I wanted to share with you a letter that I wrote to Southwest Airlines yesterday. These folks on the front lines are what Seth Godin calls "Linchpins and Artists" and are crucial to a company's success. Read more about what Seth Godin has to say in his awesome book "Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?"

April 23, 2010

Dear Southwest Airlines Senior Management team,

I’d like to share with you an incredible experience that I had today with two, very special Southwest Airlines employees.

After spending the better part of late last night preparing for several important meetings in Southern California today, I awoke early this morning and headed to my favorite coffee shop to pick up my usual, large black coffee to enjoy on my way to the airport before catching my Southwest flight 196 to Burbank.

Since this would be a quick, one-day trip, the only thing that I needed was my suit, my briefcase and a clear head—there was no need to pack anything, other than what I was wearing, since I would be catching the 6:00 pm flight back to San Jose. When I arrived at the airport and finally found a parking space, I gathered my ticket, suit coat, briefcase and coffee and got out of my car, when BAM (!) my coffee cup exploded in my hands (I guess that I was holding it too tightly to make sure that I didn’t drop it—ironic) and all over my nicely pressed white shirt. I’m not talking about a drop or splatter here and there, I’m talking about one half of a large, black Peet’s coffee all over the front and left arm of my shirt, my pants and my shoes. Since I was running late, I had no choice but to think about my ‘Plan B’ on the run so I wouldn’t miss my flight.

Little did I know that Thea and Lisa, on Southwest flight 196 to Burbank, this morning on April 23, 2010, made it their initiative to be my ‘Plan B.’

When I finally boarded and took off my suit coat to expose my embarrassingly stained shirt, both Thea and Lisa were polite and asked what had happened and if they could help in any way. As I retold the unfortunate sequence of events, I told them both that I would deal with it when I landed and hopefully, there would be enough time for me to buy a new shirt before my first meeting. Lisa came back again and asked if I was sure that they couldn’t try to help with the other flight attendants to get the stains removed during the flight so that I would be ready when I landed and not risk being late for my first meeting because I was shopping for a new shirt.

Prior to taking off, Lisa said that if I gave them my shirt, Thea and Lisa would take turns trying to get the stains out of my shirt during the flight. Knowing now that I would be cutting it close by trying to find a new shirt before my meeting, I gave her my shirt. I went back to my seat and looked back every so often to the rear of the plane, watching Lisa and Thea doing their in-flight duties, work on my shirt and help other passengers. When I looked back the last time (as we started our descent), Lisa was holding up my wet (but now clean) shirt below the air ventilation system over an empty seat in the last row, trying to dry the final wet spot before we landed.

Prior to landing, Lisa came to my seat, gave me my shirt back and said, “I hope that your meetings go well today.” That shirt was spot free, dried and looked like it had just been pressed.

I want to thank you for hiring people like Thea and Lisa. Helping me with my coffee stained shirt is not their job. But it just goes to show. Successful companies are made up of special people. And you have two very special people. And those special people are the face of your company to the flying public.

Please thank them both again for me.

Best,
Sam Cece

The social Web might seem like the Wild West, where anything goes, but social media marketing is subject to the same rules and limitations as more traditional marketing programs. You can't just pray that something becomes "viral" -- you need to create some predictability from incentives.

You can read the rest of my article here, in the E-Commerce Times.

Too many weeks have passed since my last blog posting, but I have a good reason this time. Actually, I have two good reasons. First, I am happy to announce that StrongMail just completed another record-breaking quarter of revenue and growth, despite the dreary economic outlook. We’ve signed a number of great brand-name companies throughout the quarter— where we're solving a number of critically important factors, ranging from elevating email marketing capabilities and transforming transactional email programs to maximizing email deliverability and accelerating email system performance.

Additionally, we just completed a major new product that we'll be formally announcing at ad:tech San Francisco. I am incredibly proud of both of these accomplishments and my team.

My reading log for the past three months has been a bit discombobulated -- I’ve been reading mainly magazines and articles about current events, namely the economy and what companies are doing during these times. Of particular interest are articles about what companies are doing from a competitive perspective. Here are some of the things that I’ve gleaned during my sporadic reading.

Pricing or Product enhancements?
One of the issues that I face, like many of my colleagues, is discounting. We are very fortunate to have a valuable product with a very compelling ROI, which enables us to hold our pricing steady. Many of our customers are investing to update their infrastructure during this economic down time to prepare for the eventual economic recovery, thus putting themselves in an even stronger position versus their competition. I believe that product and innovation are key. When your competitors are struggling, enhancing and innovating your solution set is key. Our customers endorsed that direction in our first quarter.

