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What Breed Is Your CEO? Randy

Komisar on Leadership and
Management
In the life of a company, every dog has its day. So says
Randy Komisar, a veteran entrepreneur and partner at
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He warns of the classic
mistakes of manager-wannabe-leaders, the perils of too
many bullets and not enough Zen, and why CEOs are like
dogs.

BY KERMIT PATTISON8 MINUTE READ

In the life of a company, every dog has its day. So says Randy Komisar, a
veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has spent the
last 25 years launching technology startups. Komisar is a partner at Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers where he specializes in working with technology
entrepreneurs. “I’m not attracted to them because of the bottom line,” he says.
“I’m attracted to them to them because of the top line–they change they can
make.” His own pedigree: co-founder of Claris Corporation, CEO of LucasArts
Entertainment, CEO of Crystal Dynamics, founding director of TiVo, senior
counsel at Apple Computer, author of two books, and “virtual CEO” to an
array of fledgling companies. In this Q&A, he warns of the classic mistakes of
manager-wannabe-leaders, the perils of too many bullets and not enough
Zen, and why CEOs are like dogs.
Kermit Pattison: What are the classic pitfalls you see entrepreneurs
making over and over again?

Randy Komisar: Mistaking the difference between leadership and

management. A lot of people believe the two are the same and believe that,
because they have been effective or excellent managers, that they’re capable
of leading. While the two ideally come together, the qualities and attributes of
a leader and a manager are not exactly the same.

In your mind, what’s the difference between management and

leadership?

Management is more operationally focused. It’s more of a supervisory role of

setting priorities, allocating resources, and directing the execution. Leadership
is more forward thinking, more about enabling the organization, empowering
individuals, developing the right people, thinking strategically about
opportunities, and driving alignment. Mind you, the line is not black and white.
But it’s a classic mistake that because someone is a good manager that they’ll
necessarily be a good leader.

In early stage projects, the CEO oftentimes is effectively a project manager.

I’ve seen some of those people over-think leadership–literally start to
compound the challenges by thinking too big and not immediate enough.

They start to think, “Oh, I’ve got to be a leader, I’ve got to start reading
books and learning theory?”
Exactly–I need a vision statement, I need to define my culture in five bullet
points. When I started running companies 20-something years ago, I learned
that the first thing to do was to define my culture, which meant sitting down
and writing up a cute little vision statement. What I realized, after being
involved with enough companies, is that these vision statements all look alike,
the words are gobbledygook and they’re not very meaningful.

Now what I usually say is, “We’re going to come up with a culture statement a
year after we formed.” Put it on the calendar. Why after a year? Because then
we can actually see what out culture is–what we don’t like about it and what
we do like about it.

How much of leadership is natural versus a discipline that can be

learned?

The first thing to realize is how many different styles of leadership can be
successful. There isn’t one style of leadership that is innately more successful
than others. There are certain skills sets, which are learnable, that are very
important. You need to be able to communicate. If you can’t communicate
well, you won’t be able to inspire, motivate and attract the resources
necessary for success.

Prioritization is a really important skill. You’ve got to know what’s more

important than the other thing. It’s amazing how many really smart people
can’t prioritize. Only a minority of people can effectively prioritize and focus.

And you need to have effective interpersonal skills. That doesn’t mean you
need to be social and it doesn’t mean you need to be outgoing. But it means
that when you sit down in your office with somebody who’s relying on you for
leadership, you’ve got to be able to emphatically communicate with them
around their challenges, figure out how to help them be more successful and
resolve their conflicts so they can do their job better than they thought they
could.

You say companies need different breeds of leaders at different stages.

How are CEOs like dogs?

I call the first CEO the retriever–the leader who has to go out and assemble
the resources. They have to go out and find the people, the money and the
partners. That person is really great sales person–they have sell the vision
every day. They’re asking people to believe in something that doesn’t exist
and take a substantial leap of faith.
The next is the bloodhound CEO. You got to find out where that value
proposition is going to find paydirt so you can actually build a business around
it. You’ve got something now, but how do you optimize it? You’ve got to sleuth
that out.

