Jasna Mihelj Coustaury Of Plume On Why Corporate Culture Matters in Business

An Interview With Vanessa Ogle

Many of the key aspects of corporate culture that deliver value and benefit the bottom line map back to the Plumian traits I mentioned earlier. At Plume, we understand the importance of staying engaged and paying attention to detail. We are big believers in teamwork, encouraging others and the power of clear communication — which are all critical to business success.

Every company has a corporate culture. This culture can foster innovation and a fresh exchange of ideas or it can promote selfishness and backbiting, which will damage the bottom line of any business. Sensitivity to the culture of a business goes beyond mere awareness; it’s about actively adapting and responding to create the culture that you want to represent your brand. This is crucial for building successful, respectful and inclusive working environments and for creating products and services that resonate with a diverse customer base. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jasna Mihelj Coustaury.

Jasna Mihelj Coustaury is the general manager of European operations for Plume and the head of #PlumeStrong. Based in Slovenia, Coustaury has more than 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. She is passionate about driving corporate responsibility initiatives across the business by engaging employees, partners and industry peers to build a better world for future generations.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about Why Corporate Culture Matters in Business, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I’ve spent most of my life with startups in the telecom sector, in which I have more than 30 years of experience. I’m also passionate about driving corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Following my graduation from law school, I started my own company. My first company built global systems for mobile communications (GSM) and other private telecommunications networks. After a few years, I managed to sell that business and became part of the larger telco company on the M&A team. After a few years, I started working with another startup company in the telecom sector. Before Plume, I was part of a small Slovenian startup that developed the algorithm for optimizing base stations on LTE networks. We needed new financing, sought out investors and identified one in the U.S. They wanted to move all of our R&D to the United States. At a certain stage, Fahri Diner became an investor. He came to Slovenia, interviewed each of us and decided he wanted to build a company with the Slovene team alongside the team in California. We collaborated to change the company, our technology and approach — and this is where I came to Plume from its beginning in 2015.

Plume is a global company. We have people working around the world, covering all time zones. That makes us highly efficient. We can have a team in Europe develop something and then share it with a U.S. or team in India, which can immediately test it and provide feedback and vice versa.

Bringing together people from different cultures is valuable because each of us has something unique to contribute. Our global nature is definitely one of the keys to success for Plume.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

The origin story of Plume’s CSR initiative — #PlumeStrong — is pretty interesting.

It all started during the pandemic, when we all had to stay locked in our houses, away from our colleagues and friends. Plume wanted to connect with and help our employees stay healthy, so we issued a challenge encouraging them to be active by engaging in the sports activities of their choice. And we provided our people with access to the Strava app to record their activities.

Our employees really embraced this idea! One group started to cycle and used Strava to challenge one another to do more and do better. We were excited about the high engagement. It changed the lives of many employees, even some who hadn’t previously been into sports. The challenge prompted some of Plume’s people to start doing some really challenging stuff.

Given the strong response to this initiative, we decided to turn this into a charity ride to raise money to help others. We’ve always believed that Plumians, our employees, are privileged to have been educated, and to enjoy good jobs and a high standard of living. But there are people who don’t have the same opportunities, so we decided to start a CSR program called #PlumeStrong.

Then, as now, we at Plume believed that education is a necessity not a luxury, and that it should be available to all. Also, we understand that children are the most fragile part of society, so we set our sights on creating a CSR program and fundraising efforts that would help kids from underprivileged communities to have access to education, regardless of where they were growing up.

You are a successful individual. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Determination is one. I don’t give up quickly. I am pretty determined to do what I need to do. Even if I run into problems on my way, they do not discourage me from reaching my final goal.

Empathy, definitely. Empathy may help me to better understand different people, including my colleagues. I always wanted to build a culture in which people really feel they belong, and that’s what we’ve built here at Plume. Companies can only be successful when people are committed.

I must admit that I’m also a bit obsessed with details. Doing things in the proper way is important to me. Sometimes people wonder why it’s important to be so obsessed with details, but I believe that if you want to be successful, you need to do things in precisely the right way.

How does your obsession with the details inform your approach at Plume?

From the beginning, Plume has designed our solutions with great care and an eye for detail.

Home gateways and routers are typically black boxes that people want to hide so that nobody sees them. But Plume wanted to create a product that people would want to show off. We even focused obsessively on the lights. Home electronics often have blinking lights, which can disturb users’ sleep. We thought about and designed our hardware to avoid that problem.

This applies to our software, too. Whatever we do, we always think about both the engineering and the design. We want our customers to have the best experience and not to worry about the technology.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. How do you define corporate culture in the context of your business, and why is it important for your company’s success?

Defining what is important and ensuring everybody, regardless of their role, has the same values and vision are essential. That’s why we have identified seven core Plumian traits: action, innovation, doing what’s right, focus, detail, on-time and on-spec delivery, and seeking the truth.

These traits are the foundation of Plume’s culture. They brought us to where we are today.

Can you share an experience where corporate culture impacted a business decision or client relationship (positive or negative)?

We act quickly to do what’s right. For example, if we see that things are not moving in the right direction, we try to address it immediately, even if that means starting again from scratch.

