Tech companies often prioritize growth over making sure they develop a healthy work environment.
Asana has been an exception to the rule. The compan۪y's founders, Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, prioritized culture from day one. Instead of organically letting the culture grow, the founders treated culture as a product that needed to be built and iterated on over time. The company experimented with a flat management structure — Goldilocks Management — and created a work environment that's focused around mindfulness, transparency, and inclusion. Building an inclusive work environment was such a priority for Asana that they hired a Head of Diversity & Inclusion, when they were only 150 employees.
The approach has worked. Asana was featured on Glassdoor's Top 10 Best Places to Work in 2017 and one of Entrepreneur magazine's best workplace cultures of 2017. Prioritizing culture has also been a driver of business success. The company just crossed a significant milestone of 20,000 paying customers.
In this episode of Resources for Humans, Asana's Head of People, Anna Binder, explains the company's approach to culture and how Asana's been able to build an experience that benefits both the employee and the company's mission.
Jack Altman: Today, I'm thrilled to be speaking with Anna Binder, who is the head of people operations here at Asana. She was previously the VP of people at MuleSoft. She has nearly two decades of experience, and she's running people operations here at a fantastic company. So, Anna, so thrilled you're here. Thank you for doing this with me.
Anna Binder: My pleasure. Happy to be here.
Jack Altman: So just to get started, I'd love for you to tell me the story of how did you come to Asana?
Anna Binder: Sure. So it originally started with a phone call from Matt Kohler who's at Benchmark and who is a member of the board here. And he called and he said, I've got this great opportunity. And then, you know, in typical good recruiter fashion, he's like, I have a few opportunities that I wanna talk to you about, but he was really just calling about Asana.
And he got me excited about it in two or three ways. So first of all, he pointed me to an article that Dustin, our CEO and founder, had written called Goldilocks Management. And it's about sort of the special view that Asana has of the role of the people manager, and it really, it prompted it it's an inspiring and piece that really prompts you to think differently about what that role is and got me excited about participating.
The second thing that he did was mention that Asana with a hundred fifty, hundred sixty employees had already hired a head of diversity and inclusion. So that that was the first conversation, and then I think we had, you know, five months of dating where we you know, I spent a lot of time with him and his cofounder, tons of members of the team, and we sort of got to know each other.
Given how much Asana has invested in in designing and building the culture and really thinking about it as methodically and carefully as they have. This was a big deal. This hire was, it's a, you know, it's a has the potential to have tremendous impact and they were really careful about, bringing somebody into the role.
Jack Altman: What is culture? What does culture mean to you and what's its role in business?
Anna Binder: Great. Great question. So, first of all, culture is not beer on Fridays. Let me say that loud.
I think a lot of people talk about culture and they say, oh, I really like my coworkers or the office is really nice. That is not what culture is about. Culture, building an amazing culture is a means to an end, and that end is what are your business objectives? So I like to think of it as sort of a a triangle or three legs of a stool.
What are you trying to achieve as a business? And that includes, you know, what's your product positioning? What's your place in the market? What's the competitive landscape?
Where are you in your development cycle? The second is, really, what are your values as humans? Whether you're you're founders or your company, but, like, how do you want to show up? And then the third is, sort of, what are the ten thousand things that make up your culture? Like the language you use in your job description, the experience the candidates have when they come in the door, the how you do compensation, how are decisions made, what's the role of the manager. I mean, I can go on and on and on. The density of your office layout.
So to me, culture is how do you build all of those people programs to help you achieve your business goals while being in line with your values.
Jack Altman: And so talk to me about the relationship between culture and business. As as PeopleOps becomes more strategic, how does culture fit into the business objectives?
Anna Binder: Great question. So thinking back to the triangle. Right? Like, the whole point of building a culture where people are empowered and happy is because in that environment, amazing employees will do great things to help further your business. So at Asana, we actually just reached a milestone of twenty thousand paying customers, and we very much think about that not as a, as orthogonal or next to the culture that we're building. We we believe that one drives the other. I think a lot of people try to make this trade off of saying, I can either build an amazing culture or I can have a successful business.
