Success and Failure Drive Innovation - Polly Sumner, Liz Tinkham (Salesforce & Accenture) Interview transcript
My notes from the interview of Polly Sumner and Liz Tinkham (Salesforce & Accenture).
Polly and Liz represent two extraordinary information technology companies in the world. Liz is one of the main partners at Accenture. Accenture is one of the most resilient and entrepreneurial technology companies in the world. Salesforce.com is a newer entrant, which has changed the way we think about software and Customer relationship management. Liz will be interviewing Polly.
L: Polly why don't you give us an overview of what you've done.
P: I've been in the technology industry since 30 years. Started with IBM, from where I took away the understanding that customers are going to shape the companies of the future, and understanding the path to the customer is going to be the next step of leadership. Worked in the small systems division. Went to work with a time-sharing company called McDonald Douglas where we did mainframe applications over a thin client. Then did a couple of startups, and one of the main themes in my career has been not being afraid to take risks and not being afraid of failure. They were great learning experiences for me. Late 80s I had a choice to go to Cisco or back into information management systems. I chose Oracle. I was kind of an entrepreneur inside Oracle. Then went to work as President and CEO of a small company. Then spent 4 years consulting for large private equity firm in new york. Helping them with the health of the companies, could the developers truly develop, could the sales people really sell, was the product truly innovative or what the product just a feature of somebody else's product. Then joined salesforce.com since two years. Chief adoption officer, overseeing whether customers adopt and continue using our products.
L: I've had one job for 25 years. At accenture you get to work with a lot of different companies. I've worked at government, telecommunications, high-tech, electronics. Started with technology based work, mainframe, client-server. Mostly developing customer based applications throughout my career. Then moving more into strategy and new data services, new product entry. Today I oversee consulting business for communications, high-tech and media globally. Spend a lot of time in silicon valley as there is so much new thinking and new ideas. Most of our clients love that silicon valley can talk about new technologies and new ideas and how to make it practical in their very large businesses. Liz, talk about how entrepreneurship plays out in large companies vs small companies.
P: Starting your own business is a big piece of entrepreneurship, but inside a large company there is a lot of entrepreneurialism goes on. Lot of it happens in products, business processes, way people comm and collaborate. Finance also like automatic bill-pay, pay-pal. You get a lot of innovative and entrepreneurial ideas from customers, and I would argue that if you listen to your customers you would get a lot of innovation. E.g. Oracle, running a team in DC. Sybase was beating us in couple of key areas. In navy and interesting applications in department of defence. They were able to do things which we from a database perspective didn't think were important. Like I proposed having Lat-Long coordinates in a database. My teams didn't agree. So I went back and thought more, on how some innovations couldn't happen without Lat-Long (cell phone, ship on the sea, airplane in the air). All applications which were nascent. All it took was understanding the idea that Lat-long were two very important parameters to track in the database.
L: At oracle how was entrepreneurship encouraged?
P: It is the culture. I left some companies that I didn't fit. I failed in devoting my time correctly which is limited in life. Culture that suits me: No idea is a dumb idea. You get that instilled when you grow up. You (students) know a lot about this world. And companies are looking for you to come and talk to them about your ideas. In an interview, I always ask "What's an idea you've had that could work here?".
L: I was interviewing someone for a media job, and I asked how we were going to make $100 mill at Warner Bros. It is challenging from a consulting perspective to drive monetization of anything which is not theatrical. E.g. how do you make a lot of money out of your sales force, finance and performance. It takes a while to come to a conclusion.
P: The kind of people VC invest in, they haven't been afraid to take risks around an idea they believe in. I ask companies I want to work for: can you tell me the last time someone got promoted when they had an interesting idea.
L: How many times have you failed when you did that.
