Interviews at The Entrepreneur Center @NVTC

Kevin Parker hasn't been in the Washington area long but he's already made an impact in the local tech community. His company, Deltek, was recently named by NVTC as “Hottest Management Team” as part of the Hot Ticket awards. Parker, 46, took the reins at Deltek, a software firm based in Herndon, Va., in 2005. Since then the company has grown from 700 people to a little more than 1,000, including a small handful of new managers that Parker has hired over the last year. And it's doing $151 million in annual revenue. Parker came to the Washington area from California where he was CFO and co-president of PeopleSoft. His previous stints have included positions at Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Toshiba America, and Price Waterhouse before it merged with Coopers & Lybrand. Parker was born in Brooklyn and grew up outside of Albany, N.Y.

Tania Anderson for Bisnow on Business: Congratulations on winning the Hottest Management Team award. What makes your management team so great?
We have a sense of collaboration and focus. We've been successful in the last year bringing on some great leaders and we've expanded our management team very significantly. We added a new CFO, a new chief marketing officer, a new general counsel, a new vice president of sales, a new vice president of professional services. In large part these are all new positions within the company, not replacements.

It seems like it would be challenging for such a large company not to have some of those positions like a general counsel.
Deltek was a successful company but very focused on a niche set of markets. Our view of the world is growing, and we have a sense that we can do a lot more in the future than we've done. Bringing in new leaders from outside has helped create a new dynamic.

How large is your management team?
I have eight direct reports.

What do you look for when you're hiring or promoting?
A high degree of integrity and a good teacher. Part of their role within Deltek is taking their experience and transferring it into the organization so the entire organization rises around them.

How do you gauge if someone has integrity and good teaching skills during an interview?
There's no one question that can illicit a response that says, 'I've got integrity or I don't.' By asking people about the challenges they face, some difficult professional or personal situations they've found themselves in, how did they resolve them. What's the toughest decision they've had to make and how did they solve it. You start to learn a lot about a person's view of the world and their sense of integrity.

In the simplest terms possible, what exactly does Deltek do?
Enterprise software for project-oriented organizations.

Who are your customers?
We have a very large base of government contractors, professional services firms, architectural and engineering firms. An organization whose primary output is a project rather than a widget is an ideal Deltek customer.

What's driving your revenue?
We have a specific set of applications that focus on governance, total cost of ownership, and high return on investment. They're very quick to deploy. The alternative for many of our customers is taking a generic software application and trying to customize it to do what ours does out of the box.

What's the biggest challenge of running a 1,000-person company?
Creating an environment that embraces change, that is prepared for growth, that really is very forward thinking and expansive in looking at the potential for our software, our consulting services and our applications.

What makes a good leader?
Humility and candor. I'm very fortunate to be in the position that I'm in and realize that our success is not attributable to any one person but really making sure that there's a sense in the organization that we're all working towards a common goal. The other component is really candor and making sure we're facing reality and addressing the issues in front of us in an open and candid way to make sure we resolve problems quickly.

Are there certain aspects of good leadership that you personally are still working on?
I'm trying to find an aspect that I'm not working on. It's a journey, not a destination. It's one of those things I wake up every morning thinking what do I need to be doing better. It's an evolving art from my perspective.

What's your management style?
Very collaborative. I assume that the people around me know more about their job than I do.

In 2000, CFO magazine named you one of the 20 CFOs who would make a difference in the next decade. Six years into the decade, what kind of difference have you made?
I've always tried to make sure that no matter how complex the issue, we could translate it in a way that made it understandable to the broadest number of people. How it related to their job as an individual, how they helped contribute to the success. Find the common denominator to help understand the direction a company is going in.

When and why did you come to Washington?
I'm a new resident. My family and I moved here from California the week before Christmas of last year. After living in California for 20 years, my wife and my family decided that we wanted to move to another part of the country and experience life in a new place. Deltek came at the same time so a lot of family and professional objectives came together.

So as a new resident, how would you describe this area?
Very vibrant. Particularly coming from Silicon Valley which can be very self-absorbed. I'm very impressed with the diversity of the Northern Virginia technology community and delighted to be a part of it.

What got you interested in business, specifically technology?
I always had an interest in business. My father was a partner in Peat Marwick Mitchell. I was exposed from a fairly young age. After leaving college in 1981, I remember the first day I sat down at an Apple and started programming in VisiCal. I got hooked. I remember taking college courses in computer programming using punch cards. I always had an interest in technology but I think it's the intersection of business and technology that really got me hooked.

What do you do in your free time?
I have a wife and a 3-year-old daughter so I keep pretty busy with that. We have a lot of outside interests, including cooking and traveling.

Any offbeat hobbies?
I have a particular interest in historical architecture. As a family project, my brother and I are restoring two Dutch colonial houses that will end up on the National Register of Historic Places. Both were built in the 1720s. One was a Dutch farm house and the other is a commercial building that was inside the stockade walls of Fort Orange in Albany, NY. We think it's the oldest standing building in Albany.

Do you have timeline of when you want to finish the houses?
No. It's like a lot of personal projects, it's something we enjoy doing together. We're very interested in research about the properties. You can trace them back to Dutch colonial era maps.

How often do you get to work on the houses?
Every few months. With digital photography, I'm never farther than an e-mail about what's not going on. : )