People and Culture Mini Series (part 2) - Culture as a Product w/ Anna Binder, CPO Asana [S5.E6]

Scaling Up: Lessons From The World's Best CEOs and Founders

Episode 2 of our People and Culture mini series features the phenomenal Anna Binder, the CPO of Asana, the $15b NYSE and LTSE listed technology business that is changing the way businesses work, collaborate and thrive.

The genesis of Asana is important to frame this conversation; When co- founders of Asana Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein were both working at Facebook, of which Dustin also co-founded, they discovered amongst the hyper scale journey that that business was on, everyone was spending over half the day sitting in meetings, responding to email, and searching for infomation. Doing skilled work was taking a backseat to the 'work about work', the ultimate inefficiency for any high performing employee and business.

So Dustin and Justin built a tool to make it easier for teams to coordinate and collaborate on their work flow. It was such a game changer, they left to go fulltime and all in on this idea, and started Asana, building solutions to help more teams do the great work.

From day one, the company has been about letting employees around the world be empowered to do their best work by providing the software to enable this. Of course this is also self fulfilling to the Asana mission and this virtuous cycle has enabled Asana to be the exemplar of what scaling a great culture looks like – it is without fail voted one of the best places to work by every award and measure, and at the centre of this is Anna – who is considered in the industry to be the best.

This conversation covers some ground and importantly gives wonderful insights into what has enabled Asana to scale so effectively – from the mental model of “culture as a product”; that is one to be constantly designed, tested and iterated upon, to what Anna describes as corporate mindfulness, this was a treat to listen to one of the great business leaders in America talk passionately about the topics that are relevant to every fast growing business.

TDM is always publishing insights into how we think about scaling culture, including an investor lens on how to diagnose it. All our content is on our website and social channels, the links are in the show notes, and you can always get in touch with me on twitter - @ eddiecowan

Show notes;

How is culture defined (triangle analogy – mission, values and 10,000 decisions) (4:16)

Asana as a culture first business and its long-term focus (7:00)

Unique value proposition of Asana (10:01)

The key drivers of engagement and the Pyramid of Clarity, energizing the workforce (11:25)

Founders background and the beginning of Asana (13:43)

Epic empowerment enabling a united team (16:02)

Culture as a product at Asana – how it has changed from the initial vision (19:07)

Identifying and overcoming cultural bugs through engagement feedback (21:31)

The skills required for and role of the strategic CPO (23:42)

Mindfulness in the workplace – intentions, prioritisation, focus and flow (27:08)

Asana’s similarity to the culture of high performing athletes (30:44)

Recruitment – hiring for a cultural fit (32:01)

Tools for tracking performance and engagement – the growth and impact cycle (34:17)

Importance and implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion at Asana (36:40)

Wellness in the workplace and regular mental health check-ins (40:03)

The role of the board and the CPO’s interactions with them (44:15)

Changing dynamics of investors’ interest in culture (46:26)

Opportunities for Asana to continue to scale people and culture (48:14)