Consulting Adult

A Millennial State of Mind

2012-02-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

I have always pitied anyone who tried too hard to relate to youth, so these results are a bit startling. I do not really have much in common with Millennials (other than a delight in Lady GaGa), but I strive to understand them. A few years ago I realized that in the United States we demonize youth. That seemed like a certain path to unhappiness for me. How would I be happy in the last third of my life if I had no respect for the kids who were stepping into the shoes I left behind? So, I try to approach this complex generation (which is defined for me as the first generation in our culture to have clocked more years of their life with the US engaged with overt enemies than any other since the Revolution) with understanding, affection and humor. Really, they are the future, what other choice is there but to embrace them?

Duty, loyalty, honor...what veterans can teach high-tech

2011-12-25T13:40:00.001-05:00

My friend Neil Seymour is in Kuwait....his story is remarkable, a working class kid who enlisted for the opportunity of education. Now, with a BA and an MBA under his belt, he did not abandon his commitment, but embraced his duty...and serves with integrity and patience. He will pay his dues in order to realize his dreams. He is an example. And his story should be shared with every young person of privilege before they impatiently demand their next raise, promotion, atta-boy, stock option or vacation.

http://atccareersunset.blogspot.com/

Merry Christmas, Neil...far away but well loved!

Good Pitch, Bad Pitch. Telling the Story is What Counts.

2011-10-27T10:12:00.000-04:00

I introduced a client, who was looking for funding for his company, to a friend who happens to fund companies a few weeks ago.

In preparation for the breakfast meeting I had the client send the friend his "deck" (the set of ppt slides that describe the opportunity). The client was eager to hear what my friend thought, and even before we ordered our eggs, he started the meeting with the question, "What did you think of the deck?" And my friend, looked around the room and then at my client and said, "you could probably make 10 decent slides from the 50 you sent to me, but you are not telling your story well and you are doing your business a disservice sending that deck around. The reader of that deck comes away thinking they now know everything about the company and they see no need to ask you anything or get to know you." Breakfast did not go down so well for my client.

A ppt is meant to be presented, not read. Write a white paper if you are communicating with the written word. If you are making a presentation remember that the slides need to be visually engaging...but they are the support to your narrative, which must be compelling. People often assume that if they cram all of the information onto a slide they will answer all questions before they are asked....but isn't that really counter to what you want to have happen in a presentation?

The limited education I received was focused on writing and directing plays. One of the first lessons you learn when you are trying to write a play is that you have to let questions form in the mind of your audience. While you are telling the audience your story you have to let them participate and engage. They have to have some puzzles to solve, mysteries to figure out and insights to bring to the party. All good theater relies on audience participation. Intellectual and emotional participation. We all enjoy the experience more if we have to think, connect a few dots and then be either startled or validated at the denouement.

Pitching for investment dollars is no different than writing a play. My client was not telling his story well. He wasn't leaving any white space for the audience to fill in with their questions, or sometimes more importantly in the venture world, their egos. The investor likes to be able to say to the entrepreneur, "So I assume from this that you will focus on XYZ and that this solves the insurmountable issue of LMNO?" And when the entrepreneur says, "Yes! I am so glad you get it!" The potential investor, validated that he can do the math and make a greater contribution than just a check, moves from audience to ally on the path to board member. The psychology is no different from writing a play. You are telling a story. You are taking your audience on a journey and you need them to be interested and invested in the outcome.

My advice to my clients when preparing a deck, that pitches for an investment, is to think of it as the vehicle by which you control the conversation. You lead your audience to ask questions....the questions you want to engage them in...the questions that will leave them feeling interested in the business...and in you. Answering every question in a deck leaves no room for a discussion...except the final question, the binary yes or no.

Whether it is Khosla's 5 second rule or Kawasaki's 10-20-30 rule, all presenters must learn that less is more. Less on the slides, more impact with visuals...and then tell your story. What could be simpler.

Investors invest in people, not decks. Don't hide behind the dense deck. Your audience will never get to know you or your ideas buried in 75 slides with 6pt typeface.

Khosla's Rule

Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

2011-07-28T08:33:00.004-04:00

If you haven't seen this, watch and ponder.

Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

Of course, I would add a fourth element: Affiliation.

People will work harder, invent more and stay put longer when they are proud of those with whom they are affiliated.

At least that is my theory and I am sticking to it.

The View From the Wrong Hill

2011-06-04T14:45:00.001-04:00

I often ask my CEO clients, "What is waking you up at night?"

I have heard many answers over the years, but yesterday a young CEO replied, "My greatest existential fear is that I will professionally die on the top of the wrong hill, with a view of the one I should have climbed."

And with those words, he took my breath away.

I do love a leader who is not afraid to succinctly describe their greatest fear. Actually, in this case, all of our greatest fear. For who among us is not terrified to discover they have climbed the professional equivalent of a trash heap, when there was a granite mountain nearby?

Why do Founding CEO's Get Fired?

2011-06-01T14:05:00.001-04:00

They start out with a great idea. They don’t sleep. They invest everything they have in the idea. They have no other life. They build the idea into a great opportunity. They entice investors to fund the idea. They invite their most trusted friends to join them. They cultivate customers. They share the potential of the idea. They nurture the idea into a budding brand. They start to generate revenue based on their idea. They can see the break-even moment. They know how they will invest the profits in new ideas. They can smell the IPO or the world dominance of their idea.

And then one afternoon, after an executive session of their Board, they are told that it is time to bring in “experienced, professional management.”

And suddenly the “Founder and CEO” has only “Founder” on their business card.

And they wonder WTF?

They did so much so right…what could they possibly have done wrong?

It is hard to ride the wave of success if you are a Founding CEO. Not many do so. And those that do stay upright have a lot of help.

Those that end up in the surf of superfluous staff positions, in their own companies, usually have wiped-out based on one or more of the following reasons. Easy to avoid…but hard to see when you are trying to ride the wave.

1. Not hiring well enough. Hiring their sister in-law, college roommate and two favorite lab partners is fine at the very beginning, but not upgrading the team is a fatal flaw. It is a serious red flag to investors that the Founding CEO has limitations if they cannot or will not attract real talent to the enterprise.

2. Not trusting those they hire. Bringing in the much-needed talent and then not using it is another red flag. If a Founding CEO is still making every decision and never schedules their team present to the Board, watch out. The Board will figure out that the Founder CEO has security issues or control needs that will eventually be a gate-to-growth.

3. Not expanding their skills beyond pitching their idea. It was their primary skill set for so long that it is hard to determine when it has become obsolete. But, if the only thing the Founder CEO can do is pitch their initial idea it is another gate. It may take a while for the Board to realize that the Founder CEO is a one-note-samba, but they will.

4. Not managing the basics. Compared to the heady first phase of a company, it can be boring in the second stage of growth when on a day-to-day basis you have to show up and manage cash, stick to product schedules, understand costs, hire and train people, find customers, serve customers and communicate with the Board. But it must be done. A Founder CEO who does not master these basics will not hold on to the CEO part of their title for long.

5. Not stretching their comfort zone. Don’t confuse culture with comfort. Founder CEO’s who define the culture of their company, as the method by which they are most comfortable doing business, will fail to build a sustainable model. Comfort and success have very little in common. If the Founding CEO is not outside of their comfort-zone every day they are not competing for their own job.

6. Not outsourcing. Thinking you can do it all, invent it better than everyone else and subscribing to the “not invented here” mentality, is hubris that wastes money and time. Building partnerships is one of the most commonly requested skills in the specifications for the “experienced, professional management” that replaces Founding CEO’s.

7. Not managing the BOD. If you do not talk to them, they will talk about you. And they will talk about you without all the facts. The investors can intimidate founding CEO’s. Being intimidated is a serious mistake. You are accountable to the BOD, but you have to ask as much of your BOD as they ask of you. No board meeting should end without the CEO placing that quarter’s demands on the BOD. And a good CEO follows up all quarter, working with the BOD members and encouraging them to invest more than money. A good relationship with the BOD offers many currencies to a company. A good BOD can offer introductions, talent, partnerships, competitive insight, financial modeling, operational advice etc. And a good CEO takes advantage of the offerings and builds the BOD’s investment in time, attention and loyalty. It is hard to vote to fire a guy who regularly solicits and follows your advice.

All of these are avoidable pit-falls and it is easy to see who is going to wipe out and end up a Founder without portfolio in their own company.

It is the Founder who never asks for help.

Ready, Aim, Fire!

2011-05-28T10:02:00.032-04:00

Recently my son saw the movie, "Up in the Air" and commented, "Oh, my God, Mom, they made a movie about your life, I mean, you are George Clooney. Ya' know without the upgrades or the affair with the hot chick."

Yep, that about sums up my career, serial terminator without the perks.

I did not choose to be a professional terminator (or as some of my colleagues have taken to call me "The Haugennator"). It just turns out that I am good at delivering hard messages.

To be fair, I do not deliver hard messages much these days. My consulting business has moved me from delivering the message, to preparing others to deliver the message. Sometimes I am called in to prepare folks to receive the message and often I am asked to stick around and help them process the message. My work can be complicated.

This is not a bad business. Helping people do the hard stuff well is a fine way to make a living. And it is a skill that is in demand. As a matter of fact, it never ceases to amaze me how remarkably bad most executives are at firing employees. Again, in fairness, it is not their fault. No one teaches this stuff. You have to learn by trial and error. I have had my trials and made my errors, so my clients call me in to help them avoid the big messy mistakes.

The biggest mistake an executive ever makes is to lose sight of dignity...that of the person they have to let go... and their own.

Here are my rules for firing someone with dignity:

1. Understand your role. Your job is not just to end someone’s employment. Your job is to sever the employment relationship in a way that reflects well upon the brand of your company. (It never reflects well on the brand when people are clumsily treated during a termination.) Your job is to deliver the message and help this person start the process of moving away from the relationship without regretting the relationship.

2. Get to the damn point. You do not have to channel Donald Trump, but please do not beat around the bush thinking that small talk will soften the blow. Do not delay the inevitable. I have seen managers trump up conversation for 45 minutes before they dropped the hammer. It is a very tough segue from hearing about their spouses torn rotator cuff, their daughter's ballet triumph or how their son is screwing up their freshman year in college, to a termination conversation. Nut-up and start the conversation immediately. Delaying is both disrespectful and excruciating. It is best to jump in, "Hi, Fred, I am sorry, but this is a bad day, I have to end your employment with XYZ Inc."

3. Do not go into a long list of the reasons or their failures. I mean really, they just lost their job. Spending 25 minutes in a self-justifying litany of where they screwed up doesn't help anyone. And it might be logical that their job was eliminated due to budget cuts, but as one person told me, “that makes it even more humiliating, you know, to discover just how little value I was.” So, save the big explanations. They cannot hear it anyway...they are already thinking of other things, they are dreading telling their significant other, they are calculating how long their savings will last and they are trying to remember if they have a full bottle of vodka at home. How they screwed up is not significant today. Even if they ask, don't go there. Explain that the decision has been made and rehashing the past won't undo it. I know, I know, some state laws or company policies require that every reason for a termination is documented up the wazoo and so you will have to go through that process. My rule still holds up. Go over the reasons in summary and stay focused on the fact that the decision is made and is final. Your job is to get this person to accept the reality so they can start moving on with their life.

4. This is not about you. No one cares how hard this is for you, how tough your job is or how much you will miss this person. The focus is on the person who has just lost their job. Stay focused on them. When you get home tonight you can whine and lament about your tough day to those that love you. But for now, remember that you are doing your job... and from the fired employee's perspective; the job you are lucky to have.

5. Don't offer help you cannot follow through on or make promises you will not keep. If you could not imagine recommending this person to another employer, do not offer to do so. Do not suggest that this person call you "If they need anything”. Do not ever give this person a false hope of help that will not be forthcoming. False promises will screw up the real plans they need to make to move forward and they will make you look like an insensitive ass. If you think that you know where this person should go next, if you have introductions you would be willing to make, if you would like to personally recommend this person to your network...be prepared with all of this information going in. Have a list prepared, or offer to add them to your LinkedIn network or offer them a selection of times that you would be willing to meet with them off-site to discuss the help you are willing to provide. Make it specific and time bound.

6. Be prepared before the conversation. Unless you are terminating someone for bringing a weapon to work, you have the time to prepare. If you are offering a package, have it with you. Don’t ask them to wait until next week for details, or come back in a few days to discuss it. When they get home their family is going to ask questions and they will need answers. For heaven’s sake, do your homework!

7. If the person gets emotional, let them. One of the worst mistakes you can make is not letting the person express their emotions. If you appear too cool or too distanced it will just make them more upset. So, let them be upset. You need to be empathetic, but don’t ever say, “I know how you feel.” Say, “I know this is upsetting, take the time you need to compose yourself.” Stop talking and sit quietly. Have tissues nearby (yes, even if you are delivering this message to a man). Understand that no one wants to be emotional, it is probably not in his or her immediate control, and it will pass in a few minutes. Sometimes people express the emotions they are feeling as anger. That, too, will pass if you wait a few minutes. Don't match anger with anger. When the volume gets turned up, match it with compassion at the same pitch.

8. Imagine you had to rely on this person for a reference based on this experience together. If you keep in mind that all fortunes can change and you never know in what capacity you might run into this person again, it will go a long way toward keeping you focused on maintaining everyone’s dignity.

There are all sorts of other HR rules and regulations that you will think about. Every company had it’s own rules on references, for example. There are forms and releases and all of that good garbage you will have to address. But you will have an easier time getting to all of that “administrivia” if you remember the key points above. Do your homework, get to the point, be brief, stay focused on them, only offer help if you mean it, let them be upset and remember that they might show up in your life again.

Happy New Year!

2010-12-31T10:37:00.000-05:00

In 2010 I started off resolving to be more "Millennial" in my outlook toward life.

I was instantly distracted by the demise of my beloved Sun Microsystems and spent about four months having an online pity-party for myself and anyone else who loved the place.

I moved on to some observations about CEO's and ended the year with a few entries about some of the amazingly talented folks I have worked with over the years.

All of it silly, none of it useful, most of it a waste of all of our time. As I read back through it, I am not very proud of much, ashamed of some and embarrassed by all of it....all of it except for my expressions of deep and abiding admiration for the folks I have mentioned by name in these posts.....thank you all for retaining your good humor while I abused you by telling some tales-out-of-school.

2011 is upon us. 2010 sucked scissors. I look forward to a much brighter year and hopefully a much brighter blog.

Happy New Year to you all

CEO Archetypes: #7 Joan of Arc

2010-09-14T12:00:00.003-04:00

Iam not sure how to say this any other way. . .

Ifyou are a woman CEO, no matter how good or bad you are, no matter which of theprevious 6 CEO Archetypes you fall into, atsome point they are going to burn you at the stake.

Andyet, there are these very courageous women who jump into the leadership spotknowing full well that incineration is a certainty.

WhenPaddy Chayefsky's prediction that countrieswould be replaced by companies came true, God apparently stopped whispering"Save France" and begansuggesting that woman save: Pepsi, Xerox, Yahoo, Western Union, Kraft and about45 other Fortune 500 enterprises. God must have a pretty diversifiedportfolio.

Now,I am not a shrill feminist, but I know that all of these CEO's will eventuallybecome martyrs.

TheJoan of Arc jumps in when reason says stay out of the water. The Joan iscompelled to lead. I don't know these women personally, but I do knowtheir experience. Actually, I worked at Sun at the same time as Carol,but I was never in her organization, so I observed her more than worked withher. And Carly and I used to get our mani-pedi's done at the same time at LaBelle in Palo Alto, so we sat next to each other frequently and chatted a bit(when she wasn't on conference calls), but I cannot say I know her.

WhatI do know is that just like the virgin-warrior, these girls are held to adifferent standard than their male counterparts. They will be excoriatedfor minor flaws in judgment or peccadilloes or even potty-mouths...while theirmale peers enjoy biology-based immunity from the same level of scrutiny.

C'mon,none of the women leading the firms I mentioned above would survive having aninappropriate relationship with a vendor, hide it by lying on expense reports,subject the enterprise to an harassment suit, be allowed to resign with amulti-million-dollar package, negotiate a settlement with the plaintiff withoutnotifying the BOD, be defended by pundits and other CEO's and then land a newC-level job in less than 60 days at a competitor. No, it takes balls to have a run like that and stillhave anyone of merit defend you.

Whenit was reported that, upon learning a senior engineer was leaving Microsoft forGoogle, by one account Steve Ballmer threw a chair and said:

"Fucking EricSchmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done itbefore, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."

...mostof the world yawned a bit and took a Boy-that-Steve-is-one-passionate-guystance.

Butwhen Carol Bartz told Michael Arrington to "fuck off" during an interviewin which Arrington had been blatantly disrespectful, she was quicklycalled a variety of crude names and labeled unprofessional and unladylike.

Video: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/24/carol-bartz-talkes-with-michael-arrington-at-techcrunch-disrupt/

Excuseme? Did you say, unladylike?

Icannot find a single instance of Ballmer being called "ungentlemanly"for his outburst. Nor do I find the plethora of descriptive obscenitiesfor male executives that are commonly used to describe women in thoseroles. OK, so Ballmer called Schmidt an obscene name...but think aboutit...in a rage, the worst thing Steve could think to call Eric was a vulgarterm for a woman's genitalia. Because really, the worst thing you couldcall a man...is a woman.

"Joans"are rare; statistics tell us that the majority of women leave the corporateexecutive ranks early with visions of starting their own companies orjoining the consulting world. The odds against them are monumental. Most women just give up or wear down and succumb to the voice in their headthat tells them the fight is too daunting. So these driven few who gut itout and excel in the big companies really are unique. They hear adifferent voice in their heads telling them to ignore the bullshit and keepmoving forward.

Sometimesa woman's family pulls her from the competition. And it is not always theneeds of school age children that make a woman reconsider her corporateaspirations.

In1992 my friend Kevin Melia came to my house for dinner. Kevin was the CFOat Sun Microsystems. We had worked closely together when he ran WorldWide Operations at Sun. It was summertime, his family was on the eastcoast for a few weeks, so my husband, Kem and I invited Kevin to share somegrilled pork-chops and a pleasant evening.

Wewere having a great time when Kevin turned to Kem and said; "I haven'tseen you for a long time, Kem. You were not at the Christmas party or thelast few Sun gatherings, where have you been keeping yourself?"

Andmy shy, sensitive husband looked Kevin right in the eye and replied,"Kevin, you pay Nancy a lot of money to deal with Sun's sexism, butyou could not pay me enough to watch it ever again, so I will not be attendinganother Sun function." Kevin actually choked on his pork chop. It was a very tense moment with two men who like each other, who I loveand who I know both love me.

Iwas initially perturbed by my husband's candor that evening. I reallythought he just did not get it. My life as a woman was different in theworkplace than a man's. I knew that and I accepted it. Why couldn't heaccept it? I felt he was applying a man's criteria to my experience andnot understanding the unique dance I had to do to remain influential and wellliked as a women in corporate America.

Idiscussed this with my good friend, Ron Lloyd, at Sun the next week and heasked, "What do you do that is different from what I do?" Andlike the fool that I am, I answered him. "Well,” I said,"If I have an idea I really want heard or implemented, I usually attributeit to a male colleague to give it gravitas." "Why would you dothat?" Ron asked. "Because otherwise it will not getattention." I explained. I went on to tell him that in aone-on-one situation, if I had an idea or solution I would invoke a colleaguewho was not in the room. So I might say to Kevin Melia, "Jim Beanand I were talking and I think Jim said, 'fill in my idea here.'" Orif I have something I think is important in a staff meeting, I try to get theguy sitting next to me to pick up my idea so it will get attention.

Rondid not believe me. Sweet man that he is, he thought I had a lot ofinfluence and did not buy that I sacrificed credit for ideas just to get thingsdone. So, we agreed to an experiment. At the next meeting of thesenior management of the World Wide Operations team, he was going to payattention to the responses I got when I offered ideas and then he would offerthe exact same idea within a coupleof minutes.

Youknow what happened. On at least three occasions in the first hour of theWWOPS meeting I suggested something or offered an opinion and no one respondedat all. Within a minute or two of my offering being ignored, Ron wouldsuggest the same thing, literally quoting me word-for-word and, what do youknow, the group would engage, consider and discuss Ron's offering. Thefirst time Ron raised an eyebrow at me in surprise, the second time he seemedamused, but the third time it happened he looked at me with such pity that Irealized I had made an enormous blunder by ever revealing the behavior.

Ihad thought I was clever and resourceful, doing what was needed to get thingsdone and not be too demanding of my male colleagues, by making them actuallyhear me.

Myhusband and teenage son, on the other hand, were always appalled by how I hadto work and how I was treated as a woman in that world.

Don'tmisunderstand, I never had any illusions of being a CEO, but my secret thoughtsof one day moving beyond a VP of HR title (a suitable job for a woman) endedwhen Ron understood how I survived. I realized that my husband and sonwere right to be appalled. So, while I might have been up to the fight,the men in my family could never bear to witness it. Kem and Andy hadlong referred to my role, as the "corporate mistress," meaning none ofthe men in my career would ever acknowledge my contributions in public. Ihad found that amusing. But now, as I looked at my corporate life throughtheir and Ron's eyes, I was humiliated and mortified by what I hadtolerated.

Myfamily could never have withstood any greater ambitions than those I haveaccomplished. Even with those early subservient behaviors, I have beencalled my share of unflattering names during my career. But Kem and ourson, Andy would never have survived anyone calling me the names the Joans getcalled everyday.

Iabandoned those give-the-credit-to-someone-else-behaviors long ago. Ilearned how to be heard and did not have to become shrill or screeching. Actually, I learned to slow down, speak more quietly and try to be the last tospeak on any topic. Do I always get credit? Nope. But as aconsultant, I now bill for the hours I am in the background.

Everywoman ever burned at the stake was first ignored and then called a name: witch,heretic, bitch, etc. etc. Every time someone hurls an epitaph at a Joanthey are laying pavement on her walk to the pyre.

So,I root for the Joans. I root for those women who have both the talentand the stamina to contend not only with the competition, but also with theunrelenting misogyny of our America culture as it relates to women in business.

Iadmire their grit, their gonads and their grace. And I mourn whenever one goesup in smoke.

The CEO Archetypes #6 Atticus Finch

2010-07-30T13:32:00.001-04:00

Wise. That is the watchword for the Atticus Finch. They are first and foremost, wise.

They are thoughtful. They are circumspect. They do not rush in or rush about expending unnecessary energy. As one Atticus Finch said to me, "you do not win the game by running the ball all over the field, you slow down and figure out how to get it over the goal line." The Atticus Finchs have a tendency to speak in metaphors, similes and slogans, all adding to the illusion/allure of their wisdom.

The real Atticus Finchs are truly thoughtful. The Atticus Finch impersonators are indecisive. You must be very careful in determining which you have encountered. I have run into both in my career and it took me some time to sort out who was who. Some authentic Atticus Finchs in my past are Tom Thilman, Bob Adler, Kevin Melia, Linc Holland, Greg Lang and Gene Haley. These circumspect, values driven CEO's can appear slow moving. They may not always be the first horse out of the gate, but they do not make mistakes once they are in the race. They measure twice and cut once. They do not shoot from the hip. They are frequently the last to speak on a topic. They listen well. They spend a lot of time alone, thinking about what they have heard. They spend a lot of time considering the future. They never lead from zeal, they lead from logic and reason. They rely on their values. They worry about having the right answer and about doing the right thing. They take their role seriously.

I worked with Kevin Melia when he ran World Wide Operations at Sun Microsystems before I consulted to him from 1996-1998 at his billion dollar start-up, Manufacturer's Services Limited (MSL). Kevin was known at Sun for his leadership style; a combination of wisdom and his competitive spirit. I got to know Kevin pretty well when we worked together at Sun and saw this recipe of thoughtfulness and stubborness move mountains there.

But, once Kevin was the CEO, once he was truly in charge, there were some changes to the guy I knew at Sun. As CEO, Kevin led first with his values. He took the responsibility of using other people's money very seriously. He did not just see it as a business arrangement, it was a covenant he had entered into with his investors. Investing money in a high risk/reward scenario was acceptable, but losing money made his head explode. He was a steward of the investment, it wasn't his too lose. So, he drove the company along a set of values that started with the understanding that it was someone else's money. The juxtaposition of Kevin's philosophy and value set with the values and attitudes of other start-up CEO's is startling. So many CEO's discuss how many more months or years they will lose money before breaking even without the least bit of chagrin or embarrassment. That was not Kevin. He was mortified by the period of time when MSL was not performing at expected levels. But, Kevin did not rant. He did not default to drama or drastic measures. His mantra was "We will manage through this together."

He was calm and focused and kept listening...always listening. He took MSL public in it's 5th year as the third largest outsourced manufacturing provider in the world.

I worked for Tom Thilman at a company in Chicago, long before my days in Silicon Valley. Tom had inherited a large commercial insurance brokerage from his father. He merged this business with a competitor and while the partners shared the CEO title, the truth is, Tom Thilman was in charge. Tom was 39 or 40 when I worked with him, but he was, as they say, wise beyond his years. Tom's partner was a likeable-but-always-agitated guy (also named Tom) and Thilman's ability to listen, negotiate, smooth the waters, soothe feelings and keep emotions from running amok was the rock that anchored the company. Tom was the first person I ever knew who really considered the unintended consequences of an action or decision. He would say, "Now wait, what if XYZ is true? Would we do the same thing? Let's slow down and think this through." Tom was such an Atticus Finch his employees came to him for personal advice. They sought his counsel on many topics. He approached their problems with the same quiet thoughtfulness that he applied to the business. He asked questions and it was clear he was focused on the problem at hand. He would never tell anyone what to do, but he would lay out several alternatives, speak to the consequences of each and let the person plan their course. I was lucky to have known Tom in my early 20's.

Gene Haley is the CEO of Wilmington Pharmaceuticals in Wilmington, NC. Gene is a smiley, fun loving, guy. He certainly has a disarming style, but he is, at his heart, an Atticus. Gene seeks input from as many sources as he can. He listens respectfully, always seeking the nugget of gold in all conversations. It is common for Gene to say, "I was speaking to so-and-so the other day and they really made me think about XYZ" then it turns out that "so-and-so" is the valet at a restaurant Gene likes or the security guy at the airport or the Chairman of the Board of a Fortune 100 Company. Gene knows no class boundaries when it comes to seeking input that might spur a new thought or dislocate an arcane one. That is why Gene enters into conversations; to generate thinking. Gene is the most patient man I know. His company, a privately held drug technology provider has taken time to grow. Gene works the process, methodically. Educating and reeducating his investors and partners about the opportunity. A big payoff is worth the patient wait and it takes an Atticus' wisdom to tolerate that wait and be able to bring the less patient along for the trip. Atticus' also have an innate charm. Gene is a fabulous story teller, as are most Atticus'. They use stories to prove a point, teach a lesson or illustrate how they learned something. They choose their moments for storytelling...and predictably their stories have lessons, morals and ironic twists. All designed to make us consider our options for a moment longer before plunging over the cliff of impatience. Most of these introspective types are humble and do not want the spotlight for very long. But they enjoy the effects of the stories they tell. Just like a small town lawyer enjoys arguing his case in front of a jury.

