Building a Culture of Collaborative Innovation

SRI VISWANATH - CTO GROUPON

Culture is ImportantHigher Customer Satisfaction is Linked to Stronger Workplace CulturesIn both the airline and grocery industries, companies that motivated employees more through play, purpose, and potential (and less through emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia) produced better customer outcomes. (HBR.org)

https://hbr.org/2015/11/how-company-culture-shapes-employee-motivation

Collaboration is Key to Culture

Collaborative Innovation "A team of self-motivated people with a collective vision collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work."

Collaborative Innovation Framework

Leadership Structure Process

Leadership

Be the Spiritual Leader and Maintainer of Culture

Strike a Balance

Consistency ←→ FlexibilityTop down ←→ Bottoms upIndividuals ←→ TeamsInnovation ←→ Beaten PathShort term ←→ Long term

Case Study of Groupon

Team ETHOS at Groupon

Engineering Traditions Habits Operations and Standards ::

Team ETHOS was created purposefully to move from (chaotic) entrepreneurial culture to collaborative innovation culture.

Team ETHOS at Groupon

Align leaders and teams

Change structure and communications

Introduce Processes/frameworks

Leadership Structure Process

Expectations of a Tech Leader

People: Build our people, then our products.

Product: Build it right; Be proud to ship.

Community: Be transparent and consistent.

Environment: Practice best behavior.

Team based execution structureTeam based goalsTeam based rewards

ORR - Operational Readiness Review

● Gate check before deploying to production for all services

● Teams are red carded for causing incidents and/or not adhering to the checklist.

● They can no longer develop features until they get to green!

“The greatest waste. . .is failure to use the abilities of people. .. to learn about the contributions that they are eager to make.”

~ W. Edwards Deming

Innovation: Global Internal Hackathon

● 5 days, 2x per year● 96 Hours of Consecutive Hacking● 8 locations● 5 Countries● 4 Continents● Presentation Day: >100 Projects● Pitch Sessions● Discussion Panels● External Keynote Speakers● Food, Fun, Mayhem!

Employee Mentoring: GEMS Program

● 250+ Participants

● Formal 1:1 traditional mentoring relationships

● Group mentoring/technical learning engagements

● Informal mentoring engagements supported by our own social learning platform (River)

Employee Feedback: Engineering Check-In

Employee Feedback: Engineering Check-In

Employee Feedback: Love Monster

Collaborative Innovation Framework

Leadership Structure Process

“If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself”

-- Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Thank You