December 7, 2022 • 23 mins
It takes a strong leader to be vulnerable and ask their teams, "can we do it this way?" and if it doesn't work, admit that it's okay. It takes an even stronger leader to speak with all new hires as they come on board, empowering and encouraging them to be reckless. Imagine starting a new job and having you leader tell you to use your first 90 days to try and do things your way, and to break and change things as you see opportunity, without fear of repercussion. That's the kind of leader that Shilpa Arora is, and DoorDash is benefitting from her leadership. As Shilpa states, "I think that's where a lot of the energy comes from, and that's where a lot of the will to do something different and think about something from a fresh perspective comes from, and it leads to better debates, better discussions, and better outcomes".
Shilpa Arora is the General Manager of DoorDash Canada, responsible for overseeing overall business strategy, operations and growth. With an international career spanning almost two decades and several industries, Shilpa has held leadership roles across financial advisory, mergers & acquisitions, corporate strategy and innovation as well as digital transformation. Before joining DoorDash, Shilpa led CIBC’s personal banking and client connectivity strategy and operations. Most recently, she was Senior Director of Transformation at CIBC, responsible for the bank’s digital enablement and business optimization initiatives. Shilpa is a trained architect, holds an MBA from Indian School of Business and is a certified business valuator (CBV). As a female leader in technology, Shilpa is an avid advocate for diversity and inclusion and
intersectional representation in the workplace and is passionate about mentoring emerging women leaders and mentors newcomers and early-career women.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Corby Fine (00:15):
So with me today is Shilpa Aurora, who is currently
the, the general manager ofDoorDash Canada.
I had the pleasure of workingwith Shilpa before, and you
know, in her current role, I'mquite impressed with what she's
doing, overseeing all businessstrategy operations and growth
for the Canadian division ofDoorDash.
I'm sure we've all on thispodcast used it.
(00:36):
I used it.
Covid changed my behavior.
I'm sure as, as well as many ofyou.
I.
An international careersurprisingly spending almost two
decades.
Across different industries andverticals.
Leadership roles in financialadvisory, mergers and
acquisitions, corporatestrategy.
I had the experience of workingwith her in innovation capacity
As she was heading up digitaltransformation as a senior
(00:58):
director a trained architect.
We're gonna have to dig intothat a little bit with an mba
and a certified businessevaluator.
So structure.
Value.
You can tell me what my healthis worth by actually looking at
the blueprints.
There's like a whole, there's awhole thing here.
A female leader in technology,Shilpa is an avid advocate for
diversity inclusion in, in herworkspace in the industry,
(01:20):
mentoring emerging leaders.
I've seen her presentedconferences.
You do not want to miss her.
Next one.
So we're gonna get a plugin forwhat that next next speech is,
Choppa.
Welcome to the podcast.
Shilpa Arora (01:31):
Thanks Corby.
So, so glad to be here andthanks for having me.
You said a lot of nice thingsthere, so thank you also for
those I do have about 18 yearsof work, so sometimes it's
surprising to me and that it'scoming up to two decades, but
like you pointed out, it's beena very different meandering path
that got me to where I'm attoday.
(01:52):
And so that.
Being a trained architect, thatincludes a c b, that includes
the mba.
And I think that's why the twodecades feel not like two
decades, cuz I always feel likeit's day one in my
Corby Fine (02:03):
Yeah, that's a, that's a good philosophy to go
on and, and.
Your career has led you to whereyou are today, which is at
DoorDash.
Maybe talk a little bit aboutwhat your role is within the
Canadian enterprise for DoorDashand for those that aren't as
familiar.
A little bit about DoorDash asit compares to maybe other
delivery organizations in thespace.
Shilpa Arora (02:23):
For sure.
So I think the way I define mycurrent role at DoorDash as the
general manager for the Canadianoperations is the in-house
janor.
My role is to connect pipes,keep them clean, make sure
everyone's unblocked in order todo what they do in the right way
and with speed and agility.
But more seriously, I think youknow, obviously my goal is the
(02:44):
entire p and l health.
Which means keep growing the topline efficiently while managing
the bottom line.
How we do this at DoorDash is westarted out as obviously a food
delivery business in Canada.
So we were operating in a bunchof markets delivering food from
your favorite restaurants toyou.
And charging you a fee for it.
(03:05):
Now we've grown the businessbeyond just restaurants.
We've, recently announcedpartnerships with grocery and
convenience stores.
Most recently with Loblaw.
We've got dollar amount on ourplatform.
We've got multiple otherconvenience providers on our
platform.
So it's it's way beyond sort ofthe what do you want for dinner
right now.
And today actually we announcedour partnership with Sephora.
(03:25):
So getting your beauty andindulgence needs as well.
Small plug there.
In addition to that, I thinkthe, the philosophy of why
Doordash exists in the firstplace and started in the US was
how do we solve problems withthe merchants?
It started with one store tryingto, you know, keep up with the
demand.
And these three or four aspirinssort of walked up and said, What
(03:46):
can we do with this problem?
How do we solve this?
And I think we've stayed true tothat philosophy, which is a big
differentiator for do ash acrossgeos and especially in Canada,
where we're like, okay, what?
What do our merchant partnersneed to grow the business and to
serve our collective?
So what?
What do we do there?
So we started this white labelproduct called Drive, where we
(04:07):
said, Okay, you don't wanna beon a platform or, or
marketplace, but you do need afleet to develop your e-com
business.
So how do we help you with that?
