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 Ramon Nunez, chief executive of LiveHive, a software maker, who says it is vital for employees to know that they can grow within the organization. “When there’s an opening,” he says, “make sure they know there’s an opening.”
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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Bryant: Let’s start with a surprising fact I read about you: you were one of 16 kids.
Nunez: Yes, three boys and 13 girls, so there were a lot of women in my life, and they bring a different perspective of life and they influence how you think. I think you become more compassionate.
Bryant: You grew up in Mexico before you moved to the States. Tell me about that.
Nunez: We lived in the state of Durango, and it literally was in the middle of nowhere. There were probably a dozen families in this little ranch and they all helped each other. We all worked the land and raised crops just to survive.
In the 1950s there was a farm labor program where the U.S. legally allowed laborers to come across the border to work at farms throughout the Southwest. My dad worked in New Mexico at the pecan farms. And during the harvest of the pecans, there were a lot of pecans that were left on the ground and he would pick them up and bring them home. So, I was about 10 years old, and I would go to shops and stores to sell pecans. My goal was to sell enough pecans to buy my first bicycle.
My family eventually all moved to the U.S., and I came here as a 15-year-old. I had phenomenal teachers and counselors who pointed me in the right direction. I went to the University of California, Irvine and then got my M.B.A. — every penny was paid through work-study, scholarships and grants. I studied to be an electrical engineer, but I really liked dealing with people and being more on the business side of a company. I moved into sales and spent 15 years doing that, particularly selling computer-aided design systems early on.
Bryant: What were some early lessons as you started managing people?
Nunez: I was about 27 when I started managing others. I made a lot of mistakes. One common characteristic of inexperienced managers is a lack of confidence, and that often translates into wanting to control. So you set rules that really don’t make people more effective or productive. What I’ve learned is that you have to figure out what needs to get done. What is the team’s mission? How do we accomplish that? You have to have some boundaries and some rules about how you operate as a team, but you let people excel the best way they can.
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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.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 with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here His next book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, will also be published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.