Culture Eats Strategy: Building Tomorrow's SMEs on Today's Values Toward a Human-First Culture

Speaker A: Core values are just a bunch of words on a coffee mug. If you don't put the work behind it. So then really figuring out how do you bring those to life on a daily basis? How do you make decisions about who you hire? And it's not pizza. Uh, right. I think people want to make it about we give free lunches or people get entitled. That's not going to change my behavior. If you give people too much, they almost get a little bit spoiled.

Speaker B: We always thought that culture are those values that we stick on the wall. We have them, but we haven't really made time to really think in depth about how we harness and nurture culture. How would you step into the boardroom? What are the questions you asked?

Speaker A: Then I would say,

Speaker B: Welcome listeners. I'm Sepp Vishmann, your host of the Doogle Insider where we dive deep into raw and meaningful conversations with visionary founders and CEOs and CHROs or chief people officers who see beyond profit, elevating the lives of employees and vendors and the planets we call home. Our guest today is Cristina Loconi, the chief People officer at Rapid7 who stands at the intersection of scale and soul of companies, having masterfully navigated Rapid7's evolution from a 75 person startup to a two and a half thousand strong industry leader, um, over 14 and a half years. But her story isn't just about numbers. It's about understanding that a company's culture is its foundation and not just a afterthought. Today she shares her invaluable insights on building and maintaining authentic company cultures during explosive growth. Over the years, Kristina gained a profound perspective on the true impact of workplace culture in small medium enterprises and beyond, leading her to launch her own consulting venture focused um, on helping companies build culture foundations that withstand the tests of scale. From preventing cultural erosion during rapid expansion to creating resilient hybrid teams, Cristina, um, offers a unique blend of battle tested experience and forward thinking leadership principles. So welcome Christina.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me Seb.

Speaker B: You're so welcome. You're so welcome. You know, I'm getting really excited about talking with you today about this, this arc of how small medium enterprises and companies above and below how we build a culture first kind of learning arc or strategy that really helps companies thrive. So I would love to kind of start the conversation you talking us through that we both believe in, that culture isn't just a buzzword, you know, as it comes to any sort of business ventures. What is culture to you within the context of companies?

Speaker A: Um, that's a great question. I'LL start with context. Um, I am old enough to have started my career when culture wasn't a thing. So nobody used that phrase. Uh, it wasn't really talked about when I started. And yet my whole culture journey, and I really will get back to it, but I love how you said culture first versus people first. And I have a reason for thinking that, but I'll get back to it. When I started, I recognized, um, my career started in startups, um, both in internship and then as soon as I graduated I was in a hyper growth consulting firm and I was that young person that said things like why the heck do we call this human resources? You know, my printer is a resource, but a human being isn't. And if we're trying to scale this thing quickly, I think even, just, even though that's semantics, it just doesn't make sense to me. I think we have to figure out how do we get everyone kind of rowing the boat in the same direction, if you will. And that was my first thinking about culture and what it evolved to over time was, look, there are like, if you grow a company, it's beyond a couple of people, you're going to have all kinds of diversity, and that's a very big word these days. But I mean, diversity of thought, perspective, et cetera. And when you start growing and you're in different locations, um, and you have different levels of experience, et cetera, there has to be some common thread that ties everyone together so that they're working towards the same mission to scale your company. Somewhere along the line, culture got pegged as this very touchy feely thing. And I actually think it's the opposite. I believe it is like the foundation for how you build your company. And if you're missing, I mean every company has a culture, doesn't make it a good one. So if you're really thoughtful and intentional about those foundational pieces that you build into your company, I believe that you have the ability to scale in a much healthier way. Both from, uh, how people feel about working for your organization, the experience your customers have working with you, the bottom line, I mean, it's got amazing applications to pretty much the health of your business on every dimension. So that's how I think about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. What do you think? Like, if, I mean you have seen a lot, right, not just at Rapid seven, but also, you know, in our other companies. What are those, I guess critical pillars or strategies or approaches you have seen where you just clearly recognize this company just doesn't have culture? In its forefront, like, uh, on top of mind. It's just like, it's really about just this kind of you being a resource, as in the staff being a resource for the profitability of a company. And I believe a lot of founders, uh, CEOs, or even CHROs, go really wrong on this intentionality around what they see in people and the purpose of people. And I believe that if you, you know, if you truly keep the person's highest interest in mind, which is about. We all want to feel belonging to something bigger than ourselves and we want to feel freaking valued. Right? So what do you think? What do you see that makes it a wrong approach or an ineffective approach for companies? What you have seen over the years?

