Pendo CEO Todd Olsen on The Importance of Refreshing Values

It's great to be here today in Most Loved Workplace today with Todd Olson. Todd's the CEO of Pendo.io, and it's awesome time because he has not only Most Loved Workplace, but he is doubling in size, um, and he has more growth. He's gotten a lot of success, and the company itself is just wonderful. Todd, welcome.

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

So tell me about Pendo.io. Tell them what, what do you do? What is Pendo all about? What, what drives Pendo?

Yeah, we basically are a software company that makes other software better. So we install ourselves in applications that people use, whether it's, you know, your application for your favorite bank or maybe an application you use at work, and we capture data on how people use it to help help build a better experience, um, for you in that software application. We also complement, um, that analytics with the ability to personalize the experience, message you. And really, it's, it's just about— look, software's, um, changing a lot of the way we, we engage with brands, um, that we work with, that we use on a regular basis. And Pendo is, is— you can think of us as, as infrastructure to help make those experiences better.

That's awesome. Tell me more about how with Pendo people just love working there, right? This is, this is kind of love, this belief. What is it that makes Pendo a place that employees love?

I think the first thing is, is being intentional and focusing on it. You know, I think there is no like, oh, we're just going to create a culture and magically things will be okay. I think I think from, um, the early days, we've decided that in order to build the kind of company we want and to serve customers the way we want to serve customers, we need employees that are engaged and happy and love being here, because that will come through with the customers. And to— so to do that, I think part of being intentional is one, writing down what your values are, um, and then focusing on living them. So many times I hear from from employees that Pendo is one of the few places that actually lives their values. They're not just words written on a wall or on a website. We do that by having peer recognition systems where if you see someone living a value, you can recognize them. And we give out awards for living values. We also make sure that when values are used to help us inform business decisions, we're really communicative around why we made decisions and how our values influenced those. The other thing that we do a lot is just constantly focusing on being better and getting feedback. For years, I did a one-on-one with every employee in the company after their first 90 days. Now it's shifted to kind of a group setting because we're almost 1,000 people, but I still meet regularly. Across the company in different levels, just soliciting feedback. Like, is the experience what you expected? Is it what you heard it was like? And are constantly looking for ways to adjust and tweak. We do surveys regularly to capture, are we living the values? Like, EMPS is something that we have as a corporate measure that we report to our board of directors, which EMPS, you know, is employee health or employee sentiment. So I think those are some of the, the reasons. I'd say it's really, really intentional.

Todd, I love what you had mentioned about awards for living values. Wow! Tell me how that manifests. How does that— examples of that and what are the awards and what have people done to show that?

Yeah, so, you know, so we have 7 core values. And so one of them is my ikigai focus on the customer. So it's a very customer-focused organization. And every day I say someone at Pendo, because we have, again, nearly 1,000 people, are doing extraordinary things for customers that, look, if it was relying on like me to see each and every one of these people doing it, it certainly wouldn't scale or work. But when anyone sees anyone doing an amazing thing for a customer, they can do a shout out. They basically do a recognition. It's actually called our PANK system, and it shows up in Slack, which is our employee collaboration tool. And then we tally these things. So if you've been, you know, recognized for being really focused on customers the most in a quarter, you'll begin win the— win the I Call Focus customer award for that quarter. So every quarter we tally up all these recognitions and give away awards based on doing it. And it could be— that's one value. Another one is around being direct and transparent. I'm a big believer that, that feedback's a gift, and it's valuable to be direct with people, to know where they stand, and to make each and every one of us better. That includes being direct with me. So if we— if someone comes up to me and says, hey, I really didn't like what you did there, you know, this would've been slightly better, we'll recognize that sort of behavior. We want people to speak up and make this place a better place. So that's an area where, you know, when people do that, they get recognized and we give out a Be Direct and Transparent Award every single quarter. And, you know, you can go in our office, we have plaques, we have, you can see every quarter who's won which award per value.. And then there's an overall award winner. The person that's been recognized the most gets rewarded as well. But it's a big part of our culture and how we've continued to maintain it as we scale.

Well, let's talk about you, Todd, Todd Olson, and the leader, the leader himself. Tell me about your leadership philosophy and values as a person and as a CEO.

