Whimsy on Purpose: Building Company Culture That's Truly a Unicorn With Michaela Flatau

Una: Welcome everyone to the Amazing Teams podcast, where we talk about all things that make work better. Today I'm joined by Michaela Flatau, Chief People Officer, or also known as, the Chief Unicorn Collector at Defense Unicorns.

Michaela was employee number 22 at Defense Unicorns and has watched the company grow to almost 200 people, fully remote, building software for the Department of Defense. She has great insights on something a lot of growing companies wrestle with, which is how do you scale a culture that's actually fun, actually whimsical, without it either fading into corporate sterility or starting to just feel performative? She's also been known to wear a full unicorn inflatable to military conferences. More on that later.

Michaela, thank you so much for being here.

Michaela: Hey, nice to be here.

Una: And for those who are not gonna be watching this, they're listening to it, Michaela is wearing a unicorn onesie, and I'm wearing a taco costume. Michaela, tell us more about unicorns. Obviously, your company is called Defense Unicorns, but you took that unicorn to a whole other level. So when do you wear this onesie besides when you do a podcast?

Michaela: Yes. Yes you are.

I wear it all the time. I wear it during company-wide meetings. Sometimes I'll wear it in person to conferences or I'll break out the blow-up one. I think there's a variety, though. We have the blow-up, we have the onesie, we have just the horn and the ears, like we have all of our company swag. There needs to be a unicorn represented at all parts for me. So I'm like, I gotta show up and show out. If me wearing a unicorn costume is what brings a little bit of fun to the equation, then I'll put it on always.

Una: You're willing to do it.

What do your kids think when you say, I'm going to work and then you put on a unicorn costume?

Michaela: I don't even know if they understand what my job is at this point because they say, You call a lot of people and you wear that costume and then they ask me to go wear it outside and I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm not wearing this to the store. Thank you though.

Una: I just wear it online in a call with two hundred people, but I won't wear it to the grocery store. That's a little too, that's a lot too much. Okay, well tell me more about Defense Unicorns and what does a chief unicorn collector do there?

Michaela: So Defense Unicorns was founded by Rob Slaughter, Andrew Greene, and Jeff McCoy, and they were all amazing. They're doing amazing things in the Air Force at the time, this is how I believe it happened. They all looked at each other and said, This could be done way better and way more efficiently outside. So let's start our own thing. The company was named something differently initially, but then Rob wanted to change it to Defense Unicorns. And so he approached me and said, Come join.

Honestly, it took me a couple months to accept because I had established a career in the government. I was doing really well. I was like, man, my whole entire family is either part of the Air Force or the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. I was like, how is this gonna go over? I'm saying, I'm leaving my stable government job to go to this company called Defense Unicorns. And the logo is this cute little unicorn named Doug, and I'm employee 22. It obviously didn't go over well. My family was like, what are you doing? I just had so much faith in what Rob and Jeff and Andrew were building.

They were very intentional about culture from the beginning. I was like, I have to join this. I really want to be a part of it. I have so much belief that this is going to genuinely change things for the government while approaching it in a different way where we actually make somewhere that's enjoyable to work. I wanted to be a part of that. So I joined first as a recruiter, then moved to head of talent acquisitions, and then got tapped to be CPO.

Unicorn Collector was our term for talent acquisitions, collecting the unicorns, recruiting, which recruiting has always been a love of mine and I still do it to this day. I still participate in it because I think that no matter what level you are, no matter what your job is, you should always be recruiting if you want amazing people to join like this amazing thing, which is another reason why we want the culture to be great, because we want everyone to be bringing people here.

But yeah, things at the company are going so well. We're at about 200 employees now, a little over, and are delivering.

Una: Amazing.

Michaela: Amazing capabilities to the warfighter, which is what you collectively call those who serve the Department of War, the warfighter. We are delivering solutions to them that I believe are game-changing, are easily accessible, that are not locked under one large contract that demands so much money and time but isn't producing a valuable product for those who are actually boots on the ground or in submarines or flying, whatever it may be, like the actual people who really need it. So I'm very proud of what we're doing here, but I'm also very proud of being able to build a culture that makes this work a little more fun.

Una: Mm-hmm.