Speaker A: Um, I will give people the benefit of the doubt and say that probably the majority of people that are tasked with really thinking about it or having a point of view on it, namely the CEO and the Chro or the chief people officer, haven't maybe have never been part of something really special where culture has been a huge asset to the companies. Um, so I think it's probably lack of exposure. And I also think even though it's been around for a little while, people still don't really understand how to do it well. Right. We still live in a world. It's just getting past those days where, like, we hired a really nice young woman who works at the front desk and she plans all our parties, who. We call her the culture person. Come on now. Like, that's not. That's great. I'm sure you have a couple fun parties, but that's not culture. So companies that really figure out, and I think a number of them also stop short, maybe they get inspired by something that they hear. Maybe they read a book so they'll go through the effort of going through that first step of, uh, you know, identifying core values, for example, and saying, this is what we believe in and that's it. You can't just hang five core values on a wall, tell everyone to memorize them, and think your company's going to have a really strong culture. This is a muscle that you have to exercise literally every single day. So once you've identified what they are, then it's really, how do you operationalize it into your business and really weave it into every element of your employee life cycle? And then once you've done that, then it's that flywheel of just constantly evolving it and reassessing it, making sure it's strong. So that's like. It is. A lot of it is a Lot of work. So somehow I have, oh my gosh, I'm a breakout in stress hives admitting how long I've been doing this, but I've been doing this for like 35 years. And, um, I still have not met a lot of people that even get it. Like they have, they don't understand the work or how to do it. So I think people like you and I have like an amazing opportunity to just help people, uh, get it.

Speaker B: And I'm really excited today because I, uh, you know, I thought about how to go about the conversation with you and we are going to workshop a little bit today, I think. Okay, right. In terms of showing people in your understanding, pulling from your Knowledge bank over 35 plus years what it means to kind of like almost like, um, kind of segregate out the different phases of culture, you know. Of course it's different. Maybe we focus on small medium enterprises since Rapid7 falls into that category and our audience also. And I believe there is major differences depending on the size of the company for sure, but the principles are the same, which is just like freaking listen to what people say, you know, it's not, it's not that hard. But we are so busy running around like headless chickens that we just forget sometimes to pay attention to the most valuable assets, which are the people. Right. But before we go there, take us back a little bit, Christina. Um, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, you know, I'm, you know, I'm 44 now. Um, I've been in this field for 15 years, but I've not seen what you have seen, you know, 20 years ago. Right. So I would love to understand from you, and hopefully the readers and the listeners also see value in this. How has this shifted? Because I also believe the way you do. I believe that more and more companies understand that culture. If you don't have a strong culture, you eventually will cease to exist. If you cannibalize the most important assets, we won't exist anymore. What has changed over the last 20, 25 years that you have seen?

