What's on Your Agenda?

Guy Kawasaki

Job: CEO
Org: Garage.com
Place: Palo Alto, California

Back during the late-1990s boom, we learned that "in a tornado, even a turkey can fly" (to quote venture capitalist Eugene Kleiner). But it's also true that no bird can fly against a tornado. And that's where we are today. It's all about one thing: survival. I can't afford to have a down day.

CEOs prove themselves in tough times, not easy ones. A year from now, I want to be able to say that we remained strong during a very rough period. Here are some principles that I'm following to get us through that period.

Communicate with employees constantly. People need to know that we have a plan of attack and that we can control our fate.

Focus on quality, not quantity. When VCs were spraying money with fire hoses -- when they were funding anyone who could boot up PowerPoint -- it was okay to focus on quantity. But these days, VCs are using pipettes to dole out cash.

Hire only for critical positions. Norm Abram says, "Measure twice, cut once." These times require us to "measure twice, hire once."

Everyone acknowledges that we're in the downward turn of a cycle. But while most people are focusing on "downward," I'm concentrating on "cycle." In the end, the high-tech economy will come back, and I plan to be there when it does.

Guy Kawasaki (kawasaki@garage.com) founded Garage.com in 1997. A venture-capital investment bank, Garage.com provides funding services for high-tech startups. Previously, Kawasaki was chief evangelist at Apple Computer Inc.

Susan Estrich

Job: Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science
Org: University of Southern California
Place: Los Angeles, California

Here we are in 2001, and just two Fortune 500 companies are led by female CEOs. Women in business may have achieved equality at both the entry and the middle-management levels, but when it comes to finding a place at the top, it's still a man's world.

Corporate America is required to report financials each quarter, and it's judged by those numbers. Why shouldn't we apply the same kind of rigor to the inclusion of women? Let's get every company to report on its "leading gender indicators." Get your company to form a task force to find out what happens to the women in its workforce. How many women are there at each level and in each division? What about promotions? Track those numbers, and expect the company to make real progress.

Women must use their power to hold company leaders' feet to the fire. One woman alone may not have the power to change the rules, but if, say, three female law associates get together to form a task force aimed at finding out what happens to women in their firm, you'd better believe that they'll get that task force. Every company has three women who have made it far enough to make that happen.

Susan Estrich (estrich@aol.com) was the first woman to run a presidential campaign. (She was manager of the Dukakis campaign in 1988.) She is a nationally syndicated columnist and has written five books, including Sex & Power (Riverhead Books, 2000).

Mika Salmi

Job: CEO
Org: AtomShockwave
Place: San Francisco, California

Even before the merger of our two companies, both AtomFilms and shockwave.com were under some tremendous pressure to validate the digital-entertainment category. Now the stakes have gotten higher. We have six to nine months to prove ourselves. Our success depends on speed and communication.

I can't delay. If I draw out the integration effort -- or if I postpone difficult decisions -- the entire company will be on hold, uncertainty will settle in, and employees will start to think about themselves, rather than about the company.

I also have to speak up. In a failed merger, communication is usually the first thing to go wrong. Rumors fly. Morale drops. So I err on the side of overcommunication. And I don't keep secrets. That's one way to avoid office politics: It's harder for people to develop a power base when everyone knows what's going on.

For employees, the key is to communicate what the merger means for them and what their role will be within the new company. By creating frequent opportunities to talk to employees, I hope to gain their trust. For many of them, I'm the new guy in charge. I can't say to people, "Trust me," and then just expect them to trust me. Over time, employees have to see that I'm delivering on my promises.

Mika Salmi founded AtomFilms in 1998 and sold it to shockwave.com, a division of Macromedia Inc., last December. Before launching AtomFilms, he was executive director for business development at Getty Images Inc., in Seattle.