Anna Binder on How Asana Built Silicon Valley's Leading Company Culture

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.