Mark Templeton (Former Citrix CEO): The Truth About Leadership, Imposter Syndrome & Scaling

Well, I feel very privileged to be here as well, especially in the spirit of paying it forward by talking about learnings, etc., and trying to give them away to other people. You know, frankly, I think it's the most important thing you can do after a long career that's not over, where you accumulate a lot of scars that then become wisdom.

Well, yeah, that's a great question. I would say that I primarily focus on the fact that I spent my career in the technology industry, and it wasn't my first career, it was my second career. My first career was basically all about making wood moldings, believe it or not. And in the process of doing that, I wrote some software to allow us to make them more efficiently. And I got smitten by software by writing that software. I'm not a trained software engineer, but I taught myself what I needed to know to create the software we used to be more efficient. So that's kind of how things started, and that was emblematic of kind of who I am. Very curious, very much anything's possible, very much think about something differently and go for it, something you believe in, and keep the childlike anything's possible sort of mind. And that continues to this moment. And then I'd say also that along the way I've learned that there are a lot of things you accomplish, but there's nothing more in business that you accomplish than to develop great leaders that go on to new and bigger heights. And also you build great followers who know how to be great teammates and functional teammates. And I think that's probably maybe the thing I'm most proud of.

Definitely, I would say the majority of it came from my dad. So my dad started his career as an electrician, ranging from climbing poles, you know, before they had trucks that lifted people up, he literally had to climb them. And then he moved into more commercial electrician work, and then he moved on to be in a manufacturing business. And during those times I worked with him as an apprentice. And as an apprentice, your job is to learn from the journeyman, my dad. And observing my dad, I learned a lot about work ethic. I learned a lot about how you respect the people that you work for and work with.

And then I'd say, just in all of the role modeling that he did, I saw a man who really cared about the quality of his work. He cared about the people that worked with and for him. And I think probably the best short story that I can tell is when I worked at the factory with him. I was on vacation working at the factory. He would in the morning get everyone together. He would assign things, projects and duties to everyone on the team. Wasn't a very big team. It was a small business. And then he would tell everyone what he was assigning to himself. So, you know, he was a player coach. And I also noticed over time that my dad would very typically choose the dirtiest work, you know, not the most interesting. And he was setting an example very much. And so I think I learned being a servant and being there for people, whether those people are employees or shareholders or partners or customers. I think I learned that firsthand from him by osmosis and example.

Absolutely. My dad was tremendously respected and loved. And there are times when I witnessed him giving a little tough love to people, and realized that tough love was coming from the right place and it was coming from here because he cared. Because the easiest thing he could have done was to let that person go, not give them the tough love, the corrective feedback to make them better. He could have let them go and gotten someone else and tried over with a new employee. So, very much a role model when it came to really how you work with people, how you respect people. And frankly, at Citrix, we had respect, we had values, clear values. One of them is or was in my time respect, and the way we defined it was that we accept hierarchy as a necessary evil for managing complexity, but it in no way is a proxy for how we respect people. So just because you have a big title or a medium title or a small title does not define the respect that you are owed and how we actually work together on a day-to-day basis. So that, you know, and again, that came from my dad and in observing him.

Yeah. I think, you know, now you've got my time machine going back. Dad would always, if you had honorable intent and a mistake was made and could have been costly, you know, you made some parts wrong, but your intent was honorable, he would correct and explain it in a way where you wouldn't make that mistake again. And I think that's another thing that a servant leader is about, separating honorable intent from intent that is for the wrong reasons. And then having the love and the care to coach and correct and develop people. And I think the healthiest organizations have that kind of respect for the individual. They do work in a way that is much more organic than what a hierarchical structure would dictate. And that creates the right kind of neural network within an organization to really get things done, to keep people informed in cross-functional ways. There are a lot of technical benefits to that. And then the other thing that I observed, in spite of kind of all of that tough love and showing how he cared, he was loved. My dad was loved, and they would go the extra mile for him. And he knew it. And I'd say one of the things that my dad didn't do that I tend to do is I tend to show my gratitude and talk about it and express it. I think this is somewhat generational. You know, I'm a boomer and my dad's part of the greatest generation, and they were a little bit, and he especially, much more reserved in that sense. But nevertheless, he showed it when it was needed, and people could see it in him and sense it in him.

