When times are hard, go with your instincts

Understanding myself is having the guts to accept and embrace the real me: my strengths, my weaknesses, and everything in between.

When I started my startup, I had little experience in hiring people more skilled than myself. Through the process of hiring the first executive for my company, I learned that I have good instincts when it comes to recognizing talent, especially at the executive level. Dan, the VP of Engineering, was one such hire.??

He was wise for his age (probably 31 or so) likable, and revenue focused.? I was all in on Dan.? He took the responsibility for talking to customers, understanding how their network vision was evolving, and shifting engineering priorities to work on delivering.? From him, I learned the art of being in front of the customers when we had product delays. When you are producing intricate technologies, delays are common, and he was unafraid to take the lead again and again with the salesperson to meet with the customer and reset expectations.

Partnering with him helped us acquire customers like WorldCom, who was the primary competitor of AT&T in those days. They became a marque account which helped us get into Deutsche Telecom, British Telecom, and Alcatel, to take the company public.??

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Dan’s success as an executive was invaluable, which is why it was easy for me to be blinded by his strengths and not notice his weaknesses.??

One day, my VP of Sales, Tim, pointed out that Dan does not have leadership skills. Dan struggled to re-prioritize engineering and kept mission-drifting into sales. Being new to leadership myself, I didn’t even know what good leadership looked like.? Dan was making me successful, so I brushed it off.??

Then, after four years of a very successful track record, Dan faltered on the delivery of the schedule of a major product. The failure to meet the delivery schedule would produce a revenue shortfall and we were now a public company.? At the same time, a major customer who purchased an early incarnation of that product became unhappy and threatened to return the product, which would require us to restate the revenues of the previous quarter.? Bill Larach (called corporate ambulance chaser) filed a class action lawsuit against us.??

These were difficult times for the company.? The Board urged me to fire Dan.? And against my instincts, I listened.??

In retrospect, firing Dan was a mistake. Dan had acted as a true partner in my business.? When he was gone, I found myself all alone, just like when Herb, my co-founder, left.??

When hard times hit, we can be tempted to do things that do not feel instinctual to us. Instead of trusting my initial instincts about Dan, I gave in to outside pressure. Maybe I would have been able to navigate through the collapse of the Internet market in 2000 with Dan by my side. Now, I will never know.?

What I do know is that trusting myself can be hard sometimes. But in the end, it makes me a better leader and a better executive.