The secret to building a culture of success in and out of your team

Do you remember Matthieu? In an insightful piece published recently, he shared how he climbed the management ladder and shaped his own approach to leadership along the way. Discussing career growth and management challenges with him inspired us to delve deeper and ask him how to build a culture of success in a global and diverse work environment. Here’s his answer!

We often hear that diversity is a real business asset. Do you agree, and how do you make people with diverse skills, beliefs, and backgrounds work efficiently together? 

First, we need to define what forms of diversity we’re talking about. Are we talking about skills, experience, culture, gender, or personality? In my team, for instance, we have a great balance in terms of experience with one fresh graduate, two engineers with 2-5 years of experience, one senior engineer with 10 years of experience who joined us four months ago, and two senior engineers who have over 15 years of experience, including 10 years at Criteo. In terms of cultural background, the team comprises three different mother tongues and countries of origin.  

Is it challenging for engineers with different levels of seniority and experience to collaborate?  

After ten years, we tend to no longer see some of our own idiosyncrasies. Engineers who arrived more recently have fresh eyes, a different background, and perspective, which is great to challenge the status quo and make us improve how we do things in the future. Those with long Criteo tenures already know the drill, so they are great at getting the job done quickly and well. Their expertise is tremendous, and they can be great mentors for more junior engineers, but for that to happen, the manager plays a crucial role in setting the right expectations. It’s about asking senior engineers not only to get the job done, but to allow others to learn from them. 

Any real-life anecdote comes to mind to illustrate how diversity of skills and personality can change a project outcome? 

I recall an important production incident we faced a while ago. Our team was investigating what happened, so we got together to discuss it, but no one thought about exploring a certain lead because "this part has always worked like this, so there is no reason to look there". Yet, a recent joiner decided to pursue the investigation in that direction, simply because his peers' conviction was not enough for him, and also because he saw investigating that part as a learning experience in itself.  

Turned out, he ended up discovering that the incident was partially due to that area that we believed had always worked and couldn’t fail. We ended up mitigating the incident way quicker, probably saving a couple of days of chaos for production.  

And how do you handle value or communication clashes in a diverse environment? 

I voice it very explicitly and honestly. If I witness such a clash, like during a live meeting, for instance, I’ll immediately speak up, letting everyone know that: "Sorry, this is not an acceptable comment". When it comes to communication, what often happens is having someone who doesn't understand something but is too shy to admit it. When I see this, I interrupt the flow and ensure we rephrase until everyone gets it. 

The thing is, you’re not always here when clashes happen, and sometimes, they’re reported to you. In that case, I hear the story during 1:1s and organize a retrospective between the clashing parties. The idea isn’t to point fingers or to decide who is right or wrong; it’s about creating engagement and, above all, accountability so we can all commit to doing better the next time around. That’s a first step toward fostering a culture of ownership and accountability across your team and, ultimately, the whole company.  

Which inclusion practices do you consider part of your daily routine as a manager? 

Active listening and humility are key. Diversity means that I have not been exposed to all communication styles or value sets in the world yet, so I do my best to listen and learn from everyone. I do my best to consider everyone's perspective before talking, to ensure I am not saying anything offensive. 

A recurring problem, depending also on education and culture, is that people feel they have nothing relevant to share in group meetings. People who believe that what they have to say does not bring value to the ongoing debate. I’m determined to fight this, so I have developed the habit of watching everyone’s face during group meetings, and to invite directly the more introverted people to share their opinion safely. 

How do you ensure people in your team feel psychologically safe to speak up? 

I admit my failures and lack of knowledge publicly in the team. This hopefully shows everyone that it's okay to make mistakes and admit failure. The sooner we admit it, the quicker we can correct and fix things. Keeping it quiet is never the best option.  

Which behaviors are key to fostering a culture of success?  

Ownership is essential. When I commit to something, I don't stop until it's done or until it's declared no doable. I believe in building a culture of accountability, where people do what they say and say what they do. For such a culture to happen, it’s important to clarify everyone’s roles and responsibilities but also to encourage honesty and humility in the face of failure. You can’t know everything. There is a lot to learn from making mistakes, so why should we be afraid to own up to them? 

How do you boost collective success in your team? 

I make time for the people I work with, often through retrospectives where I do my best to instill a casual vibe for everyone to feel like it’s also a social time we share. A few years back, I started to look at the content of our daily meetings. I no longer wanted them to be just about personal reporting. Instead, I started to put the focus on knowledge sharing and making team decisions and adjustments transparently, altogether. I’ve changed those moments, so they are about the team and how we move forward, prioritize, and solve potential blockers together.  

The feedback I got about this particular practice has been positive. People feel like they’re more than just individuals working side by side who happen to share the same manager; They’re building something together as a team. I firmly believe those simple things are important steps if you want to spread a mindset of collective success in and out of your team.  

Is ownership a key to a team’s success in your opinion? 

Certainly! I mentioned in another interview how owning up to your mistakes and learning from them is the key to creating a safe space where others feel free to do the same. Accountability is essential, in my opinion. I even wrote a whole manifesto dedicated to the role and responsibilities of what I call “topic owners”. All objectives are distributed within my team between different "topic owners" who maintain a page dedicated to their objective. There, they detail weekly their status updates, updated timeline, estimate of the remaining workload, blockers, important news and findings, etc. Doing this systematically for all quarterly objectives, big and small, has proven very efficient to give visibility of everything that is going on for each team member. I’ve found this visibility and transparency to be very appreciated by both team members and external stakeholders.