#13 JooBee's newsletter

TL;DR

🙈 Founders don’t care about people? A core belief or conflicting priorities

🕳️ HR leaders, if you want to influence, dig deeper

💥 Start-up career hacks with Jane Austin, Founder & CPO (exclusive content)

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Founders don’t care about people? A core belief or conflicting priorities

It’s easy to become frustrated and disheartened when you keep running into the “no” wall of founders shooting down HR initiatives 😓. But before pointing fingers and concluding that they simply don't care about people, let's take a step back and understand 2 distinctions that determine our approach to what needs to be influenced and how to influence it. 

Firstly, we need to figure out if their "no" is coming from a deep-seated core belief or a case of competing priorities. 

If it's a matter of core beliefs (please validate any assumptions with evidence), then we are faced with the choice: do we take on the challenge of reshaping these beliefs, or is it beyond our role? 

However, most of the time it is a matter of competing priorities. It's safe to say that the majority of founders aren't certified jerks who kick puppies for fun. They very likely care about people but prioritise other matters. And that is the focus of this newsletter. Below I’ll dive into 3 ways we can start influencing our founders to give HR initiatives the attention they deserve. 

And to guide us along the way, I’ll draw inspiration from Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

👂Seek first to understand before being understood

Dave Ulrich, the father of strategic HR once asked HR leaders: "What business issues concern you the most?" 

If the responses revolve around topics like building a scalable HR model, refining hiring processes, fostering diversity and inclusion, succession planning and crafting an exceptional employee experience, it suggests that our mental model of "business issues" is centred around HR.

He said; “HR is not about HR, but about helping the business win in the marketplace.” Business issues of most concern should be:

• defining where and how to compete through growing revenue profitably,

• serving customers to increase market share and NPS,

• increasing investor confidence as evidenced in market value, and 

• being a contributing member of the community.

To influence business priorities, we must shift our mental model from centring around HR, to centring on “business issues” and start aligning with broader business objectives. Understanding how our leaders make decisions regarding these critical business issues is key to influencing their direction effectively.

🤝 Synergise + Think win-win

As an HR leader, understanding the core business concerns of my founders and SLT enables me to connect the dots of how key HR initiatives help the business achieve its goals - and that HR initiatives aren’t just another item on the to-do list, they directly correlate to winning in the marketplace for our business.

Here's a simple tip from Ulrich on how to connect the dots: add a 'so that' to answer the 'so what' question of the business.

For example, instead of just saying we need to automate onboarding, we connect the dots by adding, "We need to automate onboarding so that we can accelerate our expansion into the three markets we're entering in the next 12 months." 

Similarly, when advocating for harmonising benefits across different locations, we explain, "We need to harmonise our benefits across our 5 locations so that we can attract a similar quality of talent to consistently serve our customers and increase NPS in all our markets."

🎯First thing first

Another crucial aspect to bear in mind is that what we individually perceive as a priority may not align with the collective priorities of the business. However, by honing our strategic thinking skills and connecting various dots within our context (such as identifying current and future pain points, and assessing available resources in terms of time and budget), we can step back objectively and prioritise what truly matters most at the present moment as well as what we can line up to tackle next. 

So, if you are finding difficulty in gaining support for your ideas, take a step back and understand why you might be receiving a 'no.' Is it due to conflicting core beliefs or competing priorities? By figuring out these nuances, you can fine-tune your approach.

HR leaders, if you want to influence, dig deeper

Less than 6 months after joining a start-up, I decided to leave due to its culture. During one of my interviews, a founder asked me, "Isn’t your job as the HR leader to improve the culture?" (This is the same founder who scored me 2 out of 10 if you've been following my newsletter 😉). 

It is the same question I asked myself when I decided to leave. After 6 months of exhausting all efforts, ultimately I realised that the state of the culture is a result of the founder's core beliefs and changing these would take years. I could either stay and attempt to alter one person’s beliefs during my tenure, or join a company where I could positively impact every individual within the organisation in the same period of time. I chose the latter.

