is key to breakout performance.  An Indian national with several years experience selling/managing in Asia is a wonderful combination of skills and experience critical in driving companies through the next level of global growth (for more, see http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/collision-course-between-executive-leadership-succession-and-global-demographic-trends-in-coming-decade/)

“]

Rob Day, Black Coral Capital | Michael Balmuth, Edison Ventures | Alexis Borisy, Third Rock Ventures

Once or twice a year we as a firm gather CEOs from the Boston innovation ecosystem to share thoughts amongst themselves.  Often, the format is lubricated by a panel to kick things off.  Always, the format is lubricated by an open bar and dinner.

 This Fall’s CEO gathering in early November brought together 50 or so CEOs around the topic of planning for 2011, and what to expect as a CEO. 

Whether early-stage venture, or mid-stage growth, investors are adopting a different approach to what they are looking for, how much they are putting to work, and what they expect to see as an end result.  This is proving true not just in the tech sector, but cleantech, medical device, and biotech.

 If CEOs are looking for more investment, whether growth equity, seed capital, or something in between, what are the “new normals” to think about going into 2011.  And if CEOs aren’t looking for money, but looking for exits, what are the expectations of investors in 2011 and beyond? 

 We assembled a panel of venture capital investors who all had raised new funds in the last year or so.  These investors also represented a different flavor than traditional venture capital.

 On the panel? 

• Michael Balmuth, General Partner, Edison Venture Fund
• Alexis Borisy, Partner, Third Rock Ventures
• Rob Day, Partner, Black Coral Capital

 What were the “new normals” CEOs and VCs talked about?

 Here are a few that got some air time:

2011 is likely to be an economic “ground hog year.”  The current economic cycle of “flat is the new up” is here to stay for the medium term;  In taking a flash vote of the room, the overwhelming majority felt that the economic conditions in which companies are being created are not going to change for the better any time soon.  Simply turning the calendar over from 2010 to 2011 is not likely to yield a more fertile or forgiving economic climate in which to grow innovation-stage companies.  In our recent survey  of growth-stage CEOsfor Q4 2010, we noted in a prior blog post that the vast majority of CEOs had already shifted their strategies or were planning to in the near future as a direct result of an expectation that 2011 might look a lot more like the end of 2009 or 2010 than ‘07 [see CEO survey pie chart below]

Seed rounds are becoming pervasive compared to prior quarters.  And these aren’t for Web 2.0 companies only.  CB Insights in their Q3 2010 summary demonstrated that this is a trend that is occurring in cleantech / greentech as well as healthcare IT.  All 3 investors on the panel agreed that seed funding makes sense.  Alexis Borisy, Partner at Third Rock Ventures, talked about their approach to seeding, saying that they tend to help start the companies, not just fund them, often taking an interim role on the executive team to incubate to a point of value inflection.  Michael Balmuth mentioned that although Edison Ventures doesn’t do “seed stage investing” per se, he loves to see companies that get seed rounds, as it often is an effort to drive toward profitability faster.  At that point, Edison may be more interested in a seed-funded company that achieves an early positive cash flow position than a typical heavily syndicated, multi-series venture-backed portfolio company.  Black Coral’s Rob Day added that he felt that investing in capital-efficient companies, even in the cleantech sector, was something he has advocated for a long time.  [see CB Insights graph of growth in seed round funding over last 5 trailing quarters, 2009-2010]

• As an asset class, venture funds have lost money for a while now.  Limited partner investors in venture capital and even private equity believe that they still have to invest in this asset class because it does make money during economic or industry sector bubble periods, and to invest once a bubble has been established would mean missing the upside.  During other times, LPs try their best to pick the funds that outperform their peers.

• Using investment banks to raise equity capital  should be done selectively.  If the industry is a small one, and the network is well established (like biotech investing Alexis pointed out), using an i-bank at an early stage is not the best idea.  However, in the cleantech sector where there are more total number of investors, they are internationally distributed, the industry is younger and less well-networked, and there is an imbalance in demand-supply (more money chasing fewer good deals), the investment banking solution may be just the right one.  One CEO, Larry Letteney of Second Wind in the cleantech sector, shared just such a recent positive experience in going out for their next round. 

• Seek out funds that have real capital to invest, preferably “fresh.”  Each of the three funds represented on the panel had all raised funds in the last twelve months or so.  But there are a lot of funds that are at the end of their last fund.  Many are unlikely to raise another fund.  Many investors are taking meetings, but setting the bar exceedingly high because they have only an investment or two left, and they don’t want to get caught making a bad one given the challenge in delivering returns to LPs in the most recent investing vintages.  There was also a “beware” comment about funds who are making seed round investments at the end of their funds.  They are more likely to do so, as it is an easier story to message an investment mulligan to LPs if you can just say, “It was just a small seed investment, so no biggie.”  Caution was also expressed that an investor at the end of a fund making a seed investment will be less likely to have additional capital to invest even if the company is doing well.

We hope to post a video snippet of the the VC-CEO dialogue for a flavor of the evening’s conversation in the near future.

Each quarter we survey growth stage CEOs who are running innovation driven companies.  This quarter,  we had more than 60 CEOs responding.  CEOs were running companies in broadly defined technology (software, hardware, semiconductor, telecom), Internet (e-commerce, media, social, entertainment), medical devices, biotech, and cleantech / renewable energy sectors.

A note on methodology.  We send these surveys only to those who fit the category (in this case, sitting CEOs or board member/founders of technology/science-driven growth-stage companies).    All responses were anonymous due to the web-based survey technology employed. The majority of respondents were in the United States, with the highest concentration on the East and West coasts (New York, Boston, and San Francisco/Silicon Valley areas).

For prior survey results from Q2 2010, titled “Impact of Economy and Renewed Growth”, go to http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/ceo-survey-results-q2-2010-%e2%80%93-impact-of-economy-renewed-growth/ .

ECONOMIC CLIMATE

The first set of questions was around the economic conditions in which each CEO felt s/he was operating.    One question we continue to ask and re-ask over the last six quarters or so targets the turbulence in the macro- economic climate.  It is interesting to compare CEO responses to the same question, “Do you anticipate a double dip in the near term future?”