Atticus' like people. They respect the talent around them. They trust a process because they trust the people who populate it. This is one of the secrets of this types success. They are wise enough to know they cannot do it alone. They are wise enough to listen to the talent they have around them. They are wise enough to know they don't know everything. They are quiet but approachable so all the problems get escalated to them and their powerful problem solving capability.

And that problem solving capability, provided by their wise ways, is the secret to their success.

I am not, by nature, wise nor patient, consequently I love every minute I get to spend around one of these powerful leaders.

#7 is a surprise.

Soon.

The CEO Archetypes #5 Sheldon Cooper

2010-07-23T17:18:00.001-04:00

"And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo

And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo

A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!"

Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss invented the word "nerd" in 1950 to entertain and educate the baby-boomers.

And some of those boomers became the nerds who have invented the modern world in which we live.

Sheldon Cooper, a nerd.

It seems fitting that it all relates to a book called "If I Ran the Zoo!"

I have worked with or met quite a few of this type: Barry James Folsom, Eric Schmidt, Bror Saxberg, Bill Hughson, Kai Li, Chip Hughes, Abhay Parekh, Rich West, Howard Lee, Scott Cook, Matt Korn. Bill Raduchel is a variation on this theme, but as in all things in Bill's life he puts his own spin on Sheldonhood. Bill Joy is the quintessential Sheldon...however, even though I worked at Sun for 10 years, I could not say I worked with Joy.

Venture money started moving these big brained boys from academia to entrepreneurship in the 1970's. Once these socially awkward, intellectually superior guys discovered the attraction founder stock has over tenure and grant money, a renaissance of invention was born. Thanks, God.

The Sheldon has been the smartest guy in the room his whole life. He doesn't remember ever really struggling in school, except perhaps on the playground. Sheldons are beyond arrogant. Really, how can you be arrogant when you have empirical proof that you are as good as you think you are? And it is not that they think they are superior...the Sheldon doesn't think about you much at all. There is just too much other stuff happening in their noggins for them to give other people much thought.

Sheldon's are logic driven. They think in syllogisms. They argue as if they were Steven Toulmin. They understand what "the real question" is in almost all discussions. They all seem to have great passion for their interests and treat anything outside their interests with diogenic indifference.

These rare birds love the complex problems, but they are great at distilling the complex into the comprehensible for us mere mortals. They love gadgets, science fiction, and a wide variety of music (I have known Sheldons that only liked classical, some who loved jazz, quite a few are taken with Punjabi hip-hop, a boat load of hard-rockers, one parrot-headed Buffet fan and a couple of guys who only listened to country).

Sheldons are often founding CEO's. They might be the most socially comfortable member of a whole group of Sheldons that start up a company. Or they might be the most visionary of their start-up team. They are the sine qua non of their enterprises.

These guys are focused on technology, invention and breaking glass. They do not innovate...they invent. They have little interest in applying new dosing technology to someone else's drug, they want to invent something that did not exist before. They want to bend light, create new markets, stop time, travel at c, dominate at WOW and if they make a gazillion dollars along the way, great. I have never met one who did not understand money.

The Sheldons attract other Sheldons to work around them. They spend a lot of time in their own heads and their early organizations are quiet places.

I once walked into a start-up client founded by 5 Sheldons. As I came in they were all sitting in the lobby...looking at the floor. "What's up, Campers?" I greeted them. One looked up at me and said, "We are thinking about what we will do if Partha has bird flu." And he went back to silently looking at the floor. They all did. Including Partha, who had looked up at me briefly from under a surgical mask, lifted his eyebrows and then returned his attention to the carpet. I knew these guys well enough not to launch into chatter. So, I sat down in the lobby and waited for them. They remained silently staring at the floor for another 11 minutes, then Raj said, "We will just have to rearrange the production schedule. If Partha has this virus, it will run it's course in 10 to 12 days, barring any complications like pneumonia, we can design around him for those days and when he is well again he will have to make up the design time." They all agreed and then turned their attention to me. There was no worry about Partha's health...this was about the design schedule.

I have watched groups of Sheldons stare at a diagram or a problem on a whiteboard for hours at a time. Silently. Each doing the hard work of thinking through the problem in their own head. That is what Sheldons do best. Think. They work hard, they program at light speed, they can work days at a time on a problem with no sleep and even fewer baths (except the OCD Sheldon's... and there are a subset of those). But what they do best is think about the hard problems. They spend their time quietly thinking about the algorithms that make our thoughts, words, pictures and money move around the world in a blink. They have invented the technology that documents, transports, compresses, stores, protects and retrieves the information, entertainment and education of modern life. It is from their silent thinking that the over-communicative world we live in was born.

These are the Thomas Edison's of our time. These are the inventors and visionaries. They impact our daily lives more than Wall Street or Washington DC. These wacky guys who could not get a date to their Junior Prom.

My experience with the Sheldons is that they make hiring decisions very carefully and then are extremely generous and appreciative of their employees. They take great pride in affiliation with their hand chosen colleagues. They are collaborative. They respect the input of their team on many things. They build cultures where technologists thrive and marketing and sales types chafe.

Not many survive as CEO for very long. (Eric Schmidt is an exception. And frankly a few of my old friends at Sun would argue with me for loading him into this archetype as he has always been perceived as more manager than inventor.) Most of these pointy headed geniuses cry uncle pretty early and beg to have someone take over the management, financing and revenue generation in the company, so they can go back to the poetry of invention. It is not a failure. It is a courageous triumph when one of these guys says, "Enough!" and asks his board to help him find a McNealy or a Fuller or a Reyes to take over the pilot's seat.

I love these quirky CEO's. It is such a blast to get to work with one. It is a riot to participate in the adventure of invention and you can only get to ride that E-ticket attraction if you buddy up to a Sheldon.

OK. Next up, The Atticus Finch.

CEO Archetypes: #4 The Michael Scott

2010-07-19T13:11:00.011-04:00

"I swore to myself that if I ever got to walk around the room as manager people would laugh when they saw me coming, and would applaud as I walked away." Michael Scott

The Michael Scott: Blowhard, credit-grabbing, narcissistic, boorish, name-dropper who waits to figure out where everyone has decided to go, then runs to the head of the line and declares themselves the leader.

Hell, we have all run into this character a time or two in low-level managerial positions. They are harmless at that level, which is why we find Steve Carrell funny. But, let one of them sneak into the C-Suite and you have big trouble on your hands.

What is funny/pathetic in a half-hour sitcom, is just not that charming 90+ hours of every week.

I have worked for both a Michael and a Michelle Scott during my career and for obvious reasons I am not using their real names. I have met a few others as a consultant...but recognized the type and did not take the gig. It seems there are a few of these Peter-Principle-Validators out there. Other of my cohorts have similar stories about low skilled, ego-centric leaders who just do not get it.

I came to believe that my Michael/Michelle suffered from what I call the Big-Ego-Low-Self-Esteem Syndrome. Like Groucho Marx, they could not respect any institution that would include them or any person that would work for them. Also, they have to remind you every single minute that they are in the room. All eyes on them at all times. They are desperate for this attention because they are afraid that if they do not draw your focus to them every second, you will forget them. They are right about this, if they did not have their position power, they would probably never cross your mind.

Michael Scotts are the MBA's who always mention their MBA program. Even if they finished it 20+ years ago. They usually attended a good school. How they got accepted is a mystery. To be fair, the Michael Scotts are not really dumb. They are just not quite smart enough to lead smart people. They know this at the lizard level of their brain and that is the genesis of some of their issues. So, they desperately try to associate themselves with authentic leaders, real or fictional.

One of the Michaels was obsessed with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and was constantly invoking Steve's rumored management tactic of arbitrarily cutting 20% from everyone's budget. I tried to explain that Ballmer was in a very different business, that those stories were totally out of context and that Microsoft was at a different stage of development. All to no avail...Michael replied that he and Steve saw things through the same lens. Then he compared himself and his never-met-but-best-buddy, Steve Ballmer to John Galt. Oh, dear.

The problem with the Michael Scott archetype is that they are so clueless that they are clueless. Having risen far above their level of incompetence, they have decided that valuing competence must be avoided at all costs. They believe that divine providence has bestowed leadership upon them. So, with no value placed on personal competence, they devalue the hard work around them and are disrespectful of all accomplishment (except that which they have specifically prescribed). If they did not think of it, it just doesn't count.

This is not just arrogant, this type is an ego in search of an intellect.

The truth is, this type cannot tolerate any input but their own. I never saw either of my Michael Scotts seek the input of their team once. Not on any topic. Ever. Of course, they appropriate any good idea a member of their team came up with. One Michael insisted to me that while they did not think of one idea, they inspired it. Really, they believed it too.

Micheal Scotts use their staff meetings for monologues. They are the only presenter at BOD meetings (well they schedule other presenters, but they interrupt them or take over the presentation or sit in the back making that hand rolling "move it along" gesture, totally undermining the presenter). They are the only point of integration in their organizations. They work hard to keep their team from meeting as a group and they prefer a team that is at odds with each other. They maintain control by making certain no other person on the management team has all the facts on any topic.

In both of my experiences, the companies were on the path to a public offering. The Michaels each had a talented group of folks working with them. The talent was recruited to the company in spite of the Michaels demeanor and reputation (I sold my butt off getting quality folks to work for them, it was the hardest recruiting I have ever been through...I can only conclude that good folks will join a bad leader because an IPO is a compelling sales tool even if the CEO is a tool).

Michaels go through life insisting that they can do everyone else's job better, faster and cheaper than the incumbent can. So, why would Michael need anyone else's input to do their job? They are oblivious to the fact that this attitude is fodder for humor from the receptionist to the board room.

The Chairman of the Compensation Committee of the Board at one company called me one day and asked if "Michael" had gotten over his optical problem.
"I am sorry, I don't know what you are referring to." I said.
"Nancy," he continued, "I am asking if he has stopped starting every sentence with I?"
Oh. So the board of directors were not oblivious.
No, oblivion is reserved for this CEO.

With Michelle, one of the Board of Directors took me to lunch to "prepare" me. He explained that he would call me from time-to-time, but he expected he would never see me again. "She would jump off the roof before she would share the spotlight," he explained. I saw this first hand as she fumed every time the BOD asked to hear directly from her talented Chief Operating Officer.

One evening over cocktails I introduced a Michael Scott and a few other colleagues to my husband. Now, my husband, Kem is a smart, quiet, theatrical composer. He is not the most macho guy in the ballet class, but, he is the big old hairy Alpha Male when it comes to music and music history. It is his life's work. One of my colleagues, wishing to include Kem in the conversation, mentioned that they had attended a concert of Handel the previous weekend. They asked Kem about Handel's influence on modern music. Kem understood the question was just a politeness and gave a quick answer about the connection between Baroque music and the music of the 1960's. That is when Michael Scott "corrected" Kembo about George Fredric Handel's influence. Michael insisted that George Fredric Handel was a 20th Century composer. "I know this for a fact!" he lectured my husband, "You should look it up." I cringed. My colleagues rolled their eyes. And Kem, who can listen to any piece of music, in any genre from western civilization and identify when it was composed down to a 12 month window, just nodded. He learned long ago not to argue with boors. (BTW, Handel lived from 1685 -1759)

So long as there are lucky bastards the Michael Scott archetype will be around. Congratulating themselves on their accomplishments, oblivious to the eye rolling and BOD calls to their staff.
I will not work for another Michael. I am too old, too impatient and lack my husbands class to ever collude with the Michael Scott particular brand of incompetence.

Let's move on to my next archetype. The Sheldon Cooper. Bazinga!

The CEO Archetypes #3 The Thomas Crown

2010-07-17T07:33:00.001-04:00

Impeccable haircut, impeccable tailoring and impeccable manners. They are not interested in the trendiest restaurants, but they know the best restaurants on every continent. They play sports where they never have to actually touch the ball: squash, golf, polo. They sail. They have real art in their offices. Their shirts are the whitest white. They wear belts. They have their shoes shined. They are never surprised. They never sweat. They can quote Sun Tzu and Rabalais. They are gentlemen. They are discreet. They speak more than one language but their language is never vulgar. They don't use a wine distributor, they are partners with a vintner. There is an air of either perfect breeding or man-of-mystery about them. Some are to the manor born and others are self-made Jay Gatsby's. They all smell faintly of Chanel Egoiste and Gurkha Centurian's. The Thomas Crowns are...well they are as cool as Steve McQueen.

I have worked with a few of these authentically cool dudes. Jim Pelkey, Greg Reyes, Ryan Wuerch, Peter Hopper, Roy Sardina and Tom Adams. I met John Chambers once...he is the southern gentleman's version of the archetype. John knows the difference between velvet and velveteen.

I have also met or worked with a few close-but-no-Chohiba Thomas Crown's. Larry Ellison appears to be a Thomas Crown, so does Ed Zander. But, for me, neither one has the subtlety to pull it off. Ted Turner is a Thomas Crown in his own wacky way.

The hallmark of this archetype is complexity.

Thomas Crown's are generally sales and marketing guys that have moved into CEO roles. They know appearances count because it reflects their attention to detail, not because they are trying to impress anyone. Who would they worry about impressing?

In my experience a Thomas is a hands-off manager. They stay focused at the 100,000 ft level, allowing their team to run day-to-day operations. They are deal hounds, always scanning the horizon for the next big partnership, merger, acquisition or product opportunity. They think about shareholders. They care about employees. They are demanding yet understanding with their executive team. If you are an employee in one of their companies you might never see them. They do not practice much management by walking around. And yet you feel their presence every day in every decision. They do not need to be hands on because their presence is pervasive.

The Thomas likes engineers and technologists, but has no problem going outside and buying rather than making technology to sell, leaving their team scratching their heads wondering what went wrong. Nothing went wrong, but when a Thomas sees something of value, they seize it...no sentimentality here about what their own team is working on.

A Thomas is a loner. A great guy, but not exactly a buddy. Too much of a gentleman to be class conscious, he is as likely to ask his favorite barrista at Starbucks to crew on his boat as he is his CFO. No one would ever think of asking him to be crew. He is only captain.

The Thomas' always run big companies. Even when they are only doing $10 mil in revenue, the Thomas already sees it as a multi-billion-multi-national enterprise. These guys are complex and they need the complexity of the large diverse company to occupy their craniums. So they create complex products, businesses models and organizations. It keeps them interested.

For these guys, money is just a scorecard. It can be made, lost, replaced many times. That is the fun. They seem not to fear failure, but to consider failure their adversary. The are playing a game against it. Sometimes they play at the hairy, scary edge.

What the Thomas knows cannot be replaced is time and wasting, losing or squandering it is a cardinal sin. Don't be late with a Thomas or they will likely have left without you.

These are the glamorous CEO's. They are legend. They are the ones movies get made about. If someone is going to be a super-hero or jewel thief in their spare time, Hollywood believes it is this archetype. In my experience the opposite is true, most of the Thomas Crown's I have dealt with are family men with long-term marriages and kids.

Of course they play lacrosse with their kids, not baseball.

I like these guys. They value their corporate cultures. They worry about whether they have the right talent in place. They encourage strategic thought. They don't dip their pen in the company's ink. They might face an indictment or two...but other than that they are an HR wonks dream.

Ok, #4 is Michael Scott.

Soon.

CEO Archetypes #2 The Harold and Kumar Duos

2010-07-14T16:34:00.001-04:00

Ok, sometime it is Kumar and Brooks IV, and sometimes it is Kumar and Kumar, and one start-up I worked with was founded by Harold and Harold and Harold and Harold. But you know what I am getting at...the multinational team of founders.

I suppose most folks think Larry and Sergey first. I have worked with Mikael and Steve; Charles and Russ; Kai and Howard; Balaji and Milan; Kevin and Bob; David and Vince (not exactly immigrants, but they know why they are included here); Duke and too many names to mention; Steven and Abhay.....

Of course, I always first think of Andy and Vinod. They added the two boys from Michigan to the team as well, but Andy and Vinod were, for me, the original Harold and Kumar.

What is it about a team of founders that includes an immigrant or a very new citizen that makes things happen? And what is it about these guys that they would rather do things by committee than declare the leader straight away?

My experience tells me that one of the guys will be a technologist and one is a marketeer or finance guy. These buddy teams rarely include women, but occasionally you will see Harold's or Kumar's girlfriend on the payroll in a marketing or HR role.

Often, not always, but often these are young people. College roommates or colleagues in their first jobs that come together with a great idea. They live and invent for a time on junk food and their own dime and then go get a bunch of VC's to salivate over what they have built on a shoestring. Ah, maybe that is the key...immigrant teams seem to understand the shoestring, bootstrap days really well. A common theme among this archetype, is doing more with less.

The immigrant founder also does not seem embarrassed by their full embrace of the American dream or by their desire to make money.

The boys who came here on student visa's and then moved over to the H1b and Green cards, do so with clear goals in mind...invent something people will buy and then sell the crap out of it. They may also want to build a big long-term company...but that is secondary to providing a product that fills a need. That may be part of their genius as well, they understand creating products that solve real problems.

The only glitch to full realization of the capitalist mentality is a pervasive sentimentality about their founding team. Some cultures that have contributed extraordinary talent to US technology, hold loyalty as a profound value. Some also do not come at people problems as directly as their American born counterparts. So, when you couple a reticence to confront a people issue with profound loyalty, you can end up with companies that have some "founder baggage" hanging around in made up jobs, or worse an executive sitting in a role that has long ago outgrown them...with no one willing to confront the issue. Don't get me wrong, I love the loyalty value. We could use more of it in US business. But as an Irish Immigrant once told me, "sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind." Letting your buddy hang on to a job in which he is failing does not seem like a great way to express friendship.

Conversely, I do not see loyalty/fanaticism about product architectures you find in some other company cultures. Immigrant teams seem much more adaptable. They are willing to listen to their customers and be flexible. They want to sell a product, not prove they are right, so they are philosophical about product decisions.
People get loyalty, ideas get improved.

Role clarity is also a US value that is not as obvious to these duos, trios and quartets. Immigrant founded start-ups have more "Office of the CEO" designations than any other archetype I have encountered. The "Office of the CEO" is where two or more of these talented young men act in concert as co-CEO's and run the company by committee. Even if they do christen one of them as CEO, it is often with limited decision making powers; requiring consensus by the founding group. (Some cultures do not default to the individual as frequently as we do in the US. Apparently not every culture in the world deifies John Galt.) This can be a wonderful way to run a small company. The team lives and dies by the decisions they make together, no one person is the single point of integration and communication is constant. But, eventually some VC who has read Ayn Rand, comes along and makes the team pick a leader. It looks better on an organization chart if one person is the uber-leader. And, in the American business culture, we like accountability to be clear. We need it to know who to fire when things go wrong.

I love the Harold and Kumar teams. I love their focus and their
commitment. They seem more ashamed of failure than the US centric
teams. One Harold came to me in a start-up I was working with not long
ago and said, "This has to succeed. My father sent me to the United
States to become a physician. I spent the tuition for that education
starting this company. We will not fail. I could never regain my
father's respect if we did, so we will not fail!" That is motivation.
And that company has succeeded.

High tech as an industry learned 30 years ago that the world was it's source of
supply of customers, components and talent. The flags of many nations
hang over every important invention since the dawn of the age of
information. I cherish these immigrant teams that build so much value in
the America economy and contribute so mightily to the American reputation for
invention.

My next CEO Archetype is the "Thomas Crown."

Soon.

The 7 CEO Archetypes #1 Happy Gilmore

2010-07-12T17:14:00.003-04:00

I believe that all CEO's fall into one of 7 archetypes. I have worked with them all. In the next few weeks I will discuss each archetype and what it is like to live in the world they lead. Let's start with....

The Happy Gilmore

The Happy Gilmore: We all know Happy, the suburban jock, frat boy turned CEO. He is fun. He is competitive. He wears jeans and sneakers to work, but he knows how to dress for dinner with senior VC's. He doles out fist-bumps to everyone he passes in the hallway. He drinks beer. He does the math in his head. He excels at sports: golf, hockey, football, foosball, baseball, basketball...he likes the game. It is easy to like him and easy to underestimate him. He is easy to imitate which is why there are so many failures in this category.

High tech attracts Happy's and I have worked with several Happy's in my career. In my experience, Dale Fuller is a Happy, so are Tim Davenport and Chas Scarantino. And, of course, Scott McNealy is the prototype of the archetype. These guys are usually finance, business or marketing majors in college. They might have learned the art and language of business hanging around their father's friends, if they are of one social class. Or, if of another strata, they may have watched closely as a caddy in their youth, while deals were done in the fresh air. Either way, they went to school knowing what they wanted to come out prepared to do: make money, have fun, compete, win.

These are smart, simple guys. So long as you understand that it is all a game at the core, groking these cats is not too tough.

The good ones learn the rules, play by them, compete, win and make money.

The great ones learn the rules, ignore them, compete, win, make money and change the world.

All while throwing a ball around their office, practicing their putt on the carpet in the hallway, or organizing a pick-up b-ball game.

My experience with the Happy's of the world is that they are not that crazy about staff meetings, but they love standing at a white board with a couple of smart buddies, drawing models that change the physics of the game they are in.

They are the boys who do not let time make any decisions, chafe at process, excel at presenting and have little patience for folks who need to ponder the options too long. The Happy's can be a little arrogant, but generally have healthy egos that allow them to share success, give credit where credit is due and evoke great loyalty from their teams.

In my past, the Happy's delegate well, because they hire well. They understand the need for a team made up of great "position" players, and they let them play their positions. They trust the team. They monitor, but they do not inject themselves in the mix unless they are asked. They stand on the sidelines of daily operations, warmed up, like a good relief pitcher. They understand that being in control helps a company grow; but a CEO with strong control needs is a gate to growth. McNealy used to say, "Deciding who decides is the only decision I should make." That is trust.

Happy's are "opportunistic visionaries". They have a vision or game-plan, but they know how to call an audible and seize and opportunity.

I have never known one that was not a great communicator. They certainly understand that the team needs information in order to act and they often err on the side of over-communicating.

Tim Davenport careens around the Parature offices on a razor scooter, dropping in on his VP's for 10 minute "drive bys" as opposed to scheduled one-on-one meetings. He goes to the white board laying out the operational plays like the experienced quarter-back he is. He has made major changes in brief 90 day windows using this casual but calculated approach. On deck at the monthly all-hands meetings, Tim "keeps the problems right in front of us," climbing on a chair to be seen by all as he explains what interesting questions the board of directors asked in the last meeting. His attitude is, "Why shouldn't all employees know what the BOD is asking? It is likely to have an impact on their life." He has a winning manner and a bias toward winning. Who could stop this guy?

Chas Scarantino of Magnus Health met me for lunch one day with his Biz Dev guy, Allen in tow. "I knew you were going to have some questions, so I brought the expert!" he said, grinning. Courageous for a 31 year old. But Chas has no need to over-demonstrate or over-control, he knows that his bright, articulate, young sales VP is a great reflection on him. So, he pushed his star player to the front of a conversation with his newest board member. Confident. Beguiling. I would not bet against Chas.

The common denominator among the Happy Gilmore's is that they like and respect the people they work with. They might be the quickest guy in the room, but they do not discount the not-so-quick-but-thorough thinkers and they are patient and encouraging to the propeller-heads. It was a group of Happy's that built much of the value in Silicon Valley back in the day.

I love the Happy's.

Next time we will take a look at the #2 Archetype: The Harold and Kumar duos.

Soon.

So Many CEO's so Little Time

2010-07-07T08:55:00.001-04:00

I have been working with the rarest of species lately, a really talented CEO.

Consulting to this gifted leader has led me to think about all of the CEO's I have worked with over the years. Some great...some not so much...some who were destined to be leaders of industry and some who should have never been allowed to run anything more impactful than the tilt-o-whirl at the county fair.

I am going to spend some time over the next few weeks comparing and contrasting the skills, styles and peccadilloes of CEO's I have known and loved/loathed.

Stay tuned.

Hitting a Nerve

2010-05-20T17:13:00.001-04:00

Lots of mail on yesterday's post. There seems to be a bit of passion on this topic.

A remarkable number of folks have contacted me privately to argue that Scott McNealy was to blame for the lack of talent at the top of Sun at the end. I get that. Even with my admitted soft spot for Scott, I suppose I could make that argument.

No I couldn't.

Let's be clear, Jonathan Schwartz was the President and COO of Sun Microsystems since 2004 and he was the CEO since 2006. It seems to me he could have replaced his inherited team at any time, I guarantee you that no one on his board told him any of them were sacred.

Jonathan should have downsized Sun while leading a simultaneous campaign to steal the best from Apple and Microsoft and Google and EMC and Dell and whoever else was changing the physics of his business. Because the physics changed and from all appearances, Jonathan thought blogging was the way to keep up.

Schwartz should have been beating the bushes to find the very best and steal them in the night from the competition, just like McNealy did when he went looking for Zander, Melia, LaCroute, Rosing and the rest.

Google Jonathan Schwartz and you discover that he does not have any technology associated with his name from his time at Sun. He is not linked to any solution in the marketplace. He is best known for a discussion with Chris Cox of the SEC about alternate vehicles of communication as they applied to the Reg FD. An intellectual exercise fitting for a former McKinsey consultant....but a nightmarish way for a CEO to spend his time. (Of course I am patently against any former McKinsey consultant as a CEO....based upon my experience they seem to believe that it is impossible to hire better than themselves....well, that is really fodder for another blog.)

Again, I do not know the guy. But I hate what he did to the value of the real estate that Sun occupies on my resume.

And for the record, it is true that I don't like it when anyone disses Scott, but I do think McNealy has culpability. Scott's Waterloo was putting Jonathan in the role. It hurts me to write it, but there it is...

What does the Burning of Rome and the Crash of Sun have in common? Nero Fiddled and Jonathan Blogged (and they both had odd hairstyles).

2010-05-19T16:25:00.001-04:00

"In a recent interview on the acquisition of Sun, Ellison faulted CEO Jonathan Schwartz for ignoring the problems as they got worse, made poor strategic decisions and spent too much time working on his blog, which Sun translated into 11 languages."The underlying engineering teams are so good, but the direction they got was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn't succeed," said Ellison. "Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales."Schwartz, who has said on Twitter he plans to write a book following his departure with a $12 million golden parachute, did not comment when asked by Reuters."