Well, look, I think, you know, I've already touched on some of them. I mean, and some of them are codified in our core values. I really care about customers. I really care about direct and honest, transparent communication. I think transparency is one of the things that does probably set myself and us apart. And, you know, I would say being transparent is uncomfortable to managers, specifically from traditional organizations. I like to share everything. We have very few secrets, um, you know, very few situations only people are in the know. And, um, I think it's really made it, made it a better place. Um, I, I think you'll also, you know, I think people describe me as a very hands-on leader. Um, so I, I, I just don't believe that, you know, my title means that certain jobs are too small for me or, or I shouldn't be doing, you know. So I think I'm willing to roll up my sleeves, and whether it's coaching someone in an organization how to deal with another colleague, um, or whether it's working with someone in sales or customer capacity to help take care of a customer better, whether it's whiteboarding with an engineering or product person, just like, I, I actually enjoy that. I enjoy just solving real problems and being with the team. And, and like, look, I've had the fortunate pleasure of being in tech for over 20 years of my career, and I've seen a lot of stuff. The company should use that. I'm just an experienced person, um, and I— you don't want to just relegate to me to like making a few big decisions or what have you. I like being in the trenches and really being part of the team. I think That's a big part of my leadership style. And I think that cascades down. I think everyone who works for me and down feels that way, that we're all on this team together. We have an aligned set of goals and that it takes each and every one of us to succeed.

I like that a lot. And you see that with Elon Musk. He's down there and he's actually doing the work, right? He's creating, he's thinking, he's innovating, he's developing 'cause he has that experience back from, you know, you know, PayPal, the software development. I mean, why not? You're, you're experienced, you do a great job, you lead developers, and that's what should happen, right? That's, that's your expertise. Um, that's really cool you said that. Um, that's a lot of, you know, what Most Loved Workplace is all about, the book. And it's about, you know, getting into the work, collaborating, being part of the ecosystem, and really digging what you're doing every day. And, uh, so that, that sounds just spot on. It really does. Finally, where do you see Pendo going? Like, you know, in the future, where do you see it going in the next year or so? What's next?

Well, look, it's a lot. I mean, we're growing really rapidly. And I think there's a couple areas of focus for us. One, we started as a single product company. You know, it's— as an entrepreneur, I wanted to solve a problem and solve a pain. We built product around that. And as we grow and scale and want to continue maintaining growth, we have to become a multi-product company. So we're starting to launch new product lines, we're starting to look at more acquisitions. And, and look, we've done a few acquisitions, and those are always interesting, but I, um— but that's always an area where we have to meld two cultures together because we obviously don't want to don't want to acquire a company who's great and then kill that culture. Like, that's not good for those people or for us. We want to take the best bits and combine it with the best bits of ours and kind of unify it and evolve on both, both cultures. Like, the other big piece is international. You know, we, we are predominantly a North American or even U.S.-based business, um, and in order to continue growing and scaling, we, we need to act and think more like a global international organization. And so we do have folks and an additional 3 countries. And I think we need to continue to look at how we expand that. And it's challenging expanding internationally where there's different cultures at work, like different, you know, human cultures, societal cultures. But understanding how Pendo operates within those areas is, I think, something that I'm particularly keen on exploring and investing in to make sure that it's a great place to work. And Japan, and the UK and other foreign countries. It's funny you mentioned Japan.

That's our next list. Also Poland and UK. So that's interesting you mentioned that. And yeah, Japan is a, it's a different culture, we'd say.

Yeah.

It really is. They would also agree. And I think many people in Japan and, as well as companies in Japan have a unique culture. And it's about like melding, you know, and seeing and looking out from here, right? You kind of, you explore it from, from in front of you and different perspectives of that culture. And then how do we find those elements that are really strong and magnetic that we all can really become part of, that we want to become part of? And makes us both better, right? Things that we can do better and things that we appreciate about what we already are. And that sounds like what you're really doing in your international approach is saying, oh, I really appreciate that about your culture, and here's what we do. Perhaps it could make it even better. Would you be aware of that? Would you be accepting of that, right?