* In Q3 2009, more than half  (54%) of CEOs polled were expecting a double dip, and planning accordingly

* In our Q2 2010 survey,  again 50% felt a second economic correction was likely, the biggest percentage of those CEOs believing it would be in either Q3 2010 or sometime in 2011.  The other half  of CEOs felt the specter of recession was behind them

* Currently in Q4 CEOs were consistent with prior quarters with a bit more than 50% indicating they didn’t feel a double dip was likely, and the other half of the CEOs saying either a 50/50 probability or greater (16% feeling more likely than not)

So less than 1 in 5 CEOs feel another economic dip is likely.  No CEOs selected the ” greater than 75%” probability.

It’s interesting to do a meta graph of the changing CEO sentiment on this question.  Surprisingly, the graph would be sloping downward, but not as much as many would hope.  The high point was certainly back in Q3 2009, but even throughout 2010, as many CEOs were fearful of a negative correction as those who felt it was behind us.  No doubt this “lack of confidence” index doesn’t inspire the CEO with a swashbuckling, damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead attitude toward growing their companies.  Rather, it makes CEOs think in short-term windows, perhaps 3 months at a time, with little appetite to make medium or long-term bets.

Those CEOs who felt another downturn was likey referenced several factors that might tip the scales negative–  gridlock in Congress due to midterm elections and likelihood that Democrats lose congressional majority, a belief that a bad Q4 holiday retail shopping was likely, and the persistent overhang of ongoing commercial and residential loan defaults.

As for when another economic dip might occur if it were to occur, the vast majority of CEOs pointed to Q1, 2011, with Q4 of this year and Q2 2011 tying for second at 18% each.

STRATEGY

Almost 50% of CEOs polled said that they had either made a shift in strategy in 2010, or were planning to in the near future.  Granted, growth-stage companies are prone to shifting strategy until they land upon the best formula for significant and sustainable growth.  However ~50% is a big number, and clearly a chunk of those companies have been driven to rethink their strategies because of the challenging economic climate, the concern over the future, and the possibility that 2010 might represent “the new normal” where with no economic “rising tide” no help generated to float all company boats as in periods of economic expansion in the past (1997-2000, 2005-2008, etc).

CASH FLOW

The majority of CEO survey respondents (49%) indicated that they were still planning on burning cash over the next 2 quarters.  24% indicated they would be profitable.  CEO comments regarding this question indicated an overwhelming drive toward cash flow break even.  That was the big push and focus for their companies in 2010, and if they hadn’t achieved it yet, they were gunning to by end of the first quarter of 2011.  CEOs also commented that they were trying to run their companies at break even, with any extra EBIT being reinvested back into the company for additional growth.

COST REDUCTION PLANS

When asked what were the top 3 areas CEOs were targeting for cost reduction, the following table summarizes their responses, representing a combination of spend reduction and staff reduction in non-core areas.  There was a preference by CEOs to favor non-staff cuts over cutting headcount if at all possible, but many acknowledged that in order to make meaningful cuts, staff had  to be considered in the equation.

CEO responses when asked about increasesin spend were logical.  The top three in order were sales, marketing, and R&D.  Many of the comments about this question noted the fact that outside of directly growing revenues, additional spend was hard to build in when many CEOs are driving toward a minimum cash-neutral mandate and economic uncertainties are driving CEOs to think conservatively rather than expansively.

[Click on "more" below for remaining 8 slides and narrative from Q4 2010 CEO survey]

RAISING CAPITAL

The largest segment of CEO survey respondents (40%) listed themselves as having raised capital in the last 12 months, and also planning on raising additional equity in the coming 12.  For those who indicated “other,” most of these CEOs had raised capital quite a while ago (2 or more years ago), were at cash flow positive, and some who were looking at liquidity event in the next few quarters, subject to market conditions.

OUTSOURCING & OFFSHORING

A quarter of CEOs surveyed responded that they were unlikely to ever use/need outsourcing or offshore resources to grow their businesses.

However, almost 70% of CEOs were using some combination of outsourced resources, whether domestic or offshore, full-time or project-based.  Those CEOs using domestic resources were the largest segment at 22%, while those with full-time offshore resources tallied at about 14%.  Nearly one in four CEOs had used contract (non-full-time) outsourced resources in the last 12 months.  A number of CEOs highlighted the fact that although they were users of offshore staff in some capacity, it was difficult to “get right,” and often the experience was less than positive early on in the relationship and took a great deal of work before CEOs could declare it truly accretive.

In answer to where global outsourced/offshore resources were being most utilized, manufacturing, product development, and customer service were the three biggest areas.  One in 5 CEOS (20%)  had already established an international sales presence located abroad.

GROWTH-COMPANY CLIMATE

Do CEOs feel it will be harder to grow companies in the future than in the recent past?  This is a question that many entrepreneurs who look to undertake a new venture (and venture capitalists looking to invest in them) are often quick to ask.

CEO responses were much more evenly distributed than one might think– slightly greater than a third of CEOs indicate “about the same” difficulty, a bit less than a third feel “somewhat more difficult,” and 27% indicating that they thought it would likely be “easier in the next 5 vs. the last 5 years.”  Many of the comments of CEOs responding “easier” pointed to the fact that advances in technology have allowed entrepreneurs to stand up companies for less cash and a lot faster than in years past.   Those CEOs who said it would be harder all pointed to the capital markets, and the medium-term challenges in both raising capital, and achieving liquidity.

DEBT LENDER APPETITE

CEOs were closely split on the question of whether debt has been harder, easier, or about the same to procure in the last few quarters.  37% indicated about the same,  33% responded that it feels worse, and 27% conceded that it appeared easier to get debt now than in the trailing 6 months or so.  However, CEOs commented that even if debt lending had stayed the same or improved slightly in the last six months, over the last year or two lenders have tightened up a great deal, and the lending climate today compared to 2008 is substantially worse.

