How to build your culture like a product — Lessons from Anna Binder, Asana’s Head of People

  Well, Anna, thank you so much for joining us.

 So wanted to kind of kick off by talking about, what Asana was like when you got there over six years ago. I think it was about a hundred people. And maybe you could kind of start by setting context from a people lens, kind of what was going on, and we'll use that to jump off and talk about the last six plus years.

 Sure. Sounds good. Six plus years, my goodness. Um, so as you mentioned, when I joined Asana, we were about a hundred people.

Before I can really talk about, um, framing where we were from a people perspective, I think it's valuable to take a look at where we were from a business perspective. Um, on the product side, things were working and customers wanted it, which was great and was creating problems because. More and more cust as our customers were growing, they were deploying Asana into larger and larger organizations, which revealed pretty significant performance issues we had in the product.

And it was, you know, there was, there's nothing short of slow. So the, the engineering team was on a year plus long journey to essentially, um, re architecture the product to make us ready for bigger and larger enterprises. And what that meant was for a year we had no new features cuz everyone was working on that re-architecture. And on the go to market side, we were just starting the process of like top-down selling, right? The, the, our product led growth had really driven most of our revenues and it was a major shift from a business perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a cultural perspective.

Then, so that's the backdrop for coming in, um, to this organization that had about a hundred people. I was really the first HR executive. The first HR person there was, there was recruiting in place. Um, but it was the typical and appropriate type of recruiting that startups do, which is kind of like hire as many great engineers as quickly as possible.

And then the rest of the sort of HR responsibilities were distributed across the organization with different people looking after different parts of it.

 with that context, did you. Work to prioritize and figure out what to do. I would think there's a zillion different things that you could do coming into that first kind of people role. Um, and so maybe what did those first few months look like and how did you figure out what to do in what order?

 Yeah. Well first I'll, I'll just explain. I, I was coming from organizations that were much larger and one of the things that was beautiful to me about, there were so many things that were perfect, like a perfect fit for me, for Asana at the time, and one of 'em was that the, the founders, Justin and Justin, We're deeply committed to this concept that the investment that you make in culture is a driver of business outcomes.

And that culture drives business, and business exists to achieve your mission and to partner with Dustin, uh, the c e o on that was really, really attractive to me. The other thing, uh, that was attractive to me was the opportunity to take everything that I've learned and all the mistakes that I had made over the many, many years of doing this type of work, and just do it right and do it better, and, You going back to a small organization like that gives you that opportunity.

So I always try to encourage, um, HR leaders to, to not be, um, married to this concept of size. And like that you need to go bigger each, each step in your career. And so we are a hundred people. And one of the beautiful things about that is that I got to go, I think I, in the first three months I met with, I don't know, 75 or 80 of the a hundred people.

And I just asked them, you know, what they were working on, what problems they were solving, what felt important for me to focus on. And so I, it was, it, you know, not only was it a data driven approach, it was an actual like live interview type of approach. And from there, combined with my own assessment of the organization, I was able to to, um, build a roadmap.

And this is a, this I think is really important for early stage HR leaders, is. You know, build your culture and build your work like the product, which means make a roadmap by quarter for 18 months and talk to the people, understand the pain points, and then say, these are the first four things I'm gonna work on, then this, then this, then this.

And obviously I didn't, I didn't just create that myself and decide on it, right? Like I got buy-in and support and alignment with Justin and the rest of the leadership team. But once I decided, I, I codified it, I published it and I marketed it. So even if people didn't agree with my order of priority in terms of what I was tackling, they understood my methodology, they understood the roadmap and um, then they understood where their particular pony was.

Do you, do you know what I mean? Like, um, they knew that it was coming.

 so there's a bunch of things to kind of dig in there. When you talk about establishing the roadmap, like if I were to look at the document, what was the, what was the structure of it? What did it actually look like or what was in it?

