The CEO of F5 Networks is taking his $8 billion company through a tough transition by using lessons he learned growing up under a dictatorship

This story requires our BI Prime membership. To read the full article,Francois Locoh-Donou, the CEO of F5 Networks, is leading the company through a tough transition from a hardware-centric to a software-focused enterprise tech powerhouse.

The movie's about people who loved to chase tornadoes, which was what the F5 founders were essentially doing then, riding the wave of the newly-unleashed World Wide Web by selling data center appliances to help businesses manage their Internet traffic. Nowadays, it's a publicly-traded company valued at some $8 billion.

"If you create an environment where these voices are suppressed, you will fail," he told Business Insider. Locoh-Donou lived in Togo in the 70s and early 80s when the country was ruled by Gnassingbe Eyadema."He basically owned the country," Locoh-Donou said. He ran the country with an iron hand, backed by a powerful military that was loyal to him, and any form of opposition or dissent was repressed"very seriously," he said.

Having more open-minded, engaged leaders, who do not say,"do this because I said so" is also good for business, he said."If you as a leader are not capable of explaining to your team that this is the strategic rationale for why you need to do this, because you don't have enough industry context or knowledge of our business, or knowledge of the customers, and you just say 'I want 'yes' people around me — then for me you are not a leader. You are a task master.

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