FEDERAL POLICY IMPACTS

More than three-quarters of CEOs surveyed indicated that there was no impact on their companies due to  changes in federal policy, be it pending capital gains changes, mandatory healthcare, or potential tax increases.  Of those CEOs who did register an impact, the majority (10%) indicated that they would be offsetting any negative impact via headcount reduction.

CEO comments focused on the negative impact of rising healthcare costs as the biggest contributor to any decisions they were considering that were directly attributable to federal policy changes.

EQUITY INVESTOR APPETITE

CEO respondents reported that they saw equity investors as having become more bearish in their investing, with almost 37% holding that opinion.  In contrast, more than 25% of CEOs felt investors appear more willing to put money to work in the next two quarters than in recent past.  CEOs commented that investors don’t want to put money into B rounds, and the investing profile “is a barbell– 259,000 angels poured $17.6 billion into more than 57,000 startups last year, and there are a number of very well funded late-stage private equity firms looking to put $20-$40 million to work per opportunity. But almost nothing in between.”  Other comments indicated that even though investors may be more interested in putting their money to work, those same investors are squeezing valuations harder than ever and their expectations for return are increasingly difficult to meet as an operating CEO.

PRIMARY SURVEY INDUSTRY SECTORS

Of the 50+ CEOs who responded, 25% were running software companies, 16% cleantech, 15$ biotech, 10% interactive media/Internet, and 4% medical devices.  Much of the other 32% of CEO respondents were in the services sector across various industry sectors.

Location of the Companies Surveyed

The majority of responding CEOs were from the New England region (66%), 10% of CEOs’ companies were located in the Rocky Mountain region, with smaller numbers in Northern California (2%), Canada (4%) and the UK( 2%).

TOPIC: How & What Growth-stage CEOs Are Planning for 2011

Below is the hyperlink to take the Q4 CEO peers speed-survey, exclusively for growth-stage CEOs.  This survey focuses on “How & What Growth-stage CEOs are Planning for 2011″

This shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes of a busy CEO’s time–

We here at BSG Team Ventures periodically take the temperature of the markets we serve. The survey is no more than 15 questions, most simple multiple-choice.

These surveys are created and compiled by BSG Team Ventures as a courtesy to our executive ecosystem with the belief that knowledge is power.  Aggregated peer-provided knowledge is “actionable power.”

For the survey results from Q2 2010, titled “Impact of Economy & Renewed Growth Planning”, go to http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/ceo-survey-results-q2-2010-%E2%80%93-impact-of-economy-renewed-growth/

We make an effort to survey only those who fit the category (in this case, sitting CEOs or board member/founders of technology/science-driven growth-stage companies). [Note, if you don't fit the aforementioned description, please refrain from responding.]

Feel free to forward to the qualified CEOs in your sphere of influence. The more data generated, the more accurate the trend lines.

All responses are anonymous due to the web-based survey technology employed.

We will forward the survey results within the next two weeks to the email address on file. Please let us know if there is another email address you wish us to send the results to as well.

OK, admit it.  As CEO of a growth stage technology company, when it comes to your sales team, they all have “happy ears.”  Joyce Durst, former CEO of Infraworks, an enterprise security software company in Austin, TX, used the phrase in describing the eternal sales optimism she and her VP Sales have to counterbalance every week during their Monday morning sales pipeline meetings with their sales team.  You know, this is the optimism that insists that the prospect call that just took place the week before is not only a “sure thing,” but is also a particularly big sized deal, and will surely close before the end of the quarter, with room to spare.   Unfortunately, “happy ears” are the occupational hazard of a good sales person.  These are the ones that as often as not has to take a partially completed beta product, dress it up, sell it into a market where no other solution like it has ever existed, persuade someone that the solution is a “must have,” and then also persuade the other buying influencers within the customer that doing business with an underfunded start-up with perhaps less than 12 months of cash in the bank is a capital idea.

Working with growth-stage CEOs as executive recruiters, we’re often helping to hire sales VPs that will be able to build and manage a company’s sales pipeline.  Certainly hiring the right VP Sales is an important first step in sales pipeline management.  However, once you’ve gotten the right person in the seat, we asked a dozen or so early-stage technology CEOs what other tools, processes, and mistakes they’ve used or made that have led to their “best practices” for effective sales pipeline management.

TOOLS (technology)

Regardless of which tools were the favorites of each CEO, there was agreement that data hygiene was critical

Chuck Dornbush, CEO of Athenium Software, put it succinctly, saying, “Make sure the data is well organized, and frequently reviewed.”  Another location-based services CEO added, “no matter what CRM tool you use, as CEO you need to make sure every sales person is using it, and using it the same way.” Vinit Nijhawan, former CEO of Taral Networks, emphasized that sales people hate to use a system at all; you’re lucky to get them to enter the data once, and you’ll never get them to double enter for forecasting purposes.  So you need to use the same system for lead tracking and reporting/forecasting.”

PROCESS BEST PRACTICES

Meetings 1x-week—sales people defend their new pipeline additions

One of the above CEOs stated simply– “Know the basics, and do the basics.”  In more detail, he and several others sketched the basics out.   Have a weekly sales meeting.  For sales people to have a prospect “make the pipeline report,” they need to defend their putting the prospect into the pipeline, akin to a team interrogation.

7 categories involved in qualifying additions to the pipeline

Many of the CEOs talked about the minimum information requirements for a prospect to be added to the pipeline report.  Although some CEOs had four steps, and others had up to 40, the core must-haves most often included the following 7:

1. Budget—– Is there an earmarked budget set-aside for this category of expenditure?

2. Need –Is there a compelling need driving the prospect to make this purchase?

3. Time urgency—–Is there something that creates a sense of time-bound decisioning, or is this an important-but-non-urgent agenda item?

4. Internal champion—–Is there an individual inside the prospect who’s willing to go the extra mile and spend the political capital required to “fight the good fight” internally within their own organization?

5. Decision making power–—Who holds the real “power” to make the decision?  Can a clear decision-making organization path be mapped?

6. Clear ROI—–How is the prospective customer going to measure “success” for this product or solution?

7. Trust– Both in the relationship between the individual sales person and the individual representing the prospective customer company, and the prospect’s relationship with you as a company with whom to do business… do they trust your products, your company, and your sales people?

