Inspired Execution

Narrator: Inspired Execution hosted by DataStax's Chairman and CEO, Chet Kapoor, follows the journeys of leaders from the world's largest enterprises and fastest-growing startups. 

Narrator: Jim Baum has spent over three decades in technology and is currently on the Board of Directors for several companies. From starting his first business called Mr. Tree to growing into a leadership role at Parametric Technology to taking Netezza through IPO, Jim is a master at helping organizations execute thoughtfully with speed. Today, you'll learn the steps to building a successful team, the biggest mistake companies make with regards to execution, why the best leaders are "uncoachable," and how recording himself on a cassette tape helped Jim overcome his shyness.

Chet Kapoor: Jim, welcome to the podcast, super pumped to have you here.

Jim Baum: Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here, and hopefully, we'll have a great conversation.

Chet: I should start by saying Jim is actually on the board at DataStax, and he was one of the big reasons why I came to DataStax, as well. So we've had a great working relationship over the last two and a half years, and he continues to be somebody that helps guide the company through all the things that we are going through. So thank you on behalf of DataStax and from me.

Jim: Well, thank you, Chet. I'm thrilled to be associated with DataStax. I'm proud to be associated with DataStax, and this journey for me has been several years now. I've never been more excited about the company than I am right now with the progress that's being made. So you guys are doing a phenomenal job.

Chet: So you started at Parametric, Endeca, and Netezza, IPO, IBM. You've done a lot, right? And your reputation is excellent in the industry. Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Jim: I grew up in upstate New York in a pretty small town. Mom was a nurse. Dad was a college professor. It was one of those places where you had to kind of figure out by yourself how to have fun, right? How to sort of do the things you wanted to do, and including how to earn the things you wanted to have. If I wanted a new pair of skis, scuba equipment, or whatever I was doing, I had to find a way myself to figure out how to obtain those things. And so I started out working and pretty focused on working from a pretty young age. And a little-known story, Chet, I'll tell you.

Jim: My first company actually was not Parametric. My first company was a residential tree business in upstate New York called Mr. Tree. Now, just for context in the time, this was the late seventies, early eighties, and some people listening may recall or may have to look up on the internet a TV program called The A-Team. And there was a player, a character on that called Mr. T, right? And so we called our business Mr. Tree. And of course, my last name is Baum, which in German means tree. And our tagline was, "We'll go out on a limb for you." You probably now understand clearly why I have not had a career in marketing.

Jim: Yeah, that was the beginning, but then I went to college. I studied engineering, and went to what was at the time, a little startup company called Parametric Technology in Waltham, Massachusetts. And started there as a corporate application engineer, had no idea what I was doing. I came out with a master's degree in mechanical engineering. This was a CAD company. I thought the technology was cool. A couple of people that I knew worked there, and so I went and joined the company.

Jim: And as I reflect back on that time, I used the phrase, and so many of us who were at that company at the time used the phrase, "I grew up at PTC," because it was a place where we worked hard, we played hard. It was a relatively tough culture, a tough place to be, but we learned a lot. And those of us who started there young earlier in our careers, we were all given opportunities to grow, and take on additional responsibility, and management roles, and leadership roles that quite frankly, we had no business being in, we were not ready for. But it was a survival of the fittest, true meritocracy kind of environment. And so a whole bunch of us just had a great run there, and kind of grew up there.

Jim: And in my case, I went from a corporate application engineer with less than a hundred employees and $9 million in revenue when I started to build the product management function, having been the company's first product manager, running the engineering function, running the marketing function, running a business unit called the Windshield Business Unit for my last three years there, running strategy for the company. I had all of these remarkable opportunities and exited the company as a $16b working for the CEO.

Jim: So it was just a really terrific opportunity and place to grow up. And in 2000, things were changing pretty dramatically, and the company was starting to face some hardship. And so I kind of realized at that point that I had a lot more fun at PTC when it was 80 people than when it was 5,000 people. And I wanted to go back, and I wanted to start in an earlier stage company, and kind of take what I had learned, and apply it, and that was Endeca. And so I came out of PTC, and I went to Endeca, and I partnered with the founder of Endeca, Steve Papa, and we built the team there together. We built the go-to-market function. We figured out what the company was going to be when it grew up, so to speak, and just had a wonderful run there.