A slightly more evolved version of that is, you know what? I need to find a a nice balance between building an amazing culture and having a successful built business. We actually think of it completely differently. We think that having investing in a culture where people are thriving and empowered and happy is exactly what drives our business success.
Jack Altman: And so thinking about culture as a driver of business success, how do you think about that during the hiring process? So when you bring a new person in, to what degree is this a cultural interview, a skills interview? Talk to me about what that looks like.
Anna Binder: There's so much to say about this topic. First of all, in our assessment process, it is a multifaceted approach. Right? And we think, what are, is there a match in terms of the criteria we have as a company? Is there a match in terms of the criteria for a particular team?
And then what are the sort of role specific criteria that a candidate matches? But the thing that I really wanna emphasize and that, I obsess about a little bit is you hear a lot of companies and a lot of people talk about, oh, you know what? I really wanna hire her. She seems like such a good cultural fit.
No. That's a terrible thing to say Because without really good definition of what is a cultural fit, then you're basically rounding off to, you know what? They seem like me, and I feel like I would like them, and we'd have a good time together, which is terrible. That's like not the path to a diverse and inclusive culture.
So I think it is really important when you say, we wanna be, you know, you of obviously, you want to make sure that you're hiring for a good cultural fit because that's part of the the reason someone's going to be successful in your workplace. But you wanna take you wanna take very clear definitions of what it means to be a cultural fit and then translate those into specific interview assignments that that are assessed with, very discreet questions, not just they're a cultural fit and I'd like to work with them.
Jack Altman: What do you do in the case when you have a candidate who is extremely qualified for the role but is only semi qualified culturally? Do you make trade offs there, or do you hold a hard line that it must be a great cultural fit?
Anna Binder: The short answer is that they need to have both. And if they're too extreme on either end, you know, you don't want somebody who really is by definition a good cultural fit and has values alignment and has demonstrated behaviors and activities that you feel will be a strong culture of it, but they don't have the skills and abilities. Right? Like, that that's not gonna be successful either.
But when when when I think about, and when we do assessments around, like, the most important parts of a cultural fit, we talk a lot about mindfulness.
And mindfulness is, you know, are you deliberate in your decision making? Are you practicing balance in coming to the right, decisions? And really importantly, are you open, curious, and comfortable talking about where things might have gone wrong? If you have some inclination towards those three, a lot of the rest will follow. Without those, I I think you'd be hard pressed to fit in.
Jack Altman: I'd love to circle back to something that you mentioned that brought you to Asana, which was sort of Dustin's blog post about the role of managers. What is the role of management at Asana?
Anna Binder: Great question. So let me talk to start with a little bit of what it's not. It is not a purely hierarchical system where the further up the chain you get, the more decision making power that you have. It all is also not some like anarchist culture of zero management and nobody's clear who's on point for what.
We very deliberately say that the role of the manager is a specific role. It is a job, like other things are a job. And in that job, the manager is not there to say, you're gonna do x, y, and z on this time frame to achieve these goals. The manager is there to be a coach, to be an enabler, to help connect the dots, to help connect you with mentors, with resources, with to help clear, roadblocks.
That's very different than I think, a lot of people define the management the role of the manager of. And really importantly, I think some people have baggage or scar tissue from other other places where they either had a terrible manager or the role of the manager is very different.
Jack Altman: And so as you guys have scaled, you know, beyond two hundred employees since you've joined, are there places where having a lighter weight management structure has become difficult? I know that a lot of companies would love to have less structure. Are there places where you found, oh, we need to course correct a little bit, or what are the break points with a with with a flatter structure?
Anna Binder: Yeah. So, this is a sort of a core, tenant of our culture in that, you know, it's designed like the product, meaning, let's figure out what the goals are, let's design something, let's put it out in the market, let's test it, and let's iterate as we as we need to. And this happens all the time because the company, as a company of fifty, is very different than the needs or experiences of a company of two hundred and fifty.
