An Authentic Culture Is The Ultimate Moat with the CPO of Dave

The Culture Code

"Building a real authentic culture is a moat because it's hard to replicate," said Shannon Sullivan the CPO of Dave.

In this episode, Shannon shares how she built her moat at Dave.

Here are a few highlights:

1. Two Ways she fosters authenticity in Dave's culture

• She injects all-hands meetings with 1) live interviews with customers, and 2) a highly transparent update (i.e., deep diving into employee engagement results).
• Including a culture-specific OKR that's company-wide.

2. How she reverse-engineered great leadership

When Shannon joined Dave three years ago, she was blown away by how high their manager effectiveness ratings were: 80–90% favorability on all of the questions around people’s experience with their direct manager.

Most CPOs would be content “leaving leadership be” with such strong results, but Shannon decided to capitalize on their high scores to decode great leadership at Dave.

“Some people call me a control freak. I call it intentional,” Sullivan said. “I decided to spend some time defining great leadership because that becomes the foundation of everything that we build. How we train managers, how we hire, and more.”

3. Her podcast recommednation: How I Built This with Guy Raz

“It's a podcast that interviews founders and shares their stories about building companies. It's a really good reminder that success, whether you're building a business, your career, or whatever, is often not linear. There are going to be setbacks. When I listen to the podcast, I can't help but reflect on the journey I've had here at Dave, which has not been linear and has included setbacks.”

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We covered all of the above and much more. This one is a MUST-LISTEN! Great stuff from Shannon.