Crafting a Company Culture That Grows With You

Crafting a Company Culture That Grows With You

Company culture is one of those things you hear popping up almost everywhere these days, but what is it really? Head of Recruiting for Stifel John Pierce wrote in Forbes that “Company culture refers to employees’ shared norms and expectations. It’s the “how we do things” of your workplace”.

Building this is important in any company, but it’s even more important for companies looking to grow and hold on to the magic that got them going in the first place. Here’s a couple of ways to build an adaptable, unique culture that scales with your company.

Hear Us Roar: Happy International Women’s Day!

 

Happy International Women’s Day! Across the world, March 8 marks a global event for women and men to celebrate the “social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.”

Here at cred, we are proud to partner with a number of dynamic women speakers across industries to help share their stories, wisdom, and unique perspectives on what’s next in innovation and entrepreneurship. As a women-led company ourselves, cred recognizes the importance of having strong female leaders who are not afraid to rattle their industries and inspire movements for generations to come.

According to the 2018 Pew Research Center’s Data on Women Leaders study, only 4.8 percent of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies were held by women. We hope to see this number grow over time as we continue to work with outstanding female leaders to give them a platform to broadcast their voice. (Related: credTen: Top Ten Conferences in Female Entrepreneurship)

Today, we celebrate the amazing women we see on the stage, in our office, and around the world.

See below for a sample of some of our amazing women speakers.

Know a female founder whose voice should be amplified? Send them our way hello@credpr.com.

 

The Art & Science of Data at RampUp 2019

 

Last week, the cred events team pulled out all the stops at RampUp 2019 on Feb. 25-26 at the historic Fairmont Hotel here in San Francisco. LiveRamp’s flagship event kicks off a year of roadshows that will highlight the company’s presence around the country. This year, RampUp boasted 175 speakers reaching 2,500 attendees, making it one of the largest martech events in the country.

After a welcome reception on Feb. 24, the event transitioned into content the following morning with five pre-conference speaking tracks covering brands and agencies, B2B, data, technology, and TV. By the afternoon, RampUp was in full-swing with the main conference underway, featuring three tracks: Next-Generation Brand-Building, The Age of the Customer, Technology and Data Trends in Practice.

Across the two days, cred was thrilled to watch a few of our own speakers grace the stage. Ripple Senior Director of Audience Marketing Shanna Leonard kicked off the main conference content with a panel highlighting the shared practices between B2B and B2C marketers, while Strava Head of Communications Andrew Vontz chatted with Inc. SF Bureau Chief Jeff Bercovici about the challenges and opportunities of techlash and hyper-innovation. LiveRamp CMO Rebecca Stone moderated one of the most popular sessions addressing data integrity and transparency.

As the Fairmont buzzed with attendees, keynote speakers took the stage at the Masonic theater. This year’s keynotes featured brands such as Marketo, HP, Visa, Cars.com, McDonald’s, Quantcast, and Kimberly Clark, and we learned that customer centricity and utilization of the right data is top-of-mind for all of these marketers.

Going out with a bang, Oakland A’s Executive Vice President Billy Beane—and the subject of the best-selling book and Oscar-nominated movie Moneyball—gave the closing keynote and shared how he implemented a data-driven strategy at the Oakland A’s that has revolutionized their program and the entire baseball industry. The night came to a close with Billy signing books and baseballs at the RampUp closing reception and attendees celebrating at RampUp After Dark party at the Tonga Room.

Interested in attending a RampUp event near you? RampUp on the Road is kicking off the spring roadshow season with stops in Columbus, Atlanta, Seattle, Denver, and DC this spring. Follow RampUp here for more info.

 

Finding Innovation, Inspiration, and Investments at Startup Grind Global

Finding Innovation, Inspiration, and Investments at Startup Grind Global

Get s#*t done. Hustle hard. Employees at startups are no strangers to these slogans in their fast-paced work environments. Leave it to startups to understand the unique hustle and grind necessary to build their small company into a booming success—breeding the next unicorn under the spotlight.

An event fittingly named for this type of grind, Startup Grind Global, wrapped up its annual event last week and the cred team had the pleasure of attending.

Head in the Cloud: SaaStr Annual 2019

Head in the Cloud: SaaStr Annual 2019

These days, on every corner in the Bay Area you can spot a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company—B2B organizations firing up products through the cloud that impact the way we work and engage with one another.

Last week, more than 12,500 founders, entrepreneurs, senior executives, and VCs from the SaaS community gathered in downtown San Jose for the fifth iteration of SaaStr Annual 2019—the premiere SaaS conference in the Bay Area drawing in attendees from around the world. This was the  first year the conference took place at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and the outcome showed the event is growing more than ever.  

credTen: Top Ten Conferences in Health 2019

credTen: Top Ten Conferences in Health 2019

Health care conferences attract attendees and speakers ranging from practicing physicians and hospital system executives to healthtech startup founders and members of the investment community. With global health spending expected to reach $8.7 trillion by 2020, it’s critical for stakeholders within the health care ecosystem and converging industries to have opportunities to come together to discuss innovations, improving patient care, and public health challenges.

