Importance of Culture

We created a culture at Data Domain.  We often described it as an environment where individuals breathed pure oxygen.  Some people can’t handle an environment where they were expected to push themselves to new heights and be respectful of the team.  We had core values – Respect, Execution, Client Focus, Integrity, Performance.

Many bailed out on the journey – it should be noted I did not lose a single sales person that was over quota in over 6 years.  I did however push people out…frequently.  Performance was a common reason -- Culture fit was just as important! 

When you have a high performance culture – people tell you who is not performing or who will slow us down.  An example of this…we hired a first line manager in a market where we sub-divided an existing region.  By all accounts this person was well pedigreed…but he did not run the pace of the business nor did he respect his team and what they could create on a daily basis.  I lost one of our good SE’s out of the blue – we asked "why" he was leaving and he would not say…so I started to poke around.  Initially some of the guys did not open up to me as they were new and were afraid of repercussions…finally (mind you this was 2 days) one of my initial hires called me and told me some of the details.  The next day the manager was gone…We kept our sales team – we reinforced a cultural element of open feedback and that all of our people matter. 

How do you beat a boxer who is stronger and bigger than you…you use speed, technique, focus and heart. 

When any member of our team requested something from another member of the company responses were almost immediate.  We were a hundred people who had the impact of a thousand.  Emails flowed freely. My average response time to an email message was about 3 minutes (unless I was at 40k feet flying without internet - but I would catch up within an hour of landing). Speed is king - faster I got an answer back to my team the faster they could close, walk away, learn and go sell more.  

We learned collectively like 1 organism not 100 separate individuals.   The Gorilla’s were bigger than us…but we ran around them.  We may not win everywhere -- but, buy the time a competitor beat us in a single account we had learned, shared, grew and beat them in 5 others.