Jim: And after five years, then Endeca left and went to sort of a big data company, as we called it at the time, and that was Netezza. I joined that company and partnered with the founder, a gentleman named Jit Saxena, who was a serial entrepreneur and was looking for a succession plan, and I was his succession plan. And we were able to continue to grow the company from about $30 million to about $300 million, and we took it public in 2007, and ultimately, it was acquired by IBM. And then after a year at IBM, I've sort of been more in project mode. I did a project at Dyn, where I was the interim CEO for that company, and we recruited a new CEO, and ultimately that company became acquired by Oracle.

Jim: And then I've sat on a number of different boards, and I continue to sit on a number of different boards, all kind-of growth-stage technology companies, many of them earlier stage than DataStax, a few later stage than DataStax, but that's really been kind of the journey. And along the way, have been married to my wonderful wife for nearly 30 years, and we have two phenomenal children—one who lives in New York City, and one who lives in Boulder, Colorado—and we couldn't be more proud of them.

Chet: What has been the biggest obstacle personally you had to overcome?

Jim: Chet, you have known me now for a couple of years, and so this may surprise you, but one of the biggest obstacles I had to personally overcome as a young professional was I was very shy. I was very uncomfortable speaking in front of groups of people.

Chet: I don't believe you.

Jim: It's true. This is true.

Chet: I don't believe you. I do not believe you.

Jim: You can check the records. Let me tell you how I got over it. So I was at PTC, and I sort of had no choice but to get over it. I was in a product management role, and I got put up in front of our user community. We used to have big user conferences every year. And I got put up in front of one of our groups, and I had to give a presentation, and I was scared to death. I mean, I really had no confidence that I could pull this off, and I worked, and I worked, and I worked on what I was going to say, and how I was going to say it.

Jim: And then ultimately, what I did, and I still, I see this in my mind's eye clearly. It's one of those events in your life that it's just clear in your mind when you think back on it. I was standing in my kitchen at the first house my wife and I owned together in Massachusetts. You remember those old telephone answering devices that would hang on the wall, and they had one of those little miniature cassette tapes in them?

Chet: Yeah, yeah.

Jim: I'm sure 80% of the people listening to this podcast have no idea what I'm talking about, right? But these things used to have a tape in them, and you could record both your greeting, and you could record the messages of people who would call you on the phone, and you missed the call, right? And you go back, and you listen to your messages on the tape. Well, I used that little recorder for hours on end to give my presentation. Right? I would give my presentation to the wall, and then I would listen to it. "Oh, that was terrible. That was terrible."

Jim: And I would give it again. "Oh, that was awful. I've got to fix this, and I've got to fix that." And I would listen to it again, and that was how I prepared for my first sort of big conference public presentation. And honestly, that's what broke me. It broke me of my shyness and allowed me to kind of come out of my shell, which as you no doubt have observed, I have done. Yeah.

Chet: You've taken what you thought was a weakness and made it a superpower. The next question is hard for me personally. What is one of your proudest accomplishments? And I keep thinking about what you, and others, and myself have all done, and our accomplishments actually I think go in timeframes. When early in your career, Mr. Tree could have been your biggest accomplishment, right? Because you started a business on your own with a bunch of people you knew and was somewhat successful. How would you answer that? What was one of your proudest professional accomplishments?

Jim: The team that we built at Endeca. Endeca was a real startup. There were maybe 20 people there when I arrived and partnered with Steve in that company, and I had responsibility for building sort of almost all of the functions in the company, right? There was engineering was there, and there was an initial product there, and there was a remarkable, talented, brilliant, fun technology team that was established, and then the beginnings of some go-to-market there, but we really had to build all the rest. And it's an incredible journey to try to put together the best team you can possibly imagine. What we did at Endeca, I'm really proud of.

