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Lessons From Dave Hitz: Page 2 of 2

NetApp had no shortage of ambition. It intended to create a new product category, dominate a new market, and double revenue every year for five years to hit $1 billion in sales. And, for the most part, it accomplished those things. Then the stock market crash of 2000 hit and NetApp's stock fell from $150 to less than $6. "We had designed NetApp for growth, and when the growth stopped, everything broke, but this time in a bad way," he writes. He says the company survived the crash because it had diversified its customer base, adding banks, telcos, other enterprises and the federal government to the dotcom and tech companies that had provided the bulk of the company's revenues.

Hitz also writes a lot about company values and how to motivate employees (the company's official travel policy is "Use your common sense"), how to manage engineers, and what customers really want from a technology company. Management lessons form the bulk of the slim book, which has fewer than 200 pages, and you can find some nuggets of hard-won lessons among the bad jokes, anecdotes, personal observations, interludes, and other short bits. While building the company, Hitz and the other members of the leadership team often had to do things they had no experience in and, as a result, often did them in an unusual fashion (see the official travel policy). He says he got a "street MBA" just from surviving at the top of a fast-growing tech company.

Readers will gain insight into management styles, different ways to make decisions, alternative approaches to managing people, and the value of dissent within a company. They also will learn why it is better to castrate a bull with a dull knife than a sharp knife. And they may get a few chuckles along the way. You can get a taste of the book here, a Website Hitz created to promote the book and solicit speaking engagement.