Attack Market Share?
My management team and I believe that this is a perfect time to go after market share, hence the major product news we'll be announcing on April 20. Economic dislocation drives additional opportunities for market share, especially among weaker, less capitalized competitors. We discuss this topic weekly during my management meeting to ensure that we stay focused on our core value proposition, our market position and listening to our customers.

Many of our prospects and customers are seeking us out as an alternative to their current provider. Why? As I mentioned above, enterprises are taking this opportunity to invest in the best-of-the-best technologies and shore up their infrastructure to be better positioned than their competitors when the economy eventually recovers. Enhancing and hardening our solution is where we’ve agreed to invest. We’ve been fortunate to earn the business of our customers—many from an incumbent competitor. As I mentioned in my previous blog posting, playing to your strengths will uncover new opportunities among weaker competitors.

At some point, things will turn around and the companies that invest and deploy technology to better their business, will be better positioned within their markets.

I would like to complete the list of the top 10 common attributes of successful leaders and draw this blog topic to a successful conclusion.

Here is the list (in no particular order), based on our collective experiences:

• Assembling a great team - See my thoughts in previous linked post.
• Fierce Sense of Urgency - Ditto
• Persistence - Ditto
• Vision - Defining, communicating and inspiring a clear, easy-to-understand vision, especially in challenging times.
• Capable - The ability to consistently demonstrate limitless capacity to solve problems.
• Humble - The ability to overcome the instinct of self-preservation, to fly under the radar and to make decisions that are best for the company.
• Trustworthy - The proven ability to empower their team and deliver as expected.
• Decisive - The ability to make timely, often tough decisions, in an unwavering fashion.
• Genuine - The ability to garner respect because of who they are and how they lead, instead of what they’ve done.
• Responsible - The ability to take responsibility for all team decisions that they’ve participated in, regardless of the success or failure of those decisions.

Tom Peters probably phrased it best: “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” I want to thank all of you who have sent me your thoughts via email. I still marvel at the similarity of your recommendations and thoughts on these commonalities.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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.

Part I

I was flattered to be invited to join a panel discussion for 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 was looking forward to this panel for two reasons: First, I was interested in hearing how other CEO panelists would answer the questions and compare them to my experiences and, secondly, I wanted to hear what the Stanford GSB students were thinking about when it came to management and leadership.

After a brief review of our respective backgrounds, moderator Kathy Ullrich kicked-off the discussion with the following question: “What are the most important skills that a CEO needs?” I answered that first and foremost, the ability to assemble a highly skilled and talented, functional team was the key to success. The ability to recruit, assemble, build and coach a world-class executive team were important skills to develop. [I am fortunate enough to have a strong management team of which several members could easily be CEO’s of their own companies. This matters when you’re trying to build new markets and make something from nothing].

Ms. Ullrich then asked me to lead off and answer the following question: “What leadership/management skills has/have been most useful to you to help you move up?” I responded that from a leadership perspective, the ability to remove the fear of self-preservation was important. When a leader makes decisions to ensure his/her survival, then they aren't taking the necessary risks that are required to build a company. From a management perspective, I believe that the ability to set clear direction and goals, as well as instilling a fierce sense of urgency to meet those goals is paramount. Transparent Communications, Presence (to really be there when you’re meeting and listening, not playing with your Blackberry and ignoring cell phone calls during that time) and Coaching are all skills that have helped me along the way.

I will post another entry (or two) with some of the other questions from both the panel and the audience in the coming week.

But now, I have little kids knocking on my door asking for candy--Trick or Treat!

Greetings from London—I’m here with my team, who like to take advantage of their Yankee leader and jam-pack my schedule with prospect, customer and press meetings while I’m in town. I’m very excited to meet with the folks at some of the biggest companies (and Brands) in Europe. I love speaking with customers!

Since I’m a little off on my body clock, I thought that I’d post a quick follow-up entry to my last posting. I’ve received some very good comments/feedback about common traits among successful leaders. So far, I’ve received consistent feedback on two important traits:

Fierce sense of urgency:
Just look to the beginning of the Internet boom for this trait: Marc Andreessen & Jim Clark of Netscape. Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google. Reid Hoffman, first dabbling with SocialNet, then PayPal and now at LinkedIn. How about the leadership at eBay? Amazon.com? Successful leaders instill a fierce sense of urgency in everything they do. Who else would you put into this category?