Sometimes when I hear a singer I can tell that they are in love with their own voice. Obvious signs are when they gradually slow the tempo down or when they start to extend notes for no apparent reason (good singers do not hold notes on prepositions...only amateurs extend "of the" in the Star Spangled Banner, professionals know to save their breath and extend the meaningful word, "brave"). You can actually see some singers get dreamy eyed as they linger on a note; savoring the sound they are making.

Apparently, if Jonathan Schwartz were a singer he would sing everything in 12-8.

From what I see in Ellison's remarks and what I have heard about Jonathan, he is a smart guy who is perceived by some as truly drunk on his own bath water, in love with his own voice and as one person put it to me "so filled with self-love, he could not even stand to cut his hair." Ouch.

But the truth is no one takes down a company like Sun all alone. I left Sun in the early 1990's, I am unfamiliar with how it was being run at the end. But I keep asking myself this: where the hell was his team while he was blogging?

What is interesting about that question is that I do not know who his team was at the end. That is odd....in the early nineties everyone in high tech knew the names of Scott's team. Folks all over the country/world knew Zander, Bartz, Raduchel, Schmidt, Rosing, etc. How could it be that the $2Billion company had more "brand" names at the top than the $7Billion company? What happened to hiring better than yourself? What happened to arguing with the boss? What happened to laying down on the railroad tracks and not letting your boss get into too much trouble? I think McNealy depended upon his brand-named, hired-as-better-than-he, team to keep him out of trouble. And given the arguments I witnessed during my tenure that team took arguing with Scott seriously. It was their duty.

Jonathan might be in love with his own voice (and his ponytail) but it is unfair to place all blame on Schwartz for this herculean waste of potential (although, my only other data point on Jonathan is that he personally fired one of the most talented people I know, because he could not think of anything for her to do...so wasting potential might be a pattern).

It appears there were a lot of non-brand-name-people, being paid a lot of money sitting right beside Jonathan while he got distracted blogging and ran the "Porsche built with over the counter parts" off of a cliff.

To be honest, it pisses me off.

Miss Nancy's Magic Mirror.

2010-05-16T16:02:00.001-04:00

"Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?"

When asked what it is I do for a living, I often answer, "Executive Day Care." That usually gets a chuckle, and it is a pretty apt description of what my days feel like.

I spend most of my professional time refereeing executive squabbles, calming executive fears, stroking executive egos, stocking executive courage stores, ministering to executive wounds and.....kicking executive butts.

Yes, frequently I have to deliver a message to an executive that criticizes them and hurts their feelings or disassembles their constructed reality and leaves them without the shelter of their illusions. This is called "feedback." I have noticed that there is no similar euphemism for praise.

I think I am pretty good at delivering these harsh messages. Except for one criminal assault charge (I was only bruised), I have an excellent track record of delivering the "hard-to-hear" over the past 25 years. I think I have had an impact on a lot of lives.

I am probably good at this task because I have a solid values system around how and what to communicate to executives.

I learned from my friend and mentor, Vivy Golub, that so long as I believe a message is the truth I should never be afraid to deliver it.

I learned from my friend and mentor, Kevin Melia, that sometimes you must be cruel to be kind.

And, I learned from my seventh-grade religion teacher, Sr Rosaire, that I had a gift for seeing the best in those around me and I should always let them know how well I think of them.

So, as long as I believe a message is the truth, I have no fear of delivering it. While the moment may seem cruel, if I can see that having this painful information will serve the person well in the future, I am the girl who will serve it up. And I always, always let those around me know what I think their future potential might be.

Who wouldn't want to get feedback from me?

The shelter of this illusion was shattered for me this past Friday night when I was recounting to my husband and some close friends over dinner how, as part of a consulting assignment, I had to deliver some thought provoking, supportive, but still painful feedback to a young executive. I was quite smug about my effectiveness.

"Oh, my God, you did not use the 'Nancy Magic Mirror' on him did you?" asked my friend.

"What do you mean?" I asked, "What mirror?"

"You know," she continued, "the one you pull out and make others look into? The one that shows reality and leaves us no place to hide? That one!"

"That's not fair," I protested, "I always communicate how well I think of the person, what I think they are capable of, what they have the potential to accomplish! To use your metaphor, I always reflect back to them the best that they can be."

Everyone at the table fell into gales of laughter.

"That is the worst part!' added another friend, "Hearing how great you can be, but how terribly you are failing at greatness currently, is awful. It would be easier to hear your criticism if you did not think so well of me!"

"Just who told you that you were good at this?" asked my husband.

"I AM GOOD AT THIS!" I insisted.

"Really, has someone actually told you that you were good at this?" my husband pushed.

"I have built a career on this gift!" I exclaimed.

At that point several folks actually fell off of their chairs laughing and screaming.

"People pay me for this!" I shouted in order to be heard over the laughter. But that only seemed to inspire even more laughter.

"Honey," my husband said, "people pay you to deliver these messages to others...no one is masochistic enough to solicit your feedback for themselves. Face it, you are the hired gun of tough messages. Your business card should read: Have harsh tongue, will travel."

"I think I am sweet!" I countered.

That launched the table into spasms, one friend headed to the bathroom with their legs crossed. They obviously would use many words to describe me, but 'sweet' was not among them. That shut me up.

Is it possible that I have deluded myself into thinking people valued my coaching? Are sessions with me really that painful? How did I get the nickname "The Haugennator" anyway?

I hope I am less smug as I contemplate the week ahead and think about what effect I might have on the young managers that I come into contact with.

Am I reassessing my values? Maybe just because it is the truth, doesn't mean it has to be said aloud? Is there room for discretion? Maybe you can get as much focus leading with kindness? Is the two-by-four to the head always necessary? Maybe my assessment of a persons potential is not relevant? Who cares what my ambitions for the other person are? Aren't their ambitions more important? Maybe........

Who am I kidding? Avoiding truth, sugar coating and letting someone find their own pace does sound like a day-care. In the world that I inhabit, no one has time for discretion, sweetly packaged messages or letting a young leader determine their own contribution. The VC-backed land in which I dwell insists that messages are clear, concise and actionable.

I am keeping the Magic Mirror. If you cannot abide the reflection, go work in retail. Until then, nut-up, I am trying to help grow great companies and make myself and others wealthy in the process. That does not leave a lot of time for tending to hurt feelings. If I am the Haugennator, so be it.

Oh, and, I guess I am not sweet after all.

Dija hear the one about the HR wonks at Microsoft?

2010-05-05T08:16:00.003-04:00

Look, there are three kinds of people in this world:

people who make jokes;
people who laugh at jokes;
people who wonder what everyone else is laughing about.

HR has always fallen into the third category.

However, even with this common knowledge of the impaired humor status of HR, apparently some of the Microsoft HR Wonks are providing a performance rating on the use of humor in the workplace. This should be good.

Can I just say this from the outset: if you are competent at humor by the standards of the HR department, any HR department, I guarantee that you are not funny.

And, conversely, if you are even a little bit funny, you are probably at risk of not succeeding at work occasionally (I speak from some painful experience here; my career setbacks are a panoplia of humor gone awry).

But, here we go, with the Microsoft HR designed proficiency levels at humor in the workplace:

A sense of humor is not teachable, therefore it is not something that has levels of proficiency.

And, if we are going to start with proficiency tables; let's create some that are helpful. I have included a couple:

Proficiency Level

Ok, my point has been made.

HR does not get humor, although they might have stumbled onto a taxonomy for a potato salad renaissance.

More later.

A Word About World Class Talent

2010-04-26T00:05:00.002-04:00

Silicon Valley was not my first time at the world-class-talent-rodeo.

In 1972 I was the bomb. I was studying acting, planning on becoming an actor and a comedy writer. I was a serious smart-ass and I thought I was pretty damn cute.
This is me in 1972. Me --->

I hung out with some pretty talented kids. All going to school and working and planning on becoming famous musical theater stars.

That was never my dream; I wanted to be Sally Rogers.

I wanted to hang out all day with a bunch of funny boys and write stuff that would make folks laugh.

No one had heard of Tina Fey yet, so Sally Rogers from the Dick Van Dyke Show was my only role-model. (Well, to be fair Tina Fey was only 2 years old when I was 18....she might have been a role model to other toddlers but she didn't have a lot to offer me).

That semester I was taking a class that had an "audition requirement." We had to audition for a number of productions to increase our confidence with the process.

I did not audition well. I used "Itsy Bitsy Spider" as my audition song for musicals, hoping the cute factor would carry me. I was not a very good cold-reader. I was a zoftig girl who spent a lot of time holding her stomach in..so my breathing was screwed up and I was much too self conscious. I usually defaulted to improvising some nonsense and hoping they did not notice I was off-script. Truth is, I just didn't take it too seriously.

But the kids I went to school with took it very seriously. When the news came to us that a new musical was being produced in the area my school-mates went nuts. They converged on the library, checking out the script and score to this offbeat (and remarkably bad) musical four weeks in advance of the auditions.

One of my classmates was a very talented young man named Ray. Ray had a beautiful tenor voice and the lead seemed made for him. Others of my cohorts were also good singers, trained dancers and accomplished actors. They studied the score and the script, they researched the director and the musical team. They prepared. I went along to fulfill a requirement and hang with my friends, I had no illusions about my performing talents. But I thought my friends were great. I thought they were the best.

We all went to the audition and did the usual things: sing, read, dance a bit. Then the director had us do it all over again. Sing, read and dance a bit. We were sitting around the theater waiting for her (the director was a woman, named Marilouise) to thank some of us for showing up (me) and ask some others to either stick around or come back (my friends). But she seemed to be stalling. We were waiting and waiting and she was conferring with her musical team and just letting us sit there.

We were beginning to grouse a bit when the door to the theater opened and a young man entered.
Several of my classmates started to whisper and fidget. They apparently knew this thin, pale, sandy-haired guy. He just looked like a skinny John-Boy Walton to me. But, he was having some serious effect on the inhabitants of the theater. Ray looked sick.

The director spotted him and jumped off of the stage and ran up to him. Now, this director was a big girl, six feet tall and at least 275lbs. So, when she jumped and ran, it was something to see and I have to admit I was mesmerized, so I was paying pretty close attention when she grabbed John-Boy by the lapels (who wears a suit to an audition?) and dragged him to the stage.

As they passed by me I heard John-Boy say, "Thanks for the note, Marilouse, but I forgot the audition was today and I did not prepare."

Note? He got a note? Like an invitation? I had heard about this audition through the grapevine, others heard about it from our instructors at school and some had read about it in the papers. But a note? No one I knew had gotten an invitation to this audition. What the hell was going on?

Marilouise was falling all over herself hustling John-Boy to the stage. "Sing anything!' she said.
"Sing, Happy Birthday," she demanded.
"Really, I have been at work all day at Marshall Fields and I am tired and not in good voice," John-Boy said as he tried to untangle himself from Marilouise's grasp (but she had 135lbs on him and she was not letting go).

By this time, I had heard my friends referring to "Kem" and I realized that this was John-Boys first or last name. They all seemed to know him. I did not. And I could not for the life of me figure out what was happening. Why was he invited? Why was Ray turning colors? C'mon, my friends were the most talented people I had ever met. What did Ray have to worry about?

Marilouise was not letting go and it was clear John-Boy was going to have to sing or get his arm wrung from his body. So, as we all watched, he walked over to the music director and asked to see the score. Why he asked to see the score I could not fathom. What was he going to do with the score? He had already admitted he had not prepared. None of the songs from this musical were well known (for good reason, that musical sucks), so what was he doing?

John-Boy flipped through the score and then said, "Ok, I will do this one."
"Shall I play it through once?" the pianist asked.
And John-Boy said something so interesting. He said, "No."
Again, what? He has never seen the score before. He is going to just pick it up and sing something from it? Having never even heard it? What was happening here?

The pianist began playing an intro that I recognized as the song Ray had been practicing all month. The big emotional number, sung by the lead. Ray had nailed the same song in his audition a couple of hours ago.

John-Boy opened his mouth and started to sight-sing that difficult, obscure piece of music.

I certainly remember that John-Boys voice was beyond beautiful; it was the voice of a sexy, love-lorn angel. He seemed to be making the song up. He didn't falter or stall and as he approached the final high note, he bent his knees slightly, dropped his chin a bit and held onto that note without stress or strain or even apparent effort. And I remember being stunned and amazed at the ability to make that sound while sight-singing. But, what I most remember is the sound of air rushing past my ears. Really. I felt as though I was being pulled at an accelerating speed though a tunnel of music. I could see John-Boy, but all I could hear was this whooshing by my ears.

And then I heard my friend Ray groan a little as he sunk down in his seat.

I realized then that I was in the presence of "the real thing." My friends were talented, but John-Boy was something else. He was a world-class talent. It was my first exposure to "the real thing."

I was only 18. I did not know that the gap between talented and world-class was so wide. But, now I understood why Marilouise had sent him the note and why she had held on to him for dear life. She knew what was coming. She knew that heart-stopping-world-class-talent was there. I did not know. I was not prepared.

When John-Boy finished singing he shrugged his shoulders as if apologizing for his performance. "I told you I hadn't prepared," he said.

The pianist was applauding and shaking her head. The entire theater of competing actors were applauding. Something I had never seen at an audition.

Marilouise was frantically moving around the stage as though she had forgotten where she was or what she was doing.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You need to read....you need a partner to read with!"
She was panting, I think.

And she looked out in the crowd and her eyes landed on me, "You, girl with the long hair, come over here and read with Kem Hauge!"

And I realized, as I climbed up on that stage, that I was not and never would be a world-class talent. But I also realized that just because I wasn't a world-class talent, it didn't mean that a world-class-talent might not one day be mine.

More soon

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems.

2010-04-25T10:00:00.004-04:00

"It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone and a day to love someone - but it takes a lifetime to forget someone."
-- Author Unknown

You do not live in a boys' dorm for ten years and not develop crushes on a few of the boys.   I had my share. To be honest, I had more than my share.

Sun attracted world-class talent and I admit that world-class talent is my addiction. Like an alcoholic in a liquor store or a diabetic in a bakery, I was surrounded at Sun with the thing I was raised by my Irish Catholic Mother to love most: world-class men.

I fell a little in love with the boys in the dorm: Linc, Bill, Kevin, Russ, Jim, Bob, David, Joe, Ken Okin, Michael, Dick, Bill, Curt, Steve, Dave, Ron, Ian, Howard, Andy, Jon, Arun, John, Bud, Robert, Crawford, Shaun, Gus, Hara San, Adrian, Hugh, Kuljit, Larry, James, Walt, Wayne, Fredric, Steve, Mark, Ed, Masood, Martin, Alex, Tony, Barry James, Chuck, Mo, Dennis, Erwin, Eric, Gene, Gerry, Greg, Jay, Mike, Rob and of course Scott, oh yes, I still have a crush on Scooter.

There were plenty of world class women at Sun, too. But like me, they were living in a male dominated environment.

Sun was never a household name, like Apple or Microsoft. But the world would not function as it does today had Sun Microsystems not existed. Had Open Systems for Open Minds not led to The Network is the Computer no one would have ever seen the Dot in Dotcom.

Sometimes I have to explain that my job is not about making people happy at work. Really, I am not your mother or your wife or your shrink or your priest, I have nothing to do with happiness. My job is to make people proud of where they work. Proud of who they are affiliated with; proud of the product and proud of the management team. I learned that at Sun. I do not think I was ever the high priestess of Sun culture. But, I do think that there was no way I could ever disguise my pride in my affiliation with the world class talent at Sun. That pride was contagious, I suppose.

I developed a crush on Sun Microsystems one autumn day in 1984 and I had a serious love affair with Sun over the next 10 years.

I have mourned the loss of Sun in these postings and I appreciate all of you sharing this Irish wake with me. These postings have reconnected me with a few of my favorite memories and many of my favorite people from Sun.

I hope that some of you will still read my ramblings from time-to-time as I go back to writing about my adventures in the world of men and millennials post-Sun. And, yes, I think I will work on a book about my time at Sun. There are still many stories to tell, but I would like the safety net of a publishers outside counsel before I tell them.

For now, I think we have honored Sun's passing well and I am ready to move on.

Thanks, Sun, I will always treasure and never forget my life in the boys' dorm.

Nancy

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 23

2010-04-20T22:49:00.002-04:00

My last trip to Linlithgow.

In the early 1990's Linc Holland moved his family over to Scotland so he could run the WWOP's business in Europe for awhile.

Someone had convinced him that this would be a great opportunity for him. A real career-builder.

So, the poor misguided guy moved his wife, 4 kids and an elderly dog from Portola Valley, CA to the suburbs of Edinburgh to be a team player and to establish some international management credibility. Poor sod.

Linc had just settled into his new house (but not really his new role), when our previous peer, and now new boss, John Shoemaker, thought the senior WWOP's team should visit Linc and hold our quarterly WWOP's organizational review at the facility in Linlithgow.

The trip to Linlithgow, Scotland from California was a bit of a trek. You left San Francisco via British Air at 5:00pm on Sunday night, landing at Heathrow on Monday at 11:00am. Then, you transferred to British Midlands from Heathrow to Edinburgh; arrived in Edinburgh about 1:00pm, and usually headed directly to the plant for a few hours of meetings etc. If you could sleep on the first flight you would probably be ok for that first day...including the ritual first evening out with the Scotland boys. But, knowing that jet lag was going to bite you in the arse sometime in the next 48 hours, you always tried to make it an early night...hoping against hope that you would not awaken at 1:00am and face the next meeting-packed-day with the dreaded "dullness with a dose of nausea" that jet-lag creates.

My normal routine in those days was to try to sleep as much as possible on the British Air leg of the journey (this was perhaps my 20th time making this trip), so I usually took two dramamine, had two glasses of champagne, put on a sleep mask and ear plugs and told the flight attendant not to wake me until we were approaching Heathrow.

But, on this trip, I traveled over with Ron Lloyd and Kathleen Holmgren. They were both new to the senior team, having been promoted when Shoemaker took command. So, I took the dramamine and had the champagne...probably more than two glasses. Ron, Kathleen and I chatted through dinner...and kibitzed about the relative size of our feet during the movie (we were all in the bulkhead row of Business Class and we were "shushed" repeatedly, the flight attendant actually approached us with her finger up against her lips). We ate some Godiva's, had some port or Baileys and really just had time for a quick nap before Ron was waking Kathleen and me up so we did not miss the breakfast service. My routine was shot and I knew in the back of my mind that I would pay for it at some point during the trip, but it was fun to kid around with those two as we flew over the north pole.

The first afternoon in Linlithgow was fine.

At about 6:00pm we went over to the hotel and checked-in to freshen up for the dinner festivities. Shoemaker had requested that we all stay at the charming Airth Castle Hotel in Falkirk, which is just what it sounds like; a hotel that was once a castle.

As it happened Ron, Kathleen and I had rooms on the very top floor (we could have looked out of the battlements from our windows if the sun didn't go down at 3pm during the winter) down a very narrow hallway from each other. I was at the end of the hall in a dimly lit room with a very high ceiling, a very tall canopy bed, and when I first checked in, a very dead bat caught in the very tall canopy. I pointed the dead thing out to the bellman and asked for a new room.

The manager on duty came up and explained that the Castle was full and that there were no other rooms to be had. Seems they didn't usually rent these rooms on the top floor, but it was the week of Robert Burns birthday and they were full-up. So, he sent some folks to remove the flying rodent, along with the canopy...they also changed all the bedding as I turned circles in the tile bathroom, which was the only part of the room where the corners were well lit. I asked for some brighter lighting in the room, but was told that the electrical system could not support bulbs with any greater wattage (this explained why there was also no TV in the room). So, I asked them to shine a flashlight in all the corners to assure me that there were no more visitors in the room. This they did, but it was not very comforting, as each time the bellman moved his flashlight to a new dark place in the room, he flinched as though he expected something to come flying at him. There was also an occasional gust of wind that whipped through the room. Upon closer examination I discovered that each of the west facing windows had a 1/2 inch gap at the top.

By the time I came down for dinner I had already had enough of the charming Castle.

My mood was also a little sour because I had been up for about 27 hours with only 90 minutes of sleep. I was feeling the fatigue and vowed to turn in early and sleep all night. We had a full day the next day. You do not fly 10 people six-thousand miles for nothing. We had important business to attend to.

We had dinner at another charming historic Scottish establishment in the area, returned to the Castle, had one drink at the little bar and then we all took the lift up to our rooms. Well, Ron, Kathleen and I had to walk up another flight after the elevator hit it's final stop...we were in the rafters of this place. We were to assemble in the lobby the next morning at 8:30am for a series of important meetings at the plant starting at 9. Fair enough.

I got ready for bed and was reading about 40 minutes later when there was this buzzing-zipping-buzzing sound and all the dim lights went out. I headed for the door and ran smack into Kathleen coming out of her room. It was dark.

I was just beginning to curse Scotland and all of it's ancestry, when Kathleen said, "I think I blew a fuse."
"Did you plug your hairdryer in?" I asked.
"No." She responded.
"Well, what did you do?" I was getting impatient in the dark; wondering what was lurking in the corners.
"I thought I had the right adapter." Kathleen replied.
"What in God's name did you plug in?" I pushed.
"My breast-pump." she sheepishly replied.
Uh oh. TMI. Kathleen had given birth to her youngest child a few months earlier. This was her first trip since the baby was born. Apparently, she was no longer nursing the baby during the day, but was still doing so at night. She had brought a portable breast-pump with her and when she plugged it in, she took out the lights in our wing of the Castle.

The lights weren't coming back on, but it seemed it was only our floor that was affected, I could see lights on when I looked down the stairway. I tip-toed down to the front desk, woke up the desk-clerk and explained that the lights had gone out. I did not tell them why. (I haven't ever told anyone why until now...sorry Kathleen, your secret was only safe for 16 years). The desk clerk asked if we "needed" them on before morning. I replied that yes, I really thought we might.

So, another Scottsman came grumbling up to our floor, flipped a circuit breaker, and dim lights flickered on.

Kathleen came out the door of her room with the breast-pump in hand. The plug and cord were melted.

"I think the baby will be weaned this week." Kathleen said forlornly. Hey, it happens to all of us sooner or later.

I did not go to sleep that night. I read the book "Disclosure" cover to cover, listened to the wind whistling around the ill-sealed windows, kept a look out for bats and never closed my eyes. At 6:30am I drifted to sleep only to have the alarm go off at 7:15am. I got up and took a lukewarm shower in a freezing cold room, longing for the Edinburgh Sheraton, with it's bright lights, phoney Castle decor, hot water and CNN.

I felt hung-over, I had eyestrain from reading in the dim light all night and I looked like crap...I looked worse than crap...really, if someone had told me I looked like crap, I would have taken it as a compliment.

I had gone too long with too little sleep. I was dead tired and the sleep that eluded me all night was now calling to me. But no, I would not be tempted. I had important meetings to go to that day; the kind of meetings you fly 10 people six-thousand miles to attend!

We gathered in the lobby and went through the ritual questions about how each of us slept the night before (Sleep is a major topic on business trips. No one ever asks you how you slept the night before when you are in your usual place of business, but the minute you check into the same hotel everyone becomes acutely curious about how much REM time you logged the night before). Everyone had a story about how they had not gotten enough sleep; awaking too often or too early or like me, measuring their sleep in minutes not hours. We made a few lame jokes about needing naps later in the day, probably during Shoemakers part of the agenda, and set off for the plant....looking forward to copious quantities of caffeine and some breakfast in the cafeteria.

I knew the day was doomed when we got to the cafeteria and it was closed. Coffee was available, and of course tea. But there was no food in sight. Shoemaker went nuts. He was stunned that the place could be closed at 8:45am. In California our cafeteria was open all day. John clearly believed the closed cafeteria represented a character flaw in the Scottish people and he made his feelings known to what appeared to be the most senior of the cafeteria attendants.

About this time, Linc strolled up (Linc has never moved fast in all of his life, I really do not know how he considers himself to be a basketball player...he literally strolls everywhere he goes) and explained that the cafeteria had been open since very early in the morning, like 5:30am until 8:00am...it closed for an hour or two to clean up and begin to prepare for lunch; but it would reopen at break-time for the plant employees, around 9:30am.

"This is a manufacturing plant," Linc explained, "and it was not set up to accommodate the executive lifestyle."

Shoemaker didn't buy it and insisted they open the cafeteria so the visiting executives could get something to eat.

So, our boss and our host are bickering about breakfast before the meeting has even started. Good times so far.

We assembled in the largest conference room in the facility, on a cat-walk above the cafeteria and commenced with the agenda.

The morning meeting was pretty normal; updates from around the room. We broke at noon for lunch and reassembled at 1:00pm for the main event: a discussion of the variety of tax advantages offered by different countries in Europe.

Linc had arranged for a presentation by one of the foremost authorities on tax incentives. The guy had flown up from London. He was an accountant/solicitor and a highly sought after consultant. He was also the single most boring person I have ever encountered.

This humorless guy with a droning, "plummy," hard-for-Americans-to-understand-accent, whipped out no less than 85 overhead slides; filled with single spaced content in 6pt type and proceeded to read them to us.

I realized during slide 2 that I was going to be in trouble. I'd had a hard time staying alert through the morning session...now, severely jet lagged, sitting in a darkened room, after a heavy Scots lunch, with a presenter that was the human equivalent of white noise...I was doomed. I looked around the room and realized I was not alone. Everyone who had arrived by plane the day before was struggling.

I decided that I would try to keep myself awake by having a little fun and started serruptitiously making faces at each of my jet lagged colleagues, trying to get them to perk up a bit. I thought, perhaps if I could get them to smile we could rally our energy and get through this. We had, after all, flown six thousand miles for this presentation and discussion. There were about 20 of us gathered around a large U-shaped table; Linc's local staff was sitting up front near the presenter; the out-of-towners were in the back of the room; Shoemaker was sitting to my right, about 4 chairs from me.

By the time the presenter was on slide #16 or so, I'd made eye contact with each of the folks at my end of the table, Ron, Kathleen, Dean, Mel, Kevin Walsh, and others whose names have seeped from my feeble brain, winking or crossing my eyes and getting smiles and rolled eyes back. Some of them pantomimed sleeping or snoring. Twice I tried to make eye contact with Bob Coe but he seemed to be consciously avoiding looking at me. I took this as a challenge.

At slide #31 or so we were well over an hour into the presentation and things were getting desperate in the back of the room. I composed a short note and passed it to my left, with the instructions to read it and pass it along. Ron Lloyd made a "shame on you" face at me, opened the note and stifled a laugh. Kathleen took the note from Ron, shook her head at me, telling me she was not going to read it, opened it anyway and put her head in her hands. She pretended to cough to cover a laugh. Bob Coe had never looked in my direction, but when he heard Kathleen begin to laugh, he started to giggle. The rest of us followed suit. Now the back of the room was in a full-out case of the giggles. Linc was shooting dirty looks at us, which made it even more funny. The note continued to be passed through about 10 hands with the same effect, a beseeching look to me or a scowl, open the note, and then suppressed laughter. Then as we were getting ourselves under control, the note was passed to Bob Coe.

