What keeps a leader afloat over time? How does a leader help maintain an engaged employee base, strong partnerships, cohesive teams, happy stakeholders and a thriving organization? We would argue that one key to this type of success is the oh-so-challenging balance of Passion (knowing how to work hard) and Timing (knowing when to work hard).
To continue on our quest to bring different perspectives and stories to the topic of leadership, we sat down with Ron Fritz, Co-Founder and CEO of Tech Soft 3D, a company singularly focused on helping software development teams succeed by leveraging their technology and expertise. The impressive list of Tech Soft 3D customers includes Alibre, Autodesk, Bentley, Fluent, IronCAD, MSCSoftware, PTC, SolidWorks and TransMagic. Headquartered in Bend, OR, the company has four additional global offices in Berkley, France, Japan and the UK.
Moementum: What are you passionate about and where did that passion come from?
Well… the first part is pretty easy. I’m passionate about building a company that’s a really great organization that we can be proud of for serving customers particularly well, being financially successful, and being a great place to work. That is what myself and the rest of the executive team are shooting for.
Where did that come from? I don’t really know. I did always know that I wanted to start my own company. I’m not a builder of other things. I don’t go into the garage with tools and build stuff, but for some reason building an organization is very attractive to me.
Moementum: So, in building your own company, how did (and do) you find balance between working really hard, and taking care of yourself?
Well, I’ve probably gotten better at it over time. When you are passionate about something you pour yourself into it – almost at the exclusion of everything else. But over time, you realize that you are passionate about a lot of things: your family, exercising, getting alone time.
One thing that has really helped me find balance is focusing on the rule of 80-20. The stuff that really matters is actually really only taking about 20% of your time in any of those arenas (family, work, personal). And so, because time is finite, don’t spend any time on stuff that is not furthering one of your goals.
Your inbox is never going to be empty – ever. And if that bothers you then you are doomed to be unhappy. You just have to say, well, I dealt with the important stuff.
Moementum: When you are hiring someone, do you look for passion or do you look for brains?
We definitely put a higher price on passion. Usually if we have gotten them into the interview process they have some amount of experience, which tells us they are smart enough to do the job. They don’t have to be passionate about the same things we are passionate about, but if they demonstrate that they are capable of being passionate about something that’s pretty important.
For example, when we are hiring a software developer we definitely want to see that they are passionate about technology in general or 3D in general because they will be far more productive if they really give a damn about the work, rather than just following instructions.
Aside from having passion or lack of passion, especially here in Bend, we find that people are almost always intentional. They moved here on purpose, had a set of goals and they made it happen. We like that intentionality about people in a work context too – they aren’t just taking any old job. They decided, “this is the kind of place I want to work, this is the kind of work I want to do, and I’m going to go get that.”
I don’t think we really specifically look for balance. We have yet to see somebody who we’ve thought, “oh my gosh this person is going to work way too much!” I will say though, that when we interview people whose energy level is fairly low, that’s kind of off-putting – It’s like, come on, show me something here.
Moementum: In the tech space in general there has been a lot of recent conversation about burnout. Have you seen burnout effect your particular niche in tech and how do you prevent it with your employees?
Yes we have seen that. First of all, we try to prevent burnout by giving plenty of vacation. So we have 4 weeks of vacation, plus we close down between Christmas and New Year, plus every 4th year you get a six-week sabbatical. We really push people to take their time off.
The other thing we try to do is not make fake emergencies. You can have all sorts of B.S. deadlines “I need this because I have this meeting with so and so” but it’s really not that critical. We avoid creating fire alarms all the time so that when it is critical, we can really call on everybody to scramble.
Moementum: Have you seen other companies fall into that trap of working people too hard and burning them out?
Yes definitely and we actually find people from other companies who we are partners or customers with talking to us on the side or applying for jobs with us because they are just getting ground down to a nub. In these particular cases I wouldn’t say that the problem is no one is helping them balance passion with time outside of work; it’s that the economics of it are forcing the company to ask them to do more with less, more with less, more with less, with utter disregard for the human carnage left behind.
Moementum: Nowadays people are trying to run so LEAN that they aren’t actually running LEAN, they are running understaffed.
Exactly. It’s the difference between being fit, and being P.O.W. kind of fit.
Moementum: Do you have any last advice for someone in your position (senior leadership) to help grow a company that fosters that life balance for employees?
Most of the companies I mentioned who struggle with this are publicly traded, or they have outside investment and they have some short-term revenue target they want to get to because they have to sell. It is easier to strike a balance when you are looking very long-term.
We always say that for us, nothing happens in the span of a quarter. So, killing yourself this quarter and then again next quarter, and the next quarter doesn’t really help. In a knowledge-based business the number one thing you have is what comes out of people’s brains, so having people that stick around for a long time is the most important thing. It is far more important than getting the most out of them in a short period of time.
I think one thing people really underestimate is the real effect that burnout or exhaustion – it’s like if you’ve been on a long flight or been awake a really long time, you can feel that your brain is not functioning at full strength. 80 hours at half brain power is not equal to 40 hours at full brain power. The hard stuff requires rest.
The post Balancing Passion with Timing: Ron Fritz of Tech Soft 3D appeared first on Work Smart Blog, Moementum, Un-Consultants.