Tim Butler, former CEO at SiteScape and now CEO of growing RFID company Tego, said that as a reminder for his sales force, they have adopted a pneumonic, BUTANE–—budget, urgency, timing, authority, need & event.

Stages of the sales pipeline

Joyce Durst has her sales team and VP Sales apply a ranking/scoring system for each sales prospect.  If the customer is 50 points or less, they remain on the prospects list only, and don’t move onto pipeline report; if more than that, 50-70, they’re pipelined for NEXT quarter; if 70-90, they’re qualified as “committed;” If 90-100, the prospect is considered “ready to close.”

Athenium CEO Chuck Dornbush finds that it’s critical to “set entry/exit rules litmus tests for each stage.”  One CEO established the rule that “you couldn’t allow a prospect into the pipeline until at least their forth stage–qualified, demonstrated, formal price quote, and funds allocated. “

Other critical ingredients

Categorize every lead as “hot, warm, cold”

In addition to assigning probabilities as a percentage, try using some sort of ranking system.  Tim Butler uses another version– possible, likely, & probable

Add non-sales peers to pipeline meetings…

One of the CEOs stated  that it was very valuable to bring non-sales functions into sales pipeline meetings.  He added that personal accountability generated by sales people committing to forecasts in front of non-sales peers in a weekly/monthly meeting environment can do a lot to reduce the “fudge factor.”

Get the customer prospect to serve as proxy VP Sales for you…

Former Pantero CEO Pano Anthos who now is CEO of Hangout added a trick of the pipeline trade he’s found very useful– —“The customer needs to sign OFF on moving from one step to another.  Have the CUSTOMER via email play a proxy VP Sales role for you.”  Do this by having your sales person ask for a confirmation by email that the prospect has indeed passed from one stage of the sales pipeline to the next, whether confirming the ROI value proposition, or the budget allocation, or any of the other stages listed earlier.

If no date for next prospect action step, off it goes…

“Every prospect has to have an action item by date, or qualify it as ‘dead,’” another CEO offered up.

Kill the bad deals early…

Many CEOs listed this as critical to effective sales pipeline management.  Slow prospects should be turned over to the inside sales team.  Prospects that are particularly non-committal should get put in direct mail “tickler” mode.   “Stop spending the time on them, trying to actively manage them to close,” Marc Tremblay states, and adds that, “if feasible, you want to focus your sales team more on hunting than farming if you can.  You can get tied into prospects who may take two years to close… “  They may close, but “I always get my man” isn’t the most efficient proverb for sales.

Expect the unexpected…

When ending the quarter and/or the year there will be sales people who will say, “we’ll absolutely close these deals….” Even when all indications say they’re done, assume that some percentage will fall out, no matter HOW good they look.  Jim Lawton,  a veteran VP Marketing at a number of venture-backed growth-stage software companies who has seen a lot of sales pipeline management approaches states the reasons can include someone at the prospect company “getting sick, leaving the position, dog ate my homework… expect just about anything.”

“3x coverage” to mitigate the unexpected …

Continuing, Jim Lawton added, “If I’m trying to hit 3 million in quarterly sales, I want to have 9 million in the pipe.  Living on luck is tough, and you might hit a quarter or two with a thin pipe where you muscle the prospects and get a blue bird or two, but you’ll never make this repeatable.”

Consider having TWO sales pipelines

No, this isn’t two separate sets of books, nor is this a tool meant to be used deceitfully.  However, one of the CEOs offered up the fact that—–early on at least–there was a pipeline they kept internal, and one the executive team shared with investors that better illustrated the potential traction of their products.  The internal pipeline was more conservative.  As they grew the business, there was a natural convergence of the two into one.  Controversial, yes.  However, in order to manage burn-rates, and make sure you live to fight another day, it’s a survival tactic that no doubt many CEOs use, whether they admit to it or not.

Other Considerations

When to begin trying to do sales forecasting

Once you’re at what’s often referred to by venture capitalists as the “scaling stage,” most CEOs list their pipeline out and begin assigning probabilities.  However, Vinit Nijhawan cautioned that, “You rarely ever hit the forecast you set up.  After you get your 3 or 4 customers, you feel there is a market for your product, but actually what you’ve done is gotten the really early adopters.  And CEOs then start to scale too early, hiring resources, and making decisions that are difficult to undo.  Instead, you need to be in that strategic marketing role in sales longer than most start-ups might think.  Don’t even OFFER sales pipeline reports.  It’s not an issue with the start-up’s products, it’s the market.  Quarter-over-quarter projections are almost impossible.”  So where is the line, and where do you know that you have a product that the market is ready for?  “THAT is the art in sales pipeline management,” says Anthos.  “It’s definitely not a science.”

Strategic consideration in building the sales pipeline–—proper reference customer sequencing

Another wrinkle in building an early-stage sales pipeline CEOs mentioned was the proper ordering of reference customers.  There is a step before managing the pipeline process or implementing some tool to help in pipeline forecasting.  This is determining what is the optimal sequencing of customers you go to in order to create proof points and references to scale customer acquisition most efficiently and effectively. Do you sell big customers first, then the small customers, or smaller customers and build up to bigger ones?  CEOs concurred, —“It depends on capital resources available.”

MISTAKES & LEARNINGS

Three major reasons deals don’t get done–

1) Budgets are frozen

2) Technology shifts

3) Competition– you get beaten

However, there are a number of other reasons in addition to these three that were honorable mentions when talking shop with these CEOs on mistakes they’ve made and subsequent lessons learned.

Delegating too much pipeline management to the VP Sales…

The CEO usually gets slammed because s/he trusted a VP of Sales that hasn’t sufficiently vetted the prospect added Anthos.  Make sure you ask the tough questions of your VP Sales as well if you have one.

The pig stuck at the back end of the python…

Chuck Dornbush emphasized that he learned early from making the mistake of having prospects move only in a single direction, saying,   “There needs to be two-way triggers at either end.  Something can go from a higher stage to a lower stage, not just upward.  You need to be disciplined in reclassifying each prospect.”