Bob took the note and held it for a long time, never looking in my direction. Then he opened it and read the following: "If you drive your pen into your thigh, it will help you stay awake."

Bob rose from his chair with the note in his hand and went to the very back of the room and leaned against the wall. He was looking straight forward when I noticed a tear running down his face. Then he turned around, leaned his forehead against the wall and I could see his shoulders shaking. Coe had lost it. We all followed suit.

Bob Coe, barked an "Excuse me" as he bolted out of the conference room. Shoemaker declared a "bio break" and we all headed out.

Bob Coe was laying on the carpet outside the conference room on his stomach, laughing. He could not catch his breath. Kathleen, Dean and I made a bee-line for the ladies room, (laughter has that effect on women) and the rest of Shoemaker's "seagull" staff was bent over the railings of the cat-walk laughing and drying their tears. I remember Bob squeeking, "I flew six thousand miles for this?"

The only people who were not amused were the presenter and Linc Holland.

We apologized to the consultant for our jet-lagged response. And he was gracious...boring as hell but gracious. The absurdity of having us sit through that presentation on the second and notoriously most jet-lagged of days is something I have never let Linc live down. It was so ill-advised, one would think my very smart friend Linc knew what he was doing and did it on purpose.

The rest of the trip sorted itself out. We went to a Robert Burns birthday party that night and all toasted to the "King of the Puddin' Race." We drank a wee dram and each and every one of us slept well. The next day and the day after that we conducted ourselves like the professionals we were. We talked about tax advantages in Europe and outsourcing and supplier report cards and no one was in danger of wounding themselves with their Mont Blanc again during this meeting. It ended up being a meeting worth flying 10 people six thousand miles to attend.

The facility in Scotland is long gone. The meetings, the dinners, the pub-crawls, the drinks with no ice and the salads with too much mayonnaise are over. I miss it all.

I left Sun a few months later to be the VP of HR at Gymboree. It was a mistake. Gymobree was so dull it made the guy with the 85 slides look like Chris Rock.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 22

2010-04-18T20:59:00.002-04:00

The CEO of Fun
Part 2 of 2

I like humor that is a surprise.

(The truth is I like humor that is a sucker punch.)

And that is another of the design flaws with the CEO of Fun designation. There is no sucker punch. Once folks know that you are the designated funmeister, everything you do is looked at as if there is going to be a pratfall or a pie-in-the-face coming at any minute. Everyone is waiting around for you to be fun or funny, so whatever you do has no surprise to it. No tension, no surprise, no humor, no fun.

So, I in the early part of 1993 I realized that I couldn't be the leader of fun.....I needed to be the shepherd of fun. I would have to find others and herd them toward some mischief. But who? Who was fun and willing to share? This led me to inventory the fun assets of Sun Microsystems.

Inspired by Kevin Melia's "Total Cost of Ownership Scorecard", I developed the following Kick-Butt-and-Have-Fun-Scale to rank each player on their ability to contribute to the fun quotient at Sun:

5    Is Fun
4    Demands Fun
3    Makes Fun
2    Encourages Fun
1    Kicks Butt and Has Fun
-2   Kicks Butt
-3   Kicks and Misses Butt
-4   Falls on Butt
-5   Is a Butt

Now, I could show you my assessment of the key players at Sun, but where's the fun in that? So, let's do this: Each day I will put a name up on this blog and you can share your assessment of how they ranked on the Fun-O-Meter.

Let's start with John Shoemaker.

Life in the Boys' Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 22

2010-04-10T16:08:00.003-04:00

The CEO of Fun
Part 1 of 2 parts

Sometimes I think Scott McNealy harbored a desire to hit me in the head with a shovel.

Don't get me wrong. I do not delude myself. I know that I was rarely on his radar.

I was just another in the herd of HR wonks. McNealy didn't ever really think of me. But, when he was forced to remember that I was in the organization, he always also seemed to remember some butt-ugly thing that needed doing, or some project that would eventually need a scapegoat, or some employee issue that had come across his desk that would require a kamikaze mission. That is when he remembered my name.

In January of 1993 McNealy took aim at my noggin again with a new assignment.

I was already exiled in my first post-HR job at Sun. Feeling like a pariah. Trying to figure out "strategy" in World Wide Operations. I remember playing a lot of XJewel.

John Shoemaker was running WWOP's and he called me and said my name had come up in an EMG meeting. I should expect a call from Scott.

You know, nothing bathes you in comfort like hearing your name has come up among the senior team....especially when you know you are underutilized.

I mean really, who wouldn't think this was going to be good news?

The next day I went up to see McNealy. Now, for those of you who have never met one-on-one with Scott, I will tell you that he is a great guy. He is good-natured and warm. But he was crisp. Scott comes to the point. He manages his time and doesn't like it wasted. If you were meeting with Scooter it was best to be prepared and leave when you had accomplished your mission. Don't hang around looking to bond.

So I was pretty taken aback when Scott asked about my family. And then we talked about my new car (he was delighted it was American made).   He also asked me look at a speech Marketing was preparing for him, asking if I saw any opportunity to warm it up with some jokes (oh, yes that is the other time he remembered me...when a joke failed...he always attributed his failed material to me by name..."Nancy told me to say that" is one of the worst phrases in all of spoken language if it is immediately proceeded by groaning from the audience).

And then he came to the point. Scott felt Sun was becoming a bit stuffy. We needed some of the old spirit reintroduced. He thought I was just the girl to help combat stuffiness; so he was drafting me for one year to be...The CEO of Fun.

Bulls-eye. Right to the head. Really, couldn't he have just brained me with the putter in the corner?

McNealy has never come up with any idea as ill-conceived as the "CEO of Fun." (Well, ok, maybe adopting a dog named "Network" ....or putting that guy with the pony-tail in charge...but that was way after my time...) and I say this as one of his staunchest and most fervent fans (Really, Linc Holland is reading this right now and saying, "Hasn't she stopped worshiping at the temple of McNealy yet? She is hopeless!").   I am not embarrassed to say that I am a fan of Scooter's. However, this assignment had "flaming bag of dog-do" written all over it.

So here was the problem with the whole CEO of Fun thing......Sun was losing the fun-factor because it was losing the fun people in leadership positions....and we all knew it.

Additionally, we had hired, and I mean no disrespect here to my friends Bill Raduchel and John Shoemaker, too many Xerox folks and they were sucking the life out of the enterprise.

Ok, maybe I mean a little disrespect toward Shoemaker....(not Bill, I am telling you, Raduchel is a riot)....I mean really, no one ever accused John of being the life of the party....at most events he pretty much stands around looking handsome; watching the guacamole turn brown. That is, actually, what he did at work too.

So, we had an influx of process-for-process-sake folks. Plus many of the original culture carriers had left or were moved to the sidelines and with them went some of the inherent fun of working at Sun.

First, Jon Feiber had left Sun in 1991. As I remember Feiber, he was short, arrogant, slight, arrogant, sandy-haired, arrogant, smart, arrogant, and funny. Oh, did I mention his arrogance? I know that Jon was brilliant and contributed in a very big way to both the product and the strategies that led to Sun's emphasis on the "network," but I was not part of that world, I knew about Jon because he was one of the architects of the best of the April Fools Day pranks.

Jon commanded the attention of the engineers who plotted and planned these jokes. He seemed to effortlessly organize those pointy headed guys who normally chafed at all authority. Under Jon's direction a group of guys, who could not get dates to their Junior Proms, pulled off some very cool capers. Don't get me wrong, Jon was not Danny Ocean.....although Jon thought he was very cool, the truth is, Jon was the coolest nerd at a nerd and geek convention. But, Jon was the pied piper of fun for the engineers. He gave them an outlet for their quirky common sense of humor. He gave them permission to act upon their affection for Sun's leadership. Jon was part of the recipe for FUN at Sun.

Second, Carol Bartz had left Sun in 1992. There was something about Carol's take-no-prisoners attitude with the other EMG members that just gave the entire enterprise a lighter feel. Carol is...well, Carol. No one screws with her and the stories associated with this most senior woman in the tech industry were epic.

The rumor is that Carol was once given a tie emblazoned with a large penis, because her staff felt she should officially have the biggest one in the room.

We loved Scott's bravado, but we also loved Carol's cajones. We all knew we could not be as brash as McNealy...but hey, we could be as ballsy as Bartz.

Carol possesses the most important attribute of a successful woman in high-tech, no, not intellect, not experience, not even balls...although she has a good amount of each of those...no, Carol is a good sport. And that is what makes her a powerful and fun leader.

During a panel discussion at a VP and Director conference, a spotlight exploded and triggered the sprinkler system. Carol was sitting in the seat that got soaked...with water and some awful fire retardant chemical. We took a quick break and then the panel reassembled...if it had been a man who'd been sprayed, he would have taken a quick shower and changed his clothes...no big deal. But women have a bit more assembly required: hair, makeup and other doodads that need to be fiddled with, so no one expected Carol back. But there she was, with her hair wet, wearing someone else's sweatshirt, ready to go. She got a standing ovation.

That night Carol was the only member of the EMG to chug a "yard-of-beer" in the bar. With the entire population of Directors and VP's chanting: Carol! Carol! Carol! This girl knows how to work an audience.

Everyone loved the way Carol kicked-butt. We loved it when she metaphorically kicked Ed Zander's butt around the parking lot from time-to-time....and then he had to admit he'd had his butt kicked by a girl.

Carol's association with Sun was a point of pride among women and men alike. It was FUN to have her in the company.

Third, Crawford Beveridge had left Sun in 1991. Crawford is not so much a fun guy as he is an enabler of fun. Crawford served as sort of a "catcher in the rye" to the organization. Letting the fun happen but also making sure it did not run over the cliff.

After Crawford left Sun, the HR function started to turn into the "personnel police," always saying no and taking everything much too seriously.

Without Crawford's benign approval of the hijinks, the next generation of HR types started quoting the risks and securing their position power by making certain every manager was frightened of being sued.

I remember one silly conversation, after Crawford had left, about a planned water fight. A couple of teams were planning a showdown using water balloons in July of 1992. Great Fun! But the HR team was debating whether they should stop it. One wonk thought that there was a risk of being charged with assault. Another was concerned about the "wet T-Shirt" phenomenon and whether we were at risk of endorsing sexual harassment. WTF?    The HR manager from Sun Labs, a cute girl named Dina I think, was in a panic thinking she was going to have to take some HR disapproval back to Wayne Rosing. I think I have a gray streak in my hair where I pulled out a clump that day from sheer frustration over the whole conversation.

What saved the water fight was that Wayne Rosing (CEO of Fun in 1992) and Ed Zander had conceived the event. Those two swatted the concerns of the HR folks away like the gnats they were.

But the tone was still not like the old days. Without Crawford's leadership assuring HR that it was just as easy to say "yes", there was some currency growing in HR to saying "no," to being the gate, the person who "saved" Sun from itself. Crawford kept the antibodies to FUN at bay.

So, we had lost an architect of fun, a source of fun and a fun enabler in a very short period of time and the company felt the loss. Now I am a pretty fun girl, but I am not Feiber, Bartz, Beveridge or Rosing. I was just a second or third level dweeb, who understood that fun is not manufactured or mandated. It is an organic thing that erupts from time and place.

I called my good friend, May Yip, to tell her about my new gig and her response was, "Well, nothing good can come of this."

Just what I thought.

Part 2 soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 21

2010-03-24T07:15:00.001-04:00

The High Priestess of Sun Culture.

When Harvard Business School decided to write a case study about Sun, Scott McNealy asked me to be one of their guides to the evolution of Suns' culture.

Well, "asked" is probably stretching it.

Scott dropped into my office on the first floor of Pal 1 and told me that a couple of guys from HBS would be around for a few of days. And he explained that he had told them that I had a collection of org charts that they might be interested in seeing. At that point is was 9 reorganizations in 8 years (ultimately 11 in the 10 years I was there).

He asked that I put the organizational changes in some "people context" and try not to embarrass the company.

Ya' know, trying not to embarrass the company seemed like a reasonable request. But "people context"?

Anyone who worked at Sun during the 1980's and 1990's knows that the organization changed more often than most of the Software engineers changed underwear (those guys are not big on hygiene).

The only real people context I had to offer was that we attracted folks with ADD and when Scott said "Eat lunch or be lunch" he was not kidding. People context?

Now, I am easily intimidated. I am a simple Catholic-school girl from Chicago.

So, the Harvard thing was intimidating. Scott had gone to Harvard. Bill had taught there. I knew it was important to make a good impression.

When the Harvard representatives arrived I was prepared to take them through the chronology of the changes at Sun and give them a little color from the trenches.

In the spirit of not embarrassing anyone, I had dressed like an adult for this meeting in a skirt, v-neck sweater and pearls. I was even wearing a slip, pantyhose and high heels. Just like a professional HR wonk.

For the first 20 minutes or so I was doing my best impression of a serious business person, trying not to embarrass anyone, standing at the white board, using what my husband calls my "Queen of France" voice, when one of the guys said, "Nancy, we were hoping you would share some of the less business related aspects of life at Sun...Scott referred to you as the 'High Priestess of Sun Culture'."

He did? This was news to me. I was blushing. "High Priestess?"

"Well," I replied, "he just says that because I used to sacrifice goats in the parking lot."

They looked at me with the oddest expressions and I realized I had slipped into smart-ass mode and was dangerously close to embarrassing Sun...so in order to recover I continued...

"Please, I am kidding" and then the smart-ass reared it's ugly head again and I heard myself saying, "I never killed anything bigger than a chicken."

Now, I could see they were not sure what the hell I was talking about.

I was panicking. I needed to recover the professional persona.

"Maybe you'd like to hear about the April Fool's days pranks?" I asked. They thought that would be helpful, so I lined up the org charts and mapped out the pranks by org change. It was obvious Scott was always a target...but sometimes others were also honored.    I was back to being the Queen of France, pointing out that no one ever launched a mean-spirited practical joke at Sun. These pranks were how we showed the love.

Now there's some people context for you.

At this point I was beginning to regret my wardrobe choice that day. My sweater or the pearls were itching around the neck and I was trying to find a moment to discreetly pull them away from my skin. Now, I may be from Chicago, but I do know that one does not scratch oneself in front of guests. However, I was undoubtedly appearing a little twitchy from the itching-but-no-scratching thing that was happening.

We carried on with me on my twitchy-but-best-behavior explaining aspects of the culture as I understood them.

Our open door policy: No, we do not have a "process." Scott's door is always open, if you do not have the gonads to go talk to him, that's your fault.

Err on the side of over-communicating: We hire smart people, we don't really limit their jobs with things like descriptions, so we have to tell these smart people as much as we can; we cannot predict what they might need to know in their limitless jobs.

Don't make the same mistake twice: You will probably make lots of mistakes. Everyone does. But learn from them and don't make them again. We stuck to this, except we hired that rascal Terry Lenahan twice, where was the learning?

To ask permission is to seek denial: Don't delegate upwards. Solve problems. Scott had stolen this one from the Jesuits, by the way.

Fun: This was not just about parties and food-fights. The work was fun. Competing was fun. It was an integrated element.

Work hard, play hard: THIS is about the parties. And the work ethic.

These Ivy-Leaguers were all about questions. This was going on and on and I was beginning to curse Socrates and his whole Harvard-adopted dialectical method...these two were really good at it, challenging and debating with me and each other the merits of the culture.

But, my damn sweater was making me crazy....and those guys knew something was going on; they kept looking at me rather oddly. Of course that could also have been about the goat and chicken episode from earlier. I was barely holding it together when the boys from Boston decided they had had enough and we said goodbye.

Again, I did the gracious Queen of France thing with the handshakes and business cards, "call me if you have any more questions" etc.

And they were gone.

And I closed the door to my office and reached up to my neck, where my sweater was so uncomfortable, to discover that not my sweater, but my slip, a piece of personal lingerie, had crept all the way up and gathered around my neck. The entire pale-pink slip was sticking out of the neck of my sweater like some lace and silk goiter. It had been like that for over an hour. With me going on in my Queen of France voice. Some High Priestess.

Ah, well, at least I did not embarrass the company.

Ok, the votes are in. CEO of Fun next...that should be...well, I guess that's obvious.

Soon.

Life in the Boys' Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 20

2010-03-23T06:25:00.005-04:00

Q4 1989.

Fresh from the field: "Ohhhh... remember that quarter that we were totally screwed (I want to say 3rd quarter 1989)? We had late products, not competitive, the sales org was way behind in their number and field morale was below bad. I had the Orange County region and we were sitting at $15.5M (down about $2M for a YTD number) against a goal of $25.5M with $10M to do in the fourth quarter (which included the $2M to catch up). No way.... We were screwed.... no one was going to club....

Joe came out with a plan which offered double commish on a couple of items and then essentially said that if we could make our old fourth quarter number (~$8.0M), we could go to club (whether we made the yearly number of not).....

... talk about coin operated... holy shit! The entire field org went nuts. In my region, we did $9.5M for the quarter, $6M in June, $4M the last week of June, and $2M the last day of the year.... Completely unbelievable.... I have never seen anything like it before or since....

That was classic Joe...." Greg Chabrier
+++++++++++

Oh, yes. Q4 '89. Who could forget. We blew the quarter. And not just sales.

Product Development was late, late, late. The products were so long-in-the-tooth; the entire Engineering management team had stopped taking credit for them.

IT had a meltdown, they were trying to determine how many orders had come in by stacking printed orders on chairs and then measuring the height of the stacks.

Marketing had totally screwed-the-pooch on the forecast.   Actually, they couldn't find the pooch...they had no idea if anyone was willing to buy the product road map. Zander joked that he would have better luck marketing maps to movie stars homes.

WWOP's had basically built more finished goods, that no one had ordered, than it did shippable product and all but lost track of what orders it was fulfilling. Although this seemed to elude Bob Coe who kept going around singing, "Ship it! beat beat Ship it good." I love that guy.

Sun was running out of money and we were about to post the first loss of Sun's history....(Sun had been profitable from it's first quarter).

Oh, and the CFO left Sun late-in-the-quarter to join Apple, sending a message to the market that either Sun was in big trouble or that he just got the biggest sign-on-bonus in Silicon Valley history....or both.

It was.....what is the word I am searching for....it was....oh, yes,...it was a cluster!

Sun had broken all the records-to-that-date by growing from zero to $1Bil organically in less than 7 years. Then we tanked Q4 '89.   Rapid growth is great, but it was clear that we had dropped the ball and outrun the infrastructure.

Lot's of changes occurred in the next few months at Sun. Bill needs to write that book.

But.....

Joe Roebuck's ability to rally his team in that utter chaos and avoid a bigger fall was astonishing in Q4, '89.

And, it was even more breathtaking in Q1 '90 when the Sales team did the unthinkable (and never-before-seen in US business).....they returned a $1Bil company to profitability in a single quarter.

Those wacky sales guys.

I mention this remarkable accomplishment because it is a great example of Joe: Half genius; half mad-man; all-magic.

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 19

2010-03-21T19:45:00.000-04:00

Aint We Having Sun Fun Now?

At one event, (in a tent in Milpitas; more on this later), I thought it would be just swell to run a slide-show of all the folks who had been promoted that year...for some reason I felt we had to remind people of the opportunity at Sun in the '80's. So, Dave Thompson, Howard Friedenberg and Curt Crosby started taking pictures of all of the folks who'd been promoted in the Workstation Division in FY'89 and my singer-composer-husband went into the recording studio to work on a parody I had written of one of the songs from Little Shop of Horrors.

Poor baby, pushed a broom,

Nothing in his life but doom and gloom,

Gotta job at Sun now give him room,

Took of like a rocket, holy cow,

That thing went, bang kaboom!

And he's having Sun Fun Now!

Sun Fun Now,

Aint he having Sun Fun Now

Bet he's having Sun Fun Now,

Sun Fun Now!

As some, "confetti" in the music we had thrown in some random "Sunisms"...if you listen closely you can hear a few executives names in the background...some product names....at one point Oh, Boy! is rhymed with Bill Joy! Not exactly Cole Porter, but cute.

Marketing got hold of the recording and my version of "Sun Fun Now" was played at nearly all of the Sun employee events.

Some years later at one company-wide event, in the early '90's, "Sun Fun Now" was blasting as we were leaving our seats at Shoreline Amphitheater...I was, to be honest, kinda proud of my little ditty's staying power.

Until I heard a software engineer say, "I wish they would find whoever the hell came up that God-damn song, stick their head in a toilet and flush...do we look like we are having Sun Fun Now?"

Ouch.

More soon.

Life in the Boys' Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 18

2010-03-18T18:00:00.007-04:00

"I think she went to the john."

I spent 8 years as the only woman on the WWOPs senior staff.

Every Thursday morning we met at 8am and spent the next 3 hours together getting the download on what the EMG was up to, reviewing the metrics and goals and then doing the round-table thing; hearing from whoever was part of the team at the time, some combination of: Russ and Kevin and Bob and Mel and Jim and Curt and Bob and Bob and Scott and Ian and Dave and Linc and Irwin and John and Greg and Hara San.

And then, before we got into any prepared presentations, we took a bio break.

I went to the ladies room and all the guys went to the men's room.

And they stayed in there.

Talking.

Continuing the meeting without me.

Every week this happened.

They stood around the men's room discussing the hot topic of the day. They chatted while every last one of them finished their business and washed their hands and then they hung around in there some more, just gabbing.

Sometimes they agreed on a course of action in there.

They made decisions.

Some sort of bias toward action took over when they were lined up at the urinals.

And I was not there. I was not participating. I was not learning. I was not contributing. I was sitting alone in the conference room waiting for them; feeling pretty stupid. Or I was lurking in the hall; feeling pretty stupid. Or I was or in the kitchen; feeling pretty stupid.

I mentioned this casually to Jim Bean. But he did not seem to get the point, which made me feel pretty stupid.

I did not like this at all.

As I have mentioned before, I had 4 brothers. The best lessons I ever learned about working with men were directly related to my childhood. I knew that whining or tattling or making a fuss was the surest way to a life of ridicule and emotional torture. Never let your brothers or your male colleagues know what irks you. It only gives them fodder for torment.

So, I determined I was going to have to handle this in a way that would make them aware of the issue without giving them ammunition.

One Thursday as we were working our way through the round-table discussion I excused myself from the meeting and left the conference room.

I made a beeline for the men's room and after assessing that it was empty, I sneaked in and waited in stall #3.

About 5 minutes later the boys from WWOP's started filing in...I heard one of them say, "Where did Hauge go?" and another replied "I think she went to the john."

At that moment before any flys were opened, I spoke up, "I am here...in stall #3. I thought that it would be helpful if I came in here since so much of the meeting is happening in here these days. Go on about your business guys. I am fine where I am and we can continue the discussion as long as you like, just tell me when it is safe to come out."

Silence. Not a zipper was stirring.

I never had to crash the men's room again (although I did once go as someone's guest...but that is another story).

The men of WWOP's had a sense of humor and they got the point. They never again left me out of discussions. As a matter of fact, lots of conversations that had nothing to do with me at all ended up taking place in my office, those guys went out of their way to include me after that...I think they might have been afraid of where I would pop up next!

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 17

2010-03-17T15:44:00.002-04:00

The Big R (circa 1987)

Curt Crosby (newbie to Sun) was incensed by the scandalous practice of scalping holiday tickets amongst Sun employees over Junk Mail.

Curt "intended" to send email (vi editor then) only to the offenders but, instead sent a COMPANY-wide email saying, "you have no shame--you should NOT be trying to scalp (for profit) holiday party tickets!!!"

McNealy decided he was tired of the company-wide mistake and sent a terse email to Crawford, who forwards it to David Leitzke, who forwards McNealy's email to me. I email David Thompson, Curt's boss and say "calm your boy down".

Concurrently McNealy, that rabble-rousing-prankster, sends a message directly to Curt Crosby, rooting him on, saying "go get 'em!"

I return an email to Lietzke, with a smart-ass remark about McNealy's patience level, inadvertently hit the Big R and of course, it goes to David, Crawford and Scott.

Scott sends me 100 business cards with a new title: "Queen of the Career Limiting Moves" and instructs me that I am to use them in place of my own until they are all gone. I was doing a lot of recruiting then and those cards were quite the conversation starters.

One couple was trying to be discreet, but the poor anxious guy hit a reply-to-all when he started an off-color exchange with his paramour, then he kept hitting the Big R blasting their private plans for an assignation all over the company.

It took a few back-and-forths before anyone tipped him off that 1300 or so of his closest friends were listening in.

There were a couple of sociopaths that used to dominate Junk Mail. The SNL character Nick Burns reminds me of them.

It did not matter what you posted; they jumped on your spelling, syntax, vocabulary, choice of subject or ethnic heritage. These guys felt Junk was not only their personal domain, but also the perfect forum to demonstrate how smart they were and how really dumb you were. No matter how hard you tried to take their issues with you off of the group forum, those guys kept hitting that Big R to bring your humiliation back to the broadest possible audience.

I made one post to Junk during my entire career. And I got lambasted. Unfortunately, this was before I learned to drop the F-Bomb so I did not have a snappy retort.
I think one of those guys monitors the Sun Alumni Group on Yahoo now.

You could hear the panic in a person's voice when they inadvertently hit the Big R....the "Oh, crap!" had a special ring to it when they knew they had just embarrassed themselves and pissed off all-but-one of the recipients.

It happened to everyone at least once. Maybe not the company-wide-mega-mistake of Curt...maybe not the career-limiting mistake I made, but at some point we all hit the Big R, said, "Oh, crap!" and then made those come-back-come-back-come-back hand gestures at the computer screen.

More on the World Wide Sales Organization soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 16

2010-03-16T07:58:00.001-04:00

Joe Roebuck.

Kathleen Filano was taking me to meet Joe Roebuck for the first time in 1984, when he exploded out of a conference room in a state of high-dudgeon. Kathleen said, "Joe, I'd like you to meet a new HR Manager, Nancy Hauge."

Joe looked at me and said, "Your first assignment is to close Chicago!"

I wanted to impress him and get this assignment correct, so I asked, "Would that be the whole city? The airport? Or just the south-side?"

Joe grinned but launched into some vehement invectives aimed at our young CEO. I remember Joe speculating that McNealy was running the company by reading an out-of-date management book and in fact had only read up to chapter 6.......had skimmed chapters 7 though 13.....and fallen asleep during chapters 13 though 22.

Joe had just come from another of the never-ending meetings he would attend during his career at Sun where his fellow-EMG-members agreed among themselves, with Joe in powerful dissent, that Sun did not have the money to make any greater investments in Sales. He was pissed.

We were in no real danger of closing down whatever resources were in Chicago in 1984...but Joe is dramatic and the king-of-hyperbole and he knows what to do or say to get attention or make a point.

