The Culture Code

This episode is a LEAKED event from our private, members-only Community of Practice for Leadership Development Professionals. We covered how to design and deliver an aspiring leaders program with the Sr. Manager of Sales Training at OLYMPUS. 

An unexpected sign of a thriving company culture is when the culture and product go hand in hand. Here are a few examples: At Headspace, a mindfulness and wellness app, company culture is fostered with guided meditations, “MINDays” devoted to letting employees unplug, and peer-to-peer gratitude. At Collectors, a collectible authentication company, employees are recognized with custom collectible cards that display their information, pictures, and stories. At Twilio, a platform for developers, employees receive custom track jackets for coding an app on their platform. When I met with Chief People Officer (CPO) of NerdWallet Lynee Luque, I was pleased to have found another brilliant example. NerdWallet culture revolves around the very things that the platform is built for: “transparency, accuracy, and responsibility.” NerdWallet is a platform that provides financial guidance and information to consumers as well as small and medium businesses. Below are a couple highlights from our interview: 1. A creative approach to feedback: live AMA's with execs“Once a quarter, we do an open Ask Me Anything. We dedicate an hour when all the executives are on Slack, and we encourage, solicit, and ask employees to ask us anything. Then, we answer the questions in real-time. We're sitting there giving responses, regardless of the questions.”2. Her clever low-budget approach to first-line leadership development“We want to ensure that our managers receive the feedback they need, so twice per year we conduct an engagement survey that's anonymous and confidential.” What makes her approach so clever is that Luque and her team deliver timely manager training twice per year following the evaluation period. That way, leaders know exactly which skills and behaviors they’d like to work on during the training. 3. How she plans to empower frontline managers to make local decisions“We have a new organizational structure, and I'll give the headline: local decision-making. In contrast to cascading a single communication, we are pushing more toward teaching managers to understand what's going on and then make a local decision. After all, managers are the best equipped to make that decision. They are the closest to the problem or to the opportunity."This one definitely earns the label of MUST LISTEN for its highly creative and easy-to-steal tactics. ENJOY! 🤓🪪 

In the HBR article, “Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy,” the authors describe an intensive study that they conducted to understand the strategies high-growth companies use to drive growth. The authors were surprised to discover one strategy that kept surfacing: putting purpose at the core of your company strategy.Across my thirty plus interviews with chief people officers (CPOs), Waymo serves as one of the best examples of how a strong sense of purpose can drive culture and ultimately growth strategy. In this interview with CPO Becky Bucich, she does a brilliant job of breaking down Waymo’s culture and the work her team does to foster it.A few highlights from this conversation include: 1. A culture built around Waymo's mission to "make roads safer." The self-driving car company strives to make the world safer, and this mission bleeds into everything that employees think, do, and say. “I still remember my first day at Waymo more than four years ago. During my orientation, we each shared why we joined Waymo, and the stories were so touching. People spoke about family members who were unable to get behind the wheel and the tragic loss of loved ones,” Becky said.2. Becky shared three unique ways she fosters culture. - A monthly newsletter and live showcase of a story of a "Waymonaut" who demonstrated a core value. - Setting aside time to volunteer in the community. - Accessibility to their product. When launching in San Francisco, Waymo launched in all micro-publications around the city to reach as many segments of the population as possible. 3. Why she leverages just-in-time learning to develop first-line managers“We offer quite a bit of just-in-time training. For example, after conducting our employee engagement survey, we train based on the results.” Bucich and her team also hold manager circles, where newer managers can learn from another manager who has more wisdom or experience in a relevant skill."---She covered the above and much more in the full interview. Enjoy! 🚗🤖 

