Hatim Tyabji
Founder, VeriFone
Hatim Tyabji's company, VeriFone, has been an unqualified success: The global and virtual credit card authorization service has grown from revenues of $31 million to $600 million since it went public in 1986. Tyabji credits that success to one thing -- the company's culture.
In his Real Time session, Tyabji shared his methods for fostering his company's culture.
"We've proven that humanity and compassion, and success and profits are not mutually exclusive in the marketplace," Tyabji said. "Most companies think they are, and that's just garbage."
One of the core principals of the VeriFone's culture is what Tyabji likes to call its "blueberry pancake" structure. The people at VeriFone are like the blueberries -- they're all equals with respect to their importance to the company. The batter is the company infrastructure, the processes, the things that bind the employees together and make them "VeriFoners."
The blueberry pancake theory is one reason why, from the beginning, all employees received stock options, not just the senior officers. "The person answering the phone is your lifeline to the customer. They represent your company to the world," Tyabji said. "Those are the people that you want to feel a stake in your company's future.
Tyabji also called the company of 4,000 a "family." There isn't a single person in the organization that Tyabji, who travels 80 percent of his time, doesn't know personally. He told the story of the departure of one longtime VeriFone employee. The employee, who had been with VeriFone for 12 years, felt he needed to move on and get new experiences elsewhere. Tyabji flew to Atlanta for the man's last day and gave him two round trip tickets to San Francisco for a weekend getaway with his wife. He also invited the couple to have dinner with his family.
"At most companies, they treat those who leave like traitors. Why would you do that?" Tyabji asked. "I don't like to lose anyone. But just because they leave, doesn't mean that I stop caring about them. They're still part of the family. And they'll be back."
Tyabji's sincerity in his affection for his employees resonated for several Real Time attendees. "What I'm taking away from this session is the sense that a company can be a family -- with all the good and bad that that entails," said David Clifton, a brand architect for Banc One Financial Services from Indianapolis. "You have this amazing potential for closeness, but you also open yourself to emotional risk that way. Tyabji lost a guy and you could hear that it hurt him."
Other steps VeriFone took to reinforce its culture:
