Leadership Lessons a Year In

Today marks the one year anniversary of my first day at FTD.  My first interview at FTD was the day after my last day at AMA. From the first conversation, I had a sense this was a story I wanted to be part of. For the first few months, I held my breath waiting for the rose tinted glasses to fall off. How can a job be high-growth, fun and rewarding? You're usually lucky to get one out of three. A year in, that first thought I had about wanting to be a part of the FTD story still holds true. Over the last few months, I have found myself thinking a lot about how much I have learnt from Jay Topper, our Chief Digital Officer - the leader who hired me at FTD.  This is the first of a three part series on some of the most powerful learnings I have picked up from him.

On Culture

1. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier : This one is borrowed from Colin Powell but one I associate with Jay.  Early on in my career, it was a badge of honor to be able to see risks no one else saw and to point them out.  Under Jay, I have learned to always keep the risk at the back of your mind but to lead with optimisim.  Optimism and pessimism tend to be infectious - so the mindset of leaders has massive implications both downstream and upstream.  The positivity that Jay exuded was embraced by each of his directs who then maintained that with each of their teams and cumulatively, this led to us setting some really ambitious goals (like rolling out a completely new browse and shop experience in under 6 months) and beating those goals time and again.  We have had plenty of moments when things got so stressful, it was easy to get frustrated, irritable or angry.  The optimism mandate kept us grounded through all of those moments.  It was a combination of positive reinforcement even in cases where we failed, feeling like you had been entrusted with a very important mission and the leaders had faith that you will succeed and last but not the least, knowing when to let loose and just have fun.  In the words of Winston Churchill, “Success consists of moving from failure to failure without loss of  enthusiasm.”


2. On a team, it is better to win than to be right : I use this one all the time when I speak with potential recruits about how our culture is based on leaving your ego at the door.  Nearly everyone I work with prescribes to the ‘strong opinions loosely held’ philosophy.  Jay encourages us to not shy away from conflict, to sometimes seek it, so that in the end, the decisions we make are truly unbiased, have been pressure tested and made for the right reasons.  I use this principle all the time : every time I feel uncomfortable about being challenged, every time someone brings up a point I didn’t think about, every time I feel upset about not having the best idea or solution.  Active listening, thoughtful debate and gentle compromises have always led to better decisions and after seeing this play out, I will never look at losing an argument in the same way.


3. Speed trumps perfection : When I joined FTD, I knew this was a turnaround business.  Our revenues and stock price were not moving in the right direction and I knew we were going to give it our best to reverse that trend.  At that time, however, I didn’t fully appreciate the Herculean effort that would be.  How at times, it would feel like we were racing against the clock and didn’t have the luxury of waiting till everything was fully baked.  We have released things knowing they were not perfect, we have rolled back features because we quickly realized we hadn’t thought things through, we have made decisions with 70% confidence but we have never stood still waiting for just the right time and the assured probability of success. “Procrastination in the name of reducing risk actually increases risk.” Turnaround companies are like startups where inertia equals sudden death.  Moving fast, failing fast and learning fast are the only strategies to emerge victorious on the other side.

Stay tuned for part 2 - On Hiring.