Later in my career at Sun, one of my colleagues in HR suggested I use any influence I had with McNealy to alter his style a bit. My response was the following, "I do not have that kind of influence with Scott, but if I did I would never do what you are asking, McNealy is a magic trick and you do not f*ck with the magic trick until you know where the mirrors are hidden!" I did not know where the mirrors were hidden with McNealy.

That goes double for the wild, irrepressible, uncontrollable, irreverent, Roebuck. McNealy is a heart-stopping magic trick.....but Roebuck is a magician with more tricks up his sleeve than David Copperfield ever dreamed of.

Joe looks like a leprechaun. He is twinkly. Certainly he was the oldest of the EMG when I joined; he must have been in his mid-to-late 40's already. Ancient by Sun's standards. But he was generally agreed to be adorable by the women at Sun. We all had a crush on Joe. He had been at Osborne Computers, an early high-potential-flame-out in Silicon Valley. He had also spent some time at Apple. I am sure he had other jobs at some point, but I do not know what they were, maybe Honeywell? He studied economics and engineering at Cornell. He worked for a time, in his youth, as a rehearsal pianist at NBC studios. So, he's cute, successful and he can play the piano...sigh....

From $1Mil every 30 days, to $1Mil every 30 minutes.

The headline above captures Joe's contribution to Sun during his career. Read it again because I guarantee you no one has ever hung on so long and contributed so much. I say this now because sometimes when people hear about Joe's exploits and attitude they cannot understand why McNealy kept him around for so long. But really, a million a month to a million every half hour? Joe could have come to work butt-naked and treated McNealy like an annoying young cousin, if he was delivering those results...and that is pretty much what he did.

Joe was fond of a place called Lago Mar in Florida. Lago Mar seems ok if you Google it today. But in the '80's it was a dive. The sales team would go there for the annual planning and goal setting meeting. I think Joe chose it to be in sharp contrast to where you would go if you actually achieved your plan and ended up at the "Sunrise Club" (Sun's boondoggle for over-performing sales folks...or as they liked to be called...Gods.)

The stories coming out of Lago Mar are legend. Joe was a full-on Ebenzeer-Scrooge-type-miser at these things. One year Joe arranged dinner at a Chinese restaurant because it was so cheap. The service was awful, but even it was better than the food. Inedible by all accounts. One table of sales guys got so annoyed they went to the pay phone and ordered a pizza...which they had delivered to their table in the Chinese place. Joe thought that was just fine so long as they did not expense it.

Bad food, terrible beds, leaky ceilings and ritual-beatings-until-you-get-the-goals-right: Lago Mar was the event everyone looked forward to. If you say the name of this little Florida gem to any sales person from that era they cower and cry and beg you to change the subject. But that was, for Joe, the charm and magic of the place.

At the other end of the spectrum was the Sun Rise Club. Total bacchanalia in exotic locations: Bali, Vienna, Hawaii. If your spouse was pissed off because of the long hours and excessive travel, a Sun Rise Club was just the thing to snatch your marriage back from the brink. Joe always made certain that spouses knew what was at stake. What could be won and who was winning it. To go to Sun Rise you simply needed to make goal plus some arbitrary percentage. That was all you had to do. Easy, right? Achieving Sun Rise Club made working on an Alaskan crab boat look like a pleasure cruise.

All in Joe's design.....

More on Joe soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 16

2010-03-14T17:00:00.011-04:00

"For some moments in life there are no words." ~David Seltzer, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

When the new SVP of HR delivered the news that I was not going to be part of his organization, he also said, "If the line guys like you so much, let one of them give you a job."

That night John Shoemaker called me at home. It was 10:00pm and John knew three things: 1. I was home alone (my husband was putting the final touches on a new play in southern California that week) 2. In order to deliver this message in person, the new SVP of HR had summoned me back to California from Chicago where I was keeping vigil over my kid-brother, Sam, who was dying of AIDS. 3. I was returning to Chicago in just a couple of days with or without a job at Sun, to finish the hard work waiting for me there.

John's call was one of the nicest moments of my life.   John and his beautiful wife, Donna were personal friends. Donna had been our realtor earlier in the year when we bought our home. They had been to our house for Christmas Eve dinner. John and my son Andy had a bond. But it was not just my friend John on the other end of the phone. He was explaining that he had spoken with some of the other execs in WWOP's and Sales and a couple of other groups. I was not to worry, they had already thought of several things I could do if I wanted to stay at Sun and not be in HR. John asked if I would be able to sleep that night. I lied and said yes, I would. I will never forget his kindness.

The next morning I went to my office in Pal 1 wondering what in hell I was going to do. I had a message waiting from Talmy Rausch. Talmy was a character among characters. A former Israeli military officer, Talmy lives by a code. His profession is Quality. Talmy is cerebral and judgmental and Quality is the perfect choice. Talmy explained that one of the more brutal theories of establishing leadership is to publicly "take out" the most powerful follower, or the most beloved, to let the rest of the team know that there are no sacred cows and to establish dominance. It was Talmy's theory that I had been kicked out of HR for just this reason; the new guy needed to establish dominance. Talmy is a lovely man who never suggested that my smart-ass ways had caught up with me. I will never forget his low, soft voice with that amazing Israeli accent on the phone. It didn't matter what he said, it was just so soothing to hear him talk.

There was a message from Kevin Melia, the CFO to come by his office when I got in. So I headed up to the 5th Floor with some trepidation.   The guy that, just the day before, had gutted-me-and-left-me-for-dead-on-the-side-of-the-road had his office on the 5th floor and, while I know this will shock you, I was not that thrilled about running into him.

I came around the corner from the elevators and entered the Pal 1 executive area (McNealy's office in the center, flanked by Raduchel's and Melia's) just as Scott came out of his office. And one of the most shocking moments of my life occurred. Scooter came over with that big, cute-but-goofy, grin of his and scooped me up in a hug.

"Thank God we got you out of HR!" he said, like I had just been ransomed out of Guerrero. Now, that you are out of there you can do something valuable around here!" (I knew Scott did not see a lot of value in HR. One time I asked him to speak at an HR meeting and suggested he be encouraging to the group as they were feeling somewhat overlooked. His response was, "I did not choose their professions...if they want more respect in this company they should have gone into engineering or sales." Hand-to-God, that is what he said....ya' gotta love this guy.)

I was having a hard time holding it together and my eyes filled with tears.

Scott noticed and changed his tone a bit, "I heard about your brother. Bummer, Nance. But, go do what you have to do and when you get back come see me, I have a special assignment for you."

Not sure this is one the "line guys" the new SVP of HR had in mind......

but I thought.... hmmmm.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems

2010-03-14T07:40:00.000-04:00

Go on? End this thing? Let's see a show of hands.

I started this thing as an Irish wake for Sun.
It has gone on for a bit.
Are you guys getting bored?
Am I beating a dead camel here?

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 15

2010-03-12T08:07:00.006-05:00

What did we do after work?

According to Sun-lore, Bob Coe knew at least 50 alternate phrases for "cuffing the camel."
Really, 50 euphemisms for masturbation? Well, we all have our hobbies.

Wayne Rosing's hobby was building telescopes. Big, world-class telescopes. He also played a huge part in building a world-class engineering function at Sun.

Several of the senior management team were gun enthusiasts. The last day you could legally buy a sub-machine gun in California, several vice-presidents went out and bought as many as they could, coming back to Pal 1 with their trunks loaded with enough fire-power to protect Baghdad.

Lots of folks played Hockey. Mostly because McNealy played hockey and it seemed like hip-checking the CEO into the boards was a fine way to express frustration with him and not get fired.

McNealy also played golf, but hip-checking him was not an option so not as many people played.

Bernie LaCroute fancied wine so much that after he left Sun, he started his own vineyard.

Bob Garrow and Howard Lee had a bet about who could take the off-ramp from 101 onto Shoreline at the highest speed in their Porsches. The day Howard entered the off-ramp at 97mph, coming back from dim sum, was the last day I went to lunch with him.

Paul Negus was a pilot. He was also a former spy for the British Special Forces, so killing people in his spare time was an option.

Linc Holland once told me that his hobby was composting. That makes sense.

One of the guys in WWOP's loved trains and had a 1/8 size train set occupying his entire backyard. Every Halloween he came dressed as an Engineer in full regalia including his hat, red bandana and stop watch.

We had musicians up the wazoo at Sun.

Ron Lloyd fished. Note I did not say he caught fish, his real hobby was sitting in a boat drinking beer all day.

Jim Bean was a newly-wed. We all know what his hobby was.

Ron Oulette was a former Olympic Wrestler.

Ken Okin played the piano (a Bosendorfer, if I recall). But given the changes in his life since Sun, I think there were some other hobbies as well.

Steve Diamond was a "ham radio" expert. Is there any such thing anymore?

Kathleen Holmgren made wine...and aged it under the sink in her kids bathroom...or so it said on the labels.

Bud Tribble was a jazz pianist and an MD. Apparently his hobby was emulating Schweitzer.

Steve Schiffman was a former detective....and one of the best writers I have ever known.

Gerry Dube's hobby was AVOIDING marriage.

Bob Graham owned a sailboat and is a world-class sailor. Apparently so is Walt Brown.

Lin Trahan was doing a lot of home renovation in those days and she would casually say, "Well, I have to go home and knock down a wall with a sledge-hammer tonight."

David Lietzke was a wine enthusiast. Cabernets. But he did not want to let his wife know how much he was spending on wine, so he used to bury the crates in his backyard.

And Joe Roebuck was a piano-playing-raconteur whose hobby was leading sales from $12 million to $17 billion.

More about Joe soon.

Have a nice weekend.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 14.3

2010-03-11T17:00:00.002-05:00

Rules and Raduchelisms

Bill Raduchel has a set of guiding principles he uses when managing teams. (Ok, I am using the term "managing" loosely. Bill does not manage. It is much more binary than that. You either get Bill and survive or you do not get him and...well...those rumors were not all fiction.)

A few years ago when I worked with Bill at Ruckus he pulled out these 11 B.W.O.W.'s (the Millennials we worked with called them "Bill's Words of Wisdom") and I recognized immediately the rules he laid out for the HR Team at Sun in 1991.   The Millennials figured out how to adopt these rules much faster than the experienced HR Team at Sun. I love the Sun HR Team (well, I love about 8 of the 600 of them, I like about 20 more....the rest, eh, mezzo mezzo at best), let's face it, they were a group that took themselves far too seriously.

Bill's Rules:

1. No surprises. Even good surprises mean that communication was poor.

The Sun HR team spent weeks working on communication processes. Trying to understand who was surprising whom, how to enfranchise all, how to communicate upward and downward, how and with what frequency to report out to Bill, etc. etc. etc. (I am a little car-sick just thinking about it).

The funniest aspect of Bill's "no surprises" rule is that he is the king of the sucker punch. Bill thrives on surprising others with new thinking, new plans, new product ideas. I have seen him announce wholesale change in strategy or policy, totally out of the blue.

So, it is not "surprise" as a concept Bill has the issue with.......don't surprise Bill.

2. "Not me" is never the right answer. No abdication. Step up.

This rule is really the most definitive proof that Bill had never managed HR before.

Most of us went into HR so we could have maximum influence with the least amount of accountability.

Step up? Stepping up is what line managers do. We are HR...we sit on the sidelines and point out what others are doing wrong.

Crawford Beveridge had once published as the HR Mission that we should "stay off the critical path." He meant that we should not impede or slow down the business. But most of HR interpreted it as "don't do anything." So, you can imagine the response to a new boss who asked us to jump in and take some accountability.

3. Communication is not "telling." You must test for understanding.

I love this because it is sooooo Bill. Notice that listening is not part of this equation. In brilliant Bill's world communication is telling and then making sure the recipient understood. Asking them what they thought would really be a waste of time now, dontcha think?

If you are Bill, this works. If you are me, you can expect some push back at the "telling" stage...even if they do understand.

4. We are all on the same team. No infighting.

If it wasn't for infighting I would have had virtually no reason to even talk to my colleagues in HR.

But, Bill hoped to be an example that professional differences did not need to stand in the way of positive professional relationships.

It was just about this time that one of the EMG, in an animated discussion with some of their colleagues, hurled a chair out of a second floor window to emphasis a point, and then went on record as saying they would never again speak to the colleague who had expressed the alternative opinion. Same team, differing opinions, but no infighting.

Bill had some work to do making this one stick.

5. Pay attention to the white space. If no one owns it, follow up until someone does.

We all knew this was only going to lead to heartache and trouble.

At Sun, if no one wanted to own "it," you could only deduce that it was because "it" was a flaming-bag-of-dog-doo-doo.

This was especially true in Sun HR, as I learned when I ended up owning things like VP and Director conferences or new "Employee/Employer Covenants."

6. Solve backwards.

This assumes you can see the end-state. Bill was pushing a rope on this one.

HR at this point, was mostly transactional and not so good at it. Seeing a better future state and then solving in reverse to the present state was not in the core skill set of the team. Most of my colleagues spent their time worrying about getting the next review process out-of-the-way. Not big thinkers on the whole (don't get me wrong, there was some amazing state-of-the-art-HR-work going on at Sun, but it was mostly being done by the brilliant Marianne Jackson, the wise Pam Headsten, the creative Patty McCord and the unflappable Gus Gannon, all under the corporate radar....yes, I know they all reported to me...if you want to give a shout-out to someone else's HR team at Sun in the '90's, get your own blog).

But, God love Bill, he came in swinging for the fences on this. Bill was determined that this was going to be a strategic and plan-capable group when he was done with it.

7. Focus on outcomes.

What? Outcomes? But what about process?

In the early 1990's all Sun HR could talk about was "process." And then, along comes Bill and suggests that process is only as good as the product or decision it delivers. Oh dear, we didn't see that one coming. Bill could see that we were hiding accountability in the trees of "process" and he was having none of it. Like a true horror-story-villian Bill took a chain-saw to the illusion of good-process and asked us to measure ourselves on actual accomplishment. Ouch.

8. Inspection. Quality comes through testing.

Bill's version of inspection would have made the architects of the Spanish Inquisition proud.

9. Careful with email.

Bill focused on choosing your communication mediums well. Make sure you deliver your messages with a vehicle that serves the sender and the receiver. Email is not always good for every message and then there is the big one....the dreaded Big "R" mistake. Replying to all when you meant the oh-so-clever-pithy-smart-ass-comment to only go back to the sender.

I found this rule a little strange considering how many times I had been fired via email by Bill in the years he had been Boo Raduchel. Yes, he denies it now, but Bill fired me several times over email. I would take the email to whoever was my HR or line boss at the time and they would explain that Bill was just venting and that I was to lay-low and it would pass. It always did.

10. Respect and manage time.

Don't be late. Don't waste time with unnecessary background. Don't pad projects. Don't sandbag. Bill was pretty clear that money could be replaced, but time, once spent or lost, was unrecoverable.
For a group that loved to delay decisions while they regurgitated the past, replayed last weeks arguments and avoided deadlines, Bill's sense of time-to-action was shocking.

11. Attenuate, do not amplify.

Who was he kidding? Even after looking up "attenuate" we didn't get it.

Amplification was the tool of HR. Running around creating drama, screaming from the rooftops that the sky-was-falling was the currency of HR. How would we get anything done if we focused and dialed down the volume?

Outcomes.

With these rules, Bill set us up as a function to be strategic, creative and accountable. As a result we were more respected and much more effective. And the EMG, who had been so cute when Bill was announced in this HR role now realized they had a function to deal with. We were not just a piece of Crawford Beveridges Facilities/IT/HR group. We were a stand alone function, ready to be lead by a full-time member of the EMG. It was a constant stretch intellectually...and it was appropriate...one time Bill said to the group, "Why should I hold you to lower standards than that which we hold the Engineers? Why should you be allowed to be less creative?"

I might have loved "a cascade of bargains" but his assertion that we were to be as creative as the Engineers at Sun and develop our products with the same focus on customer need was life changing for me. I never looked at my HR career the same. I could not be more grateful.

From January 1990 until August 1992 I had my peak HR working experience. I learned more about how to run HR from Kevin Melia and Bill Raduchel in that period of time than I had in all of my career previously or have since. Right time, right place, right people. I lucked into Sun HR and was dragged kicking and screaming into learning from these two brilliant-but-oh-so-different men.

I tease my HR colleagues here. In reality, I have enormous respect for all of them.

In my HR career at Sun I was privileged to work with the best and the brightest HR minds in Silicon Valley or anywhere on earth.

My HR career allowed me to have an impact on others lives. I was so proud of the work I got to do.

I got to help get some folks be promoted to VP...who went on to be CEO's.

I got to bully some VP's into promoting more women to Director level and they went on to being extraordinary VP's and CEO's.

I got to help some folks into rehab...and they are still alive.

I got to coach a few folks into fulfilling potential that I could see, but they did not know they had.

I got to give away 400 $100 bills in Operations at the end of one quarter.

I got to write jokes to "warm-up" McNealy's speeches.

I got to hire, train, coach, review, promote, transfer and exit some of the most talented people on earth.

I worked with that brilliant, amazing, world-class, quirky population for 8 years and I loved my job every single day.

I probably loved it too much.

In the autumn of 1992 the new SVP of HR joined Sun and after telling me that there was "way too much Hauge in HR," he made sure that his first official act was kicking me to the curb.

I was out of HR.

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 14.2

2010-03-06T12:19:00.001-05:00

Ok, so it is 1991, McNealy has lost his mind, and Bill Raduchel is now the head of Human Resources at Sun Microsystems.

Most of Bill's peers on McNealy's staff were delighted by this turn of events....they foolishly thought that giving Bill this new HR toy to play with might keep him out of their hair. They thought Bill would babysit the HR team and that would suck up his time and attention. They were amused by the terror among the HR folks. It looked to them like a great solution. They never thought that Bill might actually try to do something with HR. Suckers.

That first meeting, in the "Board" conference room on the 5th floor of Pal 1 was a tense affair. All of the Sr. HR directors (there weren't any second-tier VP's yet) were trying to look cool and casual, but there was none of the normal banter that preceded previous HR meetings.

The only HR person in the room who seemed really happy, was Rick Chapura. Rick had been Bill's HR director for some time at this point. We had all pitied him in the past. We viewed Rick as a young guy that Dick McQuillen had pressured into taking the job with Raduchel as a carrot-for-a-director-title. It had paid off, Rick had recently been promoted.

Rick is a gifted man (he is really quite drop-dead-gorgeous as well, but that has nothing to do with this story, I just mention it because, well, he is...), but I didn't have a lot of patience with him. In the past, every time there was a new HR initiative we always had to hear about how it was not going to work for Bill and his team. For me, Rick was like the kid in class that had to have special attention from the teacher...and the class had to wait for that kid to get his personal question answered before they could proceed. Some of my colleagues and I would roll our eyes and wait for Rick to tell us why Bill would not support something, or why Bill's organization was different. Eye-rolling is easy for a girl who was still hiding behind doors when Raduchel passed by. Eye-rolling takes no courage at all. Poor Rick was camping in the haunted-house every night and I was scoffing from the safe cocoon of my WWOPS perch.

So, it was fair that Rick was now looking around the conference room at all of us eye-rolling-squirmers with a "Welcome to my hell" smug smirk on his face. Ok, we deserved it.

Bill had ordered in chinese food...a good start...HR travels on it stomach. As we filled our plates, Bill asked each of us to take 5 minutes and give him the net-net of what we were working on. We went around the table: each of us trying to think of the most impressive thing we could tee up to our new and frightening boss.

The load of crap that landed on the table was astounding. I remember folks using the most absurd and astounding HR double-speak ever invented. "Organizational development" and "Business partnering" were big topics..as were "Assessing effectiveness" and "Developing effectiveness" blah, blah, blah some of the phrases were so incomprehensible I suspected that a few colleagues had succumed to the stress of the situation and stroked out. I remember thinking, this is not going well...first because someone had just used the meaningless double-speak I was planning on offering and second because Bill's head was beginning to shake and his hands were starting to flap a bit...a sign that he is running out of patience.

My turn. I have nothing. I cannot think of a single contribution I am making to Sun. I cannot remember any valid reason why they even let me come to work. So, panic sets in, intimidation is in full bloom, my flight or fight anxiety level is at it's peak and my defense system runs home to it's smart-ass-momma: "Apparently, Bill, I am adding no discernable value to Sun at this time. So, I pass." I say.

Bill looked up and away, "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Nancy, you are at least honest. Uhhhhhhhhhh, You should probably be fired, but at least you are honest." And then a miracle happened. Bill laughed out loud.

And I thought, hmmmm.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems, Part 14.1

2010-03-05T06:49:00.005-05:00

Bill

If anyone had suggested to me 20 years ago that in 2010 Bill Raduchel would be one of my closest friends in the world, I would have laughed in their face and then lit some black candles to ward off the evil thoughts. But there it is, WJR has a place in my life and heart that is unique and surprising.

I have had the privilege of seeing many sides to Bill Raduchel: the brilliant economist and world-class educator; the award winning CTO, CIO, CFO, CEO; the philanthropist and charitable leader; the generous Godfather and pied-piper to youth; the gourmand, the parrot-head-Buffet-fan; the patent-holder-technologist; the ice-cream-lover; the thought-leader; the hockey fan; the devoted brother, uncle, cousin, nephew and son. And the good friend, especially the good friend.

But that is not how we started out....

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I first heard of William J. Raduchel in the mid 1980's when Scott McNealy lamented that we "needed Radical at Sun to twist some heads around." I had no idea what or who he was talking about, but for the next couple of years I would hear Scooter refer to "Radical" as someone we needed to help us think, keep us out of trouble, design our future, help us plan, teach us, save us, beat us, if necessary, into becoming the company we could and would be.

The truth is this: McNealy is, God love him, arrogant, and apparently, intimidated by no one. However, it was clear by the way he referred to Bill that this "Radical" intimidated Scott just a little bit. Hmmmm.

Bill had been McNealy's first economics instructor at Harvard. They are friends. They are both from Michigan. I do not know all of the history of their relationship. They have known each other since 1972 or so. Bill was a mentor to Scott. Scott was Bill's boss at Sun. It was complicated. Scott is quick and smart, Bill is brilliant and forceful. They seem to argue a bit from time-to-time.

Now, I am a serious smart-ass, but I am also intimidated by all authority figures. It is part of my Irish-Catholic upbringing. Honestly, it takes all my courage for me to ask you to pass the salt...(so, if I am already hung out there, I might as well use the opportunity to tell you that you are full of crap, too).   If McNealy was intimidated by him, then I was just plain scared to death of Bill Raduchel and gave him a very wide berth for as long as I possibly could.

Bill is a pretty big guy. 6'3" or 4". Tall by any generation's standards. He looks like a college football player who was more scholar than athlete. A big guy, ya know? The actor John Larroquette reminds me a lot of Bill. Bill gestures quite a bit when he speaks, and his wing span is massive, given his height.

Bill has a tendency to close his eyes or look up, away from you, when he talks to you about important things. He certainly thinks much faster than even he can speak and when his brain has run too far ahead he has long verbal pauses which he fills with "uuuhhhhh" while he syncs his brain and his verbalization (I have heard these uuhhhs go on for seconds at a time), also, he has what Will Farrell would call "voice immodulation issues, Tina!"....you can never predict the volume of his voice; it will be going along at a standard conversational tone and suddenly kick into high volume without any warning. It can be startling; I have seen people spill their coffee.

I had also heard he had a temper and did not suffer fools.

So, when I would see this big, brilliant, gesticulating guy, speaking very loudly down the hall, I did what any sane person would do....head for the ladies room and stay in stall #2 until his voice could barely be heard....which, given his volume, could mean he was in another state.

I was not alone in my fear.

Bill was the HR version of a haunted-house. A scary-place everyone tip-toed passed; trying not to draw the attention of the inhabitant. So many rumors and sightings were discussed, never told by anyone who was a witness of course....but always recounted second-hand, in the hushed, trembling voice used to tell stories near a camp-fire...
"I heard he once fired an IR guy, then rehired the guy just to yell at him some more, then fired him again!" "That's nothing, I heard he once held a two-day staff meeting and used data to prove his points...data! Oh, the horror!"
There were whispers that his unreasonable expectations and pressure had landed a direct report in a facility where people went to "rest".
HR legend and lore, as scary as a hook-hanging-from-a car-door-in-the-woods. There were stories of late-night-ass-chewing-phone-calls; traveling across country on planes just to turn around and come back (it was the only way to get a private one-on-one with this obsessive multi-tasker); his refusal to use the Sun compensation process so instead he invented his own. He was rumored to have fired people who didn't even report to him.

People crossed themselves or spit on their fingers when speaking of his "R-Charts" or the theory of "Architect and Distribute." I bought it all. I was convinced that Bill was some demon in our midst. A combination of Vlad Tepes and Rasputin. Bigger than life. Scary as hell. Mysterious.

Forget Boo Radley, we had Boo Raduchel.

The Dance of the Snake Charmer.

I was assigned to the MRP (Mid-Range-Planning) team in 1990 as a participant from either HR or WWOP's. Bill was the head of "Strategy" at Sun. Up until that point, the saying was, that a strategic question at Sun was: "Where are you going to lunch?" We simply moved too fast to be able to execute today and think through tomorrow simultaneously.

So, scary/brilliant Bill, instead of muddying up the waters with language around "vision" gave us a planning window of three years. Our job was to try to step 12 quarters into the future, imagine it, and then solve backwards to the current state. Bill called it a plan. It was as far into the future as anyone other than the EMG was ever asked to think.

I went to the first meeting of the team (The cute-as-a-bug-Masood Jabbar and the ever-lovely-Bill Larson were leading a group of about 30 of us and a BCG consultant-soon-to-be-employee, Eric Herr was facilitating the process) and Bill Raduchel kicked off the session by speaking to us of the importance of our participation.

Bill said, "The plan is secondary to the planning. All plans are a cascade of bargains in an organization and you are the beginning of that cascade." With the phrase "cascade of bargains," Bill had me. I was hooked. For all the rumors of his lack-of-tolerance for those who were not as smart as he and for all of my intimidation, I was mesmerized by his use of language and decided I was going to have to risk putting myself in his presence....I just wanted to hear him talk some more.

I could hear that cartoon melody in the back of my head......(There's a place in France, ......)

I was still afraid. And there were all those horror stories out there....(...where the ladies do a dance...)

But the language. The language was so compelling...(...where the men wear their glasses......)

Oh dear, I am a language slut.

The call is coming from inside the house.

Sometime in 1991 Crawford Beveridge left Sun to be the King of Scotland (actually, head of the Scottish Development Agency in the service of the Queen). Closely following Crawford's departure, and as a result of staring at his navel (and a colleagues butt for 12 hours on a trek up a glacier) at Excellence@Sun, our VP of HR, Dick McQuillen left his job to take a line job in Asia.....and who did Scott McNealy ask to be the interim VP of Human Resources? No, surprisingly, not me. Nope.......Radical was in the HR house.