Forecasting off new sales people…

Joyce Durst learned that with new sales reps, it’s very difficult to “learn them” in terms of their different realism/optimism quotients.  Until you have a good read, go conservative.

Trusting the “happy ears”–making a process exception…

One of the CEOs paraphrased what he’s heard so many times from his sales team—–“Although our average sales cycle time is 6 months, I’m REALLY confident this one won’t be the ‘average’… let’s fast track it; am sure it’s going to close… “  This is equivalent to the pig not entering the python through the mouth, but surgically implanted close to the tail.  And is just about as unrealistic to happen with a python as with your prospect.

Targeting the wrong people…

Other CEOs recounted a common sales problem where a sales team was targeting the tech person with a sexy demo-able product, getting great interest, and then recognizing too late that this function had no budget authority.

Relying on sales channel partners’ own pipeline discipline…

Another CEO commented that to qualify leads from a sales channel partner, it’s like the game of telephone.  What is spoken to the first person in a line of people is never what ends up being the message received at the other end… optimism breeds like rabbits.  CEO Durst maintains that if a prospect has been brought in through an indirect channel partner, “and they’ve gotten us involved, the sales channel rep is put through the same pipeline “challenge” as those sales executives who are selling direct.

Be more aggressive about accurately qualifying the leads early…

Tim Butler recounted a circumstance where the prospect was qualified by the sales executive as a potentially very large order.   Because of this, extra resources, time, and effort were leveraged against the opportunity.  It “starts out as a big huge deal, and ends up as a small deal with ‘potential down the road,’ which creates a real mismatch between deal potential to sales effort.  Cost of sales ends up way too high.”

The “close” as drug for the sales team…

Butler added that not only can you spend too much on resources out of balance with the size of the order, but often the sales team has a natural tendency to want to close a transaction just for the high that comes along with it, regardless of the deal’s size.  “You end up expending too many resources on the smaller deals just to close them, and therefore starving the larger deals of resources.   There is a natural tendency to lose discipline in prioritizing prospects.  The ‘close’ is a drug.”  Tim suggests developing incentive structures to get the sales team to do a better job of pipeline prioritization.

Giving away the store to make the deal happen…

Often a hidden gotcha in trying to close the deal in technology sales is the development and customization resources committed to the prospect. This can quickly turn a good deal into red-ink resources sinkhole.

Taking high level executive enthusiasm as surrogate for following the process…

One CEO talked about a bad experience where they had been trapped several times selling to the pharma industry by taking their high-level executives making global commitments to move something ahead.   They allowed themselves to believe that –because they liked and trusted the people—they didn’t ask the standard questions like where is the clear path to success, budget allocation, or who’s going to pay for it.  Don’t take in good faith that senior level staff executives have access to whatever budget they want.

Beware of “false summits”…

One CEO recounted a story where it took more than a year to close a prospect, and the process reminded him of a mountaineering term where you think you’ve reached the top, only to learn it’s just a “false summit.”   On three separate occasions, he thought they’d identified the decision-maker only to learn that it was just the next layer up in a longer process.  He emphasized that you have to ask the questions flat out, “Is the money coming from YOUR account… ?  Are YOU the one who’s going to sign the PO.”  It simply isn’t enough to ask, “Are you going to be the one making the decision?”

Beware of “technology shifts”…

Another CEO offered a particularly gruesome tale of what happens when you get blindsided by a tectonic shift in the technology landscape.  It was a billion dollar technology corporation and a million-plus dollar deal.    The CFO who needed to sign off on the purchase order had a heart attack and the deal got shelved for six months.  Sure enough a technology shift occurred.  He stated that he felt that CEOs don’t smell technology shifts early enough.  And he got caught developing his software solution on the wrong platform.   His learnings were multiple—Tech shifts happen all the time, so you have to have contingency plans.  There has to be a realization that you “eat your old,” not “eat your young.”  What technology companies do more often is eat their young by canceling development projects before they make it out of the womb.  They’re not willing to suffer short-term pain for long-term gain.

Beware of acquisitions…

Jim Lawton recounted a story that–—although having a silver lining—–made him very aware of the unpredictability of closing a customer.  Jim’s company had done a pilot, the ROI was there, they were “cruising through the sales process, and dotting i’s and crossing t’s all the way along.  Even the CFO says it’s doable.”  Then Lawton learns that the prospect has been acquired  possibly scuttling any chance of a deal.  In this case, however, the CFO recognized the potentially significant benefits for the acquiring company as well as for his own – and working closely with Lawton’s team, developed a pitch that extrapolated the results and opportunities in a broader context.   The CFO was became the internal champion, and pitched the solution to the CEO of the acquiring company, which ultimately gave its approval for the investment to be made in Lawton’s technology.  Lawton’s lessons for managing the sales pipeline at risk? 1) Short term ROI levels the playing field of change.  2) Understand a prospect’s own agenda – in this case, the powerful ROI provided on plank in a platform for lobbying for job security and new opportunities  3) Never give up on a prospect, even when the odds seem insurmountable.

Your sales force needs to be able to sell both outside AND in…

Another CEO recounted hiring a sales executive who had been an engineering support person and wanted to transition into sales.  He was the antithesis of the sales guy; wasn’t well groomed, didn’t look good, was a bit clumsy in social skills.  The CEO’s instinct was that this person could do the solutions selling required, and the candidate could really understand the customer, because he’d BEEN one at one time.  The first deal this sales person brought in required some custom work from engineering.  It turned out that he was really good on the customer side, but HORRIBLE inside the company, building the support  & coalition required to deliver the ultimate product promised to the customer.  The CEO’s take-away from this experience is  that a good sales person doesn’t just have to be good selling on the outside, but also on the inside.  And this is particularly true in start-ups because inside resources are ALWAYS over committed, so skills required to lobby for mind share within your own company are essential.

Have more than one touch point within the prospect…

As a punctuation to all the feedback CEOs offered on the topic of sales pipeline mangement, yet another CEO gave their worst mistake, and how it’s changed their sales pipeline management process forever.  Her sales team had identified a prospect’s CIO as the power and the champion within his company.  There were continued promises that the purchase order was forthcoming.  After several exasperated attempts to determine the hiccup, they learned that the CIO had “fallen out of favor” with senior management because he hadn’t delivered on another technology implementation, so wasn’t going to be given any authority to take on more responsibility.

