Lattice Structures in Succession Planning with Kate McKinnon

“You don’t have to move in one particular direction.”

-Kate McKinnon

How does your succession planning strategy work?  Is it more focused on moving people UP or does it include moving people ACROSS?     In today’s episode, my guest gives us a peek into how to ensure that there are multiple avenues for people’s development and talent cross-population which develops breadth and depth.

My guest is Kate McKinnon. Kate is an enthusiastic Human Resources Executive with progressive experience in a variety of industries. Currently serving as Playfly Sports’ Head of Human Resources, Kate has proven success navigating change and creating programs to ensure successful implementation of business initiatives. Areas of expertise include Leadership Development, Organizational Change Management, Talent Acquisition, and Decentralized Workforce Collaboration.

In this episode of Talent Management Truths, you’ll discover:

• The connection between resilience and getting to 80%
• An overview of how to approach succession planning in a “latticed” way vs. the traditional stairway model 
• A breakdown of skills that are important for both Sales and HR professionals

Links

• Kate McKinnon on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katemckinnon/
• Book: Yung Pueblo by Diego Perez  (how to stay present) 

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Transcript

LM Ep 101

 [00:00:00] 

Hello. Hello, Lisa here. Since you're listening to this particular podcast, I imagine you're likely a leader in the area of talent, HR, people, culture, [00:01:00] L& D, employee experience, or OD. Are you also a talent leader who is longing for a safe sounding board to bounce ideas off of? Who's thirsty for some fresh new ideas that will actually work?

Who maybe needs to influence multiple stakeholders who don't always know what they want? Maybe you're somebody who wants to get out of their own way and who's ready for expert, ongoing, and confidential mentoring. If you answered yes to one or more of those statements, Then we need to talk in addition to my group programs, I work privately with a select few clients as their talent management thought partner, I will help you over the next 90 days, finally create the space, the intention and the strategy to implement an initiative.

That's critical to your team's longer term impact and legacy. Let's chat and see if there's a fit. Book me online at greenappleconsulting. ca slash contact.

 How does your succession planning strategy work? Is it more focused on moving people up or [00:02:00] does it include moving people across? In today's episode, my guest gives us a peek into how to ensure that there are multiple avenues for people's development and talent cross population, which develops breadth and depth.

My guest is Kate McKinnon. Kate is head of human resources at play fly sports. Kate is an enthusiastic HR professional with proven success, navigating change and creating programs that ensure the successful implementation of business initiatives. In this episode, you'll discover the connection between resilience and getting to 80%, an overview of how to approach succession planning in a lattice way versus the traditional stairway model and a breakdown of skills that are important for both sales and HR professionals.

Enjoy the episode. Hello and welcome back to Talent Management Truths. I'm your host, Lisa Mitchell, and today I have the [00:03:00] pleasure of meeting with Kate McKinnon.

Kate is the Head of Human Resources at PlayFly Sports. Welcome to the show, Kate. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Awesome. So perhaps you could begin by sharing a little bit about your career journey to this point in time and what you do at PlayFly. Yeah, happy to. So, my career journey has been non traditional.

I would say started off really interested in psychology, criminal justice and sociology specifically very interested in the psychological behavior of people, criminals worked through the nonprofit world and then continued into a sales career of which I was a part for about 12 years. So worked, worked in the sales world and decided during that time that there was a lack of connection between the producers and the sellers and the individuals that seem to be making a lot of the decisions that drove their behavior and that really touched [00:04:00] the consumer.

And then in addition, I saw a lot of really, really talented sellers being promoted into leadership roles. And failing miserably. Yes, I've seen it. It was such a challenge. And I just, I remember thinking, I just don't understand how people aren't seeing that the skill set is different. And at that point, I became really interested in leadership development.

In really trying to help leaders get the tools that they needed and really maximize their strengths as it, as it related to leading, leading people and leading teams. And so I went back to school. I got my master's in leadership development and and found that most of the things that I was really passionate about existed in the H.

R. world. So whether that be training and development or employee relations or communicating effectively with the C suite, bridging that gap that's really where it was housed. And so I never really had a desire to be a part of human resources. I actually never really liked many of the human [00:05:00] resources people that were supposedly supporting me and companies.