Speaker A: I think it's just sort of the behind the scenes of the culture pieces because I think culture has certainly evolved. I mean, at least people are talking about it. 25 years ago, people weren't talking about culture. Right. So the fact that it's even a conversation topic, um, and that people have businesses around culture that did not exist when I started. Um, but I also think for companies that get it, which I still think are very few, um, I think they understand it to be their strategic Advantage. You can have the smartest people in the world, you can have an amazing product idea, um, you can be well funded, you can have everything going for you. But if you don't have a strong culture, that will bite you at some point. Maybe not when you're five people, maybe you can get, you know, you can get a little bit of scale. But I really believe that the companies that have figured it out and weave it in as early as possible are really the ones that succeed and sustain. And I can say that with pretty decent confidence because every company that I have worked for, I got very fortunate. My first job, I started focusing on culture, even though I didn't really know what it was. So I took that with me. And I would suggest I'm um, like a kind of a crappy HR person. Right? Like I know enough, I've been doing it long enough that I sort of say it with some self deprecation. But my area of expertise is culture. Like I don't want to focus on benefits or compensation and I have amazing people on my team that can do that because I really believe my strength is sort of figuring out, helping to work with leadership teams to figure out who they are, who they aspire the company to be and then building that in to the ecosystem of the company and being relentless about it. Like it will never, that will never not be an important thing that you're focusing on. And it's worked. You know, uh, I've watched it work. I've watched companies scale and thrive and still be really healthy, great places to, to work. Um, and that I feel is work worth doing because we spend so much of our time working. Why wouldn't you want to be in a company? Why wouldn't you want to build a company that doesn't just make money, but it's an amazing place to be. You're creating, you're not just creating jobs for people, you're creating experiences for people. That's, I think that's an amazing thing to be able to do.

Speaker B: Creating experience that people like to be part of. Right. How do you define culture? Like if you give us this kind of, you know, this kind of, you know, eagle eye view, so to speak. Like in a couple of sentences or three sentences, like in a nutshell statement, I guess. What is culture? How would you encourage leaders to redefine their understanding of how they think about what culture is within their company?

Speaker A: Oh, gosh, in three sentences. I'm not sure.

Speaker B: I guess I would or whatever you, you know, like, yeah, I mean, I

Speaker A: guess I Would start by just saying, you know, if you've never thought about it, the first question I would ask is, who do you aspire to be as a company, and what is it about your organization that makes you really unique to your customers, to the people that work there? What are you really trying to build here from a feeling perspective? Not just, I don't want to just hear your numbers. I want to understand what you're trying to create, and then you can help them sort of figure out what are the value sets that support that, and then it's all the actions that you take that support those words. They're just words. Core values are just a bunch of words on a coffee mug if you don't put the work behind it. So then really figuring out, how do you bring those to life on a daily basis? How do you make decisions about who you hire based on what you say you value, how you make decisions about who to develop and promote, how do you make decisions about who to part ways with and everything in between? I think a strong culture allows companies that roadmap. I would argue if you do that work upfront, boy, you've made your lives exponentially easier. Because I think when people finally start to think about it, something's already broken, right? And that they're like, oh, we need culture. We need something. Well, if you can build it in early, you've got your roadmap for behavior.

Speaker B: Well, I just had this epiphany, and I want to share that with you. Do you think that, you know, like, let's just metaphorically say that, which is true, but as a metaphor, people, it's not the Ferrari that they actually trying to by. It's the emotional experience that gives them that comes with driving a Ferrari. The admiration they feel when people look at them, the way they feel in their body, these emotions that come up. You just spoke about emotions, right? Like, if we translate that into culture, is that significant?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it is. I love that you pick Ferrari, too. I'm a huge Ferrari Ferrari fan. Um, I think that that is. I will say, every time I've gone into a company, my goal, whether, uh, it's been stated or unstated, is I want people to feel like they. When they retire and they're talking to their grandchildren, they say, I had an amazing career, but this time that I worked at Rapid7 was the career experience of my lifetime. I learned the most. I worked with extraordinary people. I had fun. You know, I added value. Like, it was just extraordinary. That's the goal. I set for every company that I go into. Um, because I think, why wouldn't you want that? Why wouldn't you want a company where people just are, you feel absolutely privileged to work there? I think when people feel that way, when they have that visceral reaction, you're going to get the absolute best out of them. As opposed to just such an eye opener, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's such an eye opener. And this is, I believe that we both mean when we talk about creating this experience, right? What is the visceral experience? What is the emotional appeal? Why is somebody would choose your company over another company? What do you offer them? You know, it's not about.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say, like, remember, um, at the very beginning of this, you said culture first. And I noted you said culture versus people first. And there's a difference to me there because when you're thinking culture first, that to me speaks to when you say people first or when people hear people first, I think they think it's all about me. You're here to make me, you know, to give me all these things. Right. And I've watched so many companies put themselves like in financial distress because they're trying so hard to keep up with what people want.