[Originally authored for publication in Mass HighTech]

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Thursday, September 23, 2010
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Welcome Back!  BSG Team Ventures is proud to once again host the 4th Annual  Benefit: VC vs.  Entrepreneur Tennis Tournament – Davis Cup Challenge, and we are thrilled to have you join us.

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Agenda Overview

VCs vs. Entrepreneurs - Thursday, September 23, 2010

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Location – Longwood Cricket Club, Chestnut Hill, MA

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[originally written for Mass High Tech]

In our role as executive search consultants for growth-stage companies, one of the questions that seems to continually vex the CEO is how best to build out their team.   This question often narrows to a discussion around whether it would be better to hire a senior level person first in each of the key functional roles in the organization chart, or rather to hire a more junior level person and hire at a higher level once the company has built up some “traction.” For our purposes, traction can be defined as any or all of a number of indicators, including revenue, funding, or product development milestones.

Short answer, “It depends…”

When asked this question, the CEOs and venture capitalists we talked to universally responded, “It depends….” So then the question became, “On what?”  The answers came back and included the following key variables to balance when trying to decide on whether to hire high or low when you first fill a key position in your early-stage venture—

• • Funding—Money is certainly a gaiting factor for most early-stage companies, and often the largest line item on the P&L is salaries & wages.  Putting in a leadership team too early all at cash compensation that runs north of $150,000 can certainly create a net-cash-burn that would rival the bubble days.   However, “talented people hire talented people,” says Lou Volpe, Managing General Partner of Kodiak Venture Partners.   And talent doesn’t necessarily mean ‘experienced.’ Talent alone is usually less expensive.”
• • Composition of the Incumbent Team— You need to have a balanced team.  Companies are often referred to as “engineering culture,” or sales, or finance-driven.  This speaks to an inherent imbalance in the leadership team.  Kodiak’s Volpe emphasized that, “you need to think of the entire picture, the entire team.  You need to have it balanced.  If you have too much strength in one function, you’ll be out-of balance and the company will suffer accordingly.”
• • Stage of Company— If too early-stage a company, it may be difficult to attract the world-class talent you need.   This conflicts to some extent with the current thinking today popularized by Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great.  In one of the areas Collins explored with the “great” companies he studied, he and his team learned that these companies focused on “getting the right people on the bus,” then deciding where they were going to drive it.  David Power, a Partner at Fidelity Ventures, qualified Collins’ observations, saying, “If you’re a charismatic enough leader, you might be able to get everyone on the bus BEFORE you start to drive, but every company doesn’t have that privilege, especially when young, and often capital-constrained/higher-risk.  You need to be able to give talented executives that you are seeking to attract some general direction, to be able to explain to a ‘hire-high’ A-player why the company and role should have great appeal to the candidate.”
• • Which Function It Is — There are certain functions in an early-stage company where hiring the best is critical early on.  One such critical area is hiring into the leadership roles responsible for the product development in the company—engineering in the case of technology product, or science in the case of biotechnology/life sciences.  CEO Tuan Ha-Ngoc  said that it was critical for Genpath’s success to get the best Chief Science Officer they could find, and they did.   One of the VC’s commented however that the finance function is a perfect example of where hiring low is often the right thing to do—the company only needs a part time finance person at its earliest stages, then a controller later on, and then if the company is looking to go public, a world class CFO.
• • Speed of Anticipated Growth— If the company is anticipated to grow slowly, it is possible that a person can grow in parallel with the company.  However, given the often-cannibalistic nature of technology and sciences companies, “slow” is often not an option due to fears of product obsolescence, time limits on patents, or pure competitive pressures.    Globespan’s David Fachetti put it clearly, saying, “Hire higher for fast growth companies.  The opportunity will grow into the people, rather than the people grow into the opportunity.  Talented and experienced executives will bring up the level of the opportunity to meet their needs, and in so doing will accelerate the company’s growth.”
• • Price point of Product /Service— Enterprise software or very expensive hardware sold into the C-levels within the Global 2000 may put pressure on the upside of the high/low spectrum.  Kodiak’s Lou Volpe feels that if price-points are high, it is likely the company will need more senior/experienced talent to get it to market.

Universal Truths

All those interviewed agreed on a number of best practices.  The one that stood out most is the need to hire what was referred to as “quality.” There are two primary axes on candidate qualifications briefly mentioned earlier—the first is quality or “talent,” and the second is experience.  If you hire someone with both, this defines the “hire high” approach.  If you hire someone with only quality, but less experience, it points to the “hire low” approach.

Hire quality

Those we spoke with also included several other must-have characteristics further define “quality.”  Fidelity Ventures’ David Power ticked off the first four:

• • Motivation
• • Intelligence
• • Integrity
• • Ability to produce results

Joel Rosen, veteran CEO and former venture capitalist  at Charles River Ventures added two more:

• • Passion about the business
• • Cultural fit with the rest of the team

One other CEO punctuated the list:

• • Work ethic

Though no doubt there are many more, these rose to the top of the list when trying to describe what “quality” in a hire looks like.

Hire experience

The other half of our working definition of “hiring high” we’ve termed earlier as “experience.”  David Fachetti at Globespan Capital articulated four key areas he probes to determine whether candidates he interviews have what he defines as experience:

1. 1. Lifecycle experience: prior experience at a similar stage of company development
2. 2. Domain experience:  prior experience in the same industry sector as the current company
3. 3. Functional experience: prior experience playing a similar functional role (marketing, sales, technology, finance, etc.)
4. 4. Relationships experience:  has the individual worked with others on the team before?

Don’t skimp when it comes to Leadership experience

One more key experience criterion, especially when “hiring high,” is leadership experience.  One CEO emphasized that, “experience and skills aren’t a surrogate for leadership.  If you’re going to be growing a team, you’ll fail without it.”

