Culture Renovation Spotlight: F5 Networks
When François Locoh-Donou took over as CEO of F5 Networks in 2017, he inherited a strong 20+ year culture. He understood the importance of holding onto what was core and unique to the organization as part of the process of change.
“There was a culture that I inherited, and then there’s the culture I envisioned us evolving into. The notion of Culture Renovation, while I wasn’t using the term then, is exactly what I was trying to do.”
“My first priority,” recalls Locoh-Donou, “was to respect the past. I felt this way because I’ve seen too many times the movie where the company is very successful, but then plateaus a little bit. A new CEO comes in and immediately starts communicating all the new things the company needs to do to be successful again. That talk track is dismissive of what’s been done previously, and it’s a very quick way to alienate all the people who have worked hard at the company for many years. The reason the company became prominent is because of them, so it’s important to honor that.”
Locoh-Donou, who grew up in the West African country of Togo, draws on his heritage when thinking about culture change.
“My philosophy on this is an African one. We very much believe in elders and the wisdom of the people who came before us. So, we are very respectful of the past. And I think if you’re renovating or changing your culture, you have to be respectful of the past because otherwise people won’t come with you. If you tell them, or even project, that everything they’ve done previously was wrong, you’ll have a hard time bringing them into the future.”
Among the many smart actions Locoh-Donou took to renovate F5’s culture, one of the smartest was embracing the HR department—and their leader Ana White—as a strategic partner in the process.
“A critical element to changing our culture is that Ana White joined the team as our chief HR officer early on. It turned out to be a masterstroke to make the decision to bring Ana on as CHRO because Ana helped me through some of those pretty tough decisions regarding my team, and what we’d need to truly renovate our culture.”
I spoke with White recently to explore F5’s culture renovation in more depth, particularly in light of the pandemic and how the past year has affected the company’s culture. Ana is one of the more impressive CHROs we work with and I highly recommend taking the time to listen to the conversation.
This article was originally published on CultureRenovation.com. Visit the website for additional resources, solutions, and information about the bestselling book.
Kevin is CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the world’s leading human capital research firm focusing on people practices that drive high performance. i4cp conducts more research in the field of HR than any other organization on the planet, highlighting next practices that organizations and HR executives should consider adopting.
Kevin is also the author of Culture Renovation®, an Amazon bestseller which debuted as the #1 new release in a dozen Amazon book categories. Drawing on data from one of the largest studies ever conducted on corporate culture, Culture Renovation™ details how high-performance organizations such as Microsoft, T-Mobile, 3M, AbbVie, Mastercard and many more have successfully changed organizational culture.
Kevin is currently on the board of Performitiv, and on the advisory boards of Guild Education and Sanctuary. Kevin was previously on the board of directors of KnowledgeAdvisors, a provider of human capital analytics software, which was purchased by Corporate Executive Board in March of 2014. Kevin was also the Chairman of Jambok, a social learning start-up company which was founded at Sun Microsystems and was purchased by SuccessFactors in March 2011. Additionally, Kevin served on the boards of Workforce Insight and Koru prior to their sales.
Kevin is on the board of Best Buddies Washington and helped establish the first office for Best Buddies in the state in 2019. Best Buddies is a nonprofit organization dedicated to establishing a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, and inclusive living for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).
Kevin was previously the Founder and the President of SumTotal Systems (NASDAQ: SUMT) which he helped create in 2003 by merging Click2learn (NASDAQ: CLKS) with Docent (NASDAQ: DCNT). The merger won Frost & Sullivan's Competitive Strategy Award in 2004.
Prior to the formation of SumTotal, Kevin was the Chairman & CEO of Click2learn, which was founded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Kevin helped take Click2learn public and engineered over a dozen acquisitions post-IPO. Prior to joining Click2learn, Kevin was president and founder of Oakes Interactive in Needham, MA. Oakes Interactive was purchased by Click2learn (then called Asymetrix) in 1997, prior to going public a year later.