The core principles I look for in leadership
By: Eric Gundersen
As we’re growing our executive team, I sent the entire team notes on how I think about leadership hires and what I expect when I say, “I want a CFO who is a business partner.” I’m sharing this framing publicly now as part of the larger conversation about CFOs and growing tech companies in case this framing is helpful context for anyone else thinking about or engaging in a CFO search.
The best way to calibrate thinking through a critical hire like this is to get exposure to the best. I love the work of both Sarah Friar and Jason Child — two truly brilliant CFOs, people that are builders, that love challenges of high growth, and see the best in people and building teams. They did a panel interview on the job of a CFO at a scaling company that is a great listen. I also leveraged time-tested questions shared by Elad Gil and Reid Hoffman as we’re forging the path forward.
Here’s a look at that note:
Team,
As I embark on growing our executive team, it’s important for you all to know some of the core principles in leadership that I look for in people. This is a magic inflection moment.
We’re hiring key leaders across the company who can both support your teams and business today, and the builders to expand our operations and drive our products and platform to the future. As I look at the key hires we’ve made recently including Lorna Henri (VP, Customer Success) and Margaret Lee (GM, Data Services), patterns of leadership qualities begin to emerge that we are going to apply moving forward.
One of the critical positions I’m hiring is a Chief Financial Officer. Over the holiday break we formally kicked off the search. I’ve brought in the best CFO recruiter, Rhoda Longhenry at True, and am working closely with our current finance team, Head of Technical Talent Acquisition, Ouliana Trofimenko, the Board, and the leadership team to run out the search. As we build the pipeline of candidates, I’ve documented for everyone what to look for, as well as what to select against when we run the CFO search.
A key hire like this is an opportunity to re-emphasize the culture characteristics that leadership candidates must embody. Clearly establishing what we are hiring for in leadership makes a huge difference as we collect the team’s feedback and discuss candidates, even at the BOD level. It will also prevent poor hiring (or, rejection of a great candidate) due to lack of common understanding of what the executive team is looking for.
In addition to the company leadership principals, below I’ve highlighted some of the core principles in leadership that I’m using to guide our hiring. I’ve also shared this list of key principles with the BOD, since they are obviously a key part of hiring a CFO.
Smart and strategic:
- Do they think strategically and holistically about their functions?
- Process focus. Brings lightweight processes or best practices from other companies and is smart about how to craft new ones that work with our service orgs.
- Are they first-principles thinkers? Can they apply their expertise in knowledge in the context of a platform and a huge data asset, team, and product? Or do they just try to implement exactly what they did in their last role?
- Do they think about how their functions can be competitive advantage, and how they should be a service center for other parts of the company
- Raw intelligence. Self-explanatory.
Strong communication:
- Are they able to understand underlying issues and communicate them within their teams? Are they able to communicate to customers, the BOD, and other stakeholders?
- Do they have fast throughput and capacity to track multidimensional conversations?
- Are they strong at communication across the company?
- Do they have “cross-functional empathy” that allows them to work and communicate with other functions they work with closely?
- Can they consistently get others on board with team changes, road maps, and goals?
Owner mentality:
- Do they think like owners?
- Do they take ownership of their functions and make sure they are running smoothly and effectively?
- Do they own problems and solve them? Can they engage in abstraction of their functions so I, as the CEO, can engage on the specifics, but do not need to be involved day-to-day?
The love of the game:
- Do they try to do what is right for the company even if it is not in their own best interest? Do they have the excitement of helping build a business?
- Can they put a collegial, mutually supportive environment in place for the company as a whole and for their function?
- Entrepreneurial mindset. Someone who has both operated at scale and worked in a startup environment (or scaled something from scratch at a larger company like a several hundred million dollar service org).
- Do they listen and know how to debate with peers? Avoid the condescending operating execs who sees us as a “bunch of kids” and who views themselves as part of the “adult supervision.”
- Do they embrace our values and thus will be able to fit our culture? Especially do they understanding how debate does not compromise empathy, and JFDI does not mean stepping on toes?
- Personal rapport and attitude. Should be someone I not only trust, but someone I would feel good about calling at midnight on a Friday — and someone I will be able to help me grow the company and grow personally.
Functional ballers:
- Do they know not only how to run process but how to make a company loved?
- Business and strategic sensibility. A business-savvy, cross-organizational, player will provide input into team management and operations. Will they help us navigate the strategic landscape, understand how to use M&A at scale as a tool? Or do they have deep insights into product pricing or other aspects of running a business?
- Can I learn from them? Bill Gates said that he hired senior execs so that he could learn more from them.
- Do people who they have worked with respect their opinions?
- We look for executives that can be effective leaders at our current scale and scale to what the company will become several years in the future
Build and manage a team AND a company:
- Maturity and lack of ego. A seasoned exec who is willing to suppress their own ego to partner with, execute, and embrace our data and debate driven culture.
- Do they know how to motivate people on their teams and across the company? For example looking at Finance, it touches so many parts of the organization it’s critical there is a high EQ to know how to work with different people.
- Alignment of vision. Do they understand where we want to take the business? Are they aligned with that vision or direction? I want someone who will support it rather than second-guess it.
- Do they love the service org model? Do they know how to influence across teams?
- Can they recruit exceptional people? Can they build a recruiting culture within their teams?
- Has dealt with hypergrowth or rapid growth in the past. Claire Hughes Johnson scaled ops and business teams at Google before doing it at Stripe.
I hope sharing this is not only helpful for everyone to know what I’m looking for in core leadership at the company, but also helpful to all teams who are hiring and thinking through the qualities of colleagues and leaders they want to work with each day. Documenting and establishing processes like this helps to ensure that we have a high hiring success rate. Set the bar high, and don’t move it.
CFOs are business partners was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.