Determine where you need your best gene pool

Another common refrain was that–in an early stage company–there are at least three key roles where you want to hire high, rather than low.  Dave Fachetti, Principal at Globespan Capital Partners, summed it up, saying, “For a company to have a solid foundation for growth, bench strength needs to exist at the highest functional levels in technology (VP Engineering/CTO), sales, and the senior P&L role of CEO.  Scott Griffith, Zipcar CEO emphasized that each company can differ, so “get the strategy right, and THEN hire high into the key stress points of that strategy.”

One qualifier made by Genpath CEO Tuan Ha-Ngoc was the impact of the differences between technology companies and life sciences companies.  In pure technology companies, there is an additional emphasis on the importance of hiring a high level of experience into the position where the technology meets the customer, someone who has the pulse and understanding of the market into which the technology will be selling.    In life sciences, the pain of disease is more often self-evident, where technology can sometimes mistakenly be developed for technology’s sake, a “build it and they will come” approach.

Make sure executives can “zoom out and zoom in”

The individual has to be able to both lead a function and do the function.  In other words, if the decision is made to hire a VP Sales, that VP Sales has to be able to “carry the bag” and actually do the selling, as well as hire, train, motivate, and manage a sales force when the time comes.    Similarly, an early-stage VP Engineering should be able to code as well as architect early on, until more hands can be hired.  Early on at Yahoo!, the company determined that one of the key hiring criteria for any employee was that they could “zoom in and zoom out.”   Every new hire had to be able to think strategically at the 50,000 foot level, but also be able to go back to ground-zero and execute the strategy.   Zipcar’s Griffith—a licensed airplane pilot—added, “You have to be a pilot, willing to get under the plane and check all the equipment yourself, take off, navigate, AND safely land in order to get successfully from point of origin to destination.”

Biases & Cautions

Not surprisingly there were biases that had formed from the individual operating experiences of each CEO or VC with whom we talked.   And interestingly, despite these biases, many gave examples of a hiring circumstance that ran counter to their bias that worked out particularly well, or a hire that fit their bias that failed.   Following are some of the biases and cautions that stood out.

If you’re the CEO, don’t hire low in an area just because it’s your functional strength

There was a great deal of alignment on this issue, and it’s a chronic mistake the venture capitalists we talked to saw in their portfolio companies.   David Power at Fidelity Ventures elaborated saying that “If a CEO hires a weaker player into a function where that CEO has expertise, say the marketing function, the CEO ends up still managing marketing instead of doing what the CEO should be doing—running the company.  You want to hire at equal levels across the functional spectrum.”  Joel Rosen at Charles River Ventures added, “younger companies don’t have a lot of training infrastructure.  The company is running too fast to have the leeway to train much.  Although this isn’t a law of nature, the biggest gaiting factor to growth is often bandwidth, particularly that of the CEO.”

Don’t hire talent too late

Genpath CEO Tuan Ha-Ngoc put it simply and elegantly—“It is rare that the company fails because you hired high-caliber talent too early.  It’s usually that the company hired too late.”

If you hire high, think about assigning multiple roles

One of the ways you can often get top talent in early-stage companies is to offer multiple roles that will allow the higher-level executive an opportunity to stretch their wings.  Lou Volpe at Kodiak added, “If hiring a senior engineering executive early-on, think about giving them QA, support, and/or manufacturing, even product management.”

The probability of a successful high/low hire is predicated on the clarity of the task

Put another way, the murkier the goals, strategies, and tactics of a particular functional area, the more you will bias your hiring toward the high side of the spectrum of experience.  Conversely, if the responsibilities of the position are well defined and clear, a lower-hire might be just the right fit.  As EquipNet CEO Roger Gallo put it, “Is the hire going to be focused on fulfilling known initiatives,

or rather creating and forging entirely new ones?”

Think about making a “high-low sandwich”

To this point, no mention has been made of the obvious question when talking about whether to hire high or hire low—what about “hiring in the middle”?  Kodiak’s Lou Volpe admits a bias to a combination approach of hiring a low with a high—“Hire high, and then do a step function, and hire low.  In sales for example, hire the VP, and then hire one or two lower-level individual contributors, one or more of which can be step-up candidates into the middle role of manager or director further down the company development cycle.”

What about hiring high/low when it comes to hiring the CEO?

This question is complex enough to support itself as a single topic of discussion with the venture capitalists and CEOs we consulted.  However, Fidelity Ventures’ David Power listed three circumstances where hiring a step-up/“low” candidate into the CEO position can work—

1. 1. When a particular functional area is important to the stage of company growth (hiring a VP Sales or VP Marketing into the CEO position when the company is just entering its revenue stage)
2. 2. When continual technological innovation/engineering is inherent to an industry sector (hiring a VP Engineering or CTO into the CEO position because of the pressures for recurring and sustainable technology innovation)
3. 3. When you can get someone who is traditionally “out of reach” (hiring a superstar VP level candidate into the CEO position because a step-up is the only way you can attract that particular talent)

With all of the above thoughts on best practices regarding hiring for early-stage companies, an image formed to sum up some of the wisdom of the CEOs and VCs we consulted.   Perhaps it’s not too different from how many parents buy clothes for their fast growing child—you pick the color and the style, and then have them walk up the rack trying on increasingly larger sizes until the piece of clothing actually falls right off.  You then step it back one size, and buy that one.   It’s just small enough that it can be worn now, but it leaves plenty of room for future growth.

I have it on good authority that  June has been declared New England Innovation Month, per Scott Kirsner who has been tireless tender of the innovation flame here in New England for years now (http://www.boston.com/innovation).  See the growing list of June events at http://neinnovation.com.

In honor, a few thoughts follow on Innovation in New England.  First, a pointer to a related concept, called National Entrepreneurs’ Day to recognize what entrepreneurs do for this country.  It’s an idea sparked by a fellow New Englander, David Hauser, founder & CEO of successful tech start-up Grasshopper.  The date being requested of the Obama administration happens to be the first day of spring each year.  [Coincidence that the French word for “start up” also references the spring season–“jeune pousse,” loosely translated as “young sprout” or seedling).

