Andre Yee of Triblio: 5 Things That Managers And Executives Should Be Doing To Improve Their Company Work Culture

Speak about work culture values clearly and regularly. Employees want to know what it means to work at your company and the values you stand for. As executives, it’s our job to define the company’s work culture so that every employee understands the values, attitudes, and behaviors that are core to your identity as a company. And it’s not enough just to define or articulate the work culture once. Like a garden, work culture has to be tended to and nurtured on a regular basis. This means repeatedly and regularly finding ways to remind your employees of those values.

Andre Yee is the Founder and CEO of Triblio. He has numerous years of experience with an outstanding record of growing successful software companies. Most recently, he was the SVP Product Development for Eloqua, responsible for product development and operations. At Eloqua, he was part of the executive team responsible for leading Eloqua to an IPO and a $957M acquisition by Oracle. Prior to Eloqua, he was CEO of NFR Security, which he successfully led to growth and exit to Checkpoint Software.

Thank you for joining us Andre! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I came about my first CEO position via “trial by fire” route. I was the CTO of a cyber security startup that was burning cash, demoralized and going nowhere. I stepped in after the Board of Directors fired the CEO at the time and appointed me as CEO with the initial mandate to sell the company. After I convinced the BoD that there was unrealized value in the company, we were able to raise a $7M round of financing — I was able to reposition the company, turn around our execution and put it on better footing to compete in the market. Many of the employees in the business continued to thrive there for many years — well after I left the company. I realized that more than financial gain (which is important), I really get joy from making a difference in the lives of the people I work with.

I later spent other subsequent years with helping companies turn around or scale their operations. About 5 years ago, I decided to do the one thing that I had never done in my career — start a company — which led me to starting Triblio. We wanted to build a company where employees can thrive and we can do creative work.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

There are many stories we can share but one that is pivotal to our history and cultural values is a year into our existence — we had just 5 customers — one of them turned out to be Microsoft which sounded really impressive. It happened when one of our earliest customers was acquired by Microsoft. When Microsoft took over the contract, they asked us to disclose any possible perceived conflict of interest. We revealed that one of the executives of the acquired company was a small investor in our company. He had invested less than 50,000 and had no influence on our company, but we knew that by disclosing this, our contract would likely be canceled. There was no way that Microsoft would have found this out but we felt compelled to disclose this because we believe in doing business with integrity — even when no one is watching. It was not a trivial decision for us because the loss of this account would represent a significant setback for us but my co-founder and I both prayed about this and believed that it was the right thing to do. We never regretted our decision and we never looked back. Today we have over 120 accounts with several global companies as part of our customer base.

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are working on building the next generation marketing technology platform. It doesn’t seem glamorous but marketing is really broken today — it’s all about driving huge volumes of leads with no consideration if they are the right leads. For every bad lead, there is a person who got a digital ad, email or content offer that was irrelevant to them. It’s actually at the heart of the problem with data privacy today with the likes of Facebook and Google….we need to market in a way that delivers the right content offer to the right buyer at scale. That’s what our company does for B2B marketing.

According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?

That’s in some part because businesses have become so impersonal and disconnected with the needs of the workforce. We spend so much time at work but yet we’ve lost a sense of purpose and dignity of work. It’s not about work from home policies or having foosball table at your office. It’s about truly caring and investing in people. That’s why I’ve maintained that the most important thing that executives can do is to love the people they work with by caring about them and about their hopes and dreams. That’s the first principle you start with.

Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?

An unhappy workforce will obviously affect productivity because happy people not only work harder, they are more creative. It then follows that company results will benefit from a happy workforce. When I welcome new employees — I will often tell them that part of my mission is to work towards making sure that they have a joyful and growing experience at Triblio. So yes, I believe joy at work is important.

Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?

Most of my experience prior to founding Triblio has been with larger scale businesses. However, it’s clear to me that regardless of the size of your business, work culture really matters. Here are a few things executive leadership can do to inspire an extraordinary work culture:

#1 — Speak about work culture values clearly and regularly. Employees want to know what it means to work at your company and the values you stand for. As executives, it’s our job to define the company’s work culture so that every employee understands the values, attitudes, and behaviors that are core to your identity as a company. And it’s not enough just to define or articulate the work culture once. Like a garden, work culture has to be tended to and nurtured on a regular basis. This means repeatedly and regularly finding ways to remind your employees of those values.