P: Many times. As CEO didn't see dot-com bubble. Did not properly instill the discipline of only presenting one use-case to the customer, in a sales and marketing company I worked with. We ended up in trial-test. We didn't have one use-case that we could scale. If I had kept the sales with me, only sold direct, evaluated the use cases by myself to find one that could scale. I learned a lot from this experience. Learned a valuable lesson at a price.
L: Did your thinking about failure change? when did you think you could fail and recover?
P: It started when you are a little kid. When your team loses in sports, you try harder. When you fail once and win the second time, the win is so much sweeter. My failures have turned into a stepping stone to something that was a win.
L: I never failed when I was growing up, straight A's etc. I wish I would have failed earlier. My first failure was really hard, because you have nothing to fall back on. When I reflect back on my failures at work, those are the best things that happened to me.
L: What's your secret sauce in building great teams. Salesforce.com is a great place to work at, and you've had huge success.
P: When I started working, people thought of success based on how many people worked for you. Now we don't work in a hierarchical way any more. All companies today are made of teams. Today teams are like free-agents. If you don't like the team you work with, you can go and work for another team. People have to work to belong to a team. Key ingredient is transparency and communication, focusing on results, rewards, great comm, no idea is a bad idea.
L: You are very global and your teams are global. How does that transcend outside the US? There is transparency and openness in the US, but not as much outside.
P: It still is important to look the other person in the eye. It is very difficult to not know the other person. Video is great, you get an idea about the other person. We use technology, tele-presence. We believe very strongly in writing skills. There are some people today who cannot write, due to the prevalence of voicemail in their growing years. It is very important to write an effective email. Clarity of writing is so important. Understanding the customer is very important, and you gotta understand the big growth areas in the world. You need to understand Brazil, Russia, India and China. Whether it is part of being part of a company's market entry team, whether you've fortunate enough to have grown up there. These are the places where people will buy things.
L: With accenture, we've changed our management promotion, people have to have done some tour of duty in these countries. Mexico and Africa are very interesting as well. One of my colleagues was doing some not-for-profit work in Sierra Leone.
L: One problem our clients are struggling with is how do you monetize this social networking thing and how is it going to change how we work with customers, and how we do development. At accenture, we do have some social networking tools but they are nothing as good as facebook, because they've been developed by someone who is too old. There is some power there which could drive innovation.
P: We're in a new level of sharing and transparency. People really want to share.
L: What is Marc doing to keep you guys excited at salesforce.com?
P: Couple of principles. One, there's magic in simplicity. John seely brown is a firm believer in this concept. When you make things simple, to use, to deliver value, people will use them. Like iPhone, cappucino makers work as there's one button to press. There's a relation between innovation and simplicity. We really focus on that at salesforce.com.
L: I would add, related to writing. Being able to write well, and to be concise, and to be able to keep it simple.
Questions.
Steve Blank: Liz, you spent time at Silicon valley, but your customers are the Global 200. What is the thing you wish startups knew that they always get wrong about investors role and big companies are looking for?
Liz: Easy answer. Unless you have an incredibly simple, disruptive technology that most people understand and get quickly, the problem most startups have is that the big company cannot figure out how they can inter-operate with all their systems and environment. If your technology doesn't work with all their stuff, it will be very hard to convince them.
Steve Blank: You alluded to this while talking about your career. Was there some culture shock going to a startup of that small size?
Polly: It was hard because I did a few things at once. So if you're starting ideas in a big company, you start with a very small team. The smallness wasn't a big problem. Problem was I had to learn a lot of things as a CEO. One of the things was motivating development. You have a set of DNA in you. You need to understand what your DNA is (Sales and Marketing, Product development, Finance). The older you get, you hone your DNA because you have been successful. In entrep. you need to make your scope wider. You are always looking at a problem through your DNA. Other people which I led were saying that I need to fix the product. It was difficult for me to lead all disciplines. I said to myself, what could I add to my DNA, i.e. add to me team the DNA of the other roles which are important to go forward. Relationship between CEO and board was also difficult. It was difficult to think of the money people gave the company as a loan.
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