Speaker B: It's more the collective, you mean, right?

Speaker A: I mean, it's, it's like I want, it started 20 years ago with I want a ping pong table or I want free lunch once a week or whatever. And some, you know, some of those things are wonderful. They're, they're almost table stakes at this point. But those aren't the things that are going to get somebody to join your company. And they're certainly not the things that are going to keep somebody at your company. They're just nice things. But if you think culture first versus people first, you're really thinking about this is who we are. You can make the choice to be here or not to be here. It's okay. This company may not be for everybody. This is what we value. And if you value these things too, this is going to be a wonderful partnership. And part of the culture is understanding that there's going to be highs and lows when things are great. We're going to celebrate together, we're going to learn together, whatever. If we hit some rough times, that's okay because we know what we stand for. We have a commonality to work through it and it's going to be okay. So I think the culture first thing, I've never heard that expression, but I really, I'M having my own epiphany. I think that's so much more valuable than just saying people first.

Speaker B: And even that distinction is such an eye opener for me also, because to me, suddenly culture is this. You kind of almost like want to weed out the. The weak chains to protect culture. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So it's not about the person or the people to please them, to give them all they want to. It' collective. It's the company is the culture. Right. And also, I believe, and you let me know. But also, I think there's such a divide a lot of times between leadership and protecting the budget and the people. Right. Where you kind of like, the leaders are separate from the rest. But it's actually, to me, the company that encapsulates the win, win, win, you know, for the vendors, for the customers, for the company culture. Right. Where we look at, okay, who's the collective? Well, the collective is the service we offering that provides surplus value to someone else that pays us in return as a reciprocal kind of way of interaction. Right. And so I think that is very powerful where we say, look, you do not fit into the culture. We eject you to protect the rest as well. Right. To have that strong guiding hand and not just having to say, yes, you know, you're good. You know, Wow, I love that. So let's workshop a little bit. Are you ready?

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Yes. So imagine yourself, you have been hired, and you're walking, you know, day one into the boardroom. The CEOs there, uh, the founders there, chros are there, a couple of other leaders. And the task is, hey, you know, we haven't focused on building culture. We have grown now to a strong company, small, medium enterprise. We always thought that culture are those values that we stick on the wall. We have them, but we haven't really made time to really think in depth about how we harness and nurture culture. What is your. How would you step into the bathroom? What are the questions you asked? And if you can maybe segregate this into some steps, and, um, for which I then maybe ask some more clarifying question, I think that would be super valuable. I'm excited.

Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Okay. Um, let's see. I guess I would start by saying if you have core values, how many of you can name them and see, See if they can. If they can, fantastic. If they can't, that's really telling. You got to do this without shaming them too, by the way. So just sort of, uh, in my nicest way possible, that's how I'd Ask. Then I would say, if you can name them, what do they mean to you? Can you actually identify what you mean by those values? And I would imagine that there might be some different interpretations of what these things mean. Then I would say, are they still relevant for the business that you're growing? It sounds like you created these when you were smaller and now you've scaled. Some of you know what they are, some of you don't. Are they still the relevant values that you want to lead with? If they are, great. Then we can start to do some work around that, to really operationalize them within the company and kind of rebrand them, reset them, and figure out where to prioritize them within the organization. And, um, I think that's probably how I'd get it started.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a beautiful start. Yeah. So, you know, so we imagine ourselves sitting in the boardroom, and let's say they are, you know, they, um, can recall most of them. Do you think that's a true reflection of whether or not the company actually adopted those values or.