Bill's new role was the scariest news of my career to that point. Sure, I was compelled by the guy's ability to string words together. I was dazzled by his ability to distill the complex into the comprehensible. But, I did not want to work for him! I was in a deep panic. I knew Bill was not impressed with me and I was pretty sure I was about to see my career swirl down the toilet.

I remember meeting the senior HR team: John Gardner, Sharon Shoemaker, Rick Chapura, Vicky Farrow, Jan (whose last name escapes me), Dean Kearney (now Chabrier), May Yip, Peter Smith and a few others in a dive bar we called Pal 2.   We were philosophical to begin with but by the third glass of wine we all pretty much agreed we were f*cked.

The next day I ran into Carol Bartz in the elevator in Pal 1. Carol grinned at me and asked what I thought of Bill's new assignment. I was honest and told her I was pretty worried, I asked her for some advice about getting along with Bill. She considered this a moment and then offered, "Don't screw up" as her sage advice, just as she got off of the elevator. I found that helpful. Really, helpful. I was bathed in comfort with that help. I do love her like a fat kid loves Ho Ho's.

At the first HR staff meeting with Bill, Scott McNealy came into the room to "introduce" Bill into his new role. Scott pointed out that there was a search underway for a new head of HR but they would take their time as he thought we would all benefit from Bill's leadership.

Ok, let's examine this, we have a new leader here who is generally considered by the HR team to be brilliant but a lunatic, a yelling, menacing, gesticulating, crazy-man who everyone runs from (well, I assumed my response was a bellwether), he has little patience for people with an IQ of less than 171, has publicly stated that he has no regard for HR as a function and he has never spent a day working in HR. Sure, I could see the benefits of his leadership.

I thought two things:
1. McNealy had lost his mind.
        and
2. .......No, I am sticking with number 1......McNealy had lost his mind.

(This is part 1 of 3 parts)

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 13

2010-03-04T08:42:00.000-05:00

There are many theories as to what went wrong at Sun. Books will be written about why it did not last as a great consolidator. Decisions about leadership and technology choices will be studied and analyzed by people far smarter than me. But I will always believe that the day Sun stopped daily donuts was the day the fate was sealed. A couple of years ago I wrote the following for a publication in the south. The VP of Engineering I refer to is none other than our beloved Howard Lee. Lee and Beveridge went a few rounds during the great donut debate. Howard could not believe that Crawford stopped the daily donuts. Crawford won the argument, during which he made some very salient and pithy points, none of which I include here, because I am certain that if they had continued the donuts Sun would have continued to outperform it's competition. Donut denial done in Sun.
*****
In an eye-opening survey conducted several months ago by the Boston Consulting Group, a leading business think tank, three out of four top executives from 68 countries said they planned to increase research and development spending this year. Fewer than half of the 940 respondents, however, thought the increases would produce the necessary profit or competitive advantage to justify the expenditures.

Why such a disconnect? Perhaps it’s because they’re spending too much of their money on the wrong things: technology, rather than Twinkies.

My experience tells me that the rapidity with which an enterprise creates value is directly related to how well it stocks the company kitchen. The lower the nutritional value of the food choices, the greater the intellectual property produced.

I have spent time in a variety of industries: software, hardware, compression technology, storage technology, outsourced manufacturing and digital media. What they all have in common is this: They all run on junk food.

During my career, I have spent hundreds of all-night sessions alongside my entrepreneurial colleagues as we prepared for market launches, product launches, term sheets, due diligence reviews, tape outs, quarterly results, auditors and IPOs. I don’t remember ever ordering in anything nutritious when the heat was on.

When engineers, scientists and technologists have to stay up all night, they don’t reach for No-Doz they reach for Cheetos.

It’s always a sign of decline when a company slows down on junk food purchases. Many CEOs and CFOs deny the value of the kitchen. It is an easy expense to control or cut when money gets tight. It seems like no big deal. People can bring food in or buy their drinks from a vending machine. They will understand that investors don’t want the company “wasting” its limited resources buying snacks for the staff.

But the purpose of junk food is not just to give the team a little blood sugar bump at 3:00 pm. When you stop supplying fun food, morale and productivity decline.

As soon as your supply of Twizzlers and Diet Coke runs out, so do your people. They leave the office to go home or go out to eat. And when people leave, even for a short lunch break, you can lose the rhythm … the hum of execution … to say nothing of that esprit d’corps that comes with foraging for Pop Tarts at 2:00 am or the creativity that accompanies your third Red Bull and fourth bag of Nacho flavored Doritos in an hour.

I once worked for a start-up computing company that grew to $7 billion in annual revenue during my stint. In the early years we brought in doughnuts every morning. As time went on the doughnut bill got to be pretty outrageous. So we cut back to doughnuts only on Wednesday mornings. Funny thing, our product launches began to stretch out. We were not moving as fast as we once had.

When I asked the vice president of engineering what had happened, he said, “You cut back the doughnuts! My guys used to get in here by 8:00 am every day to get their favorite doughnut before it was gone. Now they come in around 9:00. I have 600 engineers in this organization and I lost about 600 man hours per day because you stopped the doughnuts!”

Why should junk food have this effect? Can a doughnut really motivate folks to come to work earlier? Sure. It’s simple: People eat stuff at work they would never be caught dead buying and never allow themselves at home. It is compensation for long hours. And wholesome food really doesn’t cut it.

No one goes to the community kitchen to fix themselves a salad and then go back to work. People do not bond over broccoli spears and cottage cheese. When you go to the kitchen at work it’s to find something fat or fun or naughty and a colleague to share it with. Forget fresh fruit; it is the forbidden fruit that cranks up the volume among entrepreneurial enterprises.

Junk food in the kitchen is designed to keep your most important asset at work.

Do I really promote enticing employees to spend too many hours at work and eat junk food to boot? You bet. Junk food is the enabler of an unbalanced lifestyle and an unbalanced lifestyle is crucial to success, especially at start-up companies.

Maybe we can seek balance and nutrition after the company starts producing $500 million in annual revenues. Until then, pass the Pork Rinds and Beef Jerky (I’m on Atkins).

More soon

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Coming Soon

2010-02-26T14:00:00.002-05:00

From my email this past month:

"I am eagerly awaiting the Bill Raduchel segment."

"When are you going to write about Bill Raduchel?"

"I bet you are still afraid of Bill!"

"I've heard you had run-ins with Raduchel."

"Did you ever work with Bill Raduchel?"

"Can you tell any stories about Bill R?"

Slow down campers...I cannot rush the telling of this tale....I am working on it. Soon, very soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 12

2010-02-25T23:00:00.006-05:00

A Few Tidbits, Unconfirmed but, RUMORED to be True.
Or maybe I am just worried about lawsuits?

A dead camel at the bottom of a swimming pool after a Sales event in Palm Springs (Please, no cries about PETA...that spitting dromedary should not have been drinking in the hot-tub with Joe Roebuck if it knew it couldn't swim).

A $3000 cleaning bill from a hotel in Monterey after the "Silly String" episode.

McNealy dancing on top of a piano (pick the event, based upon the rumors, he apparently did this everywhere he went, although I never witnessed it).

A manager who checked himself into a 30 day rehab program rather than face his VP over a $42k dinner and bar bill for 10.

Bill Joy was the inspiration for the character of Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park.

More sexual harassment claims brought against women than men at Sun in the first 13 years.

The guy who fell into the hole outside Mt View 4 after a Friday beer-bust; remaining there until Sam Williams found him on Monday morning.

Marriott Hotels banning Sun employees from ever booking a room in their hotels after a Sales event.

A group of Christian Brothers throwing a bunch Sun employees off of their premises in the middle of the night and then banning any Sun employee from ever attending a tasting (after a Sales event).

Ron Lloyd trying to cure his recent Salmon catch in the manufacturing test ovens in Milpitas.

Crawford Beveridge standing on the roof of Milpitas 1, proving to a group of software engineers that they could still see the Hoover Tower at Stanford from that vantage point, before signing the lease.

A Sun exec driving down 101 at a pretty rapid clip when a call came to him from a former female subordinate. He hears a baby crying in the background. "Did you have a baby? he inquires. "Yes!" she says, "and so did you." Repairs to the car were numerous and expensive.

Kathleen Holmgren testing the new automated manufacturing line by climbing into a bin and launching herself through the process.

Wayne Rosing refusing to arrive for a departing flight any earlier than it's actual departure time.

The comedian Pat Paulson looking around at a meeting of 400 employees, spotting Scott and asking, "Who's running this place? Beaver Cleaver?" (Oh, yeah. I know for a fact that one is true.)

More soon

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 11

2010-02-24T16:00:00.003-05:00

TODAY WOULD HAVE BEEN SUN'S 28TH BIRTHDAY.

Let's spend some time with David Lietzke.

I love David. David is smart and he is an exceptional friend. Also, David taught me how to do what I do, don't ask me what that is, but David taught me to do it. David is first a business guy and then an HR person. I owe him so much I cannot begin to describe it or thank him. So, mostly I tease and torture him.

The day I realized David always left his keys in his car was the day my friend, May Yip and I started the diabolical plan to move his car everyday...not far, just a couple of spaces from where he'd left it.

This went on for months. We would stand in the windows of our offices and watch as David went out to get into his car at the end of the day. He would head to where he parked it and then stand there puzzled for a second or two, see the car a couple of parking places from where he expected it to be; or parked directly behind where he had left it, scratch his head and then get in and drive away. It was like the movie "Gaslight", we were slowly driving him insane.

One day we replaced his Jimmy Buffet tape with Mozart. He apparently got out on Rt 85 and with the windows down and the volume already cranked up, turned on his Buffet tape...only to find "Eine Kleine Nachtmusic" blaring...and almost ran off the road. Then we left a photo of his Buffet tape, wrapped in barb wire, on his front seat with a ransom demand. All good fun and I thought that one day he would figure it was us and we would pay the price. But, what I had not counted on was that David never dreamed it was us....he had another friend named Kirby, who was also something of a practical joker. Turns out, David thought Kirby was behind the car torture. So, David starting torturing Kirby with his own assortment of tricks and treachery. The two of them went at it for quite a while, escalating the pranks.

May and I just watched and commiserated with David and didn't tell him that we had started the snowball rolling down the hill until his last day at Sun, at which point we also opened the sun-roof on his car, closed and locked the doors threw the keys in through the sun-roof and proceeded to filled the car up entirely with styro-foam pellets we had stolen from the distribution warehouse That will teach you, David...girls can be fun too!

After I returned from a vacation one Monday, David slipped into my office with a silly grin on his face. David has big dimples and seeing him grin is just such a treat. He wanted to tell me about something Bob Lux had done. Bob Lux ran Customer Service for Sun at this point. Another DEC hire. We did not know him very well yet. But he had the reputation as something of a loose cannon. A "player." I was his HR manager at the time (1986) and David had attended Lux's staff meeting in my place while I was out of town.

With me out of the room and David in my place, Bob had an entirely male staff meeting and he decided to cut loose a bit. Bob opened his staff meeting by telling his team the story of the famous "Newly Wed Game" incident where Bob Eubanks asks the young-marrieds to name the most unusual place they had ever had sex. The first young husband, a rather over-weight, sweaty guy in a too-small-suit replied, "Well, that would be the butt, Bob!"

David told me the story. We both laughed a bit, tried to figure out if any harm had been done by the telling of the story and didn't see any (please do not send me angry notes if you see some harm....it was a long time ago...and it was funny....). Based on that incident, we started to call Bob Lux, "That-would-be-the-butt-Bob-Lux" in our HR staff meetings (as one of my colleagues once said, "in an HR meeting anything goes, we are a self-cleaning oven"). Within a month or so "That-would-be-the-butt-Bob-Lux" was the only name we used to refer to Lux.

Some time later, David again came into my office, this time....no dimples showing. David was the HR Director for Bernie LaCroute. Bernie ran Engineering, Marketing, Operations, Customer Service....etc etc....he ran everything except Sales, Finance and HR. If Scott McNealy was God at Sun....Bernie was the Holy Ghost...he made things happen. Well, David had been in Bernie's weekly staff meeting and somehow, without thinking, he accidentally referred to the head of Customer Service, a Vice President of a publicly held company and a direct report of Bernie's as, "That-would-be-the-butt-Bob-Lux." There was dead silence in the room, according to David, "What was that?" asked Bernie. David covered somehow. But he was mortified. And he knew Bernie was not amused at all. He was certain that Bob Lux was offended and pissed and probably in complaining about David to Crawford at that very moment. David was telling me all of this, shaking his head, blaming me for being such a smart-ass-ring-leader and lecturing me that we had to...HAD to...take this all more seriously. Just at that point Bob Lux stuck his head in the office door....beaming....."Nancy!' he yelled..."I want new business cards and I want them RIGHT NOW! They are to say, 'That-would-be-the-butt-Bob-Lux' Vice President of Customer Delight." He continued, "This is the best HR team I have ever worked with. At DEC they had no sense of humor!" And off he went. David and I just stared at each other and then burst out laughing.

It was David that taught me that no one should ever know you are an HR person when you are in a staff meeting. You need to be able to contribute to all areas of the business and not just raise your head when "people" issues are on the table. It was David that first suggested that my humor and creativity might be assets in my work. David forgave me for not having a Masters in OD and let me do the strategic work anyway. David made me stand at his white board every couple of months and show him how I would redesign the group I was supporting to make it more effective. David let me know that personal integrity was far more important in a business than "process integrity." David showed me that objectivity can be used as a cover for cowardice and that loyalty is still a virtue. And, David had fun every day....he was not one of those lamenting, whining, woe-is me-these-managers-are-all-so-stupid HR types. He is not chicken-little running around in high dudgeon all the time, creating more drama than value. I owe this guy a lot.

We have remained friends. When he left Sun and joined another company as VP of HR I stopped in to see him in his new office. He did not expect me. I approached the receptionist at his new company and asked to see him. "Is he expecting you?" she asked. "Well, no, but I am Margaret Bedwetter, his parole officer, and he has missed his last two appointments...I need to see him NOW!" I replied. She dialed David and said into the phone, "There is a Margaret Bedwetter here Mr Lietzke, she says she is your parole officer." And David, unfazed, replied, "Is she a very short woman.....?"

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 10

2010-02-23T15:51:00.002-05:00

Standing on the border of the future with "One Cheek in Italy and One Cheek in Austria"

In 1989 Crawford Beveridge decided he needed a VP of Human Resources to report to him. Crawford's background was in HR but at this point at Sun he also was running Facilities and IT. He needed someone who could focus just on HR. I don't blame him; HR was a handful. Crawford ran a process for selection of this new VP by collecting feedback on three internal candidates: Dick McQuillen, a Brit who had worked with Crawford in a past life; David Lietzke, an Oklahoman we had hired from Apple; and another Brit friend of Crawford's whose name escapes me (I do remember that he insulted the crap out of me one time by pointing out what nota bene meant....uh, excuse me, I went to Catholic school....I might not be able to curse in English, but I know my Latin, bardus!)

When Dick McQuillen was promoted to VP of HR, I was pretty upset. David Lietzke, my friend and mentor, decided to leave Sun at that point. I was suspect of Dick. He had spent only a little time as the Director of HR in Europe for Sun. He was from DEC, not an HR organization for which I had a lot of respect (way too many rules and much to much process), and he was so quiet...I never knew what he was thinking. He also seemed, at first, to be a mini-me of Crawford. We had a Crawford. I thought we could use some alternative thinking. So I behaved badly. Dick and I circled each other cautiously...well he was cautious, I was a pill and a smart-ass and in retrospect it is shocking he did not fire me. When he and Crawford took back-to-back vacations and some decisions were postponed because we could not get them both to sign off, I posted a note outside my office asking the question: "Attention HR: would you rather have a Crawfordless Dick or a Dickless Crawford decide?" A few months into his new job Dick took some time off and asked me to fill in for him. It was a generous thing to do, he was reaching out to me; someone who was bent on being disrespectful to him. I was rethinking my opinion when he made the mistake of sending an email to the EMG and all of HR referring to me as his deputy. I could not resist and I wore a hat, a star and called myself Deputy-Dick all week.

One day in late July 1990, Dick came to my office and in his beautiful English public school accent asked if I would be interested in participating in the inaugural executive development program at Sun. "Excellence @ Sun", was a new program for high-potential Directors and VP's. It was an honor to be chosen to participate and I was happy to tell him yes, but rather surprised that he had recommended me. Then Dick said, "I will be going as well. It is going to be in Obergurl, Austria, much of the program will be outside on a mountain. And, Nancy, we either come back friends or one of us is going off the mountain." Well, I guess I was wrong, I guess I did know what he was thinking.

I arrived in Munich very early on a Sunday morning September 2nd, 1990 with a guy from Sun that I did not know well, Walt Brown. We were so early....the rest of the participants were due to meet at the airport in 5 hours and then we would all travel to Obegurgl by bus. Walt and I needed to kill some time. There are two things open in Munich at 7am Sunday; Churches and Beer-Gardens. We decided to alternate, first a church, with it's Rococo gilded-wedding-cake interior then a beer-garden with wooden tables and big beer steins, then a church, then a beer-garden. Let me just say this. Walt Brown is a great guy. There is no one in the world I would rather get liquored-up and visit churches with.

We all finally assembled at the airport. 24 of us. 22 men and 2 women. Kay Hart, a woman from Marketing whom I did not know well, and I were the only female participants. We boarded the bus and I felt this horrible sinking feeling....not just because of all of the "church visits" I had managed that morning coupled with the diesel fumes were making me a bit queasy, but also because it was dawning on me how competitive this week was likely to be. 24 VP's and Directors from Sun, 22 of them men. The smell of testosterone was stronger than the diesel fumes on the way to Austria.

Munich airport is a long way from Obergurgl. At the halfway point, Dick McQuillen insisted that we stop at an Inn and toast to the reunification of Germany. I was beginning to like him more by the moment. The first competition was a discussion of German wines. What was interesting is that the Californians dominated the conversation....the poor guys from Europe, including a couple of Germans....never got a chance to voice their opinions.

After a couple of glasses of wine we reboarded the bus and made our way to the facility where we would spend our week. I say facility because we were staying at the Austrian Olympic Ski Team's training center. We are not talking 5 star accomodations. This is not a 3 star venue. This was a lovely but very "monastic" school for athletes. The men were shown to dormitories with communal bathrooms. Kay and I shared a room with a private bath. It was late afternoon/early evening...most of us had been sleepless and traveling for many hours. We were ready for dinner and all trooped down to the dining room.

The little bar was closed which did not surprise us...it was Sunday night and we were the only guests. A buffet of salads was waiting for us so we helped ourselves to the first course. Some lettuce, some cold cuts, nice fresh rolls and then we all were chatting about what to expect from the next day, when we noticed that the salads course was being put away and the kitchen was closing. Seems what we thought was a salad course....was dinner. Oops.

The team looked around for our guide and facilitator, an amazing man named Horst Abraham. Horst explained that given the rigors of the coming days our menu had been chosen for maximum nutrition and rapidity of transit time (yes, that is just what you think it is). In other words: dinner was over, get over it.
There were cries of protest. A small group decided to hike into town and eat at one of the restaurants. Horst intervened and reexplained that the work we would be doing, dangling off the sides of the mountain the next day might be impeded by a rich, calorie laden dinner tonight. Suddenly you could see a little bit of apprehension set into the group. What had we gotten into here? Most of us thought this was another Sun Boondoggle and had not really done the prep work (including a three week physical activity prescription to be accomplished before arriving)....we all were beginning to wonder if we had made a mistake.

The next day was an eye-opener. We assembled early. Maybe 6:00am. We walked about a mile to a river bank (a group Horst dubbed the "rabbits" ran to the river bank) where we were taught to begin the days with some Tai Chi. We did all of this in silence. No talking on the walk, no talking during Tai Chi, no talking on the walk back to the school. You could talk when we got to breakfast. Breakfast was granola, milk and some whole wheat baked goods. No eggs, no bacon, no muffins. The group was now beginning to panic about the food situation and I believe that at this point a couple of the guys from Sales were plotting an escape. We did some classroom work that morning on creating a vision for ourselves and then we were given a sack lunch, fitted with mountaineering garb and went outside. Another walk/hike to a meadow situated between two cliffs...a big one, and an enormous one. If you were experienced at ascent and abseiling, you headed to the enormous cliff. If you had never seen a caribiner before, you stayed on the "bunny" cliff. I was in the bunny group. The instructors gave us the verbal rundown of what was to come and then they demonstrated how to just sit-down in mid-air off the face of a cliff and remain in a sitting position bouncing your feet off the side of the mountain while your guide controls the ropes that lower you. I now understood the wisdom of the light meals and rapid transit time...without it I am sure I would have needed a change of underwear at this point. I was scared spitless.

So, let me explain why I volunteered to go first. I was a 5' tall woman with a weight problem surrounded by a bunch of competitive Sun Mircosystems male colleagues. I had to go first. I could not let the men know I was afraid. I would never regain any status or respect if I wimped out.   I went to the top of the cliff, turned around, and with the guides holding a labyrinth of ropes, spread my arms out from my sides and simply leaned back off of the edge as far as I could in a sort-of backward swan dive. When I was perpendicular to the cliff, I bent up from the waist and proceeded to bounce down the mountain. The truth is it was not a very big cliff. It was small. But, 25% of all mountaineering deaths occur abseiling down a cliff less than 30 feet tall. I bet I did not take a single breath on the way down.

Getting back up the cliff was a bit more taxing. Finding hand holds and toe holds, not using your knees to climb...tough work for a chubby girl. That night I was bruised from head to foot. I was bruised by the harness, I had used my knees to climb, I had bumped a shin on the way down and torn-up my elbow on the way back up. Good times so far.

Each day Mon - Wed was the same. Silent mornings at the riverbed, classwork and small group break-outs on a variety of leadership topics, some feedback on our style and then afternoons outside taking longer hikes and doing the up and down the cliff action a few times. We were preparing for a trek up the glacier into Italy, where we would spend the night in a hutte and hike back to our ski school the next day. We were beginning the trek right after an early breakfast on Thursday. We would take the ski lift up the mountain and when we got off the lift, we would continue up the glacier for some hours, ascend a sheer cliff and continue to the hutte. It was expected to take the better part of the day...and we would do some sight-seeing along the way, dangling down into the cravasses to get a better view of the deep blue color of the glacier. Thursday we assembled in our hiking gear. This time we were given a substantial sack lunch...sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, cookies, veggies. It looked like a last supper to me. I was sick with worry about my ability to make this trek.

I was worried about the wrong thing. When we finally got to the glacier, we added crampons to our hiking boots. They broke us into two teams: 11 men and 1 woman on each team. Then, they did the funniest thing, they tied each team together at the waist. We would spend the next 6-10 hours tied at the waist. Ok. Fine for the guys...but let me ask you this: how does one pee with discretion when she is tied at the waist to 11 men? Several guys saw the issue immediately and offered to lower me down a cravass for privacy. Really, there was no way I was going to let them lower and hoist my fat-cravASS anywhere. One of my rope-mates had thought this might be an issue and produced a one person tent from his knapsack that he offered as my own personal-potty during the trip. I declined and decided to manage this dilemma in a different fashion, I simply stopped drinking anything. The guides had driven home the need for fluids on this trip, but that was silly...there was no way I was going to risk a full bladder until I was in Italy, in a hutte with plumbing.

So we headed south-east over the glacier toward the Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen.

We discovered very quickly that I was not an asset to the team. Out-of-shape, short of stature, taking small steps, breathing too hard from the altitude. I am lucky they did not throw me down a cravass. I think George Reyes had to be talked out of cutting the rope and leaving me for dead on the glacier.

We finally reached the sheer cliff that was the border of Austria and Italy. We did not really have to do the ascent thing....there was a path and a wire guideline to hang onto as you made your way up the stone wall.
When you reached the top you were straddling the border of the two countries and each of us took our turn showing off "one cheek in Italy and one cheek in Austria."

As I stood there, in the Austria/Italian Alps with one cheek in each, in the company of some of the smartest and most accomplished people I have ever known, all I could think about was my parents. My folks died when I was pretty young. They never really had a glimpse into who I might grow up to be. I am certain that they assumed I would grow up and marry a man who would take me to Europe on his arm. They could no more have imagined the experience I was having than they could imagine me traveling to Mars. It simply was not in their world view. And, so, I said a little prayer as I stood there and asked that they take a peek back at Earth to see what their baby-girl was up to. It was one of the most moving moments in my entire life.

My rope-mates and I arrived at the hutte at least an hour behind the other group. They beat us by that much even though Kay Hart fell into a cravass when a snow bridge gave way under her. ( Luckily, the engineering of the tied-at-the-waist arrangement worked and as the guys all just sat down where they stood, up popped Kay from the cravass. It was a thing of beauty.) I had held the team up. I was pretty embarassed by this and was not feeling my best as we stored our outer-wear and put on slippers to wear in the hutte. We assembled for a meal and ate what I believe was the best soup and spaghetti dinner ever. Afterward we each took turns entertaining the group. Highlights for me are Walt Brown reciting a risque poem, Dick McQuillen singing the Irish lament "Four Green Fields" and the adorable Gerry Dube's beautiful tenor voice blessing us with "Ave Maria" in that warm, snug hutte on the top of an Alp.

I was sick all night. Seems not staying hydrated exacerbates altitude sickness. I had achieved my goal of not having to pee on the trek up. But I was paying for it very dearly. I spent most of the night laying outside the bathroom on the cool wooden floor thinking I was going to die of a headache. The next morning, one of the guys from Germany gave me some fennel pills....I felt better almost immediately and I felt much better as soon as we descended to about 7,000 feet.

We trecked down off of the glacier, and hiked back to the ski school the next day. The whole trip was probably 20 miles round-trip. But we had all traveled much farther than that. I got blisters on the way down. I remember Walt Brown and a couple of the other guys wrapping my foot in mole-skin and then deciding I should not walk the last mile back to the school. They sprinted ahead and came back in a jeep for me. My heros.

That Friday night the bar was open at the school. We drank a bit. Dinner was not as spartan as earlier in the week. Some of the guys hiked into town and kept the party going into the wee hours. We all felt we had accomplished something special. We had bonded over fear, meals, vision exercises, Tai Chi, feedback, bunnies and rabbits, trekking and laughing in the Alps. We parted that Saturday morning different people than we were when we arrived. At least one of us decided to change their career and life during that week and when we returned to California, Dick McQuillen, who was now my dear friend and a role model of living your values, decided to leave HR and do some work in Asia. Wouldn't you know...just when I decided I liked the bloke.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems

2010-02-19T07:38:00.000-05:00

I have been lax this week. I write when I have insomnia and this week I have slept too well. But, in the works for the coming week:

A "Radical" look at the world
One cheek in Austria and one cheek in Italy.....Excellence@Sun
Unconfirmed and uncomfortable rumors.
"Close Chicago!" Requests I could never fulfill.
My favorite bosses are 3,000 miles away.

