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SUSTAINING YOUR OWN CAREER DEVELOPMENT WITH SATYEN SANGANI

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This is a podcast episode titled, Sustaining Your Own Career Development with
Satyen Sangani. The summary for this episode is: <p>The best feedback can sting
at first. Today on the podcast, Matt and Satyen Sangani explore the art of
embracing feedback and growing from it. Tune in for insights into prioritizing
feedback, managing your energy, and focusing on targeted
improvements.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>This is a valuable episode you won’t want
to miss!</p><p><br></p><p>Satyen Sangani is the founder and CEO of Alation, a
late-stage data infrastructure company based in the Bay Area.</p>
Key Takeaways
Transcript
🗣️ Constant opportunities for feedback

01:33 MIN
📈 Focus on progress

00:48 MIN

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational
executives to share their real- world experiences and practical advice about
scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and
CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with Satyen Sangani. Satyen is the founder
and CEO of Alation, which is a late- stage data infrastructure company,
hopefully I got that right, in the Bay Area. Welcome to The Daily Bolster,
Satyen.

Satyen Sangani: It's great to be here, Matt. Good to see you as always.

Matt Blumberg: So my topic for you as a founder who has scaled with a company to
north of a hundred million in ARR is basically how have you done it? How have
you scaled yourself up that far? I know that I always used to say at Return Path
that I had the same business card for 20 years, but every year or two it felt
like I had a totally different job. What are your top tips for sustaining your
own career development?

Satyen Sangani: When we started the business, I would constantly go back to my
wife and I would say to her, " Jigna, if soon as we do this thing," and at
first, it was the Series A, and then it was the Series B, and then it was$ 10
million of revenue, and then it was hiring a certain executive, and I'd say, "
As soon as we do this thing, it's going to get better. And I think she looks at
me now and she just sort of says to me, " There's always going to be another
thing. You're always going to be working on something." And I think the reality
of high- tech growth is that it's fundamentally, it's a very high- stakes game
and you're constantly having to up your game and your skills to get better. And
so I think one part of the realization is just realizing that there's always
something else to work on. And for me, the way I've always recognized how to
work and what to work on is mostly by getting feedback from my team and often by
getting feedback from my customers and investors. The team will generally, if
you do a structured 360, you'll get a whole bunch of feedback that people,
particularly as founder and CEO, may not necessarily want to give you face- to-
face. And so those are opportunities to be able to get feedback. I remember the
first time I did it, it was really eye- opening because it was right after our
Series B and I hadn't been brave enough to do it prior to that. And people were
like, " Look, you micromanage too much. You don't give us enough agency. There's
no structure or organization. We don't know what's important." And that was a
pretty rough go for me, but it made me really think about how to build an
operating system and how to get people focused and aligned and how to let them
have their space. But that's changed in multiple points in the journey, and I
think the feedback is really the best way to sort of constantly react. So you're
never done, get feedback.

Matt Blumberg: Any steady diet of feedback is absolutely critical.

Satyen Sangani: Yeah.

Matt Blumberg: Because it changes. The inputs are going to change that.

Satyen Sangani: And they always will if you're trying to do something hard and
try to do something new.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. All right. So feedback is one piece. What's another piece?

Satyen Sangani: I think the other is managing your own energy. These roads are
long, and obviously if you're successful, they're long. And I think even in some
ways, if you're unsuccessful, they're even longer because they just become super
stressful. And so being able to, and look, I'm not the best at this, but just
working on yourself, working on your health, working on your mind, making sure
that you're emotionally centered and balanced, all of those things matter
because you're constantly changing. Because there's constant change, you have to
be centered in order to be able to react to that change, to listen to the
feedback. And sometimes that's hard to do if you're not centered or if you're
really anchored to a particular way of thinking. And that centering can really
help you do your best. And so it's really hard to do, particularly when there's
constant moments of stress and constant moments of new information that you're
dealing with. Sometimes you feel like you're running from fire to fire, but that
can be really helpful. And I feel like even though I give that advice, I'm still
constantly working on it. And I don't know, you could always get better.

Matt Blumberg: You can always get better. That's right. So look, your first
suggestion creates awareness. Your second one is work on the things that you
hear in feedback. Do you have a third part?

Satyen Sangani: Yeah, and it probably is also a constraint to the other two,
which is that you get feedback and often there'll be 20 different things that
you'll have to work on. And one of the things that I've come to realize is it's
fair to say, " Hey, I agree with this feedback. I'm actually not going to work
on it," or, " I disagree with this feedback. I'm just going to completely ignore
it." Because often I'll have gotten a 360 and there'll be somebody who says, "
Oh, you need to give us way more direction and way more specificity and tell us
exactly what to do." And other people in the same 360 will say, " Oh, but you've
got to actually give us more space." And so there's sometimes conflict. And
that's an example, although there are many others. I find that you have to pick
one or two or three things and make those the themes of your work as you're
trying to improve. And you'll get to the end of the year and there'll be a new
three things. It won't always be the same. But trying to really focus on how
you're going to improve yourself as opposed to taking on the world can be really
helpful both to your own sanity, but also to just being able to make some
progress.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah, for sure. One of the ways that I always dealt with a
conflicting feedback problem is we sort of migrated our 360 process over the
years from form- based to interview- based to live moderated session, and then
ultimately to live moderated session where I was present in a listening and
questioning mode. And obviously, you have to have a culture that can handle
that. But at a minimum, the second one down, that sort of live moderated session
where there was a coach or a facilitator present was perfect because someone
would say, " A," and someone else would say, " Not A," and then the coach would
say, " All right, time out. Let's talk about this." And invariably, you get a
more helpful response by doing that. But I think you're totally right. There are
times where the feedback is relevant and top of mind for you and you know it's
the right thing to do. And there are times where maybe it's something you have
to do down the road.

Satyen Sangani: Yeah. And it's hard. I mean, ultimately, and sometimes the best
feedback often is the stuff that you're most likely to disagree with initially.
It kind of stings when you hear it the first time around. But that can be really
powerful. And I think the more you do it, the better you get at it, or at least
I feel like the more I've done it, the first couple of times it really stung and
then it's like, " Okay, this is just the work."

Matt Blumberg: It's like anything, practice makes perfect.

Satyen Sangani: Just doing the work.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. All right. Satyen, thank you so much for being with me
today.

Satyen Sangani: Always. Thank you, Matt.

DESCRIPTION

The best feedback can sting at first. Today on the podcast, Matt and Satyen
Sangani explore the art of embracing feedback and growing from it. Tune in for
insights into prioritizing feedback, managing your energy, and focusing on
targeted improvements. 




This is a valuable episode you won’t want to miss!




Satyen Sangani is the founder and CEO of Alation, a late-stage data
infrastructure company based in the Bay Area.


TODAY'S HOST

MATT BLUMBERG

|Co-Founder & CEO, Bolster


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


TODAY'S GUESTS

SATYEN SANGANI

|CEO, Alation
Satyen is the founder and CEO of Alation, a late-stage data infrastructure
company based in the Bay Area.
Connect on LinkedIn!


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