Shellye Archambeau shares vital tips to navigate today’s precarious career climate [click this link to see full bio-link and photo]
GGG: Shellye, your bio reads like a Who’s Who of Women to Watch in Corporate America! As our first C-Level personality featured at GGG, let’s talk for a minute about CEO and what that looks like. You’re currently the Chief Executive Officer of MetricStream Incorporated, a market leader in Enterprise-wide Governance Risk and Compliance for global corporations. Please tell our BGG family, and our young geeks-in-training, how early did you envision your success? You obviously aimed for greatness, but how methodical was your plan to get there?
SA: I’ve always been a goal oriented person, and very big on planning. At some point during my high school years I decided that I wanted to run a business, I wasn’t sure what kind of business initially, but I knew I wanted to ‘build’ something.
In the early 80s Apple, distributed technology, and personal computers were just emerging and the industry was starting to boom. I thought technology looked like a growing, inviting area, and so I decided to start a career in technology.
GGG: Growing up as a person of color, for our generation and previous, in many cases, our parents didn’t say, “be sure you do well in school so you can be a CEO one day”. Or, there may not have been talk at the dinner table on the importance of value proposition. What were the primary driving forces that led to your career aspirations?
SA: One driving force for me to succeed was that I wanted to have resources (the means) to live comfortably. Growing up, I was the oldest child; my mom had 4 children in 5 years! The good news is that we’re all very close today. My parents did fine raising us within their means, but it was the simple things that sometimes stood out. I remember that it was always cold in our house - the thermostat was never above 68 degrees in the winter! My dad worked hard and did well for what he earned and my mother was a stay at home mom, so things were financially tight sometimes with our large family. I remember wanting to one day be able to have certain resources for myself and live differently.
GGG: And today, what does a typical day in the life look like for Shellye Archambeau?
In the early 80s Apple, distributed technology, and personal computers were just emerging and the industry was starting to boom. I thought technology looked like a growing, inviting area, and so I decided to start a career in technology.
GGG: Growing up as a person of color, for our generation and previous, in many cases, our parents didn’t say, “be sure you do well in school so you can be a CEO one day”. Or, there may not have been talk at the dinner table on the importance of value proposition. What were the primary driving forces that led to your career aspirations?
SA: One driving force for me to succeed was that I wanted to have resources (the means) to live comfortably. Growing up, I was the oldest child; my mom had 4 children in 5 years! The good news is that we’re all very close today. My parents did fine raising us within their means, but it was the simple things that sometimes stood out. I remember that it was always cold in our house - the thermostat was never above 68 degrees in the winter! My dad worked hard and did well for what he earned and my mother was a stay at home mom, so things were financially tight sometimes with our large family. I remember wanting to one day be able to have certain resources for myself and live differently.
GGG: And today, what does a typical day in the life look like for Shellye Archambeau?
SA: There is no typical day, but there are typical cycles. What is typical is that my days are very long and full! For example yesterday, we were having our board meeting, and I needed to get into the office early to prep for this meeting, so I wasn’t able to work out that morning. By the way, I’d gotten home the evening before after 10:30 p.m.! I arrived to the office around 8:00 a.m., the board meeting started at 8:30, followed by another meeting about 11:00, my staff meeting was later that afternoon, and I ended up leaving the office early to rush to attend a formal networking event- I was in the typical rush hour traffic for about an hour, and arrived to the event that ran well into the evening!
GGG: So, for a CEO this “typical” schedule is par for the course. How do you find your work-life balance?
SA: I have a phenomenal husband. Everyone should have such a great partner or support system. That is how I am able to make my life work as I have always envisioned. From the very beginning my husband was an awesome partner to help us accomplish our goals. For example when I graduated from college I married my husband and got pregnant soon after. I told my husband as we were looking for our first home, that we needed to have a nanny in order to support our careers. We looked into areas where we’d buy our home and we didn’t start out with the best home right off. Our priority was the welfare of our child and we spent more money on the nanny than buying the better home. It was a matter of a trade-off and what was needed at the time.
GGG: So you made a strategic choice and deferred instant gratification.
SA: Yes, it was important to us to have children, it was important to me to be able to have my career and achieve the kind of goals I set for myself and I didn’t believe I could do it without that kind of help.
