Here are two examples from my past that I will connect in a minute, stay with me. A very long time ago, I had an opportunity to work for Sabre (the airline reservations system). During the interview process, I had a chance to speak with 5 different systems developers. I asked each one: “What do you do?” In each case, these folks were able to link exactly what they do to a business result. For example, one guy told me that he was responsible for the queuing algorithms for the reservations line. He knew that by shaving off .0001% of a second in the route to free sequence, he could improve throughput which directly translated in X dollars of revenue on an annual basis.
It was amazing. Contrast that to some big lumbering insurance company I worked for in the late 80’s. The what do you do question would be answered with “I code” or “I’m an analyst” or “I’m a tape (!) librarian.” Any answer except the specifics of what they do as it relates to the business.
Fast forward to today. The problem/difference exists today. As part of due diligence on companies, I ask everybody in the company “What do you do” and am always surprised how the company’s success trajectory can usually be linked to to the granularity of the answer(s).
I Love Rewards, a JLA portfolio company, is a particularly good example of this thinking in action. The technical team at ILR gets this in spades. There is the “simple” process of looking up your points, picking a reward, etc, which makes up a fairly good chunk of the ILR offering. When you ask one of the coders “what do you do”, you get back answers around the speed of the dB look ups. They will tell you they’ve tweaked/improved some queries by X% so that the user gets a result faster which in turn gives them a great experience which is then passed on to fellow employees. They translate that directly into sign ups which translates into new customers, seats, points, etc, all of which means good things to the company.
Joe Taiabjee, my technical uber-brain at b5 Media, knows to the sub atomic particle level how fast pages load, where, what, and why because he can track ad serving, page abandonment rates, etc, and tie it directly to revenue. He is not “just the tech guy” by a long shot.
Our main tech man Frank, over at Xobni, along with Adam (one of the co-founders) obsess over every pixel paint, refresh, etc. When I interviewed Adam and we go past the co-founder state, he dived into the WDYD answer with an almost line by line source code linkage to how it impacted the product and where the paid things would be impacted. It was impressive.
And so it goes. If you are a CEO/Founder, ask yourself if you’ve got your entire team thinking like this. Can a random stranger come in and ask that WDYD question with results that are technical but business focused.
If your tech team is a “those people” or they think of “them” as the “others” in the company, you’ve got a problem.
I’m beginning to think this is a seriously important key to success.
Great post Rick! Completely agree with you.
Posted by: Mark MacLeod | June 22, 2009 at 04:41
Well put Rick, totally agree... you can take this well beyond the tech team too. It's amazing what happens when people generating consumer-level content, or answering support inquiries, can look at metrics that tie the quality of their work directly to the business KPIs. Knowing how your work impacts the likelihood of continued paycheques, is the best motivator you can hope for.
Posted by: Dave Bullock | June 22, 2009 at 11:34
Nice post Rick, linking to it in my favorite VC posts column today.
Posted by: Larry Cheng | June 26, 2009 at 07:16
Fantastic post. Its 11PM on sunday and I'm working on a spec for exactly this type of optimization customer experience/profit double-win optimization. So I'm very much on this wave length at the moment and it is that important. What do you do here (and why does it matter). So simple yet crazy fundamental.
Thanks for the boast to push on into the wee hours!!! :)
Posted by: Chris S | June 28, 2009 at 08:47
Absolutely true Rick. We call this Market-facing. Too many company's are engineering centric -- and not in touch with what the market wants or needs.
And I would suggest that if the CEO can't give the same spiel -- the guy (or gal) should be out. Board members should periodically invite key employees to present -- and be free to ask questions. Keeps the CEO honest.
Posted by: Diane Burley | July 06, 2009 at 07:08