So there's a lot of deliveriestoday, like if you order
walmart.ca or if you order HomeDepot there's a pretty good
chance that there's a dasherdelivering that order.
Even though you don't see it onour app.
And then there's other thingslike storefront, et cetera,
(04:29):
where we're like, Okay, youdon't know anything about E-com,
Let us help you, let us buildthe interface for you.
Let us create the fleet for you,and then see where it goes.
Corby Fine (04:37):
Yeah.
Well first I'm gonna say as.
In our preamble of starting therecording, we're talking about
you put things out in theuniverse and they come true.
I actually always use the termjanitor as well, but more in the
context of you can call me thejanitor as long as you pay me
the salary that I want.
So more from a titling, but Icompletely understand as a
leader, your job is to.
(04:58):
Really remove roadblocks or asyou say, clean the pipes and
make sure that things canessentially get done.
So that's, that's very aligned.
And the Sephora I, I had noidea.
So congratulations on that.
I actually just saw a, a meme onInstagram and I think it was a
picture of a shocked man as hewas shopping for his wife at
Sephora.
And it was just a really kind ofcomical face that he was making
of like overwhelming crazinessof walking into a store where he
(05:21):
would have no idea aboutanything.
But now he.
Use you guys to deliver it.
So I think everybody wins.
Shilpa Arora (05:26):
Absolutely filter it with The product filters
browse to the experience.
And honestly, like, you know,we're, we're learning how to do
this and so I always say like,it's day zero.
It's always a beta product.
We're always trying to make itbetter.
So now that you know about it,Corby, go shop and
Corby Fine (05:45):
Well, you said make it better, and I.
That's really the new theme ofwhat I've been trying to do
since relaunching the podcast.
And so I actually think I'mgonna reverse order on how I
generally go with this, becausewhat you just described in the
evolution of DoorDash, thinkingabout a business that was
working no major problems.
I mean, you've got-competitivesets, you've got pricing,
(06:05):
challenges, et cetera, but sodoes every business.
But you still found a way toinnovate and expand and as you
talked.
taking a single functionbusiness platform to a more
white labeled enabled fleetcapability to a software
platform, to a multi-brand,multi-business, multi vertical
delivery capability.
When you think about that andmaybe think about other areas of
(06:25):
your career differentorganizations, different times,
how do you actually keep yourteam motivated to say, You know
what, even though things areactually going.
We still want to carve off time,effort, focus, and energy to
still iterate and try and findthings to make better.
How do you manage that?
Because often organizations arelike, Why would I invest in
something that's working?
(06:46):
I should go fix the stuff that'sbusted.
Shilpa Arora (06:49):
Yeah, great question.
I think like all of us, I pridemyself.
Being green on the goals, right?
It's the things are going well,I'm hitting the targets, like,
great, let's, let's go out.
But there's always this hungerto go dark green, and I've seen
that, more in places likeDoorDash than some of the other
more established industries ororganizations.
(07:12):
And that's really telling of alittle bit of the culture of how
things operate.
So how do you get dark green isonly when things are going.
Right.
This is exactly the time whenyou find those opportunities
because you aren't fighting awar.
You aren't scrambling to fixsomething or get the red to the
greens, and so on.
So I think, you know, if I lookback, my last two jobs,
including DoorDash, have beenvery local market based
(07:35):
businesses that were doing well.
And I pushed around to see ifthere's, you know, any
reorganization that we can do inour thinking, whether it's
around capabilities orfunctions, and see even better
results, right?
So for example, when I joinedDoorDash, there was this theme
around, We operate in this Xmarket.
Ontario is a great market tofocus on dance population, et
(07:56):
cetera.
Let's go win this one.
Let's go all the things thatwill help us go win Ontario.
And then we did meet the targetsthat we wanted to meet.
And then I was like, now if wekind of reorganize our thinking
instead of going and what's thenext market to go win?
Can we, can we look at it as,can we win one part of our
flywheel?
Every.
And reorganize our thinking thatway.
(08:18):
And I think that allows us tobecome more creative and, you
know, think about things like,does that mean now, if merchant
ops is that chosen function,does that now mean that I need
to go solve for a white labelfleet, or I need to go solve for
a better POS integrationproduct, or I need to go, you
know, do something else like, Idon't know, help them in hiring,
which we did over Covid or like.
(08:40):
Better plastic containers orsomething else.
Right?
And really take a functionallens that helps us innovate.
the other thing you know, it,it's very important you
mentioned this around motivatingthe teams and understanding how
people operate in thatenvironment.
The green environment, so tospeak.
I think it is to create thepsychological safety for teams,
right?
We look for pulse checks andsurveys and stuff for things
(09:02):
like that, but I think that thewill and hunger to go dark green
is a good indicator for me onhow psychologically safe the
teams feel.
In taking risks and bringingideas and being okay with
failure.
And I think the way I've donethat in the past is leading by
example and being vulnerable andsaying, Can we do it this way?
What happens?
And if it doesn't work, that'sokay.
(09:22):
Cause we were green, were fine.
And one of the things, wordsthat I use most frequently when
new hires come on board is I'dlove if you could be reckless
use your first 90 days to tryand do things and break things
and change things and do all ofthat.
And I think that's where a lotof the energy comes from.
And that's where a lot of thefrankly, you-know, the will to
(09:45):
do something different and thinkabout something from a fresh
perspective comes from and leadsto, better debates, better
discussions, and better.
Corby Fine (09:54):
So admittedly, not every organization.
Guts to allow their leaders totell every new employee on day
one.
