Who can you be?

[muse]

September 18, 2010
Sit Down, Please, and Tell Me How Smart You Are
By ADAM BRYANT

This interview with Kevin O’Connor, chief executive of FindTheBest.com, a comparison search engine, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Mr. O’Connor is also a founder and former C.E.O. of DoubleClick.

Q. Do you remember the first time you were a manager?

A. I was 21. I didn’t know anything about managing, and I was a terrible boss.

Q. Why?

A. Well, I’d never taken a business class in my life, and I was an engineer at a software company. I just figured the way to be a boss was, you tell people what to do, and you have huge expectations for them. If they can’t keep up, then you yell and scream and get them going. I was working hundred-hour weeks, and I expected everyone to work hundred-hour weeks.

Q. Did you get pushback?

A. After the 20th person went into the C.E.O. and said, “This guy’s a real jerk,” I started getting a little sensitive to it.

Q. What changed?

A. I became a wrestling coach, and that totally changed me. That was my M.B.A.

Q. Tell me about that.

A. The local school down the street had a weak wrestling program. So I’d go down there and burn off some steam from work, and thought it’d be good to help kids. It takes real management and leadership skills to get a 17-year-old to do anything.

Q. So what did you learn?

A. A bunch of things. People would show up to practice late. It was lacking discipline, and I was always a big believer in discipline. I found out it was better to get rid of people that didn’t really care and just really focus on the kids that wanted to be there — the really serious, competitive kids. People want to be good. They want to be successful. They need help believing in themselves. Sometimes they just need help to get going.

Q. What were some changes you made to the team?

A. We were so bad that we were getting pinned all the time, and getting pinned is basically when you’re on your back. It’s the ultimate insult in wrestling, and I always told them there are only two reasons to ever get pinned. You’ve had a heart attack and you’re dead, or you’ve snapped your neck. So, it was really starting with, “Look, you’ve got to have pride.” It was starting out small, and we stopped getting pinned.

And I learned that you don’t have to be proficient at 50 kinds of things. You have to be the best at one thing, and it usually comes down to one thing that you’re better at than anyone else. So, for example, takedowns are the fundamental thing in wrestling. You have to have a favorite move, and even if the opponent knows that move is coming, you should be so proficient at it that he can’t stop it.

Q. And coaching the team made you a better manager at work?

A. I started to realize that, again, people want to be successful, and you can’t just berate them. You can’t expect people to read your mind. You need to lead by example, help them be successful and inspire them. You don’t have to be an arrogant jerk to get people to be successful. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

Q. How do you hire? What are you looking for? What questions do you ask?

A. Hiring is the toughest. After you’ve done it a thousand times, and you hire someone who’s bad, you still realize you don’t have it all figured out.

One of the most useful things I learned from electrical engineering was how you figure out what’s in a black box. You throw something called an impulse function at it, and you can figure out what’s inside the black box by what comes out of the box.

So, people are black boxes. You can ask them a question, and they’ll tell you whatever they think you want to hear. So, you’ve got to throw an impulse function at them. I try to keep them off balance. I try to give them a question that feels like a two-by-four between the eyes.

Q. Like?

A. I’ll start off with, “How smart are you?” People get really uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do, and they don’t know how to answer it. They know it’s kind of a trick, and it flusters them. Or I’ll take a look at something that they did, and I’ll tell them it’s a big mistake and then just see how they react. Do they start crying? Do they get in a terrible rage and argue with you, or do they come back and systematically tell you why you’re wrong, or perhaps agree with you on certain areas? So, I’m looking for that.

Q. What do you want to hear in terms of answers to the “smart” question?

A. Ultimately, we’re looking for what I call smart athletes, people who have raw intelligence. Some of the best people I’ve worked with didn’t go to great schools. It’s not necessarily about what skills they have because the most interesting problems are the ones that nobody’s ever faced before — especially in a start-up, but really any company.

And I really love competitive people. I get nervous when someone has never put themselves in a competitive situation. You go through rough patches, and I don’t want people bailing at the first little bit of water coming on ship. I want people who, when the ship’s almost underwater, they figure out how to save it.

Q. What’s a good answer to your question about whether someone is smart?

A. I’m looking for somebody who is a genius in a certain area. You’re not going to find a guy who’s a genius at everything, but you want someone who’s really, really good at something, and knows it. But they also realize they have shortcomings in other areas, and they say: “Look, I’m just not that smart in that area. I could be smart about it, but it just doesn’t interest me. I just have no experience in it, so I’m not going to lie to you.”

I’ll start asking other questions, like how would you rate yourself, 1 to 10, in this particular area? I had one guy give himself 10s in everything. How could you be a 10? Why did you even go to college? How can you improve in anything?

Q. So, are you smart?

A. Yeah.

Q. What kind of smart?

A. That’s good — flip it on me. I’m really, really good at figuring out tough problems. I am sufficiently smart, but I’m not too smart. So my solutions tend to be simple rather than complex — simple is always better. My emotional quotient, my E.Q., is probably pretty low.

Q. Yet, you’re a leader.

A. I’m not an expert in E.Q., but I think my logic and consistency help a lot more in leadership. I’m not particularly emotional about stuff, but I am passionate. I think emotion is what gets C.E.O.’s in trouble. People need to know what to expect from you. When decisions happen, they’re not surprised — it’s what they would expect from you.

I think leadership starts to crumble when it becomes inconsistent. People don’t know which way the wind’s blowing. What’s the C.E.O. going to decide today? They’d rather him or her consistently be a jerk in a certain area as opposed to being inconsistent. Then they know it’s coming.

Q. Are there other two-by-four questions you hit people with?

A. I try to really scare people, which is unusual because companies are usually trying to sell themselves and tell people what a great place it is to work. I’m trying to scare them so they don’t want to take the next step.

I warn people on the phone. I say it’s going to be long hours. Are you passionate about what you do? I mean, is this something you really want to do? We don’t pay that much. We want people who are more interested in equity. And so, people get very scared. Some people get very excited, and those are the ones we’re looking for. I have guys tell me they’ll camp in my backyard. They’ll do whatever it takes.

Q. How else do you scare them?

A. I tell them they’d better be smart because, if they’re not, they’ll be fired. You can fool me that you’re smart in this interview, but I’ll say that you’re not going to fool me three months from now. If you’re smart and you’re competitive, I guarantee you will love it here.

The other thing I’m looking for is passion. I’m really passionate about technology. Someone’s got to want to do this job. It shouldn’t be a job. You shouldn’t have to work 70 hours a week. People will say, oh, you know, I understand it’s a start-up; we’ll work 70 hours a week. I want you doing it because that’s what you would do.

Q. How would you say your leadership style has evolved over time?

A. As you get older, you see more things. You’ve seen things happen over and over again, but you’ve got to catch yourself. So I just always try to be current and to realize that there are new ways of doing things. That’s something that I have to really always focus on, to always be aware of those, even including listening to my kids’ music.

You know, being stupid about something is one thing; being ignorant of things is unforgivable as a leader. So, I’m just trying to stay current and listening to the young folks. Some of my best ideas came from when I was in my 20s, and most great innovations come from people between the ages of 20 and 30. They’re very rarely created by a 50-year-old.