Why Performance Comes Before Promotion with Mark Thurmond

0:10Welcome to Revenue Builders, hosted by John Kaplan and John McMahon. Today's mini-sode features Mark Thurmond, co-chief executive officer at Tenable, where he has helped lead one of cybersecurity's most significant platform transformations while guiding the company through a pivotal leadership transition. In this conversation, Mark shares why the strongest career trajectories aren't built by chasing titles or compensation. They're built through consistent performance, continuous learning, and earning the trust of people who want to build alongside you. People who want to build alongside you. If you're thinking about your next leadership move, this perspective offers a different way to measure progress and make career decisions that compound over time.

0:50Let's dive in.

0:55and so i tell a lot of people is don't get caught up and saying i've got to be at this certain level by this certain time period with this certain salary with this much equity i am like focus on the moment focus on execution and if you are one of the number one number two number three or top you know five percent performers opportunities are going to come to you right they're going to find you either internally within the company you're at or externally you know folks are going to seek you out. So my advice to everyone, right, that I talk to in my network, and I've got, you know, a couple kids in college right now playing college sports, and I talked to other teammates.

1:29And I just say, stay in the moment, focus on what you need to do, focus on the next play, focus on the next rep. And if you do that, right, with discipline, you're going to actually end up in a great spot. So those are some of the things that I do. I did not map this out to be a CEO of a publicly traded company. It just kind of happened in regards to focus on execution and being with the right people. I love that. Basically, in the statement that you made, it all starts with performance. So to even think about a career or trajectory in an arc like yours, you have to perform. If you want the next job, there are ways to act like you already have it.

2:12one of the ways you can act like you already have it is to outperform the job the current job that you're in and i that can't get lost in any of the messaging that we do you performed at every single level the other thing you did and whether you did it consciously or not you were not only performing but you were gathering followers like when i think about all those places where you move johnny's a great example of that well is that you are gathering followers are you aware of that as you're going through your career or how does that play out? Yeah, it plays out, you know, well, A, you get to see the result when you do make a move or you do go to another company, you know, you can actually very simply look at all the different people that you would want to reach out to, that you would want to communicate and you would want to work with again.

2:59And as I made these different moves, you know, there would always be a core group of people that I would reach out to and say, hey, listen, I've got this opportunity. I think it's going to be great. Let Let me kind of walk you through it. But then I really flip it to them and say, here's why I think it's great for you. Right. Here's why I think this is going to be an amazing opportunity for you and your career. Right. And when you're able to look at these opportunities, evaluate them correctly and then be able to build your team and have your following. You know, to me, that's a great sign of a phenomenal leader.

3:30You know, we all know this. It's super basic. But, you know, one of the biggest telltales of hiring the wrong person is once they've been in the seat for three, six, nine months, they don't have anyone from their past companies that have joined them. You know, that to me is like a massive red flag. Like we might have hired the wrong person if they don't do that. Right. We've got examples. You know, we just actually just brought in Dino Di Marino as our new CRO. Yeah. Total rock star. But you look at Dino being on board 120 days. He's already brought in four or five people from his network. Right.

4:02A lot of the folks that we've brought on board and retooled our executive staff have all brought in people, whether it's in product, whether it's in finance, whether it's in human resources. That, to me, is one of the biggest telltales of a phenomenal leader. And all you got to do is look at John McMahon right there and look at all the companies that he's been involved in and all the different people that follow John, whether he's on the board or whether he was running it day to day. You know, that's it. That, to me, is one of the biggest things for a phenomenal leader as a as a grade. What I wanted to add to what Mark was saying is like for me, and some of it's built into what he's saying is you have to put yourself in learning and developing situations constantly.

4:44It's the times when I've left companies is when I feel like I'm not growing anymore. When I'm not growing, I kind of get bored. um and in a funny way i like to put myself in situations where i'm comfortable being uncomfortable yeah absolutely and that's where the growth is that's where the johnny as you always say the learning is in the struggle that's where the learning is that's where the struggle is that's where you have to learn how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations because that's where you grow without a doubt the other thing too is everybody always asks me like who's your mentor?

5:21I'm like, I don't really have a mentor. Everybody to me is a mentor. So no matter what level they ever were at or who they were, I was always listening to what they said. And if they said something where they had a certain skillset, I always thought, wow, that's really interesting. I need to incorporate that into what I do. So think of the fact that you can always learn from everybody around you if you have that mindset. And that developing mindset, for what Mark said, is that's what's going to get you to the next level. And Mark, with going international and dealing with the crisis, those were all learning and developing situations.

