Skip to content
Business
Link copied to clipboard

Cris Conde

The SunGard chief’s worldview: The age of the bossy CEO is over. It’s time to collaborate.

Cris Conde: Foresees a new direction in organizational dynamics.
Cris Conde: Foresees a new direction in organizational dynamics.Read moreTINA FINEBERG / For the Daily News

The big idea:

What Conde described at this year's World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, as "the last nail in the coffin of the imperial CEO."

He foresees a new direction in organizational dynamics that gives workers authority to green-light their colleagues' best ideas, taking the boss largely out of the loop.

Wayne-based SunGard Data Systems Inc. uses what it calls a "collaboration architecture" - a software system and mindset - to let employees direct their own projects. "CEOs in the future need to be very good at putting together these collaboration systems instead of bossing people around," Conde said.

Using software that the company wrote for its own use, SunGard programmers regularly vote on one another's ideas after discussing them in forums. "It's not the typical hierarchical structure," Conde said. "They decide things among themselves."

In another collaboration initiative, developers at a branch office in Malvern work together around large tables, like screenwriters. They account to one another for their progress every day - again without looping in the boss.

He also enjoys the comic strip Dilbert. "Oh yes, yes. I am a fanatic," he said - to the point of subscribing to a daily feed from Dilbert.com. "Whenever I write something that's going to go to all the employees, I always think, 'How would Dilbert deal with this memo?' "

Having survived, he has become more mindful about showing gratitude. In business, he has noticed that people seem embarrassed to acknowledge a job well done, and he now makes it a point to say "thank you."

"I stop myself. I say, 'Hey, that was good.' I tell people."

He also is careful not to dwell on petty disappointments. "It's an active choice to not make a big deal of it," he said.

In a daring feat of work-life balance, he lined up his response calls for 11:30 a.m., when the children would be in the water. But it turned out his youngest was too young to swim unaccompanied. "So I put on a life jacket," Conde said, "and I jumped in."

At 11:30, he was bobbing in the water with his brood, watching his two cell phones vibrate on the dock.