Nick Mehta: Human First, Vulnerable, Funny | Turn the Lens #01

Hey, how you doing? Jeff Frick here, coming to you from my home office. I haven't done a lot of stuff from the my home office, but will be doing a lot more from the my home office. As we continue to get through the COVID issues, as they continues to rock our world. A lot of news happening yesterday, I wanted to highlight a couple of specific things. And today in this video I wanted to highlight really, some really good news for a friends over at Gainsight, Nick Mehta and the team. Had Nick Mehta on a number of times over the years. Was reported by Alex Konrad over at Forbes that Gainsight was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.1 billion. You can go check that out on Forbes again, it's Alex Konrad. I think according to Crunchbase, Gainsight's raise overall of 150 million, Equity was 50 million for their E round.  So a good exit for them. What I want to do is highlight some special characteristics that I think Nick Mehta has as a leader. I think leadership is just going to get more and more important as we get through this, these trying times that I think Nick has an interesting perspective on a number of things. We covered this in an interview that we did earlier when COVID first started in the March-April timeframe, but I still think it's relevant. I want to review a few of his clips on a few of the top topics. And then of course you're always welcome to go view the whole video. First off I wanted to talk about distributed teams. Gainsight was founded in St.Louis, Nick lives in San Francisco Bay Area and they had a huge development team in Hyderabad. So they had to be distributed from day one, as soon as that got involved. And so really, I think one of the key pieces is asynchronous communications.

And this is something that comes up with Darren Murph, when you're really talking about remote teams. What's most important is people can operate in an asynchronous way. Which means that if I need an answer to a question, I cannot expect to be able just to call somebody and have them give me that answer or text them or email them or Slack them or whatever. But we have to set up systems that support asynchronous communication which means I know where to find most of the information that I need and when I need it. And if I don't, I have an expectation that's reasonable and matches the delivery of the people that I'm expecting to get back to me with that information. So that's a really important piece of the puzzle. So let's take a look at Nick talking about running distributed teams.

>> We are just by happenstance from the beginning, distributed where we have often, our first two offices were St.Louis and Hyderabad, India. So two places you can not get there through one flight. So you have to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously. And then over time we have offices in the Bay Area. We've tons of people that work from home. And so we try to tell people, we don't have a headquarters. The headquarters is wherever you are, wherever you live and wherever you want to work. And so we've always been super flexible about come into the office if you want, don't come in, et cetera. So different than some companies in that respect. And because of that, you know, pre COVID, we always a very video culture, lots of video conferencing, even if we weren't, some people aren't in an office. There's always somebody else dial again. One benefit we got from that is you never had to miss your kids' stuff or your family things. Like, I would go to my daughter's performance in the middle of the day and know I can just dial into a call on the way there.

>> So there was so much going on there with Nick on that clip. And I think the really important things to take away is this concept of the whole human. There's something that we've talked about a new way to work and I've got another blog post coming out. With some interviews that we do with Marcia Conner before as well as Tim McCleary and whole bunch of other people that, you know, this concept that you get the whole person and we're people, we're not rocks or cars or buildings. And, you know, people are complicated and messy and sloppy. They've got families, they've got kids, they've got dogs, pets, animals, all kinds of challenges that are happening in their life. They also have unique perspective and they're also unique individuals. So really embracing the whole individual, supporting the whole individual is an opportunity to do better by your people and the fact that they can eat dinner at home with the family or go see a kid's performance from two o'clock to three o'clock in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, if they can work that into the schedule, really why not?

It's just a better work experience for people. And I think it's a really important piece. Another topic that Nick has a really strong opinion on and I wanted to share some of his thoughts. Was really about those kids. Like I said, and the whole person, and not being upset at the distractions, but embracing the fact that these are your people and these are their lives. So let's take a listen

>> Pre COVID. We always wanted to keep a level playing field. So we actually moved our all hands meetings to be instead of being broadcast from one room, and you're kind of seeing this small screen with all these people, we all just were at computers presenting. And so everyone's on a level playing field, so I thought what GitLab said is great. And then the other point, I think post COVID we've learned is the kids and the dogs aren't distractions, they're part of our life. And so embracing those and saying, "Hey, I see that kid in the background, bring them onto the screen." Even during work meetings, even customer meetings, and I'm seeing like I'm on a customer meeting and the customers bringing their kids onto the screen, right? And it's kind of breaking this artificial wall with between who we are at home and who we are at work, 'cause we're human beings all throughout. At Gainsight we talk about a human first approach to business and we've never been more human as a world than we are right now.

