There Is No Shortcut to Business Growth: Interview with Paul Mountford, CEO of Protegrity

I recently went one on one with Paul Mountford, CEO of Protegrity.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Paul: The past 40 years as an enterprise technology industry executive, which included leadership roles at Pure Storage and before that Cisco, were instrumental in preparing me to lead Protegrity. During my time at Cisco, in particular, I was tasked with representing the company’s business interests in various countries around the world. This involved liaising with everyone from the crown princes of the Middle East and the late Queen Elizabeth II to the world’s top business and political leaders. It exposed me to geopolitical issues, like data sovereignty, which can disrupt cross-border data flows that are critical to innovation and growth in any global business. 

The cumulative of these experiences, I believe, prepared me to take the helm of Protegrity at a time of unprecedented digitization, raging debate about protecting data privacy, and the enactment of privacy regulations around the world, starting with the EU’s GDPR five years ago. As we continue to witness the fragmentation of data privacy regulatory landscape around the world, I see enterprises caught in the crosshairs. They are trying to preserve their investments in globalization strategies while serving their customers effectively and continuing to innovate and grow, even as cross-border data flows become restricted. 

Protegrity’s data-centric security solutions enable companies to navigate this complex and fast-evolving regulatory and cyberthreat landscape by protecting their sensitive data in such a way that it becomes useless when it is in the wrong hands. The company’s unique value in protecting the data itself while allowing collaboration for innovation and business growth is what attracted me to the company.

By tapping into my experience putting a growth mindset to work in multinational IT environments, I’m excited to bring Protegrity’s Borderless Data™ solutions to market, providing end-to-end data protection capabilities to solve the problem to secure and compliant cross-border data flows for companies

Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?

Paul: Anyone who has ever successfully scaled a business knows it takes an incredible amount of work. There is no shortcut to business growth, but smart planning can help improve your profitability and long-term value. 

First, it is critically important to understand your customers and the business outcomes they want to achieve. Next, you need to understand your team’s capabilities and how far they can go to determine the speed at which you can scale your business. Then put strategies (which should include digital and talent) and processes in place to achieve your business goals. Lastly, continuously assess the market opportunity and direction via good data-driven research and customer feedback to determine whether to stay the course or pivot to better address market shifts and trends. 

In Protegrity’s line of business, for example, we saw that large enterprises have been forced to rethink their globalization strategies because of the fragmented data privacy policy landscape. Data localization requirements can put global innovation at risk. Protegrity's Borderless Data Solution is the only tool of its kind that can turn local data privacy compliance from an innovation inhibitor to a global accelerator, and there is a significant opportunity to expand our global market presence to help more enterprises to reinstate business-critical cross-border data flows.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?

Paul: Leaders need to be authentic and engaged. At Protegrity, I strive to show up authentically every single day, to lead with integrity, and demonstrate consistency in my words and actions. The failures in leadership that we see today are not necessarily those of skills and competency, but those that lack the character to sustain trust and credibility. This can sometimes mean stamping out poor behavior irrespective of results. This also translates to an obsession with results and performance and the ability to see wins and losses with the same level of discipline and passion.

To build a team, a leader must show up consistently and create conditions for motivation to flourish. You need foresight to identify when to adjust goals in either direction to continue to motivate your team. Stay laser-focused on results and be a steward for regularly sharing critical information with your team. Being engaged with employees, and understanding and recognizing their contributions to the company, are also critical to building team spirit and camaraderie. 

Adam: What are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them?

Paul: Most companies today have invested heavily in a myriad of cybersecurity tools to protect their most important asset, data. Yet as data sprawl continues, data breaches are inevitable. Leaders need to prepare their businesses for that eventuality. They need to consider investing in technology that protects their companies’ sensitive data so that even in the event of a breach, the extracted data is rendered useless in the hands of the hackers.

But locking down the data to protect it is not the answer. Business leaders today are grappling with a complex web of evolving privacy regulations, increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats and the urgent need to innovate and stay competitive. Data’s true value comes from being able to share it to derive insights. 

As data plays a more critical role in driving business value, leaders need to invest in data protection solutions that allow for cross-border data to flow securely, easily and in compliance with evolving regulations. Cross-border data sharing allows businesses to innovate, governments to cooperate, and human beings to collaborate. This is revolutionary for organizations, and it is why, at Protegrity, we have made secure borderless data a priority. 

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Paul: Napoleon once said, “the best leaders are leaders in hope.” Hope for the future and the overriding belief in the potential that lies ahead is what should drive a leader. Without hope, a leader cannot expect their team to overcome the challenges they will inevitably face. 

Additionally, a leader needs to be adaptable. A plan is just that, a plan. I think we have all learned in the last few years that the world can change in a moment’s notice. A leader who can remain calm, and pivot quickly and efficiently in times of change, will be able to lead their team to long-term success. 

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Paul: Find someone you really admire and schedule regular check-ins with them. Ask them to coach you. There are a lot of books and other content out there, but emulating the behavior of a leader you admire is probably the most effective. Fundamentally, a leader is someone who inspires people to follow them. So, find someone you admire and identify the qualities in them that inspire you to follow them. Reflect back on yourself to see if you live by those qualities and try to develop them.

The person who had the largest effect on me is John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco. No matter how much time has passed since I last saw him, he is always consistent. He always starts by asking about you and telling you about him. He assesses very quickly if you’re real or not. Through asking questions he always finds a way to the empirical truth. Those are qualities I admire in him and ones I try to live by in my own life.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?

Paul: A leader is someone who can set a vision and the path to realizing it; and ensures their team has the tools to achieve it. In my experience, an effective leader also does three things really well. 

First, set ambitious but realistic goals. As I mentioned before, it’s important that your teams are not only inspired but also feel that the vision is achievable. Make every goal measurable, and ensure that your teams regularly measure data, progress, and budget. This will give you concrete metrics to compare and ensure tangible progress.

Secondly, be flexible and adaptable by recognizing when core strategies are no longer working; being willing to change course to adjust to market demands is imperative. Leaders need to be able to identify when their business is at this juncture and pivot. They need to herald their team to constantly innovate while keeping a close pulse on the market and their stakeholders.

Lastly, build resilient teams. Leaders can never anticipate what the future will hold, but they can build teams that are strong and capable enough to manage whatever happens. A leader’s greatest success is often seen in how well their team can operate independently and in their absence. 

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding? 

Paul: I think there are a few fundamental things that determine the success of sales, marketing, and branding in a company. As the first step, it is critical to define the purpose of your company that people can connect with. At the same time, understand your market, and what your customer’s needs are. Next, devise a plan with your team to bridge the two. Set that in motion and continuously reevaluate based on market feedback to see if you need to course correct at any time. Lastly, it’s important to continuously refresh your team on the objectives, as well as update them on progress, even the small wins.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Paul: Never judge a person on what they say, but the questions they ask. I think this kind of questioning technique often leads to the truth or shows the other person that you're interested enough in what they have or their proposition. It gives you credibility with them and really shows them that you’re listening and that you’re genuinely interested. It demonstrates that you will not take anything at face value, rather you will keep pushing until you get to the underlying reality.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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