Michaela: Because the nature of this work and working with the government is hard. When we're talking about the military, we're obviously talking about people who are putting their life on the line working with what we call our mission heroes, which is another word for our customers or the folks we're servicing. They have hard jobs.

Una: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Michaela: How can we create an environment where like, yes, we have to do hard things, we have hard folks that we work with, but how can we make it better for everyone involved?

Una: It sounds like this mission probably attracts a lot of talent your way.

It's like you, right?

Michaela: Yeah. Yeah, I think it does. And I think that did you say because of me.

Una: No, no, I said just like you. Like you were attracted to Defense Unicorn. Well, probably because of you too. I mean, if you show up with–

Michaela: I was like, don't be so nice to me. No, but you're right. It did attract me for that reason because I'm like, this is a mission that can save lives and has a large impact. And I think that is attractive to people.

Una: Exactly. I mean we all seek meaning in our work and it's like, hey, you can truly produce really meaningful stuff, right? Like that, that's a whole different story. So tell me, you were employee number 22, you're a little over 200 right now. Fully remote, correct? No offices, no physical offices.

Michaela: Yes. Okay. We do have physical offices. We have a physical office in San Antonio and in Phoenix. And we have a small one in Colorado Springs, but not so much foot traffic there. Mostly everyone is fully remote. We just have those offices so that we can go meet with our mission heroes. If that makes sense. Yeah.

Una: Okay.

Yeah. It does make sense. How has the culture changed from when you joined as 22 to now ten times the headcount growth? How would you describe it? Or maybe it hasn't.

Michaela: I think the whimsy and the fun of the unicorn and the sparkle and all the things we inject into the culture, I think it's stayed the same, this sounds kind of weird, but I feel like it's stayed the same, but the nature of it and how we've approached it has changed in order to maintain it. So, like what worked back then to maintain the culture would not work now. And when I say that–

Una: What is an example? Yeah, what's an example of something that worked but doesn't anymore?

Michaela: Back in the day when we had a meeting, it was all 22 of us on one call and we could all be there representing marketing, finance, HR, engineering, product, all of the different areas all in one call. Now that's obviously, to have everyone on one call is very expensive, but also not everyone gets a chance to speak. It can't be an open forum as it used to be.

So, like, how do we still make people feel like their voice is important and heard? How do we make people still feel like they're a part of something? How do we make it so that there's no pockets or cliques? How do we make it feel like there's no silos really, you know? How are we still making sure that people are connecting, even if they're not working together on the daily basis?

Una: So what are some ways that you have figured out how to make that work?

Michaela: HeyTaco is a really good one. We use HeyTaco in a variety of different ways. I think that like for folks that are listening who are considering HeyTaco, can get really creative with it. We have got really creative with it.

Una: You have, which we're gonna get into 'cause your stories are great.

Michaela: We curate a lot of different events. A lot of different recognition opportunities that we're trying to consider those who are a lot more forward-facing, those who may be like showing their face at conferences, those who may be quietly coding in the corner, who are just consistently there but might not be as loud. So how do we make sure that everyone is getting recognized and also how do we make sure that people are coming together to participate.

We do that with a lot of different fun wellness challenges and also a lot of fun different Slack channels that people are really into, like gaming, 3D printing, cooking. We have one for parents where we all just talk about how crazy our kids are.

But we also have a lot of just fun, fun opportunity and whimsy injected into everything so that we can make everybody feel like we're all collectively laughing together and we're all in on something that's just a lot more special. So my hope is that when people experience those types of things that they think, man, the work is hard, but I wouldn't want to do it anywhere else.

Una: One thing that I remember you saying is the titles used to be fun and kind of crazy and were very, you know, inside baseball, right? You would have to know it. What did you do to change them as you were growing? How did you reason about that? And also not make them too corporate-y, right? Because that's the danger as you're growing, there's a process and a policy, and everything sounds like the office.

Michaela: Yeah.

I feel like our employees have been very vocal about not wanting things to become corporate or feel stale. So one of the changes though we had to make when we scaled was changing everybody's titles because in the beginning we had titles like Unicorn Collector and Chief T-Rex and Unicorn Scout, Battlecorn, all of these really fun titles that at the time were amazing. But then as we scaled, we noticed that a lot of people were either confused on who to reach out to or hadn't heard those terms before. And we're like, okay.

