Susan Hansen

Stings Like a Bee

 


What the employees think. Marketing vice-president Phil Sheridan, who worked for two other high-tech companies before joining Tidal, says the company's no-nonsense management style (not to mention its new jeans-only-on-Friday dress code) isn't for everyone. "We just bring a little more discipline to the deal here," notes Sheridan. "We're not part of that 'anything goes' kind of culture." Indeed, some recent hires found the "commitment" Tidal required -- that is, the 70-hour workweeks -- too grueling and were gone within a month. "I guess they thought we were kidding about the hours," says director of operations Jorge Montoya.

Montoya recalls that life at Tidal was easier before Charlton took charge. But employees are hoping all their hard work will pay off when Tidal goes public -- a goal Charlton has been driving everyone toward since he took charge of the company. From the start, Montoya notes, Charlton didn't just make big promises about plans for an initial public offering. He was actually bringing in million-dollar deals and hitting initial revenue targets -- and leading the charge from the top. "All of a sudden, people are thinking, 'Hey, we can make a lot of money doing this," he says. All at once those stock options seemed as if they might really pay off. That new sense of common purpose has helped foster a kind of finals-week camaraderie at the company. Individual staffers say they don't mind putting in long hours so much because they know everybody else, including the CEO, is working just as hard.

"It kind of brings out the best in people," says Tidal chief technologist Derek Evan, a 16-year veteran of the company. "People seem to have rallied. They're willing to do what it takes." Former sales rep Stephenson, who is now director of international operations and technical services, says she was well aware of the "huge commitment" she was in for when the new boss took over. "It would have been a lot easier to say no -- a lot easier," says Stephenson, who's married with two kids. But despite her early reservations about Charlton, it was hard for her not to get caught up in his drive to instill a whole new spirit at the company. "I was excited to be part of it," she says.


The results. When Charlton took over, Tidal was losing $800,000 a quarter and burning through a $4.5-million infusion of venture capital. Since then the company has doubled its revenues, secured an additional $12 million in venture funding from J.P. Morgan and other investors, and grown from 40 to 100 employees. For the year ending June 30, 2002, revenues stood at just over $15 million. Charlton declines to comment on when Tidal will actually become profitable, though he hopes the company will be ready to go public when the market rebounds.

Even when the news is good, Tidal isn't above putting a little extra positive spin on it. A year ago the Gartner Group, an influential tech consultancy, reported on the growth in market share of Tidal and other job-scheduling vendors. Tidal posted a news release on its Web site claiming that Gartner had ranked it "the fastest- growing independent software vendor in [its] segment." Gartner said that its report included no such formal rankings and asked Tidal to remove the statement, which the company did in early April.

Charlton was brought up to never, ever, give up a fight.

But then, extreme zealousness in the line of duty isn't the sort of thing that bothers Charlton. In his worldview, there are winners and losers, and winners win by working harder and longer and smarter than everybody else. Maybe he has tempered some of his intensity since taking over as CEO; he no longer pries open file cabinets or yanks doors off their hinges, and, his colleagues say, he only rarely flings nearby objects (like his telephone) against his office wall. But Charlton, the former Golden Gloves boxer, insists that doesn't mean that his stamina is flagging. Not even close. "Burnout is a term I don't even recognize," he scoffs.

And he's definitely not letting up on the Tidal staff. Especially not his younger brother Henry, the Tidal sales vice-president. After Henry came down with pneumonia last winter, Charlton dashed off an E-mail to Stan Chin, Henry's manager at the time. "Do not be alarmed, and do not allow him to slow down his pace," wrote Charlton. "It's only stage one pneumonia, and I do believe we have at least two stages to go."


Susan Hansen is a former senior editor at Inc.

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What should we be learning from Thomas Charlton's management style?

  • Plenty! So what if he has a few rough edges? As managers, most of us have gone soft. It's time to bring back the no-nonsense accountability that Charlton stands for.
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