Corner Office: Wain Kellum of Vocalocity on Winning Over Employees

Q. What were some early lessons for you?

A. My dad was a military officer, which meant we moved every two to three years. So from the time I was born, my mind-set was new and different every three years. That had a profound impact on my belief system and my perspective. I like change, and I think that’s at the core of what makes a good entrepreneur or a good C.E.O. of a fast-growth company, because it does change.

Q. Other lessons?

A. I worked full time while in undergraduate school, which taught me a good work ethic. I worked at a manufacturing company that made big turntable bearings — the kind that are used to let cranes turn. It was a raw, hard-nosed factory environment. I really liked working there. I moved up, and I basically ran quality assurance at the factory from 11 at night until 7 in the morning. That was perfect because it fit well with my school schedule. I learned to get by on not much sleep — I have a lifetime of sleep dysfunction now because I sleep only about four or five hours a night.

Q. Your first management experience after college?

A. I ran a little division inside a big software company, with about 20 people. I was 23.

Q. I assume that everyone was older than you. How did that go?

A. You have a disadvantage going in, because people often don’t want to work for somebody who’s younger, just on principle. On the other hand, every human being has a desire to be part of something bigger than themselves. They have a desire to be led and stretched. One of my belief systems is that true happiness, especially in a work sense, comes from earned achievement. So if you can step in and provide an adequate answer to that need to be led and be part of something bigger, and if you’re open and transparent and honest with people, and they think you genuinely care, they’re often glad to help you and to move forward.

Q. Then you became an entrepreneur.

A. I eventually started a consulting firm that I ran for 10 years before we sold it. That was the only company where I was employee No. 1. Every other company has had a handful of people, and I’ve come in to scale it. Vocalocity is my sixth company.

Q. So what have been some lessons about turnarounds, about culture?

A. There are some core tenets about culture that you have to have to be successful, but then the nuances of it vary dramatically. One tenet is that you have to have a core belief in others and a respect for the individual. It’s about how you listen to each other, because I think that teams have the best ideas, not individuals. If people don’t share that belief, they need to go work somewhere else.

Another one is to embrace diversity, because people from different cultures and different backgrounds communicate in different ways. If you don’t learn how to embrace diversity in a context of respect, oftentimes you lose the best ideas and the best thinking.

The third one is that people have to sign on to the belief that we have to grow — not just growing revenues, but people have to want to grow as individuals. If you buy into growth, then you buy into being open to feedback.

If I’m hired into a company, my first priority is to help people understand that things are going to change quickly. The more people absorb the fact that things have to change, the less likely they are to hang on to the way they used to be. You also really empower people who want to step up to be part of the new thing.

If a company is bringing me in, they have less than optimal performance, which means you always have a people problem. Sometimes people just need more help. They need more focus, they need more structure, they need more feedback on what they’re doing.

Sometimes people are just in the wrong job. Some of those people are in the wrong company. People who want to win care about me weeding out the people who are not contributing their fair share. But they also watch very closely how you let somebody go, and how you treat them.

Q. How do you assess people when you first go into a company?

A. The first thing I do is I have people write a self-assessment and give it to me. That’s a good starting point, because I get at least a baseline about where people are versus where they think they are. It’s shocking how candid some people will be. But those are usually the people who turn out to be some of the very best people because they’re introspective and thoughtful.

Then I go to as many meetings as possible. I’m really interested to see how people interact because, again, I believe that teams always produce better outcomes than individuals. Then you start to identify and bubble up who are the people who are going to be the most helpful in the turnaround, and you include them in the process of making some other decisions.

Q. How do you hire? What questions do you ask?

A. I found the best question that works for me is, “Tell me something you’ve learned that you haven’t had to learn for work.” That question gives you a lot of insight. The number of people who I’ve hired who didn’t have a good answer to that question is very small. People who have an innate curiosity and value growth as an individual always have phenomenal answers to that.

Then I always ask people what they’re good at and what they’re bad at. It’s insightful because not only do you find out what they’re good or bad at, you also find out how introspective they are and how transparent they’re willing to be.

Those two questions will usually take up most of my allotted interview time. It almost turns out to be a little artificial laboratory experience of what it’s going to be like to work with them. You start to interact and talk about something that they’re the expert on that I’m not, and you try to get a feel for why they did something, what did they get from it, and what else they want to do. And it’s disarming, because we’re not talking about work, so they relax and they totally change.