I'd love you to be reckless.
I think I might have maybe donethat a few times and gotten my
hand slapped for it, but that'sanother conversation.
do you think that thatpsychological safety net that
(10:16):
you describe.
Is actually enough to really getpeople motivated to do that, to
be reckless, to challenge, tofind ways to innovate?
Or do you think you need to getdown to brass tacks and actually
start to play with compensationmodels and incentivization?
You know, can you do it withpsychological safety?
Can people really feel it or didthey need to feel it in their.
Shilpa Arora (10:40):
It does vary by role, right?
So if I go, I need to dosomething reckless, and I might
get slapped on the wrist too.
But but if I ask the sales teamsto go do something reckless,
their compensation structuretoday lends a conversation about
how am I gonna get compensatedfor it if.
(11:01):
Provide the safety for someonewho's in strategy or ops or, you
know, doing some grassrootoperating tactical in the
trenches work there, it isenough to provide the energy.
It is enough to provide the willto see the green turn, dog
green, which then in turn,raises everyone's rewards at the
(11:21):
end of the So it definitelyvaries, but I think in the work
that I've seen most closely,there's some frontline.
Capacity that you have to manageslightly differently, but the
psychological piece I think justpermeates to everybody.
Corby Fine (11:35):
I think culturally being in an environment that
somehow rewards, and it doesn'tnecessarily need to be monetary
compensation, but pat's on theback.
the Friday afternoon notes thatjust highlight the
accomplishments of the week andeven if the accomplishments were
learning the things that weshouldn't do again, that in and
of itself is an accomplishment.
And, and so then maybe flip backto the other question, which
(11:56):
normally I ask first, which is,you've walked into a bunch of
different industries inorganizations over 18 ish years.
There's obviously things thatwhen you either start or have
been there a while, youidentify.
Challenging, problematic, Maybenot as efficient as they could
be.
do you, when you look back,think about any of those
(12:16):
situations where you reallyidentified something that
wasn't, wasn't humming, wasn'taccording to you, at least as
good as it can be, a product, a,a process, something in the
structure, and how did youaddress getting the buy-in to
make that change and really getpeople to focus?
Shilpa Arora (12:32):
Yeah.
Another great question, Corby.
I like to believe that.
Usually brought in to sparkchange.
So that's kind of my jobdescription.
But I think of a coupleexamples.
That stand out?
I think the, the one is I'vespent a lot of time in internal
strategy teams, so whetherthat's COR strategy corp dev
some bd and then strategyliaison and, for example, at C I
(12:52):
B C transformation, so the thinkof that as a more internal
consultant.
Type role in a lot of places,and usually I noticed that when
we tended to get busy was wheneither the core day-to-day ops
teams didn't have the bandwidthto do something, or it was an
completely net new to the runrate situation where it was an
(13:14):
inorganic.
You know, partnership or mergeror acquisition or something, or
it was some sort of a, Hey, wedon't even know how to begin
here.
We don't know who the rightfulowner is, so like this team
needs to go run with it.
And I thought that that was agap, right?
Just structurally on what theteam of generalists that this
strategy team tends to be, wasutilized for, was a gap.
(13:37):
And so one of the things that Istarted to do at both C I B C
and Loblaw.
That, how do we get people onthis team start to get more
engaged with the operating team?
And so what that was, you know,when you participate in the
execution and operationalizingof your ideas along with the day
to day teams, that gives you agranular and trench level
(13:59):
empathy and appreciation for howthings work.
And that in turn, actually makesyou better at shaping the 10,000
and the 50,000 foot level bigpicture thinking.
So, you know, the appreciation.
The, you know, omnichannelstrategy or the, the call center
ops or the frontlinepartnerships on the personal
(14:20):
banking side lent itself to amore crisp direct banking
strategy when I got there.
so I think that's the kind ofthought process and structural
understanding that I was able tobring.
The other thing is visibility.
So, you know, this is an examplefrom my time at Loblaw when
There's a bunch of strategyteams across the different
(14:40):
business verticals andfunctional and shared services,
et cetera.
And from, from my c thatcorporate strategy, I worked
with every single one of them,but I started to notice gaps in
the appreciation for eachother's work in that group.
And so I created a forum.
Which was kind of like aroadshow of everybody.
You know, talk to each otherabout what you do.
(15:02):
Make your presence felt, makeyour work showcased, celebrate
the wins and share and learnfrom each others in terms of
best practices, whether it'speople, whether it's.
Projects or whatever it is, ortechnology.
And that becomes apparent whenorganizations gain scale and
it's important to create moreand bigger bridges across these
important teams.
And so I think those are the twothings that I've stayed
(15:24):
consistent with in managingeverywhere I went, because I
feel like, you know, there's,there's data that we can make
data driven decisions from, anddata always wins arguments as
they say.
But if there's likable.
Correlation of data that leadsto business collaboration and
less arguments and makes thecorporate strategy job easier.
(15:44):
And in my janitor role, likethat just makes the
Corby Fine (15:47):
It, it sounds so simple to conceive of engaging a
strategy team in the day to dayoperations team, cuz quite often
you, you do find, you go into acompany and it's like, Oh, we
have a Corp Strat team andthey're gonna build a deck and
tell you where we should go.
And they have no concept.
And it could be, you know,something as simple as everybody
in an organization, whateverrole, whatever level, whatever
(16:08):
capacity should.
a day or a week doing the in theshoes job, right?
Work in every customer touchpoint, take calls, work at your
retail branch or outlet,whatever that might be for your
business.