>> That's great. Thank you Nick for that. So another topic that we covered is really great conversation, Nick's a good guy. Is about motivating people, right? One of the things we've seen as COVID has hit and people are working from home is almost this draconian desire to measure people's activity through things like having their camera pop on and see if they're sitting in front of their desk or tracking how many hours are in zoom meetings, et cetera. And really that's not the way to manage a knowledge workers. That's really not what it's all about. And you heard the fact that people are remote and you can't see them, it makes you more complicated. So it really drives this concept that we need to manage people to output. You need to manage people to the work that they're producing and what they're trying to do as opposed to activities. And I think Nick share some thoughts that he is borrowing from Daniel Pink who we've also had on, and a TED talk about what motivates kind of knowledge workers.

What keeps mode, what makes them tick? What makes them work? What do you need to do with your knowledge workers? So let's jump in and hear a little bit about knowledge workers.

>> I think there's an older approach to work, which is more like a factory. You know, it's like, you got to see how many widgets you're processing and you've got to micromanage you got to monitor and inspecting. You know, look, I don't run a factory, so I maybe there are places where that model makes sense. So I'm not going to speak for every leader, but I could say if you're in a world where your job is information, services, software, where the value is the people and their knowledge. Managing them that way is a losing battle. I go back to some folks probably know this famous TED talk by Dan Pink on basically what motivates people. And in these knowledge worker jobs, it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. So autonomy, we have the freedom to do what we want. Mastery, we feel like we're getting better at jobs, and purpose, which is I have a 'why' behind what I do. And I think, take that time you spend on your micromanagement and your zoom, analyzing the zoom sessions and spend it on, inspire your team on the purpose. Spend it on enabling your team in terms of mastery, spend it on taking away barriers so they have more autonomy. I think you'll get way more out of your team.

>> Good stuff, right? Autonomy, you want autonomy or those big three? Autonomy, mastery and purpose. And really, again, some conversations with Darren Murph, from GitLab about leaders enabling their people to do more, which means that rather than managing their task, becoming a roadblock remover, helping them by removing roadblocks. Removing things that get in the way for people to get their job done. And that's really what you need to do as a leader with knowledge workers, and get out of their way and not manage what they're doing every minute of every day. That's really not the answer. Next topic that we covered again. I think it's very timely is all about social. And Nick is a guy who's very active on social, very personal on social, involve his families, his kids.

And I know there's a lot of conversations about that and whether that's good or bad. And I think a lot of senior leaders don't like to do that. So I tie up this next clip. So I asked Nick about being social and is being so personable and really how that draws back to being the leader of this company. So let's hear what Nick had to say about being a social CEO.

>> I'm mean in a group of CEOs that get together on a regular basis and I'm going to be leading a session on social media for CEOs. And honestly, when I was putting it together I was like, "It's 2020, does that still need to exist?" But somehow there is this barrier. And I think it's, I'll talk more about it. But I think the barrier isn't just about social media, it's just about how a CEO wants to present herself or himself into the world. And I think to me, the three things to ask yourself are, first of all, why? Like, why do you want to be on social media? Why do you want to communicate to the outside? You should have a 'why', you should have, hopefully you enjoy it. But also you're connecting from a business perspective with your customers. And for us it's been a huge benefit to really be able to connect with our customers and then kind of, who are you targeting? So I actually think an important thing to think about is it's okay to have a micro-audience.

I don't have millions of Twitter followers like lady Gaga, but within the world of SaaS and customer success and retention I'd probably have a decent number. And that means that I can really connect with my own specific audience. And then, 'what'. So, the 'what' is really interesting 'cause I think there's a lot of non-obvious things about it's not just about your business. So, I can tweet about customer success and retention and I do, but also the 'what' about you as an individual, what's happened to your family? what's happening in the broader industry, in my case of SaaS? what's happening in the world of leading through COVID-19. All the questions you've asked Jeff are in this lens. And then that gets you to the final, which is the 'how'. And I think the 'how' is the most important. It's basically whether you can embrace the idea of being vulnerable. It's, you know, there's a famous TED talk by Brene Brown.

She talks about vulnerability is a greatest superpower for leaders. I think the reason a lot of people have a hard time in social media is they have a hard time really being vulnerable, and just saying, "Look, I'm just a human being, just like all of you. I'm a privileged human being, I have a lot of things that luckily kind of came my way, but I'm just a human being. I get scared, I get anxious, I get lonely, all those things, just like all of you." And really being able to take off your armor of, "Oh, I'm a CEO." And then when you do that, you are more human, right? And it's like, this goes back to this concept of human first business. There's no work persona and home persona. There's just you. And I think it's surprising when you start doing it. And I started maybe seven, eight, nine years ago, it's like, wow, the world wants more human leaders. They want you to just be yourself to talk about your challenges that I had the kids, when we got to 13,000 registrations for pulse everywhere, they pied me in the face.

