Think For Yourself: Interview with Matt Calkins, Founder and CEO of Appian

I recently went one on one with Matt Calkins, founder and CEO of Appian.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here?

Matt: In 1999, at the age of 26, I walked away from a great job to follow an idea. I wanted to build a company, but I didn’t think about a product or a market at first. I thought about culture, and what kind of culture would create an organization capable of delivering sustainable value. With that, and along with three friends, we began building the software company Appian.

Twenty-four years later, Appian, is publicly traded with more than 2,000 employees - and was the most successful software IPO of 2017. I think it’s worth mentioning, that after all these years, all four founders are still in the business which I think is atypical from start-up to scale-up.

Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business? 
Matt: Well, I know it's fashionable to start businesses with a great idea and a pile of money. But since we didn't have a big central idea and we sure didn’t have a pile of money - I will give the alternative perspective, and that is that you should start a business by creating value.

If necessary, you should be adaptable, find a customer, and listen to them. You should find out what their problems are, solve some of them, but get to the value as soon as possible. That's my top advice for starting the business. 

That not only allows you to gain a reputation, some funds, and some cache in the industry for having solved a problem; it also leaves you with a degree of self-determination, which you wouldn't have had, had it started with somebody else's money.

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Matt: The leader has to be committed to the causes that they're leading and commitment will be evident to everyone who works with them. They must have commitment and must demonstrate it. But I also think it's the leader's unique duty to create value in all directions.

Obviously, if you run a business, you have to be good for the customers, but you also have to be good for the employees. Your job as a leader is to be sure that everyone wins; you have to be conscious of who's winning and how they win and be sure that everyone gets a benefit. That's not just a salary to your employees. It's also education and respect, and whether they feel like they're growing and they're proud of what they do. All that is part of what the employees get. Then the customers get something, and ideally, you're spreading value out to the rest of the world by setting a good example.

The job of a leader is to be sure that the segment of the economy over which they preside, in this case probably a business, is shedding positive externalities in all directions.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?

Matt: The most important thing when you're going to lead an effort or be an entrepreneurial executive, or civic leader, is that what you’re leading is something you believe in. If it's a market opportunity, you've got to be invested in the reality of that market opportunity. If it’s a non-profit, it has to be a cause that you strongly believe in. Because as a leader, you will be tested; you're going to face adversity; you're going to be forced to rethink your conclusions under new developments, and you've got to have a solid foundation of belief that what you're doing is possible and it's important. 

Second, it's important to be relentlessly honest with yourself - and I don't think most people are. I think you have to constantly evaluate your own contributions and performance. And especially as the boss, don't be tempted to believe what you want to believe is true or what others are willing to tell you is true. You have to be your own, most honest critic. 

Third, be original. Bring your authentic self to whatever you do. Don't feel like you have to match somebody else's model for leadership.  If you're going to make a leader out of yourself, be sure that it's yourself who's doing the leading. Be completely authentic about who you are.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?

Matt: The most overlooked thing about building a team is that you’ve got to be aligned or it's not your team.

A person who is qualified to do a job, may not be qualified to do a job for you unless they're on board with your plan. So, the problem I see frequently is that I'm trying to coordinate people to work together on a distinct plan, rather than just have them be capable of running a team of a hundred people or something. It's far more important that they're able to execute within a broader strategy. So, it starts with alignment more than capability.

Matt: I also look for an aptitude plus will threshold. I want to be sure that whoever's on my team has the capability and drive, more than I want to be sure that they're experienced and have a history that they can just plug and play. So, I'm looking for alignment first and always [a nonnegotiable], and then a combination of aptitude and will. 

Adam: What are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them?

Matt: The trend that goes beneath AI and beneath a lot of others is that technology is empowering people. It's the most fundamental trend of our technology.

If you start with a technology and you want to know how to make it useful, you should think, how do I elevate people? How do I empower them with this technology? It doesn't have to be able to automatically drive a car or deliver food in thirty minutes, but how can I empower people? It's a very microstate of mind. Instead of thinking about big trends and well-defined market segments, which I have never focused on. You instead say, here's this technology, how can I create goods? 

In a really simple way; how can I save people some time? How can I allow more people to participate than would otherwise have been able to participate? How do I reduce confusion or reduce the qualification needed to use the software?

I think it's good to start with these really fundamental considerations and then whatever technology you have is going to be useful.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Matt: It's got to be no liquid calories…

I’m kidding of course, but in all seriousness, it has to be to think for yourself. 

We're all capable of forming our own conclusions, using our own mind, and weighing the evidence for ourselves. Especially as a leader, an entrepreneur, and a pioneer, you have to come up with your own original takes. 

As soon as we’re born, we're under pressure to agree with what other people believe, and it never stops. You live your life under constant pressure to believe what other people want you to believe. And as a leader, I would say push back, think for yourself, draw your own conclusions, and then you'll really be adding something.
That's the single most important lesson. I think that's true as a leader, it's true as a professional and it's true as just an individual. It's one of the most important things I would ask, maybe the most important, of everybody no matter what it is that you're doing. You have this wonderful capability to reach your own conclusions - you should.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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