Get in a truck or a car, deliverfor you whatever the business
model is because until you'veactually understood the
interaction at the, at the lasttouch, I'm not really sure how
you can effectively recommendmassive change further up
(16:31):
funnel.
So it's a great point.
Shilpa Arora (16:33):
Yeah, I, I can't take credit for this one, but
DoorDash has this we dash.
Program which I've talked aboutbefore, is every employee is
respective of whatever team,whatever your title, you have to
go and deliver.
Like you have to dash multipletimes a year.
It's, it's like structural.
It's part of your comp reviewand so I feel that that's just
(16:54):
so simple and so important,right?
And I've said this before, We'rein the business of operations
and so we cannot be, cannot notbe in the operations
Corby Fine (17:03):
So what's the craziest thing you've ever had
to dash?
Shilpa Arora (17:05):
Not crazy in terms of the items that I've had to
bring, but there's been someexperiences of, you know,
dashing in a condo building andhaving to like literally jump
through stuff to get through adoor.
And in the winter, like people,not everybody shovels on time.
So it's a little bit of a, thisis risking my life to get you
your
Corby Fine (17:25):
So it gives you an appreciation for what really the
employee base is having to do ona day to day basis.
Shilpa Arora (17:32):
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent because I'msitting over there going like
this, the order should have beencompleted five minutes ago.
What's taking so long?
And when you actually do it,it's like, yeah, I was moving
snow outta my way,
Corby Fine (17:44):
the extra pickles that always does it.
You gotta wait for the extrapickles.
So you talked about Sephora.
We got a little bit ofbackground on the evolution of
the business to date.
Congrats on, on thatannouncement.
What's next?
Like, what can you share interms of where is.
Where is DoorDash going?
What's, you know, shareable froma roadmap to just get everybody
excited about what's coming.
Shilpa Arora (18:03):
For sure.
I mean, obviously you can't getinto a lot of the details, but
what I can say with a lot ofconfidence is that e-com is
undeniably here to stay.
We're, we're seeing that fromthe evolution coming out.
Of the pandemic.
I don't know.
We've both been sick or we hadsick kids for the last little
while.
So I don't know if this is toonormal, but we're obviously
different than we were you know,eight, 10 months ago in heavy
(18:28):
restrictions and lockdowns andso on.
So it's interesting to see thatthat demand, that the fit for
this product has stayed andconsumers are actually
believing.
And the convenience that webring to them and continue to
order more with us and continueto tell us what else they.
And so I think for, forindustries like ours, and
(18:50):
especially for DoorDash, it isall about how we offer and
continue to offer what theaudiences need from us, right?
It could mean more omnichanneloffers with consumers.
And one example is ourpartnership with Loblaw, where
we have rapid, we have same day,we have within hours.
So it's a little bit of how youwant to interact.
We have the ability to give youand what does that mean for
(19:12):
other categories, right?
Grocery inconvenience is one wayto look at it.
Now with Sephora, we'll havemore learnings, and then we're
also experimenting with othercategories to help us learn
more.
And then there's this same thingfor merchants and Dashs.
Who are our dashers,understanding those audiences
and then seeing how well weaddress their needs from us.
Same thing for merchants.
Like Drive is one example of,you know, a need based product
(19:34):
development that happened atDoorDash.
And we're working with otherinnovation pieces as well.
And it's similar thought as thewhat is the macro environment
telling us, and what is ouraudience telling us?
So obviously affordability is abig theme, right.
Getting folks back into theworkforce and having the kitchen
capacity raised for somemerchants is a big theme.
(19:55):
So how do you address thatsystematically versus a, you
know, hacky bandaid project is,is the stuff that we're looking
at.
And then honestly, likeinnovation, never.
For the industry either, right?
If you go back and look at threeyears ago to where we're at now
we like to call the pandemic ourChief Transformation Officer,
but But there was a lot of, lotof transformation happening
(20:16):
anyway, right?
I talked about rapid delivery,but we actually also launched
drone delivery.
So the first drone delivery wasmade in Australia within 15
minutes.
And it's actually a, a funvideo.
It's, it's all about deliveringregimen and butter forrey.
Really fun, fun to see how thatoperationalized.
We're doing cross countrydeliveries.
(20:37):
So if there's something that'sfamous about Chicago, you get
that in California throughDoorDash.
We did a food truck partnershiptrying to help our merchant
decide where to open their nextlocation.
We're doing ghost kitchens.
But truly this is, this is atthe beginning and I honestly
feel that as we, you know,address the macro trends of
trying to become a more.
(20:57):
Business as an industry, franklythere's definitely hunger to
keep innovating, so you'll
Corby Fine (21:03):
I think back to a conference, probably three or
four.
Right before the pandemic and Ihad an opportunity to see the
CMO for I believe is the largestpizza chain in the world out of
the US without naming names.
And one of the things that hewas presenting.
They had innovated the deliverycapability to the point where it
didn't have to have a physicaladdress.
You could literally mark mewhere I am right now to get my
(21:25):
pizza example.
You're with your friends, you'rehanging out playing football on
the beach.
There's no discernible address,but I want my pizza.
Not a problem.
We can find you.
So I'm gonna challenge you.
I want a drone to follow me withsome Vegemite, and a sandwich
for breakfast, and we're gonnarun around the city of my car
and see if that drone can findme.
But I mean, you can justobviously think of all kinds of
possibilities.
(21:45):
So, Thank you for sharing.
