← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
S2E62 | Is HR Really Just Compliance and Recruiting or Is There More on the Table? with Joe Rosenbaum
00:55:30
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- [00:00]
A
Companies and organizational leaders make state of the company meetings far too difficult and complex. Like they get too much in their head about it. Just give the information, put yourself in the seat of the employees. And what do they want to hear? How's the company doing? Are they financially stable? Am I going to have a job? And what cool stuff's coming down the road? That's what employees want to hear.
- [00:29]
B
Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. I'm your host, Ryan Hogan. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and challenges of the system in action. Let's jump in. Well, Joe, this is going to be a lot of fun. Number one, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and looking at your background, there's this common theme and it revolves around people. Is that the case?
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A
Yeah. First off, Ryan, thanks for having me today. And you're right. You know, my background has really been in human resources from the time I was in college, you know, right up to, you know, the last year. So I would say that's never really stopped and it's probably going to continue throughout my career as an EOS implementer.
- [01:18]
B
And what was interesting is we're not just talking about like, you know, an HR manager or like we're talking all the way up to the C suite levels of, of human resources and, and managing human energy, which I know we'll get into in a bit with, with eos. Was this something like growing up that you were like, hey, I love this side of the business, I love the people side, or like, where, where did this come from?
- [01:44]
A
Yeah, that's a great question. And I love it because it actually is a great demonstration of how I've kind of changed as a person over time. You know, when I was younger, as a child, high school through college, I was incredibly extroverted and I would say even a little, you know, just uninhibited in the way I communicated. I didn't think too much. I was very open, comedic, even making people laugh. I remember situations in classes where I was laughing so hard I'd fall out of my chair. But as I, you know, grew into my career, you know, I grew up in the Midwest, farm, you know, there were 90 people in my graduating class for high school, from high school. Wow. And my goal was always to get to New York based on all Those kind of 80s New York based movies. And once I finally got here, my goal was fashion. I was always into clothes and accessories and retail. And I started on the kind of merchandising side, and then I got pulled into HR on a fluke as an intern because the company I was working for said, hey, our human resources assistant quit at the last minute. Do you want to work in HR this summer? And I was like, oh, sure. I get to hang out with the executives and everything. You know, like, that's awesome. Office job. And I'm the kind of person that once I get into something, I just kind of stick with it. And that's how I got into hr. It was never really the plan. It organically presented itself, and it stuck. And the company liked me in the role. So when I graduated from college, they were. They actually tried to get me to quit college early to come to work for them because they were growing so quickly, which, thankfully, I declined to do. So, yeah, that's kind of how I was as a younger guy. But once I got into hr, I evolved. Because you can't quite be your full self in a human resources position. You have to learn how to filter and to work with people in a way that meeting them where they are, but also maintaining a level of appropriateness and I would say restraint, because you do not want to kind of cross the line about what someone will accept or what they're actually into. So over time, I think I probably turned a little bit inward as an individual so I could be a better human resources leader.
- [04:06]
B
I love it. And when you were. When you were making that transition to a graduating class of 90. Like, I think my graduating class was, like, 400, and that was still small based upon where I was at. And so, like, 90. You. This is a. This is a small town. Also. You and I share. Like, I grew up in, like, Top Gun and some of these other movies, and so I wanted to be a pilot my whole life. And so the way that this stuff influenced us is ironic. When you move to the Big Apple, like, was this a. Was it everything that you anticipated? Was everything moving too fast? Like, what was that like, going from a small town to, like, here we go, New York.
- [04:45]
A
It was a meandering, you know, kind of trip journey to get here. You know, when I graduated from college, I moved to Chicago. Then very quickly, my company relocated me to Raleigh. No, to the D.C. market. I lived in Arlington, Virginia. And then a year later, they moved me to Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, and. And a year later, they moved me to Columbus, Ohio. And then six months after that, they moved me to the east coast, which is when I got into New York. Obviously, an incredibly you know, I've been kind of primed, you know, because I'd lived in cities, not quite New York, I've been here before. But it was a radically different experience and one that I loved. You know, I loved the experience of getting up in the morning, going into the city, on the train. You know, my first role in the city was a two hour commute each way on New Jersey transit, but I didn't mind it at all. And that was about the time that the ipod came out the first time. So, you know, I'm a big music guy, as you can see, with the vinyl over my shoulder. So it was a great time to listen to music. And so being in New York, you know, was everything I ever hoped it would be professionally from a cultural point of view. Excitement, you know, the buzz, you know, it was everything I wanted.
- [06:01]
B
That's awesome. And when you think about kind of your, your growth and your career trajectory, you know, the time that or the enormous amount of time that you had spent in hr, when you, when you think about hr, there's like different perspectives and there's a perspective of like the company where, where sometimes the company is like HR is, is like our, our protector. HR is the person that ultimately protects the company. The perception of the team is generally like HR is the place that I go to get support, to get resources, to get help. When you think through and that's at some points that can be two different things of protecting the company, but also providing that support. What role do you see HR and what's kind of your philosophy around HR in business?