So, having said that, the situation of the nanny didn’t last forever, but we leveraged certain decisions that would work for us. We did move into a better house eventually, it was all about the planning. People really need to spend time planning for themselves and then working their plan. Had we not planned for a nanny, when buying the house, we might not have had the financial resource flexibility that we needed.
GGG: One of your LinkedIn recommenders says of you, “Shellye is an awesome business person. She has a gift for taking the complex and making is really simple"… How do you take the complex and make it really simple?
SA: I do it out of self-defense! I can only handle so many things. “What is it that I need to achieve and what’s the value proposition” is my overall approach and I just go from there.
GGG: The current state of our economy and job market is creating the highest levels of competition and creative strategy for employment – at any level. What do you feel gives people the competitive advantage in a company?
SA: Tactically, it is extremely important that right now people concentrate on doing the best possible job and showing their value in their current roles. Companies across our nation right now are in survival mode. There will be time for getting to the next level, but for now, while we are in this unique period of pervasive layoffs and corporate down-sizing, it is critical that people are able to show the value they bring to their company.
GGG: So, for a CEO this “typical” schedule is par for the course. How do you find your work-life balance?
SA: I have a phenomenal husband. Everyone should have such a great partner or support system. That is how I am able to make my life work as I have always envisioned. From the very beginning my husband was an awesome partner to help us accomplish our goals. For example when I graduated from college I married my husband and got pregnant soon after. I told my husband as we were looking for our first home, that we needed to have a nanny in order to support our careers. We looked into areas where we’d buy our home and we didn’t start out with the best home right off. Our priority was the welfare of our child and we spent more money on the nanny than buying the better home. It was a matter of a trade-off and what was needed at the time.
GGG: So you made a strategic choice and deferred instant gratification.
SA: Yes, it was important to us to have children, it was important to me to be able to have my career and achieve the kind of goals I set for myself and I didn’t believe I could do it without that kind of help.
So, having said that, the situation of the nanny didn’t last forever, but we leveraged certain decisions that would work for us. We did move into a better house eventually, it was all about the planning. People really need to spend time planning for themselves and then working their plan. Had we not planned for a nanny, when buying the house, we might not have had the financial resource flexibility that we needed.
GGG: One of your LinkedIn recommenders says of you, “Shellye is an awesome business person. She has a gift for taking the complex and making is really simple"… How do you take the complex and make it really simple?
SA: I do it out of self-defense! I can only handle so many things. “What is it that I need to achieve and what’s the value proposition” is my overall approach and I just go from there.
GGG: The current state of our economy and job market is creating the highest levels of competition and creative strategy for employment – at any level. What do you feel gives people the competitive advantage in a company?
SA: Tactically, it is extremely important that right now people concentrate on doing the best possible job and showing their value in their current roles. Companies across our nation right now are in survival mode. There will be time for getting to the next level, but for now, while we are in this unique period of pervasive layoffs and corporate down-sizing, it is critical that people are able to show the value they bring to their company.
GGG: What about the thing everyone wants to know about, as you speak of the shrinking job market and people needing to show value and being able to own the job they have, what about corporate politics, as another factor to challenge job stability?
SA: You have to communicate on all levels. Ensure that people at different levels in your company know the value you are contributing today as well as what your aspirations are for the future. If you’re a project manager today and you want to be a director tomorrow, how well have you communicated what you want to do? No one will know if you don’t tell, don’t worry about politics per se, focus on building good relationships– because after all, politics is really just a bunch of interpersonal relationships that affect outcome, isn’t it?
SA: You have to communicate on all levels. Ensure that people at different levels in your company know the value you are contributing today as well as what your aspirations are for the future. If you’re a project manager today and you want to be a director tomorrow, how well have you communicated what you want to do? No one will know if you don’t tell, don’t worry about politics per se, focus on building good relationships– because after all, politics is really just a bunch of interpersonal relationships that affect outcome, isn’t it?
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Shellye Archambeau is CEO of MetricStream, Inc. She has a proven executive management track record and over 20 years of experience driving sales growth in the technology industry. Prior to joining MetricStream, Shellye was Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Sales for Loudcloud, Inc., responsible for all global sales and marketing activities. For speaking requests Contact Shellye at SArchambeau@MetricStream.com
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