I have received such positive feedback and so many kind words, I can only say.......where the hell were you people when I was getting performance reviews?

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 9

2010-02-13T21:00:00.009-05:00

As Seen on TV.

Charm School

Bob is hyper-active. He is twitchy and itchy and never shuts up. He shakes his foot, rocks back and forth in his chair, runs his hands through his hair and clears his sinuses non-stop. He is 60 years old now and needs Ritalin, Aderall and sometimes a brick to the head. He was worse when I worked with him 20 years ago. Bob is totally politically incorrect (he lived outside the US during the '70's and most of the '80's and missed a lot of US cultural change) and always had to reference ethnicity or religion when speaking of someone ("He's a Jew from Brooklyn, he'll do great in purchasing" or "Well, Nancy, that guy is a Pakistani Muslim, so he is a bit touchy", or "he's a Congregationalist, what do you expect?"...How would I know what to expect of a Congregationalist?). He not only still uses the word "Oriental" he will explain why it is the more correct description of those people who prefer to be called Asians (from an historical/geo-political perspective). He is a news-junkie, Libertarian and a know-it all. Bob can be a bit crude, sometimes does not assess his audience well, has limited social skills, sketchy manners, no patience for small-talk and he talks too much. Moreover, he tends to fall asleep if anyone else is speaking. Do you remember the show Seinfeld? Think, Kramer....on crack. That is Bob. He is also generous, a man of great personal faith and pretty smart, if you can get past the other stuff.

I am really not sure how it all began, but when Bob was a VP in WWOPS at Sun, a gaggle of folks were in my office in PAL 1 discussing Bob and some of the challenges of working with him. Someone suggested he open a Charm School. We closed the door and started to whisper as we each came up with courses he might teach:
"How to mispronounce or forget the simplest of names"
"Boring a room to tears with old stories of your former employers"
"Ethnic stereotyping in 3-Easy Steps"
"Adjusting your underwear while you adjust their attitude"
"Dominating conversations for fun and profit"
"Taking the shame out of sleeping through meetings"
And then Pam Headsten, dear sweet, Pamela who is so kind and lovely says, "And for early enrollment we will send you a copy of his new book.....Breaking Wind Without Breaking Stride!"
We were entertaining ourselves, but I figured it was all good-innocent-blowing-off-steam.

However, when I came into work the next morning, there were flyers all over the WWOP's offices advertising "Bob's Charm School", including all of our courses and the book offer. Someone had gotten their hands on Bob's badge picture (not flattering, he looked like a drug smuggler or as Bob would say, a Mexican drug smuggler), created a 3-color flyer and peppered both PAL 1 and the Milpitas campuses. It was soon being sent via email to Westford, MA; Linlithgow, Scotland and Atsugi, Japan.

It was a good laugh, Bob was a great sport about it (for all his peccadillo's, Bob is not entirely unaware) and it died down.

Three years later, when Bob and his business partner were running their $2Billion company, they were trying to close a big Silicon Valley customer. At the final meeting, the go/no-go session, the potential customer pulls out an old, dog eared flyer....shoves it across the table at Bob's partner and asks, "How's Bob's Charm School working out?" It didn't upset Bob at all, but his business partner was pissed at me for a year.

The Scalp Sucker

The WWOP's cure for baldness (God love and bless Scott Walberg)

Before* After*

Step 1. Grow a full beard

Step 2. Attach Scalp Sucker to top of bald head

Step 3. Turn machine on.

Holding one's nose is recommended so hairs do not shoot out.

* Actors, not actual Sun employees.

I do not know who created the ads for "The Scalp Sucker," (with pictures of actual Sun employees), that were on all of our desks one day in the '80's. But I bless them and love them more than I can ever say.

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 8

2010-02-12T22:22:00.001-05:00

Better to be quarrelling than to be lonesome. Irish Proverb

Scott McNealy took me to lunch three times during my ten-year career at Sun. Each time it was to ask me to be a team player and remain in WWOP's. I was not kidding when I said no one else wanted this gig.

In September of 1989, Scott's admin, Karen called and asked if I would have lunch with Scott in the coming week. I knew what was up. Bob Garrow had left Sun the previous month and the new guy was to start in another month or so.

Someone from Ed Zander's team had called me and asked if I would like to come over to Ed's shop and take a stab at keeping Ed out of trouble. I was flattered beyond belief and giddy at the prospect of a change of scenery.   But McNealy and I went to Scott's Seafood Restaurant across from Mings and Scott made the pitch. The new guy was going to need an HR person who knew the team. The new guy was a savvy HR user. The new guy needed my help. Scott is good. I had so wanted to move out of WWOP's, but it was not to be. And so, I was dragged, kicking and screaming into the best two years of my career.

I heard the rumors about Kevin Melia even before Scott and I had lunch. He was from Digital Equipment. He was Irish by birth. He now lived in Boston. His nickname at DEC was "the Jesuit." He was the youngest ever Vice President at DEC. He had run World Wide Materials there and was considered brilliant and tough (not another tough guy!).

Kevin and I met for the first time in a conference room in Milpitas, CA on October 17th, 1989 at 5:00pm.

At four minutes after 5 the room started to shake a bit.
I made a joke, "Oh, Kevin, we seem to be having a little earthquake to welcome you to California!"
Ceiling tiles started to fall.
"Kevin, I have to ask you to do something I do not usually ask my boss the first time we meet. Will you get under the table with me?"
"What?" he asked. Who could blame him.
"Big earthquake, Kevin...GET UNDER THE TABLE!"
He did. For 15 seconds. Then he said, "Let's get out of here!" And we did.
As we stood in the parking lot of that building in Milpitas we watched a couple of hundred people bolting from the surrounding Sun buildings.
All the car alarms were going off.
All the hazardous chemical spill alarms were going off.
People were yelling that the Bay Bridge had fallen down, that 280 had collapsed...that Candlestick park was in ruins.
It was pandamonium.
And Kevin turned to me, pointed to his watch and asked, "Do the employees always leave this early?"

Kevin moved to CA a month later and started his new job officially the same week as Sun was throwing a party for everyone celebrating their 5th anniversary with the company. Having joined in October of 1984, it was my 5 year party. The afternoon gala was held at a psuedo-castle in the east bay. The theme was a Medieval Faire. Jugglers, Puppeteers, Knights, Damsels etc, etc. Sun did these parties well. Scooter saw me across the tent that was set up for lunch and motioned for me to come over. He was standing next to Kevin Melia.

When I walked over, Scott took me aside and said, "Look, I invited Kevin... it is his third day here. I am going to be busy with some presentations and things, so will you entertain him, please?" I looked longingly at all my friends having a purely social event, and then told McNealy that of course I would attend to Kevin.

I found a table of WWOP's folks and Kevin and I sat down. The lunch was typical Medieval Faire eat-with-your-hands-things, Cornish game hens, roasted root vegetables, rolls. The minute I saw it I knew what was coming and sure enough, Scott moved to a podium to speak and suddenly a cornish game hen was flying through the air at him. Then a roll, then a potato and the next thing you knew there was a full on food-fight underway. 100+ Sun employees with eat-with-your-hands food...who were they kidding....a food fight was the only thing that was a certainty at that party. One of the manufacturing engineers was showing me how to get the greatest velocity out of a roasted carrot (you grab it by the pointy end and flip it), when I noticed Kevin was missing. I was puzzled for a moment and then I realized where he must be. I picked up my plate and joined him under the table. And there we were again, on our second meeting, taking shelter under a table.   Kevin was grinning. "Reminds me of the early days at DEC....great energy!" he said...and he continued to eat. Unfazed. And I thought....Hmmm.

When Kevin is 15 years older than he is today, he will look quite a bit like Richard Harris (the original Albus Dumbledore). When I met him 20+ years ago he already looked a lot like him.   Kevin was an avid runner (marathoner) with a BMI in the negative numbers. His hair was thinning, unruly, dark red/brown and I speculate that he never looked in a mirror when he combed it. He a fabulous listener. He is thoughtful. He is wise. He is a fascinating combination of high energy and stillness that seems to be one of the interesting paradoxes of those raised in Ireland, as he would say "In the shadow of a world power."

Kevin had lived in the USA for about 13 years when I met him; he had become a citizen of his adopted home, but his brogue was still thick and charming as hell (and still is). Several weeks after he joined Sun we held a meeting for the 100 or so most senior folks in WWOP's. Part of the agenda was getting to know Kevin a bit better. He prepared a piece on his values and how he worked. It was a great list of his expectations; stuff like: Keeping commitments, speaking out, avoiding politics, not chasing ghosts (the past), teamwork, focus on the mission etc. I thought he did splendidly. Of course, I was spending a lot of time with Kevin, I had heard his list and I was pretty used to the brogue. The other 99 folks were not.

Within 5 minutes of the meeting breaking up I started to get the questions.
"What does Kevin mean when he says he doesn't chase goats?"
"Not goats, ghosts."
"So, if Kevin doesn't chase goats, does he chase other farm animals?"
"Not goats, ghosts."
"Are goats some hated animal in Ireland, is there a reason he hates them?"
"Not goats, ghosts."
"I do not know why Mr. Melia felt he had to single out goats for his wrath."
"Not goats, ghosts."
"If Melia is a vegetarian, he should just say so."
"Not goats, ghosts."
"I am insulted by Mr Melia's disparaging statements about the Greek people. We eat goats."
"Not goats, ghosts."
"What the hell does 'not chasing ghosts' mean?"
"Not ghosts, goats....I mean.....never mind."
I give up.

Kevin has what is considered a Dublin brogue. He pronounces "th" like "t" and the g sound is always missing from the "ing", so it is not thinking, it is "tinkin." When driving home accountability, he would often ask his team in meetings "Who's wakin up in t' night, tinkin about tis?" You have to listen and pay attention or you could seriously misunderstand him. One time, as we were coming through the lobby doors together, Kevin asked me to follow him to his office on the 5th floor of Pal 1. I headed for the elevator and he for the stairs, he gave me a scowl signaling that I was expected to walk with him up the stairs. Did I mention that he was a marathoner? Did I mention that I was and am 5ft tall and chubby? But, up we went with Kevin talking all the way. He was very animated about some issue that had happened over the weekend. "We must be more turrow!" he kept saying. I was listening, trying to avoid speaking, as I was at the point where I could climb and breathe, or climb and talk, or breathe and talk, but I could not climb and talk and breathe. I thought that oxygen deprivation was impeding my comprehension skills because I could not for the life of me figure out what he was talking about. "Turrow?" What is turrow? I couldn't concentrate on anything else he was saying...what is "turrow?" I felt like Booger in Revenge of the Nerds, "What the fuck's a frush?"

We reached the 5th floor just as spots appeared before my eyes and I was leaning against the wall, gasping and yawning and trying to re-oxygenate before either my heart or brain decided to give up the ghost (not goats, ghost!). Kevin left me there and was 3/4 down the hall when all the tumblers fell into place. "Oh! THOROUGH!" I called after him. "We have to be more thorough!" He looked back at me puzzled but grinning.

Twelve years before 9/11/01 the word "terrorist" did not have the same connotations as it has today. Well, at least it did not have those connotations in the US. Kevin was affectionately referred to as "the Irish terrorist" for his unrelenting refrain that "the plan is the plan." Kevin occasionally appeared to be channeling Yoda with his there-is-no-try-there-is do-or-not-do belief system. He was like the freakin' Jedi master of the supply/demand equation.   He had enormous patience for the process of exchanging ideas and he could listen to a raging argument go on for a quite awhile and then raise both his hands and ask, "Does anyone have a fact? Any fact at all?" I can picture so vividly John Shoemaker, Mel Friedman, Jim Bean, Dave Weishaar, Bob Coe or Bob Graham shaking their heads as they came out of Kevin's office. He simply could not be reasoned with when it came to missing commitments or not performing to plan.

Kevin loaned me a book shortly after he joined Sun. I read, and then bought copies for all senior managers in WWOPS of, "The Age of Unreason" by Charles Handy.   The title is inspired by the following:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists" Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 - 1950)

By the end of Kevin's first year at Sun, WWOPS had moved $1billion from poorly planned finished goods inventory sitting in cages to cash on the balance sheet, just by improving our planning capabilities and sticking to the plan. We all learned a lot, but I think I learned the most. Kevin posed the greatest challenges, expected the most, engaged in the longest strategic view. He managed from both his intellect and his heart. Kevin is THE MOST competitive person I have ever met and there was no such thing as failing when you were around him. There was no try, there was no not do, there was only do.

Kevin and I became friends. We have socialized and visited each others homes over the years. I owe him so much and love him very dearly.

That was the first year of the best two years of my career....the second year was coming and it involved someone who I was not just intimidated by, but honestly afraid to even speak to. I was about to report to Bill Raduchel.

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part Interrupted

2010-02-11T21:06:00.000-05:00

No, no, no, no, no....you are not supposed to take me seriously!

"Group: Sun Microsystems HR Alumni Group
Subject: New comment (1) on "Sex and the Start-up"
As an HR Professional for 20+ years and a Sun Alum... I find your article inappropriate for the forum. While our paths never crossed, I am not sure what can be gained by "dishing" at this point. Just my two cents."

Doesn't it just figure this came from an HR wonk?

1. I really hope I am not offending folks...my stories are told with love...but to be honest, anyone who tries to add credibility to a point-of-view by telling me how many years they have been "an HR Professional" .....lost me. I've met way to many HR Professionals for that to have any merit....hell, I am an HR Professional and I have zero credibility.

2. Inappropriate is the goal...this is an Irish Wake for a beloved institution, for pity's sake.

3. "Dishing"? Did you say, "dishing?" I never dish. I validate perceptions, perhaps. But I do not dish....well, unless it might be good for a laugh.......

4. Eat a bug.

Back to the wake and some more inappropriate dishing tomorrow. And for those who have been sending me ideas and memories...thanks....this memorial may go on for awhile.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 7

2010-02-10T21:00:00.015-05:00

Bob Garrow.

It is hard to explain how much I love this guy....or why....

Bob joined Sun in 1985 or 1986. I heard a lot about him through the grapevine. He was a very successful Silicon Valley executive (one of the founders of Convergent Technologies), too young to retire but just enough older than the rest of the management team to be considered a bit of a gray-hair. His reputation was that he was a great engineering executive. He was rumored to be tough, smart, tough, tough, unreasonable, tough, unrelenting, tough, impatient, tough and tough.

Operations reported to Bob, up through Jim Bean (Jim's turn in this blog is coming soon). I stayed out of Bob's way; the truth is I was pretty intimidated. I could hold my own with smart. I could even deal with tough...it was the unreasonable, impatient and unrelenting that worried me. He seemed to be impervious to charm. I am mostly about charm (let's face it, I am unencumbered by any real skills, knowledge or abilities), so I avoided Bob. I was pretty successful at avoidance for about 2 years. David Lietzke and Vicky Farrow worked with Bob and I pretty much went my merry way in Ops. Then one day it was announced that with the internationalization of Ops to World Wide Operations, Bob was giving up Engineering and focusing on leading WWOP's. WWOP's would be broken into two big groups (workstations and servers), Bean would lead workstations and we eventually hired Mel Friedman to run servers under Bob. I would now report directly to Bob Garrow. Avoiding him would probably not be that easy now.

I was a little premature in my assumption that I couldn't avoid Bob. One of the first things he did as the head of WWOP's was announce that he was looking for a Director of HR for WWOP's. Wait, what was that? I was the Senior Manager of HR for OP's....how was this not my job? He was recruiting for my job? What the hell was going on here?

David Lietzke intervened and Bob decided to give me a couple of months to prove myself. That avoidance thing had not been so wise it turned out. Bob knew nothing about me. The 60 days passed and Bob approved me as the HR person, but he was reluctant, he just did not know enough about me.

The first week I reported to Bob, I was desperate to figure out a way to connect with him. I was in my office in Milpitas around 6 pm when one of my direct reports, a young man named Mark, came in pretty upset. It seemed Bob Garrow had just tried to run him down with his Porsche. Actually, given his rep, Bob trying to run someone down did not surprise me that much...
"Which parking lot were you in?" I asked.
"What parking lot?" Mark replied. "I was in my office!"
"Bob tried to run you down in your office?"
"Yes, he just drove through the window of my office and almost killed me at my desk!"
Bob was a cigar smoker back in the day and his routine was to stop outside his beloved Porsche, reach in and start the car while it was in neutral and light his cigar before getting inside the car.
This time the car was not in neutral.
The Porsche leapt forward, jumping the 3 feet of lawn and the bushes and crashed through the window of Mark's office.
Mark described himself, seeing the sports car coming at him at the last minute, back-pedaling his chair against the far wall of his small cubicle to avoid being hit.
After making certain Mark was ok, I realized what Bob and I would bond over.
I sent Bob an email that evening. I explained to him that I fully understood his lack of regard for HR types, but running over them inside the building seemed extreme.
Bob's response showed the appropriate concern for Mark and a serious concern that I would never let him live it down....seems Bob did know me pretty well after all.

Very soon after my promotion to the director level in 1988, the annual VP and Director off-site was held in Monterey CA. It was the first of these, soon to be legendary, events and it was being run on a modest budget. The agenda was good, lots of strategy and good discussions about where Sun was going. But rather than the expensive entertainment that came later, the plan was that each function would provide entertainment to their colleagues the first evening of the meeting. We were asked to participate in a lip-sync contest. Bob, perhaps to get back at me for the unrelenting grief over the Porshe-through-the cubicle incident, told me I was in charge of the WWOP's linc-sync. Oy vey. I looked around at the team...what was I going to do with this motley crew: Jim Bean, Bob Coe, Mel Freidman, Linc Holland, Erwin Lenowitz, Jim Griffin and about 8 other rhythm-impaired-white-boys who had little to no interest in participating.

The rumor was that the other groups were taking this pretty seriously. The software group, famous for the April Fool's day practical jokes were practicing a couple of evenings a week. The east coast division had a 45 page set of instructions for their team and Barry James Folsom was personally directing them. Marketing, a very creative group was working on it and Sales thought they had a lock. I was pretty stumped.

I called an old friend, a director-choreographer, told him what I had to work with and what we needed to accomplish, He and I decided...go for simple, go for funny. I got half the WWOP's guys to show up for one brief rehearsal.

The night of the competition, Jim Griffin (the pooping in the desk guy) was a delightful, lip-syncing lead to "Leader of the Pack", everyone else was a back-up singer. All of the other macho-WWOP's guys were bedecked with foam-core-cut-out dresses. And, at the appropriate moment, our leader, Bob Garrow appeared as the doomed teenage love interest, on a foam-core motocycle, leather jacket with foam-core angel wings...and his cigar.....and what do you know, we won. Bob was thrilled. I moved a step closer to respect from Bob. Thank you, God. (By the way, the stories about the sales guys starting fistfights in the bar that night and havoc wrecked in the hotel are very, very overstated...just ask Roy T-S.)

Bob's administrative assistant was a lovely young woman who we will call Gail. Gail had an unfortunate love affair and a beautiful baby. When Gail was still on her maternity leave she dropped in to show off the baby...a gorgeous little girl about 4 weeks old.   When she appeared, Bob admired the baby for a minute or two and then asked Gail if she could help him find some file that he really needed. "Sure," she said. "Can you watch the baby for a minute?" Bob explained that we were on our way into his weekly staff meeting, but yes, he reluctantly agreed to take the baby in her carrier into the meeting while Gail helped with this small administrative task.

As soon as Bob got into the conference room, he took the baby from her carrier and held that tiny little girl on his shoulder. And there she stayed for the next 90 minutes. At one point he let Bob Coe hold the baby for a bit...but only for a bit...seems old-intimidating-Garrow has a serious weak spot for babies. And, I believe to this day that he sent Gail on a wild-goose-chase so he could hold that sweet-smelling little bundle for an hour or two.

At the end of the meeting, as we were leaving the conference room, Bob turned to me and said, "Nance, did you notice how well-behaved everyone was in this meeting today? We should have a baby in all of our staff meetings. They make us better people. See if you can arrange that, ok?"
"You want me to arrange to have an infant in our staff meetings?" I asked, "Don't you think Scott Metcalf has that role covered for us already?"
"Well, yes he has the behaviors, but when I try to hold him on my shoulder my arm goes to sleep." replied my now-not-intimidating-at-all boss.
Who can resist a man who loves babies?

Scott McNealy's direct reports were referred to as the Executive Management Group (EMG). Each year they had to produce a goal set that fit a formula, X number of quality goals, X number of performance goals, X number of people goals etc. etc. As part of Bob's team, I was participating in the creation of the WWOP's goal set. These goals would be rolled-out not only to the rest of the EMG, but to all the WWOP's employees. As we sat there trying to configure the right mix and priority of goals, Bob was very concerned not only in the goal content, but in the relative positioning of the goals on the list. He believed that the order signaled priorities. After pondering the list for a long moment, Bob turned to the group and said, "I think we better move those people goals higher on the list and make them think we give a shit." Could any statement resonate more in the heart of an HR type? I told you, this guy is irresistible.

Our performance review process was pretty ad hoc at Sun. Bob was an engineer by education and he liked data, so he used a point system. The problem was he held the criteria and point values in his head until your review. So my first review went something like this:
"Ok, you earned about an 87 for project A." Bob started out.
"How many points could I have earned for A?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know. It was probably worth 95. And, I think you got 105 for project B."
"How many could I have earned?"
"Probably 100, but you did a great job so I am giving you extra points. And you get 60 for project C.
"But we canceled project C!"
"Yes, but that is no excuse for not finishing it. And 100 for project D."
"Project D? I don't remember project D, I never had project D."
"Well, I was hoping it would occur to you that we needed project D. It was worth 200 points. So, lets add this up..... you got 353 out of a possible 500. Wow, Nancy, not so good."
"What?", I sputtered, "are you kidding, Bob, this is totally arbitrary!"
"What do you mean arbitrary?" Bob asked, "Nancy, the score is the score, I didn't make these numbers up!"
"Yes, yes you did" I argued, "I just sat here and watched you make them up!"
"This is why you could never be an engineer," said my boss-soon-to-be-my-friend, "you just do not respect the numbers."

Bob was the best of sports, it turned out. He let me dress him up in tights and a cape once for a WWOP's meeting. I am sure I had a reason, other than to get him back for the arbitrary performance review numbers, but honest to God at this point all I remember is my delight when he came running out from behind the cafeteria in Milpitas dressed as "Sun Man" or "Rocket Man" or some such nonsense....tights, cape, face mask, with his glasses on over the mask. I will give him 510 points out of a possible 700 for the performance.

Bob taught me many things. Rigor of thinking. Discipline. And how to be professional and human simultaneously. He also taught me about money and how to value my contribution to the mix.

Bob and I have remained somewhat in touch all these years. I don't know many men who are as devoted to their families and who are such good and faithful friends. His son's have given him granddaughters so he has had a lot of baby-girl-on-the-shoulder time over the years. I will always be grateful to Sun for introducing me to "Rocket Robert" Garrow.

I am thinking about Joe Roebuck....cannot wait to see what I write about him....

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 6

2010-02-09T23:20:00.001-05:00

When I use a word - it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.
- Humpty Dumpty, Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

I was promoted to the director level at Sun because I learned to drop the F-Bomb. I am not kidding, exaggerating or using hyperbole. (WARNING: I am going to use the real word from here on out, so if you are sensitive to such language....change channels now, ok?)

I had been passed over for promotion in 1987 with some very vague feedback, you know...something about my limited skill level, my business acumen, my smart-ass demeanor, my inability to build a positive relationship with Bob Coe...I think someone even criticized the way I opened the mail. I was disappointed, but truth be told, I knew I wasn't ready.

Early in 1988 I was passed over again. I was prepared to be philosophical, but wait...one of the folks who was promoted was an absolute empty suit...a colleague who, as far as I could tell had not accomplished a single thing during their career at Sun. I sat in Crawford Beveridge's Senior HR Staff meetings with this person every week and I had yet to hear them offer an idea, a solution or an insight. What I did hear was the word "fuck." Every week this cat complained that something was "fucked up" or a "fucking mess" or "the last fucking time I will deal with this" etc. etc. etc.

It dawned on me that this person, this room-temperature IQ, was taken more seriously than I was because they said "fuck." Hmmm.

I was 34 years old and about to say fuck for the first time in my life. I am the original good Catholic girl who did not use curse words or vulgar language, so this was not going to be easy. I practiced for a few weeks. Each day as I drove to or from Milpitas I would try to work fuck into my vernacular. Fuck was a second language to me and like all non-native speakers I was awkward at first, my syntax was not polished. Fuck did not roll off my tongue easily. I had some seriously flawed initial attempts:

"Good morning fuck, Jim"
"What?"
"Never mind..."

"Did you fuck get those resume's, Linc?"
"What?"
"Never mind..."

"I am working from Pal fuck 1 today, Bob"
What?"
"Never mind..."

And then, one day, in the Senior HR Team meeting someone took a shot at Op's. Someone made a thoughtless remark about my direct-labor-peeps and I lost it. I went on a bit of a rant and all that practice paid off. Fuck was my friend. I used it as a verb, a noun, a pronoun, an adverb, an adjective, a preposition, a conjunction and an interjection. It was a thing of beauty. I was on fire. And, when I finally started to calm down a bit...shocked by what I had said, panting a little, I turned to Crawford and asked....."How many more times do I have to say fuck to get promoted?"

I was promoted a month later.

The official language of Sun was fuck. You had to speak it in order to be heard, noticed or taken seriously.

Six weeks after meeting Kevin Melia (he will have a turn here soon as well), he did something that totally baffled me. We had been using our best manners up until that point, but without thinking..."What the fuck was that?" I asked. "Oh, are we going to say fuck? Good!" he replied. And our conversations were never as stiff or formal again. We bonded over the F-word (and a habit of diving under tables together, but more on that another day).

I am not proud of my ability to speak fuck. Well, maybe I am a little proud, my personal best is dropping the F-bomb 23 times in 45 seconds. I was making a passionate point to a Millennial at Ruckus, 20 years after my first awkward beginnings with this most useful of words.

Since moving to the south and having grandchildren I have been trying to clean up my language...the right thing to do, but it moves me a bit further from the Sun culture, which I loved and miss. Fuck!

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 5

2010-02-07T08:22:00.002-05:00

"A quiet personality sure isn't what you need to attract attention." Bill Budge

We had some "personalities" at Sun.

Ian Bell. Just the name makes me smile. When I met Ian he was running Operations (Manufacturing etal) for Sun in Westford, MA. A Scotsman, from Dundee, we had hired Ian from Digital Equipment Corporation where he was one of the architects of their legendary team-run plant in Enfield, Conn.   Ian was in his early 50's. A former footballer, something of a cult hero in Scotland. About 5'4" tall...and built like a fireplug. He reminded me of James Cagney. Ian was a personality.

