Experience
Human Learning – How our agile culture keeps us innovative (part 1)
Just a few years ago we were a start-up. Since then we have grown very fast, approximately doubling the number of talents every year. As we grow, the working environment around us changes rapidly every day, and maintaining that start-up mentality becomes more and more difficult. How do we ensure that we don’t lose the values we were built on, when scaling at such speed? Here are a few of the ways we stay adaptable and innovative…
By continuously trying to improve
We know that failing fast accelerates improvement. On their very first day at trivago, people are told that it’s ok to fail. In fact, failure is celebrated. As long as you fail fast, you will learn fast, and succeed sooner. We believe innovation is built on trial and error, and that is why entrepreneurial passion is one of our core values.
Our MDs Andrej & Rolf, sharing their biggest failures at our ‘Fuckup Friday’ event.
By promoting empowerment
Looks cozy, right? Well, talking openly about our failures is one way we reduce the feeling of hierarchy in the company. We also abandoned titles, to encourage people to leave their ego at the door. Whaaat? You might be asking yourself. How do you know who’s in charge of what? Well, we prefer to identify ourselves with what we do, rather than what it says on our business cards. A “Senior Executive Manager” shouldn’t get to decide everything just because they are the most senior. The best idea should always win, regardless of whether it comes from an intern or a team lead. This attitude reduces internal politics, and generally keeps us more humble and respectful towards each other. From leadership team to students, we all sit together and we all party together as equals.
So how does an intern get an idea through the door? Well, by valuing power of proof over seniority we give everyone the chance to get their ideas implemented. We love testing, so if you have an idea of how to do things better, no one will stop you making a business case. We continuously test new initiatives & analyse our results, persuading people to follow our lead based on power of proof. This way, we get to innovate, learn and share knowledge, rather than give or follow orders.
We also support innovation on an organizational level, by holding hackathons and pitching days, where anyone can turn an idea into a Minimal Viable Product, and if it performs well, get the resources to scale it. These ideas can range anywhere from getting rid of our legacy code, to shortening our meetings to 50 mins instead of an hour to allow time for people to move.
By breaking down boundaries
As mentioned before, we got rid of job titles, so that all trivago talents see eye to eye. We’re very much a people-focused company. We know that even the best ideas won’t work if our talents don’t like coming to the office. We therefore put a lot of emphasis on breaking down walls, whether that’s between leads, teams or departments. We work in cross-functional teams, in different mixed project groups, and encourage our talents to move positions in the company, to keep them motivated and curious. We take every measure to enable direct conversation. Sometimes a short chat at someone’s desk will avoid the hassle of calling each other, aligning calendars and scheduling a meeting in a month’s time. That’s why we all sit together in a big open space. We also have a wide variety of events, sports, our trivago Academies, guest presentations and many more opportunities to get to know your colleagues outside of work. Our experience is, the more you get to know someone as a person, the easier it is for you to approach them to collaborate, openly disagree with them on work topics, and give them honest feedback. This creates a transparency that builds trust.
