“Build Your Culture Like a Product — Lessons from Asana’s Head of People" Anna Binder
Learnings from The First Round Review
Welcome back to Sunday Night Study Hall, a self-learning ritual to transform the start of the week. I choose one article from a newsletter, magazine, chapter from a book or podcast. I spend 20-ish minutes reading or listening. I’m tracking my top takeaways, resources and action steps in one doc weekly. I'm sharing it publicly for accountability via this newsletter.
This week, I dive into The First Round Review, a magazine-style publication from First Round Capital. The article: “Build Your Culture Like a Product — Lessons from Asana’s Head of People – Anna Binder”
📚 3 Learnings
1️⃣ Product Approach: Culture requires a clear plan, intentional effort, and continuous iteration. When reviewing it, ask thoughtful questions, analyze responses, identify pain points and track patterns in the data. When building, publish your road-map and be open with plans.
2️⃣ Culture takes the shape of a pyramid, incrementally building up: “Strong cultures take shape when purpose, values and decision-making all align.”
3️⃣ Most successful leaders embody curiosity and humility. They don’t stay in an “ivory tower” but interact with vulnerability with each other and employees.
📅 3 Actions To Take This Week
1️⃣ Attend Different Team’s All Hands: This is encouraged during onboarding, but there could be great value in doing this at any time to “get a flavor of the things that are close to your work, but not in your day-to-day role.”
2️⃣ “Over-communicate until you start to annoy yourself”: Share and reshare
3️⃣ Reflect on Fridays: Look back at the week and ask how did I show up, how did I give feedback, what was hard?
📘 Follow-Up Resources
1️⃣ Listen to In-Depth: First Round Review podcast: Listen to interviews with startup leaders to grow teams, companies and themselves. Brett Berson is the host of this great show.
2️⃣ Read more First Round Review articles: This is a treasure-trove of content, edited by Jessi Craige Shikman. Subscribe to their newsletter too.
3️⃣ ”The Art of Asking Great Questions” by Tijs Besieux in Harvard Business Review
Photo of Stift Admont, library, Austria
