135 - Rivian CPO on scaling culture from 9 to 15,000 employees & changing the face of factory workers: Helen Russell (Chief People Officer, Rivian)

Helen Russell, Chief People Officer at Rivian, joined us on The Modern People Leader.  

We talked about scaling the culture as they’ve grown to 15k employees in the last few years, how Rivian is changing the face of what it looks like to be a manufacturing employee, and how they improved decision making throughout the company.

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This episode was brought to you by People Leader Accelerator. Learn more here.

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(3:22) Good news stories

(9:30) Helen’s career journey to becoming Chief People Officer at Rivian: Sonos, Atlassian, Rivian

(16:38) How she’s approached picking the right role

(19:57) Her hypothesis on why there’s a shortage of people leaders right now

(23:43) Why we should be jealous that she gets to work at Rivian

(27:10) Capturing the essence and scaling what it felt like to work at Rivian in the early days

(31:00) Their quarterly recharge conversations

(34:04) Measuring culture at Rivian

(37:40) The onboarding process at Rivian

(40:57) Changing the face of what it looks like to be a manufacturing employee

(50:46) How Rivian involved their frontline employees in their IPO

(54:48) The difference between scaling a company and operating at scale

(1:00:53) Spotting which leaders are going to be able to succeed in the next phase of growth

(1:04:20) How Rivian improved decision making throughout the organization

(1:12:08) Rapid fire questions

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