CULTIVATING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE CULTURE with Yvette Pasqua

Audio production by James Ede, Be Heard

With hybrid and remote work, building diverse teams that collaborate well together is more challenging than ever. So, how do you go about creating an environment that drives innovation, performance, and impact and where people can create products that customers love and the business needs?

My guest today, Yvette Pasqua, shares her experience on the topic.

Yvette is the CTO of EXOS where she leads the product and engineering teams with a focus on continuous improvement, iteration, and using data to launch software that helps their members become healthier and achieve their wellness and professional goals.

Episode Highlights

Here are the key highlights from our conversation:

• Why Yvette focuses on the team more than on the individuals in her role as the CTO at EXOS.
• What is a “manager readme” and why you might consider having one?
• Why the main goal of an engineering team should never be to build a “perfect” product.
• The importance of being vulnerable as a leader and how to be open and vulnerable in a remote or hybrid setting.
• How to do your due diligence around company culture and get a good sense of what your relationship with the board or other senior leaders in the company might be – before you join a new company.
• Yvette’s biggest mistake as a leader and how she bounced back from it.
• Breaking up silos and setting your team up for success by aligning your whole organization around your mission – plus the role OKRs can play in this.
• Continuous Improvement Summits in EXOS – what they are and how they help the company to serve its mission internally.
• The importance of talking with humans when you want to create amazing products.
• Why you might be struggling to source a diverse talent pipeline – and how to overcome the challenge.
• What is a manager Voltron and how to build one (spoiler alert – you’ll need to invest in building a strong network).
• High alignment/ high autonomy – why is it so important to focus on these two things?

Listen to the interview in the player below or on iTunes. If you like what you hear, please leave a review, and it may be featured on a future episode.

Audio production by James Ede, Be Heard

More about Ivette Pasqua

Prior to joining EXOS, Yvette led Engineering at Haven, the Amazon, JP Morgan, Berkshire Hathaway health tech startup, and was the CTO at Meetup. Yvette’s career has included leadership roles at product development firms and startups like Grindr. She’s on the Board at Chloe Capital, a VC firm that invests in women-led seed-stage companies.

Books and resources mentioned in this episode

Yvette’s “manager readme”

Resilient Management by Lara Hogan

Manager Voltron blog post by Lara Hogan

The Ultimate Guide to OKRs

Additional resources 

CultureBrained Community – a one-of-a-kind virtual community for Heads of Culture, founders, and leaders who want to up their culture game.

Scaleup’s Guide to Creating a Culture Playbook

Personal Core Values Discovery Guide