The husky is the next one. Now you’ve got a product, a value proposition, and
you’ve figured out your business model. Now you’ve got to pull this sled as it
gets heavier with people, products and customers up a hill, which is
essentially the hill of building a big successful business.

The one dog you never really want pulling your company is the St. Bernard.

The rescue dog.

Right. Because at that point you know you’ve got big trouble.

Even a great leader, if the wrong breed at the wrong time, can be a
mismatch?

Absolutely. There are different talents in the creation of businesses

and running of businesses that need to be taken into consideration. A mistake
often made in the venture investment business is rushing to bring in a big
CEO into what is still a small venture. The mismatch of skills is severe. The
big CEO needs resources, needs a strong sense of direction and momentum,
and is not very effective day-to-day with a bunch of people putting bits and
bytes together. The other mismatch that’s harder to foresee is the small
company with momentum. You say, great, let’s bring in the guy who can grow
it to $100 million and take it public. The problem is that you may face yet
another significant right or left hand turn in your business which that CEO may
be completely unqualified to do.

I liken it to a story a friend of mine told me many years ago about driving
through the Sahara. For three nights the road through the sand was dead
straight to the south. On the third night, there was a right hand turn. At the
base of that turn, it’s full of crashed trucks. I think about that CEO the same
way. If you’re not an agile, venture CEO you are very likely to end up crashing
at that turn.

What episode earlier in your career were formative experiences on

leadership?
At Go Corporation I worked for Bill Campbell, who has absolutely been
formative to me. Bill showed me, first and foremost, that business was worth
doing. At that point, I was a lawyer and I certainly had no inclination to go into
business. To me, business was about buying low and selling high–a fun
game, but not an interesting life. Bill taught me the high art and that what was
interesting are the people you work with, the people you sell to, the
constituents and stakeholders you bring together, the art of being able to
manage them all together to succeed, and to create potential beyond the
obvious. I just found that mesmerizing–that’s why I do what I do today.

If you look at the ranks of CEOs today, who strikes strike you as being
particularly thoughtful about leadership?

When I read interviews with CEOs lately around leadership, I’ve got to tell
you, the stuff that gets published seems awfully conventional. I’m not seeing
any brilliant insights about leadership lately from the leaders who get a
following out there.

I’ve given up on the guru model and think more in the Zen model: things will
change and that’s okay. What we need is a set of constant provocations.
What I like to read are those things that really challenge my assumptions,
authors who are willing to think differently, no matter whether I agree with
them or not, because they at least broaden my own thinking. What I don’t like
reading is the pablum–the 10 habits of great leaders or whatever. Those are
constraining and not very effective for the average person.

Speaking of bad advice, what’s the worst advice about leadership you
ever heard?

One of the most important lessons I learned is that people are not fungible.
I’ve had bosses who said, “We’re not going to pay well, incent, or develop our
people because there’s always somebody to take their place.” The problem
with that logic is, while it might be statistically true, it fundamentally indicates a
culture that is not going to invest in anybody. Nobody is going to become very
effective.

The other piece of leadership that somebody tried to teach me, which I
dismissed, is manage by the numbers–if you manage by the numbers
everything else takes care of itself. Just get people to execute, measure, hold
people accountable, and that’s enough. That’s not enough. Yes, it is important
to instill accountability in organization, it’s important to have good metrics, to
discipline the process, reward people, and withdraw those rewards when
they’re not being effective. But that won’t get you greatness.

So what does get you greatness?

When I am most successful, it’s because the people around me have made
me successful. It comes down to the fact that success is created by a group of
people and not by any single individual. How do you get people to come
together around a goal and objective and be great? It’s establishing a sense
of common purpose. Greatness doesn’t come from a tactical sense of
execution. Greatness comes having a vision that goes beyond yourself and
even beyond the organization.