Ian never called me anything but, "MS Hauge." At first I assumed it was because his wife's name was also Nancy...but no, the way he emphasized the "MS" soon taught me that he just was not that fond of women in business. Ian would say to me, "You American woman do not get it. In Scotland a married woman is the most liberated person in society. She has her husband's money and all the free time she wants! You girls over here in the states are mad." Ok, so now I knew where he stood on the gender thing.

During the time we worked together, Ian had jobs in Westford, MA; Linlithgow, Scotland and Hong Kong. As I remember it, Nancy Bell never gave up her home in Connecticut, so the Bell's were "expats" in all of these places. "Nancy enjoys living the life of the colonists wife," Ian was fond of saying. Ian was even an "expat" in Westford. He commuted home to Connecticut on weekends; staying in a hotel Monday through Thursday nights.

Ian was surrounded by a cast of characters in Westford that I will never do justice in describing. Talented, hardworking, quirky guys that fell under Ian's considerable spell. They ran the assembly and test, materials, distribution, finance and manufacturing engineering functions supporting the products designed on the east coast. Their weekly staff meeting was at 7am Friday morning. Being late was unacceptable. You were never late to Ian's staff meeting. Ian was unrelenting in his ridicule of you if you were late. There were sanctions. I think he gave you a wedgie or something.

Ian was fond of pub-crawls (as I learned the hard way one time in Scotland...more later). And it was not unusual for a Thursday night pub-crawl to go on to the wee hours....making the Friday 7am meeting an effort of Herculean proportions for some. There was a story that one Thursday night Ian and the boys were out "crawling" and realized that it was too late for Red-Eye (who had a 75 minute commute, and no I do not know why Dave A was called Red-Eye) to go home and still get back for the meeting. It was agreed Red-Eye would sleep in the other bed in Ian's hotel room. They fell into their beds at 4:00am...for 2 hours of sleep. They had to be up at 6 to make it to the 7am meeting. Ian's last words to Red-Eye that night were, "Do not let us oversleep, Red-Eye, if you are going to stay here, YOU are responsible for getting us up!" The alarm was set for 6. Red-Eye awoke every 10 minutes for awhile worried that they might oversleep...but after a bit, alcohol and fatigue got the better of him and he drifted off.

As Red-Eye told it, the next morning he was first conscious of being pummeled with a rolled up copy of the USA Today. Ian was beating him and screaming at him to WAKE UP! It was 6:50am. The alarm had failed. Ian had never been late to his own meeting. They had 10 minutes to get to the plant. Ian started throwing Red-Eye's clothes at him, including his shoes. Ian and Red-Eye left the hotel room in their shorts, carrying their clothes, Red-Eye drove while Ian dressed in the car and then they did a chinese-fire-drill at a stop sign and Ian drove while Red-Eye dressed (and this was in Ian's beloved Jaguar, oh, to have seen it)....all the while, Ian would reach over and slap poor Red-Eye on the head every 15 seconds or so calling him every foul name he could think of.

They careened into the parking lot, Ian jumped out, yelling to Red-Eye to park the car. When Red-Eye breathlessly made it into the conference room for the meeting it was 7:03am Ian was sitting with the rest of the guys, looking remarkably calm and refreshed. He proceeded to act like he had no idea why Red-Eye was late and belittled him for the rest of the meeting.

We opened the Linlithgow plant in '88 or '89 and Ian was the first Managing Director of Scotland for Sun. It was at this point that he and I became colleagues on the World Wide Operations Staff. We reported to Bob Garrow. As I mentioned earlier, I was not flavor of the month with Ian. He thought American women in business were brash, mouthy, obnoxious busybodies...and those were the good points. Ian had no problem with women in the workplace, so long as they were tall, blond, pretty and kept their mouths shut. Now, I am not and have never been a shrill-feminista...I was raised with four brothers, I learned early on that I could learn to play third-base or I could be third base, but I couldn't whine about not being chosen for the team if I didn't have the skills. And, I am short and chubby and not the kind of woman Ian was attracted to for any reason. So, he couldn't exactly hate me. But he sure didn't like me. He mostly ignored and/or ridiculed me. (That was ok, I knew how to deal with that...that is exactly how my brothers treat me!) At least that was how he treated me until our first pub crawl.

I am a three-beer girl (drink one, spill one, leave one). A pub crawl with the Scotland boys, led by Mr Bell was daunting. But, I try to be a good sport. We set off through the streets of Edinburgh. I drank a pint at the first bar. I sipped a beer at the second bar. By the 5th bar I was ordering bottled water and had totally lost any hope of gaining the respect of the Scotland team. I was the worst of American women to them....didn't stay home as I should, short and squat and a wuss in the pubs. I was pretty bummed. But I had noticed the most lovely of things during my time sitting at the bars being ignored or scoffed at. In Scottish pubs there is always a chalkboard above the bartenders head. It has two names and an order on it...Hugh/Collin 1 pint.
I asked one of the bartenders (at this point the only person who would talk to me) what it meant. "Ah, if a fellow comes in looking for his buddy and the buddy is not here, the fellow buys him a pint anyway and I make sure his buddy gets it next time he comes in." Hmmm.

The next afternoon I left the plant early and headed back to Edinburgh where I spent the afternoon on my own pub-crawl. I hit about 10 pubs. The next morning I flew back to the states.

Four weeks later, Ian Bell came to Palo Alto for a monthly meeting and when he entered the conference room he came directly to me and swooped me up in a bear-hug. "Now, this is a fine woman," he declared to my astonished colleagues, it was after all no secret he was not fond of me..."This marvelous woman left pints all over Edinburgh for me and my team! We have been drinking on her and to her all month!" he declared. Hey, if you cannot play third base, be third base. We were fast friends from then on. And I have never been to Edinburgh that I have not left a pint for him at Kay's bar.

Patty McCord, the extraordinarily gifted Chief Talent Officer at Netflix worked with me at Sun. We sent her on an expat assignment to Linlithgow. Brave soul that she is, she packed up her family and spent the better part of a year as the American woman in residence. She has her own stories of that experience. But one day she called me in Pal 1 from Scotland to ask how she should handle a situation. Seems Ian had blown her off all day as she tried to get time with him. His admin finally told Patty to come meet with Ian at 5:30pm...but Ian had a business dinner that night so the meeting would be short. Patty arrived at his private conference room for the meeting, where Ian proceeded to change his clothes during the meeting. Stripping off his shirt and changing his pants behind the table. It was a pretty obvious message of disrespect...what should she do. I said, "Have you ever noticed those chalkboards above the bartenders in the pubs......" Ian and Patty ended up with a fine and functional relationship.

Ian drove fast and was often stopped by the police. He had lived in the US for 15 years, but he kept a Scottish drivers license for just these ocassions. He would pull it out and say in his thickest Dundee accent, "Ima strrrranger in your land officerrrr, was I doin sometin wrrrong?" He never got a ticket.

Ian was one of the best dancers I have ever known. His mother taught him. "It is a good mother who teaches her son how to dance" Ian said as he lindy-hopped with me at a Sun party. He was right, my son dances beautifully.

When Ian's mother died, he told me this story. It took Ian years to finish a degree. He was from a part of Dundee that did not produce many college graduates. Ian worked and went to school when he could for many years. When he finally graduated, the neighborhood threw a big party for him at the pub. It was a big party and it went on for hours...but as it was beginning to wane, Ian's mother, took him into the kitchen and said, "Ok, Ian, Mr college graduate, now, teach me everything." Then he put his head on my shoulder and cried a bit.

I have not seen Ian since 1997. We had both left Sun and we met in the lobby of Kevin Melia's and Bob Graham's company, Manufacturers Services Limited. It was a great reunion. He had been sick and lost some weight, I had dieted and lost a boodle of weight. We showed our new figures off to each other and reminisced a bit. I am not sure where he is today. I hope he and Nancy are sunning themselves on an island.

More soon.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 4

2010-02-03T06:24:00.006-05:00

Sometimes life at Sun was just....different.

In 1986 the EEOC accused us of falsifying records. One of our software engineers was reported as female (where we were "underutilized") on our last audit. Apparently, the same person had been reported as male the year before. I was assigned to investigate.
Turns out that it was true and also correct. "Bobby" had become "Bunny" over the summer. My first trans-gender....but at the time, we just called it a sex-change.

I let the feds know that everything was fine and got a surprise...they would not take my word for it. Had to have some proof. They gave me a list of things I had to discuss with Bunny. So, I asked Bunny to meet me in my office in Mt View.

When Bunny was living her life as a man, he must have cut quite the dashing figure. But the 6'6" blond that walked into my office was, well...not ever going to be Miss America. Bunny had breasts, she had been undergoing hormone treatment for 11 months and now dressed in chiana shirts, khaki's and sandals. I noticed that the toes on her size 14 feet were painted the same pink that I was wearing, but she was not wearing any make-up, so you could see the last few hairs from her waning beard. She had long, thinning, naturally blond hair and hands the size of dinner plates. That was OK, beauty is not everything. Besides, Bunny had done this all for love. Seems he had fallen in love with a lesbian and this change was the only way to be with her. True love. But, whatever the reason for the change was irrelevant, I had a task to complete. Bunny was such a good sport, submitting doctors affidavits and her new driver's license, proving the State of California considered her female. And then I asked the question I had been dreading...the feds wanted me to find out where Bunny used the restroom, no kidding, I had to ask her where she went to the john...even after all the other questions, this one seemed so......invasive. But again, Bunny was philosophical. "Well, I cannot use the men's room, obviously," Bunny said, pointing to her new upper frontals. "And, the women seem very nervous if I use the ladies room...you see, at my height, I can see over the tops of the stalls when I stand up. So, I go down the street to the Exxon Station!" She was right, this was not a girl I ever wanted to run into coming out of stall #3, but my heart broke a bit for Bunny...I mean really, the Exxon station?. Bunny left Sun a little while after someone hacked into Wayne Rosing's email and posted the performance reviews of his direct reports on Junk Mail. Last I heard, Bunny and her lady love had moved to a lesbian nudist colony in Oregon. I hope they are happy and have a private toilet.

The story of Johnny DLP.

The Monday after Thanksgiving was always a bit subdued at Sun. There was certainly the hangover from a 4 day weekend, but there was also the calm-before-the-end-of-Q2-storm. In Operations, that Monday was the day of full reality...we had a very few days to ship a sh*t-load of product. The damn holidays always seemed to catch us by surprise.

My phone rang mid-morning the Monday after Thanksgiving 1987 and at the other end was Johnny DLP. Johnny was one of my favorite folks. He had joined as an assembler in manufacturing, was promoted to supervisor there and then had made the switch to materials manager. He was integral to making Q4 happen. He was a stellar, if somewhat unpolished employee. Johnny was short, cocky, unintimidated by authority, over familiar, hard working, over dressed some days, under dressed some days, macho, sweet, competent, not well educated and smart-as-can-be! He was a rising star in Ops and I loved him.

"Hey, Nancy," he began, "I cannot make it into work today."
"OK," I said, "I will let Linc know" (Linc Holland, the man who has never won an argument with me).
"Are you OK?" I asked.
"Well, yes, but I have a little problem...."
"What's up?" I naively asked.
" I am in jail." Johnny replied.
"Oh no!" I exclaimed.
"What happened?" I was now thinking we had a problem with a DUI or scofflaw issue and knowing Johnny as I did, I could picture him sitting in some police holding cell refusing to post bond on principle.
"Well, I was at my mom's house on Thanksgiving and I got into an argument with my brother-in-law and things escalated and, well, someone got stabbed in the arm with the turkey fork."
"Johnny, do you need bail money?" I asked, trying not to laugh out loud. "Are you sitting in jail because your family will not bail you out after impaling your brother-in-law?"
"No," Johnny said, "The judge won't set bail, I have to serve 90 days".
"Why?" I asked.
"Well, I do not qualify for bail because of my previous manslaughter conviction." Johnny said...as if it was a fact that we all had at our fingertips.
Now, I have to say, and I think most folks who know me will agree, that I am rarely at a loss for words. But Johnny stumped me. I sat there, dumbfounded for what felt like a long time....then I heard Johnny put coins in a payphone and that snapped me back. "What conviction, Johny?"
"When I was 17, I was joining a gang in LA. There was an altercation with another gang...someone was shot. I never even saw the gun, but I was slow over a fence and the police caught me. I served 5 years in prison."
I needed time to figure out what we were going to do,"I have to think about this, Johnny. Can you call me back later today?"
"Yes."
Linc and I caucused on this and decided Johnny had to be at work that month or we were going to blow the quarter.
I called the judge on Johnny's case and begged for a work release program It was agreed that Johnny could do work release for two months and then he would have to serve a full month in jail. It was not easy, but the judge was a bit of a technofile and he was delighted to help Sun. Johnny was happy. He wanted to get back to work and spending the nights in the county jail was better than spending all day there.
Q4 was great. Johnny did a great job. We all breathed a sigh of relief.
Then Johnny needed to go to jail for a month.
Sun was pretty big by this time. It had policies and procedures and a few personnel police had been hired. I knew that I could not just let Johnny go away for a month without an explanation. He couldn't be paid, he couldn't take vacation...and we were not going to fire him.
I processed what I thought was the appropriate paper work and crossed my fingers.
Crawford Beveridge called me a few days later.
"Nance, talk to me about Johnny DLP" he said.
"What do you want to know?" I asked.
" I have been told you have placed him on educational leave, is that right?"
"Yes." I replied.
"Is he studying at an institution of of higher education?" asked Crawford.
"He is in an institution." I replied.
"What is he learning?" asked CB.
"Uh, not to bend over for the soap?" I answered.
"OK," said the unflappable Crawford, "so long as you think he is getting an education, I will approve this."
I will always love Crawford Beveridge.
When I left Sun, Johnny DLP sent me an adorable note. I hope he is well and staying out of trouble.

We had an employee at Sun that refused to declare their gender. And we never did figure it out.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 3

2010-02-02T05:26:00.013-05:00

It has long been my theory that in the early days, Sun Microsystems was held together by stock options and sexual tension.

24 years ago, a woman we will call Judi came to my office to complain about a coworker. It seems one of our accountants was being very aggressive in pursuit of a date. She did not feel she was being harassed, but she was not interested. It struck me as odd that she and the bean-counter had ever even crossed paths. She was a technician in manufacturing in Milpitas and he supported Sales in Mt View. When I asked her about this, Judi replied, casually, "Oh, we haven't really met, but I went skinny dipping with him and a bunch of the folks from sales in the Hyatt Rickey's hotel pool at the last company party. And we fooled around a little bit." My expression must have communicated my thoughts, because Judi rushed on to say, "Please, it was the product launch and we were celebrating....I would NEVER date anyone at work!" So, getting naked and "fooling around a little bit" with coworkers is OK, but dating is out. "Before that party, I had not had a date in four months," Judi later told me. "I had been working 75 hour weeks! So, we go to this party and things happen. But I do not want to date him, so can you make him go away?" The accountant was astonished and crushed. Silly boy, he had misread the situation. Seems in his last company, if a woman stripped off her clothes and kissed you in a hotel pool it was a sign of some sort of interest. Not at Sun. At Sun it was just a way of saying, "Hey! We launched SPARC!"

One Sunday afternoon in the late '80s, I decided to get a head start on the week and went to my office in Milpitas to do some work. I entered the building at the back and passed through the manufacturing floor on my way to the office space. As I entered the offices I passed by a darkened conference room where I noticed movement. I backed up and saw the VP of Finance for Operations and a young woman from the materials organization standing in the back corner; she was peeking out from behind him. They were standing very close together. I moved on to my desk.

A couple of minutes later, the VP of Finance came to my desk. "Hey!" he started talking at a break-neck pace, sounding a lot like a panicked Brian from Family Guy, "Getting a running start at the week? Great. That's great! I just came in to, um, go over some materials numbers with the team there. She, I mean they, wanted some help with some numbers." I just stood there looking at this married man with children who, apparently, thought I was an idiot. "Yeah, we cleared up their number issues....oh, and you might have noticed me and Betty in the conference room just now. We had just turned the lights out, and were just standing their talking about numbers when you saw us. She, was confused about the numbers and so, we were just talking about numbers in the dark conference room when you went by." You know, I might have bought it...maybe, if it hadn't been for the fact that the entire time he was going through this monologue, his shirt-tail was sticking out of his fly.

Another senior finance guy (what is it with finance?) used to park his car under the trees in the far corner of our Pal 1 office parking lot...next to the KFC. It seemed odd to me that he would park virtually a full city-block away from the building, but I thought he was just a healthy guy who liked to walk a bit. Then one day, one of his colleagues jokingly suggested I keep an eye on the car at lunch time. I had no idea what he was talking about and I was not about to stand around spying on this guy's car. Do I look like Gladys Kravitz? Not much time passed though until the finance guy's boss told me that he had to figure out a way to tell this guy to stop having sex in his car at lunch. What was to figure out? I suggested he say "Stop it!" and that seemed to work.

Our CEO was single-and-ready-to-mingle for most of my career at Sun. Crawford Beveridge carried most of the water keeping Scott out of trouble in those days. But I would get the odd assignment related to Scott's sex-life. At several of the annual VP/Directors conferences I was asked to keep and eye on Scott's date. Sometimes it was to assure his date did not get bored or feel left out, sometimes it was to be sure she didn't steal the silver from the hotel. On one occasion, Scott brought a woman to this event that he had met on a plane the night before. That wouldn't be such a big deal except the rumor is that on the second night of the festivities, she had only known Scott for 36 hours, hadn't really seen him much, and could not remember exactly what he looked like....she ended up in some other guys room and only figured out it wasn't Scooter when she realized it wasn't the CEO's suite.

We watched out for Scott. At the launch party for the opening of the new plant in Scotland, when it looked like he was getting too cozy with one of the young woman who worked there, I was assigned to go get his sweater back from her (she was acting like it was an emerald cut set with baguettes), load him in a taxi and deliver him back to the hotel. Scott wasn't drunk or foolish...he was just a 35 year old single guy having a good time.

There is a rumor that at one of the Sales boondoggles in Florida, one of the female sales reps, who'd been to the beach that morning, inadvertently dropped her bra out of a rolled-up towel as she got on the plane. Scott found it and, according to Sun-lore, walked up and down the aisle of the plane with the bra claiming that like Prince Charming with the glass slipper, he would marry whomever the bra fit. He had no takers.

Another time, when Crawford was on vacation, I got a call from Japan. Scott had been out with the sales team there and it seemed as though the female sales administrator might have misinterpreted Scott's attention to her. I think she was arranging for him to meet her parents. Could I figure out a way to head this off? This was my first introduction to the real meaning of "high-context culture". I called a couple of my Japanese-American colleagues, all men it turned out, who, after they laughed their butts off for a while, told me they couldn't help. But as they were leaving my office, one of them suggested his Japanese mother might be able to help me. So, my colleague and his mom got on the phone with me and we called the young woman in the sales office in Japan. I ultimately sent flowers to both the woman in Japan and the Japanese mother in the USA and said a small prayer for our CEO.

I have enormous respect and affection for Carol Bartz, but her love life was the bane of the HR existence at Sun. During my tenure she was married to two sales guys (at different times, we were not that Libertarian). This caused organizational issues up the wazoo. She couldn't be married to anyone who was in her organization and she was running more and more of Sun as time went on, so options were getting limited. Her second husband came to work in Operations, but as Carol's career progressed, it looked like he was going to end up serving lunch in the cafeteria in order to stay clear of reporting to her.

I do not know how many love affairs, engagements and marriages occurred between co-workers over the years. It was just too hard to keep the players straight. It was a sexy place, filled with young, smart, passionate people. It was work to not to fall in love with your colleagues. I had, on average, one serious crush per year, and I remain in love with some of those men in my own Irish-Catholic-chaste way.

There were two women who claimed they had "bagged" all 4 founders. I have no idea if it was true.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems Part 2

2010-01-30T07:55:00.003-05:00

When I began at Sun it was booking about $1million in revenue per month. When I left it was booking about $1million in revenue every 90 minutes.

My first day at Sun there were 400 employees already there. My badge number was 586, so a few folks apparently had joined, thought better of it, and left. I get that...Sun was not for the faint-of-heart.

Until I joined Sun, I always felt I was the smartest person in any room I was in (I know it is arrogant, but I have to be honest). I went to Sun Microsystems and that delusion was rapidly shattered. Not feeling like the smartest person in every conversation took some getting used to...but I found it to be both depressing and... thrilling. Sun was the Olympic Training Ground of Smart. You had to be the smartest person in every room you were ever in prior to joining Sun, in order to join Sun. It could take some adjusting for new employees; they would join knowing that in their past lives they were the "A" players; now, at Sun, they were "C's". But, like the Olympic teams once you made the team, even if you were not a medalist, you were part of the team; part of Sun. So, those of us who were not medalists rooted for our Gold, Silver and Bronze earning engineers ( Joy, Bechtelshiem, Gosling, Feiber, Gage, Lee) and following the lead of the brilliant Scooter McNealy, we formed not a cult of personality around our CEO as Apple and Oracle did, but a culture of brilliance. A culture led by a bunch of guys who never wore socks or deodorant.

We worshipped engineers at Sun. We worshipped nerds and geeks long before "The Big Bang Theory" made it cool. Most of these guys did not have any social skills (Bechtolsheim is German...he has lovely manners, so he is a bit of an anomaly) but we knew they were changing our society. When you hired an engineer at Sun you were very aware that you would ultimately be the beneficiary or the victim of whatever he/she invented.

All I ever really understood about what the engineers did at Sun was this: they bent the laws of physics, they shrunk time, they sped up the world in a way that had never been done before; they connected one universe to another in a way that no one had thought of before. I always assumed that if Einstein had had a Sun Workstation, we would have time-travel. I really believed that those engineers could, if they put their minds to it, invent anything....anything. My years at Sun always felt like I was camping-out in Thomas Edison's back-yard. You just never know what would greet you in the morning.

And, those engineers were not the humorless, OCD, Ausbergers syndrome plagued, literal thinking guys you see in the movies. Our engineering team had wit. It was the engineers who assembled a VW Bug in Eric Schmidt's office, floated Eric's office in a pond (with working phone and Internet). floated Andy's Ferrari in a pond, put a water trap in Scooter's office and ran a 40-foot arrow through the building ("all-the-wood-behind-one-arrowhead" was Scooter's favorite phrase at the time).

Of course they could be true pains-in-the-ass, too. My first year at Sun one of the young marketing wonks came to me to complain that he always had to drive when he was with some of his colleagues and their boss, so they could get high. "Pardon me?" I said. "Did you say, get high?" "Yes!" he continued and plaintively asked me to help him figure out a way to not always be the designated driver as one of our senior directors and a bunch of marketing folks toked up on the way to lunch, the airport, the building across the parking lot or...wait for it....a customer visit!

I approached my new boss (yes another new boss), David Leitzke, with this issue and his advice was to discuss it with Carol Bartz...she was the VP of Marketing at the time and the boss of the director who was bringing the dope to the party. Carol was stunned when I told her what was happening. She called the director into her office and confronted her. The director fessed up...a very courageous thing....and then the two of them cried for awhile. I went back to my office and Carol came down to tell me she had sent the director home for a few days while we tried to figure out what to do. This was 1985. There was not the push for "zero-tolerance" that came a bit later. So, Carol, David and I worked out a plan for the director...she was to go to a substance-abuse training program, she would not be eligible for her bonus that year and there would be no promotion to VP, ever. She accepted it and stayed home for a few days. Problem mostly solved. Now we had to let the other partakers know that the "party" was over. I was assigned the task of speaking with each of them and telling them that this was a warning, because the behavior had been led by their boss, they would not be in any trouble, unless it happened again. It seemed pretty fair to me.

Apparently, I was wrong. The next morning 15 or so software engineers lined up outside my office and announced that they were going to sit there and smoke pot all day if anyone got into trouble over the episode. Now, here's the thing, none of the guys outside my office were part of the problem. They had not been part of the original group. I had not spoken to any them. They didn't even like the marketing director who was in trouble. But, they hated the hand of authority more. They had heard through the grapevine that someone was in trouble for smoking pot at work and that was it...a cannabis scented sit in outside my office! Now it was my turn to cry. I was now the "personnel police", something I have worked my whole career not to be. I called David, and he called Carol, they called Crawford Beveridge and Bernie LaCroute and we all ended up in a big conference room with the software guys. In the end ,after a long discussion, the engineers agreed that smoking dope before visiting a customer was not cool. They had misunderstood and thought we were punishing folks for getting high at lunch. That they would not tolerate. So they went back to work, I went back to work, the director went to anti-pot-smoking-school and life went back to normal.

And then George Bush, as the Vice President of the United States, decided to visit Sun.

I was assigned to work with George Grove the facilities director to get ready for Bush to tour the Sun Manufacturing building. It was a stressful time. The Secret Service was all over the place. We had to do background checks on all employees in that building. On the first pass 75 of the 200 or so employees fell out of the background check and had to be told to stay home that day. Including the VP of Operations. So, there was a level of complexity to this visit that we were not really equipped to handle. And then, Crawford Beveridge called me to his office. A group of software engineers had decided to protest Bush's visit to Sun and the use of advanced technology in warfare. Ok, these guys were all Good-Will-Hunting-Wicked-Smart, but they apparently had not realized that most of our revenue came from selling workstations to the three-lettered-agencies of the US government. Who did they think was buying that stuff?

Crawford decided he had to accommodate them. We discussed it with George Grove (former Navy Officer) and the Secret Service. We could set up a roped off area for the engineers to stage their protest, but it had to be 100 yards from the front door of the building. We could all live with that. "Oh, one more thing", the Secret Service guy says as we are about to leave Crawford's office, "I will need to put snipers on the roof of the building across the street, aimed at your engineers." We all stood there silently, I think I actually heard Crawford gulp. "Snipers?" "Yes, otherwise, no visit." So, let's review, the Vice President is coming to visit, almost half the employees from manufacturing cannot come to work that day cause they did something in their youth to make the FBI mad at them, another 200 or so will be protesting this visit and we are going to have military sharpshooters ready to take them out if they cross a line 100 yards from the building. Yep. Crawford said, "Ok".

The lead story that night on the news was not the PR event we had hoped for showing off Sun as the pinnacle of "trickle-down-economics". No, the news led with a shot of 200 scruffy software engineers protesting Reagan, Bush and technology use in warfare at Sun Microsystems, making Sun look like the least gracious and most cool place to work in Silicon Valley. And, if you knew what you were looking for you could just glimpse the rifle barrel over the roof across the street aimed at our brain-trust .

Good times. More tomorrow.

Life in the Boy's Dorm: My Career at Sun Microsystems

2010-01-29T16:05:00.002-05:00

Someone just imed me and asked if I was going to finally "un-bury" some bodies in my blogging about Sun. My answer....absolutely! Stay tuned.