by David DeJean
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The culture shock caused by the emergence of the new economy has reached almost mythical proportions. Everything is different, from business models to dress code. So how do you make the transition? If you're working in a big company, what does it feel like to move to a startup? What differences can you expect, and how can you prepare for them?
The biggest difference, says Edward DeArias, is infrastructure.
DeArias should know. In 1999 he left IBM, where he was the director of worldwide channel sales and marketing in IBM's Networking Division, and joined Sitara Networks, Inc., a startup in the Internet hardware space, as vice president for worldwide sales and operations. In nearly 20 years with Big Blue, Ed DeArias held a variety of senior sales management positions in the most corporate of cultures. The IBM standard of white shirts and blue suits has changed a great deal over the years, he says. "It's much more open, more casual. What I've done would have been a much bigger deal 10 years ago."
Still, the culture shock has been real. His transition has been a good one, he says, but clearly going from a big corporation to a New Economy company is not for everyone. His experience offers three predictors of success that you should consider before you trade a Fortune 500 career for one in the New Economy:
- How do you measure your status in the organization?
- How comfortable are you with risk-taking?
- How good are you at improvising on what you know?
1. Organizational Status
One of the biggest changes, says DeArias, has been working without an administrative assistant. "I had a dedicated admin for 15 years at IBM. Now, the last thing I'd want to do is hire an admin. It just doesn't fit the culture." Instead, he practices the self-sufficiency that is part of the New Economy culture. "A lot of the support you might be used to in large organizations, from admins to travel departments, just doesn't exist in small companies, and that's a big difference," he says.
Many of the perks associated with executive positions in large organizations are missing from New Economy companies -- corner window offices, company cars, reserved parking spaces and first-class travel, to name a few. You can't use these things as a measure of your position in the organization, DeArias says. If that's what you've been doing you have to find a new yardstick: "Its not the window office or office politics. It's got to be about your contribution. You'll make sacrifices and not care about who reports to who. That goes by the wayside. In a small company everybody knows what's at stake, and what you're contributing."
2. Risk-Taking
Any new venture involves risks, and if you want to be a leader in a new venture, you've got to be comfortable with taking those risks because you can't avoid them.
Big companies, says DeArias, can insulate you from the risk in what you do. "I made some decisions that made a lot of money for IBM and drove a lot of sales. And I made a few that cost IBM some money. But there was a safety net there, even after the bad decisions. IBM wasn't going to go bankrupt. I could go on and do the job."
But in a small company a bad call can have a significant effect on the bottom line. "The impact of your decisions on the success of the company is huge, and the risk has got to be part of what turns you on."
3. Improvising
In a new company, along with building the company you're building the infrastructure, and that means more than just doing your own typing. Systems and procedures that you might take for granted in a large corporation may not have even been thought of yet in a startup. Which means, that you've got to draw on your experience and then go create it. "You're not told how to do something here. You've got to define it and maybe go hire somebody to help do it," he says.
He offers an example: "When we started shipping our first product, QoSWorks, we lined up thirty accounts to do beta-testing and take the products. But we didn't have an order entry system. So I turned a conference room into the order entry system. We tacked all the memoranda of understanding and paperwork up on the walls. That conference room had been other things before that, and it's been a couple of things since as I figure out what we need."
This flexibility to tackle whatever needs doing, whether there's a system in place for it or not, is an important success factor for DeArias: "I ask interviewees whether they have experience with startups and they think about companies without infrastructure. Not one has ever said it's an issue. But I can tell by they way they answer it that some of them should go home and think it over."
Making the Boxer Shorts Transition
Cultural differences are a mixed bag, DeArias says -- some things about working for a New Economy company are very different, while others are very familiar.
When his new job calls on his IBM experience, he says, "sometimes it feels like stepping into old pair of shoes." His experience in building sales organizations was largely hiring and that's what he says he's doing again, lots of hiring and building a team.
"The biggest difference is the speed with which we make decisions. Even after IBM streamlined a lot of things it still took a lot of time to get decisions made. Here we look at facts and make a decision at Internet speed. It's a lot easier for us to dance than to get all of IBM dancing the same way."
And the New Economy may just be more fun. Take, for instance, boxer shorts. For a recent tradeshow Sitara Networks gave away boxer shorts that bore the company logo. "Everybody wanted them," De Arias says. "They were great. Yet even now, after all the changes it's been through, I can't for the life of me see IBM doing that."
Could the typical IBM executive make the boxer shorts transition?
"I think there are lots of IBM execs who could come in and do this, and lots who couldn't," says DeArias. "Going from a big company to a New Economy company is not for everyone." He speaks respectfully and even nostalgically about IBM. "I love IBM, but there's part of me that says I want to go build a company from the ground up, to be part of a senior executive team that makes this happen, and it was very tough to make that happen at IBM.
"But you've got to really, really want to do it. You've got to have that itch, something missing in your life. It's got to be about doing, building a company from scratch. You're the only one who can decide. You've got to look yourself in the mirror and answer truthfully -- "Can I get up every day and go there?" It can't just be about the money. If that's all that interests you you're going to fail. You've got decide what you're looking for."
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