Jan 29, 2020 | 4 min read

Thinking Beyond the Immediate in Business with David Hoag

By: Patrick Emmons

Thinking Beyond the Immediate in Business with David Hoag

In a corporate environment, a leader’s main task is to keep their team running efficiently and productively. However, in the startup world, a leader needs to jump in and help out at every level. It was this kind of environment and mindset that best informed the leadership style of our guest today, David Hoag.

David is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for OCC, the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing organization. His time working at a startup taught him lessons that he’s carried over to his teams throughout the years. David talks to Patrick and Shelli about why it’s so important to look beyond immediate problems, why egos keep business stuck, and why it’s better for managers to lead through inquiry and questions as opposed to dictates and direction.

Tune in for a masterclass in effective leadership.

  • [00:25] - This week: David Hoag
  • [01:12] - The Options Clearing Corporation
  • [02:54] - From CME to startup to OCC
  • [06:34] - The challenge of adding customer value
  • [08:40] - Incremental wins for transformational change
  • [12:53] - Creating a culture of empowerment
  • [17:37] - Acknowledging mistakes
  • [24:52] - Debugging your company
  • [26:51] - Establishing a healthy leadership style through mentorship
  • [36:03] - The innovation leash
  • [39:49] - The Advantage
  • [40:46] - Identifying the perfect candidate

In his role as SVP and CIO, David Hoag leads the entire OCC Information Technology team, ensuring that OCC has the technology infrastructure to provide OCC’s approximately 100 clearing members with cost-effective risk management solutions while also meeting the heightened expectations of global regulators.

Hoag is a technology executive with nearly 25 years of information systems and development experience. He previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Halo Investing, Inc., which offers a pre-defined market return trading platform for investors. Before joining Halo, Hoag was Chief Technology Officer for NextTier Education, a web and mobile-based post-secondary readiness platform that delivers critical information on every two and four-year college in the U.S. Prior to NextTier, he spent 11 years with CME Group, most recently serving as the Managing Director of Post Trade Technology leading the exchange’s information technology development teams responsible for all its clearing and settlement activities.

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This podcast episode was produced by Dante32.

About Patrick Emmons

If you can’t appreciate a good sports analogy, movie quote, or military reference, you may not want to work with him, but if you value honesty, integrity, and commitment to improvement, Patrick can certainly help take your business or your career to the next level. “Good enough,” is simply not in his vernacular. Pat’s passion is for relentlessly pushing himself and others to achieve full potential. Patrick Emmons is a graduate of St. Norbert College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Patrick co-founded Adage Technologies in 2001 and in 2015, founded DragonSpears as a spin-off dedicated to developing custom applications that improve speed, compliance and scalability of clients’ internal and customer-facing workflow processes. When he is not learning about new technology, running a better business, or becoming a stronger leader, he can be found coaching his kids’ (FIVE of them) baseball and lacrosse teams and praising his ever-so-patient wife for all her support.

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We interview leaders from early-stage start-ups to billion-dollar enterprises who distill their lessons from their victories and their failures. Learn how these high-performing leaders organize their teams, establish a growth-minded culture, and leverage new technologies such as DevOps and Cloud.