Corner Office | Seth Besmertnik
Spin the Wheel, and Get to Know Your Colleagues
By ADAM BRYANT
Published: November 17, 2012
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This interview with Seth Besmertnik, co-founder and chief executive of Conductor, a provider of search engine optimization technology in Manhattan, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Seth Besmertnik is co-founder and C.E.O. of Conductor.
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Q. Tell me about the first time you managed someone.
A. I started Conductor when I was 23, and my first official management experience was with the first salesperson we hired. He was very difficult to manage, and I did everything wrong as an early manager.
My second week working with this guy, he got a call from somebody who would have been a great new customer for us, but the customer was in California and he said he could talk only at 6 p.m. But my salesperson came to me and said he couldn’t do the call then because he had to go to the gym. My blood was boiling. But I was intimidated by this guy, and I didn’t have the courage to actually say, “What are you doing? This is terrible.”We probably should have fired the guy on the spot. That would be my inclination today. But 18 months later, I had never once given this guy any kind of feedback. And I had my employees from the organization telling me that this guy’s a problem. I ended up letting the guy go, and he was furious. He had every right to be furious, because I had never given him any critical feedback over 18 months. I’d say he was my first real management experience, and I got an F.
Q. So what was the lesson for you?
A. A lot of my growth as a manager has been around conquering my own insecurity and gaining confidence. When you’re confident, you can give people feedback. You can be candid. You feel secure enough to say what’s really on your mind. So the biggest take-away from that was when you’ve got something on your mind, say it. Bring someone in the room and say: “You did this. It really made me feel XYZ.” And having those good conversations is really 80 percent of being an effective manager.
Q. A lot of people go out of their way to avoid difficult conversations.
A. I find them the hardest thing to do in life. Problems drift and grow out of proportion because people never have conversations about them. Some people lack empathy, so they’re not as sensitive to other people’s feelings. It’s easier for them just to say, “Hey, you did this wrong.” For me, I can feel how the other person feels, so I’m very careful about what I say. And I genuinely want to do well for the other person. So you think that when you tell someone something they don’t want to hear, you’re actually hurting their feelings or you’re making them upset. So that becomes a challenge. You learn to realize the best thing you can do for that person is to be as candid as possible.
Every employee who joins the company gets a book called “Fierce Conversations,” and a letter I’ve written that basically says: “Life moves forward one conversation at a time. If you can have effective communication here at the company and if you can learn how to have hard conversations with people, then that’s going to solve most of the problems that come from work experience.”
I think employees often resign from companies because they had a problem with something, and all these little things fester. And they never once share them with anybody. Then they come in and say: “I’m out of here. Here’s my two weeks’ notice.” Their manager will say, “Why are you leaving?” And they’ll answer, “I’m upset about this, this and this.” The company might be able to fix all those things, but it’s too many conversations to unravel, and it’s too late.
Q. So what are some dos and don’ts for giving feedback?
A. The most obvious one is how you start the sentence. If there’s something that’s bothering you, don’t go to the other side of the court. Stay on your side of the court. So you start your sentences with “I feel.” You’re upset about something that someone’s done, and the way to address it is to say: “Bob, you’ve done this, and it really makes me feel like you are not engaged in the organization. Should I be feeling this way?” And then Bob can say to himself, “O.K., he’s allowed to feel how he wants, and he’s asking me if he should be feeling this way.” That’s the right way to approach it.
The wrong way to approach it is, “Bob, I’ve noticed you’ve been doing this, and I think you’re doing it because you’re not interested in working here, and I don’t like the way you’re approaching this.” Bob’s defensive, and might say, “You think you know why I’m doing this?” Or, “Hey, I’ve been working on the biggest project in the world, and I was going to show it to you next week.” Bob’s annoyed because you’ve already accused him of something. So the simple rule would be that if you’ve got a problem, let them know how you feel first and then let them respond, instead of assuming that they’re doing something for a reason you’re not sure of.
Another approach is that when you first start working with someone, say to them: “Hey, I really like to give you feedback. It’s my job to give you feedback.” Set their expectation that you’re going to be giving them a lot of feedback. When they do something great, send them a little e-mail. When they do something you think they can do better, pull them aside, and get into that rhythm. A lot of bad patterns happen when you go for really long periods without giving people feedback, and it just bottles up. They’re so used to not getting any feedback that when they get it, it’s this huge deal. If you get into a rhythm of giving feedback, they get used to it. So I’m always reinforcing these cultural points. If you’ve got something on your mind, let it out. Don’t let it drift.
