Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of David Kenny, chief executive of the Weather Company, parent of the Weather Channel and Weather Underground. He is convinced, “Speed without a purpose is chaos. Velocity is speed toward a purpose.”

To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Photo credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

* * *

Tell me about some early lessons you learned.

I grew up in Lansing, Mich. My dad was a TV repairman, but that work went away. Without an education, he became a janitor in my high school. He did it very well for 30 years, and my mom was a payroll clerk. But that led me, from the beginning, to think that you can’t ever count on your job — because the world changes and it can always go away — and that it’s important to be a lifelong learner. That really made me very curious about a lot of topics, and made me respect every job. Those were my basic values from the time I was 6.

My leadership started with Boy Scouts. I’m an Eagle Scout, and I was always trying to get a group of people excited to do something. It taught me a lot about leadership through listening — you had to know where other people were coming from and then try to find some common thread to get everybody to camp on the lake in the winter to earn our Polar Bear Badge.

What about leadership lessons early in your career?

One came during my years at Bain, the consulting firm. I’m a big believer in velocity. You have to move fast because the world is moving fast. But some people felt that velocity was just chaos, because it didn’t have a purpose. So I learned to be clearer about what we were trying to accomplish. I still work on that. My mind goes really fast and sometimes I’ll know exactly where we want to go, but I don’t have everybody else seeing it. Speed without a purpose is chaos. Velocity is speed toward a purpose.

The second thing I learned is that you inevitably get friction in a team, because different people have different goals. I used to think it was really bad, so I would try to solve it. But if the leader solves the friction, rather than the team members, it doesn’t really get solved. Since then, if there’s friction, I just put it right out on the table or send out an email: “You believe this. You believe that. Both can be true, but not at the same time. We have to agree on an answer.” If you’re transparent, people don’t feel that whatever decision is ultimately made was politically motivated.

What were some early moves you made, in terms of culture, in your current role?

From Day 1, I wanted to establish that it was a culture of respect and generosity and truthfulness, and that we were going to work together to solve problems. On my first day, I met all the employees at a quarterly ad sales meeting. The first presentation started — and this was January 2012 — and we had just come off a big quarter because of Hurricane Irene. The numbers were “on track” to keep growing.

I said: “I just want to make sure we all communicate in the same language. So I’d like us to define what ‘on track’ means. To me, ‘on track’ means, ‘We are highly likely to hit those goals,’ and I heard nothing in the presentation that led to that conclusion.”

I didn’t mean to embarrass anybody personally. I meant to change the tone. Your first hour really matters. We took a break, and people started changing their presentations for the rest of the day. It was their chance to say what they really think about what’s working and what’s not. I just wanted to be clear. Let’s always tell the truth. Let’s not shoot the messenger. This is all done with respect. And then let’s find a real answer. There had been a lot of spin and denial. Because this company had been so successful and profitable, it could cover these sins.

We also, a few months later, wanted people to better understand the culture and the direction, because we’ve got a lot of moving parts. So we built this chart called the Compass. It said that the backbone of what we do is the world’s best weather. And we define that in four important ways — the best science, the best communication of safety, the best stories and the best services. So there were four S’s that people could remember.

Then we had all the products that flow out of those, and how we make money from them. The Compass allowed everyone to know how we made decisions, and we could talk about it. If people know what we’re trying to do, they can get aligned around it.

* * *

Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.comthat he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.

His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.