KAHN: One way is by example. You tell yourself there should be no fluff in what you're doing if that's how you want others to do it. How can you ask people to listen if you don't listen yourself? How can you ask them to work hard if you don't work hard yourself? The problem is not the hierarchy; it is the threat that good ideas may get lost within it. What I don't like is someone claiming to be right simply because he's the boss.
INC.: What's the answer? How do you participate in decision making without being regarded as "the boss"?
KAHN: I act as kind of a referee, asking questions. I'm pretty good at asking tough questions, whether they're in technology, finance, or marketing. I spend time roaming. I know everybody in the company more or less by first name, and I go through and talk to them -- without a goal, actually. By randomly going places at random times, you discover things that you never would discover otherwise. If people expect you at a given time in a meeting, everything is set up for you, and there are no surprises. But walk around and see someone copying an invoice 13 times over. . . .
INC.: Then you show them how to do it right?
KAHN: Well, I don't sit down and design a better system. I try to motivate. I simply ask open-ended questions: don't we have computers that can do it better?
INC.: Doesn't a CEO's poking around two big buildings leave a bit much to chance?
KAHN: I also use electronic mail.
INC.: As a management device?
KAHN: Yes. I want opinions to come through different levels of the hierarchy without being muzzled. Creating open discussion happens naturally using electronic mail. It answers the challenge of how to get people to understand that there is no loss of authority in creating an open discussion in which every opinion can be expressed. Even R&D opinions about marketing, say, where the conventional reaction from marketing would be, what does R&D know about marketing, we are not even going to talk to them about it.
INC.: Describe how e-mail encourages their open-mindedness.
KAHN: Say a guy from R&D sends a memo to marketing, and copies me. Of course, the marketing guys can decide to erase the electronic-mail message, but maybe I will have sent a message back: that's a good idea. Then everybody has to pay attention.
INC.: That sounds more like coercion than encouragement.
KAHN: Not really. It means that people who have an idea can just pop it into my mailbox, and it will be given a hearing. It doesn't mean that suddenly everybody reports to me. Not at all. In fact, it flattens the organization. In electronic mail, every person in the company is merely a number, no matter what his title; anyone can get to anyone else in a confidential manner. In the typical corporation, management claims its doors are always open, come on in. Great! What's an employee supposed to do -- walk over to the administration building, talk his way through four secretaries, knock on the door, and find the guy's busy anyhow? Here, you press "enter" and you're in.
INC.: Still, everybody in the system understands that you're the final arbiter, whether or not you claim otherwise.
KAHN: One of electronic mail's greatest attributes is that I cannot write louder than anyone else.
INC.: How, then, do you impart your vision to the company?
KAHN: It's already imparted. I have a focus that will take Borland into the next century. Everyone knows I believe the long-term future of the company is built around R&D, and that there's no way around that fact. If R&D needs something, they're going to get it.
INC.: Because you're technologically oriented?
KAHN: That's very important. I think it's easier to find good marketing people than it is to find people who understand technology. Something along those lines happened recently. Customer service was complaining that they didn't get respect from the rest of the company, so I asked all the VPs, all the managers, all the R&D guys, to work in customer service for a day. Some of the biggest nerds in R&D turned out to be amazing salespeople. Customers would call to buy a $50 upgrade, and the R&D guys would sell them a $200 one. The others weren't as good at it.
INC.: Back at the beginning, what convinced you that selling software directly through the mail, rather than indirectly through distribution to retailers like everyone else, was the way to go?
KAHN: Not only was nobody in the software industry doing mail order, they insisted it couldn't be done. I asked myself why the hell not, everyone else in this country seems to be able to sell things that way.
I was seeing the opportunity as a French guy, not as an American businessman. There was no mail-order industry in France at that time, no 800 numbers. The first time I saw an evangelist raising funds on TV, I thought it was a Monty Python sketch. Friends had to convince me it wasn't. I figured I had as good a product, and people out there are going to send me money, too.
INC.: Didn't it occur to you that the reason software companies weren't selling by mail was that they had already examined it and decided it wasn't feasible?
KAHN: The point is, whatever the experience was for software people at that time wasn't applicable to me, because those were already large companies with their strategies in place. If I had played the game by their rules, obviously I would have lost. For Borland, the idea was to create new rules.
INC.: Why the name Borland, and not Kahn?
KAHN: Because Borland International sounded more important than Kahn International. It's made up, of course. But there was a problem I didn't anticipate: as the company became better known, we began to receive mail addressed to a Mr. Borland. So we had to compose the guy. The first SideKick manual, in 1984, happened to have a drawing of a sidekick -- a little prospector. We named that guy Frank Borland and wrote that he lives in the Santa Cruz mountains, travels with a mule named Lotus, and communicates with the outside world only through electronic mail. It was hype.