Speaker A: No, not at all. I mean, but I think it would be very telling because I think if your leadership team. I, um, mean, if the board really understood what your core values are for the company, I'd be really impressed. But I'll start with the leadership team. Right. If your leadership team really buys in, then I think you're coming from a place of strength. They may not know how to do it or how to really weave them into the organization, but if they know them and they say they're the right actions and they're the right things that we believe in, you're in a pretty good place. Then you can just build from there. If they don't care, man, you're going to have a really. You're going to be rolling a rock uphill. Because whether you have a you or a me on the staff that can help lead through these exercises is almost irrelevant. Because if you don't have a CEO or leadership team who cares enough to understand how important this is, uh, uh, you know, that's. That's a pretty tough. That's a pretty tough thing. I've never seen it. I have had the extraordinarily good fortune to work with CEOs who value this work. I don't know what it's like to work with a CEO who doesn't care. None of them know how to do it, which is who cares? But they understand its value, and that's a place of strength to start from. If you are already of some size, your leadership team doesn't care. Um, I don't know how you make serious progress, because even if you have a really empowered, really excellent staff who believes in this, if it's not being led from the top, I think it's hard to, to truly drive through the organization in a sustainable way.

Speaker B: And so, you know, they care for their values, they understand them. And so you then talk about, okay, can you explain to me almost what do they mean? Right? So, because they're, in the end, they're just words on paper, right? And we have a million and one interpretations. How, like what should the board team, the board member or, um, um, the executives, what should they ask themselves to really elicit, I guess, whether or not they are aligned with their individual or, uh, subjective understanding of the objective values. How would you go about that?

Speaker A: Sure. I would probably ask them, like, what do these mean to you? When, when you say be an advocate, for example, what does that mean to you? Because if there's not a clear definition, it could mean something very different to you than to me. So I would try to, like, look for an understanding, and then I would try to build alignment. And I guess maybe one of the ways that I would do that is to say let's talk about examples of people living that value. So if we talk about being advocate and we're trying to figure out what the real definition is, give me an explanation of someone or give me, give, uh, an example of somebody who does that is correct, who lives that really well, that we can all sort of get our heads around and say, oh my gosh, Seb is like the perfect example of this because when he talks to his customers, xyz. Right. So I think getting that alignment and making it really clear what's valued, and you can do it the opposite way too. When does this look really bad? When would somebody not be living this value to the extent where we say, oh my gosh, this is, this is not great. I'll give you a silly example. M. Not in my whole life have I ever heard someone say, I'm not a team player. Right. Everyone thinks they're a team player, but not everybody is. Right? We know people that don't. You know, they, they say it, but they, they ultimately want to go heads down and, and do their own thing. If, uh, one of your values is about collaboration or teamwork or whatever, I would ask people to really consider who does that really well and who doesn't and what happens when they don't. Do you see the negative ramifications of them not operating that way. Um, and I will give you a crazy example. Years ago, we hired a really senior leader in our sales organization. And m. Um, he was in sales, so he sold us really well. Is one of the. Probably the worst hires we ever made. Wonderful human being, good person, just a horrible culture fit. And we thought that we had done a really good job assessing the skills. And literally the first week of his employment, we thought, oh, my gosh, this person's really culturally misaligned from what we're trying to do to the example of collaboration, where we tend to work well together, where I might say, like, I have an idea. Hey, Seb, do you have five minutes? Can we just talk this through? Because I believe my good idea will become great if I bring other people into it and, you know, sort, uh, of really. Excuse me. Tap into those possibilities. This person was so the opposite of that. Much more command and control. Couldn't learn anything from anybody. I have the right answer. You will do as I say. It's, like, completely the opposite of how we operated the business. We spent. The CEO, myself, and our president each spent about an hour with this person a week, uh, for six months. And then finally we said, this is not working at all. And it was a painful thing to do, but we terminated him. The day we terminated him, the sales floor applauded, and it was insane. I mean, I would be devastated.

