For a concise, readable summary of iTulip concepts developed over the past 16 years and a vision of a challenging next decade and how to navigate it, read Eric Janszen's book "Post Catastrophe Economy".
Join the discussion of today's events with a wide range of professionals with an interest in economics and finance.
Register to join our 50,000 plus member registered community from 78 countries today.
Subscribe to iTulip Select for access to the longest running, deep, accurate, and unvarnished macro economic trends analysis and forecasting available, since 1998.
If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Sabine Heller, chief executive of A Small World, an online travel and lifestyle community, says she has learned the importance of self-education in a career. “If someone has gaps in their knowledge,” she says, “they need to be willing to fill them.” Earl Wilson/The New York Times
This interview with Sabine Heller, chief executive of A Small World, an online travel and lifestyle community, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. When you were growing up, were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things?
A. My early years were spent in an interesting and multicultural way, splitting time pretty evenly between Mumbai, New Delhi and New York. I also grew up in a matriarchy. My grandmother was in the upper house of Parliament in New Delhi, and I was trotted off to the Parliament house frequently. Several generations of my family had been very involved in nation-building in India. It gave me a broad perspective and allowed me to think in possibilities, not problems. And it gave me a great deal of confidence as a woman.
When I started going to school in the States, I went into a shell because of culture shock. It took a little bit of adjustment. But then I decided I wanted to make my own money. When I was 14, I started a flier business for nightclubs. I hired some other kids, took a cut and deployed them all over New York. I had about 25 of my friends working for me at one point.
Q. Were you in leadership roles in college?
A. I went to Davidson, in North Carolina. It had an extraordinary and stringent honor code, and people really stuck by it. I was the head of the council of appeals.
Q. What drew you to that?
A. There was a high degree of accountability with the honor code. But there were these weird and interesting discrepancies in how different violations were treated. I wanted to fight for the person who was possibly looked over. I’ve always been drawn to advocacy in one way or another.
Q.And after college?
A. I worked for a company called UGO Networks, a website. It was the start of the Internet boom. I walked into that job and the C.E.O. asked me if I could write. I said, “Sure.” I started writing our business plan to raise money. It was 71 pages. I really didn’t know what I had agreed to do, but it brought me very close to our management. When we had a management consultant come in, I would do research for him. I would read a bunch of books on a particular topic, distill them and help him with his presentations.
We ultimately had to restructure the company and take it down from about 234 employees to about 38 employees. I was very involved in that, and it taught me the power of restructuring well. It taught me how to keep people motivated, even when you are laying off everyone around them and even cutting their salary. It taught me that vision is really the currency you have as a C.E.O.
Q.Tell me about your leadership style today.
A. You have to manage people based on results and set clear goals. It sounds like a simple thing, but people don’t do that often. When I was 22 and working at UGO, it didn’t matter that I had no experience and it didn’t matter what my process was as long as I hit my goal. It taught me how empowering it is to be treated like that. I am a great manager for people who are strong thinkers and motivated. I empower people. I promote people. I give them a lot of leeway. At the end of the day, I look at results, and that’s it. I feel very strongly that organizations infantilize employees. You should treat them like adults.
Q.Let’s talk about hiring. What are you looking for?
A. I’m much more interested in understanding the way someone thinks than what they have done. What I’ve learned is that people’s résumés often don’t reflect the quality of their work. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they are hiring is to look at a lot of big brands on a résumé and hire a person because they’ve worked at X, Y and Z. People who have worked at big, big brands haven’t had to really create something, because they are riding on the strength of the brand. That can be a trap.
So what I do is have a conversation with them to understand how they problem-solve, to understand how agile their mind is, to understand why they do what they do, to see where they are looking to go, to see how much they understand the larger space of the industry we’re in. Are they willing to self-educate, because self-education has been a really important part of my process. There are people in all sorts of fields who have no idea what they are doing. If someone has gaps in their knowledge, they need to be willing to fill them.
I like to identify people’s strengths and weaknesses right away. I tell them right off the bat that I’m not interested in canned answers. You can ask people how they might act in certain situations. People will figure out a problem to 75 percent and not complete the last 25 percent. That’s where I can usually find the weakness in someone’s thinking. For me, thinking on the spot is the most important thing. I’m interested in people who are smart and can think on their feet.
And I want to know if that person has been able to come up with an idea, build consensus for that idea and follow it through. I want to see if they are a leader in one way or another, because building consensus for something is very important in the world of business. You need someone who can manage laterally and who can get people on board with their ideas. So I always ask for a time in someone’s career when they have come up with an idea and were able to get people on board, and then executed the idea.
Q.What career advice do you give students graduating from college?
A. I would say that the world has changed a lot, and there is more opportunity in off-the-beaten-path careers. You should also take the time to understand industries. If you think you want to be in marketing, take the time to understand that there are 200 or 300 different job functions in the field of marketing. Someone who is doing database marketing at American Express is different from someone who is doing brand marketing at Louis Vuitton. The jobs are so wildly different that the umbrella term ceases to even matter. So talk to people and understand the different roles within a field.
Tweet
