Q. How do you define your current role now? What are the things you focus on and which aspects have you delegated?
A. Internally, I work on driving the vision. Plus, I regularly meet my key executives to look at the product strategy, specific products and how things are shaping up with respect to our vision. So, I am still very hands-on in that process.
I believe the success of a company depends on the leadership driving the vision. For example, we recently introduced our vector signal transceiver, and I spent a great deal of time in the process of getting it to align with our vision of what we are trying to do with FPGAs, multi-core and ensure that we deliver a truly visionary product in the marketplace.
Q. After talking to folks at NI, I get the sense that you are involved in quite a few projects and you connect with people across the levels. But somehow, it seems that there is a positive spin to it, nobody looks at it as micro managing. How do you manage that?
A. Well, it starts with the vision. So, it’s coaching about the vision and how you’re working and getting folks to understand that. So, you’re not making the decisions, you’re being more of a coach and making sure they know what the vision is all about and what is important in what they are working on.
Q. How do you manage the HR side of business?
A. I do spend quite a bit of time recruiting, all the way to giving the vision presentation to young graduates.
When it comes to recruits, there are two popular techniques: the stone wall and the brick wall. In the stone wall technique, you try to match the skill and talents with the job of the person. So when you put together stones of different sizes and different shapes and they fit, you get this brilliant wall. The other one is where you try to find people who can match the requirements of a position.
I prefer the stone wall technique—when I look at someone, I look at his strengths and talents and then I complement them over time.
Q. How do you complement people over time w.r.t. their talents?
A. Well, I can list some very brilliant people who have communication issues. They may say something in a manner that might confuse their subordinates. So you have to complement them with people who can communicate well. Similarly, you find folks that are really good at implementation but don’t want to work on the big picture view, so you need to find somebody who matches that profile. Overall, you have to keep looking for the right pieces to fit in the puzzle.
Q. Right now, a lot of people pit discipline vs creativity. What is more important to you, as an entrepreneur?
A. We aim to reach a balance between the two—a sort of harmonious relationship between the two attributes. We hire based on both of them. Obviously, there has to be creativity to define a unique opportunity but without discipline it is of no use.