Speaker B: You should have asked yourself, why haven't we terminated him a little earlier, I guess.

Speaker A: But. But. But what it showed me was literally one person can massively affect a culture in a. In. In a really positive way or in a really negative way.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And it was. It turned out to be a really smart decision to part ways with him. But such a harsh reality of, oh, my gosh, this is really. When you have somebody senior who's not living the values, oh, my gosh, it can really implode.

Speaker B: I hear you.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Thank you. And so, relevancy. Right. What's your third point? Which I loved. So now we have. We understand kind of, you know, do we understand the values? Yeah, we align with them and are, uh, kind of. We understand what they emotionally mean to us as a company and how we also communicate them. We have examples, good and bad and all that good jazz. But are, uh, they still relevant? Right. We have grown now. We have created them, which is a pretty real example, you know, five years ago, ten years ago, three years ago, whatever. Are, uh, they still relevant? How would you help or how would you suggest companies assessing that if they are still relevant or not.

Speaker A: I would probably do it with a variety of different groups of people. I mean, uh, I would definitely speak to the leadership team and get their sense. I would speak to people that I would think of as like cultural icons, if you will. People that really have a strong voice, are well respected, live the values whether they're articulated or not. But they're sort of the examples of the people in the company that you really have a lot of influence. No matter who they are, they live at every level. And I would ask them too, where are we strong here? Where are we saying we believe in something, but we're behaving in a very different way? Where do we need to strengthen, where do we thrive and try to really get an understanding and then create, uh, a roadmap from there about what are the biggest priorities, where do we need to dig in and tackle? And it's just a lot of hard work.

Speaker B: I really enjoy this point around asking them how or where we as a company do not align with our values. What do you observe? How we interact within the team, within the culture, and to our customers or vendors, where we say one thing on our values piece, banner. Uh, but we don't really act in alignment. And this also, like, you know, if we think about it starts with a thought, the thought impresses upon emotions within our body, and then we act based on our crappy or really, you know, ecstatic feelings. Right. And so where's this thought, Emotions, action, not in alignment with what we say we should be doing. Right. And I think that's a very smart question.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that, you know, one of the other points I might make is when you're thinking about your core values and it's who's the audience of them? Right. I mean, I think oftentimes people think, oh, it's just for the employees of the company, so they know the rules of engagement. I would also say, though, that they should be external as well. They should make sense to your customers and how they experience. Working with your team should be the same. Like people's behavior shouldn't change internally versus externally. If you say impact together, for example, that's our phrase for collaboration. That's how we work together, but it's also how our customers should experience us. We are partners with them, we are collaborating with them to get to the best possible solution. So you don't want these confused behaviors. Oh, uh, which thing am I supposed to be today? It's kind of like being. It's almost akin to being the authentic self. I can't imagine working in a company. I talked to somebody the other day and I was talking about friends at work, and he's like, I have no idea what that's like to have friends at work. I don't work at a company that values relationships. It's, you do your job, you leave. And I thought, oh, my God, like, that sounds horrible. Like sounds horrible. It has to be your best friend. But I can't imagine not having that, uh, social element of people that I actually enjoy working with, you know, working with. But if I had to be two different people, he's, you know, to, to talk to him in real life, he's this animated, charming human at work. It sounds like he puts himself in a box. I think it's really valuable if you can identify who you are as a company. And this is who we are. It may not be for everybody, and that is okay. I think companies are afraid to say that they want to be all things to all people. That's impossible. Right? So this is who we are. We're really clear about it. If you value these things, fantastic. We want you here. But then it's like, and this is your behaviors, right? This is how you should act within work. These are the values that we care about. And this is who we're showing up to as our, uh, to our customers as well. It's like pretty. This, none of this is rocket science. It's all really basic. But it's amazing to me how many

Speaker B: people miss that for themselves.