We need to kind of standardize titling. That's not fun. That sounds very corporate, but the biggest thing was making sure that everybody knew why we were doing it. So everyone felt on the same page. We went to everyone and said, Hey, you're gonna start to see these changes roll out. Here's our rationale behind it.

We feel like as we're growing and new people are coming in, we want to create an environment where they feel included as well. Something that brings clarity is having straightforward titles, so people know who to reach out to or who's in charge of what or who they can go to for help, you know? We made that very clear to everybody and said, Hey, we're not trying to take the fun out of this, but we also want to create an environment where it doesn't feel like two groups, one who is the OG, who they've been here for a long time, and then the others who are new and they might feel like a disconnect or they feel like they're left out of a fun inside joke that, you know, the older unicorns might get and they don't.

I feel like that went over fairly well, because everyone understood. I feel like most people were on the same page because we were just very radically honest with why we were doing it. I feel like a lot of companies don't really do that. They kind of just say, Hey, we're a roll now to change, shut up and color. No, we still wanted everyone to feel heard, but we wanted to provide that clarity. I think there's tons of other ways to insert fun and culture, but that was one of the ways that we kind of grew out of and I think it was for the best.

Una: Are there any other things that you grew out of? I'm sure there's plenty of things you grew out of. What are some other things that you grew out of that went over well with people? Is there anything also that did not go over well with people as you grew out of it?

Michaela: I just feel like there's a lot of things. I speak from like the realm of mostly HR, but there's just been a ton of things that we've really tried to get a handle on and form more processes around. Because like, yeah, in the beginning, maybe chaos worked, but now as we bring in more people too, it's kind of hard to teach and replicate chaos when there's no playbook. So I think we've gotten way more organized with finances, with HR and reporting structure, and how we title departments.

That all sounds very boring, but I also think that when the time comes down to it and when we show that to our employees, it provides a sense of trust in leadership as well. Because it's like, hey, this is a fun environment. We have a fun logo, we're doing a lot of cool things, but also we're building this infrastructure in the back, and we're being very transparent, we're showing it to you during all-hooves, which is our word for all-hands. Like, we're showing you these things so that you know where we are.

How our finances look, what deals we're landing, which deals we aren't landing, where we're expanding our work to, what products we're working on. I think the bottom line is, yes, we're getting more organized and building more structure with everything, but also we've still been very honest with our employees on where we're going and what we're doing so that they feel like a part of it and they don't feel blindsided when, you know, obviously this doesn't happen, but with a lot of companies, it's like, Psych! We're pivoting to a completely different thing. People say, Wait, this isn't why I joined, or Wait, the nature of the work has changed drastically. But we just try to keep everyone on the same page as we're going to let them know how and what we're doing as we do it.

Una: It's not what I signed up for.

What do you think companies get wrong when they scale and become too formal and corporate-y? Like why do they do it and what do they get wrong where they just kinda you know, you have people like, This place used to be great, but now we're over 150 and it's kinda meh.

Michaela: I think that a lot of people believe that HR is the curators of the culture and it's on them to be like they are the fun police, but they are also the party planning committee.

Culture has to be something that is across the executive team. Every one of them needs to understand it and need to be taking it into consideration with every decision we're making. That's something that I believe Defense Unicorns has got right is whenever we roll out a change or whenever we're talking about something, anybody can raise their hand and say, How does this impact our unicorns? How are they gonna feel about this change?

Just for even more clarity, even our CFO and our general counsel say, How does this impact culture? Those in industry are typically not roles who are considering culture. No offense to CFOs and GCs across the industry, but I feel like it is something that is so ingrained in our daily operations.

And that's where other companies get it wrong is they think they don't need to spend a lot of time on it and they don't need to be intentional about it. Then it leads to just kind of being indifferent about it and saying, Well, we need to do this and at this point we don't really care how the employees feel about this because this is the marching order. That's where I think people get it wrong.

Una: It's a very top down approach of like, This is where we're going, you must fall in line or get out.

Michaela: Yeah.

Una: Why do you guys focus so much on the culture? Is it just like, hey, we just wanna build a place where people love working? Or is it also, people are more engaged and then they do better work? Or is it just like, this is what we want, no explanation needed.