Yeah. When I coach, when I do my own coaching, especially with men, I tell them they have to get an extra chromosome. Because that extra chromosome in my book is where EQ comes from, where empathy comes from. It's where instinct comes from. And intuition comes from, and trusting all of it comes from. I think as well it's that, and I think that's the hardest part.

Yes. Yeah. You know, you come to that conclusion somewhere along the way, perhaps from scars. You know, you start in a place where your digital brain is really controlling your career, your professional life. You're very analytical, you're very logical, you're really working hard to be able to explain, etc., in a digital sort of way. And you do have this analog brain. It's here, but it's like a little person sitting on your shoulder talking to you about your instinct, your intuition, kind of that analog sort of analysis. And when you're early in your career, you just don't trust it.

And you don't have enough credibility to express it that way. And over time, when you get enough scars and those scars turn into understanding and then wisdom. And then that's when I think you tip the scale to a balance between digital and analog, and I think make better decisions. I think you communicate better and you have a much higher level of confidence in making decisions and you're much better at failing fast and unwinding a bad decision, admitting that you made a bad decision and moving in a new direction.

Yeah. I think over time you get just much bigger picture oriented, longer term, your eyes go up to the horizon. Early in your career, you're very transactional. I've got this task or the tasks that define this role and I want to just really do them well. And again, I think as you move along in your career your eyes raise up and you look more at a bigger picture and realize that you're going to make some mistakes. As I said earlier, if your intent is honorable, you can sleep with your mistakes at night and you can also own up to them, hold yourself accountable to them, and then admit it and move on. And I think that was all part of great leadership and that creates and teaches great followership.

Well, there were 51 employees when I joined the company in June of 1995, and I was employee 52. I joined the company as VP of marketing. And my family, we were living in Los Gatos, California, and I was doing some really interesting work out there at the time. And I was introduced to our CEO, our first CEO, Roger W. Roberts, and he's just a really special and still is a really special human, very special business leader, very special mentor. And so I was really attracted to him first. Secondly, what the company was working on, remote access at the time, I believed was really important to the future of work and computing. And then the third reason I joined was the culture that the company had. So when I went around and interviewed, I had learned by this time in my career that culture trumps everything. I mean someone can offer you a lot of money, a big title, all these things, but if the culture is wrong, none of that matters. Everyone that I interviewed with, when I asked them about the culture of the company, they all said exactly the same words: we like to work hard, play hard, get results, and we like to have fun doing all of those things.

And so I fell in love with all three of those ideas: the leader, the mission, and how they were doing it in a culture that really sounded like it was my kind of culture. So thankfully I have a CEO, my bride of 46 years, Ivonne, who's always lifted me up, been supportive. And once again, she said, 'Okay, we'll pull up stakes and we'll move from California to Florida.' And with children and all of those things, it's complicated. Especially for mom who really is the CEO of the household, making sure we're raising our children well, we have a beautiful home to come home to, a sanctuary so to speak. And so couldn't have done any of the things that I've accomplished without her and being a team. So the funny story is when we went out to take a look at the company, Roger wanted us to come out together, and he made me promise that when we were out for the long weekend of interviews and various things, that before we left I would make a decision. And I agreed to that because I had no problem in saying no. So on the last day, he had a yellow legal pad and he listed out all of the terms of employment. And we went back and forth on a couple of things. And then at the bottom of the yellow legal pad, he put an X and a line, an X and a line, and then a third X and a line. And I said, 'What's that third one for?' He said, 'That's for Ivonne. Go call her down.' We were in a hotel. 'Go call her down because she has to agree to this just as much as you do.' And so she looked it over. He explained things and he said, 'What do you think?' And she turns to look at me, you know, that stare that if I could kill you right now I would but I don't want to do it in front of Roger Roberts. She said, 'I'll sign this on one condition.' And I said, 'Well, what's that?' And she said, 'That if this startup does not work out, we are going to go back to California, Silicon Valley. You're gonna get a real job and you're gonna shut up forever.'

