VaynerMedia's Chief Heart Officer Claude Silver - 'Feed Your Brain Podcast'
Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO of VaynerX which consists of VaynerMedia and PureWow, considered Claude Silver the most important employee of his company as the Chief Heart Officer aka. the leading person for everything around culture and people at the company.
I had the pleasure to interview the amazing Claude to talk about the culture behind VaynerMedia, her approach to people and the heart of the people and the tactics that Gary uses that led to the culture that VaynerMedia is expressing.
Gary, not just in her eyes, is an extreme HR person. Thus, the company lives a culture that is based on people, based on culture and based on different hearts coming together. Claude herself was at the big agency Publicis in London and was responsible for Digital and Strategy until a friend connected her to Gary in NY. After meeting him, she immediately felt that it was a special moment - it felt like a brother-sister relationship. The mix of her advertising and strategy background and her passion to culture made the fit almost non-negotiable. Still, she wondered how this whole culture thing can be measurable, respectively successful?
For Gary, this was clear. "Touch every person and infuse VaynerMedia with empathy". The mission was clear. Claude talks to lots of people at the company, does lots of 1-on-1s to understand the vibe and the texture of the company in order to go and execute on the learnings here. If people need a free lunch, because they had been working extremely hard, she will make that possible for them - just as an example.
The whole topic is based on one sentence "Listen more than you speak". While Vayner has been expanding into Europe as well with now more than 800 employees, culture has still never changed in the priority list. It's still the most important part of the company which is incredible.
Nevertheless, I wondered, how does culture fit into the leadership team where revenues and finance for instance are essential to enable a company's success? Claude responds that culture is clouds and culture is dirt. Gary blesses culture from the cloud while culture is also being nurtured from the dirt, respectively from the soil. She brought up the metaphor of a flower: A flower can be planted, but it needs to be watered regularly in order to stay alive and bring prosperity. Therefore, as a culture-leading person, you need to be hands-on meaning talking to people and really building and grinding for culture day-to-day. "Culture means people and people means offense". That's clear for her. You have to be on the offense in order to push people. From a financial standpoint, a CFO of a company rather needs to be defense, trying to save money. Still, employees won't "hustle" until 9pm if a company does not have a vision that builds on culture, in her eyes.
So where does culture start?
It starts with listening, Claude says. Bring people in, give them an open mic and let them talk. Whether this is in an open space or in 1-on-1s. Try to recognize patterns through the people's opinions and act on those patterns. "Make waves". People have to feel the security to speak up, bring up new ideas and think differently. Gary is an extraordinary person with doing that. He always analyzes patterns, breaks patterns and recreates patterns again to always keep the movement going. "You either give a shit about people or you don't" - in order to understand patterns, you have to listen and you truly have to care. Just by pushing culture into people's minds without a clear interest, nothing will happen in her opinion.
Thus, what she does on a day-to-day basis is scaling Gary Vaynerchuk. She scales him and she has champion culture people around her that scale her in order to infuse the whole company with empathy (as previously said). As a side note, culture comes from the Latin word 'Cultura' which means 'the cultivation of the soul' which clearly describes what it's about.
To build culture, you need to hire the right people. How does Vayner does that?
At the beginning, Vayner only hired for cultural fit. If two people liked peanut butter, they were more or less in. Now, since the company got bigger and bigger, Vayner looks for excellent skillsets and cultural addition which is a little different. Cultural addition thus means that Vayner looks for people that bring extra value into the company that is not as present at this moment in order to bring in new perspectives and experiences.
To maintain the given culture, Claude executes on several routines that help her keep the culture. She always brings people together, uses a whiteboard and let them express and deep-dive on certain topics like achievement or success. In order to have good results, her job is it to let people feel comfortable and safe around the work-mode to talk about stuff - even when it's rather private. Furthermore, to achieve that, she does not have a desk in her office but several chairs positioned in a circle to express a warm interest for people. Love that!
Rounding up, Claude's tip for everybody wanting to be productive and maintain a culture with people, is to be completely present. Be present, listen to people and collect the information they are telling you about in order to match the people's ambition to the vision of your company.
Listen to the interview now & you'll be fascinated. Enjoy!
TUNEIN http://tun.in/tizFy0
YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3HkRaLHpIk&t=83s
LinkedIn Top Voice | Mental Health Advocate | Follower of Christ ✝️
6yClaude's an awesome human being!
CareyJchop
6yAwesome #Cloudsanddirt! Flowers grow in the dirt! 🌻😊❤️ Team GaryVee