Jen Guzman of Stella & Chewy's, on Keeping Everyone in Sync This interview with Jen Guzman, C.E.O. of Stella & Chewy's, a pet food company based in Milwaukee, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. What were some important lessons for you growing up? A. I learned one running cross-country, and part of it came from knowing my weakness, which was just pure speed. I did much better on hilly courses than flat courses, so I developed a strategy. I would stay with the pack for a lot of the race, and then, when it came to the hilly portion, I knew that's when people tended to give up a little bit because it was the toughest part of the race. So I would actually sprint up the hill, particularly that last 30 percent, when there was that natural reaction to just let go. And then, once I was over the hill and out of sight, I would sprint down the hill. So when someone came up over the hill behind me, they would see that I had opened up more of a lead. Q. Does that strategy translate into other parts of life? A. When I'm hiring someone, I think, "I want someone who's going to sprint up the hills." When the course gets really tough, that's when you want someone who's going to really rise to the challenge. Q. Let's talk more about hiring. What else are you looking for? A. I try to hire the best person for what the organization needs, and who can fit into the culture, rather than just hiring the person with the strongest résumé. And there's another sports analogy I think back on. When I was a sophomore at Harvard, and I was rowing, the coach had a system for picking what was called the "first boat." She would line up two boats. In one would be the eight strongest rowers. In the other boat would be the ones she thought were the next eight strongest rowers. She would race the boats, then switch two rowers at a time, race the boats again and then see what happened. She would keep doing that until she felt she had the fastest boat because everyone was in sync. And so that's how I think about hiring, because often the eight strongest individuals don't necessarily make the strongest team. Q. If you could interview somebody for only five minutes and ask just three questions, what would they be? A. Why do you want this job? Why do you think you would be good at this job? And what do you think are the five most important qualities or things that you need to be good at this job? Q. Other broader leadership lessons? A. In my first year at Harvard Business School, we did this exercise early on. We were thrown into groups of roughly 10 people, and we were told that we were stranded in Antarctica or something. The plane had crashed. And there were all these tools on the plane, but you could take only five of them with you. Which five would you take? And we had about 10 minutes to figure it out. Then the experts came in and told us what we really should have chosen. The whole class was really about what happened in our group, and what were the dynamics. The key thing I learned is that you can't let the conversation be dominated by one or two voices, which is sort of what happened in our group. The key take-away for me was that to get to the best answer, you need to seek out and pull ideas out of people. And that's what a good leader should do. Q. What about mentors you've had over the years? A. One boss of mine really pushed people beyond their comfort zones. When people would go to him with problems, he often would not be quick to give the solution. But he would ask a lot of questions that would make that person advance their thinking, and he would say, "Well, what do you suggest?" That is something I try to do now, because by pushing people out of their comfort zones, they're going to grow. And as a manager and as the C.E.O., you might be surprised because they might have a better solution than you were thinking of. Q. Anything unusual about how you run meetings? A. The typical meeting is about four people - the people who are really going to be actively participating and giving ideas, versus a much broader group. I find that for a small company that needs to be very nimble, that's a good way to operate. But there are other meetings where it's more of a brainstorming session, where it can be a very large group. During one recent one, we probably had about 12 to 15 people. Basically I communicated, at a very high level, what we were trying to achieve, and not much else, because I didn't want to sort of feed them the ideas. I wanted to hear what they had to say. In that situation, we broke down into four different groups, with about three to four people each, and had them go into different rooms to come up with their own ideas. Then we regrouped, and had every group present, and took the best ideas from each group. I think it's very difficult - it can almost be unmanageable - to have a brainstorming session with 15 people and get complete ideas. This way, you're getting everyone's input, because by breaking them into smaller groups, you have several meaningful discussions happening. Then when everyone regroups, you have yet another meaningful discussion about the best of everything. I like to be able to follow thoughts through. When you have a large group, and you just sort of put them all on the spot, you get bursts of ideas, but you don't get as much thought. Q. You worked in private equity for a time. What did you notice as you were assessing C.E.O."s? A. I looked for people who could explain their business and how they were going to succeed in simple terms, as in: "This is my business model. This is why it works. This is what I think we're going to achieve next year, and this is how we're going to do it. Someone who can boil it down to something very simple, to me, really has their arms around their business. If it's too complex, how are their employees going to follow it?