6:04He didn't run away from them. He was very, tried to be as comfortable as possible. No question. Yeah. That's really what he's saying. So I want to just add some. I think it's an awesome point, John. And if you look at, just use myself as the example, you look at some of those roles I ended up moving into coming out of EMC after 15 years. They were chief operating officer type roles. Well, really, at EMC, it was such a machine. I was really, even though I had general manager titles and things like that where I'd learned different aspects of the business. You know, when I left DMC and then went to Click, it was running professional services and, you know, running all the renewals business and involved in tech support and then going to Turbonomic as a COO with even more role responsibility with marketing.

6:51And then, you know, going to a public company as a COO right now, learning how the street and being able to work with Wall Street, work with all of the different folks that you need to work with in a publicly traded company. Like every one of those moves, it was a really big challenge. But that honestly, you know, the money was second. It's like if I can learn something and I can benefit, I think I can impact this org a little bit. That was always the compelling reason for me to kind of make those jumps. And there were with people, you know, especially when the Turbonomic and with Hannibal folks that I knew.

7:23Right. And a network that I knew. So I want to just summarize a couple of things that I heard from both of you, which I think are really, really important. you have to have performance to even have any kind of arc at all so if you're not performing right now focus more on performance than the arc trajectory of your career focus on performing where you're at and being you know making a name for yourself that way also building you know i think it is a big red flag when um leaders you won't have an arc like this if you do not if you have not built a relationships and a communication path and style that would get others to want to join you and follow you, just like they would show up in a crisis like you guys had early on in that RSA situation.

8:18And then the other thing is, what I really have been most impressed about you, Mark, is the number of years that I've known you. Invariably, I talk to you at least once a year where you will ask me a question for feedback. You'll say, hey, based upon what we're talking about, how do you think we're doing against that or X, Y, Z or ABC? And you're constantly, I've never talked to you where you thought like you had it all, you got it all buttoned up and you got it written down and you're just running a playbook. That's always been something I've always been most impressed with you. The day you think you got it all locked up and you've covered all the knowledge in the world or in sales or in sales operations, you're done.

9:00You're done. Everybody realizes at that moment, you're a dinosaur now. It's a matter of time before they find a way to get you out. 100%. It is one of the biggest things. I always, you know, whether I'm talking to my marketing director, I'm talking to our CMO, I'm talking to our product people, I'm talking to our renewals team. I always ask, how do we benchmark against the competition? Who is first in class and how are we competing and how are we going against them? I always want that third party validation and I want that stack ranking. Because to me, simplistically, right, there's all sorts of creative ways to get better.

9:36But if there is a playbook and it's all about execution and you can learn something, not that you're going to take every single step because that might not work for your company. But if there are people that are out there doing it, understanding how they do it, how you compare, what you can benefit from, that to me is like a calling card. You can talk to my people and they can say Thurman is always asking, how does this compare against our competition and how does this compare against folks that are doing it world class? I want to add one other thing that Mark said before, because a lot of people, especially these days, younger people think they need to get promoted really quick.

10:12And they're quick to grab onto a position, quick to grab onto money, but not quick to grab onto opportunity. So I get calls all the time from people that have been around and they'll label out a couple of different opportunities that they're looking for. They'll name a company where they got the better title and more money and more stock. But when they tell you about the situation and they know it's going nowhere, it's literally going nowhere. Sure. And then they talk about another one where there's a really good opportunity. The title is less and the money is less. And what do they choose? Even though you tell them you go for the opportunity because three years from now, if you work your ass off, you'll be at a much bigger title with more money, working around people you want to work around, you know, with the stock that you want and the company's going somewhere.

11:09And then the next place you go, you have a whole bunch of other people you've been around that you can go with. But guess what they always do? They always choose the position or the money. And then two years later, they call me and say, yeah, John, you were right. I made a mistake. Okay, dude, but you lost two years of your life. You weren't challenged. You didn't learn anything. You took a big title. You didn't work around anybody you really wanted to, you could learn from. Now you're stuck and you got a big black mark on your resume. Good luck. Could not agree more. And listen, all I can do, you are 100 % accurate.

11:44Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe. Rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.