Stay-at-home Dad

You accepted the CEO job at DocuSign after taking several years off to be a stay at home single dad you had been at Responsys for ten years before that why did you decide to make the decision to step away completely from the workplace?

Yeah, it was a really easy decision and it was the best decision I think I've made professionally in my life so Oracle bought Responsys and we'd been a reasonably successful public company and I felt good about that in some ways I had a lot of confidence and I had a lot of pride in where I was professionally and I had recently become a single father and I had two boys in middle school and a high school and it just hit me it was my last chance I had always been a very involved father but it was a chance to say I can really really focus on them before they go off into the world and, again, it was a fantastic decision.

It was three and a half tremendous years but I think it was easy for me to make that decision I wasn't feeling uncomfortable about my career success or my career opportunities I also knew that having run Responsys which was you know a pretty big scale SAS company and SAS was clearly going to be the future of software so I didn't feel like if I decided I wanted to go back and work it would be that difficult I felt I was fortunate to have the opportunities to be there and I didn't do zero work I did join a few boards and I was working a little bit with a private equity firm but I made breakfast every morning dinner every night I got to every lacrosse and soccer game my kids played the sports I played in college so it was like fun to go to their things and I was there I drove carpool. I did it all.

You did carpooling too?

Carpools the best place to hear what's going on.

Right, same thing with my kids.

And you hear what's really happening.

Because sometimes they forget that you're in the car with them.

That's the goal, you gotta get quiet and you just start listening so it was great it was the best experience and I think it made me better now coming back to work I think it made me a better manager and I think it made me a better collegue and so im really glad to of had the experience.

In what way did it make you a better manager a better leader?

Well I think first of all you get new experiences if you keep doing the same thing over and over you dont have new perspective I had a new perspective about someone who was putting the focus first on their family and I had always had a huge focus on my family, but I had a competing career focus and I realized that we have a lot of employees in the world that they are single parents or they're juggling so many different things some people we now have in our workforce the phenomenom they're taking care of kids and they're taking care of their parents.

I know.

And you realize you have to meet that person where they are and you have to design a program for them.