And it's really it's, it's aninteresting roadmap and you
know, I think as the in-housejanitor for DoorDash I look
forward to seeing how you helpthe organization innovate and
succeed on those things.
So thanks for sharing that.
and you know, with that greatlearnings, Putting people in the
shoes of all of the differentcustomer touchpoints, you know,
trying to create a psychologicalsafety ecosystem to really get
(22:07):
people to innovate and, andbreak things, be reckless uh, so
happy you've landed in anorganization that actually
rewards and, and facilitatesthat kind of thought leadership.
And, and so congratulations onthat.
And again Shilpa Aurora janitorfor DoorDash Canada.
Thank you so much for spendingsome time with me.
Shilpa Arora (22:24):
Thanks so much for having me, Corby.
So with me today is Shilpa Aurora, who is currently
the, the general manager ofDoorDash Canada.
I had the pleasure of workingwith Shilpa before, and you
know, in her current role, I'mquite impressed with what she's
doing, overseeing all businessstrategy operations and growth
for the Canadian division ofDoorDash.
I'm sure we've all on thispodcast used it.
(00:36):
I used it.
Covid changed my behavior.
I'm sure as, as well as many ofyou.
I.
An international careersurprisingly spending almost two
decades.
Across different industries andverticals.
Leadership roles in financialadvisory, mergers and
acquisitions, corporatestrategy.
I had the experience of workingwith her in innovation capacity
As she was heading up digitaltransformation as a senior
(00:58):
director a trained architect.
We're gonna have to dig intothat a little bit with an mba
and a certified businessevaluator.
So structure.
Value.
You can tell me what my healthis worth by actually looking at
the blueprints.
There's like a whole, there's awhole thing here.
A female leader in technology,Shilpa is an avid advocate for
diversity inclusion in, in herworkspace in the industry,
(01:20):
mentoring emerging leaders.
I've seen her presentedconferences.
You do not want to miss her.
Next one.
So we're gonna get a plugin forwhat that next next speech is,
Choppa.
Welcome to the podcast.
Shilpa Arora (01:31):
Thanks Corby.
So, so glad to be here andthanks for having me.
You said a lot of nice thingsthere, so thank you also for
those I do have about 18 yearsof work, so sometimes it's
surprising to me and that it'scoming up to two decades, but
like you pointed out, it's beena very different meandering path
that got me to where I'm attoday.
(01:52):
And so that.
Being a trained architect, thatincludes a c b, that includes
the mba.
And I think that's why the twodecades feel not like two
decades, cuz I always feel likeit's day one in my
Corby Fine (02:03):
Yeah, that's a, that's a good philosophy to go
on and, and.
Your career has led you to whereyou are today, which is at
DoorDash.
Maybe talk a little bit aboutwhat your role is within the
Canadian enterprise for DoorDashand for those that aren't as
familiar.
A little bit about DoorDash asit compares to maybe other
delivery organizations in thespace.
Shilpa Arora (02:23):
For sure.
So I think the way I define mycurrent role at DoorDash as the
general manager for the Canadianoperations is the in-house
janor.
My role is to connect pipes,keep them clean, make sure
everyone's unblocked in order todo what they do in the right way
and with speed and agility.
But more seriously, I think youknow, obviously my goal is the
(02:44):
entire p and l health.
Which means keep growing the topline efficiently while managing
the bottom line.
How we do this at DoorDash is westarted out as obviously a food
delivery business in Canada.
So we were operating in a bunchof markets delivering food from
your favorite restaurants toyou.
And charging you a fee for it.
(03:05):
Now we've grown the businessbeyond just restaurants.
We've, recently announcedpartnerships with grocery and
convenience stores.
Most recently with Loblaw.
We've got dollar amount on ourplatform.
We've got multiple otherconvenience providers on our
platform.
So it's it's way beyond sort ofthe what do you want for dinner
right now.
And today actually we announcedour partnership with Sephora.
(03:25):
So getting your beauty andindulgence needs as well.
Small plug there.
In addition to that, I thinkthe, the philosophy of why
Doordash exists in the firstplace and started in the US was
how do we solve problems withthe merchants?
It started with one store tryingto, you know, keep up with the
demand.
And these three or four aspirinssort of walked up and said, What
(03:46):
can we do with this problem?
How do we solve this?
And I think we've stayed true tothat philosophy, which is a big
differentiator for do ash acrossgeos and especially in Canada,
where we're like, okay, what?
What do our merchant partnersneed to grow the business and to
serve our collective?
So what?
What do we do there?
So we started this white labelproduct called Drive, where we
(04:07):
said, Okay, you don't wanna beon a platform or, or
marketplace, but you do need afleet to develop your e-com
business.
So how do we help you with that?
So there's a lot of deliveriestoday, like if you order
walmart.ca or if you order HomeDepot there's a pretty good
chance that there's a dasherdelivering that order.
Even though you don't see it onour app.
And then there's other thingslike storefront, et cetera,
(04:29):
where we're like, Okay, youdon't know anything about E-com,
Let us help you, let us buildthe interface for you.
Let us create the fleet for you,and then see where it goes.
Corby Fine (04:37):
Yeah.
Well first I'm gonna say as.
In our preamble of starting therecording, we're talking about
you put things out in theuniverse and they come true.
I actually always use the termjanitor as well, but more in the
context of you can call me thejanitor as long as you pay me
the salary that I want.
So more from a titling, but Icompletely understand as a
leader, your job is to.
