Tom Dailey joined 2Checkout.com as company president in October 2009. A 25-year veteran of the card and payments industry, including a stint as the head of Discover Card’s global merchant business, Dailey has served on numerous industry boards, testified in landmark legal cases involving the card and payments industry and been regularly quoted as an industry expert.
In August, he was named one of the 2010 Smart Leader honorees. We asked him how 2Checkout.com has adapted to a changing business environment. Here is an excerpt from the interview:
Q: What recent business challenge has 2Checkout.com faced, and how have you led the company through it?
2Checkout.com was founded on the principle of facilitating e-commerce payment transactions between buyers and sellers, regardless of where they are located. In the past year, 2Checkout.com has retooled the foundations of the 115-person company, including creating new vision, mission, strategy and value statements because we believe we are at the cusp of a new growth phase as a company.
The challenge was to present the payment experience to each party in a language, currency and set of payment options that are appropriate for that party. As a result, 2CO created a global payments processing platform that connects buyers and sellers in any country, supporting more than 20 languages and 30 currencies. This combination of languages and currencies is unmatched by any other payments solution provider of any size.
Employee involvement and a focus on communication were key to the success of the massive changes which come at such a time. I personally gave every employee a seat at a roundtable with myself and encouraged all senior management to expand on our already extensive channels of communication. We have always believed in an open-door policy at all levels of the company, but we took that value to a whole new level this year.
Q: In what ways are you an innovative leader, and how does your organization employ innovation to be on the leading edge?
For a small company, 2CO does leadership and innovation in a big-company way, with recognition, employee innovation and leadership development initiatives. 2Checkout.com recently sent several key management members to the TechColumbus Innovation Summit and challenged each of them to bring lessons learned back to 2CO in the form of actionable ways in which to drive day-to-day innovation at all levels of the company.
Every employee of 2CO is encouraged to innovate constantly, and we have an Innovation Committee, started in January 2009, which once a month reviews employee submissions for how to improve 2CO and our product offerings.