Some things you can’t change, but 95% of things you can

The case of core belief misalignment is very rare, at least in my experience 😅. I would say over 95% of the times when I encounter challenges in influencing founders, it falls broadly under three categories: 1️⃣competing priorities, 2️⃣ founders lacking understanding of what a great HR team could deliver or 3️⃣ having had negative experiences with HR teams. And THOSE challenges I find challenging, enjoyable and a way to stretch my influencing skills.

As I’ve covered 1️⃣ competing priorities above, I will delve a little deeper into point 2️⃣ and 3️⃣. If we are honest with ourselves and ask leaders around us, many have had negative experiences with HR, and the majority may not have experienced HR that truly 'gets' their needs or the needs of the business. Essentially, as HR leaders, you are attempting to change the entire profession's impression. But don't be discouraged by this; we can make progress one leader and one company at a time.

To influence, you need to understand the person you are influencing

I remember when I started a new role, and during my second 121 with my founder, I had a ‘let’s lay it all on the table’ conversation. I wanted to understand his perception of HR as soon as possible. 

He deeply cares about people but is wary of HR teams due to past experiences. He dislikes processes and policies that control people's actions, and I could hear his voice change and his emotions heightened as he talked about it. In his past experience, these processes and policies slowed down business progress and took away people’s time for the sake of compliance behaviour. 

Understanding this was crucial! It gave me insights into potential emotional triggers if my founder were to reject HR initiatives. So, I levelled with him. I started by saying, 'I love processes, and I love guidelines,' pausing for dramatic effect 😉. 

Then I explained, 'As a start-up grows more complex, clarity in processes helps to align people and, most importantly, prevents the business from slowing down due to confusion.' This piqued his interest. I continued, 'You brought me in to help the business operate at scale. I want to let you know upfront that my team will be implementing processes. However, if we do this with the purpose of enabling the business to scale, and not slowing it down, I need to know if you will be open to always hearing me out?' The founder agreed. 

Sometimes my proposals go through easily (years later I’m still surprised I got the benefits budget approved in under 10 mins 😱). However, some require multiple long discussions because they might trigger a fear of over-designed processes that could slow down the business. Because of our early conversation, I recognise that this stems from a fear of processes rather than my founder not caring about people. It simply means that I have not communicated clearly, or indeed, some processes could be further streamlined. Both are within my control to do better and achieve our collective goals: enabling people without slowing the business down.

4 questions to get to know your leaders

I don’t limit this conversation to just founders. As an HR leader, I have the same conversation with every leader in the company, and I do this within the first month of my role.

Here are the 4 questions I will include in my first 121 conversations with the leaders:

Besides understanding their business and people needs, it's important to consider their past experiences in working with HR teams. Past experiences influence how we think, feel and act with the present HR team. With these insights, I can adjust my strategies, communication, and actions to influence the leaders around me and achieve our collective goals.

So, HR leaders when you find yourself hitting roadblocks in driving change within your organisation, take a moment to dig deeper. Is the lack of buy-in due to core beliefs that your founders don't care about people, or is it more about 1️⃣ juggling competing priorities, 2️⃣ founders not fully grasping the value of an exceptional HR team or 3️⃣ lingering negativity from past HR experiences? In my experience, about 95% of the time, these challenges fall within our sphere of influence. It's about exploring different approaches.

Use the runway on work that will extend your runway

The mistake I made

I thought I knew how to be lean and move at speed in my previous jobs as they had all been digital transformations. What I didn’t get was that these transformations were in established businesses, and we had the luxury of a business generating revenue while we worked. I didn’t understand what urgency in start-ups meant. I wanted everything I delivered to be perfect - but you only need to focus on what has the highest impact.

The one thing I wish I knew to avoid that mistake

In start-ups, you don’t have the luxury to make everything great. You’ve got to be super commercial and understand the value proposition and the differentiation. The focus needs to be on the things that will move the needle and make a commercial impact. You need to let the rest go and accept some things will be hacky or not great. You’ve got to use the runway on work that will extend your runway.

One tip to hack your career in start-ups

Imagine you are spending your own money – do you really need to polish this thing or do several rounds of research on that thing? It's okay for some things to be good enough, and to get them out the door and into the hands of users. Users are very forgiving of some flaws in the experience if the product is giving them something they want. Make sure you know the key areas to polish and why, and be able to make a case on how this work will move the needle to more users or more revenue.

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