Kristen Tronsky Of DoiT On Why Corporate Culture Matters in Business

An Interview With Vanessa Ogle

Have fun and act as one team. We work in a fast-moving industry full of constant change and there will always be challenges. In DoiT’s culture, when things don’t go as planned, we take a beat, laugh it off, think it through, and then try again until we find the right solution. It’s always us verses the problem — not each other.

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 Kristen Tronsky.

Kristen Tronsky is the chief people officer (CPO) of DoiT and is responsible for all functional areas of human resources. With more than 18 years of experience across people strategy, operations, talent acquisition, employee relations and more, Kristen’s role is instrumental to DoiT’s employee base, affectionately known as “Do’ers.” During her time at DoiT, Kristen has scaled the people strategy team and function from the ground up while also serving as chief of staff to the CEO.

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?

When I attended Boston University, I took a course on the Sociology of Work that really opened my eyes to the potential of People Strategy in building high-performing teams and successful companies. This led to a major in Sociology with an emphasis in Work and Organizational Structure. I’m still intrigued by the patterns, data and stories behind the world’s biggest successes and disasters, whether it be the rise of Netflix or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. This foundation has since helped me in every area of HR — and I can trace it all back to that inspiring college course.

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

I’ve worked in HR for 20 years and witnessed a lot of interesting stories. Many include great experiences of helping people that have gone on to lead their own teams to great success, and I love those stories most of all. Some of the more intriguing tales, however, are those that deal with our flaws. People aren’t perfect and neither are companies. If there was a time machine, I’m sure there are many of us who would go back and do things differently. But I also believe a crucial part of my role is keeping these stories in “the vault.”

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?

The first one is reliability. You need to be somebody that others can count on. If you make a commitment, be known for keeping it and consistently delivering top-quality work. And be authentic in your communications — don’t change the narrative from one person to the other. Most important, meet employee expectations, especially when it comes to fundamentals like being paid on time and ensuring benefits are in order.

The second trait is self-confidence. You need to be willing to jump into a new opportunity, embrace learning experiences, and ask those qualifying questions that are essential to understanding, even if you feel they’ll sound stupid. You can’t do your best work if you don’t know the details. Remember, impostor syndrome affects everyone, but the more confident you are in what you bring to the table, the better you’ll do.

The last trait is radical honesty. In any kind of people strategy role, you have to be the voice of hard truths, presented constructively and with the best of intentions. It’s your job to have a point of view and share it as part of the executive decision-making process. But for that to work you have to be versed on the strategy of the company and its broader implications. Part of being radically honest is having the knowledge and context to back it up.

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?

Corporate culture at DoiT is a reflection of our values in action. We have six core values: Act as one team, wow the customer, see your work through, be entrepreneurial, pursue knowledge and have fun. This shapes how we recruit, reward and incentivize talent, the customer experience, product innovation, investments and employee programs. These values weren’t picked out of a hat — they were crowd-sourced first to gain employee feedback. These guiding principles have helped us scale from around 50 employees when I joined to the 600+ employees we have today.

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

Here at DoiT, we are all about being entrepreneurial and wowing the customer. But those don’t always happen in a vacuum. Take our engagement with Sweetwater Sound, a leading retailer for all things audio equipment. To meet their needs, we developed a collaborative approach with the customer to source and as necessary develop the right technical solutions to their problems. Rather than operating within a black box, we made a point to work side by side with the client throughout the development process to make sure that what we were building exactly met their needs. Our customers come to us to be true collaborators, and sometimes wowing the customer involves showing how the sausage is made.

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

We have over 600 employees, spread across 20 countries. The traditional water cooler talk, or learning by osmosis, just isn’t possible. Our CEO, Vadim Solovey, is fond of saying we’re tightly aligned but loosely coupled. That means we need to be very intentional about internal communications, disseminating information, managing change, as well as documenting programs, policies and activities.