Persistence:
Apple boss, Steve Jobs is a great example of possessing this successful trait. Mr. Jobs is always on the forefront of trying new things and keeping his critics guessing. The iPod. iTunes. The new iPod. The iPhone. The new iPhone. MacBooks, iTunes subscription service, what next Apple TV? You never know, but one thing that you can be assured of, something is always brewing with Mr. Jobs and his team. Persistence = keeping at it. Pushing hard. Never giving up.

I believe that these two traits surely belong in our coveted Top 10 common traits among successful leaders. Please let me know your thoughts and ideas. We have eight more traits to go!

While I was getting caught up on my business reading during a recent flight, I came across a very interesting article in the June 9, 2008 issue of Fortune Magazine called “Lessons of the Fall,” by Patricia Sellers.

It was fascinating to read the back-story to some of these high-profile CEO ousters and the dynamics of the CEO and their respective Board members. The article covers three well-known CEO’s who lost their jobs involuntarily: David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue, Jim Donald, former CEO of Starbucks and Ed Zander, former CEO of Motorola. First, kudos to Fortune Magazine and writer Patricia Sellers for pulling together this story. How lucky are we to be able to read about these men and learn from their mistakes?

What I found most interesting about this article was the honesty that all three executives displayed when discussing what is surely a highly personal, pivotal and emotional period in their careers. All three executives were at one point “high-fliers”—so getting them into a room to talk about their toughest day and outline their lessons learned presents an amazing educational opportunity for management-types. And, of course, I was intrigued to read lessons from other graduates of the School of Hard Knocks.

Here is the free advice that I was able to extract from these three senior executives:

• Communications: Keep your key constituents updated. If you don’t, they will draw their own conclusions.
• Invest abroad to grow and hedge.
• Get inspired in the field. Prospects really do know what they need – and, they’ll tell you for free. Just ask them.
• Move fast on people, whether it’s hiring or firing. Great talent makes or breaks a company.
• Focus on building long-term value. Focus on the decisions that reinforce your long-term strategy.
• Admit your mistakes. Explain them and move on.
• Ideas are good. But execution is everything.

In addition to the information above, I found some other very nice pieces of free advice sprinkled throughout the article from the likes of Ted Turner, Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey:

• Keep taking risks.


• Don’t let doubters get you down.


• Seek a purpose.


• Visualize the next big win.


• Learn from your mistakes.


• Remember: Failure can be temporary.

I enjoyed the simplicity of the article and the nuggets provided by all three executives. There weren’t any new, ground-breaking management theories outlined in this article, just good-old fashioned, tried–and-true business tenets. Lessons learned from The School of Hard Knocks.

Innovation or iteration? I’m sure that most of you have heard the phrase, “The New, New Thing.” If not, it’s one of those Silicon Valley phrases that is typically asked by an investor, most likely a VC, that is intended to make you stop and think about your company’s next move. Plainly stated, it means, “What new technological (or market, business model, adjacent technology, etc.) innovation is on deck within your company that will leap-frog your competitors and propel your company into the future?” This is a tough question for any CEO.

The problem with forcing “The New, New Thing” onto your organization is that these big leaps are distracting, destabilizing and unrealistic. I’m a fan of iteration—the long, steady march of building something from nothing. Making good on the promise of your original business plan. The sustained, laser-sharp focus of being the best and owning your market segment—by listening to your prospects and customers closely and taking note of their needs, worries and requirements—not only now, but five years from now. Most importantly, by truly understanding your prospects' and customers' businesses—this iterative process builds on your core strengths and technology platform.

We know this first-hand here at StrongMail because our product road map is driven by our customers. They’ve asked us to build the world’s best commercial grade, on-premise solution for marketing and transactional emails.

It’s amazing what happens when you listen to what your customers want.

My team and I continually look at ways to make our company wildly successful. We listen to our customers and prospects. We look hard at our products. We look at adjacent markets. We look at our competitors. We look at alternative selling channels. All in all, we look at a lot of different things and plan accordingly.

It’s easy to get distracted with spreadsheets and numbers, or worse, look for trending information in data points, where none exists. I like to be consistent in my messaging to my team: customer acquisition, successful customer deployment, customer retention, and finally, complete customer satisfaction.

The more customers you win over, the more customers you will attract. We call it ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’—the more you have, the more you’ll get. Of course, we have to earn every customer's business, but our focus on customer success and satisfaction is fierce. Happy customers buy from you again. Happy customers tell other companies that they’re happy. Happy customers are loyal. Happy customers help you build momentum.

We’ve gained a lot of momentum during the past year by focusing on two things: execution and keeping our current customers happy. We’ve used this simple approach to attract high quality companies to become StrongMail customers. That same approach works in attracting high quality employees.