- [06:57]
A
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, and if you don't mind, I'll kind of share a little bit of the evolution of my career as a human resources leader. So I started in retail stores, department stores, where I would say that kind of at that lower level, you know, where everything's coming from corporate, everything's planned for you, you're just executing that. It's a lot easier to be an advocate for the employees purely because you need to retain people. So you want them to come into a good environment and you want to protect them so you're a little less involved in the business. But what I have experienced is the more experienced you become, the more demanding the role comes, the more senior you become, your perspective starts to change. And I don't think that every human resources manager has this experience. But as I grew, I'm a business grad, so I was interested in the business. I reported the chief financial officer, which for anyone listening, coming into their career. If you're going to hr, try to report into finance because that's how you get the money. It's the best way to, you know, to kind of run your business. But the more senior you become, the more difficult it becomes to balance the, the needs of the employees and to advocate for them and the business. And you know, to some degrees it became very, very traumatic, you know, when you're trying to balance that out. So, you know, that's how I would characterize that.
- [08:26]
B
Got it. And when you think through, I'm sure you've dealt with a ton of human issues and if you were to put kind of HR into different buckets and some of the things that I've seen in your background as far as like improving employee engagement and things like that and productivity, what are some of those buckets or some of those focus areas that you think through? And then how do you, how do you balance all of that?
- [08:55]
A
Well, you know, HR is always thought of kind of in that old school. I mean, even today when you've gone through, you know, kind of the way that the tech sector affected HR and how you treated employees with on site dry cleaning and food and kombucha and what have you, you know, things have really evolved. But, and at the heart of it, the CEO, your leaders still, I shouldn't say every CEO, but I'd say it's probably a good 50, 50 split. Just speaking from my gut view, HR as compliance and risk management, benefits and recruitment, you know, and that's kind of where it ends. You know, hire the right people, you know, but they didn't necessarily see you as quite the business partner that you and the value you could bring in that capacity. You know, today, you know, you know, I'm an EOS sentimentary now, but I still work with clients in the human resources capacity as well too. And I think it'd be very, it's very difficult to be an in house human resources person. Simply going back to that, to the experience of trying to walk both sides of the fence. Companies tend to, you know, it's a very challenging investment, especially in the small and medium sector. I think at the enterprise level it's a little bit different because you have more cash and assets available to invest in training and development. But it takes a lot more work to make the case for leadership development, management development, skills development for a multitude of reasons like they're just going to learn from us and take it someplace else or we don't have time to do that. But the toughest part and this is a recurring theme in our conversation for the 10 minutes we've been speaking is kind of walking that line between advocating for the employee and creating value for them, because that creates a stickiness that they won't leave the organization. That's kind of like being in a fly trap in the most positive way. And you create that value through training and development and engagement and listening to them and letting them, asking them how to solve a problem instead of solving their problem for them. As I've gotten to this point in my career in house, hr, I think, is a challenge. And I think there may be opportunities to start really outsourcing certain pieces of HR to independent agencies outside of the company to make it probably more effective financially and operationally to manage the operational side of human resources along with side by side with the kind of employee advocacy and fairness and environmental creation and even leadership development.
- [11:48]
B
I love that. When you think through them. We were talking a little bit about buckets earlier. When you think through the outsourcing of hr, which components do you think are kind of ripe for outsourcing and what should a company forever hold on to? Because it's some of those critical, critical things.
- [12:08]
A
Right off outsourcing, I think it's employee relations and conflict resolution. Because employees. You'd mentioned very early on that employees come to HR for help, and they do. But I've also had the experience, you know, in different organizations, I think they had the employees go on glassdoor to say bad things about me, you know, thinking that I was not an advocate for them. So right off, I think outsourcing, you know, employee relations, conflict resolution, any sort of internal investigation, which is not your investigations about any, you know, impropriety, sometimes you bring in outside resources anyway. But I can see employee relations being a lot more effective if you have a third party to go to instead of someone inside the company. Because as business evolves, more and more employees become a lot more sophisticated and aware of labor law and things like that. So I don't think that that trust of hr, no matter how hard the HR person tries or the HR team tries, I think there's a little bit of skepticism and doubt amongst the employee population about how much they can actually trust them.
- [13:18]
B
That's super interesting. And when you think about, like the resource allocation for this, and you talked about, you reported to the cfo, I love that. And then your plea to all HR managers is try to PL in there because then you can, you can get access to funds and, and the resources that you need to be able to Accomplish, accomplish these things. Like, I've heard different types of, of arguments. It's like, you know, you go up and it's like, hey, we need to invest in training. And it's like, but what if they leave in six months? And then the HR manager says, but what if they don't? Or, you know, what if they stay for two years? Don't we want them trained up? You know, what are if, if there's HR leaders out there that are dealing with limited resources and things like that, what are some different proof points or data or positions that they can take to really fight for the funds and the resources they need?