Jim: We surrounded ourselves with people who were better than us, smarter than us, more capable than us in many respects. We brought in people who were motivated, who were net positive contributors to our culture, who were net positive contributors to the intellectual capital of the company. We had a culture that was fun-loving yet serious, execution-oriented, committed to building a great company. It was just a wonderful experience, and as I think back on it, and I think back on the people that we were able to attract, and recruit, and hire, and retain in that company, I'm really proud of what we did.

Chet: You've now been in the data space for a while. The way I think about it, enterprises have been going through a digital transformation for a long time. And the first part, the first leg, was all about mobile apps, right? And going and doing that. The next part was cloud. And those two continue, right? The cloud journey continues for many enterprises. But then the third one, which is what some CIOs would say the final mile, it's all about data.

Chet: You've been doing data for a while in the analytics and the data space, and you've lived it, Endeca, Netezza, and now you're looking at it from you getting a chance to look at so many different companies, right? Number one, what are your observations generally about data and how enterprises are adopting it? And secondly, if you were sitting with a CIO today, what would be your advice to them?

Jim: You and I both, we've been in this business for quite a while, and for me, and I know for you, it goes back sort of well before mobile apps. Parametric Technology, PTC, we were really a product of the migration off of the mainframe. We were minicomputer and desktop computing base before really the desktop PC. So I raise that point because we've lived through a number of fundamental platform shifts, right? And each of those platform shifts has created opportunity, and it's built companies like DataStax, and Netezza, and many others, but it also, I think, increases our capability. Right?

Jim: And sort of what problems can we solve with computing? Data, and data analytics, and the use of data, we've been doing it forever. Right? And certainly the retail industry, they were probably the pioneers in the use of data for analytics, and now it permeates everything that we do. I kind of think about it this way, Chet. If we migrated now from on-prem client-server type technologies to a cloud architecture. And that cloud architecture has allowed us to deploy mobile apps, and mobile apps have driven a need to be able to deploy data. And as we look out further, and we continue to expand technologies in AI and machine learning, and we see the really amazing, frankly, and exciting things that can be done as we add additional sensors to the global network through IoT. We have more and more data streaming in all the time.

Jim: To me, there's this real drive now kind of back to the edge. Right? And if you think about what's happening now, distributed edge computing, that is somehow all coordinated through both networking and the network layer through compute, and the application layer, and through data, and the distribution of data to the edge. It's opening up additional new opportunities. Right? And you think about there are so many organizations whose data lives at the edge, yet whose computing is quite centralized. Think about, for example, an organization like Starbucks, right? All their data, all their transactions are occurring very, very much at the edge. And for them to set up a new store, or take down a store, and move a store, they really do need to be able to sort of deploy effectively at the edge and have it integrate with the enterprise.

Jim: And so I think there's a new frontier that's opening up here that I'm really excited about. I'm really excited about it in the context of DataStax, and I'm really excited about it in the context of the general direction that enterprise computing is taking.

Chet: There are a lot of people starting to think hard about it, but no one has actually cracked the code on how to do it yet. Right? And that's the interesting part. And doing it, like you've said, at scale on the edge is hard because you almost have to do the entire stack. And the stack probably is different than what you actually have in the cloud, as an example, not on the edge. I love that. I see that all the time, and I'm super excited about how we and others figure it out together because I don't think it's going to be one company just doing it.

Jim: Yeah. And doing all of that in a secure environment. Right? Because almost by definition distributing, computing, networking, and data to the edge creates security risks that we haven't really even thought of yet. Right? And so there's an awful lot of work to be done. And for me, it's encouraging in sort of the continued momentum and direction of our industry, right? Of this world of enterprise computing that we've lived in for so long. It's not yet mature, right? We're not there yet.

Chet: One of the things that we do at DataStax, as you're well aware, is "Inspired Leadership Principles" that everybody has to go through. And one of the principles is "execute thoughtfully with speed." What do you think is the biggest mistake—as somebody who has done this before—what's the biggest mistake you see companies making with regards to thoughtful execution with speed?

Jim: People sometimes confuse activity with execution, right? And then they're very different. And if you measure activity, you get activity. And if you measure outputs and outcomes, you get execution. So I do think one of the things that people are not as disciplined enough about as they could be, and probably should be, is this discipline associated with execution, and being able to execute within a framework, right? And a framework that everyone understands. I think having that framework is a way for people to understand what activities are needed in order to produce execution, right? And without that, it can often be somewhat chaotic, right?

