Q. You joined YouSendIt with a mandate to turn it around. What changes did you make in terms of culture?
A. I think any great culture is born out of transparent, authentic communication. You almost can’t overcommunicate. You can try, and you might think, “Oh, do I really have to say this again?” And the answer is yes. One thing I started doing was to send out every Sunday night an e-mail to the whole company. The e-mails aren’t particularly structured, and they might be on all kinds of topics, like what’s really going on with our monthly results.
We also started a free Monday lunch to bring everybody together to share a meal. The first Monday lunch we did, some people got their food and went back to their desk. So I started to talk at these Monday lunches for a few minutes and then just take questions. I set the tone that all questions are fair game. The third thing I did was require everyone to do what we call a “fly along” with our customer support desk for several hours so they could really understand our customers.
Q. How did you develop these ideas about culture?