#2 — Celebrate the whole person. It’s important for executives to relate to employees as people, not just individuals that serve a particular role or function within the company. There are lots of ways to do this but the simple act of celebrating employee birthdays and other significant events in their lives will express to your employees that you value them as people.

#3 — Create context for mutual appreciation. Everyone wants to be recognized and appreciated for the work that they do. It’s important for leaders to express that on a consistent basis but it’s even better when you can create a context for employees to do that for each other. At Triblio, we have an all-hands lunch meeting every other week with a very simple goal — we want to showcase the good work that each group in the company is doing so that we can collectively appreciate their efforts. The result? Engineers are celebrating the creative work of the marketing team while sales are giving kudos to the engineers for the latest software release.

#4 — Make mentoring a priority. Investing in the personal development of your employees can pay off in a big way as they grow in confidence and work-related skills. Contrary to popular belief, many Millennial and GenZ employees truly appreciate constructive feedback and guidance in their career. Mentoring isn’t an option for executive leaders — it’s part of our job description

#5 — Be Active Listener. One of the best things an executive leader can do to promote a fantastic work culture is to take time to actively listen to our employees. As executives, we spend a lot of time sharing our thoughts and plans with others but seldom take time to listen to how our employees are doing, how they are processing our directives or how we might improve — either as a leader or as a company.

It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but it seems like we have to “change the culture regarding work culture”. What can we do as a society to make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture?

We can start caring about our employees as a matter of first principle. Workers are not machines — their fundamental worth is not simply on the basis of performance. To be sure, performance is very important but it’s not the only important criteria for success

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Over 25 years ago, I was new in my first management role as a software engineering manager for a tax accounting software company. My team put out a bad release which had a critical bug and it affected a lot of our 25,000 users. You’ve never seen an angry customer until you’ve seen tax accountants with buggy software during tax prep season. I apologized to Jim Petersen, the CEO of the company and vowed I would make it right… which we did. We released updated software 2 weeks later that fixed all the problems. But I also said to the CEO that I didn’t think I was cut out for management because I made this big mistake and I wanted to return to being a software engineer. He was so gracious to encourage me, he told me that he would allow me to return to my prior engineering position if I wanted with no loss in pay… but it would be a shame to see that happen because he believed I would make a really good leader and manager. He said — “if you retreat every time you make a big mistake, you’ll never progress anywhere worthwhile… I make mistakes every day, I just learn from them and I keep going … I suggest you do the same”. I did and I never looked back.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

We’ve tried to share our financial success both personally and corporately but more than anything, we try to create opportunities for people who may not always have the right background or credentials — we will take a chance on them. We’ve seen plenty of success stories of people who may not always had the “right degree” or come from the “right background” but they thrived at Triblio.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Here are a two life lesson quotes that have helped me -

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”

We used to say this at Eloqua (my former company prior to Triblio) and it simply means that it’s more important to establish the right culture in the company than to get the strategy right. Of course we want the right strategy but culture is preeminent in the life of the company. Strategies can change — but culture is enduring. The strategy is about what we do, culture is about who we are. That’s the way you build a creative, productive and resilient organization. I believe that over time, the company with the right culture will win over the company with the right strategy.

The second quote is more a “life lesson” than the first -

“You can’t lose if you don’t quit”

It’s relevant as an entrepreneur because obviously the journey is difficult and you’re often worn down by the process of building a company. We’ve all considered quitting at times — sometimes we consider that because we are tired of setbacks or losing. But we don’t lose until we throw in the towel, until then we’re still in the game and we have chance of winning.

I’ve told my kids the same in the past when they’ve wanted to quit piano lessons or some other activity. It’s ok to stop piano lessons if you don’t like piano anymore but it’s not ok to quit piano because it’s too difficult. So you can stop piano lessons, you can’t quit piano lessons — there’s a difference.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would want to inspire a generation of workforce leaders that would truly joyfully love the people who they work with. We talk about patience, hope, faith, — many virtues we deem applicable to work — but never love — why?