(04:58):
Really remove roadblocks or asyou say, clean the pipes and
make sure that things canessentially get done.
So that's, that's very aligned.
And the Sephora I, I had noidea.
So congratulations on that.
I actually just saw a, a meme onInstagram and I think it was a
picture of a shocked man as hewas shopping for his wife at
Sephora.
And it was just a really kind ofcomical face that he was making
of like overwhelming crazinessof walking into a store where he
(05:21):
would have no idea aboutanything.
But now he.
Use you guys to deliver it.
So I think everybody wins.
Shilpa Arora (05:26):
Absolutely filter it with The product filters
browse to the experience.
And honestly, like, you know,we're, we're learning how to do
this and so I always say like,it's day zero.
It's always a beta product.
We're always trying to make itbetter.
So now that you know about it,Corby, go shop and
Corby Fine (05:45):
Well, you said make it better, and I.
That's really the new theme ofwhat I've been trying to do
since relaunching the podcast.
And so I actually think I'mgonna reverse order on how I
generally go with this, becausewhat you just described in the
evolution of DoorDash, thinkingabout a business that was
working no major problems.
I mean, you've got-competitivesets, you've got pricing,
(06:05):
challenges, et cetera, but sodoes every business.
But you still found a way toinnovate and expand and as you
talked.
taking a single functionbusiness platform to a more
white labeled enabled fleetcapability to a software
platform, to a multi-brand,multi-business, multi vertical
delivery capability.
When you think about that andmaybe think about other areas of
(06:25):
your career differentorganizations, different times,
how do you actually keep yourteam motivated to say, You know
what, even though things areactually going.
We still want to carve off time,effort, focus, and energy to
still iterate and try and findthings to make better.
How do you manage that?
Because often organizations arelike, Why would I invest in
something that's working?
(06:46):
I should go fix the stuff that'sbusted.
Shilpa Arora (06:49):
Yeah, great question.
I think like all of us, I pridemyself.
Being green on the goals, right?
It's the things are going well,I'm hitting the targets, like,
great, let's, let's go out.
But there's always this hungerto go dark green, and I've seen
that, more in places likeDoorDash than some of the other
more established industries ororganizations.
(07:12):
And that's really telling of alittle bit of the culture of how
things operate.
So how do you get dark green isonly when things are going.
Right.
This is exactly the time whenyou find those opportunities
because you aren't fighting awar.
You aren't scrambling to fixsomething or get the red to the
greens, and so on.
So I think, you know, if I lookback, my last two jobs,
including DoorDash, have beenvery local market based
(07:35):
businesses that were doing well.
And I pushed around to see ifthere's, you know, any
reorganization that we can do inour thinking, whether it's
around capabilities orfunctions, and see even better
results, right?
So for example, when I joinedDoorDash, there was this theme
around, We operate in this Xmarket.
Ontario is a great market tofocus on dance population, et
(07:56):
cetera.
Let's go win this one.
Let's go all the things thatwill help us go win Ontario.
And then we did meet the targetsthat we wanted to meet.
And then I was like, now if wekind of reorganize our thinking
instead of going and what's thenext market to go win?
Can we, can we look at it as,can we win one part of our
flywheel?
Every.
And reorganize our thinking thatway.
(08:18):
And I think that allows us tobecome more creative and, you
know, think about things like,does that mean now, if merchant
ops is that chosen function,does that now mean that I need
to go solve for a white labelfleet, or I need to go solve for
a better POS integrationproduct, or I need to go, you
know, do something else like, Idon't know, help them in hiring,
which we did over Covid or like.
(08:40):
Better plastic containers orsomething else.
Right?
And really take a functionallens that helps us innovate.
the other thing you know, it,it's very important you
mentioned this around motivatingthe teams and understanding how
people operate in thatenvironment.
The green environment, so tospeak.
I think it is to create thepsychological safety for teams,
right?
We look for pulse checks andsurveys and stuff for things
(09:02):
like that, but I think that thewill and hunger to go dark green
is a good indicator for me onhow psychologically safe the
teams feel.
In taking risks and bringingideas and being okay with
failure.
And I think the way I've donethat in the past is leading by
example and being vulnerable andsaying, Can we do it this way?
What happens?
And if it doesn't work, that'sokay.
(09:22):
Cause we were green, were fine.
And one of the things, wordsthat I use most frequently when
new hires come on board is I'dlove if you could be reckless
use your first 90 days to tryand do things and break things
and change things and do all ofthat.
And I think that's where a lotof the energy comes from.
And that's where a lot of thefrankly, you-know, the will to
(09:45):
do something different and thinkabout something from a fresh
perspective comes from and leadsto, better debates, better
discussions, and better.
Corby Fine (09:54):
So admittedly, not every organization.
Guts to allow their leaders totell every new employee on day
one.
I'd love you to be reckless.
I think I might have maybe donethat a few times and gotten my
hand slapped for it, but that'sanother conversation.
do you think that thatpsychological safety net that
(10:16):
you describe.
Is actually enough to really getpeople motivated to do that, to
be reckless, to challenge, tofind ways to innovate?
Or do you think you need to getdown to brass tacks and actually
start to play with compensationmodels and incentivization?
You know, can you do it withpsychological safety?
Can people really feel it or didthey need to feel it in their.
Shilpa Arora (10:40):
It does vary by role, right?
So if I go, I need to dosomething reckless, and I might
get slapped on the wrist too.
But but if I ask the sales teamsto go do something reckless,
their compensation structuretoday lends a conversation about
how am I gonna get compensatedfor it if.
