Recently retired as CMO for Tableau,¹ Elissa Fink led all marketing strategy and execution for 11 years, from pre-IPO startup with ~$5 million annual revenue to public enterprise with $1 billion+ in revenue. She knows growth, scale, and building disruptive brands. Prior to Tableau, Elissa served in marketing, product management, and product engineering executive positions. Now semiretired, Elissa advises tech companies, serves on multiple boards, and teaches at the University of Washington.

In this interview with Elissa we are going to explore how to charge a brand with culture and how this also helps in hiring people.

But Tableau became front and center to me when I wanted to relocate to be closer to my extended family. I read a LinkedIn job description, and the way that the company described itself intrigued me. I had downloaded the product, and I knew this product was going to change the world. So I really wanted to be part of this company.

When I interviewed with Christian Chabot² on the phone, I asked him what the mission of the company was. He said it was to help people see and understand their data. And then he stopped. Silence. No long-winded blather about stakeholders, just a mission with a clear purpose. That was it. I knew this was the right company for me.

Sometimes you're so excited about the big that you start building for the big before you're ready for it and you don't focus enough on what's needed in the current so you can get to the long term. But on the other hand, you don't want to be acting so reactively in the short term that you're not ready for the future. So it's a real balancing act.

Community in particular is a great example of that. I knew the community was going to be a critical linchpin even before I joined the company. We have always been mindful of making sure that our community, even when it was small, really felt part of something and they were connected to each other.

I was worried because I didn't come from that kind of pedigree at all. I was really concerned I might not hold up, but they were so respectful and incredibly open. It was something that just really struck me. These guys started a company, a culture, a movement where you didn't have to be a genius; you just had to have something to contribute. The fact is that the founders were humble and smart (in fact, I coined the term “humblesmart” to describe Tableau people). At the same time it meant they really wanted people to bring their “A games.” They wanted to give opportunities to people of all kinds who could contribute.

So even if you were not from some hot company or didn't fit the typical hot startup profile, their attitude was: You can add to this. You could be part of this. We want your opinion. We want your thoughts. We want your contribution.

But to your point, one of the most important things we had to do was get people to give it a shot — to get people to experience it. You have to be convincing that you're worth the time or effort to try. That's hard, especially when you have no brand or no image.

Because we did convince a few people along the way, they could convince more people. So enabling them and getting them to share their experiences rather than us talking was critical. That was the huge thing: people connecting with other people who might join the family, become customers, and be part of the community.

We spent a lot of time and energy on cultivating customers who could come forward and show what they accomplished and what they did. And in a lot of ways, that was the beauty of Tableau Public.⁵ Because that was a public forum that allowed people to showcase what they accomplished with Tableau. It was a passion project a lot of times and that, I think, did a lot to help us make it easy for people to convince other people.

Social was something we cared about pretty early on, and it also is a great way to carry your brand and your voice, because it's somewhat casual and very temporal. You could have a little more fun with it, which of course was a huge part of our brand.

But you also have to be respectful and responsive. When people complained or needed help, you had to help.

Through this, we never wanted to lose the soul of Tableau that data geeks identified with. But it had to be expressed in a way that was, as we grew, and our customers grew in number, congruent with their vision and their ideas of how to use data within their organizations. I think we got more sophisticated and smarter about that.

I think the company did a really good job of having the referral network and then really understanding how to hire for passion and attitude.

People went through the wringer on interviews. But the thing about a great culture is not only does it attract the right people, sometimes it helps people understand when they need to move on or move out.

That's why we would put cultural aspects in performance assessments. And it wasn't just checkbox. You had to assess if the employee was living our cultural values. Tableau put a lot of energy into all those hiring and onboarding aspects to ensure the right people were on the bus and had the tools to be successful.

This is a relationship we're investing in from the ground up because we believe in you and you believe in us. So, we want you to be as smart as possible as fast as possible.

And then, of course, the payback. It's hard to measure directly, but you can so see it as people were just more efficient and more effective sooner. And so, from a business perspective, it was smart because people could get efficient and effective a lot faster than not doing it.

