When companies give their teams greater autonomy and support, the results speak for themselves.
Just look at Realtor.com. According to David Herman, senior vice president of product and AI innovation, the real estate marketplace believes that sustainable innovation requires a healthy culture. Regular surveys have shown that empowering teams to drive decisions with clear alignment across stakeholders has enabled employees to avoid burnout — and make a major impact.
“We are able to respond to agent and consumer needs with immediate agility, ensuring our innovation is honed by real-world data rather than assumptions,” Herman said.
AI-driven commerce ecosystem provider Commerce has also seen the positive effects of tight-knit teamwork. Senior Staff Software Engineer Patrick Edelman said that team members are united by the company’s core value, “Stronger Together,” which is reflected in the company’s recent decision to unite previously isolated product lines under a singular Commerce brand.
“We are already seeing a massive shift in how teams are engineering solutions; we are moving away from redundant feature work and toward building scalable platform architecture,” he said.
But it’s not just about working hard; companies need to celebrate employees’ determination, too.
Vice President of Professional Services Melinda Dehn shared that risk management solutions provider AlertMedia recognizes top performers through peer nominations as well as department- and companywide awards, highlighting both what an individual delivers and the behaviors that made them successful.
“The return is clear, both organizationally and within teams: Recognition builds trust, strengthens engagement and reinforces the behaviors that drive performance,” Dehn said.
Read on to learn more about the empowering cultures that drive business success at Realtor.com, Commerce and AlertMedia.
Realtor.com’s platform helps people find properties for sale and enables current homeowners to track their home’s value over time, research and manage home improvements, and find similar properties nearby.
What recent decision best reflected your values — and what changed as a result?
Driven by our values of “RealAmbition” and “RealInnovation,” we recently shifted our search experience to a continuous testing model. Instead of aiming for a single, perfect launch, we now run simultaneous experiments to see what truly helps consumers find their way home.
The result has been a fundamental shift in how we operate. We moved toward a model where teams are empowered to drive decisions with clear alignment across stakeholders on the value of search and what it means to “win.” This clarity allows us to fail fast and learn even faster. We are able to respond to agent and consumer needs with immediate agility, ensuring our innovation is honed by real-world data rather than assumptions.
What collaboration habit keeps work moving—and how do you measure it?
In our consumer organization, our defining collaboration habit is working in autonomous, cross-functional squads. We recently restructured to align dedicated designers, engineers and product leads around focus areas like search, AI and our listing detail pages. These changes represent a fundamental shift in how we build. By embedding roles together, we remove the friction of hand-offs, giving teams the autonomy to make decisions and drive toward year-long targets without waiting for permission. They stay aligned through constant communication via Slack and daily standups, clearing roadblocks in real time.
“By embedding roles together, we remove the friction of hand-offs, giving teams the autonomy to make decisions and drive toward year-long targets without waiting for permission.”
We measure success through a balanced mix of delivery and health metrics. We track output metrics to ensure teams stay on pace, but we prioritize outcomes over activity. We look at post-launch data to measure tangible business impact: Did we help the business win? Crucially, we believe sustainable innovation requires a healthy culture. We use regular surveys to track employee satisfaction and team dynamics, ensuring high velocity doesn’t come at the cost of burnout. This data confirms that when our teams feel supported and autonomous, business results follow.
How do you recognize impact fairly — and what’s the return on investment?
We approach recognition with a dedicated, high-visibility cadence. Every two months, the consumer organization holds an all-hands meeting where we spotlight employees who are living our values. We believe fairness comes from celebrating the cross-functional effort behind a win, ensuring that the individuals who knit teams together are seen and rewarded.
We recently recognized a team member for her dedication to our value of “RealCollaboration” on our new AI-powered search feature called “Search it how you say it.” This launch was technically and operationally complex, requiring deep synchronization across product, engineering, marketing and analytics. By highlighting her leadership in front of the broader organization, we demonstrated that we value the “how” as much as the “what.” The return on investment on this time spent is a culture of appreciation and high retention. When people see that we take the time to recognize specific individual contributions within large team efforts, it reinforces their sense of belonging and motivates the entire organization to lean into healthy, collaborative dynamics.
Commerce, the parent company of BigCommerce, Feedonomics and Makeswift, aims to empower businesses to drive innovation and grow through an open, AI-driven commerce ecosystem.
What recent decision best reflected your values — and what changed as a result?
We recently made the strategic shift to unify our product lines under a singular Commerce brand. This aligns with my personal values of collaboration and knowledge-sharing, as well as our company value, “Stronger Together.” Historically, our product lines operated in relative isolation, but this new ecosystem approach is effectively dismantling those barriers. We are already seeing a massive shift in how teams are engineering solutions; we are moving away from redundant feature work and toward building scalable platform architecture. This structure is unlocking value across the stack and giving our team members the opportunity to solve larger, more complex technical challenges collaboratively.
