A Very Special… Perspective on people

A second post in the “very special” series (and I have a 3rd for tomorrow) – you can read the first here.    These are topics of the heart, not topics of tech per se (but absolutely topics that matter).  I’ll get back to the regular tech topics soon :-)

It’s been an interesting couple of days for me on the topic of people – which is really the most important topic.  

• Two days ago I was debating saying something about the Indiana thing on this blog.   I was second guessing my instinct to talk – as a leader, you think about the broad views of people and how to communicate, and sometimes this can paralyze you.  Then bam – EMC pulls out of the Indy Big Data conference.   It crystallized something for me immediately – being a leader means following your principles, and doing it when it ISN’T safe.  I KNEW that the law passed there was wrong.  I shouldn’t have even hesitated.  It’s against EMC’s stance on diversity, and more importantly, it’s against MY view on respecting people and diversity.   I’m glad the company reminded me of the right thing to do.   Now – I absolutely condemn some of the reaction (people threatening violence for example).   The right way to have this debate is to have a debate of ideas.  Heck - I’m sure there are people who feel equally that they are following their principles – and I understand that.   Laws are reflection of the values of “the people” – and it’s really interesting to see this debate playing out loudly and visibly (and quickly), which is the right way to go.  No one is surprised to see Apple stand strongly on the topic, but it’s in a sense more interesting to watch Walmart (a relatively conservative company) loudly push back on the proposed similar law in Arkansas.  Change is funny – it’s slow, and then all at once.
• It has been a 3 day road trip, and whenever I have “dashboard time” with my EMC family in the field, I always ask “how are things – good/bad/ugly – what’s working, what’s not” – and I love hearing things that ARE NOT working.   For the most part, I hear very positive things – but one sales rep said “sometimes its frustrating to see people get roles and you say ‘huh?’”.   In any group of people, there will always be relationships, politics, backroom deals – it’s human nature.  To some degree – it can be a force for good in the form of “loyalty”.  But often it is more than that, and it becomes a force for evil – and can be incredibly corrosive.  When “old boy networks” become the dominant factor in candidate selection, and people get picked for “relationships”, things go downhill fast.
  • I had one negative example today – where someone got selected not SOLEY for their relationships, but it played a disproportionate factor on the choice.   That’s not good – and something I need to fix.   If you’re a hiring manager, look deep in your heart.   If “relationships” is a strong factor – think again.   A good practice to protect from bad choices are interview panels for final selection, particularly in senior roles.
  • I had one very positive example today – where a panel selection picked a surprise candidate who absolutely killed it in their final panel interview.
• Internally, I caught some flack (from a couple friends who are product specialists) after recommending that for a specific customer, a CI strategy that used a lot of VSAN, and smaller amount of ScaleIO would make sense (they were ok with “vSphere lock in”, and they need simplicity more than they need flexibility).   BTW – in the same week, I had another customer who I recommended the inverse (they biased to open, and the ScaleIO performance behaviors and much more flexible deployment models).   It hurt to have friends fight me, but of course, their focus leads to a view that says “ScaleIO always”.   I’m sure there are VMware people who are specialists who would say “VSAN always”.   I’m a grown up, and know we can’t please everyone all the time… still – it hurt.   Then I read this absolutely great post “Remember your technical credibility”.   For what it’s worth - @pandom, thanks for posting it!
• Today I’m at the Simmons Leadership Conference, which is first and foremost a leadership conference, but a conference focused on diversity and women. 

EMC is a long term sponsor (the last 8 years) and David Goulden shared his opening keynote speech (that’s me pointing during his speech) here.  Being physically here is making me think long and hard on a set of topics – and not just gender diversity, but thought diversity in general.  Being a man in this room is lonely – in fact, Kevin Roche and I were among a small set of EMC male leaders attending (and there were even fewer across all 5000-ish people).   All the bathrooms except one lone one are converted to women-only (for purely logistical reasons) :-)  This had an effect on my thinking – this is something like what it must feel like to be at work in a male-dominated ecosystem.   It’s always healthy to put ourselves in other peoples shoes, imagine the world from their perspective.  We  have a long way to go – but I’m girding up for the fight.   It’s very important for people to understand – while the topic of diversity in all forms can be driven for altruistic reasons, there’s also fundamental business drivers here: 1) access to a broader pool of human/thought capital; 2) thought diversity is good for business; 3) anytime one doesn’t adapt to match the market and our customers – it’s ends badly.

• And… this was absolutely KILLER, and the team in EMEA caught me by surprise.  I knew this video was going to be good (they are an awesome team), but I had no idea HOW good.   Put a huge smile on my face – and I would encourage you to all take a look.   To the EMEA team – THANK YOU!

Comments

[Javier]

Thank you Chad, we definitely sometimes need a non technical post like this ...

[Dennis Faucher]

What a great post Chad. Thank you for everything you do for EMC, your customers, the Presales profession and partners like us.

[Kevin Roche]

Chad,
My first post to one of your amazing blogs as I want to elaborate your mention of the Woman's Leadership Conference yesterday. An inspiring and intellectually stimulating day. My take away - there are great, successful, funny, entertaining, talented, woman role models (not only on stage but in the audience) that should challenge us all to "Dare to Compete". It was great to see over 500 EMC (mostly females) attend this stimulating conference. Thanks to #SLG15!
Kevin