A few of us from work were invited to meet with Vice Chairman Tom Mendoza from NetApp downtown this morning.  He seems to have sort of a side job being a fairly popular inspirational speaker in the business world. Apparently he stopped by between flights from the east to west coast and the local NetApp folks talked him into holding an informal seminar over breakfast with some of us customers.  There were only 12 or 15 of us, and it was in a lofty conference room with a wonderful city view, which gave us the feeling that it was a special event.

He spoke a lot about NetApp, but I didn’t get the feeling that he was doing it as a salesman so much as he was doing it because they were valid experiences to illustrate his point. He spoke a lot about how they’ve run their business, their culture, and the problems he’s seen in other companies.

He pointed out a few things he’s seen, such as companies saying that people are their greatest resource, but not spending any time in board meetings discussing how they show that as a company.  He talked about how NetApp has a program to let the executives know if you feel that someone has done a good job and given extra effort, and various ways in which they recognize those extraordinary people.  He even talked about the one layoff they had, where 50 of the 70 affected individuals wrote thank-you letters to the company for how they handled it, which was first to let the people know that it wasn’t their fault, that the company had to do it, second to compensate them fairly in their severance, and last to be involved in helping them find jobs elsewhere.  He said that later on, many of the individuals came back.

He also spoke of their business culture, and how they’re more than happy to save their customers money by coming up with new technologies, for example when Oracle asked them for read/write snapshots, creating what they now calll Flex Clone. It allowed Oracle to buy fewer NetApp products, but it made NetApp products better and made them money in the long run.  He spoke about the economic downturn, and how many companies throw their arms around what they’ve got and try to protect it, looking at what they need to cut to stay the same, when they should be meeting, changing, and figuring out new strategies that will allow them to adapt and grow. ‘Either you’re moving forward or you’re moving backward. If you’re standing still then you’re moving backward.’ On this same topic, he spoke about candor and about how it’s crucial to the company, that people shouldn’t be afraid to say what they think, and the productivity that comes along with that.

Last, he spoke about personal goals, and how the majority of people who become successful have them. He detailed a bit about how he thought one should go about managing their goals, and offered to e-mail any of us a more detailed outline  that he’s come up with.

In all, it was a pretty good speech and I’m glad that I went. Part of me did wonder whether it was a roundabout recruiting mechanism, since I’m pretty sure everyone there went away wishing they worked for NetApp, but at the same time  I think some of the information he shared really is valuable if  we implement what we can in our current environments.