Corner Office | Mark B. Templeton: Mark Templeton of Citrix, on the Big Career Choice

Q. You’ve been the chief executive of Citrix since 1999. That’s a long tenure compared to most C.E.O.’s.

A. I didn’t want to be C.E.O. at first. I had no interest, and it was kind of accidental. A lot of people I meet who have the title also have the ambition that goes with it and the desire to be C.E.O. But I’ve never really had that ambition in my life. I think there’s a bit of a lesson in it. Just generally in my career — and I’ve seen it in some team sports I’ve played, like lacrosse and soccer — the guy who always says “give me the ball” is usually the one who probably shouldn’t have the ball. It’s the guy who plays his position and is just doing his job that oftentimes is the guy you should give the ball to.

Q. Why didn’t you have the ambition for the top job?

A. It was probably a combination of two things. Before Citrix, I had a number of start-up experiences. One of them was as C.E.O., and we ran out of money and I had to lay off about 30 people. I had a pretty deep scar from that experience, and I thought, “O.K., that’s not for me.” I decided that focusing on marketing and telling stories around products and understanding customers was really what I was best at.

The other reason was that we were a public company and I didn’t really feel I was qualified to be C.E.O. Again, there’s a lesson here. You try as a manager to never put people in situations where it’s too big a stretch for them, because it often doesn’t work out too well. Usually when people end up there, it’s because the person who really wants the job has overestimated their own capabilities, or management has overimagined someone’s capabilities and puts them there mistakenly. I didn’t feel I was qualified.

And there was a time, a small gap, when I lost the C.E.O job. In the June quarter of 2000, we really missed our expectations, and by then I’d been C.E.O. for six quarters and I was learning a lot, especially about working with the board. I had not kept the board informed about what was going on and some of the struggles we were having, and I was trying to carry all of it myself, which is what green leaders do. After we missed our expectations hugely, the board decided we would do a public search for a replacement, and I was demoted to president and senior executive officer. I deserved that because that’s part of the game, being held accountable.

So we did a public search for a replacement and we had a candidate, but the board decided they didn’t like him. That was about six months in. Then we had a second one, but the board decided that I was actually a viable candidate again. They asked me if I’d be interested in having my title back. It took me about a microsecond to say yes.

Q. So you were able to hit the reset button on the C.E.O. job, but with lessons learned.

A. And what a set of lessons to learn. No. 1: Remember you’re a member of the team, and teams can take on big problems. You don’t have to carry them yourself.  In fact, as C.E.O. you have two teams, your board and management. And No. 2: Communication with the board is really critical to your success because that’s how you can get the kind of advice you need to lead a company through hard times.

Q. What are your thoughts about company culture?

A. You have to make sure you never confuse the hierarchy that you need for managing complexity with the respect that people deserve. Because that’s where a lot of organizations go off track, confusing respect and hierarchy, and thinking that low on hierarchy means low respect; high on the hierarchy means high respect. So hierarchy is a necessary evil of managing complexity, but it in no way has anything to do with respect that is owed an individual.

If you say that to everyone over and over and over, it allows people in the company to send me an e-mail no matter what their title might be or to come up to me at any time and point out something — a great idea or a great problem or to seek advice or whatever.

Q. Other thoughts on culture?

A. The way we define culture over all is how companies get things done. If you have a factory, you get a lot of things done through machinery. Most companies in software get things done through people. So our machinery is people, and to put it in technology terms, people are the hardware and our values are the operating system.