 Um, so two of the main things, you know, um, two of the main things that bubbled up really loudly early was that in order to scale, we needed to shift are the way that we recruited, um, from this sort of startup all hands on deck, let's recruit as many engineers as possible to a more, um, like a professionalized and operationalized recruiting model.

Right? Like, how many roles, what kinds of roles? What does your pipeline look like? How many interviews can, like, can you do in a week? What, um, what kind of sourcing do you need? How many interviews are you scheduling? What, how does that translate into how many coordinators you need?

Really, like just organizing it. What kind of, um, uh, candidate marketing do you need where you know, what's driving your, uh, close rates, your offer, close rates, right? And so that was one thing to, to shift away, like build an operation around it. A second thing that was very loud from the en the engagement survey that the company had done, that Asana had done before I got there, was people didn't trust, understand, or, um, believe in compensation at the company.

and it's not the, no, no one had done anything to reduce trust, but there was no philosophy, there was no cadence, there was no understanding of why decisions were made. There was no, there's no machine around it. And, um, compensation is a very one-way street, right? Like the company has a lot of information and the employees have very little information.

So building some muscle around that and a, um, a program around that was critical to people having, um, confidence. So those two things were, you know, the, the compensation piece was really only like one quarter's worth of work. The recruiting was a 4, 5, 6 quarter journey. But I, I was able to show like, these are the two things I'm starting with and here's what you can expect in terms of outcomes by when.

 And how did you approach establishing some sort of framework that then made it clear that those were the two things to focus on? And, and I'm particularly curious about it because I think. in the realm of people, there can be a little bit more judgment and instinct in certain parts, maybe versus like running a go-to-market organization where sometimes inputs and outputs aren't as kind of, um, clearly coupled.

And so I would think, you know, if there hadn't been a formal people function and you have a rapidly growing business, you talk to 70 or 80 people and then you probably have dozens of things and you as somebody who's quite experienced, there's probably dozens of things that are bothering you that you think could be made better.

And, and then you have to align to the point that you made before you came up with the roadmap. With this, within this case, I assume, at least the co-founders, about how we're gonna do this in what order. And so what, what was that like and how did you, like, what was the framework that you used to, to sort of align around the focus on at least these two things to start.

 Yeah, it's a good question and it's, um, it, there, I think your point is fair in the sense that there is art and science. Uh, and it can seem really squishy, but I think that, I don't think it has to be that squishy . Right. I, um, I took those 75 interviews and I, I was like a user experience researcher. I, I cataloged them and organized them and said, 40 people mentioned this.

And, you know, they may have like used different words, but I cataloged them as, you know, comp related. And here's another theme that came up. It was about career and career mobility. Um, another topic that came up was just burnout. I'm tired. I have way too much work, but if you looked at the teams that were really burnt out and tired and overworked, they were the same teams that had the most open recs, right?

So it's very tied to the, the ability to recruit. So, so you, and this is where your judgment comes in, right? Like I can have 70. Conversations, but I need to be able to catalog them. Um, and that was only one input. Another input was, uh, the engagement survey and what are the things that the engagement survey shows.

And, um, you know, you can't just take that data a hundred percent at face value. You have to overlay some judgment on it. Like I knew that from a benchmark perspective that we were paying competitively, yet the employees didn't feel confident. And so that's a shame. Like that's a waste.

And so I quickly moved that up because the Venn diagram of it being a big problem and a relatively easy problem to solve means that, hey, let's move it up on the roadmap because it's a quick win that is hurting a lot of people right now. 

 one of the things that sort of, the last comment gets at, and I think this runs through a lot of people, work is kind of the, the role of narrative, right? And education as opposed to maybe what we're doing or how we're treating someone. And I, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that.

Meaning if you have a bunch of conversations and you think that there's a compensation issue,

in compensation there was maybe a hundred different things that could be going on. But if do that work and you find actually, hey, we're, we're paying people in the top 1%, 5%, 30%, whatever, So I actually feel very confident that, that that's not the problem.