- [14:15]
A
First and foremost, this is such an amazing question. And if I could go back one second, My first couple of top HR roles, I reported in finance and then I reported directly to CEOs after that. But still reporting into finance and getting that exposure, like, no offense to the finance people out there, but like, it is a wealth of information and data about what's going on in the company because they tend to know the most. But when it comes to kind of justifying the investment in training or development, look backwards. You know, look over the past 12 months or 24 months and look at the, you know what I would say? High contributor, high value employees who have left and look at the reasons why they actually did leave. Was it lack of growth opportunity or refusal to let them grow for some reason? You know, whether it was an interpersonal issue or a, you know, personality conflict, did they ask for training and development that we never delivered? Whether it was internal or even giving them a budget to go outside to take some sort of class, that's the number one thing I would do. Look at those people that were really painful to lose. And if you had provided that leadership development training, would they still be there? And a lot of times I think the answer is yes. The second thing is thinking about cultural sense of belonging and how people work together. If you have an organization where it's just tense, you walk in the door and you can feel that tension. And I think everyone's been in that type of role or for that kind of organization at some point, you know, that is something that you just feel it in your bones. And if you do an employee engagement survey or something like that, and you get a lot of, you know, there's usually a heat map, there's a lot of red. Like, you got to be careful what you ask if you're not prepared to act on it. So if you, if you take an engagement survey or administer one, like, be prepared to act or you're going to lose those people. But also just gut check the culture. You know, have your employee, your executives and managers talk to those, you know, really high performing people. And when I say talk to the high performing people, it's not because everyone else is not important, but it's because you're thinking about, you have to think about business continuity and what's going to continue to drive your growth and your success. And, and there are always going to be people who are, you know, who understand the company. And I'm going to start getting into some eos stuff here. You know, they get their job, they know how it creates value, they kind of understand the importance of what they deliver. They're excited to do the work, they want it. They get out of bed every morning like pumped to go in and do it. And sometimes go in is walking from the bedroom to the bathroom to the shower to your home office, like I do sometimes. And then do they have the capacity or capability to do it? And those are the people that you've really got to cling onto and they're always the biggest loss.
- [17:17]
B
Yep. It reminds me of the exercise run to understand the core values of an organization as it pertains to eos. You think about who are the rock stars, who are the people that are living and breathing these types of values that are driving the success. So hear you loud and clear on that. And also, if I could just foot stomp one thing that you said of like being prepared to act. I've been caught in this trap so many times because like what I want to do is take care of the people inside of an organization. That's all I want to do. And there was a certain point in my last company where we introduced engagement surveys and we collected a whole bunch of amazing feedback. And what did we do with it? We took action on some of them. We didn't communicate it, we just took action. And then the other stuff, we're like, oh, we're going to have to put this in somewhere else. I think we were doing these surveys every six months. We did one next six months and basically the tone had changed and was like, we don't even understand why we're doing these things anymore. And then we got in front of the team, we're like, oh, well you know, we heard these last time. And then, you know, we made these changes and they're like, well that's good to know, like six months later. But what we saw is like this went into a vacuum and we saw zero action. And so, like, that warning that you just gave, like, I lived that. And. And it had. It. It had. It was detrimental to the culture at that point.
- [18:38]
A
Yeah. I mean, you're presenting, you know, a good case that, you know, when you administer a survey and you get the results back, you know, you kind of got to, like, hang out the dirty laundry for everybody. Like, this is what you said, and these are the things that we can do something about and what we're willing to do based on your feedback and your suggestions. But here are the things that we can't change. You know, like, that's going to create a level of transparency and then you create, you know, some accountability. Like we said we were going to. I don't know, I'll pick something really banal, like we're going to fix the H vac in the office so that, you know, it's not 85 degrees in the middle of summer, you know, so you have a comfortable work environment, you know, you know, if you don't follow through on that, like, acknowledge that it was an issue, we heard your complaint or your concern, and we're going to fix it. Or if it's. We don't like the intense and punctuality policy because some companies today, of course, we don't care where you work just as long as you get it done or what time you work. Other companies still have a very nine to five, nine to six mentality. They need to tell the employee, we don't like the schedule. We hear what you're saying, but this is how our business operates. You have to close those loops. I think that goes back to what you were saying. You were doing great things, but you weren't telling them that you were doing it. And for some reason, you know, employees, I think people, humans, just don't see things until they do, you know, or they are told like, this is what we did, you asked us to do it, and here's how we're doing it. So as an organization, take the credit for the things that you change. You know, take the credit for listening and take the action that actually, you know, again, I go back to the stickiness, you know, you know, metaphor that. That will create more trust in the organization, really, at all levels.
