Todd Olson

But look, I worked at a company pre-Pendo where the CEO just didn't like to visit places.

And then, like, how does that make the average employee feel in that office?

That the CEO, like, this is important enough to, like, spend time with them?

And look, you may not have an office, so this may be, again, not relevant to you.

But you're going to have people scattered all over the world, likely.

And don't always make them come to you.

Go to them.

It's respect.

It's seeing people in their element, seeing people in their community.

It's really, really important.

Now, of course, with our size and scale, you can't do that.

I still travel, but I can't do all these skip-level meetings.

I don't meet with everyone individually.

So it's hard.

I mean, honestly, the day I walked into the office and I didn't know every single person was a sad day for me and still is a sad day for me.

But I literally walk around the streets of Raleigh, and Raleigh's not a huge town, and people walk up and say, hey, I should know who they are.

I probably should know who they are, but I don't, and it makes me very sad, but the reality is you have to do things differently.

So now what we do is we do a very, very detailed, comprehensive talent review nearly every quarter, certainly every half year, but that's doing things like Ninebox.

If you're not familiar with Ninebox, it's looking at performance versus skill level or upside.

And every single human at the company is put within a nine box.