Speaker A: Yeah, they just isn't it.

Speaker B: So give us a couple of examples that, uh, are maybe not so obvious. And I may put you a little spot here, which I feel I've done for the last 20 minutes. But you know, I mean, sometimes great for us, like, oh, wow, you know, because like, truth be told, you know, um, and thank you so much for opening up to this because every boardroom is different and you're not walking. You know, it's like. And sometimes for us, I feel like it's so like there's the million one approaches you have as a, as a, as a master in your fields, you know, that you have crafted over the last 35 years. So really applause you for just jumping in with me in this cold water here. So what are those? I guess operational pivot point of integration that company just can do in a real sense that that's that nurture culture that are not those usual things like all hands and off sites and kind of talking about culture in meetings and having one on ones. What are those?

Speaker A: I guess yeah, that's. I mean, that's a great question, I think, um, I'm assuming you've seen this as well, right? If people sort of buy into the notion of culture, then it's, how do I do it? What's the book I can read? Or what's the podcast I can listen to? And then they spend 20 minutes learning about it and they're like, okay, we're going to build culture in our company. It's that easy. Like, come on now. It doesn't. I wish it was that easy, but it's not. It's a lot of hard work. And I think, um, having somebody who's like, this is relatively new, right? I mean, it's not new anymore, but it's still. People are still trying to figure out how to do it. And, um, I think understanding that you can't just download, uh, Netflix's culture presentation that was made so famous 10 years ago and say, that's what works for Netflix. And it might be a great starting point so you can understand how they approached it. But that doesn't mean you can just take their core values and say, oh, these sound great. Let's use those. You have to be authentic. You have to know who you are as a company. So I think that piece is really critical. And once you do, then it's figuring out those little things that make sense for you. So at Rapid 7, this is such a goofy example, but when the company was started, um, it's a long story how we got here, but basically two sales guys identified a moose. They said, we're going to be one moose, and you know, the other guy. I'm sure there's a little jerking involved when this happened, but what they were doing was the singular of the word moose is moose, but so is the plural. And if we say we're one moose, that means we're working together. And it became this symbol of teamwork and collaboration. Today, 20 years later, we have a 12 foot wooden moose standing in our lobby in Boston. And the moose represents something that is so incredibly important within our culture in terms of teamwork. And we don't talk about it a lot. It's impossible not to walk into our lobby and notice this insanely large creature. Um, but it's also how we address each other.

Speaker B: What is a moose? Is it a name?

Speaker A: A moose?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Like, do you know what it is? Like those giant.

Speaker B: I have no idea what it is.

Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry. There's not a lot of them, I'm sure.

Speaker B: I like being German, I'm not sure. Maybe there's a lot of them in

Speaker A: Sweden, but not Germany. It's like a giant elk. Deer. It's in that family, of course.

Speaker B: Yes, sure.

Speaker A: It's like huge animal. Yeah, right, yeah, it's got, like, big. Yes. Um, so that's picture giant animal.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Um, it's a stupid thing. It has nothing to do with cyber security, but to us, it represents teamwork. And, uh, we've gotten so much mileage from our culture on this one animal. So we don't call each other employees. We call each other moose, which, you know, has issues.

Speaker B: No, woman. It's become reiterates, though, the point. Right.