- [20:29]
B
And you brought up Glassdoor a little bit earlier, and I feel like this is kind of on the same topic. It sounds like you might have the same perception I do. How do you balance this as a business leader of, like, we care about our people and we want to do right by our people, but for some Reason we keep getting 1 star reviews and they're just blasting us, but we're doing everything we can to take care. Is there a certain toughness that you need to have in these types of positions where it's like, hey, you're not going to please everybody? Or is it like, no, everybody needs to write five stars, therefore we need to take care of everybody's issues?
- [21:12]
A
That's a great question. So I'm not going to. I think Glassdoor serves a purpose. Kind of like Yelp serves a purpose or resi. Or whenever time you book a restaurant, it kind of give you how they've been rated so far. But I think we all know that human nature is to. We're more apt to complain when we, when we're angry or upset than we are when we're happy and everything is great. So, you know, that is something you've got to take into consideration when you look at things on Glassdoor. You should absolutely, an organization should absolutely look at what is on Glassdoor, but then take that information and bring it inside and, you know, kind of litmus test it with people, you know, and this could be at any level. You know, like, we see this on Glassdoor. We want to know what you think about this. You know, just do like a sample size to find out, like, oh, this person was just really unhappy, or their exit, if they were let go involuntarily, wasn't handled well, or they resigned because their manager didn't listen to them. You know, find out if that was a one off or if that's a pervasive issue. You know, that runs through the entire organization. You know, and Glassdoor, I mean, it is. They do not necessarily do a valid, a good job of validating whether an employee is an employee. You know, I worked at one organization. You know, we would never ask employees, like, go on Glassdoor and give us a good rating, please, because that's really just not incredibly innovative. And I don't think it's fair to do that either. And be careful what you ask for. Right. Because all those people who are kind of just grinding it out every day are going to go on Glassdoor and tell you the truth. But you know, Glassdoor doesn't actually have a really good method for verifying whether you're actually an employee of that company, you know, so you can't completely trust what's there. And the other point I wanted to make is that it's. I worked at one company specifically that was rapid growth, did great business, really challenging culture. But every time we would see a positive Glassdoor review come up. It would be like an automatic response of three negatives, you know, so we started to think like, well, there's something going on here. You know, like someone posts something positive and then there's three negatives. We never understood it, so it was a very difficult resource to trust. So, you know, it's just another data point, you know, that you need to look at, but it's not, you know, a defining factor.
- [23:39]
B
I loved what you just said there of, of taking the Glassdoor comments and bringing them internal and like, kind of stress testing them amongst a tiger team or a small cohort. I've never thought of that. I've never done that before. But it's almost like, it's almost like treating it as the engagement survey where it's like you do the same thing, you bring an internal. Hey, do we have a, do we have an issue here? Because this is, this is something that's serious and something that we want to correct. Is this a bot from somewhere overseas or is this like a legitimate kind of degradation right now?
- [24:10]
A
Well, in this day and age, you never know, right? Like, it could be a bot, it could be somebody in a, in another country that for some reason is just, you know, doesn't like your organization or something like that and decides to do that. I mean, it seems like a stretch, but you never know.
- [24:26]
B
We fought with Glassdoor, my last company, because, like, even the name on it was somebody that had never worked. And we're like, we have no records. And they're like, we already did the verification. We're like, no, you didn't. When, when you think through. Because like, the only reason that there's two reasons this is important. One, it sounds like you can suss out things that might be happening in the organization. Maybe it's a blind spot and it provides an opportunity. The second part of this though, is it can have real impacts on your ability to recruit. And like, one of the things that we do when we go into an organization is like, we have to look at Glassdoor because we know it's going to be one of the first things that comes up as we're reaching out to candidates. And if you have a bad reputation, whether it's perceived or not, like, it may not be true. And I think that's at the heart of some of the things we're getting at. But, like, you know, is. Is your thing from an HR role, like, hey, we need some sort of strategy in Glassdoor, or is your thing like, listen, we focus on the culture. And when we interview and when we, you know, actively reach out to prospective talent, like they'll see who we are through the conversations that they have with us.
- [25:35]
A
I mean, Glassdoor is a money making organization. Like ratings is their first piece. But then, you know, they allow companies to pay a fee to brand themselves to post jobs and things like that. You know, in my experience, people don't apply for jobs in Glassdoor. You know, they're applying through LinkedIn or directly through your career site if they targeted your company. But if you have bad Glassdoor reviews and you feel like they are hindering your ability to hire, which I've experienced before at one particular organization, then there are some different ways to counteract that. I mean, first and foremost, have the person come in if you want to make them an offer and work with you for a day or two, sign an NDA, agree to pay them and let them live it. You know, another thing is, another option is to have them sit with, you know, a group of other employees and ask them questions and just kind of get a vibe, you know, and have a variety of employees. Like that's a good way to overcome those Glass Door Glassdoor scores is by giving people a taste of what the real experience is actually like.
