The Case For Intertwining Company Culture And Product with NerdWallet's CPO

The Culture Code

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!

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