And I said, 'Okay, I agree with that.' I picked up the pen and I signed it and then she signed it.

There you go. I never had to.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I would say it was... the truth is it was in the moment. It was an in-the-moment message.

But it was based upon, you know, what was not only in my heart, in the heart of the company that I was privileged to be given the leadership of. So we had, you know, every company has times where they have trials and tribulations and have to really look at the tea leaves and your belly button all at the same time and decide where are we and how are we going to solve these problems and then make a decision to pivot. And we had one of those moments. It was in the early 2000s. It was about 2003. And in 2003, we had a time when we had to pivot from the idea of remote access to a bigger idea that we called the virtual workplace.

Which was a much bigger idea, and that was to virtualize the entire workplace experience. And so it meant we had to have multiple products. It meant we had to do successful M&A. It meant we had to really see ourselves as a much bigger company in a small body, becoming that company. It meant a lot of things that we were training people to understand. So about 700 of our team were in Fort Lauderdale getting that training, and I was asked to come at the end of the training to talk to everyone. No slides, just a few words and then some Q&A. And so they had been through all of the detail around the transformation that we were responsible for driving the company through. And so when I finished making my comments and I asked if there were any questions, it was very quiet to start with. A hand goes up. A young man who I still admire to this day. He stood up and he said, 'Mark, those are great words and ideas for transforming the company for all the newbies in the room, but what's your message to the old-timers?'

And I thought about it, you know, for a few seconds. I don't know how long it was. It was like this long pause because you could have heard a pin drop in the room because it was kind of like the elephant in the room. And I thought to myself, well, I could say something that would make the old-timers feel good and kind of gloss over it and almost be a politician. Or I could just tell the truth. So I decided to tell the truth and I said, the message around the transformation is the same. We're all in this together. The additional message I would have for old-timers is: you got to believe. You got to believe we can do this. You got to believe that what we're doing is important. You got to believe in your leaders. You got to believe that this is going to be fun and rewarding. And if you don't believe, that is perfectly okay. But if you don't believe, you got to leave. And you got to leave to make room for believers because it's going to take belief to actually accomplish all of this. And I don't know, there was this moment. It was like silence. I don't know how long it was. And then the room exploded and I got my first standing ovation.

And it taught me something so important. Of course, a standing ovation makes you feel really good inside. But I always try to take that and think, now what am I learning from this? And what I learned from it is that authenticity is one of the most important characteristics of leadership. Telling the truth, because people are smart. Your team is smart. And you learn along the way that teams are just waiting for the moment that the leaders understand what's broken and own up to it and do something about it.

Yeah. I think again, maybe I'm overanalyzing it, but I was hired in the image of the culture. And part of that image was a passion for what we were working on and a belief in it. And so, as I said earlier, to a large degree, I was only expressing what we were doing every day, but maybe not saying it in some new words perhaps. And I hope, I don't know this for a fact, but I hope that first of all the old-timers in the room got the message that if they weren't believing, they were in the minority and they had to either get with it or get on with their careers. And so it put a lot of peer pressure on people. And I also think that's a characteristic of strong cultures. Strong cultures have a way of cleansing themselves, pushing the elements that are not consistent with the culture, pushing them out. And I think all of that was at work in that moment. And hopefully there was a lot of learning that took place not only in me but in everyone that was in the room and experienced that moment. But it was, you know, I can tell you it was in November of 2003. So that's how impactful it was.

I think so. I think so.