But maybe the problem is just we're not explaining and educating and setting a narrative around compensation that's effective. And so do, do you think a lot about, of the role of making a change to some actual piece of the company versus working to change a narrative around one of these people pieces?

 I think it's a great question. I'll, I'll say a few things. The first is, um, perception is reality, right? And you could have a great comp program, but if people either don't know about it or don't understand it or don't trust it, it doesn't matter how that you're paying in the 1%, right? Like, so that, that, uh, you can't ignore that.

Like that. You have to pay attention to that. The second thing is, whether it was my first quarter or, you know, now where we're, uh, almost 2000 people, I often think of my job as a sort of a, a chief communications officer. I, I spend so much of my time listening and talking to employees, and sometimes I'm talking, you know, one-on-one.

But, you know, these days I'm more thinking about how are we communicating to the masses And the thing that I remind myself over and over again, I need to say it so many times, and I need to share the same information so many times until I'm almost annoyed by the sound of my voice or how many times I've done it.

Because that's what employees need and that's what employees deserve. Uh, so I, I very much think about the, the narrative and, you know, going back to your comp, Example, I, I think comp is a perfect sort of case study there because comp is an awkward, uncomfortable topic for everyone to talk about.

And so success for me was like demystifying it and de awkward it. Right? And just like, let's put it out there. Um, I also found relatedly is that different people have very different levels of understanding on how equity works. So one of the things I did was invest in education at two different levels, and I allowed.

People to opt in to the level that they were comfortable with. So I had a pure 1 0 1 version where people got to learn at the very basics of a, uh, how a stock option works and what an exercise price is, and what a cap table is, all of these components and what Radford is and what a range is, and all, you know, everything.

And then there was a different version. There was also, you know, it was just like one or two clicks, people who had more experience. And, and separating those groups meant that the people who really needed the basics had a safe space to ask those basic questions. And, you know, some people were like, oh, well that's too much.

And like, you know, like, that's a lot of work for HR. And, um, wow, that's, so it's like over the top. And honestly, I mean, payroll is such a huge component of your operating expenses. Like, I, I think it's crazy not to do that.

 when you think about the most talented people that you've worked with, do you think they generally want the same thing out of work, or most people want all sorts of different things?

 Hmm. I think that there's probably a, a maslov's hierarchy there. I think most of the people that I've worked with that are outstanding, share a few different things. they want to achieve their goals. They are, whatever the mission is that you've set in front of them or that you've collectively agreed to, they're very motivated to get there.

They want to get to the top of that mountain. Um, So that's number one. A second characteristic or need I think is meaning, right? Like, does my work matter and am I working on something that matters? Can I connect my calendar and my tasks, you know, all the way up to like our purpose and our mission. And I think that feeds a very deep-seated need. Uh, and then I've really come to believe in, this combination of curiosity and humility, right? It's, it's, I think it's very easy to work with people who have deep expertise and experience and, um, have really seen a lot of movies. But the ones that I think are. the most successful, are the ones that are humble enough to be curious that, hey, I'm awesome and I have great experience and I've been successful, and there might be a different way to achieve this goal, or there may be a different way of doing this.

And it is that the combination of that humility and curiosity that leads to even more learning and more improvement. So those are the three things that I have, I have come to believe about the, the pattern matching.

 So how do those three things ladder into what you started the whole conversation talking about, which is culture and what is a great culture and how do you articulate even what culture is?

 Um, well, I articulate what culture is. If you can imagine the whiteboard behind me at the top of the triangle, is the mission like why are you here? Like, what is, your purpose of your organization? And the second. Part of the triangle is your values. How do you commit to showing up with each other?

And I, I choose those words deliberately because we don't always get it right every day. And sometimes I say I, like, I make more mistakes on our values before nine o'clock than anybody, right? But at, I'm committed and I'm committing to fixing things when I mess them up and, and, um, continuing to try.

