In the early 1980s, a school librarian introduced Jim Anderson and his fifth-grade classmates to computer programming. He didn't know it at the time, but the future Lattice Semiconductor CEO's career took shape right there.
Anderson and his classmates learned how to create their own programs. They used the kid-friendly Turtle app. Enthralled, Anderson peppered the librarian, Don Ramstad, with questions.
"He made time for me after school after that," Anderson recalled. "There were no computer science classes in fifth grade," so the self-taught Ramstad mentored the youngster on programming basics.
Build Your Future Like The Lattice Semiconductor CEO
Today, Anderson is president and chief executive of Lattice Semiconductor, a chip firm based in Hillsboro, Ore. Anderson credits Ramstad, who became Anderson's high school computer science teacher, with expanding his horizons at a young age.
"He was an amazing teacher," Anderson said. "He put me on the tech path."
Anderson grew up in a Minnesota farming town of 1,200 people with no stoplight. So he knows how fortunate he was to gain exposure to the new frontier of computing. He kept in touch with Ramstad over the years. And he visited him just a few weeks before he died in 2019.
"I told him, 'I'll always be very grateful to you,' " Anderson said. "I was lucky to be able to say thank you to him for everything he did for me."
Learn To Perform Like Anderson
Anderson, 50, may have started out making simple computer programs. But now he runs a global semiconductor company of roughly 1,000 employees. He became Lattice's CEO on Sept. 4, 2018, after spending three years as a top executive at Advanced Micro Devices.
And his efforts have paid off quickly for investors as well.
Shares of the company are up 475% with Anderson at the helm. That easily tops the S&P 500's 27% rise in that time. Lattice Semiconductor is now valued at $6.5 billion.
And the company's growth is just as impressive. Revenue hit $515 million last year, up 29% from 2018. But more head-turning is the company's adjusted profit per share, which last year reached $1.06, up 221% from 2018. That's nearly 48% compound average annual profit growth.
The company, founded in 1983, is a key player in a niche of the semiconductor industry called field programmable gate arrays. These chips are useful in industry as they can be easily customized by customers after they are made. They're ideal for hardware that performs specialized tasks, such as medical imaging devices like MRI scanners.
But it took planning for the company to succeed.
In his first few months as Lattice CEO, Anderson set out to simplify the company's leadership structure. He recruited key people to help him overhaul the organizational culture. Many newly installed CEOs hire former associates they know and like. But Anderson took a different tack.
"When you start as a new leader, you tend to hire people you've worked with who are a known quantity," he said. "I didn't do that."
Recruit A Whole New Leadership Team
Instead, Anderson sought out the best candidates he could find. He didn't favor people he already knew. Within six months of becoming Lattice CEO, he hired five executives from outside the company.
"It was risky, but the company needed an injection of fresh talent," he said. "All five of them I'd never worked with. I prioritized picking the absolute best person for the job."
His criteria for selecting his new leadership team didn't just revolve around what he calls their "work experience and domain knowledge." He paid equal attention to their personality and mentality.
In interviews, he asked himself, "Would I want to work for this person?" He says he sought individuals who exhibited humility along with a focus on "good operational discipline."
Anderson prioritized assembling a highly focused leadership team. And he upgraded the company's prevailing culture at the time.
"When I got here, I wanted to get the right culture in place," he recalled. "I loved its culture of being team-oriented. But we were slow-moving and had lost being bold and agile. The company had a history of innovative products, but it had drifted away from that. We had to reinvigorate that."
Send Big Messages With Big Bets
For Anderson, a key to spurring innovation is creating a safe, supportive environment for people to take risks. In his early months as Lattice CEO, he sensed a problem.
"The team would come back with conservative proposals because if you took risk, there was a lot of downside to your career," he said. He engineered what he calls "a cultural shift" to encourage employees to share bold ideas freely without fear of hurting their career prospects.
"We will be honest if we make a mistake and we will move on," he told his team. "You won't get beat up if the risk doesn't work out."
To signal the new approach, he surprised staffers by taking a high-stakes risk. When rolling out a new product, Anderson placed an outsize bet on its success.
"Normally, you wouldn't order any production material until you test it and were sure it would work," he said. "But I said, 'Let's assume this new product will work and put in a big production order.' "
Speeding up the time to production paid off. Customers loved the new product. And it also sent a message throughout Lattice that Anderson welcomed bold thinking and faster decision-making.
To reinforce the message, Anderson distributed the minutes from his leadership team's meetings to the workforce. He ensured that the minutes reflect his directive that if an innovative idea or new product didn't work out, "we will adjust course and learn from it," he said.
"You do that enough times and people see that you're creating the underlying fabric to build innovation," he said.
Simplify Complex Concepts Into Plain English
Pat Moorhead, a technology industry analyst, says that few leaders can operate successfully at both large corporations and smaller firms. Anderson, who worked at tech giants such as Intel and Broadcom, is a rare exception.
"He has the ability to get five or six levels of people in an organization to execute," said Moorhead, chief executive of Moor Insights & Strategy in Austin, Texas. "He also has the entrepreneurial twitch skills that typically come with running small companies."
For Anderson, success comes in part by communicating complex concepts in simple terms. When addressing employees, investors or other audiences, he says he seeks to simplify his message. Others have taken notice.
"Whether he's engaging a board (of directors) or engaging the organization to help (employees) understand the why, what and how, he's good at simplifying complex topics," said Abhi Talwalkar, former president and chief executive of LSI Corp. "He has the best slideware of anyone I've come across." Slideware refers to the slides used in presentations.
At LSI, Talwalkar recalls when Anderson — then an LSI executive — proposed a bold, multiyear initiative to invest in disruptive technology for cell towers.
"I needed to be convinced," Talwalkar said. "So did the board. Jim's ability to distill complex topics into consumable, bite-size elements played a role in convincing all of us."
Jim Anderson's Keys:
- President and CEO of Lattice Semiconductor, an Oregon-based semiconductor firm.
- Overcame: A culture at Lattice Semiconductor that discouraged employees from taking bold risks.
- Lesson: "When you start as a new leader, you tend to hire people you've worked with who are a known quantity. I didn't do that."
