Citrix

Founded in 1989, Citrix became extremely successful developing cloud, collaboration, networking, and virtualization technologies. By 2011, the company achieved revenues of $2.2 billion and employed over 7,000 employees globally. Citrix believed this success was due, in large part, to its unique corporate culture and the unusually effective way employees engaged with each other.

But rapid growth was creating cracks in the very culture that originally enabled their success.

Culture Fracturing Under Rapid Growth

As Citrix expanded, the culture that once unified employees began fragmenting. New employees experienced the culture differently than existing employees. What once felt cohesive now felt inconsistent and hard to define.

Leaders worried that these inconsistent perceptions could negatively impact how employees—now more geographically dispersed—worked together toward the company's success.

Nobody Could Articulate What the Culture Actually Was

The irony was painful: Citrix had a strong culture that drove their success, but they couldn't articulate what it actually was. As Marla Noble, who headed Learning and Development, later explained: "We ourselves were having a hard time articulating about our corporate culture."

Employees struggled to understand what the culture tangibly meant. Without a common language and framework, people interpreted expectations differently. "We don't have that kind of common language and approach in Citrix," one employee observed.

Geographic Dispersion Creating Silos

As the company grew globally, teams became isolated. "The larger the company becomes, the more impersonal it becomes. You become siloed off," one employee explained.

Physical separation made it easier to blame others for problems rather than examining one's own contribution. "It's very easy to think it's always the other person's problem and actually we're doing things and behaving in a way that's contributing to that problem or we're in fact causing that problem," another employee reflected.

Communication Breaking Down

Without shared understanding of culture and expectations, communication suffered. One employee admitted: "I would listen to argue. I would listen to debate. I was so dead set on my work. Get my work done, do this, do that. I didn't understand, you know, what was going on, why people weren't understanding me."

Another described surface-level interactions: "I think I was just thinking that if I smiled and looked them in the eye then they'd think that everything was okay when actually really things weren't okay."

The breakdown extended to working relationships. "What I've done up until now has not made for a good working relationship. So how do I make it better? How do I improve it?" one employee questioned.

Losing What Made Them Special

The challenge was existential: how to continue growing while maintaining the core values that made Citrix successful initially. "We all want to feel good when we come to work. We want to feel good about our work. We want to feel good about the people we work with," one employee explained, but that feeling was eroding as the company scaled.

Because of their familiarity with "Leadership and Self-Deception," Citrix engaged Arbinger for workshops in 2012 to address these culture challenges. 

The initial Arbinger workshops in 2012 had tremendous impact on participants. The sessions demonstrated close correlation between Arbinger's approach and the work practices implied by Citrix's values.

Creating a Systematic Way to Scale Culture

As a result of this experience, Citrix asked Arbinger to develop a customized program using Arbinger's concepts to enable more effective implementation of core values across the company. Citrix saw in this approach a systematic way to scale their culture and ensure long-term business success.

The result was Citrix's "Values Driven Leadership (VDL)" program.

Articulating the Unarticulated

Marla Noble described the breakthrough: "In this training and implementation program, Arbinger articulated things that we ourselves were having a hard time articulating about our corporate culture. It has provided fuel for people who were struggling to understand what our culture actually is, tangibly bringing to life the expectations that we have of everyone."

"We've had lots of different training programs but the values driven leadership offers a completely different insight to individuals in terms of how they interact with people and how others interact with them," one employee explained.

Building Internal Capacity

The cornerstone of VDL is an initial workshop, followed by customized tools and programs that reinforce concepts and help participants implement them in day-to-day work.

An important element: a cadre of Citrix employees that Arbinger trained to deliver VDL to their fellow employees. This enabled scaling across 7,000+ employees while maintaining consistency.

Focus on Self-Awareness, Not Blaming Others

The program enabled employees to better understand themselves, their impact on others, and how they could be better. "This is effective because it's not about the other person in the end. It's about you changing," one employee noted.

The shift in perspective was dramatic. "You just see the light bulbs going off and people growing from that self-realization because the ideas make so much sense," Marla observed.

Employees began thinking differently: "It almost becomes second nature to start thinking in this way and to start thinking of well, you know, what does this person need or want and how can I help?"

Creating Common Language and Framework

VDL provided what had been missing: a common language and methodology. "The thing which has changed as a result of the training is that things that we did before which we thought were, 'Hey that's cool, that's a great idea, that worked.' We now...there's a methodology. There's a framework that tells us why it worked," one employee explained.

This common framework broke down silos and improved collaboration. "When people feel that they have a say in things, that you really are trying to understand from a very authentic place, seeing them as people and understanding what their objectives are, they really buy in to what you can do together."

The leadership program had significant impact on how employees understood themselves, communicated, collaborated, and delivered results.

Operational Efficiency Improvements

The improved collaboration produced measurable results. One team reported: "We've managed to reduce the amount of tickets that we've got open, that our engineers are working on from the customers, from 60 at any one time down to 30. So it's a 50% improvement in how much time we've freed up of our engineering staff to actually work on new features."

Another team described project success: "We came in early, no defects, under budget. I mean it was, it changed the rest of that project."

Financial Opportunities Discovered

In every training session, according to Marla, Citrix "discovered the potential for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in opportunities that we can gain by working in this way, and that's just with 20 people in the room. I almost feel like there's magic in the air—it's almost like pixie dust." 

Communication and Collaboration Transformed

Employees reported dramatic improvements in working relationships. "We can get things done better and faster and smarter if we understand each other. It actually is a great time saver, right? Because you know, we find we can cut through the crap so much more quickly because we are so much more self-aware and aware of each other."

The shift wasn't just professional: "Marla describes having emails with amazing stories from people who have gone through the program in which they describe what an important difference it is making in their lives inside and outside of work."

Sustained Cultural Clarity

Most importantly, Citrix could now articulate and scale their culture systematically. The VDL program provided the language and framework that had been missing, enabling consistent culture across geographic dispersion.

"This is as important as part of our strategy for achieving business outcomes as anything else that we have," leadership emphasized.

One employee summarized the transformation: "So definitely it's a much more effective way to manage. It's also a lot more fun."

Because of the impact and results, the program was "taking off like wildfire" within Citrix, enabling the company to maintain the culture that drove their initial success while continuing to scale globally.

Citrix proved that rapid growth doesn't have to fracture culture, but only if you can articulate what that culture actually means. When Citrix couldn't define their culture tangibly, new and existing employees experienced it inconsistently, geographic dispersion created silos, and communication broke down despite everyone's good intentions. By developing a systematic way to articulate and scale their culture through the Values Driven Leadership program, Citrix unlocked hundreds of thousands in opportunities, achieved 50% improvements in engineering efficiency, and maintained what made them special while growing to 7,000+ employees globally. The lesson: you can't scale what you can't articulate, and culture at scale requires common language and frameworks—not just good intentions.