And then the third part of the triangle is the 10,000 decisions. These are the 10,000 decisions that all of your employees make all over the world every day to move the business forward. And, um, this can be like, hey, um, an obvious decision. Like we're gonna use certain language and our job descriptions to make sure that we're attracting people from all different backgrounds so that we can build a representative workplace.

But it also, you know, what features are gonna go into your free product versus your paid product. Those are critical business decisions and those decisions that you make to help achieve your mission while being in line with your values inside that triangle. To me, that's where culture lives.

And I, you know, I think that the other important framing of your culture, and I, um, I can't emphasize this enough because I think people tend to forget this, is that your culture exists to move your business forward. It doesn't just exist on its own. Your culture exists to move your business forward, and your business exists to achieve your mission.

So when people talk about like a good culture or a bad culture, my lens of judging a culture is, is it serving to move your business forward?

 And how do you know that? What are the questions you ask or what is the data that you're looking at that. Makes you confident that the culture is serving the mission?

so the example that I'm gonna give you is specific to Asana. And, and by the way, you know, our mission is different than your mission and another company's mission. So our culture is different and the culture that we have here might not serve to accomplish or achieve another company's mission.

 But one of the things that is really true at Asana is we try to make sure that the culture mirrors the product attributes. So, uh, one of the things about the Asana product is that you have clarity on who's doing what by when, and you're reducing confusion and work about work through that, by using the product to move work forward, to collaborate on different tasks, projects, or initiatives you provide.

You have that clarity. . And I actually think that when I, when I think about the culture and the work that we do inside of the company with the employees, I think one of the things that really matters to people is, I, I, you know, am I doing duplicative work? Does this task that's keeping me up at eight or nine or 10 o'clock at night does it actually matter?

And, and ensuring that people have clarity on their role and their objectives is something that I spend a lot of time on and is very, very connected to how we think about the product in so much so that, . I think that our salespeople are better at selling Asana the product to our customers because they are using, you know, we're obviously an end-to-end customer and ha they're experiencing it in their day-to-day work.

And so if, if our salespeople can naturally, you know, frankly, without too much enablement, sell that story or sell that dream to our customers, or are doing it effectively, they will close more deals. We will achieve our AR numbers, like, which will put the product in more the hands of more customers. like connecting and threading that through, I, I think about a lot and I see it in our engagement survey.

 you know, one of the, I think the most important questions in an engagement survey is do you 

 yeah. Do you understand how your work connects to the mission of the company? And it is fascinating to me that, um, and it, it goes and puts and takes, right?

Like in, sometimes different groups have different, um, high scores on that, but it's, it's one of the first questions that I look at the results on and I dig into,

 Are there other questions on the engagement survey that you, you tend to find, have outsized signal for you?

 yes. Um, does my manager give me constructive feedback that helps me grow? and I, I'm actually on the board of Culture Amp, so I get to see this through the lens of being a customer, uh, that uses an engagement survey.

And then I obviously at the board level. But I think it is fascinating that the data shows that high performers are twice as motivated by constructive. And by constructive we mean negative, constructive feedback, uh, than the average employee. And. Because in the land of startups and fast growing companies, a lot of people, managers are 10 minute managers, meaning they just, they're, they're brand new to the craft of management and they don't know how to give good, constructive feedback.

And that, that, like, it's such a virtuous cycle, right? Like if I invest in my managers, in teaching them how to give constructive feedback, that will then in turn they will do that for their highest performers, which will then in turn motivate those people and grow them even more. Right? It's, it's, um, it, when I think about as an HR leader, R roi, , that is a place that's like a high leveraged place that I can spend my time on.

 we could spend hours talking about, um, how do you create a feedback rich environment? Or let's say you run an engagement survey and, and you score low, low in that specific question is, is there any shortcuts or things that if a founder or, or head of people wants to move that number up, that they can do, around getting more high quality critical feedback to employees?

