Tomáš Braverman (Heureka): You can’t roll out an international culture from Prague

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Tomáš Braverman, CEO of the price comparison site Heureka. He joined the company in 2013, and it has changed owners twice since then. Braverman believes the ownership structure doesn’t have to shape company culture. Whoever owned it, Heureka always built its own culture.

According to Braverman, culture must be built deliberately. That’s why Heureka didn’t define it in a management meeting. Instead, it ran a culture scan, holding in-depth interviews with around 65 employees from every office about what they experience at the company and what matters to them. Management suspected that freedom and fun were strong values. What surprised them was how strongly those values came through everywhere, from Prague, Liberec and Plzeň to Budapest and Ljubljana. The third core value is fairness. Braverman says it also applies to partners: Heureka must not favour any e-shop or manufacturer. “The Czech e-commerce pond is small,” he adds.

Braverman sees turnover as a key indicator. In his view, turnover that’s too low isn’t healthy; the ideal is around 10% a year. Most of it should be active turnover, meaning departures the company decides on. He takes inspiration from No Rules Rules, the book about Netflix: “We are not a family, we are a team.” People who leave Heureka of their own accord often do so because the company has become too big and too international for them. Developing a single platform with teams in several countries means coordinating with a lot of people.

Braverman says an international culture can’t be created in Prague and then sent out to the other offices. Heureka has representatives from every country in its management and in its international culture team, which deliberately includes no one from HR. International groups were set up for ten areas the company wants to improve, such as decision-making, meetings, English and work-life balance. They draw up principles and recommendations. Braverman himself leads the group describing how to run effective meetings. Workshops mostly take place online, but he believes sensitive topics such as organisational changes should be handled in person and, ideally, informally.

Heureka also grows through acquisitions. Braverman says the first step is cultural due diligence: if the target’s culture is too different, the combination won’t work. The second is transparency. When Heureka plans to fully integrate a company, its people must know from the start and help shape the integration. The acquired company then adopts Heureka’s values. Individual tribes, Heureka’s development units, can still create their own vision and sub-values, as long as these don’t contradict the company-wide ones.

Freedom, Braverman says, can easily turn into chaos. That’s why the core values come with additional ones: responsibility, efficiency and cooperation. The individual’s interest matters less than the team’s, and the team’s matters less than the company’s. Direction comes from a long-term vision, annual company OKRs and quarterly team OKRs. Teams have a lot of autonomy in how they reach their goals, but the goals themselves are clear.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• Why a change of owner doesn’t have to affect company culture

• How the culture scan worked and what surprised management

• How to tell from the outside that a company has a good culture

• Why turnover shouldn’t be too low

• How to build one culture across offices in several countries

• How to combine freedom with efficiency and clear goals

For Tomáš Braverman, company culture isn’t created in a management meeting room but in conversations with people across the company and across countries. To work, it needs clear boundaries, a long-term vision and measurable goals. Freedom is then the reward for those who stick to them.