Q. Other things that are part of the culture?
A. We have signs in every conference room in the office that say, “We respect our colleagues by not reading e-mail during meetings.” This is one of the few things that drive me absolutely insane. I’ve been in meetings where everyone around the room is either reading e-mail or doing something on their computer. It’s the most disrespectful thing. Let’s not meet if no one’s going to be paying attention.
Q. What else?
A. I have a slide of what makes a great person who works for Conductor. I share that with everybody about every 90 days, and they might feel annoyed seeing it again, but repetition is a good thing at times. They’re basically the things that we look for when we hire people, and they’re pretty consistent.
One is an incredible sense of self-awareness. I tell everybody, you should be looking back at yourself every six months and saying, “Man, I was a dummy back then.” We want people who are very in touch with what they’re doing right, and what they could be doing better. So the second thing is that you need to be very committed to your own improvement.
The third piece is passion. We want people who are very passionate and put their soul into something, and they don’t stop until they get where they want to go. It’s not about the paycheck. It’s not about the résumé or an accolade.
The fourth thing we look for are people who are good communicators. We look for people who say what’s on their mind.
Q. What are some interview questions you use to get at those qualities?
A. I ask people where they want to be in the future. They tell me, and then I say, “Do you think you’re going to be different then than you are today?” And they’ll usually say, “Of course I’m going to be different.” Then I’ll say: “So how are you going to grow from the person you are today to the person you are then? Where do you most need to grow to achieve where you need to go?”This is a very indirect way of asking people what they need to work on. From that answer, you get a strong sense of a person’s confidence. If people are confident, they’re willing to admit weaknesses and insecurities. And you get a sense of how self-aware they are.
Then I get to the most important question, which is, “What have you done outside of work to make yourself better over the last two or three years?” How people spend the time when they’re not working and when they’re not sleeping is the biggest indication in my mind of what they want in life, and how ambitious they are, and how committed they are, and how curious they are.
I also ask, “Tell me a situation where you had something on your mind and you didn’t share it.” Again, you get a sense of self-awareness. You get a sense of their memory. Then, depending on the answer, you might ask them what they learned from it. And then you ask them, “Tell me a situation where something similar happened and you did something about it.”
The other thing I will ask is, “What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had in your life, the thing that required the most perseverance to get through?” I like to find people who’ve struggled. I don’t hold it against them if they haven’t had a struggle. But sometimes people will really open up and will tell you an experience in their life where they had a tough time and how they persevered and conquered a problem. Ultimately, when you’re in a war, and business is war in many senses, you need people who are going to lean into problems.
Q. Any rituals or customs at your company?
A. Every Friday, we have an all-company meeting where we go over everything from the past week. We have a big gong in the middle of the office and someone whacks the gong when something good happens. And every 90 days, we have these all-day meetings that are basically these shareholder conferences. But it’s only for our employees, and we go through our financial performance in detail. We go through every level of the business. My feeling is that our employees have a lot of options for how they want to spend their time. Their time is their most valuable asset, and they can choose where they want to invest that asset.
We feel fortunate enough that they’ve chosen Conductor, but we also know they have other places where they can invest that time. So just like we have investors and a board, we treat employees as shareholders in a more traditional sense. We think of our employees as investors, and we reciprocate by sharing all the relevant information frequently so they understand the value of their investment, and they also understand how their contributions can grow the value of their investment. We think that if people understand why they’re doing things, they have a purpose and they trust that their leaders are being open and candid and including them as equal members of the team. Then you’ll have people who are more motivated and you’ll have lower turnover.
Q. During those weekly Friday meetings, what else do you do?
A. They last from 10 to 40 minutes, depending on what happened during that week. We also go through all the new hires, and I embarrass new employees by asking them to give a speech in front of the company.
Q. What do you ask them to say?
A. Random things, like “Why did you join the company?” And sometimes I’ll ask them something funny, like “tell everyone about your most embarrassing relative” or something. And we also have this big spin-the-wheel, and the “Conductor of the week” spins it. Their name is chosen randomly by an automated program. It’s a badge of honor, but the point is for everybody to know everyone else better. They spin this big wheel next to my desk, and depending on where they land, they have to do a different thing.
One might be a talent show, and they have to perform a little talent show in front of the whole company, right there on the spot. It lightens up the dialogue. As the company gets bigger, it helps everyone get to know people from other departments a little bit more. Otherwise, it’s very easy for you to have colleagues who work on the other side of the office, and you never talk to them.
Q. What else is on the wheel besides the talent show?
A. There is a crown. You have to wear a crown around the office the whole day. There’s “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” which means you get to go home early. There’s one that’s a picture of me with my veins popping out of my head, and then I have to make this fake angry face in front of them.