And the world wants to see CEO's being pied in the face. Probably that one for sure. That's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, CEO's being pied in the face. (Jeff chuckles) But they want to see what you're into outside of work and the pop culture you're into. They want to see the silly things that you're doing. They want you to be human, right? And so I think if you're willing to be vulnerable which takes some bravery, it can really really pay off for your business. But I think also for you as a person.

>> Really interesting take that you can, you know, basically vulnerability as a strength for leaders. And I think we've seen it over and over again. I think it's really valuable lesson. I think it's a challenge for people that are maybe not so confident, maybe not feeling so good about who they are or have the confidence that they could potentially get through having that type of exposure to their their humanity and their... The sensitivity, their... The resilience, not the resilience. They're being scared, being vulnerable. Thank you, that's a word. That they're vulnerable. Using vulnerability as an asset for leadership, terrific stuff. It's really good. And the last thing that we covered in this particular interview, again, a topic within the leadership realm that I think is continually relevant.

In fact, we were referencing an interview and a session that a presentation that Dave Pottruck gave way back in 1995 or six back when I was in business school, at Wharton and Dave Pottruck is a phenomenal public speaker. If you ever had a chance to see him speak he's got a lot of stuff on the internet as well, but Dave's a really good speaker. And when we asked them about why are you such a good speaker? He basically said he practices. So the job of a CEO is all about communication, and communication is so important and so difficult and so underrated as a skill and so under invested in, in terms of practice and really thinking about the impacts of communication and effective communication and what channels of communication go where and what types of information should be where, we'll have a whole nother conversation with Darren Murph about that.

It was really a dictated, a very specific strategy to help people sort through that. But let's listen to Nick talking about leadership and communication as a CEO. Before I let you go, I just want to get your reaction to one more a great leader. And as you can tell, I love great leaders and studying great leaders. Back when I was in business school, we had Dave Pottruck who at that time was the CEO of Schwab come and speak, and he's a phenomenal speaker. If you ever get a chance to see him speak. And at that point in time, Schwab had to reinvent their business with online trading and basically kill their call-in brokerage for online brokerage, and I think that they had a fixed price at 1999, whatever it was. This back in the late 90s. But he was a phenomenal speaker and we finished and he had a dinner, a small dinner with a group of people.

And we just said, "David, you are a phenomenal speaker. Why, how, why are you so good?" And he goes, "You know, it's really pretty simple. As a CEO, I have one job. Is to communicate and I have three constituencies. I kind of have the street and the market, I have my internal people. And then I have my customers in my ecosystem." And so he said, you know, I, and he's a wrestler. He said, "You know, I treated it like wrestling. I hired a coach, I practiced my moves. I did it over and over. And I embraced it as a skill." And it just showed so brightly. And it's such a contrast to people that get wrapped around the axle with their ego or whatever. And I think you're such a shiny example of someone who over communicates, arguably, in terms of getting the message out, getting people on board and letting people know what you're all about, what the priorities are and where you're going. It's such a shear or such a bright contrast to the people that don't do that, that I think is so refreshing. And you do it in a fun and novel and in your own personal way.

>> That's so, that's awesome to hear that story. He's an inspirational leader and I've studied him for sure. And I, but I hadn't heard this specific story and I totally agree with you. Communication is not something you're born with. Honestly I'm not, you might know this Jeff or not. As a kid, I was super lonely. I didn't really have any friends and I was one of those kids who just didn't fit in. So I was not the one they would pick to be on stage in front of thousands of people or anything else. But you just do it over and over again, and you try to get better and you find, I think a big thing is finding your own voice, your own style. I'm not a super formal style. I try to be very human and authentic. And so finding your style that works for you, I agree. It's completely learnable.

>> Yeah, Good stuff again. My time with Dave Pottruck was of my favorite times. The such a phenomenal leader and the other great thing that came out of that whole conversation is about eating your own business before somebody else eat your own business. They were put in a very difficult position in the late 90s as online trading came on board, pricing got crushed, the dial in brokerage, folks were in, we're having lots of issues, E-trade is coming on, I can't remember the timing of, you know, E-Trade and Ameritrade and all these kinds of online brokerage houses that had no fixed infrastructure costs at all or very little. So anyway, great conversation with Nick Mehta. Congratulations to Nick and the team for the investment by Vista Equity at the $1.1 billion valuation. I'm sure they will enjoy having some new sources of capital and accelerate their growth.

And if you want to watch the whole interview, you can check it out on youtube.com/siliconANGLE or you can just Google Nick Mehta, Gainsight the CUBE, and you should see it. It should come up in your video returns. So anyway, just wanted to share that again. Congrats, Nick and the team. Thanks for watching. Will see you next time.