- [26:40]
B
Love that. Okay, you kind of hinted at this a little bit of, and it was a little bit on the glass door, but I think it really speaks to the cultures and, and I forget the comment, the comment you made, it wasn't necessarily like deserving, but you were like, I could see how, how that reputation had built, like kind of turning, turning the script on to like toxic cultures or toxic leadership. Like, as a business leader, I know very few people who intentionally set out and by no, I mean kind of in my circles. Like I, I don't really know anybody that would go out and be like, I want, I want to build a toxic culture. And so like these things just kind of happen over time. What, are there signals or other things that business leaders should be looking at to understand? Like, oh, crap, like, no idea how we got here. We used to be amazing, but we now have these indications that like our culture has taken a turn for the worse.
- [27:41]
A
I mean, such a great question. If you, when you say leaders, I'm going to narrow this down and talk about founders specifically, or CEOs of companies that are scaling up. They can trust their gut vibe, but I would suggest that they talk to their other people on their senior leadership team and try to get more information and feedback from them about it. But that doesn't always work either. If you have not worked to build trust with that group, to actually get candid feedback. Because even at a senior level and eos, you see this a lot. You'll see that people are not as open or as apt to put their thoughts or concerns or problems on the table to be resolved for a multitude of reasons. So trust is the number one thing. And it takes a lot to build trust from top to bottom, left to right, no matter what level of the organization.
- [28:38]
B
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- [30:43]
A
I think the number one reason at the organizational level or number not reason Thing that you can do is have quarterly, you know, state of the company or state of the union meetings, town halls, not a new concept, but have them four times a year. Be as forthcoming and transparent as you can be, and that is a start. Then roll that down into other teams so that your team leaders can have those same kinds of conversations with their groups instead of every single meeting just being about solving problems, getting from one week to the next and being productive. I think that's the number one thing. Items like newsletters are great, you know, happy hours. I mean, been there, done that. I mean, it's not exactly a big. I mean, you have plenty of people that just want to go home to their families these days. So not necessarily a great thing. But I do think the state of the company. I do think that something that I have experimented with and had great success with is a thing called stay interviews. So you go through the process of interviewing a new employee. Takes a lot of time. It costs money, which not every, you know, leadership team CEO understands that there's a monetary cost there. But once a year, sit with the employee and re interview them, you know, but instead of interviewing them for themselves, interview them for their feedback on their experience working with you. Like, how do you feel when you wake up in the morning and you know you have to come in to work with us and what would we have to do to make sure you are with us for the next 12 to 24 months? Is there something that's been rubbing you the wrong way for a long time and you really wish we would solve it? That is a great way to get feedback and start building trust too. But that also goes right back to the same concept of the survey. You've got to close those loops and make sure those things are addressed. It takes time to do that. That's the most precious asset that any manager or leader organization has, but it's time well spent.
- [32:45]
B
How do you feel in the morning when you wake up and you realize you got to come here? Like, that's a, that's a great question. And at a certain point, you might not like the response. The response or the answers.
- [32:57]
A
Well, that's when the trust issue, that's when the trust issue comes in. Comes in, right?
- [33:01]
B
Yep, yep. 100%. When you think through the town halls four times a year, like what, what types of topics? Like if a leader, if a leader's thinking themselves, like four times a year, I'm going to get in front of the team. Maybe it's after the quarterly pulses, like when they start Thinking through the information that they're going to give. Like, what is, what is a good agenda? And is this like 15 minutes, hey, here's where we're at, where we're going. Is it an hour? And we bring feedback into the conversation. How do you think through that?
- [33:29]
A
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I've seen it done a lot of different ways. I mean, the longer the meeting, the less effective it is. So I think an hour to 90 minutes is probably good, you know, for a state of the company type or, you know, address. I think if you're doing leadership team meetings, like with us, you're doing quarterlies and annuals that are full day. But there's a different kind of, you know, objective in that scenario. But the agenda for, you know, kind of the state of the company. I mean, if you can talk about financials, talk about financials. If you don't want to give the numbers, at least give, at least give percentages. Like, we grew by X percent or we stayed flat or we are starting to. We had a tough quarter for some reason. And talk about what we think those reasons are. And ask the team, like, what do you think those reasons might be? Look for things to highlight. You know, when you do an L10 in EOS, like, a key part are company headlines that the leadership team goes through. And sometimes those headlines need to be cascaded out as messages inside the company. Like, what are those things from that last quarter that you want people to. To know and to hopefully be excited about and go home and tell their partner, you know, husband, wife, kids, roommates, like this amazing. Like, my company is doing so well and it's so exciting to be a part of it. I think that companies and organizational leaders make state of the company meetings far too difficult and complex. Like, they get too much in their head about it. Just give the information, put yourself in the seat of the employees. And what do they want to hear? How's the company doing? Are they financially stable? Am I going to have a job? And what cool stuff's coming down the road? That's what employees want to hear.