 I'll, I'll say a couple different things. I do think, um, starting at the top here really matters. So I think that the highest leverage thing that a c can do is ensure that he or she is doing that real time with his or her directs and, you know, Giving constructive feedback is uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable for everyone. So you know, sometimes I quit. Like if you're not uncomfortable giving feedback every single week, you're not doing your job. because if you have a bunch of high performers, which you should have and like high-impact people, then it's your job to be giving them feedback regularly, which means you are uncomfortable every single week.

So one of the things your CEOs can do is as they're reflecting at the end, like on Friday afternoons and they're finishing the week, like just, you know, was I uncomfortable this week? Giving feedback And if they were, they're helping to support that culture. Um, I think next order and, you know, if you've built an organization that has high levels of psychological safety and then the c e O could be doing that one or two clicks down from their directs, and that, I mean, that's a gold standard. Uh, one of the things an HR person can do is go, you know, do a little bit of auditing. You know, , I'm a believer that once or twice a year, depending on what works for your organization, you need to have written performance reviews of some sort. Like I just, I'm gonna put that there. I strongly believe that, and I think as an HR person, you can, you know, go to the executive team and read what they're writing about their directs. Um, and by the way, I'm making a simplifying assumption that everyone is awesome, that you've moved out anyone who's not high impact and that everyone there is really outstanding. And so since, so, since I'm assuming that, and I know that those high performing, high impact people really want constructive feedback, it's really easy for me to do an audit and I can sit down with the head of marketing and say, Hey, let's take a look at what you wrote about each one of your six direct reports.

And is there constructive feedback in there? Is there feedback that was uncomfortable to write and is gonna be uncomfortable to read? If not, Hey, you're probably not doing your job and I'd like you to take another, another draft at this before you deliver it.

 So I wanted to loop back on something that we actually started the conversation with, which is, you talked about, uh, when you joined us on a, you did a bunch of one-on-one conversations, and I assume, you know, you were talking about a couple of the, the sort of ways in which you get a pulse for what's going on.

One is engagement survey. I assume still to this day you have specific one-on-one conversations. Um, give you data to make decisions as to what needs to be fixed. I'm curious, any thoughts on what you should be asking in those conversations to get the most kind of nutritious insights out of them?

 Yeah. Um, so first of all, we have a very intentional framework around this. We call it the voice of the employee. It is, um, modeled after what many organizations do around the voice of the customer to make sure that you're bringing the outside in, in terms of the product that you're building.

And there are qualitative. Quantitative, um, bottoms up and top down elements of the voice of the employee. There are obvious things like, um, the engagement survey, the exit interviews that we do for people that are leaving, but there's also, um, bottoms up qualitative inputs like the HR business partners or the people partners that are out in the organization talking to folks.

We have six ERG employee resource groups, and that leadership group helps provide and bring a, a different lens to the table. Um, I also, you know, I'm constantly making sure that the programs that we're building and the insights that I'm in considering are through the lens of what the company's goals are.

So I re like, I, I actually think our 10 annual objectives, I think of them as an independent component of the voice of the employee. And I, I need to, everything that we're building, Throughout the year, I think about how is this supporting one of the objectives and is this making it easier for our employees to achieve their goals?

But going back to your question around like, what kinds of questions am I asking? Um, so first of all, what are you working on? Like what are your personal goals? This, this quarter or this month? And, um, what have you achieved? Like, what was a win recently? And, um, like I'm, I'm not interested in what they think about culture or HR or a program.

Like I wanna know about their work. Like what, what feature are they working on? What customer are they working with? What, marketing program are they launching? And then another question I, I ask is, how have you personally grown recently? , right? Like what, what's, um, what's stretching you?

What is making you uncomfortable? And there's a few different ways to ask that, but it, it allows me to understand on an individual level where the stretch or the stress points. And then the third question is, is like, what's something that's getting in your way? And like, what, what do you think is one thing that we should, like, get faster at or get better at, or build or improve?