I've learned a lot as well, some of which I wish I knew before I retired. A big lesson has been to take time for reflecting — for activities like learning, thinking, getting advice, considering new ideas, reading, really listening. In a fast-growing company like Tableau, the pace is relentless, and you're constantly trying to squeeze more into your day. So I often sacrificed reflecting time to get more doing time. That's not always an exchange worth making. I would have been better at my job if I had taken more time for reflecting.

Now, I'm advising companies, serving on a few boards, doing some teaching at the University of Washington, mentoring or being a sounding board, and most importantly spending more time being truly available to my family.

Second, culture comes a lot from the personality of the people, especially the early people. So ask yourself — am I surrounded by people I want to build this culture with? Are they displaying the kinds of behaviors we want institutionalized? If not, maybe you need to make some people changes now. It will be a lot easier in the long run.

Third, culture shapes behavior but behavior shapes culture as well. It's kind of like smiling; sure, you smile when you're happy, but sometimes the act of smiling can bring happiness to you. So not only should your culture already be shaping your accepted norms of behavior, but also are you consciously choosing to behave in ways that represent the kind of culture you want?

I think a great example of a refreshed culture is Microsoft. It's an amazing company, but for a long time, it had a pretty tough culture. But Satya Nadella, an insider who became CEO, has transformed the culture over a multiyear journey.

So a lot of culture refreshing can be similar to early-stage culture building as discussed before. One way to think about it is through the people you're bringing in, especially the role models at the top.

Second to that is encouraging and recognizing the behaviors and norms you do want and honor them as examples to be emulated. Show people why those cultural behaviors are good.

And finally — maybe most importantly — pay attention to the folklore or cultural stories that get told and repeated. Social scientists tell us stories played at least two important functions for our ancient ancestors: to help people remember important information before we had written language and to help establish what's considered acceptable behavior in terms of social cooperation.

I love reading so I'm a huge Kindle fan, but I also love the New York Times and the Washington Post. I am a big Evernote user. Actually, I love Flipboard, because it gives me a perspective of lots of different media sources. I also love Spotify, Slack, Waze, Dropbox, and all kinds of word games.

And I still of course love Tableau. I love using it in my class to teach it to show my students that you need to be analytical. But I also use it to analyze the data coming out of my class: Who's paying attention? Who is participating?

Related to that, he said in the same conversation: “You can become the best if you're willing to work hard and you're willing to learn and work smart.”

The third one is from Christian. He said when you're hiring, hire people who have their best years ahead of them. In other words, hire people who are excited about the future and want to change and learn and make the most of today and their future opportunities.

First is about hiring your people. Being more digital and more remote has meant that the talent pool for every position has greatly expanded — you know now that you don't have to have every employee in the office every day, that we can work remotely at scale. So take advantage of the expanded talent pool and hire the best people you can find, wherever they are (within reason).

That being said, we're all going to have to get much better at establishing deep and trusting relationships without necessarily experiencing in-person touchpoints. That's hard to do, from the interview or first meeting to the daily working relationship. That means reading people well, sending clear signals, and delivering on the things we say we're going to do.

We're also going to have to find ways to make teams work efficiently together at scale in digital environments. I've noticed in my teaching that I can't cover as much material in a virtual class as I did in an in-person class. But there are practices and techniques that can shorten the time to efficiency.

And finally, when it comes to sellers and buyers, I'll make a pitch for my discipline. In an increasingly digital world, marketing is going to own more and more of the customer journey because marketing teams can generally execute digital experiences well. So seeing sales, customer success, and marketing come into greater alignment and integrate better is going to result in more customers acquired, happier customers, and more turnover.

Key Takeaways

• Social media is a great way to carry your brand and your voice, because it's casual and temporal. You could have a little more fun with it, which can be a huge part of your brand.
• Culture comes from the personalities of the employees. You need to be surrounded by people you want to build this culture with.
• Refreshing culture is not done in a one-day workshop. It's going to take deliberate evolution over a long period that starts with the truth about who you are.