(11:01):
Provide the safety for someonewho's in strategy or ops or, you
know, doing some grassrootoperating tactical in the
trenches work there, it isenough to provide the energy.
It is enough to provide the willto see the green turn, dog
green, which then in turn,raises everyone's rewards at the
(11:21):
end of the So it definitelyvaries, but I think in the work
that I've seen most closely,there's some frontline.
Capacity that you have to manageslightly differently, but the
psychological piece I think justpermeates to everybody.
Corby Fine (11:35):
I think culturally being in an environment that
somehow rewards, and it doesn'tnecessarily need to be monetary
compensation, but pat's on theback.
the Friday afternoon notes thatjust highlight the
accomplishments of the week andeven if the accomplishments were
learning the things that weshouldn't do again, that in and
of itself is an accomplishment.
And, and so then maybe flip backto the other question, which
(11:56):
normally I ask first, which is,you've walked into a bunch of
different industries inorganizations over 18 ish years.
There's obviously things thatwhen you either start or have
been there a while, youidentify.
Challenging, problematic, Maybenot as efficient as they could
be.
do you, when you look back,think about any of those
(12:16):
situations where you reallyidentified something that
wasn't, wasn't humming, wasn'taccording to you, at least as
good as it can be, a product, a,a process, something in the
structure, and how did youaddress getting the buy-in to
make that change and really getpeople to focus?
Shilpa Arora (12:32):
Yeah.
Another great question, Corby.
I like to believe that.
Usually brought in to sparkchange.
So that's kind of my jobdescription.
But I think of a coupleexamples.
That stand out?
I think the, the one is I'vespent a lot of time in internal
strategy teams, so whetherthat's COR strategy corp dev
some bd and then strategyliaison and, for example, at C I
(12:52):
B C transformation, so the thinkof that as a more internal
consultant.
Type role in a lot of places,and usually I noticed that when
we tended to get busy was wheneither the core day-to-day ops
teams didn't have the bandwidthto do something, or it was an
completely net new to the runrate situation where it was an
(13:14):
inorganic.
You know, partnership or mergeror acquisition or something, or
it was some sort of a, Hey, wedon't even know how to begin
here.
We don't know who the rightfulowner is, so like this team
needs to go run with it.
And I thought that that was agap, right?
Just structurally on what theteam of generalists that this
strategy team tends to be, wasutilized for, was a gap.
(13:37):
And so one of the things that Istarted to do at both C I B C
and Loblaw.
That, how do we get people onthis team start to get more
engaged with the operating team?
And so what that was, you know,when you participate in the
execution and operationalizingof your ideas along with the day
to day teams, that gives you agranular and trench level
(13:59):
empathy and appreciation for howthings work.
And that in turn, actually makesyou better at shaping the 10,000
and the 50,000 foot level bigpicture thinking.
So, you know, the appreciation.
The, you know, omnichannelstrategy or the, the call center
ops or the frontlinepartnerships on the personal
(14:20):
banking side lent itself to amore crisp direct banking
strategy when I got there.
so I think that's the kind ofthought process and structural
understanding that I was able tobring.
The other thing is visibility.
So, you know, this is an examplefrom my time at Loblaw when
There's a bunch of strategyteams across the different
(14:40):
business verticals andfunctional and shared services,
et cetera.
And from, from my c thatcorporate strategy, I worked
with every single one of them,but I started to notice gaps in
the appreciation for eachother's work in that group.
And so I created a forum.
Which was kind of like aroadshow of everybody.
You know, talk to each otherabout what you do.
(15:02):
Make your presence felt, makeyour work showcased, celebrate
the wins and share and learnfrom each others in terms of
best practices, whether it'speople, whether it's.
Projects or whatever it is, ortechnology.
And that becomes apparent whenorganizations gain scale and
it's important to create moreand bigger bridges across these
important teams.
And so I think those are the twothings that I've stayed
(15:24):
consistent with in managingeverywhere I went, because I
feel like, you know, there's,there's data that we can make
data driven decisions from, anddata always wins arguments as
they say.
But if there's likable.
Correlation of data that leadsto business collaboration and
less arguments and makes thecorporate strategy job easier.
(15:44):
And in my janitor role, likethat just makes the
Corby Fine (15:47):
It, it sounds so simple to conceive of engaging a
strategy team in the day to dayoperations team, cuz quite often
you, you do find, you go into acompany and it's like, Oh, we
have a Corp Strat team andthey're gonna build a deck and
tell you where we should go.
And they have no concept.
And it could be, you know,something as simple as everybody
in an organization, whateverrole, whatever level, whatever
(16:08):
capacity should.
a day or a week doing the in theshoes job, right?
Work in every customer touchpoint, take calls, work at your
retail branch or outlet,whatever that might be for your
business.
Get in a truck or a car, deliverfor you whatever the business
model is because until you'veactually understood the
interaction at the, at the lasttouch, I'm not really sure how
you can effectively recommendmassive change further up
(16:31):
funnel.
So it's a great point.
Shilpa Arora (16:33):
Yeah, I, I can't take credit for this one, but
DoorDash has this we dash.
Program which I've talked aboutbefore, is every employee is
respective of whatever team,whatever your title, you have to
go and deliver.
Like you have to dash multipletimes a year.
It's, it's like structural.
It's part of your comp reviewand so I feel that that's just
(16:54):
so simple and so important,right?
