When Trend Micro, one of the world’s biggest cybersecurity companies, reorganized its leadership, co-founder Jenny Chang wasn’t sure she had a place in the company anymore.
“What difference would my not being here make?” she asked.
In her new book, Spotting the Trend: An Entrepreneur’s Success Story, Chang writes that her role at Trend Micro had always been low-key. She co-founded the company in 1988 with her husband, Steve Chang, and her sister, Eva Chen, but she said real operational authority was in the hands of other executives.
Her answer came from colleagues. They told her she was needed as Trend Micro’s “culture czar.”
So Chang became the first CCO — chief culture officer — of the multinational company.
Spotting the Trend is both memoir and a history of the company. Chang’s personal life cannot be separated from the company, she said.
And these days, she knows the company’s success cannot be separated from its culture.
Chang, based in Taiwan, visited the company’s U.S. headquarters in Irving in July to lead internal culture workshops and to share her book with employees.
In it, she tells the story of the three founders. She writes about her marriage and the moment Steve decided to pursue cybersecurity.
“‘We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these viruses,’ I remember Steve announcing to me,” Chang wrote in the book. “‘Viruses?’ I said. ‘Computers get viruses? You’d better stay clear of the computer, then.’”
But instead they studied viruses and business management.
Trend Micro, which started from $5,000 in seed money, grew to be a Nikkei 225 company, making more than $1 billion in revenue a year. Chang’s book details the ups and downs of the company over the years. It concludes with her discovery of the important role that company culture played in their success.
Trend Micro is a mix of nationalities: The founders are from Taiwan; they launched the company in California; they went public in Japan; they operate in more than 20 countries.
With such a transnational group, Chang said, creating a balanced company culture was more difficult than it would have been in a “cut-and-dried ‘American’ model.”
Among 15 company executives, they speak nine languages. Chang said she used to joke that their only common language was broken English.
The company’s move to Irving two years ago also reflects the importance Trend Micro places on culture. CEO Eva Chen said the corporate nature of Dallas-Fort Worth was part of the decision.
The Irving headquarters has 245 employees, and Chen said people here want to join a company they can call a second home. This is unlike Silicon Valley, she said, where employees often jump from company to company.
“In Dallas, you find people willing to join and stay,” she said.
Chen also believes that Trend Micro’s multiculturalism may bring more diversity to Dallas-Fort Worth. “Just this morning we had a culture workshop, and I don’t even know how many ethnicities we had in the room. We relocate people from around the world,” she said.
Commitment is important because Trend Micro’s culture thrives on employees who know its goals and values well.
Both Chang and Chen agree that Trend Micro’s culture is difficult to explain. But employee independence is one of the most notable outcomes.
“Cybersecurity is a very unfair game. The hacker can do anything, and the security has lots of compliances, like privacy, which makes it harder to protect clients,” Chen said.
On top of that, she says that cybercrime has become more complicated over the years. Trend Micro once protected clients against a handful of viruses. Now hackers are all over and attacks can come from anywhere.
To safeguard their clients, Trend Micro employees have to respond to new threats quickly, Chen said.
Because the pace of cybersecurity doesn’t always allow employees to follow a traditional chain of command, Chen said she relies on company culture to ensure that all her employees keep Trend Micro’s goals in mind.
In her book, Chang explains this by recalling something her husband told her.
“‘The way I see it,’ he said, ‘strategic decision-making requires three things. Firstly, a shared vision; secondly, consensus on who is the competition and where you are competing; and thirdly, how you plan to define victory,’” Chang wrote.
A deeply instilled corporate culture guides employee decision-making by keeping them from choosing the wrong battles and squandering limited resources, Chang wrote.
“A company is like a person, and a person needs a brain, a heart and hands. But most only have the brain and the hands,” Chen said. “I think Jenny is the heart.”
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