Michaela: I think a lot of us are either veterans or came from working for the military. We took a lot of the things that worked and a lot of the things that didn't and brought that to the table and how we wanted to shape things. Like, for example, unfortunately, the military isn't always family friendly because the mission comes first and you either have to pick up and move or go to a different duty station or you get sent overseas and your family has to stay behind. And so that's something that our founders were thinking of when they created this company was, how do we create something that is family friendly and where people can show up and do their best work, but they also feel supported to be at home with their kids or with their family and friends? That's good work-life balance that isn't as much in the military.

But then also, the things like camaraderie is something that I think we brought over. How do we make sure everybody feels like we're all in this together? We're all passionate about the mission. It doesn't matter who or what department you're in, everybody is willing to jump in and help or give an opinion or try to learn.

I think that that's kind of what we pulled from our own experiences and said, Okay, how can we make it different without creating this– we have to be careful about it though. We don't want to create a just like a free-for-all, like choose happiness, do whatever you want, and it negatively impacts the company. We still have a business to run. So, how do we juggle those two things of creating a culture where people feel empowered to have a work-life balance, where they feel empowered to raise their voice and be happy at work, but also still understand that there's a bottom line at the end of the day, and we serve the mission.

We're trying to build our business and unfortunately we have to make money in order to keep this going. So yeah, I think we've done a pretty good job of it. And I think that some people don't take the time to do that. Then they wonder why their employees are unhappy or their employees want to leave. It's like, well, do they love work?

Una: Of course.

Una: It sounds like a lot of how you reinforce the business goals and obviously like, hey, we still need to make money so we can all pay our bills is also through the all-hooves meeting. You also mentioned your CEO does weekly office hours, right?

Michaela: Yeah, yes. He basically just comes to the table and says, Whatever questions you have, even if they're hard questions or controversial questions, this is my time, you have the open forum here, do it. And people do ask hard questions or they ask, How did the last board meeting go? Anything we should know coming out of that? And Rob is pretty candid about all of it.

That also provides that culture of feeling everyone feeling involved in the business's decisions and in how we're doing things. Then it creates that trust and being like, I want to be here because not only is the culture amazing, but also our leadership trusts us enough to tell us the good, the bad, and the ugly of what is going on. We get to either help or we just get to digest that information, you know what I mean?

Una: No, absolutely. It's funny, I recorded an episode yesterday and it was with the CEO of a company and he used to do the same thing. So I think there's a pattern of great cultures and leadership, investing in the culture, everyone being on the same page, and leadership being open about how things are going, the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? Versus hiding things behind closed doors. I wanna get into the blowout, the blowup, the unicorn blow up.

Can you tell me the story again of when you actually wear that and why?

Michaela: I've had it since our first retreat, and I honestly think I just bought it because I was like, you know what? This just feels right. And then I just started wearing it, and another employee, her name is Madeline. We both started on the same day, so we have a bond, and we said we're both getting unicorn blow-ups and we're bringing them to the retreat. Ever since then, there's always been like a yeah, Michaela, bring the blowup. And I'm like, okay. I've had instances where I'm walking around in the blow up, which it's a good, it's a good marketing tool.

Everyone wants to take pictures, everyone wants to FaceTime their daughter and say, look, there's a unicorn here. I've weirdly had people kiss my nose in the costume, and I'm like, okay, there's still a real person in here.

But it's odd, also I've had people say, Hey, I don't know how much Defense Unicorns is paying you to wear this costume, but we could probably pay you more. Like, this poor I don't know, I don't know what they think I am, but I'm like, hey, I'm actually on the executive team. I'm just wearing this. They're like, Why? I'm not sales, I'm not like running the booth. I'm just wearing this costume.

And they say, Why? I'm like, first off, like, look at the return on investment. A lot of people want to take pictures with it, or tag Defense Unicorns, or share, or go to the booth to get awesome stickers and swag. But also, it does bring people happiness too. You know, you're surrounded by military machines and guns and all these like booths that are very military-esque and then there's just a unicorn there and you're like, what is this? This is not the environment for this, and this is really funny. That's really all it is. I hate to say it like this, but the love of the game. I'm like, yeah, I'll put on the costume. Why not? Why not?

Una: Exactly. At least it makes the day more fun for you and your team and in a sense it was like, Why not? Right.