And I've said this before, We'rein the business of operations
and so we cannot be, cannot notbe in the operations
Corby Fine (17:03):
So what's the craziest thing you've ever had
to dash?
Shilpa Arora (17:05):
Not crazy in terms of the items that I've had to
bring, but there's been someexperiences of, you know,
dashing in a condo building andhaving to like literally jump
through stuff to get through adoor.
And in the winter, like people,not everybody shovels on time.
So it's a little bit of a, thisis risking my life to get you
your
Corby Fine (17:25):
So it gives you an appreciation for what really the
employee base is having to do ona day to day basis.
Shilpa Arora (17:32):
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent because I'msitting over there going like
this, the order should have beencompleted five minutes ago.
What's taking so long?
And when you actually do it,it's like, yeah, I was moving
snow outta my way,
Corby Fine (17:44):
the extra pickles that always does it.
You gotta wait for the extrapickles.
So you talked about Sephora.
We got a little bit ofbackground on the evolution of
the business to date.
Congrats on, on thatannouncement.
What's next?
Like, what can you share interms of where is.
Where is DoorDash going?
What's, you know, shareable froma roadmap to just get everybody
excited about what's coming.
Shilpa Arora (18:03):
For sure.
I mean, obviously you can't getinto a lot of the details, but
what I can say with a lot ofconfidence is that e-com is
undeniably here to stay.
We're, we're seeing that fromthe evolution coming out.
Of the pandemic.
I don't know.
We've both been sick or we hadsick kids for the last little
while.
So I don't know if this is toonormal, but we're obviously
different than we were you know,eight, 10 months ago in heavy
(18:28):
restrictions and lockdowns andso on.
So it's interesting to see thatthat demand, that the fit for
this product has stayed andconsumers are actually
believing.
And the convenience that webring to them and continue to
order more with us and continueto tell us what else they.
And so I think for, forindustries like ours, and
(18:50):
especially for DoorDash, it isall about how we offer and
continue to offer what theaudiences need from us, right?
It could mean more omnichanneloffers with consumers.
And one example is ourpartnership with Loblaw, where
we have rapid, we have same day,we have within hours.
So it's a little bit of how youwant to interact.
We have the ability to give youand what does that mean for
(19:12):
other categories, right?
Grocery inconvenience is one wayto look at it.
Now with Sephora, we'll havemore learnings, and then we're
also experimenting with othercategories to help us learn
more.
And then there's this same thingfor merchants and Dashs.
Who are our dashers,understanding those audiences
and then seeing how well weaddress their needs from us.
Same thing for merchants.
Like Drive is one example of,you know, a need based product
(19:34):
development that happened atDoorDash.
And we're working with otherinnovation pieces as well.
And it's similar thought as thewhat is the macro environment
telling us, and what is ouraudience telling us?
So obviously affordability is abig theme, right.
Getting folks back into theworkforce and having the kitchen
capacity raised for somemerchants is a big theme.
(19:55):
So how do you address thatsystematically versus a, you
know, hacky bandaid project is,is the stuff that we're looking
at.
And then honestly, likeinnovation, never.
For the industry either, right?
If you go back and look at threeyears ago to where we're at now
we like to call the pandemic ourChief Transformation Officer,
but But there was a lot of, lotof transformation happening
(20:16):
anyway, right?
I talked about rapid delivery,but we actually also launched
drone delivery.
So the first drone delivery wasmade in Australia within 15
minutes.
And it's actually a, a funvideo.
It's, it's all about deliveringregimen and butter forrey.
Really fun, fun to see how thatoperationalized.
We're doing cross countrydeliveries.
(20:37):
So if there's something that'sfamous about Chicago, you get
that in California throughDoorDash.
We did a food truck partnershiptrying to help our merchant
decide where to open their nextlocation.
We're doing ghost kitchens.
But truly this is, this is atthe beginning and I honestly
feel that as we, you know,address the macro trends of
trying to become a more.
(20:57):
Business as an industry, franklythere's definitely hunger to
keep innovating, so you'll
Corby Fine (21:03):
I think back to a conference, probably three or
four.
Right before the pandemic and Ihad an opportunity to see the
CMO for I believe is the largestpizza chain in the world out of
the US without naming names.
And one of the things that hewas presenting.
They had innovated the deliverycapability to the point where it
didn't have to have a physicaladdress.
You could literally mark mewhere I am right now to get my
(21:25):
pizza example.
You're with your friends, you'rehanging out playing football on
the beach.
There's no discernible address,but I want my pizza.
Not a problem.
We can find you.
So I'm gonna challenge you.
I want a drone to follow me withsome Vegemite, and a sandwich
for breakfast, and we're gonnarun around the city of my car
and see if that drone can findme.
But I mean, you can justobviously think of all kinds of
possibilities.
(21:45):
So, Thank you for sharing.
And it's really it's, it's aninteresting roadmap and you
know, I think as the in-housejanitor for DoorDash I look
forward to seeing how you helpthe organization innovate and
succeed on those things.
So thanks for sharing that.
and you know, with that greatlearnings, Putting people in the
shoes of all of the differentcustomer touchpoints, you know,
trying to create a psychologicalsafety ecosystem to really get
(22:07):
people to innovate and, andbreak things, be reckless uh, so
happy you've landed in anorganization that actually
rewards and, and facilitatesthat kind of thought leadership.
And, and so congratulations onthat.
And again Shilpa Aurora janitorfor DoorDash Canada.
Thank you so much for spendingsome time with me.
Shilpa Arora (22:24):
Thanks so much for having me, Corby.
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