Cory Munchbach Discusses Cultivating Diversity and Inclusion

One of the things we've been talking about here in this forum for, I think, over seven years, which is why this is set up, is the importance of diversity. And the reason is so we can infuse in everything we do an aperture of understanding that you only get through diversity. I think you're seeing it exhibited, of course, in Shannon, Amy, and Corey, in the way they approach our business. But I think it would be important, so I don't want to just focus on that. What I want to focus on is why we do what we do, which is invest in enterprise software and why this aperture is important. And, Corey, I'll turn to you and talk about how you have engaged your teams in delivering an aperture of thought, which is diverse in many respects, which is forward-leaning in many respects, and how do you actually do that from a recruiting perspective, development perspective, so you hear as part of the fabric and not just an instance that we do from time to time episodically. So maybe if we can start there. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I particularly benefited from in hindsight is the co-founders of our company were Dutch, and so they moved to the U.S., to Boston, to found Blue Conic in 2014. And so from the very beginning, we had, I was employee 17, we had half American, half Dutch employees. And it was challenging in a lot of ways, and the primary way was like work styles and communications. I've learned to love Dutch Direct. I've got a lot of... Anyone but Max Verstappen. Yeah, that guy I don't like. We don't, that's a different conversation. Team Lewis all the way, which is, you know, again, that's a form of inclusivity as well, that we can support each other's F1 drivers, look at us go. And so that figuring out communication, and so our founder, former CEO, who I took over from a year ago, we started with the two of us on what is Blue Conic going to look like culturally as an organization. We cannot just be a Dutch company and another half of it is an American company and we figure that out. What that has lent itself to over the years is being incredibly thoughtful about what does it mean to be part of the blue crew versus to be a pocket within that. And so one of the most important things about that is creating sort of this culture of belonging within the organization. And so for us, diversity really did start at more of a multicultural level. Now in our office in the Netherlands, more than 45% of the folks there are non-native Dutch speakers. Obviously, in the US, we also have a huge amount of diversity. And so being able to start somewhere was really important. And then that has what has led to when we talk about our six core corporate values and what that looks like here, a lot of that has to do with cultural awareness, what your background is in, how you communicate, right? And that can be across cultures. Aaron Meyer's book, The Culture Map is a big kind of Bible for us. I think if you get good at communicating with a lot of different people, you open up this concept of having a broad perspective, different thoughts, being able to support different perspectives and lenses on things in a really healthy, constructive way. And that has turned into a superpower of ours that started with me being like, I can hate working here. You people are mean. Like, why doesn't anyone give positive feedback? What the heck, man? Which literally was how it started. You can ask the guys. It was very uncomfortable. But being super intentional is really what it comes down to. We had those conversations. Bart and I, the last thing I'll say about it was we had a lot of very constructive conflict over the years, sort of the two of us, the management team as well. The most essential piece to being able to have that productive conflict was that we always knew that the other person was taking the perspective of, I think this is what is best for this business. So it was not personal. And it got emotional. It got personal. But the seed of why we were having the argument was a disagreement about the best thing for the company. And if we could start from there, that is the place that we can kind of build from. And that has turned into something that works incredibly well for us. Our customers, obviously, we look like our customers, which is incredibly important. Again, I talked about marketing, largely female-dominated, enterprise software, largely not. So that is a big competitive differentiator for us as well. So, yeah, those are some of the ways that we've thought about it. And it is in recruiting, I will tell you, during the Great Recession or resignation or whatever we were calling it, we got a lot of pressure of, like, you probably saw the influencers on LinkedIn, you know, if you can't hire someone in a week, you know, you're wrong. And I'm like, no, you're wrong. I haven't gotten married after meeting someone in a week, and I'm not going to hire someone after meeting you in a week. And so staying, I call it urgent but patient, like, yes, we need the role filled. We need the role filled by the right person who understands why they're coming here. And so that is an area where we've stuck to our guns, even when it's been uncomfortable or we've lost probably good candidates. It's worth it for being and to ensuring that the durability of the culture and what makes us special persists, regardless of who we move people in and out.