- [35:26]
B
I just wrote this down of the cascading messages because we just had our quarterly pulse. And the one thing we. We have a Friday fireside. So every Friday we get the team together, we do it for 30 minutes. We talk about our wins, we talk about our losses, and we acknowledge folks that are exhibiting core behaviors or core values. And like, for us, it's. It's one thing to say what they are, it's another thing to explain what they are. But for us, it's really about being able to point to the actions or the decisions that are happening inside of the company, to be able to acknowledge and show that example. And so we just replaced our normal fireside with. With this kind of State of the Union town hall, but I threw it together last minute and what you just said, that right there got me thinking of, like, it almost an issue in the, in the quarterly pulse should be like, the cascading messages of like, hey, this is the end of it. We've spent all day talking about all these things. What are, what are the, like, three to five things that we want to communicate to the team to make sure that they're on the same page. So thanks for that feedback because that's a great nugget right there.
- [36:34]
A
I want to circle back on something that's come up a few times during our conversation, which is the concept of core values. Core values are a key part of eos and it plays into so many factors of how you operate your business or run your business. On eos, core values sometimes just. They're dismissed as, like, soft and gooey and they don't mean anything. And, you know, a company might write them, or CEO might write them and put them on the website, but they don't really mean anything. Like, what do they actually look like in action? Why do we actually care? And it's a huge opportunity. And it's one of the. You know, one of my favorite things about an EOS implementer is seeing a company think about, well, this is what our culture is right now. Because when you want to have a culture or create values, it's not a matter of saying we want our value to be collaboration, which of course, everybody wants that. Instead, it's like, who are our top people? Why are they our top people? And if we could hire 100 of them, this is what we want them to possess. Those are your values, and they are so useful in so many different ways. You know, you could always do a values recap every quarter. You can recognize people to your point for exhibiting the values. I would, I would highly, you know, suggest that companies do that. It factors into how you hire. You know, at least it should. And, you know, to kind of go back to something else that you said, talking about your Fireside chats, that actually gave me a great idea about a good way to do kind of a state of the company address every four months or every three months, every quarter is maybe you have somebody come in from the outside and do it as a fireside chat where they interview the leadership team or the CEO with their own kind of organic questions. And, you know, it just seems like something I've never seen before. But I used to be the head of HR for an events company that did fireside chats a lot as part of the agenda. And people always pay such close attention because it's so personal. And I think that can be a great way to do, say to the company addresses. So you just gave me a great idea.
- [38:51]
B
Well, then you just, you just gifted it back to me. So that's great because I didn't even, I didn't think about the interview. Like, that's getting. And like, spoiler, like an EOS implementer would be great for that because the EOS implementer just sat in the session room and like helped the leadership team get through. And so I'd love to have an EOS implementer interviewing us about the quarterly and stuff like that. Oh, it's brilliant. Okay. I don't even know where to now. Now I'm like stumped because that's, that's got me, that's got me lost when
- [39:22]
A
you call me brilliant. Like my week is, my week is made. You know, like, like I couldn't do, I couldn't just hang up the, turn down the computer for the next few days. Just did it.
- [39:31]
B
But okay, what, real quick, one last thing on the hr, then I want to get back to the leadership team because I think this is a really good conversation. Like you talked about throughout your career, like you started off reporting to the CFO or you're reporting into the finance team. Towards the end of your career, you were reporting directly to the CEO. I realized that you had a C in front of your title probably at the time that you were reporting in. I've had this philosophy is that I always wanted, and we call it people and culture. I mean, people and culture was to us, hr, taking care of the people and really not necessarily creating the culture. Cause I think that's ultimately the founders or the CEO's job, but being able to nurture it and advise on those types of things. But I've always wanted that as close as possible to me. And so when it came to does HR report to operations or does HR report to finance? I'm like, HR reports to the CEO of the organization. And it sounds like you experienced that kind of later in your career. And maybe that was also sort of an evolution in where does HR belong inside of organizations. Do you like, when you're working with leadership teams and you would have to be like, hey, no bias here, but, like, are you advocating to the visionary or the integrator that, like, HR is a. Is truly a core list, And I know I preach three core functions, Operations, finance, sales, and marketing. But I'm going to tell you right now that people is also a core function. You know, Is that your argument or are you, like, it depends upon the size of the organization, the state, the stage, things like that?
- [41:06]
A
You know, I think so. First of all, to address, you know, when I'm working with an EOS client group, you know, I'm not going to prescribe to them anything. Like, they need to figure that out on their own, you know, through their own, you know, IDS process and their own discussions, you know, I'll facilitate that conversation. I do find that I sometimes have to intentionally back away from those HR talks because. Because of having lived in that so much. But just because I've had that experience doesn't mean that that's going to work inside their company. So, no, I do not push them in any certain way. Sometimes in other areas, I might be. Cut the crap, you guys, quit beating around the bush and say what you want to say. But when it comes to the reporting structure and kind of who's responsible, you really hit it on the head. That CEO, senior leadership team overall is responsible for the culture of the organization. And if you go on LinkedIn right now and look for jobs that are posted for chief people officer or HR director, you're going to see that 75% of those jobs say cultivating and sustaining company culture and values. Okay, they're a partner. HR is a partner in that, but they don't create it. And there's a tendency to dump it on the HR team when it's actually the entire senior leadership team. Like, what's the point of having, you know, culture and values if not every member of that leadership team is, you know, embodying them, you know, showing how it's done, you know, in real life and kind of fitting in to the seat that they're assigned, because if they're not doing that, like, you know, that's a decision that needs to be made about that person being on your team. So.