We must be intentional about how we gather employee feedback, too. Last year we rolled out an employee experience platform, Culture Amp, which can gather feedback around a host of things. We also use it to distribute employee engagement surveys twice a year, two different onboarding surveys, exit surveys and pulse checks.

We can review confidential feedback by region, department, management level and more. We can break it down by criteria like gender and age to detect and weed out bias. We also use Culture Amp to map out company goals, whether it’s for individual contributors or business objectives for the year. And, we have an open-door policy when it comes to asking questions of the executive team. This is supported with an “ask me anything online channel” and monthly virtual AMA sessions where anybody can submit a question, confidentially if they wish.

We want employees to feel like they have the right to know what’s happening in our business. And if something isn’t clear — and they want to understand the why or how behind it — we offer the means for them to get answers.

How do you handle situations where the executives may not be aware of corporate culture in mid-management?

The results of our employee surveys give us a clear indication if this is happening. It could be that a particular manager lacks people skills. They could be too focused on day to day deliverables and not spending enough time on employee career development. We’ll look at the layers of survey data, and if there’s an issue like high attrition, we’ll examine the feedback we’ve gotten. We may ask for insight from the business partner who is working with that manager too. We basically want the perspective of those on the ground who work with the individual daily.

There are many, many reasons why an executive may be out of step. So, we have a leadership development manager curating programs to yield more effective conversations. These focus on goal setting, coaching to improve performance, how to have difficult conversations. Sometimes a little extra support does the trick.

Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways Corporate Culture Boosts a Business’s Bottom Line?”

1 . The right culture accelerates ramp-up. You especially want a strong culture in remote environments where people feel comfortable asking and leaning on each other for support and guidance.

2 . Hire entrepreneurial people. These types of employees quickly understand there are a host of training and documentation resources and they’ll use the tools at their disposal to come up to speed quickly.

3 . Have fun and act as one team. We work in a fast-moving industry full of constant change and there will always be challenges. In DoiT’s culture, when things don’t go as planned, we take a beat, laugh it off, think it through, and then try again until we find the right solution. It’s always us verses the problem — not each other.

4 . Provide opportunities. We have a culture that’s rooted in learning and growing, and people come here to make an impact. When you’re challenging yourself, you’re improving, and as a result you contribute more and have a positive impact. It helps when employees can see the connection between their development and compensation, as well as their career trajectory at DoiT and beyond.

5 . Be passionate. We have employees motivated by complex customer problems. They live to solve issues and see their work completed. This is why we attract some of the best cloud architects and engineers. Their passion shines through and connects with customers. The result is high retention rates and even greater opportunities to keep these driven employees around.

In what ways has focusing on Corporate Culture given your business a competitive edge?

DoiT is unique in that we did the vast majority of our scaling in a post-COVID, remote-first world. Couple that with our core values, which directly align with the entrepreneurial spirit, and a globally diverse, fully remote company like ours can make great strides. We attract and retain talent not just with better than competitive pay — we give candidates the flexibility of a completely remote experience. This has given us a massive competitive advantage when it comes to hiring because we offer both flexibility and opportunity. There are larger companies, and while we love working with them, the ability to bring your ideas to the table in a 20,000-employee environment is dramatically different than it is within a rapidly evolving, nimble company of 600+ people.

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. :-)

While I fully recognize that a fully remote team is not the right solution for every company, I’ve seen first hand how having a completely remote workforce removes location bias and puts everyone on an even playing field. I also think it’s incredibly important we have more conversations related to the equality and advancement of underrepresented minorities. There are plenty of leaders who think they’re doing fine by checking in on their folks to make sure they’re doing okay. That’s not the same thing as being a sponsor and making sure those in marginalized groups have an equal voice and opportunities. I’d like to see a massive movement towards employing people with diverse life experiences. It would also allow companies to better understand employees and reap the benefits that come from this unique insight.

How can our readers further follow you online?

You can find me posting on LinkedIn and the DoiT blog.

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.