Yeah. Look, this is all about adaptation. And, you know, you know, I mentioned that we have a value of be direct and transparent. What does it mean to be direct and transparent in Japan? Probably different than what it means in the US or even Europe, you know? And so exploring that and making sure that it's comfortable for those individuals and natural is, I think, really, really interesting area that we can innovate on. And because, yeah, we want to be a loved place to work in Japan. Yeah, obviously, because I think it's core to our success as a business is people who love where they work ultimately do their best work, ultimately take care of customers the best. I mean, it's part of the strategy. So I think it's critical for us to find ways to scale internationally.

And the cultural elements internationally are very different too. There is a lot of the research before is the McClellan Power Index. The way power is perceived perceived differently in Japan as it is in the U.S., in Eastern versus Western. There's other constructs too of high trust, low trust, high context, low context. You need more cultures that have high— in Asia, more high; sometimes in the U.S., more low context. There's numerous studies that show the differences. And then you have to test those studies again, because they change, they shift with new generations, with a new influx of talent. And whether there is really the living of that research and behaviors, or they're just perceptions, is a big question too, right? So there could be more similarities than there are dissimilarities, perhaps due to language differential. There's so many questions, isn't there?

Oh, 100%. And actually, an interesting, just a fact is that, as I mentioned, our values are important big, big, important way that we, we live our culture. And we refreshed our values early this year. So, so as I said, we have 7. We've had 7 since about 2016. We started the company actually in 2014, early 2014, with 4 values. So twice we revisited these, these things that are very, very, very important. We, we've made adjustments, we've changed them, we've adapted them. The refresh in many ways was to help address some of the issues you're talking about, which is, are these words that we're using— so I keep talking about being direct. Before the value was be direct, it used to say brutal honesty. And what we found is the word brutal honesty in English translates very different when you look globally. And it was— and it's one of these things like, yeah, yeah, yeah, when It's when you're 400 people, 500 people, and everyone kind of knows what it means. Like, it's fine. It's like, it's fine, you know? But as you grow really, really fast, people don't know what it means and they're just reading these words. They're getting confused. It's not helping the culture. So we adjusted the words, refreshed all the values to make sure the words translated well. The words were explainable. They're clear. And I think we've come up with a rubric for— through interviewing process, like what questions you can ask which can help test whether this person is a good fit or not with respect to our values, right? A lot of investment here just to make sure it's clear and, and understandable by a global audience. And I think, I think that's— you're touching on something I think very, very important. But if these things are important, you have to, you have to invest time and energy into them, just like you invest time and energy in everything else. Um, so that's, that's, um, one of the cool things I think we've done this year specifically.

Absolutely. And people don't realize it's, it's, you know, time, energy investment. You know, there's also monetary. These are very important things, and where you're touching on too, the word brutal honesty can be— goes back to the way in which people feel within government regimes. Are they being brutal with me? Are they going to harm me? This, that question. And then the question itself can be actually a place people are being placed into defensive positions with a question. Versus a statement. So you're shifting the statement really to— so you're saying, this is the question. So I would say to you, "Hi, Todd, tell me more about who you are," right? Versus, "Who are you?" You know, how do they feel? You know, "Who are you?" is a lot like saying, "Give me your passport and identity." Yep. Versus, "Todd, tell me more about who you are," right? And even the directive, could be seen as brutal honesty. So me saying to you, tell me, versus please let me know you better, please help me understand, you know, that's— now we're getting even deeper to this concept of friendship, which is pervasive in Asia. Friendship is very pervasive, and respect, honesty, you know, the, the whole concept of, uh, of really loving another's, uh, way of being, respecting their way of being. It's really deep in their culture.

100%.

You're going there, you're going there, Todd. It sounds like, it sounds like you're doing this. This is so exciting. You're going, you're literally going international.

It's fun, it's fun. Look, it's a journey and we're, we're early in that journey, but, um, yeah, I think, look, I mean, I'm sure we'll learn a lot as we continue down this path.

You know what's cool though, Todd? Even if You know, that's a year or two away, right? The lessons can be learned in the here and now, inside your company now. Even the concept of respect that you're doing and you're already leading around, you know, how we accept and love another person inside of your company.

Yeah, that's good. That's a good point.

Todd Olson, Pendo, awesome person, leader, done great jobs inside of Pendo, doubling in size, doing amazing things, going international. Thanks for joining me today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Louis Carter. Take care.