Speaker A: It does. It does. When we had zero money, when we were, you know, just getting started, I thought, well, how do you get our culture? How do you really get people to. To. To experience our culture in a really inexpensive way? And so many of us were into music in those early days. I mean, they still are. But I came up with the idea of getting guitar picks because, you know, guitar picks are like a penny a piece. I mean, they're so inexpensive, we put Rapid7 on them, and we had five core values and five different color picks. And I could say Seb was a fantastic example of challenging convention. He gets a blue pick, and somebody in, you know, in our tech team, like, created a scrolling hall of fame. So you would see everybody getting these. Um, and then every. So we started then, you know, everyone had little guitar picks, and then it. And you saw them on the hall of fame. And then from that, every quarter, we would go through the thousands of picks that had been given, and we would choose five people for the five core values to celebrate every quarter from around the globe as just stellar examples of people living this. So I think it's like, no one tells you that's in the playbook of how to build your culture. But to your point of how do

Speaker B: you make it split?

Speaker A: I think it's figuring out what getting creative and doesn't have to cost a lot of money. It's just being true to who you are and what you value.

Speaker B: And I would even extend to this. And even if it costs a lot of money, I think it is worth it to invest.

Speaker A: No, I mean, if you have the money to spend, I'm, uh, just coming at it from a store, but I love the tons of money.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. This is so good. And I think it gives us really, like, a real example of what companies could do. Right. Make it. How do people feel appreciated again? Right.

Speaker A: That's Right.

Speaker B: I mean, we are pretty simple creatures. We want to be appreciated.

Speaker A: I think people want to make it about, you know, we give free lunches or we. People get entitled. Right. It's not just about. I mean, I, uh, don't get me wrong, I like a free lunch, too, but that's not. That's not going to change my behavior. Right. In fact, if you give people too much, they almost get a little bit spoiled. But it's really, how do we behave together? What do we value?

Speaker B: What experiences are we creating, working together? It's almost like about. It's not the perk. It's not the coffee machine and the barrister. It's the conversations you have while you drink the coffee. Right.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, that's so true. Okay, perfect. So I'm going to take that and tell you we have in our headquarters a barista bar. It looks like Starbucks. In our lobby, next to our giant moose, we have this beautiful coffee bar.

Speaker B: I want to come down to Boston.

Speaker A: Yeah, you don't come to Boston and see this. I'll take a picture and I'll go for you. And, um. And people assumed when we put that coffee bar in that we were trying to be all bougie and like, oh, look at this. That's not why we did it at all. We did it because it creates a great experience. And when you're standing in line to get your coffee, I might not have seen you for a while, and I can turn. Or maybe we never met, and I can turn to you in line and say, hey, I'm Christina. What do you do? And we'll see people talking and building relationships and then taking their coffee around the corner to all the couches we have in front of the windows and maybe starting to connect with people that way. You can't buy that experience. That is just an incredible experience over a cup of coffee.

Speaker B: Oh, uh, so good. Uh, you know, I can really see that you love just bringing people together and, you know, the idea of building something. Get together, building something that is worthwhile, building that's a value. Right. So, Christina, thank you so much for your time. It was such a pleasure. There's so many golden nuggets. Um, you know, I love this. There's just this, the different phases, you know, from understanding. Do you understand your values? Do you also understand how you emotionally, you know, what it means emotionally to you? Are we still aligned? Are they still relevant right now? Little nuggets about operational integrations. You know, uh, we mentioned the speeds around the leadership wall and the little guitar picks, I think you called them, for people to feel valued, to just, again, listen. Right. And for companies to understand that it is not, you know, it's not just about perks. It's really about this experience, as you call it, that we create as leaders within companies that really is this reciprocal thing that we provide in return for people to an extraordinary job. And it's not, you know, it's not this kind of motive that we have is this. Is this genuine wish and desire we have for people to have an extraordinary experience within the context of what they do for us. So to protect the collective right, including probably the customers and all that as well. So. Wow. Amazing. Christina, thank you so much for your time. Are there any last words that you have?

Speaker A: No, I wish we could keep going. I mean, you're like, I love talking about this with you, but thank you so much for the, uh, for the opportunity.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. Have a good day.

Speaker A: You too.