- [42:57]
B
And you just said something there, which I think it's going to. It's going to take us down a quick path. But it was. I forget the words you just used, but it was like, it was like, all right, cut the crap. Like, you know, let's. Let's make decision. Or like, let's help facilitate and move this conversation forward. And that kind of gets me back to, like, kind of the definition of facilitation and this idea of, like, not letting people off the hook and, like, maybe holding that moment and driving them down. Like, what, as. As a facilitator, like, what do you look as your primary kind of role in that room? And then the following question is going to be like, how do you, like, take them down that path and make sure that. That we're not getting off topic or off. Off the core issue because it's uncomfortable.
- [43:46]
A
I mean, I think the first thing is asking the right questions at the right time. You know, somebody's thinking it, but if they're not thinking it, like, help them refocus by asking, you know, a question or proposing something like, well, have you ever thought about this or that? To kind of shift their conversation out of just kind of politicking and spinning around, you know, kind of the same behavior that you do before you start operating on eos. Like, you talk about the same thing for a year and never actually solve it. So, you know, it's using the right questions at the right time. It's also tone of voice. I mean, you know, if. If you've read. Never split the difference, you know, I don't want to, you know, like, hopefully everybody has. I mean, the fm, you know, the late night FM voice, you know, the bright and perky voice. Like, I mean, I've had some instances where I've kind of had to lightly tap on the table and be like, all right, guys, like, cut it out, you know, or use that FM voice to kind of like, calm them down if it's getting too elevated and too heated. But, you know, facilitation is never about prescribing or telling. It is presenting, you know, possibilities, you know, things to put out there for them to think about giving them a different pair of glasses, you know, which I can literally, like, change glasses right now if you want. And the world looks different because these glasses are about the computer, and these glasses are for when, you know, for normal life. So that's what facilitation really, really is. You know, the teaching part, you know, of EOS is not the easiest, easy part, but it is probably the easiest. Facilitating the group to solve problems and to figure out, you know, what they want. Their. Not only what direction they want to go in, but how they're going to go in that direction together is the hardest part. And facilitation is key in that.
- [45:48]
B
Are you comfortable being uncomfortable? Because a lot of what I've seen with my teams is like, once we start going down a path that people don't want to talk about, like, that's where, that's where people get squirmy and start going. And it sounds like you are, like, that's the time that you're locked in. Like, is this, is this just an environment that you're, you're comfortable based upon the HR background, or is this something that you had to, you had to work on?
- [46:13]
A
When I was an in house HR person, I would say that I was far more diplomatic, you know, political, you know, like playing the game, you know, because everyone can kind of relate to that. You know, as an EOS implementer, it's, you know, a lot more direct. I would prefer to have a more difficult client than an easy client. There are no easy clients if they want to go on Eos because they've already decided that staying the way they are, you know, hurts too much and they need to change. But I would prefer to have a volatile, fiery room, a group of people to work with because they're all passionate and it's just energizing. And when that group kind of has a breakthrough together, they shift from kind of red in the face, maybe figuratively punching it out, to standing up together and screaming in joy that they had some sort of breakthrough. So while it's not easy to seek out EOS clients that are like that, if one of those comes my way, I'm more likely to lean into that because to me that's a lot more exciting.
- [47:26]
B
Okay, sort of a separate topic. But what we've realized over the last couple years with this podcast is that there's a lot of EOS implementers that listen to this podcast and there's a couple things that they're deeply curious in. Number one, they're deeply curious into the backgrounds, the histories and the process and the thinking of, of their peers. And the other thing is, like, how they think about growth and some of the strategies that they've been using. Like when, when you think through, you know, business development and some of the tactics that you're using to acquire clients, what's kind of been like your, like front and center and the one that's been, been working the best for you?
- [48:05]
A
Well, you know, it's a great question and I'm still relatively early in my US journey, but, you know, clients for me, so I was a fractional HR person, that's where my kind of first group of clients have come from. But what is really starting to get me a Lot of traction in the client pipeline is not being afraid to ask for introductions and referrals. I think that we all tend to think that, you know, one of the core values of eos, it's always to be helpful. And when you meet with someone that's in your network or you meet them for the first time, you know, you can really get in this mindset of like, oh, like I have to give them something before I can ask them something and, or ask them for something and really it's, it's not that way. I mean, obviously build a relationship. I mean, I look at networking as friendship building. You know, like, hopefully you and I will stay in touch and, you know, become friends after this, you know, to some degree. But, and if not, you know, I'll post it on my own YouTube channel that, you know, that Ryan just disappeared on me.