So, along these lines, a couple I mean, I can off the top of my head, here are a few. We now have, somewhere between fifty and sixty people managers. Like many companies similar to us, half to two thirds of those have never been managers before. And that's that's great. Like, that's you know, we want people to be able to grow their careers here, and becoming a people manager is one way to grow your career. But without a ton of people running around, that actually have experience managing and without a super structured sort of learning and development program, you know, some of these people are learning things on the fly and making the best of a situation. So one of our challenges is to make sure that we're bringing in enough experienced managers to work alongside the new managers that we've created so that people feel supported and people have colleagues that can help them.
Jack Altman: I'd love to ask you about the evolving role of people operations. You've seen, at a leadership level what people people operations looks like, for fifteen years, and I'd love to hear sort of what are the most important things that have changed.
Anna Binder: So there's a short, quick, easy answer that I think, you can read a lot about. Right? Like, we the role of the HR department is a much more business minded, business focused. The, the function is being much more informed by data and and some of the tools that we have to make good data driven decisions.
But the the interesting where it gets really interesting is and this is part of the reasons it's so fantastic to work in HR in Silicon Valley. Right? Because it's connected to culture, and CEOs and founders really get that building an amazing culture can be a competitive advantage. So it's it is not this this thing on the side the way it is in many industries. It is really core.
One of the most interesting ways that I feel like I've I am seeing I'm still seeing it change is this the sort of the Pay for Performance model. If you go back twenty years, you had sort of the, the ethos of GE and Jack Welch and of McKinsey. This like really hardcore Pay for Performance and put a disproportionate amount of the, bonuses, for example, at the top five percent and call out the bottom five percent. And, we've really evolved much more to thinking about what are the intrinsic motivations and what is really driving people and how can you build and design compensation programs that hit those core intrinsic motivations as opposed to the more, like, you know what? If you give me five dollars, I'll do x.
Jack Altman: Yeah. That strategic development seems like the core. And have you noticed even within tech that this has particularly strengthened over the last, say, decade?
Anna Binder: Yeah. I mean, I think that, I I think you're seeing it in a lot of different places. Right? And part of it is the millennials coming in to the workplace and saying and and really being awesomely demanding of, I wanna understand how my work, my day to day work connects with the mission of the company.
Yes. Of course. I want to be fairly paid. I want to be well paid. And I, but I but what really feeds me is making sure that I'm connecting my work to the mission.
Jack Altman: Yeah. And I imagine that that focus on culture and mission is what allows people to sort of find their value from the company, not just in terms of the cash and the compensation, but in terms of what they're building as a team.
Anna Binder: That's right.
Jack Altman: So that seems really important.
Anna Binder: So when I go to, sort of connect with other people ops leaders and we talk about what's going on in our organization, you know, we the the conversation goes all over the place. But the it falls into three different categories. The first is people really wanna feel like their work matters. Is the the my toil, my daily impact, the the am am I spending my wild and precious life on something that matters, and can I connect it to the company mission?
The second piece of it is, am I growing? Am I being stretched? Am I learning? Am I progressing?
And then the third piece is, do people actually give a shit? Right? Like, are am I getting recognized? Am I being rewarded? And reward is part of that is compensation, but really, there's a lot about acknowledgement. So when I think about the work that I do, it, you know, almost all of it falls into one of those three categories.
Jack Altman: Amazing. Impact, growth, and care are the things that we talk about at Lattice, so I'm glad that we're not totally off track there.
Anna Binder: Well, or we just have a mutual admiration here.
Jack Altman: Exactly. Right. That's right. On the topic of feedback, I find that it's so important that people to have that personal growth are getting the feedback that they need. What's the feedback culturally here at Asana and how do you cultivate that?