"Building a real authentic culture is a moat because it's hard to replicate," said Shannon Sullivan the CPO of Dave. In this episode, Shannon shares how she built her moat at Dave. Here are a few highlights: 1. Two Ways she fosters authenticity in Dave's cultureShe injects all-hands meetings with 1) live interviews with customers, and 2) a highly transparent update (i.e., deep diving into employee engagement results). Including a culture-specific OKR that's company-wide. 2. How she reverse-engineered great leadershipWhen Shannon joined Dave three years ago, she was blown away by how high their manager effectiveness ratings were: 80–90% favorability on all of the questions around people’s experience with their direct manager.Most CPOs would be content “leaving leadership be” with such strong results, but Shannon decided to capitalize on their high scores to decode great leadership at Dave. “Some people call me a control freak. I call it intentional,” Sullivan said. “I decided to spend some time defining great leadership because that becomes the foundation of everything that we build. How we train managers, how we hire, and more.”3. Her podcast recommednation: How I Built This with Guy Raz“It's a podcast that interviews founders and shares their stories about building companies. It's a really good reminder that success, whether you're building a business, your career, or whatever, is often not linear. There are going to be setbacks. When I listen to the podcast, I can't help but reflect on the journey I've had here at Dave, which has not been linear and has included setbacks.”---We covered all of the above and much more. This one is a MUST-LISTEN! Great stuff from Shannon.  

Culture isn't magic. It's the product of thoughtful effort.As Josh Bersin puts it, “To change the culture, don’t start with the culture. Start with the problem that you are trying to solve, what success looks like, and why it matters to your company.”Nowhere is this mentality more present than at Headspace, where Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief People Officer (CPO) Karan Singh fittingly operates under the mantra “less but better.”Here are a few highlights from our interview:how he creates a culture that reflects the company mission“Culture certainly doesn't happen magically,” Singh pointed out. “You need to create it.”Here are three ways (of many) that he does so:- Beginning every all-hands meeting with a guided meditation- Flexible time off for employees to catch up on life, recharge, and get away from laptops- peer-to-peer recognition where employees express gratitude for each other’s contributions and adherence to company values2. how a team’s engagement and workload capacity go hand-in-handAs a dual COO and CPO, Singh shared the following unique perspective:“Wearing my operational hat, I think a lot about capacity planning and how much a team can take on. I think those areas are directly related to employee engagement scores. As engagement decreases, so will the load that your team can handle. If you wait every six or 12 months to measure team engagement, you clearly can't plan effectively.”3. how he develops “superhuman” leadersA recent example of “less but better” in action:The “Superhuman” Program—In collaboration with a team of neuroscientists and faculty members from UC Berkeley, Headspace created a program centered around this question: “How do you create a workplace that is remote-first and creates space for people to work smarter, not harder?”Singh and his team strove to make these concepts explicit and operationalize them. Every employee at Headspace completed the program.---This one is a must-listen! Enjoy! 

Leadership development is the lever for a thriving culture. Gallup research indicates that 70% of engagement can be traced back to an employee’s relationship with their manager.At DocuSign, employees actively love their leaders. In fact, year after year, one of the company’s highest-scoring items on its employee engagement score is “How likely would you recommend your manager?” When I asked Chief People Officer (CPO) of DocuSign Jennifer Christie about the success of her leadership development team, she said she attributed it to the proper preparation of emerging leaders.In this interview, Jennifer covers: 1. How she prepares her emerging leaders. She prepares people to lead early - Christie’s leadership development team works with aspiring leaders before they actually manage people. “If we've identified someone as being on track to become a manager, we put them through training to help them experience what it’s like."Emerging leaders can then opt out of leadership roles - Based on their experience during training, emerging leaders then have the ability to opt in or out of leadership. 2. Her advice for CPOs: Ingrain yourself in the business“When I first took the stage at a different company, I thought everyone expected me to be perfect and the best HR expert. I chose to focus less on being an expert in the business. If you focus on understanding the business, it will make you a better partner to your chief executive officer (CEO) and your peers.” 3. Jennifer's top book recs (both help drive a culture of effective feedback)Thanks for the Feedback and Difficult Conversations. Both books were written by the Harvard Negotiation Project with Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone. “These are two books that everyone can benefit from. I don't care what job you have or what level you are, these kinds of conversations are difficult. Giving feedback that's going to land the right way or receiving feedback in a productive way are fundamental skills for everything we do.”Hope you enjoy this one! 

