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How One Technology Company Is Leading A Culture Of Change

This article is more than 9 years old.

Looking for a way to lead culture change in your organization? I spoke with, Divya Ghatak, Chief People Officer for GoodData, about the role company culture plays in leadership and business success. Divya was poached away from Cisco to help transform GoodData’s corporate culture. The CEO recognized that the lack of a strong, cohesive culture was holding the organization back from meeting its business objectives, so Divya developed a plan to reshape the internal culture and align itself with the kind of company GoodData wanted to be. Not only is Divya making a significant contribution as a female executive in the technology industry, but she is also paving the way for more effective human resources and people development within GoodData’s organization. Here’s how.

(Paraphrased for brevity)

Jeff Boss: Divya, you believe strongly in developing a culture of innovation. What sort of challenges did you face when dealing with existing employees who may have been less than innovative and how did they adopt the new creative processes?

Divya Ghatak: In the past a lot of people had come on board where we had not been deliberate about a right culture fit for applicants, and recruiting wasn’t consistent because we hadn’t identified our core values. So we instituted Talent Scorecards to standardize the hiring process to make decisions more deliberate and therefore talent acquisition more predictable. The hiring process may be a bit slower but the people coming on board now are much more aligned. And the facts speak for themselves. Our retention rate for top talent is at 95 percent. Processes, embedding core values in the culture, and [receiving] feedback from employees  is owned by leaders and People Champions, or people who represent different functions.

Boss: With 20 years of experience, what has been your observations in HR between large and small companies, and what makes GoodData unique?

Ghatak: The level of impact and speed at which you’re able to move is a defining element between large and small scale companies. At GoodData, we’re only about 300 employees so our agility isn’t weighed down by too much bureaucratic process.

What makes us unique is having a CEO and leadership team who believe in a people strategy, which is highlighted by our GoodVoices program. What we aim to do [as a smaller organization] is work across all levels in the company, whereas in larger organizations strategy is defined at the top. At GoodData, our strategy is defined by what our people want and then embedded into the culture, so there’s a real opportunity here to put your own stamp on things. [But this also means] you’ll have to adapt to change or make the organization adapt to change in a huge way, and building out that capability is a huge part.

Boss: How does GoodData adapt and stay competitive?

Ghatak: We were one of the first data companies to look at data in the cloud and the only one who has an end to end platform. We stay ahead of competition by being deliberate, understanding the environment and our competition, investing in people through our company training and bootcamps, and exposing people to growth opportunities since you must grow people to grow the business. When you build a system of belief in the people and systems then organizational growth is a positive byproduct.

Boss: What have been your greatest challenges and how have you overcome them?

Ghatak: Retaining talent in San Francisco since it’s such a competitive environment. People aren’t motivated by money nowadays, but rather opportunity to shape the industry and define it; they want to add their value and make a dent in the world, and if culture isn’t a fit for the employee then they leave.

Creating that connection between the employee and the organizational vision and making them know that they have a big part to play in realizing that vision is always a challenge. It’s tough, it’s not easy but I do think we move the needle--especially in retention.

Boss: What would you say are two to three characteristics of a high performing culture?

Ghatak: The first is a focus on results. A company built by people who care about doing something different and creating value for customer is one that will sustain its value over time.

A passion that is shared across the organization, which comes from the top. Leadership team needs to be excited about doing something different, whether it’s doing something revolutionary or truly care about making a difference in a very measurable way, and doing so on a daily basis.

The second is transparency. The ability to talk about problems—positives and negatives—and this goes both ways [top down, bottom up, across functions]. Leadership needs to be able to hear feedback in a candid way, which is what we use thru our GoodVoices program because we got a lot of candid feedback from employees and we shared all of it—every bit of it—at a [previous] meeting. We did this in an all hands and it built enormous trust amongst employees because issues were raised, everyone was cognizant. You just adapt and move forward.

The third is ownership. People want to feel like they own the problem and the solution, so creating cross-functional initiatives that expose employees to new areas of the company so they can solve problems and work together is what makes work fun.

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