Anna Binder: So this is actually something I'm super excited about, and I this was baked and in place when I came in, so I can speak about it with great pride because it's not my work. So we have three formal systems annually of feedback, and they are supported and underlined by just a general openness to self improvement, to improvement as a company. And this ties directly to our value of mindfulness.
So around the feedback, the first piece is an annual self review. And, employees are encouraged and really given space to, writing a thoughtful self review. And we have lots of prompts and it's, it's really designed for you to show up as your whole self. So what's going on with you at Asana? What's going on with you in your heart? What's going on with you at home? And it it is all there. And that, concludes with a conversation with your manager about what's going on there.
And it often ends with, hey, I wanna learn or grow in these two or three areas, and can we make a plan together to help me to help me get there? The second is peer review, and, we do peer review in a really wonderful fashion. So you select somewhere between five and ten people. You ask them to write up some peer review for you.
And then you, you know, you go either you have a coffee walk together or you sit down in some beautiful part of the office. And the peer reviewer, the person giving you feedback, reads it to you and you discuss it. Now, there's two or three things that come out of that. One, obviously, there's, things that you learn that you didn't see and, and we believe, as the data demonstrates, that people have much more, the impact of of any kind of review is stronger when it the positive outweighs the negative on a five x basis, and so people are encouraged to do that. The other thing that happens during that peer review is that there's trust built between me and you because we have this, no matter how good the review is or the feedback is, it's a little bit uncomfortable, and getting through it can sometimes be scary. And doing it makes sure that, it helps us build a little bit of a stronger relationship. So that's the peer review.
And then the third is, manager to direct feedback. So once a year, me as your manager, I will write, some feedback for you based on your performance as it relates to your OKRs and your objectives, as it relates to your personal growth goals, and, then I deliver that to you. And as part of that, you do the same thing for me. Jack Altman: I love the idea of the peers reading it out loud and seeing that. I've never heard of that before, but that sounds like a really great interaction.
Anna Binder: You know, it started and I this is long, long before my time. And I think there were, like, ten or fifteen employees here. And the everyone here took a day to write peer review for everyone else in the company and then did, like, a round robin fashion of delivering it. And it was filled with love and filled with good intention and openness, and some people call it the best day in the history of all of Asana.
Jack Altman: It also really sounds like a full feedback system that is really about helping the employee, not about evaluating them. It's about growth. Yeah.
Anna Binder: Absolutely. Yeah. So there are a couple other, components of it. We do an anonymous three sixty for a manager or an, a leader that's going through a particular transition or just is taking a new role. We also do a ninety day check-in. So there's other components, but those three are really at the at the, at the core.
Jack Altman: That's great. And then my last question I'd love to ask you is, what advice do you have for somebody who is newly getting into people ops?
Anna Binder: So I feel really lucky. I feel like I found the work that I was absolutely meant to do. So, I mean, if nothing else, I I encourage everybody to find whatever it is that they're meant to do. Because once you get there, it's pretty awesome.
The second thing I'd say is I think of myself as a business person who happened to choose this function in which to do my work. So I think great HR people really think like business people, and how do we work on culture recruiting or compensation or whatever it is in in service of moving the business forward.
The last thing I'll say about it is it's kind of a personal thing. You know, I kinda stumbled into it in my, late twenties. I thought that I was gonna kinda go a finance route, and I thought I was gonna go microfinance. And I I ended up doing this work that I, you know, I was like, how did I get here into this HR HR role?
And I'd I'd go to parties or I'd meet people, and I'd say, oh, I work in HR, and I had so much enthusiasm for it. And they would totally roll their eyes. And they'd be like, oh, you work in HR. Like, that's the lamest thing ever.
And it took me a long time to, realize that, like, my motivation comes from inside, and I'm gonna try to change some of those people's attitude with their eye rolling because this is it's great work, and it's a fantastic way to have impact on the business.
Jack Altman: That's amazing. Anna, thank you so much for doing this.
Anna Binder: My pleasure.