Jim: And so early on in a company's life cycle, it's very chaotic, right? And so much of it is about finding the way, figuring out the product, figuring out product-market fit, figuring out product-channel fit, figuring out how customers buy, why they buy, what value you create for them, all those things. And there's so much that needs to happen. It's almost by definition quite chaotic. But as a company scales some and matures, it no longer needs to be as chaotic, and there needs to be some framework within which execution occurs. And I think to give an example of that, as we already discussed, I kind of grew up at PTC, which is the place in the industry where one of the more popular sales frameworks was developed called MEDDIC. And whether companies use MEDDIC or not is not relevant to this point. The point is there's a framework there, right?

Jim: And with that framework, there are very measurable states. There are very measurable outcomes, and people can be held accountable to those. And people who are executing within this framework know what they need to do. Right? They know the definition of success. That discipline within the context of that framework produces some really remarkable results in terms of, in this case, sales process efficiency. And so I just use that example, but I see all too often, there is no framework, and there is no discipline around a framework, and I think that's the mistake people make. They confuse activity with execution.

Chet: You may have heard this, but definitely a lot of people inside DataStax hear it a lot, which is, "Activities don't pay for college educations."

Jim: Yeah. That's right.

Chet: Or the other one that I use with some of our sales leaders is, "Can I cash that? Can I take it to a bank?" Because unless you have a purchase order, or you have a contract, you cannot actually cash it.

Jim: Right. That's right.

Chet: And so it's an interesting... Because everything else leads to that, but you have to get there.

Jim: That's right.

Chet: On the personal side, who inspires you?

Jim: I think about that in the context of professional inspiration. I think about that in the context of personal, artistic, intellectual inspiration. I get inspired pretty easily. I had an opportunity recently to spend some really great quality time with a famous blues musician named Joe Louis Walker. And Joe, he's a legend. He's played with all the greats, right? And I had such a great time with him, and I find him inspiring. His story to me is inspiring.

Jim: You inspire me, Chet. I mean, I see the passion, and the enthusiasm, and the energy, and the intellect, and the skillset that you put to work to build DataStax. That's inspiring, right? It really is. It's a really hard answer. There's no sort of one or two-person answer for me in that one. I find myself inspired by somebody on nearly a daily basis.

Chet: That's very unique. For all the guests we've had, that is the most unique answer we've had. That's really good. Thank you. What advice would you give a younger version of yourself?

Jim: There is no doubt that I made choices in my career that were at the expense of my personal life. We like to use the term work-life balance, right? But there's no doubt that certainly during the PTC years, the Endeca years, the Netezza years, I was always at work. Right? And whether I was physically in the office, or physically commuting to the office, mentally I was always at work. In fact, I learned probably when I was in my late twenties that, or maybe 30 even, early thirties... I learned that the only way I could really get away from work on a vacation was just to take two weeks off and not one week. Because if I took one week, I never left. And if I took two, by the middle of the second week, I kind of chilled for a little while, and then I went back to work.

Jim: And so I think the message out of that is I do think the balance is quite important, and I'm lucky. I feel very blessed and fortunate to have the family that I have, the relationship I have with my children, and my wife, which I cherish. But it was not easy. I think I missed the balance bus, and I think if I were to do it again, I'd find a way to do a better job there.

Chet: I actually think, Jim, you've done great. The thing about balance, I always reflect on this, because I think the struggle with balance is what it's about because I don't think anybody achieves it. Right? Because it's you're always trying to go back and forth on how much time I'm spending here versus how much time I'm spending there. So I've come to peace with the fact that the struggle is the reward, or it is the struggling that gets you there.

Jim: I think you're right. It is the struggle, and you reflect back on the struggle, and you have a sense of accomplishment for having survived it. Right? For having gotten through it, and achieved something as a result of it. So it is definitely part of the journey.

Chet: Rapid-fire quick responses. You are a certified pilot. What's your favorite place to fly?