See the video clip below for serious entrepreneurial inspiration, and the other link to add your John Hancock (yes, yet another famous New England innovator) to the virtual petition.

* Killer link for entrepreneurial inspiration– http://grasshopper.com/idea

* Link to petition– http://www.entrepreneursday.org/dh

Now, back to June’s month-long celebration of innovation.   Indeed, New England  has a storied innovation past.  However,   what may begin as a strength in our region can at times turn to weakness, the metaphorical double-edged sword.   I’ve penned a wish list of five ideas for innovation here in New England along that thematic refrain, akin to “innovation on innovation”:

• #1 “Coopetition” in New England to foster national visibility
  New Englanders are known for their fierce independence and self-reliance.  We needed this when we came over as settlers 300+ years ago and put our MacGyver-esque skills to the test to survive (note, MacGyver was no doubt was an Irish immigrant from good New England pioneering stock).  It’s been said that unless you can trace your lineage to the Mayflower, you’re still considered an outsider.  New England has never been known for leaving fresh-baked pies for the neighbor who just moved in next door.  In fact, at times, neighbors live next to neighbors for years without getting to know each other, all in the name of “independence” and a desire to not meddle in others’ affairs.  However, New England could benefit a great deal if we pulled together and collaborated just a wee bit more.  Example, Peter Rothstein, recently named Director of the New England Clean Energy Council, has been driving for both State and Federal government resources (Department of Energy and other), to fund the concept of a “Regional Consortium” that would bring together all the components of the cleantech ecosystem in New England in a thoughtful, harnessed approach.    The only way New England can achieve this national recognition (and funding) is via collaboration.  OK, just to prove to hardy New England stock, we’ll call it “coopetition” just to retain a bit the independence streak that runs so deep up here.

• #2 Greater sense for openness for new ideas/ways of doing things
  New England also has a wonderful sense of tradition—Mayflower, Plymouth Rock, the Boston Marathon, Red Sox, clam chowder… we’ve pioneered our fair share of “we were first to….” And “we have the oldest of….”  I’d like to see us bring back a bit more of the revolution versus  evolution.  A bit more General George Washington and Lexington/Concord derring-do, rather than what has grown to be our reputation as conservative  in all things “blue sky”-oriented.  Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to wait for the imprimatur from an MIT lab or a Harvard Business School professor before we tried something new?  New Englanders are possessed with pedigree.  And until something has been anointed with pedigree pixie dust, an innovation often languishes in ignominy.

• #3 Be more “what you know” versus “who you know”:
  As an outgrowth of #1 and #2 above, New Englanders often suffer from an acute case of “who you know.”  This to some extent is a derivative of the circular logic involving #2 above on pedigree.   Despite our reputation as the nexus of sophistication and erudition, New England seems to grow more and more insular in letting outsiders into board rooms as well as bar rooms.  New England, despite being the original crucible of diverse cultures, has homogenized. Amazing ideas and innovations come from equally surprising and diverse sources.  One of the best examples of “what you know” is exemplified in one of my favorite recent Malcolm Gladwell articles in the New Yorker Magazine (dare we say also a New England masthead), chronicling a Silicon Valley entrepreneur from India who heretofore knew nothing about the sport of basketball, who—when tasked with coaching his daughter’s middle school basketball team—innovated game strategy to turn a weakness into a strength and a last place team into a near division winner (see http://www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/type-leaders-required-to-outpace-competitors-in-recovering-economy/ )

• #4 “Hold” vs. “Fold” or “Sold”
  OK, so I’m not pioneering this idea, but if imitation is the highest form of flattery, I’m a big fan of this growing mantra in the innovation community here in New England that goes like this.  Massachusetts used to have an incredible set of tech & science crown jewels:  in biotech, Genzyme, Biogen & Millennium Pharma.   In tech, companies in hardware and systems like Data General, Digital, Wang, 3COM, and Banyan Systems.  In software & Internet the likes of Lotus & Lycos.  However, over the years, these companies have either been sold or forced to fold.  One of the few remaining companies embracing the “hold” mentality is EMC, preferring to buy others than sell themselves out.  However, just one EMC, or even a handful more doesn’t make for a robust, sustainable innovation ecosystem.  Innovation can metaphorically be cast in the same light as combustion– that combination of spark, oxygen and fuel that powers innovation and drives creativity.  Spark is the new idea, fuel is the money provided from investors in the idea.  And oxygen is the people who take the idea and the money, the business-saavy entrepreneurs who partner as the steel to the innovator’s flint to spark the novel idea, tech innovation, or scientific breakthrough.  I wish we were making more oxygen in New England.  This type of oxygen only comes from the talent that grows up and makes small companies into big companies.  These bigger companies serve as a training ground for the next generation of entrepreneurs to cut their teeth, get their training, build their network.  These larger companies offer entrepreneurial training wheels.  When we sell companies too early, they never get the chance to develop a critical mass of next generation talent who can apprentice at the knee of others and with greater security to make mistakes without having each decision be a bet-the company-one that risks putting the company in mortal peril.  When there is no larger company safety net, fewer young talents practice jumping into the uncertainty of innovation acrobatics, often key experiences required to be able to drive younger companies to success later in their innovation careers.

• #5 Create a “Celebrate the student Week”
  I’ve always been in awe of many of the Asian countries who celebrate things that we in the U.S. might find odd.  I believe they have a day that celebrates children.  And a day that celebrates the elderly wise ones in their communities and cultures.  There is likely no region in the U.S. that has more undergraduate and graduate students than New England.  And these students are the equivalent to our regional “innovation fountain of youth.”  Undergrads, Masters students, PhDs, Post-docs, Fellows.    I wish we could celebrate them.  What better time to do it than during New England Innovation Month.  Make them feel welcome.  Give them social stature to counterbalance the grumblings around U-Haul vans that descend like locusts in late August, or parties that get a bit too raucous.   New England students should be lauded.  Perhaps a regional “student innovation awards” as capstone to this celebration.   OK, at minimum, a free scoop from yet another New England innovation legend, Ben & Jerry’s.  A  scoop of a new flavor in their honor, “College Cram Crunch.”