Culture is not created by chance. Create it and change it every day. Josh Bersin, Human Resources Analyst, said: “To change culture, don’t start with culture. Start with the problem you’re trying to solve, what success looks like, and why it’s important to your company.”
I recently had the opportunity to learn what building and growing a company culture really looks like at Exasol, an analytical database software company. The efforts CEO Joerg Tewes and his CPO Christine Bhosale have made (and continue to make) to extend and sustain the company’s culture across his 200-plus hybrid employees in the U.S. and Europe. will be explained in detail.
Exasol delivers productivity gains, cost savings, flexibility, and helps organizations redefine how they use their data. Exasol Espresso is the fastest AI-integrated analytics database on the market.
CEO Joerg Tewes and CPO Christine Bhosale
Tews & Bossare
Five values that support Exasol’s culture
When it comes to creating and sustaining Exasol’s corporate culture, Tewes and Bhosale emphasized that Exasol’s core values are “the guiding principles that drive our internal culture.”
To define Exasol’s core values, Bhosale worked with all departments to understand how employees view their culture. “We held a workshop across all departments to define our core values,” says Borsale. “We collected quantitative and qualitative feedback to make sure everyone was heard. We ended up with five values: being customer-centric, trusting, and delivering results. It means giving out, taking responsibility, and loving growth.”
Both Mr. Bosare and Mr. Thues emphasized the importance of living these values and making them part of the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring to onboarding to performance reviews. The number of existing employees will increase accordingly,” Tews said. “At the same time, we have to find new talent that really helps us spread that culture and live our values every day.”
How Exasol measures engagement and is transparent about change
To measure engagement, Bhosale and her team conduct an annual Gallup Q12 engagement survey as well as monthly pulses throughout the year. “To achieve these results, we go to every team and talk to them. In doing so, we get quantitative data from the survey and the teams’ qualitative reactions to that data. I can.”
This approach helps establish more context for the data being collected. It’s also a great way to find new ideas and practical solutions. “Especially when it comes to change management, it’s important to make sure you bring people along with the change,” Borsale noted.
Boost engagement with Amazon-inspired meeting efficiency
For the past 10 years, I have conducted the world’s largest study on employee engagement. I redo that research every few years. About five years ago, his fifth key driver, meeting efficiency, emerged as a new driver for employee engagement.
Tewes, who previously held senior leadership positions at Amazon, brought inspiration to Exasol from Amazon’s highly creative approach to meetings. Amazon famously banned Jeff Bezos from using his PowerPoint presentations in meetings. Instead, people prepare for meetings by creating detailed summaries. During the meeting, everyone takes about 30 minutes to read the outline, highlight passages, and take notes in the margins. Then, discuss the outline with everyone. This approach helps make meetings more efficient and engaging by:
- Get everyone ready (no need to prepare for the meeting)
- Give everyone a chance to think critically before discussing
- Increases the amount of preparation that presenters must do
All of this leads to better insight, creativity, and discussion in meetings. “We’re taking a bit of Amazon’s approach,” Tews said. “I’m taking the right elements from that concept and integrating them to improve meetings at Exasol.”
Tews’ recommended books to stimulate reflective thinking
Tews recommended the book. first 90 days Written by Michael Watkins. “The first 90 days of a new job are where you decide what to do and what not to do,” says Tews. He also added that the book is useful even after your first 90 days on the job. “This book helps you think about how you do things and how you approach and want to approach new challenges.”
What excites Tewes most about the future of Exasol?
Looking ahead to 2024, what Tewes and Bhosales are most excited about is the potential to leverage generative AI as their business grows. “The next wave of data analytics and business intelligence is hitting us full force,” Tews said. “Right now, every company in the world is asking the question, ‘How can we leverage AI to be better?’ For us at Exasol, this is a huge opportunity because: Because our core technology is very well-suited to working with generative AI, that’s the opportunity for us and that’s why I personally am in the position now to lead Exasol on its journey into the future. I’m very excited about that.”
Kevin Kruse is the founder and CEO of. LEADx, scale and sustain leadership behaviors with behavioral nudges, microlearning, and live cohort-based workshops. Kevin too, new york times bestselling author of Great leaders have no rules. 15 secrets about time management that successful people know and Employee engagement 2.0.
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