Jim: My favorite places to fly are the little grass airports around Northern Vermont, where I fly in my Cub. So I have an airplane that goes pretty high and pretty fast, and I love it. It's wonderful, and it gets me from A to B, and then I have this little airplane that goes really low and really slow, and it's just more fun than you could possibly imagine, and we bounce in and out of the grass strips all over Northern Vermont, and it's a tremendous amount of fun.

Chet: And these are not backyards of people, right? They're actually airports?

Jim: Yeah, mostly.

Chet: If you had a dinner party with any three people, dead or alive, who would be on your invite list?

Jim: Probably the first person on the list would be my grandfather, my father's father. I never knew him. He died in an American Airlines Ford Trimotor plane crash right around 1930. It was one of the early plane crashes. And he was an entrepreneur. He ran a construction business, and he was traveling from Tennessee to, I think, Chicago. I don't remember exactly, but the plane crashed, and everyone on board was killed.

Jim: My father was seven years old, and so my father grew up without him, and I never had a chance to know him, and my dad and I chose very different paths in life. Right? He is a Ph.D. in chemistry and worked as a college professor his whole career. And I sort of went a different way, and studied engineering, and went into this crazy startup world that I've lived in for all these years. I think it would be really cool to meet that man and understand how he thought about the world.

Jim: Another one—and I'm sure this is an answer you've not gotten before—I would actually like to meet Charles Steinmetz. Charles Steinmetz was... Some people refer to him as the father of electricity. He was in upstate New York. He had some affiliation early on with General Electric, as I understand it, but he was a mathematician and electrical engineer, and he really fostered the development of alternating current. Right? Which really is the foundation of the whole electrical grid today.

Jim: And the reason I'm fascinated by him is that when I was in either fifth or sixth grade, I don't remember which it was, but I received an award along with a couple of other kids in my class, and it was called the Steinmetz Award. And it was for we had some aptitude in math and science, and we were recognized for that. I've always been sort of interested in, well, who was this guy? And what did he do? And how did he think and whatnot? So I think I'd have him on my list.

Jim: I'd love to know how Charles Lindbergh planned the flight across the Atlantic. Right? I would love to have that conversation with him. I think that would be really cool. And so I think those guys would probably be on my list. There are others that I'm fascinated by. Most of them are kind of science and technology-related. Nikola Tesla, really interesting guy. Wozniak I think, would be a lot of fun to talk to about the early days of personal computing. Same with Gates.

Jim: I think that would be very interesting to have those conversations, only because I have within my lifetime, I have the perspective of this entire journey. Right? And so it would be really interesting to talk to people who had insight back at the beginning of the journey that really sort of launched so much of what we're doing today. But I think I'd probably have those three guys, my grandfather, Charles Steinmetz, and Charles Lindbergh.

Chet: So you're a student, you're a leader, you know many great leaders, and you spent a lot of time coaching. Across great leaders, what is the one trait you think they share?

Jim: They're not coachable. And I say that sort of joking, but sort of not, right? I find that great leaders, they're confident, right? They have a vision. They have a mission. They're executing toward their vision, and I find that they're coachable in their own way. The best ones will listen to advice and consider it within their personal framework, oftentimes ignore it, but take the pieces that they feel will be helpful to them. And so I guess it comes back to a degree of confidence and self-assuredness that I think every great leader I've known shares that trait.

Chet: Jim, this was a blast. We've spent a lot of time over the last few years. But this has just been awesome to get to know you, and talk about your path, and getting the listeners to get a good view of how you think about things and your perspective on things. So I really, really appreciate the time. I had a lot of fun doing it.

Jim: Well, Chet, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It really was a great honor to be here. I'm flattered that you asked me to have this conversation with you. And it was a ton of fun, and again, all the best. Thanks so much.

Narrator: To build the best teams, you have to hire people who are smarter than you and create a fun & execution-oriented culture. Remember Jim's advice: don't confuse activity with execution. Make sure to measure outputs and outcomes. And have a framework that everyone in the company understands. Finally, strive for balance in work and life. 

Narrator: Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Inspired Execution podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the show, and drop us any questions or feedback at inspiredexecution@datastax.com.