Blog of Roger Greene, CEO

David Amidon

This week our friend and colleague David Amidon passed away unexpectedly. As a course developer and instructor for our Network Management division, Dave embodied the qualities we all aspire to at Ipswitch. He had a positive outlook, worked hard, cared deeply about doing a good job, was a pleasure to work with and was highly regarded by the customers he trained on our software. Here is some praise he received in course evaluations:

• “Dave, a really great job keeping it fun and keeping everyone focused.”
•  “Dave is patient and there to answer any questions.”
•  “Overall I loved the course and the instructor was great.”
•  “Enjoyed the way Dave taught the class, made it interesting and fun.  Actually looked forward to training.”
•  “Dave is a wonderful teacher!”
•  “The introduction to each component is what I needed most, and David did a great job of explaining each section.”
•  “David was a knowledgeable, helpful and engaging trainer.  He knew his audience and was helpful to all.”

Dave’s boss Mike Ehasz wrote these words about him.

It occurred to me that you may have known Dave by name or by sight, but might not have had the opportunity to know him.

David came to us with extensive network management training experience gained at a Cisco Training Partner and at Lucent Technologies’ wireless and data networking division.  He also developed and taught classes for RSA Security’s log management product, and for Archer Technologies’ governance, risk, and compliance solutions.  David earned his master’s degree in Interactive Telecommunications at New York University and completed graduate Instructional Design courses at UMass Boston.

Dave started off with Ipswitch Network Management Division as a contracted Technical Training Course Developer/Instructor in September of 2011, and was instrumental in developing the WhatsUp Gold and Plugins training curriculum.  He joined Ipswitch as a permanent employee in January 2012, and continued to develop technical product training curriculum and teach classes.  He routinely received rave reviews from students and colleagues alike.  In response to the class evaluation question “What did you find to be most valuable in this course?”, one student simply answered “Dave”.

Dave is survived by his wife, Liz, and will be remembered as an enthusiastic, positive influence on friends and coworkers.  We will miss him.

Ennio Carboni, Ipswitch's Network Management President, Accepting For Ipswitch

The Boston Business Journal just announced the results of their annual survey of the best places to work. Ipswitch ranked third among medium-size businesses in Massachusetts.

Each award we win causes me to reflect on its significance. I think this one is based on many years of learning about people and  management. For most of our 21 years I hired managers with talent, energy and enthusiasm, but not a lot of early stage executive experience. None of us had every done anything quite like starting and growing a company. For me, that was an important part of the appeal. I felt that with smart, motivated people we could figure things out as we went. And the challenge of not having been there before gave us the exhilaration of explorers of new territory.

In recent years, as we have grown to 350 employees, we recognized that our prior approach to management would no longer suffice. We had to devote more time to the art and science of managing. That needed to come in two ways – by hiring expert managers, some of whom had been places we had not, and by developing the managers already on our staff. This need extended throughout our management team. With the breadth and depth of our business, we could no longer rely on executives to understand and manage all aspects of the business. We needed from all managers both specific expertise and leadership, which includes the ability to develop talent.

Because of these efforts, our management has steadily improved. We set clearer goals and give more feedback and coaching. I am proud of our progress and of our managers. I see how much they care and how hard they work to keep getting better.

This is, however, a long process, and there is no finish line. We recognize that the landscape is ever-changing and there is always room for improvement. So while I take the news of this award with pride, it also motivates me to manage better.

At my visit this week to the Supreme Court I was surprised and impressed by how interactive, direct and even blunt the justices were with their questions. They interrupted, cut to the point and dispensed with niceties. They seemed to want to get to the heart of the arguments.

I was struck by how informal and conversational their questions were, despite the potential for imperiousness that might be expected with the setting and the justices’ power. With all written arguments having been submitted in advance, the discussion did not follow a scripted path – no PowerPoint! Each side had just 30 minutes to make their case, yet at the end it seemed like they had enough time to present their core arguments.

If at the highest level of our judicial system we can have a productive discussion of fundamental issues, I think we should find ways to shorten business meetings.

I liked Kate Linebaugh’s article this Wednesday in the Wall St. Journal (“The New GE Way: Go Deep, Not Wide“), in which she explains that GE has shifted their approach to management development. GE used to move managers around a lot to give them wide exposure to different business units. In recent years, as their businesses have become more complex, they increasingly emphasize deeper experience in fewer business units.

I like having our product strategy and operations driven by product and market experts who know customer needs, experts who combine their product and market knowledge with creativity to come up with new solutions that delight customers. That kind of expertise doesn’t come quickly – it is developed over years.

This story in the article drove home the point:

Anders Wold came to GE as part of an acquisition of a Norwegian ultrasound business in 1998 and now runs that business at GE. The unit was a bit of stepchild in GE’s imaging business, which is dominated by expensive products such as magnetic-resonance-imaging machines and CT-scanners.

His strategy was to recruit talent with deep customer relationships and expertise in the field. Employees, he said, needed that depth to be able to listen effectively and translate needs into new technology.

“Customers won’t tell us exactly what they want,” he said. “If you are very generic, if you don’t have that domain understanding, you will develop products that will be average and not very successful.”

