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As I mentioned in my previous post, I was invited to be a panelist at the Stanford Graduate School of Business entitled “Getting to the Top.” I was one of four CEO panelists, fielding questions about leadership, management, career paths and a number of leadership topics.

I wanted to follow-up on my last post and provide more details on the questions and my answers. Here are some of the questions asked during the panel:

“How do the skills required change from a Functional VP role to the CEO role?”
I answered that both roles share common skill sets, but as the CEO, the constituencies have changed: All Employees, Board members, Investors, market makers and Industry leadership are key constituencies that the CEO needs to address. My role is to set the strategic direction for our Company and to provide proof points to those constituencies that a market can be made. We’re trying to make something from almost nothing and the CEO needs to articulate this opportunity to those constituencies.

“What skills/advice had helped you in working with your Board of Directors?
This was an interesting question because frankly, it’s one of the hardest skills to develop for a new CEO. How much information do you share with your Board and how often? My style is to give frequent, transparent, high-level communications throughout the quarter. Establishing a good, trusting working relationship with your Board is essential. A very smart person taught me long ago, “Bad news is not like fine wine, it does not get better with age.” Transparency, defining a plan of action and managing expectations are the most important skills to develop when interacting with your Board of Directors.

[The very smart person that I reference above was my Grandfather, a hard-working, Italian national, who was a Blacksmith with the Italian Cavalry in Naples, Italy. He had a lot of great quotes for me when I was growing up and helped instill in me the work ethic that I employ to this day.]

“Are there any disciplines that you wish you had more experience with now that you’re a CEO?”
I could write for days on this subject, but the short answer is yes. I wish that I had a Law Degree (J.D.) and a CPA Degree. What I’ve learned in business is that having a great product, building a great company and making a market is only half the battle. The other half resides in the details: financing a business for growth requires experience and is complicated. Raising Venture capital is complicated. Structuring deals with customers is complicated. As the CEO, it’s important to understand every functional area, but hire the very best you can in each discipline.

“What Mistakes are most common for a first time CEO? What mistake did you make that you learned the most from?”
There are a lot of common mistakes for a first time CEO and I’ve made them all. The most common mistake, in my view, is not firing fast enough. A bad hire, without taking action, can really set a company back. Interestingly enough, there was violent agreement amongst the other panel members on this subject and my answer. The other common mistake is not taking risks. I call it “failing fast.” I use this term with my team a lot. It simply means that I am willing to provide a safe environment for innovation, but in return, the team commits to “failing fast” on the initiative. This means that the initiative has a very small team (1-3 people), architects the idea, prototypes it and then compares the idea to what our customer base is looking for. If it works, I authorize further development. If not, it “fails fast” and we move on to the next initiative.

“When you are hiring executives, what do you look for?”
This question really caught the attention of the attendees. Since most of them were Stanford GSB graduates or students in the GSB program, I think everyone was expecting a silver bullet answer. As you know, there aren’t any short-cuts when it comes to experience. What I look for in an executive is their ability to be a utility player—experience counts. A track record of success and knowledge/experience in different areas (Sales, Marketing, Finance, Engineering, Product Management, Product Marketing, Channel Development, etc.) is important to me. Once this hurdle is crossed, a good cultural fit is extremely important.

“What is the key to your success in one sentence?”
Work hard, do your homework, hire great people, instill a fierce sense of urgency in everything you undertake, take risks, don’t take yourself too seriously and have a GREAT sense of humor.

Overall, this was a great experience for me. I enjoyed my Panelist colleagues, their unique perspectives and their sense of humor. One thing that is very interesting is that each of us, though we all had disparate backgrounds, share a number of common traits as leaders in our respective companies.