Conversations: On Leadership

Welcome to the second instalment of our Conversations series. These posts expand upon my usual musings and reflect an interesting discussion I’ve recently had.?Catch up on the first one here which was On Mentorship. I want to share them with you because in my experience, sharing knowledge, beliefs, and vulnerabilities helps us grow.?

?For this installment, I sat down with?Eric Laughlin, CEO at Agiloft. We discussed leading through rapid growth, the importance of passion, and why the abundance mindset is great for the legal industry. Some spoilers: neither one of us thought we’d end up in legal, and we both recommend getting lunch with your competitors. As always, I’d love to keep the conversation going, so leave your thoughts in the comments. I’m looking forward to reading them.?

?“I want to build a big independent org that doesn’t hit a threshold.”?

The Draw of the CEO Role in Legal

Varun: A good way to kick-this off is something one of my mentors said recently: everyone thinks the CEO knows alot, but they know very little about most things. Can you relate??

Eric: Absolutely. I feel I couldn’t?run?any of the functions in my business. So how did we end up here?

V: My only formal training is as a biomedical engineer. I used to look down on my college experience. What did I really learn? I realized I learned how to break things down into component pieces. That was my entrance into the market and how I think about my role today.?

E: My first job out of college was as a consultant and my first client was Thomson Reuters. I was suddenly in the legal industry through no choice of my own, but I didn’t think I'd stay.?

V: I didn’t think I’d end up in legal either. I saw a pattern of someone coming up with a new idea, and then one of the Big Law firms would buy them. Then those ideas would die. That pattern didn’t excite me.

E: There was a ceiling to how big an organization could be. I felt strongly it doesn’t have to be this way.?

V: No one wanted to figure out a way forward, and that’s why the industries kept stalling. I realized I want to build a big independent org that doesn’t hit a threshold.?

“We’re sending people to the moon.”

The Importance of Loving the Work

V: There’s the anecdote about asking the janitors at NASA what they do for a living, and they all answer, “we’re sending people to the moon.” My passion is to build a company with that level of focus on the mission. For Factor, we’re not drafting contracts for procurement teams at pharma companies, we’re helping them deliver drugs more effectively.

E: You’ve got to have passion. It doesn’t have to be for the product. It could be the clients you’re helping, it could be the learning on the job, or the people that you’re working with.??

V: We forget about the human part of that story. Our job is not to sell a deal or execute a contract, our job is to help enable our customers. When I say customer I mean the individual person. Get?them?promoted, help?them?achieve their goals.

E: I can tell myself a story: Eric, you're not an innovator, but you can take other people’s innovations and apply them to a new space. And thank goodness the legal industry is a little bit behind everyone else, because that means I never have to invent anything.?

V: That was a big moment of ego swallowing for me, realizing I was not a 0 to 1 guy. It’s not where I excelled. I’m about the 1-100. That’s why when Factor came along, it was such a unique experience.?

E: Agiloft is over a decade old. And yet, I've been here a little over a year now, and in that year we’re almost twice the size, and I love that part. I don’t love the 0-1 either. But having a wonderful organisation was such a blessing to come into. My job and my passion is to add to that and help bring in the missing pieces.?

“In the CEO position there’s no crawling back.”

Imposter Syndrome in the Role

E: In the back of my head I had imposter syndrome. Mine was all about the fact I’m not a lawyer.?

V: Imposter syndrome is a big one. I had a ton of it.?

E: My imposter syndrome declined significantly when I came to Agiloft. I came into this job and people were commenting that I was a relationship and culture-driven CEO. I took the compliment to heart, and it helped with imposter syndrome because I started to double down on that strength.?

?V: The imposter syndrome for me is around the fact that the buck stops with me. It’s something you know going into the role, but there were these situations, whether at a board meeting or a leadership meeting, when someone would turn to me and say, “Varun, what do you want to do?”

E: To do the job well you have to be comfortable making those decisions.

V: Early on, a symptom of my imposter syndrome was needing to call my advisor, my mentor, AND my wife before making any decision. I still feel that symptom sometimes, but there’s no time for it. I put more trust in the fact that I have the right data and the right team that will ensure that you're not making the worst decision.?

E: In the CEO position there’s no excuses like “I?fought but couldn't get that resource for you.” Now it’s, “I had to prioritize and can’t give you that resource”.?People?working for us want decisions so we can move forward. As soon as I got comfortable with that, it made a big difference for me.?

“I’m going to make this change now, and in six months I might make another change.”

Leading Through Rapid Growth

E: Rapid growth can be a wonderful problem to have, but it’s not just, “if I add three people to this team we can do three times the work.” It requires each team to change often. I did not appreciate that that’s the hardest part.?

V: That’s something that I completely resonate with. My solution ends up being “lets hire more,” but that’s a small piece of the solution. The part that I'm struggling with is while the company is winning, how do we make sure everyone feels like they are too??

E: By nature of growing a company so big and so quickly, people's jobs have to be more specialized. Some people like that, some people don’t. You have to find out which people are which and make the right moves to capitalize on what people are good at versus what the business needs.?

V: Every decision leads to more decisions and questions and changes to manage.?

E: My way of dealing with it is not to assume I will make one big change and then not make any others for another year. I make this change now, and in six months I might make another change. At larger companies, in my experience, once a year you make a big change, and then you settle until the next year. That’s not realistic in rapid growth.

“My success is not your loss.”

Abundance Mindset in the Legal Industry

E: Three years ago, I had lunch with one of my competitors. I thought to myself, “what am I doing at this lunch?” I told myself that whatever I do, I'm going to be as supportive of this person as I would anyone else. By doing that, I was able to make some very small relationship investments. Three years later this person is one of my key partners.?

V: Who knows what comes next? There's so much in life. There’s more than enough business for all of us. When we move to better connections and understanding of our people, our customers and our market a large, that's what wins the day.?

E: I think a lot of leaders in our space share an abundance mindset. There is so much for us to do in this space.?

V: This is not Coke or Pepsi.

E: There’s an abundance of opportunity, and we’re all in it together. Maybe it gets more cutthroat over time, but it doesn’t feel that way now. That’s a really good thing for the industry. My success is not your loss.?