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| Home - CEO Spotlight - Jun 04 Issue |
CEO Spotlight: Bill Conner, Entrust
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Angel Mehta: From an investor’s standpoint, is the timing right to enter the security market? You are in a position where you’re sitting at or close to the top of the mountain looking down. From that vantage point, is this just another bubble or is the hype around security a little bit different at this time in that maybe it’s justified?
Bill Conner: It’s not about hype. I think the hype was the fear side. The reality is that there are lots of vulnerabilities out there and more importantly, there are many business uses where security can help. You can extend your business to your customers, your suppliers, your partners, and do it in a safe and secure manner that doesn’t cost you productivity or the types of class action suits that can come out of legislation like California SB1386.
I like to use the Quality process as a basis for comparison. What was the first thing that people said about it? There really wasn’t a lexicon for quality and, you know, the first book was published and all of a sudden you had a parade of Quality Experts and new techniques. It didn’t start with quality in Six Sigma…and I remember in the corporate world the first thing you said was ‘cost or quality.’ Many people said you can’t afford quality. But if you look at what’s happened over 50 years, the concept of quality has become a fundamental way of reducing cost, bringing value, and differentiating. I think information security will be the same.
Now, contrary to that, if you listen to Tom Ridge, and if you listen to a lot of the people certainly in the United States and other governments, they say the legislation’s coming because it is a different world and 85% of the critical infrastructure lies in private hands. So, as they say, we are at war, and cyber terrorism is a new war front – separate from air, land and sea. It’s the Network. So that is certainly a driver.
Angel Mehta: Do people who understand security really well – for example, yourself, and other industry insiders – have a greater paranoia about what could go wrong? I remember that the most paranoid I was about getting sick was when I was studying biology…
Bill Conner: Absolutely. I mean, why have I spent so much of my personal and corporate time on this information security governance? What increasingly keeps me awake at night is the sheer risk we face – every single day. Our economy is at risk. Those of us who are practitioners in the security space, and understand it, understand that the risk countries and industries are running right now is just immense. It’s not a question of “if” a disaster will occur. It’s a question of “when” and “where” and “how severe”, and that’s the stuff that you worry about because most people just don’t have a good enough understanding. As an industry, I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job of moving out of the hype and moving into the kind of framework you need to manage and prioritize. We haven’t made our solutions easy for enterprises to adopt and protect the information they need to run their business.
Angel Mehta: How have the expectations of CEO competency changed from the time you joined Entrust to now?
Bill Conner: I think that in this kind of market and with these kinds of stakes, shareholders, employers and constituents expect CEO’s to have a hands-on working knowledge of every aspect of the business. It’s a tall order for us. It’s even a taller order for bigger companies that are more diversified. However, that is the expectation. Your ability to have had operational experience, and at various disciplines or functions or geographies that your businesses work in, are paramount now because at the end of the day you’re the one signing and attesting to it. I think that’s a big difference. It’s important for the employees to know you’re comfortable at their level, as opposed to just the level of the executive offices. They need to know you’re watching and you’re involved. There’s an old saying that goes, “Trust everybody but always cut the cards”. That’s the world we’re living in now.
Angel Mehta: I’ve heard it put another way…’Have faith in the Lord, but always build your house on high ground.’ [Laughing] So, tell me, how do you tell if an executive whose experience has been in running a billion dollar business can actually survive in a smaller entity?
Bill Conner: It’s a critical issue. There are a couple of challenges the CEO making that move has to deal with. One is the huge change in the size of your staff. In a large company, you would always be able to find talent from within. When you go to small companies and start cutting through that amount of experience, either geographically, or functionally, it is not even close to the depth you have in a larger company. That means, you’re going to bear more of the weight…and you’re going to have to have a different balance of hiring versus promoting from within to get the right balance.
Angel Mehta: Does it take more or less energy to run a smaller company?
Bill Conner: It’s takes a whole different level of energy to run a smaller company. At a small company a CEO is carrying the leadership role and overseeing the same amount of work that the Securities and Exchange Commission requires at say, Nortel. So that takes a lot more personally out of you in terms of your own passion and energy – not to mention drawing on the operating expertise. If you don’t have it, you’ll get exposed - because there aren’t a lot of other people, especially in turnaround situations, that you can just hand things off to given the timeframes and the risk you have.
Angel Mehta: How do you ensure that information about how the company is doing at the lower levels reaches you as CEO at the top before things spiral out of control?
Bill Conner: The key is to have enough fortitude to be able to first think about your own mistakes. To look yourself in the mirror when you’re shaving and go “damn that was a mistake” and deal with it. I think it is critical that you be paranoid, you be relentless on yourself and the mistakes you make because at the top, if you’re not, it’s awfully hard for others to tell you you’re making mistakes…people in the organization aren’t going to tell you about the bad things unless you really are open to hearing about them – and confronting your own blunders first. There are no easy decisions at the top – if you can cope with that, information will flow easier from the bottom.
Angel Mehta: Tell me about the evolution of Bill Conner. If you were to take a freeze frame of Bill today and then one of Bill 15 years ago, what would the differences be in terms of approach to leadership or temperament? How have you personally changed as CEO?
Bill Conner: Well, I looked a lot skinnier because I had a lot more time for exercise. [Laughing]…But beyond that…I think there are a couple of things. First, I make tougher decisions faster. Particularly in terms of dealing with Personnel – either in terms of accountability or performance or attitude. I was a hell of a lot more patient with leaders or managers in the past. The second thing is that in past lives, I focused more on development of human capital. In this market that’s hard to do, and it’s certainly much harder to do in a small company. Which does not mean it’s not important to do it – it’s just that you don’t have the time. You just have to hire people that can hit the ground running.
Bill Conner is Chairman and CEO of Entrust. Before Bill joined Entrust, he held various senior executive positions at Nortel Networks, including president of Nortel Enterprise Networks and e-Business Solutions. He was named "hi-tech marketer of the year" in 2000. Conner joined Nortel Networks in 1992 from AT&T, where he served in various leadership positions. He can be reached for feedback at: bill.conner@entrust.com.
Angel Mehta is Managing Director at Sterling-Hoffman, a retained executive search firm focused on VP Sales, VP Marketing, and CEO searches for enterprise software companies. He can be reached for feedback at: amehta@sterlinghoffman.net
 
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