Kissflow is a business process and workflow management software enabling transforming and optimizing business processes. In an interview with The Smart CEO, the company’s CPO, Dinesh Varadharajan, shared with us the company’s unique work culture, where talent is hired for its passion rather than just qualifications. Dinesh took time off from the CTOTalk event the company was hosting, to tell us about Kissflow’s approach to team building and ‘unleashing’ talent.

Managing a tech team

Tell us about your team, the number of people, their capabilities and expertise, and why it’s exciting to manage this bunch. 

The hiring process at Kissflow is very different from how it is elsewhere. We have a team of around 140 employees (mostly in product and engineering), each of whom has been hired because of their passion for technology. Our tech team is very aligned with the organization’s vision and doesn’t require much managing. We give them complete ownership, which makes them feel responsible. Our focus, instead, is on unleashing individuals. If we succeed in that, they take care of what they need to deliver.

For instance, when we go for campus interviews, we don’t look for recruits with a great degree, language proficiency, educational background or communication skills. The latter (communication skills) is taken care of through internal training programs. Instead, we ask the campus coordinators for one specific attribute – a list of students who always stay in the lab. Today, many of these recruits are champions in our organization. In fact, a few of the current employees haven’t even completed their degree despite having been in the organization for two years now.

This process has worked well for us because our attrition rate is low. Many employees have been with the organization for over eight years, and many have grown to become engineering managers as well. For instance, we have a recruit who completed his degree two years after joining Kissflow. He’s a champion right now. He wants to become the next CPO. So, we’re working together to help him meet his goal by addressing skill gaps, and putting together a plan to get him to his goal in the next five to ten years. 

Building, Hiring, and Nurturing

Share some tips on hiring well. A ‘must ask’ question in interviews and what makes you say NO to a candidate. 

In our lateral hires, we look for candidates who are curious and aspirational, because we believe they forge their own path. As long as their path aligns with the organization’s growth path, there is a good match. Rather than what we want, it’s about deeply understanding what they want to be. 

Many times, they may not even have the answers, because people normally don’t think about aspirational goals. So we have a very deep conversation, and try to understand what they are really passionate about, and assess whether what we expect aligns with their passion. One of the ways we evaluate this is by understanding the books they read, the blogs they normally go through, or, the technical groups they’re a part of. People who are aspirational and who want to grow tend to be continuous learners. Getting such people makes our lives much simpler. 

For nurturing, the managers have one-on-ones every week, or at least once in two weeks, with individuals. Rather than focusing on project status, these meetings are conducted to understand if they are facing any challenges in the journey towards their goal. The teams are small, with each manager having only three or four people who they are directly responsible for. So they need to be very clear about what these individuals want to do. And as leaders, it’s their responsibility to devise a growth plan. If there are challenges that these individuals are unable to solve by themselves, the leaders step in and clear the path.

This has a lot to do with the culture of the organization. Kissflow’s culture is centered around people and not just on results or revenues. Those are outcomes. When we take care of our people, when people are passionate about what they are doing, we naturally get those outcomes.

So, instead of focusing on outcomes, we focus on everything that leads to the outcome.

The Biggest Challenge

What are the skills of the future? From a tech team-building perspective, what is the biggest challenge? 

Maintaining this culture when we are small is easy. But when we grow big, sustaining this culture can be a challenge. So, we conduct many programs, such as the Kissflow leadership program every month for nearly 100 employees. It’s a continuous exercise where we do a lot of book reading and other workshops, with a focus on learning and growth.

This is to sustain their interest in learning and to help employees understand and talk about our culture every day.

Happiness is the central point around which the organization functions and it comes when people do what they love, when they feel they are taken care of by the system. And it also comes from the leaders who believe that the organization is in really good hands.