Michaela: Yeah, and it gives people something to talk about. And then they come and they say, I heard there's a unicorn, where is it? And I'm like, I gotta go put the costume back on now because now people are asking for it.

Una: Now you're a celebrity at a conference. There's a photo circulating online of you wearing a blowup at your desk announcing Tacopocalypse. Can you tell me more about what Tacopocalypse is?

Michaela: We had a day where we said, this is back a couple years ago, and we said, Okay, everybody has one day to give out all of their HeyTaco stickers, and it was absolutely insane. The employees loved it. We still have it on the calendar, the anniversary of.

We had Employee Appreciation Day coming up and thought, should we send everybody a gift card or Starbucks or something? I went to our CEO and I was like, you know, it'd be really funny. Let's bring back Tacopocalypse. Let's give every single employee way more tacos to give out just for one day only and let them go wild with it.

It's a good way for everyone to show their appreciation for each other. Like everyone still loves the, you know, the past event of the first Tacopocalypse. We still talk about it. And I was like, we should bring it back, and he's obviously on board. He loves HeyTaco and all the taco things. He was like, Yes. So we did it, and everybody just loved it.

There's so many like images of Tacopocalypse, tacos raining from the sky, people getting crushed by tacos, tacos getting thrown everywhere. Yeah, to introduce that, I showed up to the meeting in that unicorn costume and I unzipped it, pulled my head out, and I was like, guess what? We're bringing back Tacopocalypse and we're giving you all tacos, it felt like an Oprah moment of like everybody look under your seats.

Una: There's a car waiting for you under your seat.

Michaela: There's a car. No, it's just 20 tacos.

Una: It's the little things. It's the little things. What are some other rituals that you do or you know, anyone else on your team or just as a company that are kind of the same source, that are just fun?

Michaela: My CEO's really passionate about this one. For one, we recognize people who give tacos by giving them double taco-giving power. We do a monthly thing like, here's the top folks who have given a taco or given five tacos every single day for the whole entire month. So now for the next month, they get 10 tacos. People are very serious about that. And they're scheduling their tacos, they're making sure they're given because they're like, I want that double taco-giving power for the next month.

So when I don't announce it early enough in the day, I start getting pinged and they're like, Michaela, are you gonna announce the top taco earners? I'm like, Yes, give me a moment, geez.

Una: It doesn't matter if the payroll runs or people get paid, but if you don't announce the top taco givers–

Michaela: Our employees are very serious about their tacos. Recently we decided we're gonna tie our taco amount, how much our tacos are valued, to our current ARR. Because if our ARR goes higher, we want to reward people and give them more taco-giving powers.

Like, yes, obviously we have official employee bonus programs and things like that, too. So we understand tacos like the whimsy morale tool, but we're still like let's tie it to ARR and let's spin a wheel to recognize an employee and let them spin the wheel to determine how much the tacos are gonna be worth. Yes, that wheel might be rigged because it is like an already set number, but anything that gets us all to rally together and gets us really excited about something is always good for the culture. And HeyTaco is often involved.

Una: Everyone likes giving and receiving tacos. So it's a great currency to bring people together, right? Just like real tacos. Michaela, if someone who's listening to this podcast and they're like, you know what? Like maybe my culture is a little bit too corporate-y, or we're kind of growing and I can feel it becoming too corporate-y, what's one piece of advice would you give them to keep the whimsy and not go all-out corporate.

Michaela: I think just honestly, if a company is getting too corporate and then you show up in a unicorn costume, it might feel performative. Like, yes, in our culture it is regular for me to show up like this, but you can't just start this. I think the best way is being honest and having open forums with employees. So CEO office hours, or allowing people to ask questions at the end of all-hooves or all-hands, whatever your company may call it. Saying, here's where the company's at right now, here's our goals, and being very realistic about it too.

I think that that's the baseline of having a good culture and you can't if you've already gone too far down the path, you can't turn it around by suddenly having fun logos or you know, costumes and things like that. You have to earn your employees trust as well. So I would say that.

Una: That's a good one and that definitely resonates. What about someone who's like a 22, you know, imagine like giving advice to–you're not younger, but you're Michaela at 22, employee number 22. Let's say a company is in their twenties and maybe they raise money or they're growing but they really want to make sure they don't do anything wrong. What advice would you give someone in that role and say, This is what you must keep to stay on course?

