Since I joined Uptake as President two months ago, I’ve been listening. This comes in the form of stand-ups, weekly staff meetings, happy hour Zoom sessions, and my weekly talks with our Founder and CEO, Brad Keywell. Through my various conversations with our employees and senior leaders, I have gotten the advice to focus more on the culture and what drives our high-performance work environment. With more than 20 years managing teams, I have learned many different ways to dissect the strengths and opportunities within an organization. In the end, the most effective tool is to simply dig in and meet with employees directly, having unfiltered and honest conversations. Yes, this will take time and you have to balance the meetings with your other dozens of tasks as the new leader, however there is no better validation than what you hear in these one-on-one sessions. With 100 employee conversations completed thus far at Uptake, I am consistently hearing one word: culture. All things culture. 

What is culture? Maybe it’s best if we first define what culture is not. I’ve seen companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lavish offices and amenities. These are award winning office spaces, with visitors having office envy. One can appreciate the artwork, modern furniture, beer/coffee taps, cafeterias, and pickleball courts. These are amazing employee perks; however, does this define your culture?

For me, this is not culture. These objects are simply artifacts of culture. While they may contribute to a healthy and fun work environment, they shouldn’t be considered the motivators behind your culture. Nothing is wrong with creating the fun work environment, however is this truly retaining your highest performing employees? With many of us working from home today, I would like to assume everyone’s workplace is being validated in a real-time manner. How is it working out?

For me, a positive and high performing culture is the shared understanding of company values, transparency to business and professional goals, effective communication, and consistent recognition.

Celebration happens bidirectionally, from the top down and bottom up. Because culture can mean a lot of different things to different people, I’ve been diving into this topic very specifically and very attentively with our staff. My conversations have been unbelievably informative, transparent, and productive. Each Uptaker is helping me personally to think about the core internal strengths of Uptake and where we can concentrate on opportunities for growth.

What’s been inspiring from my conversations is the incredible amount of diversity, talent, and breadth of expertise within Uptake. Backgrounds, experiences, and projects that our employees have done pre-Uptake or while at the company are impressive, and they also point to our collective potential. An important part of that promise is that Uptakers aren’t strictly technologists. One of our teammates has a background in meteorology, and they bring that to bear when building products and factoring in contextual data. Another spent time in the Los Angeles entertainment/film industry, working with clients on really hard deliverables and projects, and they now ensure that our customers are satisfied and derive value from our products. Our immersion in heavy industries is the foundation for our expertise, yet the unique perspective our people bring of life far-flung from the worlds of chemical processing and discrete manufacturing are equipping our team with the agility and creativity to tackle some of the most difficult industrial challenges.

One of our greatest strengths is innovation, driven by our diverse and deep employee experience. It’s an organic strength because longtime Uptakers dream big and build amazing products and services. As a new employee, you see and feel this within a couple of days of arrival. There’s still a month-one start-up hunger that drives us in our sixth year, and creativity in data science, products, and technology, is an expression of that collective pursuit and ambition. The insatiable desire from our team for better, more, stronger, faster is absolutely part of the culture I see consistently at Uptake.

Another core strength of Uptake’s culture is asynchronous clarity. Brad Keywell has spoken about the term as being an important part of remote work. It’s the ability to know how to navigate the digital world and have access to the information you need to do your job without being able to stop by someone’s desk and ask about who has responsibility or expertise over a certain area. Uptake teams deploy software for customers all around the world from their own living rooms. With the crystallized clarity around roles, responsibilities, and who is doing what, we can move swiftly towards achieving our company goals. There is pride and a sense of mastery over one’s area of responsibility as well as a mutual understanding and respect for our colleagues with full alignment towards the greater good of our organization. These are critical building blocks for a harmonious and an effective remote work environment. I consider that ability to effectively work remote and related to talent, ambition, and expertise. From day one, it’s a part of the organic start-up culture Uptake has built as an Industrial AI company.

So, what is culture? It’s a question that merits re-asking frequently because culture is something we do, not something we have.

I’ve learned that each Uptaker will give you a slightly different answer, but the openness to give an answer at all and to question is why I’m encouraged. As I listen to each and every team member, I’m gaining a fuller picture of our everyday culture and our collective commitment to the direction of our company.