And when I say we, I mean the company, not the HR team. Um, and, and that, uh, you know, there's sometimes there's themes there, but a lot of time I get surprised. I, I will also say for, um, you know, for companies that have a global footprint, it is uh, it is invaluable to get out there in the field and meet employees in your field offices to get the perspective of your company through that lens.

Cuz it's often like a completely different view.

 What about, uh, you mentioned this a second ago. As, as a part of the voice of the employee, how do you run exit interviews?

 Well, once upon a time, everyone who left the company, I had lunch with them and I, you know, tried to create a space, uh, to, for them to give me real talk. And that's when I did that. At the beginning, I like, or in the early days, you know, up to several hundred people, I did that every single time. Somebody left one I you.

I, I was genuinely interested, but also, you know, when somebody leaves the organization, they're your alumni, they're part of your community. They refer you employees. They, um, they might become customers, and I want them to know how I feel about how positively I feel about them leaving. Um, so it used to be in interviews and I'm, I'm very aware of my own bias and or anyone's bias going into an interview like that.

So I would ask the same set of six questions, um, over time. We moved that really into a form that people would fill out and, um, you know, and we would ask them questions about their experience, about their growth, about what advice they had for their manager's manager, uh, in, in terms of leading the group.

Um, and then I, uh, there was a period of time where every time one of those came in, I would take a look at it and figure out whether I wanted to have a follow up conversation. Now we're a couple thousand people, so, um, this is done through the people partner team.

 what do you think are some in, in sort of this sphere of people stuff,

do you think are some things that a lot of people think are, are important problems or significant problems, but actually given your incredible amount of experience you found They're actually not a big problem. Like, and, and for me, the, the sort of the place that I go is like if you are a really good primary care physician and someone comes in.

 a lot of people who come in and they have a little bit of a cold, and they're worried at something very serious, and you're, and you're like, no, I, you think this is a big deal, but it's not. And then there's other people that come in and, and they're like, and you're like, no, no, no. This is a big deal.

And a lot of that comes from training, comes from experience. And I think, again, in, in some parts of the in people work or the people function, there's so many problems all of the time. There's always someone that's unhappy about something, right? There's always an angry customer. And so are there things or themes that come to mind that like when you talk to other people, leaders and they're bringing you a problem and you're like, listen, I've worked at a lot of companies at all sorts of scale, don't even spend time on it.

It's, you know, like those type of things.

 I'll, I'll give you two extremes and then I'll, I'll talk to you about how I think about it. Um, if there's people on your accounting team who's, who are scoring low, for example, on your engagement survey, on risk taking and innovation, that's good. I don't, I don't want those people taking

risk, if your enterprise salespeople don't have confidence in the roadmap, that's a major problem. So those are like, those two examples on the edge. The, the thing that I, that I want to point to in answering your question is, um, not all feedback is created equal.

And I think that's, um, that's part of what you're getting at. And I want to parse, Hey, here, there, there, there are people in your organization who are highly engaged and have high impact. There are people in your organization that are low engagement, low impact, they're probably leaving, right? Like if you look at the, the, the, actually the Culture Amp, they, it's the people in the green versus the people in the red.

 the data shows don't listen to the people in the red because you've already lost them, right? You're not gonna impact them. And so I really try to think like we're the voices of the people who are high engaged and high impact, and how can I take their input and, um, and allow it to shape my roadmap or my prioritization.

Another way of saying this is if my low impact people don't feel like they have career growth opportunities at the company, that's okay. So let's not, like, let's not react to that.

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Anna Binder joined Asana back in 2016 as its first HR executive. She shares her advice from helping weave the cultural fabric, from getting comfortable with feedback to maintaining a healthy exec team.

Lessons from Asana on building your culture like a product

Anna Binder joined Asana back in 2016 as its first HR executive. She shares her advice from helping weave the cultural fabric, from getting comfortable with feedback to maintaining a healthy exec team. 