Ori Sarid

If you ask me what is the one thing that made the biggest difference in my career and helped me make it all the way from an engineer right out of university to the top position of my company, this is my tip:

In every company I worked for and in every position I filled, I always referred to my work as though it was my own business. This was obvious when I managed a company, but it was as true and even more important, before I became a manager. This certainly made my life more interesting and helped me get promoted, but I must admit this approach also kept me awake some long nights…

The most important qualification for a manager is the ability to cooperate with other people. Professional skills such as engineering, marketing and finance are very important. But they are nearly worthless if they don’t come with a strong ability to work in a team. A wise man told me once that the two keys for cooperation are mutual trust and mutual respect. While this sounds like a trivial truth, implementing it is never easy. Some times I had to work hard to win the trust and respect of others. Some times I had to work hard on myself to keep trusting and respecting others, especially when we did not agree on important matters. More often than not the effort was worth it.

For a manager to become a leader it requires to detach a little from the daily activities of the company. It is very difficult to do it and there’s no much immediate satisfaction in planning for five years ahead. You can only do it if you have other people you trust to close the next deal or design that cool feature.

Product innovation is the biggest challenge of growing a company. I had the honor to experience some great success and some miserable failures in product innovation. Most times it did not work it had to do with listening to the customers. Some times I did not listen enough; sometimes I listened too much…

My take from it is that customers will tell you their problems, but you have to define the solution, after all that’s what they are paying you for. When you define it – go validate your design with the customers and make sure it really solves their problems.