How to codify and redefine your culture?

Date: September 23, 2025   location: draftkings HQ, 222 Berkley Street, Boston

Event Summary

If we want cultures that attract, grow, and retain exceptional people, we must look at how leadership is defined, developed, and deployed.

Starting with redefining and recodifying culture at every level.

As companies scale at speed, we’re seeing a troubling pattern. The gap between potential and performance often lies in one overlooked space: leadership readiness.

A question more and more organizations are asking (quietly or out loud): Where have all the good leaders gone?

The event was a blend of:

• ethnographic research
• speed professional networking
• culture engineering
• fire-side chat stories
• a workshop on leadership readiness
• and a panel with our board of visionaries.

Ethnographic research:

The power of just 2 questions to your workforce.

We started the day with some serious brain food as we learnt how a research methodology lead by Yoonjin Choi, Assistant Professor at Mason School of Business, College of William and Mary, would guide DraftKings in codifying their culture.

Employees are asked just 2 Qs:

❓Think of someone who is valued at your company. Explain why?

❓Pick three values that best represent your response to the above

The output being a “value network”.

One that reveals what people care about, what sub-cultures exist, where and who are the change agents in your organisation.

Powerful stuff!

Yoonjin then went on to share some fascinating control and test learnings on “remote Vs In office”.

Empirical evidence from setting up companies in India and periodically surveying workers in those two common workplace setups.

In short, communication was down and loneliness was far higher in the remote company and men were much more likely to feel the adverse effects of not having an office culture surrounding them.

Culture Engineering

We then heard directly from Linda Aiello how DKs took these insights and together with Jessica Skon‘s BTS crafted an ambitious plan to not only codify and redefine what made DK successful, but turn that into a wide-ranging set of programs to deeply embed them further, in every corner of the company.

Animating values creatively for employees is something DKs take great pride in. What was impressive was not just the scope of the work, but the pace within it was rolled out.

🤔 When was the last time your company made a concerted effort to galvanise everyone around it’s core DNA?

🤔 Could you even describe that to someone on the outside?

🤔 Would your peers come up with the same answers as you?

Where have all the good leaders gone?

We tackled this leadership readiness challenge from the perspective of a typical CPO c-suite. What can each leader do to move the dial? Each table took a different role.

It starts with the CPO, who holds guardianship of a company’s culture and accountability for the people strategy.

Then comes a co-ordinated team effort across HR, L&D and TA functions to ensure leadership is capable of taking the
company where it wants to go.

This report shares back the brilliant basics and some new ideas to develop strong leadership readiness for the future.

Fireside Chat Recap:

“F*ck fanpool” and “boundaryless accountability”

In our fireside chat, we had the privilege of hearing from DKs CPO Corey Gottlieb. He covered the story of building culture at DKs. Through many large mergers and in building out a global sports betting book and tech platform.

Linda and Corey share exactly what being a member of the DraftKings team looked like and the expectation that comes with.

What typifies DKs culture?

Given a tough, complex problem and an unreasonably lofty timeframe the DK team back themselves to get it done. That’s when they are at their best and for their people its not for the feint hearted but is exciting and has enabled them to grow very fast.

“Boundless accountability”

One of the hallmarks of a DK employee is that people are so invested in the success of building a solution that roles and hierarchy go out the window. People pitch in without politics, ego or self doubt.

“F*ck Fanpool”

DKs has acquired several companies globally to become the sports betting giant it is today. This very intentional process though keeps culture at the centre of the equation. The right strategic move, financials and regulatory checks and balances yes of course, but at DKs the cultural impact is fundamental to the decision making process.

What are we willing to give up in the way we are and work for a merger to take place?

As the story goes the board had been debating and lining up a merger with a huge competitor Fanpool. Everything seemed to make sense, yet something wasn’t quite right.

As legend is told, one of the founders communicated the final decision by standing on a table and simply declaring “fuck fanpool”.

The cultural cost of the merger was deemed to severe and the reality that DKs could grow via other strategies.

Corey on his leadership journey

The one thing Corey identifies that has sharpened through his time at DKs is his ability to know when to step in and when not to with the team.

He described it as a fine balancing act.

1) letting people who are close, have a little more time to get there.

2) doing them a disservice by not stepping in when they are miles away, or have lost focus / sight of the goal / objective

Corey on one thing he’d have changed

The culture at DKs is very much, stiff problem, solve, deliver and move onto the next thing. That is what has created the pace and success.

However celebrating the wins was something he wishes they did more of and do more today.

Culturally this is something that is very hard to change as it’s baked into the ether of how they work.