Name: Forcepoint CEO: As Your Company Grows, Don't Lose Sight of Culture
Uploaded: 2018-09-05
Duration: 5 min 23 s
Description: Set standards on culture early, says Forcepoint CEO Matt Moynahan.

The Fortune CEO Initiative. Matt thank you for being with us. It's great to be here. You run a security company. Tell us a little about Forcepoint and what it does and what you're seeing out there. Forcepoint is the world's second largest private security company. We have about 300, 000 employees globally. And we're focused on really delivering a new type of security that's called human- centric security. Without getting into all the whiz- bang technology behind the scenes, it actually is a pretty simple premise, which is instead of focusing on technology and events, focus on the people who are actually inside of you organizations, or shouldn't be inside of your organizations. So we have something called risk- adapative protection which is really around making sure that good people are free to do what they want inside of an organization but we turn up the defenses when we see something going wrong, whether it's an insider threat or a nation- state acting your company and has breached the perimeter. Perimeter, which is happening all the time. You have an interesting founding story, no? The company was kinda founded for a certain purpose and it's a combination of things. Tell me a little bit about how that got started. This was a very, very unique opportunity that got me excited by it. For the first time In a relatively small company, I say relatively small. Three thousand people. We had three companies come together in a very broad portfolio in technology. So what you had was all the ingredients that we needed to do something. I think very special in cybersecurity, but Have that under the roof of a really small company where we could innovate faster and take advantage of it. How do you deal with integrating those those things, right? We're talking about a technological integration, we're talking about a culture integration. How do you make sure that everyone is operating behind the same mission? This case was really more fascinating because we had three companies coming together. Very quickly after that, we bought two additional ones. So we had five companies coming together that were on completely different pages. And it was actually a benefit because we had an opportunity to put in place for the first time a new culture inside of the company. Can you do that? Can you just insert a new culture, Lane? Well, I think it's a growing process, right? I mean it takes a lot of time. I probably spend 60, 65 % of my time on trying to build a culture. Get to know as many people as you can, setting leadership expectations, hiring and firing or promoting by those expectations. So the company has to go through a couple of cycles for it to actually take hold. But I'm super proud of the team, I mean it's taken hold and it's one of empowerment. If you do it right and you put the right investments, then it becomes sort of this virtuous cycle and it's starting to take off. In today's hyper- partisan, hyper- political world, we're seeing a lot of CEOs kind of go out front to speak on issues. Apple's Tim Cook, Salesforce's Mark Benioff. What do you see the role of the CEO in this context, and Do you wanna be out in front? Is there a middle ground? I think it's really, really important for CEOs to have strong opinions around things that matter to people and try to separate out the politics from urban issue from the secular things that are important to humanity. Certain equal rights I think are critical, the equal pay are critical. So I think you can have very, very strong points of view On secular trends that can help everybody if you throw the weight of a big company behind it as opposed to getting into the niche points of view, right? That's very different and can be dangerous, quite frankly. One of the articulated reasons that this is a good idea by some executives is that it's a talent It's a matter of talent acquisition, you know. Your potential employees want to hear that you're an equal place to work, that you're an equal pay place to work. Do you see it that way? Do you see this as not just good for the right role for a CEO but actually good for business? It is. I mean, talent acquisition is certainly a benefit of having a culture that people want to work at, right? But I think even more importantly It's a self selection process for folks who don't wanna work their either. I think you have to be true to yourself as a CEO. I think you need to do what's best for the greater good of the company, and I try to tie that to the greater good of humanity. And pick on issues that I think all employees will benefit from. Diversity is an interesting term, we prefer to use diversity and inclusion, it's a little bit, so I think how you speak about these issues, I mean, which ones you back are critical, because at your point, it will define the culture. Not just will it attract talent in some cases, it will keep talent away if you don't get that mix right. But every company is different, and I think that is the role of the CEO to sort of find that right mix for a particular company at a particular time. What do you see business' role in society today. I realize that's an enormous question, but it's Definitely on our minds right now as we think about globalization and of course technology as it cascades across different nations. I would hope that the largest of companies, and in particular can have a sort of altruistic sort or purist approach to social responsibility and try to understand now that they're part of the world's infrastructure. If you look at the largest who have crossed a trillion we were talking about. What does that stand for, what does it mean? And that's a very complicated quesiton. It involves maybe being a little less profitable for the greater good and that's not easy when you've got shareholders that you've got to answer to. I think it's [ UNKNOWN ] issues over the next decade or two, but it's one that I think you start seeing that the executives of companies asking, so they're just asking the questions probably the right The right beginning for this conversation. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Forcepoint CEO: As Your Company Grows, Don't Lose Sight of Culture

Set standards on culture early, says Forcepoint CEO Matt Moynahan.