Getting to Know New TIBCO CEO Dan Streetman
We recently sat down with Dan Streetman, the newly appointed CEO of TIBCO, to ask him about his background, leadership style, and how he plans to help our customers overcome challenges on the journey to digital transformation.
What inspired you to join TIBCO?
Dan Streetman: TIBCO is at the heart of some of the most transformational things happening in the world. Everything in our lives and businesses is more connected than ever before, and as a result, we’re now able to collect exponentially more data. Yet Forrester estimates that as much as 73% of that data goes unused. At TIBCO, we have the unique ability to connect everything, unify all the data, and leverage it to augment intelligence and provide insights in real time. At a time when every organization needs to make smarter, faster decisions, we’re unique in our ability to do all this in a multi-cloud world.
Just as importantly, I love what we represent as an organization. Our TIBCO values speak exactly to what is most important to me: We are Together, Innovative, Bold, Customer-focused, and Optimistic—I can’t think of a better way to describe the kind of teams I want to be part of.
Can you tell us about how your personal philosophies are influencing the work that you do?
DS: First, I love a ‘can-do’ attitude. ‘Can Do’ was the motto on one of my unit crests many years ago, and it’s always stuck with me as shorthand for preparation, resiliency, creativity, and optimism (shout out to Colonel(R) Tad Davis, who will never read this interview)!
Just as important to me is integrity. Being able to count on one another to be reliable and consistent is critical if we want to work Together. Unfortunately in life, we see many examples of people that are self-focused and who seem to go far. I’m convinced that kind of success is usually short-lived, and we also see many examples of that approach coming back to haunt people. To me, having integrity means always being able to look forward…and never worrying about looking back.
Of course, I also believe in teamwork and believe all three of these traits and philosophies complement one another. People want to be around others who are Optimistic and act with Integrity…and as a result, they enjoy doing work Together.
At TIBCO NOW Chicago, you spoke about being ‘Better Together’, explaining that collaborative culture is your top priority right now. What is your plan to achieve that, based on your previously mentioned ‘can do, charge forward’ attitude?
DS: The first step is making sure we have this idea of a shared consciousness and shared goals, and that starts with improving our collaboration. We have a fantastic baseline of innovation, and we’ve got great customers, but more than once I’ve heard people say “I didn’t know TIBCO did that” or someone else says “I didn’t realize we had that customer.”
We were just working with a hospital in Canada, and the team there hadn’t yet heard about the work we’d done with the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics to help them dramatically reduce infections. Better collaboration is the first step to making us more effective. Helping everybody make smarter faster decisions internally—by using TIBCO Analytics to assess everything we do and by collaborating using modern tools like Slack and Elevate—will help make us more successful, and make TIBCO a model for our customers to emulate.
What can TIBCO employees, customers, and partners look forward to with you as CEO?
DS: As the CEO, it is my job to work for our customers, our partners, and our team members. And that’s critical to me. It comes back to working Together. As a leader coming into an organization that has a tremendous heritage of innovation, I respect and appreciate all the many contributions of our team over time. So our team members who have been here for 20 years as well as our team members who have been here 20 days all have something to contribute, and recognizing that is important to me. Both groups bring unique insights that help us drive Innovation… and realizing the magic of the whole team working Together, that’s probably what I look forward to most.
Dan Streetman is the Chief Executive Officer of TIBCO. Dan is an expert in driving growth initiatives, innovation and customer success, and he has been part of significant digital transformations at BMC Software, Salesforce, C3, Siebel and others. He is a strong advocate for creating cultures of innovation and teamwork and he honed his leadership skills as an Army officer, where he served in Iraq combat operations and earned decorations including the Bronze Star medal. He actively advocates for veterans and serves on several non-profit boards supporting veteran education and employment. Dan is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School.