Longtime VMWare President Carl Eschenbach: To Grow Your Business, Manage Your 4 C’s

In the world of high tech, Carl Eschenbach’s is a name synonymous with explosive growth. As the longtime president and chief operating officer of VMware, he helped the company go from 200 employees and $30 million in revenue to 20,000 employees and $7 billion. During that sometimes challenging uphill ride to success, Eschenbach developed what he affectionately calls his 4 C’s that he counsels any executive to manage.

“You have to beware the trap of Cockiness, know when you’ve become Complacent, respect your Competition and conduct yourself within the rules — or remain in Compliance,” the business titan said on a recent episode of the Corporate Competitor Podcast. “Failing to have your antennae up for any of those will cost you in the end.”

A true competitor both in business and as a lifelong athlete, Eschenbach left VMWare to become a partner at Sequoia Capital, regarded as Silicon Valley’s most prestigious venture capital firm. On the podcast, he shared that his time in athletics helped shape those philosophies that took him to the C-Suite.

The recipient of five Most Valuable Athlete Awards, ten varsity letters, and captain of the football, baseball, and wrestling team, Eschenbach was recently honored as a 2020 inductee into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. “In sports, I often tell people, you have to learn to lose before you can learn to win,” he said. “It’s very unlikely you’re going to go undefeated in anything you do for your entire life, so learning how to lose when you’re an athlete and competing, it teaches us so much about how to have endurance and perseverance in life.”

How does someone learn to lose? Eschenbach will tell you that it starts with accepting defeat and owning your losses. “The better you are, the better you make the team, but if the team loses…well as the leader, you take the blame,” he said during the interview. He emphasized how owning those losses is how you get people to rally behind you.

Eschenbach made a point to differentiate between two leadership styles — motivational and inspirational. “A motivational leader points out team members’ strengths and challenges their team to accomplish more,” he said. “An inspirational leader gets the team to a point where they say, ‘I’m not going to let that leader down.’ The first pushes his or her team, the second does more pulling.”

But no matter which style of leader you might be, Eschenbach believes you must always be aware of the things that can derail your efforts and cause those you’re leading to no longer be inspired by your leadership. These are “the 4 C’s.”

1. Cockiness: It is important to always remain humble and grounded. “No matter how great the company is doing, just make sure you’re humble and grounded and that you have two feet firmly planted on the ground at all times.” Eschenbach reminded listeners that no matter how successful they might become, “we will have problems, that is inevitable, so it’s important to not be cocky.”
2. Complacency: “Complacency kills. It can kill great companies.” Eschenbach used the example of when people become complacent in life, their minds and their bodies stop working. “It is important to remain active and continue to push ourselves to get better and better.”
3. Competition: It is the time in sports and the competition that helped shape Eschenbach into the person he would become. “You have to be aware of your competition, but the one thing I’m not a fan of is talking down about your competition,” Eschenbach noted. “Always be competitive, but respect and value your opponent.”
4. Compliance: One question Eschenbach continuously asks himself as he is making a decision, forming a partnership or engaging with customers is “Are you ok with what you’re doing if it is printed on the front page of the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal? If you cannot answer yes to that, do not do it.” The ability to be seen as a company with a highly respected culture and values system can be ruined overnight without compliance.

Eschenbach said he is continuing to use the leadership lessons he learned as an athlete back in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania to lead, inspire, and fight complacency.

“The choice to lead is one you make for the long haul and the lessons and the losses will just make you better,” he said.