John Lilly (a partner at Greylock Partners) in “The Corner Office”

lilly-johnAdam 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 John Lilly, a partner at Greylock Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

* * *

What were your early years like? Were you in leadership roles early on?

My dad was in the Air Force, and we moved around a lot. There was a stretch when I went to a different school every year. We lived in San Antonio before I went to college. I learned a lot from being in a marching band.

I was playing trumpet, and it was a 200-piece marching band, exactly like in “Friday Night Lights.” I became a section leader, and we would get up at 6:30 in the morning and do all our drills when it was still dark.

Then I went to Stanford, where I had a lot of great leadership opportunities. As a sophomore, I ran the kitchen for our dormitory. Another guy and I had a budget of about $300,000 a year and we were responsible for feeding 80 people and hiring staff.

When you were younger, did you mind moving so often?

I don’t remember kicking or screaming. I always just thought it was a pretty good adventure. I’m pretty adaptable. I’m good at packing and unpacking.

Tell me more about your parents.

They both have a good sense of humor and like jokes, and humor’s a big part of what I value and how I lead. And they’re both analytical. Mom’s an accountant. Dad was a physics major but then became an engineer.

I remember when I was in second grade, we needed a new TV. All my friends would just go to the store and buy one, but my dad bought a Heathkit, and we had to put together the parts. I remember being mortified and saying, “Dad, why can’t we go buy a TV like everybody else?”

But in retrospect, it taught me that everything is made by people. We look at our technology now, like iPhones, and I think a lot of people see them as magical obelisks from the mountains that Steve Jobs bestows on us.

Early leadership lessons for you?

I didn’t understand the role of simplicity and messaging early on. One of the things that happened at one of my start-ups was that I would get bored saying the same thing every day. So I decided to change it up a little bit. But then everybody had a different idea of what I thought because I was mixing it up.

So my big lesson was the importance of a simple message, and saying it the same way over and over. If you’re going to change it, change it in a big way, and make sure everyone knows it’s a change. Otherwise keep it static.

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.com that 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 of hundreds of business leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.

Posted in

Leave a Comment





This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.