Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58061
When you took the job at Intuit, you had no back- ground in software. What would you tell business stu- dents who might someday be new CEOs at companies where they have no background in the industry? At the end of the day, leaders add value because they are content or domain experts, or because they are facilitative leadership experts. When I was hired, Intuit needed facilita- tive leadership, not someone who was an expert in software. Domain expertise alone, especially in technology, does not lead to success. As a matter of fact, it can get in the way of success. There are a lot of examples of company founders who had great domain experience but didn't turn out to be great general managers. When you're a new CEO going into a company, you have to be able to assess what the company's good at and what it's not so good at. You have to figure out how to help the company improve its performance. You might need to focus on your product, your talent, your customers, or any of a multitude of factors. You bring your background, your experience, and your passion. You spent more than 20 years at GE, so you were steeped in its Six Sigma culture of process improvement and quality control. Intuit's culture was far more re- laxed and customer-focused. How did you decide what parts of Intuit's existing culture to honor and what parts needed to be changed to ensure its success under your leadership? It's important to take what you've learned elsewhere and apply it to a new situation. Intuit was known for customer- driven innovation, and GE was known more for strategic and operating rigor, as well as execution. When I arrived at Intuit, the company had great ideas, and it was approach- ing $1 billion in revenue, but it didn't have the strategic or operational rigor to execute those great ideas. What I brought was an ability to execute. On the other hand, Intuit already had great operating values when I arrived. There were ten operating values written out, and I changed only one word. No. 9 used to be "Think fast, move fast." I changed it to "Think smart, move fast." I used to joke with my team, "I don't know about you, but getting dumb things done fast doesn't do much for me." So the values were in place. But as we grew and devel- oped multiple businesses, the complexity went up exponen- tially. We had to find a way to operationalize the culture, the values, the execution, and the scale. This was where my GE experience paid off. Today at Intuit, we are launching 22 BizEd MAY/JUNE 2007 more new products and growing faster than we ever have in the history of the company because we have married customer-driven innovation with a capacity to execute. That customer-driven innovation has always been one of Intuit's greatest strengths. In fact, the company is known for actually "following the customer home" to see which features of its products work and which features are difficult, especially for nontech people. Why do you consider these sessions so important? When we do a follow-me-home, we're getting customer feedback—but even more important, we're observing the customer. I don't think breakthrough innovation comes from customer feedback. No customer said, "Could I have a Walkman, please?" The Walkman was invented because someone watched people who were trying to listen to music while they were running. I think the idea could apply directly to deans at business schools. It's dangerous to design a product or a program around what customers or students tell you they want. You may end up fulfilling their needs, but you won't be design- ing for delight, which is innovating to solve a need they didn't know they had. Our job is to help customers do their mission-critical tasks in a way that's really easy, that offers great value, and that delivers unexpected "wow." Whenever we do a fol- low-me-home, we try to learn two things. What can we do to make our existing products and services better? And what unmet, underserved need can we solve by launching a brand-new product? Give me an example of how customer feedback helped you develop a new product. When Quicken was launched in 1984, it was designed for consumers. Scott Cook, who co-founded Intuit, did some research and found that 46 percent of Quicken custom- ers were using it for their businesses. He thought it must be bad research and threw it away. He did another survey the next year and found that 48 percent of the users were small business buyers. This was the "aha!" moment. Intuit did follow-me-homes to determine how to build a great accounting product for small businesses, and we launched QuickBooks in 1993. We then began looking at other needs a small business owner would have, such as organizing the payroll and com- pleting credit card transactions. We've developed products that address these important areas. The people using our products and services tend to be self-directed—they want to