Tom Erickson of Acquia, on the Philosophy of ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’; The chief executive of an open-source software company says he wants to hire people “who are going to jump in and own their work, who are going to risk something, and risk failing.”

Tom Erickson of Acquia, on the Philosophy of ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’

MARCH 29, 2014

By ADAM BRYANT

This interview with Tom Erickson, chief executiveof Acquia, an open-source software company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. Any leadership lessons early in your life?

A. I grew up in a very small town in Wisconsin, a classic Scandinavian town where it wasn’t encouraged to brag. My father was a leader just by virtue of his personality. He ran a store that’s still in the family. He was president of the City Council, president of the school board, and was a leader of the business association. He was one of those quiet leaders who just did his thing.

He had a very different leadership style than me, because he was blessed with a patience that I don’t have. He was able to help people, over an extended period, think about things differently. We were one of the very first schools in our part of the state to receive a computer. My dad had been really active about saying, “We need to be on the forefront of what’s next.” I glued myself to that computer.

What about early management experience?

I got a job out of university with a small company called PSDI. I had eight other job offers, but I chose them because they said, “You’ll be promoted if you work hard.” Within a year, they sent me to Australia to open an office there. I was 23.

I was a technical guy with an engineering background, but I learned how to sell there. That was probably a pivotal point in my career — learning that it wasn’t magic. Coming from a small town, I just assumed that there were certain tracks in life, and that moving across them was hard. But I learned that I could sell.

Any early speed bumps in learning how to manage people?

One notable mistake happened with a very nice guy who really didn’t fit in the company. I told him one day that we didn’t have a position for him anymore. He had been there a while, and he had a lot of friends, and I didn’t let him go in a way that was graceful. That caused a domino effect, and some people left who I didn’t want to leave. That was a really hard lesson. There is a right way to let people go, and there’s a wrong way to let people go.

Another happened when I went into France to build our business there. I thought I had hired the right guy, and he started to explain to me that France was a different market, and that the French are different. I let him persuade me that the kind of people we had to hire were different. The whole thing collapsed a year later, and I had to make tremendous changes.

So what was the memo-to-self lesson?

Building the culture and the way you go to market need to be consistent, no matter where it is. I used that lesson many years later when building the business in Japan. People would try to tell me, “We need to do things differently here.” I’d say, “No, this is how you stay on message, on target.”

Tell me about the culture of your current company.

I think of myself as a team builder more than anything else. At Acquia, I interviewed the first 220 or so people who came on board. We built a core DNA for the company. There’s a saying I learned: “If you let one bozo into the company, they multiply like rabbits,” which is especially true if they’re in a position where they can influence hiring of other people.

When you first became a C.E.O., was the reality of the job any different than you expected?

One thing I learned is that I should have been a C.E.O. a lot sooner. I’m not great at anything, but I’m quite good at everything. I have a good technical understanding, a good understanding of financials and a very good understanding of marketing and sales, because I’ve done all those roles. I realized that being a C.E.O. suited me extremely well.

How do you hire?

I ask the person to tell me what they want to do, and what inspires them. When they have free time, what do they choose to do? How do they work with others in difficult situations? If you’ve had to fire people, how did you do that? How do they think about leadership, and how do they think that’s sustained?

In a fast-growth company like ours, you may come in with only one or two people reporting to you, even though you had 500 or 800 reporting to you in previous jobs. How are you going to deal with that? Your leadership skills and ability to influence people are much more important than your need to have direct lines of authority.

I also use a lot of behavioral interviewing techniques. I do believe that what people did previously is likely to be what they’ll do in the future.

What else do you look for?

One thing I preach a lot about is the importance of “ready, fire, aim.” There are people in the world who are ready-aim-fire types. If I sense from an interview that they are a ready-aim-fire person, I’ll tell them: “I don’t think this is the right place for you. You need to be in a place where precision matters and the ability to get the right answer will be valued. Because those won’t be valued here.”

How do you figure that out?

If it’s a college student, I’ll listen to the way they talk about their studies. How meticulous do they feel they need to be? If they’ve had other jobs, you can get a sense of where they were comfortable and where they weren’t comfortable. Some people are just very set in their ways.

I’m looking for people who are going to jump in and own their work, who are going to risk something, and risk failing. So you can ask questions about how often someone’s failed or how comfortable they are about failure. Then you decide, “Is this going to be a ready-aim-fire person or a ready-fire-aim person?” Because if you don’t accept failure from an emotional perspective, then you’d be a bad fit for us.