- [49:10]
B
But I'll still be here.
- [49:12]
A
I promise you'll still be there. But the, you've just got to get comfortable, you know, asking for connections and make it easy for them to give you those connections. You know, look at who they're connected to. Bring them a list of names. Be like, what do you know about this person? What do you know about that person? And this is not something that I figured out on my own. You know, another successful implementer gave me this tip and it has worked incredibly well. But you just have to talk to everybody that you can. You know, I even called my father the other day in rural Indiana. You know, where I'm from, first there's, you know, there's a small town, but then there's the larger kind of county seat with 30 or 40,000 people, plenty of small, medium sized local businesses. There's I'm like, dad, like give me five guys because you know everybody, like give me five guys that I can reach out to or you could tell about me. And you know, I go home, Indiana all the time. You know, my dad, my mom, my sisters, you know, I have a brother in law that works in financial planning. I think that using your intimate family and friends as connectors is something that's probably underutilized. But in any case, like no one's going to tell you no, they're not going to help you connect with someone. They may not have somebody, but make it easy for them. Look at their LinkedIn connections, ask them about specific people, make it easy for them to connect you with them.
- [50:44]
B
Love it, love it, love it. Okay, so to you, when you're looking for clients or the ideal client, what does that client look like? Are You. Are you focused in New York? Are you focused broadly? Do you have a vertical? Like, what, what. What does a great client look like to you?
- [51:04]
A
There's no. I mean, I shouldn't say there's no such thing as a great client. But, like, you know, every client's going to be a little bit different. You asked the question about verticals. You know, I thought about a lot about that. Like, instead of going broad, just going deep into one area. And I was looking at the healthcare space because a. A lot of opportunity there, a lot of consolidation in terms of investment in private equity, you know, and I've all my HR clients, not only my HR clients, been in the healthcare space. So physical therapy, chiropractic, applied behavior analysis, psychotherapy, things like that. But I also have a close family connection because I have an older sister who has cognitive disabilities. So we've been working with, you know, home health providers for 30 years. So I know how those systems work. So sometimes having that operational familiarity is helpful. But I decided I don't want to be limited in that way. Like I told someone the other day, and they kind of laughed at me, like, I'm a capitalist. You know, I want to make money for myself. I want to help my. My clients make money. And that goes across the spectrum, you know, and it's not to talk badly about anyone working in the healthcare space, but, you know, they have a little bit more of a. They lean towards helping their clients and they feel sometimes a little hesitant to say that they have a financial goal, you know, and I want someone that wants to chase a number, you know, so doesn't mean I wouldn't work with healthcare companies, because I have been. But, you know, I kind of want to work with the hustlers who want to grow and, you know, for themselves and their teams, love it.
- [52:40]
B
And before I get to the last question, which is I promise a softball just to brag on your background just a little bit like, you know, starting off in. And it's very much all in the people space, which. And maybe I'm biased here, I just, I happen to think it's the most important space. It's the most important part of any business is aligning that energy and making sure that everybody is inspired, believes in where the company's going, because then magic happens. So some people think about strategy, they think about all these other areas. And I think that a lot of those other areas are taken care of if you've got the right people in the right seats. And you also, like, you know, from HR Manager all the way up to the C suite, and then you looked or you worked at a brand that I looked up to for quite some time coming out of the consumer space, but authentic brands group. So your career is incredible. And now the fact that you're able to take all of that experience and translate that and bring it into facilitation mode, I think is. Is incredible. So. All right, last. Last question here, which is someone just listened to this entire thing and they're like, I. I gotta get a hold of Joe. I need some Joe in my life. What would be the best way for them to get a hold of you?
- [53:53]
A
Oh, boy. I'm gonna answer no matter what. But, you know, LinkedIn DM is the easy way because you don't need my phone number for that. But all my contact information is on there. But if you know somebody, you know that's in, that's connected to me, go through them, call me on the phone, you know, like, that's one thing. You know, looking for clients myself, like, just stop emailing and stop zooming and, you know, either go see them in person or call them, you know, but if they want to get in touch with me, like, post it on my LinkedIn wall, you know, I have no shame. I'm not worried about that. So, you know, kind of a softball question, but also kind of a weird question. Ryan, thank you very much.
- [54:38]
B
There you go. I love it. Joe. Joe, this has been so much fun. I love geeking out on people stuff. And so the fact that you and I just got to spend an entire hour together just talking about people and strategies and recruiting and culture and, you know, for. For some, this might be like, oh, like, okay, I get it. We do an engagement survey, but no, it's like, it's not just the engagement survey, because actually you can do more harm if you just do an engagement survey. And that's all you ever did without, like, going and communicating, actually taking action, following back up. So, anyhow, long winded for. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on, and it's been a lot of fun now.
- [55:21]
A
Thank you for having me, Ryan. This has been a blast. Blast. I'll come back anytime.