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 Perry Evans, chief executive of Closely, a digital marketing firm. He says says he regularly awakes at 4 a.m. and spends “two hours every morning just calibrating what’s going on in my market.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
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What were some early influences on your leadership style?
My mother was a very strong woman — she taught nursing, was very meticulous and very professional. She was very proud of her craft. And I come from a family of shipbuilders on my dad’s side. My uncle had a cabinet manufacturing shop that I grew up working in.
So I’m a big believer in mastering your craft. I always seek out people who have real strong pride in craftsmanship, and I look for that in engineers. To me, the things that matter most are pride in their work and curiosity. When you find someone with that combination, they can do amazing things.
Tell me about your college years.
I jumped around a lot. I went from aeronautical engineering to law to fine arts and finally graduated with a degree in commerce. Part of what drove me into that was a professor I stumbled upon who was a really interesting, eclectic character, and he had an entrepreneurial spirit.
Early management lessons for you?
A. I ended up with two or three people working for me when I was fresh out of college. I was way too smart for my own good and managed to anger a lot of older people who were intimidated by the young kid, or just annoyed by the kid who thought he knew everything. I learned to step back, listen, figure out the person first — where they are and where they’re trying to go — and then calibrate their role and contribution.
You’ve worked in the digital space a long time. Thoughts on innovation?
I’m a real student of business transformation. In any transformation I’ve seen, the winner is always the one who takes out a clean sheet of paper and says, “This is how you would do it if you didn’t have the drag of your traditional business.”
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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.
TAGs: Adam Bryant, SundayBusiness section, The New York Times, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, Times Books, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, Times Books, Perry Evans (chief executive of Closely) in “The Corner Office”