Get Out of My Building

http://steveblank.com/2009/10/08/get-out-of-my-building/

by bhousel • 17 years ago

137 43 17 years ago

cmos2• 17 years ago

damm! Now that's an intense experience. I'm often impressed with leaders that have a level of control over their emotions and intensity with the ability to use them to their advantage, with the right emotion tailored for the right situation.

dschobel2• 17 years ago

Wait, are you talking about the CEO shrieking "get out of my building and get out of my company"?

That's not leadership, that's insanity and unmitigated disdain for his employees.

kungfooey• 17 years ago

I agree. The first time an employer screams at me will also be the last. It is unprofessional and abusive.

dangoldin2• 17 years ago

I didn't get that from the article.

The CEO was trying to prove a point and used drama to get it across. I doubt Steve would have taken it as seriously if the CEO did not do what he did.

In addition, I'm sure that experienced contributed to Steve's development and he's thankful for it.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

And I bet that you would call a Zen master hitting a novice over the head with his staff [and provoking him into an enlightened state] assault and battery. It's obviously a method which can be overused and abused, but used wisely on appropriate subjects, can produce incredible learning, as it did in this case.

rw140• 17 years ago

I suspect the presentation was a reflection of the company culture... from the previous post in the series: "The culture and work ethic of Convergent had earned it the title the Marine Corps of Silicon Valley. (Not until I was older and wiser did I realize that this was not always meant as a compliment.)"

And "My boss, the CEO, had just come from a string of successes at Convergent Technologies..."

edit to link Convergent and Ardent re-edit: can't spell

ajju• 17 years ago

This is a great article, but episode 1 of the Ardent story is a bit scary. How does a startup team go from making a hypertext like software application to supercomputers which require:

"We had to write our parallelizing and vectorizing compilers and build our own high-end graphics boards, and write our own 3d graphics subroutine language – and put in all in a box that could fit in an office. Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.)"

Apparently they did ship (some product(s)) based on their wikipedia article, which is impressive given the odds stacked against them.

_pius3• 17 years ago

Just awesome.

michaelkeenan• 17 years ago

The linked blog post is about the learning experience a guy had when he said something pointless without thinking among a group of people who would prefer to be using their time and energy more productively.

_pius3• 17 years ago

The linked blog post is about a lesson a then out-of-touch marketer learned from an insightful but admittedly abusive boss.

InclinedPlane• 17 years ago

Regardless of the end result here, yelling and intimidation are not healthy forms of communication or modes of professional social interaction. If you can't make your point without yelling then you probably don't have a good point.

Yelling and intimidation shuts down communication. It raises adrenalin which, more often than not, shuts down brains (quite literally). When people feel threatened, by the CEO of their company no less, their bodies activate a flight-or-fight response. Part of this response includes shutting down blood flow to the more rational parts of the brain, leaving the primitive parts with control. The result is that people tend to either enter into highly emotional shouting matches devoid of reason or logic (fight) or they shut down, stay quiet and try to ride out the "attack" (flight). Neither of these are healthy or contribute to worthwhile discussion.

The CEO yelling at employees in a business meeting is as sure a way to shut down rational discourse and profitable interchange of ideas as an entry level employee pulling a gun.

rimantas• 17 years ago

Why would anyone want to discard the end result there? It matters. CEO did not make his point by yelling. The point was made by explanation that followed the yelling. So yes, you are right, yelling did shut down the brains of the author for a while, but wasn't that the idea? To get him out of "know-all" attitude? To reboot the brain and feed a new program into it? Not that I like this way of getting the point across, but in this case it did work.

Estragon• 17 years ago

The main problem is, that's not the end result, only the immediate result. The end result was likely that people were scared to express opinions to the CEO, and a culture of disrespect and hostility developed in the company. Ever heard of Ardent before? Me neither.

diablo_r• 17 years ago

I am curious what was his first sentence when he has to speak to that boss again :)

romanm• 17 years ago

I am inviting everyone to imagine that he is running a company, would he use such an Armageddon weapon, hmm...

Shooter• 17 years ago

At least there was a lesson ;)

My first job out of college was with a high-end security company (biometric systems at Langley, DOD, etc.) I was hired by the National Sales Director. They flew me across the country and put me up in a nice hotel for my first meeting with the CEO and for training on their monitoring systems. They had spent at least a few grand on my trip.

I walked into the first meeting, and the CEO looked up and saw me. "Get that motherf*cker out of my sight!!!! I don't want to see him again until he's fixed!!!" He was apoplectic. A bunch of no-neck guys from Philly and NYC (I was later told some of the investors were mobsters) ushered me out of the room. I was shaken up, because it was my first job and I had no idea what I had done wrong. The guy who hired me told me to go back to the hotel and enjoy the pool...and that he would talk to me later. No indication as to whether I was fired or what was going on. My nerves went to hell while I was waiting for him to call me. And my wife wanted to know why my 'important meetings' had only lasted three minutes.

It turns out the CEO has a huge issue with non-white dress shirts. He thought anything other than plain white was unprofessional and offensive. (I was wearing a blue dress shirt that my wife had bought me as a gift.) He decided he would rather waste several thousand dollars and have me come back another time than see a non-white dress shirt. He was successful enough that most people humored his eccentricities. [I had another boss that would go absolutely nuts if you shut any door in the building. He would almost foam at the mouth. He had a phobia of closed doors because of something that had happened to him in foster care. He fired at least one girl because she kept shutting doors out of habit.]

I think if a boss is going to have frequent asylum-quality meltdowns, it's nice when you can at least learn something beyond "This person is crazy. Be careful." It sounds like Steve learned an important lesson, even if the instructor was unpleasant.

Get Out of My Building

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