Business Journal contributor Brad Scheller recently sat down with Leonora Valvo, CEO of etouches Inc. in Norwalk, for a conversation about leading and growing her software company, which provides cloud-based software and services for event management professionals.
Scheller: Leonora, you”™ve received multiple awards for entrepreneurial leadership. What would you say is the toughest part about leading a company?
Valvo: “I would say for me, it”™s the responsibility to the people who invest their time in being part of your company. In some weird way, everybody who works here is like one of my kids. These are people who have said, ”˜Yeah, I believe in you. I believe in this company, the product, what we”™re doing and so I”™m going to invest my time.”™ Time is the most valuable resource people have, so if somebody works here for one year or ten years, that”™s time you can”™t get back, so we need to make sure that we do right by them and that it is time well spent.”
How would you describe your company”™s core values?
“We have three. Care, growth and play. The philosophy being that caring about your colleagues, your customers, yourself and your work, is going to make us successful. Your personal growth as a human being will impact us in terms of the company and its success. And we feel it”™s really important that we play together. Our people just enjoy each other”™s company, an outcome we have and continue to work hard to achieve.”
How has your leadership style evolved over the years?
“I would say I was probably more of a micromanager in the past because it was hard for me to not know everything that was going on. Today I have become pretty balanced in terms of evaluating situations and being able to pretty objectively look at what”™s going on, whether it”™s how a customer is reacting to us, or with conflict between people in the company, or in creating the required alignment between the board and the company. These new aspects of leadership are a direct result of our growth stage making it possible to step back a little bit more from that day-to-day, have-to-know everything, have to be involved in everything interaction, and really trust this incredible group of people that I”™ve brought together.”
You”™re listed as one of Connecticut”™s fastest-growing companies. What unique challenges come with running a fast-growth company?
“From my point of view it feels the same to me. I feel like I”™ve always worked just as hard as I”™m working now. But the stakes are higher, the strategy is more challenging in terms of getting that right, the way the business needs to be structured to manage the growth.”
What do you look for in leaders?
“First of all, we look for them to be ”˜pink”™ or ”˜pinkable.”™ For us that means we look for people who can empathize with the customer. It”™s probably one of the key most important characteristics of people who come here. The baseline is that they know their business, they know the job and they have the skills, but we need people who can really step back to see the situation or challenge from the customer”™s perspective. As a technology company, it”™s a little bit more challenging because our customers are not technologists. They don”™t care about our vernacular. They don”™t care about our road map. They care if this is going to help them get their job done at their moment of greatest need.”
You”™ve done a lot of hiring lately. How do you hire here?
“It was initially so much of a challenge for us that it occurred to me that we had to do something completely different. I created a recruiting program where we bring college graduates in to spend a week with us. Each day they work with different department heads ”“ marketing, sales, support and they learn what a day in a life looks like in our kind of high-tech, high-growth company. It amounts to a whole day of interactive interviewing with these kids and they don”™t think of it as an interview because they”™re having a blast. They love being here in the company. We”™ve hired about six or seven people from this program, which I am really excited about.”
BY BRAD SCHELLER