With their deep involvement “on-the-floor” frontline managers are a lot like player-coaches.That’s how the CPO of Box Jess Swank likes to think of them. And I think it makes a lot of sense!Jess shared five critical ways she develops her frontline leadersMonthly manager power hours on timely skillsA bi-weekly manager newsletterA Slack channel for Q&AFocused development programs and coachingNew manager trainingShe also shared that moving in 2024, she’s focusing on locally tailored training: “We're working on understanding the commonalities across locations and how we can support local managers with local issues in a customized way.”In addition to the above, she dived into what culture looks like at Box, how they scale and sustain their culture, and her number one book recommendation.Hope you enjoy this one📦

At Cupertino Electric Inc. (CEI), the company grew so fast that they’ve found themselves at an inflection point. Now, CEI is attempting to slow down to observe its most effective leaders and determine what makes them great. To learn more, I met with CEI’s CPO Estrella Parker.A few highlights from our conversation include: 1. How she decoded the mindset behind great leadership at CEI She called the mentality "one team" and explained three main tenets: There are three tenets of the one team mentality:- CEI leaders are connected on a human level.- CEI leaders are accountable. “We pride ourselves on our projects, and we deliver. We do what we say. We do it on time and on budget,” Parker highlighted- CEI leaders have an adaptable mindset. “Resiliency is how this company grew,” Parker explained. 2. Her podcast recommendation for people & culture prosWisdom from the Top” with Guy Raz. “Guy interviews different leaders from different sectors to hear their stories. You learn a lot about leadership and the authentic struggles, successes, and hard lessons that people have learned.”3. Her advice for CPOs"Think with your heart and love with your brain."“You're dealing with people, and people need love. But you are also a strategist for people, so you have to think with your heart. You have to be rational about how you approach the softer side of organizations, and at the same time, you must solidly ground your thinking."Estrella offers a ton of great insights for people and culture leaders at companies in phases of rapid growth. Hope you enjoy 🤓

As I approach 40 podcast episodes with CPOs, an interesting theme has emerged: Companies that lean into quirky values stand out as especially creative and authentic environments. At Virta Health, employees operate around the value: "Evidence based." To learn more about what this looks like in action, I met with Dr. Lucia Guillory, the CPO. A couple highlights from this interview include: 1. What an evidence-based culture looks like in action. Guillory: I'm the CPO, but I wouldn't ask anyone in the company to do something if I wasn't able to explain to them why it was important and the evidence I had that it was going to work.2. First-line leader programs delivered by more senior leaders. Guillory: We went to our leaders and said "Here's where we think you have expertise. Do you agree and would you teach a course?" Then, we produced an 8-week course on essential topics, and we recorded it so we could continue to use it. This one has a lot great easter eggs throughout. Hope you enjoy. 

Gallup research indicates that 70% of engagement can be traced back to an employee’s relationship with their manager. This just goes to show that at the heart of any thriving culture is thriving leadership.Bristlecone is no exception. When the company attrition rate grew to 27% nearly two years ago, Chief People Officer (CPO) Lisa Lesko knew she needed to take action. After designing and delivering the “High Engage” Leadership Development Program, results began to stream in:Attrition dropped 15%.The employee net promoter score doubled.Bristlecone’s Glassdoor rating increased from 3.7 to 4.1.In this interview, Lisa covers: 1. how she reduced attrition by 15% through leadership development. The biggest issue showing up on the employee engagement survey was that employees wanted to talk more and connect with their managers. So, Lisa designed the "High Engage" program, equipped managers with tools like engagement report cards, and designed a system of career pathing.2.  5 initiatives that help sustain company culture. - learning month, where the org sets aside time for people to learn. The average employee spent 42 hours learning. - people week, to promote collaboration and networking. - my day friday, where employees devote the second half of Fridays to aspirational projects, self-help, and planning. - work from home- Triumph, an awards event devoted to recognition. 3. 6 ways she collects employee feedback- town halls with exec leadership- quarterly "let's talk" meetings instead of "Quarterly Business Reviews" - exec leader "up close" meetings where exec leaders meet with random groups of employees. - peer groups. a council of seven people who anonymously share concerns of employees. - code champions who champion company values and advocate for the needs of employees- an online feedback tool that allows for anonymityThis one is packed with steal-able ideas. Give it a close listen.