Culture doesn’t happen by accident. You create it and change it every day. As HR analyst Josh Bersin puts it, “To change the culture, don’t start with the culture. Start with the problem you are trying to solve, what success looks like, and why it matters to your company.”
I recently had the opportunity to learn what creating and scaling a company culture looks like in action—at the analytics database software company Exasol. CEO Joerg Tewes and CPO Christine Bhosale broke down the work they’ve done (and continue to do!) to scale and sustain company culture to over 200 hybrid employees across the United States and Europe.
Exasol brings increased productivity, cost savings, and flexibility to help organizations redefine how they use data. Exasol Espresso is the fastest AI-integrated analytics database on the market.
When it comes to creating and maintaining a corporate culture at Exasol, Tewes and Bhosale emphasized that Exasol’s core values are the “guiding principles that drive the culture within the company. “
To define Exasol’s core values, Bhosale collaborated across every department to understand how the employee population viewed their culture. “We had a workshop across all departments to define our core values,” Bhosale said. “We collected quantitative and qualitative feedback to make sure everybody was heard. We ultimately arrived at five values: Live customer centricity, trust, deliver results, take ownership, and love to grow.”
Both Bhosale and Tewes emphasized the importance of practicing those values and integrating them into the entire worker lifecycle, from hiring to onboarding to functionality reviews. “Culture starts with leadership that is transparent about the pillars of that culture and then works with the existing worker population accordingly,” Tewes said. “At the same time, you want to find new skills that can help you spread this culture and put its values into practice on a day-to-day basis. »
To measure engagement, Bhosale and his team conduct an annual Gallup Q12 engagement survey, as well as pulses by month of the year. “To achieve those results, we went to all of our groups and communicated with them. Therefore, we have the quantitative knowledge from the survey, as well as the qualitative reaction of our groups to this knowledge.
This approach helps establish more context for the data being gathered. It’s also a great way to stumble upon new ideas and practical solutions. “Especially when it comes to change management, it’s important to make sure you take people along with your changes,” Bhosale pointed out.
For the past decade, I have led the world’s largest employee engagement study. I do this survey every two years. About five years ago, a new driver of employee engagement emerged as the fifth most important driving force: meeting effectiveness.
Tewes, who once held a management position at Amazon, was encouraged through a very unique Amazon technique to meet with Exasol. At Amazon, Jeff Bezos banned the use of PowerPoint presentations in meetings. Instead, other people prepare for meetings by writing detailed notes. During the meeting, everyone spends about thirty minutes reading the report, highlighting passages, and taking notes in the margins. Then everyone discusses the report. This technique helps make meetings more effective and engaging through:
All of this equates to increased knowledge, creativity, and discussion in meetings. Tewes said, “We’re taking bits and pieces of Amazon’s approach. I’ve kept the clever elements of this concept and are integrating them into our meetings at Exasol.
Tewes advised the EEEELBOOK for the first 90 days through Michael Watkins. “It’s about the first 90 days when you start a new task and what you do and don’t do,” Tewes said. He also added that the EEEEBook is useful even after its first 90 days on the job. “This EEEEBook is helping you think about how you do things and how you might need framing and techniques for a new challenge. »
The number one thing on Tewes’ and Bhosales’ minds moving into 2024 is the potential to leverage generative AI as they grow the business. “The next wave of data analytics and business intelligence is coming at us at full force,” Tewes remarked. “Every enterprise in the world right now is asking the question, ‘How can I use AI to become better?’ For us at Exasol, that’s a huge opportunity because our core technology lends itself to work extremely well with generative AI. That’s the opportunity for us, and that’s why I’m personally extremely excited to be where I am right now, leading Exasol on that journey into the future.”
Kevin Kruse is the Founder + CEO of LEADx, scaling and sustaining leadership behaviors with behavioral nudges, micro-learning, and live cohort-based workshops. Kevin is also a New York Times bestselling author of Great Leaders Have No Rules, 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management, and Employee Engagement 2.0.
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