What collaboration habit keeps work moving — and how do you measure it?
Our most critical habit is a “write-first” culture driven by lightweight requests for comments. Our team is too distributed for synchronous meetings to be the primary alignment tool. Before building new services or features, engineers write a brief technical proposal and circulate it for async feedback. Crucially, this format democratizes the conversation. It gives everyone the space to digest information and contribute feedback on their own time, rather than only hearing the loudest voices in a meeting. It might sound counterintuitive, but slowing down to write actually speeds us up. Once aligned, these proposals graduate into architecture decision records, creating a permanent history of our choices.
By solving architectural debates during the design phase rather than during the build, we avoid mid-sprint blockers and costly rework. We measure success through team velocity and delivery timelines. While no timeline is perfect, the RFC process has effectively eliminated the massive, late-stage rewrites that used to jeopardize our release dates and cause frustration.
“By solving architectural debates during the design phase rather than during the build, we avoid mid-sprint blockers and costly rework.”
How do you recognize impact fairly — and what’s the return on investment?
Fairness starts with clarity. We recognize impact by mapping everyone to standardized engineering career ladders that clearly define expectations for every level, from junior to principal engineer. To ensure these are applied fairly, we hold rigorous calibration sessions where leadership reviews performance data across the entire organization, not just within one team. This eliminates manager bias and ensures an L4 engineer on one team is held to the same standard as an L4 on another. The return on investment is evident in our retention and internal mobility rates. Because the path to promotion is transparent, our engineers choose to grow with us. We see team members frequently transferring internally to tackle new challenges, rather than leaving to find growth elsewhere.
AlertMedia’s threat intelligence, emergency communication and travel risk management solutions help companies of all sizes identify, respond to and recover from critical events faster and more confidently.
What recent decision best reflected your values — and what changed as a result?
This year, my team focused on strengthening the customer experience during their first months with our product. As we reviewed past implementations, it became clear that standardized did not always mean effective. Our customers span different industries, move at different speeds, and require different levels of support. True partnership requires systemic differentiation and reflects our value, “Our Reputation Is Priceless.” For example, an enterprise customer may need more time navigating change management processes, while a mid-market customer may want to move quickly with a more hands-on, iterative approach.
Recognizing these distinctions, we redesigned our implementation milestones to reflect what customers actually need. We introduced a shared framework to create clarity around timelines, responsibilities and progress for both our team and customers, removing friction and reinforcing accountability. The impact has been meaningful: Conversations are clearer, collaboration is smoother, customers feel supported, and managers are better equipped to coach and support growth. This customer-centered approach reinforces trust and upholds our value, “Our Reputation Is Priceless.”
What collaboration habit keeps work moving — and how do you measure it?
One of the most important collaboration habits for our global team is establishing early ownership, reinforced by consistent communication. When ownership is clear and updates are ongoing, trust grows. Customers are supported, teams stay aligned, and work moves forward with fewer stalls. I’ve found that people do their best work when they understand how their role contributes to the larger vision, especially during strategic customer conversations. When the right owner leads an update, whether that is implementation, sales or customer success, we are able to reset expectations, guide the customer forward, and rebuild momentum when a project stalls. Clear ownership doesn’t just keep tasks moving; it builds trust and keeps the partnership on track.
“Clear ownership doesn’t just keep tasks moving; it builds trust and keeps the partnership on track.”
For me, the key is not intensity but consistency. Ownership has real impact only when paired with predictable behaviors like follow-through, structured updates and communication rhythms teams can depend on. We measure the effectiveness of this habit through smoother cross-functional handoffs, fewer escalations, more predictable momentum across customer projects and regular customer surveys that reflect trust, clarity and alignment.
How do you recognize impact fairly — and what’s the return on investment?
Recognizing impact fairly starts with looking at both the results an individual delivers and the behaviors that make those results possible. At AlertMedia, we use multiple recognition programs to ensure employees are valued for both what they do and how they do it, including peer nominations for embodying our values, along with department- and companywide awards. Paired with recognition, we invest in development through mentorship, career and leadership training, and employee groups that create connection across the organization.
Similarly, in customer-facing work, success is both measurable and experiential. We look at indicators like milestone consistency, time to value and project momentum alongside behaviors such as communication, problem-solving and ownership. Recognition in customer operations is intentional and ongoing, from our COO spotlighting weekly customer wins to annual customer success kick-off awards that honor meaningful impact over time. This approach supports growth; in customer ops alone, we saw a 25 percent mobility rate in 2025. The return is clear, both organizationally and within teams: Recognition builds trust, strengthens engagement and reinforces the behaviors that drive performance.
