Alexander: I was at your farewell party right after Tableau Conference 2018 in New Orleans. All our colleagues were very sad and touched. How much do you miss your Tableau colleagues and your Tableau identity?
Elissa: That was a night I'll never forget — thank you for being there. I do miss Tableau — the people, customers, and fellow employees, mostly — very much and I'm just so proud of it. I'm so proud to have been a part of it, what we invented and what we accomplished together. There were so many interesting people who had so much to give and had such interesting lives. I felt like I had done everything I could, and it was time for me to just get out of the way in a lot of respects.
Alexander: You are now semiretired. How did you adjust? Which things did you learn?
Elissa: It took me a while to adjust to a different pace and realize my schedule was my own. I would wake up on a Monday and look at my calendar. I'd be like — holy smokes, I don't have 30+ meetings on my calendar this week. I'm not in wall-to-wall meetings from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. That was my life as a CMO.
I've learned a lot as well, some of which I wish I knew before I retired. A big lesson has been to take time for reflecting — for activities like learning, thinking, getting advice, considering new ideas, reading, really listening. In a fast-growing company like Tableau, the pace is relentless, and you're constantly trying to squeeze more into your day. So I often sacrificed reflecting time to get more doing time. That's not always an exchange worth making. I would have been better at my job if I had taken more time for reflecting.
Now, I'm advising companies, serving on a few boards, doing some teaching at the University of Washington, mentoring or being a sounding board, and most importantly spending more time being truly available to my family.
Alexander: So many companies do not have such a strong and positive culture. Which advice can you give other companies that are at a very early stage?
Elissa: My advice would be three things, all related to taking deliberate action. First, reflect on what your culture is already beginning to be. What culture are you already building? Does it reflect the values you want to cultivate?
Second, culture comes a lot from the personality of the people, especially the early people. So ask yourself — am I surrounded by people I want to build this culture with? Are they displaying the kinds of behaviors we want institutionalized? If not, maybe you need to make some people changes now. It will be a lot easier in the long run.
Third, culture shapes behavior but behavior shapes culture as well. It's kind of like smiling; sure, you smile when you're happy, but sometimes the act of smiling can bring happiness to you. So not only should your culture already be shaping your accepted norms of behavior, but also are you consciously choosing to behave in ways that represent the kind of culture you want?
Alexander: What is your advice for established companies that want to refresh their culture?
Elissa: Refreshing your culture is not something you do a one-day workshop on, list some attributes you wish for, publish an email about that, and then think it's going to refresh. It's going to take deliberate evolution over a long period that starts with the truth about who you are. It's an overused word these days, but authenticity is critical.
I think a great example of a refreshed culture is Microsoft. It's an amazing company, but for a long time, it had a pretty tough culture. But Satya Nadella, an insider who became CEO, has transformed the culture over a multiyear journey.
Culture is reflected in your hiring. Deliberately hire for the culture you want.
So a lot of culture refreshing can be similar to early-stage culture building as discussed before. One way to think about it is through the people you're bringing in, especially the role models at the top.
Second to that is encouraging and recognizing the behaviors and norms you do want and honor them as examples to be emulated. Show people why those cultural behaviors are good.
And finally — maybe most importantly — pay attention to the folklore or cultural stories that get told and repeated. Social scientists tell us stories played at least two important functions for our ancient ancestors: to help people remember important information before we had written language and to help establish what's considered acceptable behavior in terms of social cooperation.
You need leadership with courage.
Alexander: That's great advice. I guess it also takes plenty of courage to perform a huge cultural shift as Satya Nadella did within Microsoft. Don't you think so?
Elissa: I'm glad you brought up courage. It's such an important part of everything we've been talking about. Because if you don't have the courage to be yourself, if you don't have the courage to change, if you don't have the courage to try again after failure, if you don't have the courage to make the first move, well, a whole lot of stuff is just never going to happen. You need leadership with courage.
Alexander: Besides Tableau, what are your favorite apps, tools, or software you can't live without?
Elissa: I use this app called Done. It's a to-do app where you can set goals in order to get in the habit of doing certain things. I love it because it just kind of keeps me focused on the five or six things I want to do regularly to make sure that I'm building the habit.
I love reading so I'm a huge Kindle fan, but I also love the New York Times and the Washington Post. I am a big Evernote user. Actually, I love Flipboard, because it gives me a perspective of lots of different media sources. I also love Spotify, Slack, Waze, Dropbox, and all kinds of word games.
And I still of course love Tableau. I love using it in my class to teach it to show my students that you need to be analytical. But I also use it to analyze the data coming out of my class: Who's paying attention? Who is participating?
Alexander: What is your smartest productivity hack or work-related shortcut?
Elissa: Whatever problem you have, somebody else has had it, so don't think “I'm in this on my own.” Anytime there's a problem, I always think I'm sure that I can't be the first person who has had this problem. Someone else solved it. They got out of it. They survived. You can too. And maybe you can even solve it better.
Alexander: What is the best advice you have ever received?
Elissa: One of my brothers and Christian Chabot gave me great advice. Let's start with my brother. When I was getting out of college, I told him I thought I wanted to do a certain job, but it's too competitive. He replied: “Elissa, there's always room for the best. Don't give up on your dreams because you think you can't compete. If you're the best, there's always room for you.”
Related to that, he said in the same conversation: “You can become the best if you're willing to work hard and you're willing to learn and work smart.”
The third one is from Christian. He said when you're hiring, hire people who have their best years ahead of them. In other words, hire people who are excited about the future and want to change and learn and make the most of today and their future opportunities.
Alexander: How should a business evolve to survive and thrive in an increasingly digital world?
Elissa: As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic forced us all to be increasingly digital at an accelerated pace. Businesses needed to evolve in several ways.
First is about hiring your people. Being more digital and more remote has meant that the talent pool for every position has greatly expanded