Not all companies do that. Instead, what you typically see is companies that spot problems, express a desire to try to fix them and then take the position that maybe someday they will.

But we have the attitude that if things aren’t working, you should react immediately. We don’t hesitate to change according to the customer needs, and that has helped our company and our customers to be more successful.

What strategies do you employ to enhance corporate culture within your team or organization?

One of the things that we do to enhance corporate culture is to consistently engage and encourage our global remote teams. We connect outdoor activity throughout the year via Strava, and we frequently have employees engage in activities such as 29 minutes of outdoor activity a day for the 29 days of February. It’s a great way to do team building even though we are physically located all over the world.

For the upcoming #PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge in September we have several of our employees training to ride with us! You can check them out — and sponsor their fundraising efforts — here.

Based on your experience and research, can you please share a few aspects of corporate culture that are most important, add value and can boost a business’s bottom line?

Many of the key aspects of corporate culture that deliver value and benefit the bottom line map back to the Plumian traits I mentioned earlier. At Plume, we understand the importance of staying engaged and paying attention to detail. We are big believers in teamwork, encouraging others and the power of clear communication — which are all critical to business success.

Many of us at Plume have been in this industry for a long time, so we have deep expertise, whether that comes from our entrepreneurial backgrounds, engineering and/or product.

Our global reach, approach of working in partnership with our customers and our consultative process are also central to our culture. We have customer advisory boards, one for America and one covering Europe. This is important because customer needs in the U.S. and Europe are different, so we work to capture their different requirements. At the same time, we try to take a diverse approach; there are usually people from seven, eight or nine countries at customer advisory board meetings, where we get advice from customers on what they are seeing in the market. Rather than taking an isolated view of the world, we have a broad, nuanced outlook. Our work related to #PlumeStrong is another example of that approach at work. All of the above allow us to solve customer problems, innovate and provide amazing experiences — because we’re not just an out-of-the-box Wi-Fi product, Plume is focused on the experience.

When we talk about experience, that is multifaceted because we’re a true B2B2C company. We consider and cater both to our partners that use our technology to provide their own service experiences and to ensure optimal experiences for communication service providers’ end users.

Additionally, we encourage customers to talk to each other. Sharing their experiences enables customers to help each other and can contribute to the growth of their industries and markets.

In what ways has focusing on corporate culture given your business a competitive edge?

There’s plenty of technology out there, but it doesn’t always help because you may not know how to use it or understand how it can simplify your life and the lives of your friends and family.

We don’t just offer technology. We solve people’s problems and teach individuals how to use technology to make their lives easier. With Plume, it’s simple to get connected; control the data you’re sharing; protect your home, friends, family and children; and enjoy the best overall experience.

This provides Plume and our partners with a competitive edge and improves end users’ lives.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start 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 appreciate that, and I’m excited to note that we have started a movement: #PlumeStrong.

We held our first big event — the #PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge — in 2021. The five-day event was a success and raised money for a good cause. We wanted to keep a good thing going and raise even more money the following year, so we looked for someone to increase visibility.

I spoke with different professional cyclists in a quest to find an event ambassador who was inspirational, aligned with our values and personified what you can achieve through hard work. Eventually, I met with a determined, hardworking, humble young cyclist named Tadej Pogačar. We immediately recognized that Tadej was a special person who loves cycling, is committed to giving back through his time and charity efforts, and, like me, is Slovenian.

Our #PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge ambassador just won his third Tour de France and is the first rider in more than 25 years to win the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in the same year!

We look forward to September when Tadej will join us again for the #PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge. We’re giving Plume employees and partners the unique opportunity to meet and ride with this cycling superstar! And we’re encouraging everybody to get involved with this movement, through which our charity partner Street Child will collect donations to support 15 new rural secondary schools in Sierra Leone — providing education to more than 1,500 children annually and funding a teacher training program and a community agriculture project.

How can our readers further follow you online?

You can follow me on LinkedIn here. You can keep up with all of the news about #PlumeStrong here and follow us on Instagram @myplume.

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About The Interviewer: Vanessa Ogle is a mom, entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and singer/songwriter. Vanessa’s talent in building world-class leadership teams focused on diversity, a culture of service, and innovation through inclusion allowed her to be one of the most acclaimed Latina CEO’s in the last 30 years. She collaborated with the world’s leading technology and content companies such as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Broadcom to bring innovative solutions to travelers and hotels around the world. Vanessa is the lead inventor on 120+ U.S. Patents. Accolades include: FAST 100, Entrepreneur 360 Best Companies, Inc. 500 and then another six times on the Inc. 5000. Vanessa was personally honored with Inc. 100 Female Founder’s Award, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and Enterprising Women of the Year among others. Vanessa now spends her time sharing stories to inspire and give hope through articles, speaking engagements and music. In her spare time she writes and plays music in the Amazon best selling new band HigherHill, teaches surfing clinics, trains dogs, and cheers on her children.

Please connect with Vanessa here on linkedin and subscribe to her newsletter Unplugged as well as follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and X and of course on her website VanessaOgle.