“GE as a company can’t just take a generic approach here,” he said. “We have to be viewed as the specialist.” The approach helped the group boost its sales to $2 billion last year from $200 million a decade ago. Now, ultrasound is the biggest division at GE’s health-care unit. Mr. Immelt took notice and has used ultrasound as an example at company meetings. “There has been very clear messaging to give priority and to develop domain knowledge,” said Mr. Wold.

I am proud that each of our three divisions – IT Management, Secure File Transfer and Messaging – has developed and continues to build its own deep expertise.

Jonah Lehrer tells us in his New Yorker article that brainstorming doesn’t work. Although it is common practice, if you gather a group and ask for ideas in an open format with no judgment allowed then you should expect inferior results. Who knew?

So what does work? Allow criticism and debate as ideas are being generated. To produce great innovations, create teams with a mix of people who know and have worked with each other with others they don’t know; teams that are too homogeneous/familiar with each produce less innovation. Nor do teams that don’t know each other at all. Organize the work environment so people have frequent opportunity for informal conversation. “The most creative spaces are those that hurl us together.”

This list from Inc. reminds me of  our many remarkable employees. In particular, these three resonate:

• From #7, “Education, intelligence, talent, and skill are important, but drive is critical. Remarkable employees are driven by something deeper and more personal than just the desire to do a good job.”
• From #6: “They speak when others won’t.”
• From #8: “Some people are rarely satisfied (I mean that in a good way) and are constantly tinkering with something: Reworking a timeline, adjusting a process, tweaking a workflow.”

Last night in Ipswitch’s kitchen Jonathan Burgess taught the first in a series of cooking classes. I like that he started with health trends and explained how they are affected by food, as measured scientifically. He handed out Walter Willet’s Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, a rigorously researched book that gets past the typical conjecture, misinformation and disinformation that is passed off as dietary advice. Willett explains what foods actually help or hurt our health. I think it is hard to argue with his conclusions, unless you happen to be a large company whose profits depend on continuing down the bad path we are on. Jonathan then went on to explain a variety of cooking styles and how to create tasty dishes from simple ingredients. Then he guided us through preparation of a full meal. There is nothing like the reward of good food at the end of a hands on cooking class.

I like this Forbes article on why companies lose their best talent, which reinforces how I feel about what it means to be a good place to work. In particular, I like #2 – finding projects that ignite passion, #8 – the missing vision thing, and #9 – lack of open-mindedness. As with any such list, even in the best companies, success in retaining talent does not last without on-going attention and management. Part of that is recognizing when improvement is needed and then doing something about it. Sometimes this takes longer at Ipswitch than I would like, but I feel good about the arc of our progress.

My cousin Louise is 100 years old. Her birthday was last Sunday.

When her daughter asked her how much activity she wanted on the big day, Louise responded, “Bring it on.” So in the morning, Louise went to church. After lunch, she attended her party, holding court and talking for hours with the many family and friends who had traveled from near and far to celebrate with her. After the party, she headed out to dinner to continue the festivities with a dozen or so guests. I have always known Louise to have remarkable energy, but at her age such a full day gave me pause and caused me to reflect on life. Although some of what made this day possible is undoubtedly genetic good fortune, I think it also comes from Louise’s radiant, positive spirit, and her many close relationships.

So much of our society’s work culture seems to be about using ourselves up to achieve some goal, to sacrifice health today in order to get “there”, wherever that might be. When I think of Louise and of her continuing vitality at 100, it seems she demonstrates that life’s true value comes from our relationships, not from all of the goals that we set or achieve.

I think our work should reinforce this. I want Ipswitch to be a place where we work hard to accomplish ambitious goals, but not at the expense of that which makes us feel alive and fulfilled.  I want our success to come substantially from the relationships we build with each other, from the teamwork that I think provides the most enduring satisfaction we derive from our work. At the same time, I want our success to be enhanced by, and not at the expense of our relationships with friends and family. If we can make this happen – and that is no easy challenge in the always-connected world we increasingly live in – I believe it will lead to greater success.

Thank you Louise, for your example, for your spirit, for your inspiration.

This year we have twice been recognized as a good place to work in Massachusetts, second best (mid-sized) by the Boston Business Journal and fifth-best (small) by the Boston Globe. Both were based on employee surveys.

It is easy to point to certain events to explain the survey results. For example, to celebrate our 20th anniversary we flew the entire company to a nice resort in Florida. But I think this misses the point. The Florida trip was a celebration of all that we have achieved, which was influenced by our work environment. In the absence of all else that we do, are and aspire to be, it wouldn’t be any more than a nice weekend, have a lasting effect, or make for a nice workplace.

Here is why I want us to be considered a good place to work. Because we have interesting, challenging work. Because everyone has clear direction, clear goals, a productive work environment, the right resources, regular feedback and feels that they are paid fairly for the work they do. Because we live our values, emphasizing honesty, integrity, diversity and treating people with respect. And because we attract ambitious people who like being around others who are similarly ambitious. Being simply a comfortable place to work is not our goal. We are here to think big and see what we can accomplish. We need to be a place where top people who like that message want to work.

On balance, I think we do a decent job of meeting these objectives. It helps that we recognize that being a good place to work is not binary, and that having been one does not ensure that we will continue to be. There are always ways to improve. As we grow, we will pay even more attention to our workplace with the goal that each Ipswitch employee will appreciate their role and feel supported in helping us achieve our ambitious goals.