Q. What are some other things you do in terms of culture now?

A. On Wednesdays, the entire team comes together and we have updates from different departments. We view this as an opportunity for everybody in the company to understand what’s going on, because so much of what we do is integrated. It also provides learning opportunities, so somebody working in customer experience can learn about a brand-perception study. When you look at the reasons people leave companies, it’s usually because their boss is a jerk or because they aren’t learning and growing. So we spend a lot of time developing leaders internally and creating learning opportunities.

At these meetings, we also have new team members come up and introduce themselves and share a fun fact about themselves. It’s usually something humiliating, and the reason is to make that individual memorable to the rest of the team and also to make that individual vulnerable. It’s through vulnerability that human beings create connections. The more vulnerable we can be with one another, the more that we’ll trust one another and the more we’ll be able to collaborate effectively.

Q. What else about culture?

A. We have quarterly 360 reviews for every employee, which is very time-consuming. But as a manager, it’s your highest priority to be developing your people. The promise we make to our employees is that you’ll always know how you’re doing and that there will never, ever be surprises.

And every week we ask everyone to tell their happiness rating on a scale of zero to 10, and the one or two reasons for that. So in an ideal world, managers know exactly what’s going on with their direct reports. But we all know that utopia doesn’t exist, so this really forces a conversation to happen. People might look at that zero-to-10 scale very differently, but at least we can look at trends.

We also ask everyone for an innovation idea every week because we want to reinforce this idea that it’s everybody’s responsibility to innovate. We think a lot about being a disruptive company. The question is, How do you remain a disruptive company? How do you create a culture of innovation? The first way is actually asking for innovation. A lot of companies don’t expect or ask their team members to come up with ideas, but we demand it. It’s just everybody’s responsibility.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring.

A. From a competency standpoint, we try to really get into a person’s mind to understand how they think, and try to mimic some of the work they’re going to be doing as much as possible. We’ll give them a problem to solve and they have to come in and present it.

If they’re reporting to me, they also have to just have a ton of leadership potential because they’re going to be managing a lot of people. Evaluating someone’s leadership potential is really hard, but you want to get a sense of their emotional intelligence and their charisma, because ultimately the best leaders develop followership.

On the personality and fit side, we try to assess whether somebody’s personal values align with our core values. One of our core values is to inject fun and quirkiness into everything we do. So we’ll often ask, “What was a recent costume you wore?” And the point isn’t that if you haven’t worn a costume in the last four weeks, you’re not getting hired. It’s more to judge the reaction to that question. Are you somebody who takes yourself very seriously? If so, that’s a warning sign to us. We want people to take their work seriously but not themselves. We also ask, “What do you like to do for fun?” The answer always speaks volumes of who that person is.