In this edition of our credTen series, we’re highlighting 10 events shaping the future of health care.

Speaking 101: Anatomy of a Speaking Opp

 
Anatomy of a speaking Opp (1).png

Here at cred, we pride ourselves on securing the best speaking opportunities to meet the goals of our clients. To accomplish this with success, we’ve built an extensive process to make sure these goals are clearly defined, set, and reached.

The Planning

It all begins with the client kickoff. This is where we start our on-boarding process by diving into the company and speaker(s) to understand where speaking fits into their overall communication strategy. We've created our own process that asks the right questions to help us become successful.

Once we have an idea of the speaker’s high-level topics, we develop our speaking platform, which serves as the roadmap for our work.

The Day-to-Day

The bulk of our day-to-day work consists of content curation. We create numerous topics and speaking angles aligning our speaker’s expertise and background with key themes relevant to their industry and target audience.

Additionally, event research and outreach are the bread of butter of our speaker management. We’ve built a database of more than 10,000 events (and counting!) from scratch broken down by industry, deadline, past client feedback, and more, as one of our key research tools. It also helps us stay on top of any key deadlines, which we easily track on a weekly basis. We target high-value events that align with a client’s program goals, from conferences to webinars to meetups. We’ll even do opposition research to track where competitors or key partners are speaking.

Lastly, we’re constantly connecting with organizers early to understand what types of speakers they’re seeking, and fostering those relationships so we ensure we’re adding value to their agenda.

Our work isn’t only limited to engaging with our speakers and event organizers. We understand speaking is just one component of a company’s marketing/PR strategy, and are accustomed to collaborating with PR firms and marketing teams to ensure we maximize the impact of an opportunity. For highly competitive events, such as Cannes Lions and SXSW, we’ll work directly with our clients to develop a more curated session.

The Impact

Communication and planning are key. All event updates are updated in real time in our shared events trackers, so clients can see progress and a full picture of speaking activity.

Once a speaking opportunity is secured, we manage all event logistics—from confirming the session date, time, and topic, to managing prep calls, deadlines, and on-site details. We ensure speakers feel prepared and know what to expect before hitting the stage.

When an event is complete, we take feedback into consideration so we can iterate on future speaking opportunities. This allows us to refine and optimize future activity to build an impactful program. We’ll also gather feedback from the event organizer to help understand the audience’s take on our speaker’s session and how to make the next presentation stronger for future events.

Successful thought leadership comes from not one, but multiple successful speaking arrangements to target audiences, and we are passionate in helping speakers get to them.

Interested in working with us to help expand your speaking program? Connect with us at speak@credpr.com!

(Infographic: Gina King)

(Infographic: Gina King)

 

Reflecting on Illuminate 2019: How to Empower the Modern Workplace

 
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Last week, I attended Illuminate, a one-day people conference on a mission to make the manager-employee relationship better. Hosted by people management platform Reflektive, the event was filled with tactical takeaways to improve myself as a manager and contribute to the growth of cred’s culture and people.

Featuring speakers from Allbirds, Airbnb, Omada Health, AppAnnie, Pinterest, and 23andMe, Illuminate shined light on the employee journey and its expansion to include a company’s work environment, mission, values, culture, and wellness.

Omada Health CPO Jo Dennis and CEO Sean Duffy weighed the pros and cons of anonymous feedback before concluding their business is better off without it, opting for a transparent culture of feedback. Transparent feedback limits confusion, has ownership, and provides context. While not easy for anyone, giving constructive feedback does gets better with practice.

In addition to sessions discussing diversity and inclusion and coaching culture at scale, Illuminate offered attendees a chance to win a pair of Allbirds following the event. While I didn’t win the Allbirds giveaway, I walked away with a deeper look into what it takes to be a better manager and overall a better team.

More thoughts from the stage:

  • Fairness is the foundation of feedback. Create an equal playing field by offering tools and resources that ensure everyone is speaking the same feedback language.

  • Peer-to-peer feedback is just as important as manager-to-employee feedback.

  • No one quits because they received too much praise from leadership. Top communication issues that prevent effective leadership include failure to recognize employee achievements, offer clear directions, and carve out time to meet with employees.

  • People development and culture is a work in progress. It can be rewarding, challenging, messy and constantly has to be worked on.

  • For more, here’s Reflektive’s official event recaps.

Interested in continuing your learning and fostering a culture of #nobadmanagers? Check out these four books that stood out and were recommended by speakers and other attendees. I’ve added them to my reading queue, what about you?