Michaela: It's hard because I think our culture has been a beast that we've had to frequently tame and like I'm imagining being at the circus and pulling the things down, it's got pros and cons. Giving your employees a voice has pros and cons. I know that sounds weird, but it's true, but how do you just create that culture where everyone feels safe to experiment and safe to raise their voice? If I were telling a company that, I would say, how are you doing that for your employees? And even if it's the small things of, tacos are fun, but also the bottom line is you're giving employees money every day.

To go give that reward to other people and recognize them in their own way. That in itself is a symbol of trust. We trust you to do the recognition. It's not all facilitated by leadership and it's not heavily regulated. We trust you guys to do it.

I think HeyTaco's a good way to start small with that, right? Because it feels fun, but also it's like a little bit of a symbol that feels good. I feel like I'm not doing that question a good...I need to do better.

Una: I think your concept of trust was really good. Your line of like...you're telling people at the early stages, I trust your judgment to recognize what good looks like and to say, Hey, this was awesome. Thank you. Right. I actually like that line, I can't even quote it right now, but you're like, it's a sign of trust.

Like a lot of people don't trust their employees and maybe they do things even that are–it's not conscious. It's like, Well, now we're gonna control credit card expenses, now we're gonna do this, now we're gonna do that and as you scale it doesn't become any better, right? That lack of trust, people can feel it.

Michaela: Well, we do the same thing with our home office budget. We give people $2600 dollars a year and we say, This is your home office budget. Spend it on whatever you think makes your office better or makes you perform better at work.

I don't care if you buy, I always love to use this example. Like, if you buy a bathtub with your money, great. But at the end of the year, if all your money's gone and you're like, wait, I need a new monitor. It's like, we trusted you with this money. Yeah, that seems kind of crazy to just give people this card and say, all right, we trust you with it, but you know what? We're all adults here and we all want to do well at work and to treat people like children makes them maybe want to rebel, to not do as good of a job.

Why do we care about throttling how that money is spent if they're gonna spend it anyways? Do you know what I mean? So this–how can you give that trust back?

Una: Exactly. And then at the end of the day if they betray your trust, then you deal with it on a one on one basis versus creating a policy for 200 people when only maybe one person will betray the trust. And maybe they only do it because they didn't think about it, right? They were just excited to get a bathtub for their office.

Michaela: Exactly. Exactly.

Well, and if we say we hire a high caliber of talent, like let's treat them like that and let's give them the space to be amazing. Yeah. We gotta practice what we preach. Yes, to be a unicorn.

Una: Exactly. To be a unicorn.

Una: Well, Michaela, I feel like you guys do so many fun things at Defense Unicorns. When I see your taco channel, but also your LinkedIn activity, I think everyone has a unicorn emoji next to their title or their name, which is kind of fun identifier. But to wrap it and bring it back to my costume, since we added and ended with your costume, you know how in HeyTaco, everyone has five tacos to give out every day.

Maybe sometimes it's 20 or 100, depends on different events, but who are you giving your five tacos to today? Doesn't count in the app, it's just between you and I. Who would you like to celebrate today with your five tacos and why?

Michaela: You know, like you can give tacos out for whatever reason, and I messaged my recruiter, Stephanie Holman, messaged her last night, and I said, Hey, are you attending this meeting today? And she said, Yeah. And I said, Good, because I'm going to a doctor's appointment. So you're gonna present for me. I'm gonna give my tacos to her for doing that because she said, Okay, I'll do it.

Una: She deserved, sounds like she deserved all five tacos.

Michaela: She's getting all of them, and she's relatively new too. So that was also me saying, I trust you. I know you're awesome, and I gotta go take care of business other places. So you got this. And that's a, I think, that's a good thing to give tacos for.

Una: That's a great thing to give tacos for. So tacos to Stephanie and then tacos to you, Michaela, for joining me on this podcast and for wearing the costume. And we talked about it, but we didn't confirm it. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going with it. And you showed up and I appreciate it.

Michaela: We're on the same wavelength here.

Una: Thank you, Michaela, for being my guest.

Michaela: Thank you. Thank you for having me.