And I thought that I could just come up with a different way to practice HR. And so that was, that was my intro into the HR world was really in the training and development space. Yes, me too. Me too. That's kind of where I started out as well. So, interesting. Okay. So I, I, we're going to circle back to the connection between sales and HR.

And that's come up on the show before, but I think we'll have a bit of a different take on it. Perhaps you could share more about Playfly itself and, and what the company is all about. Yeah, of course Playfly Sports was founded in 2020 by one of the co founders of Hulu, Mike Schreiber, and it was really the result of wanting to bring local fan experiences to fans in a different way, in a more all encompassing way.

And so, Playfly Sports is a sports media and marketing company, and we have a lot of different pieces of that business. So, we have offices all across the [00:06:00] country. We support high school, collegiate, and pro sports. So we, a lot of our offices are actually right on site with our college partners that we work hand in hand with.

So, also have a large naming rights division that works on naming rights deals. We have a creates division and a huge a huge partnership division. So we just, we have so many different pieces of the business that we have worked to acquire over the course of the last few years. Interesting.

And it's all, all based in the U S. Almost entirely based in the U. S. We do have a few Canadian employees as well. Oh, well, you should. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So, and you know, I something that when you and I first met you had shared is that the company has gone through rapid growth. Perhaps you could shed a little light on that and what that's been like.

Well, it's been crazy in all of the best ways, I would say. When I joined the company, we were at about 200 employees and now we're at[00:07:00] with the addition of addition of contractors. So we're up over about 1000 employees now and just continue to build the business. So In terms of what that's been like it's just been very exciting and, and a, and a really great experience to be able to build the HR function and really grow with the people which is one of the things that I love most about my, my role.

Well, and I just want to point out for listeners. So Kate's been with the organization for two years only. So that, that is a growth from 200 to over 1, 000. So really significant. So I'm just curious, like, you know, if you were to share some advice on how to survive a period of rapid growth like that, you know, what, like, how did you scale?

How did you even know as you started out how to set things up so that you could scale? That's a that's a great question. I don't think I've ever really thought about the how it's more just doing [00:08:00] which I don't know. It's great. It's great advice. But I think that sometimes people really feel a need to be completely prepared for something in order to jump in.

And I would say one of the biggest lessons that I've learned in my career is that sometimes you're only 50 percent prepared and you just have to trust your gut and trust the people around you to help you through those times. Thank you. I think I stay really curious and I really value the partnerships that I have within the organization, but also external to the organization.

And I think 1, 1 piece of advice that that I took with me very early on in my HR career was never to be afraid to say that you don't know the answer to something. So I, I don't know the answer to things daily and I ask a lot of questions and I'm not afraid to say I don't know and I'll find out and I think that that allows me to have the humility to be able to grow and lean on other people to help if I, if I need that.

So, I think also being very flexible and being able to operate in an environment that [00:09:00] that is very it can feel very rocky because nothing is really steady state. And so like, you're always trying to get to that steady state, but then something else comes your way and it throws everything back off balance.

So, even when interviewing for my team, I tell people, you know, I asked the question, you know, how do you respond to change? Do you like change? And usually I won't hire somebody that says, Hey, with change, like I need people that thrive in the chaos, like that. Love it. Yes. That wouldn't be happy if they didn't have a chaotic environment.

Well, it's funny because the word I just wrote down on my paper here was resilience because it, it sort of sounds like that's your general sort of innate approach to change, you know, just, okay, we're just going to expect it because when we get into when I see, you know, with my coaching clients, when they get into trouble, and even myself, and I actually.

I don't quite like change. I need variety. I, I create change [00:10:00] myself. Like I do it to myself because I get bored so easily, but I'll see people that, you know, they're sort of digging in their heels because they, they, you know, it's that acceptance piece. They don't want to accept that it's necessary or that, or that there's any reason for it.

And so there's this drag that that creates versus if you're already. Just trusting your gut as you put it and deciding that, hey, I get that change is constant and I'm going to just kind of float with it, you know, float down the river of it. It's, it's, I'm not fighting against the current that way.

It's so true. And I see so many people, not only specific to HR, but really in any career nobody loves change. Like it's, it's really hard. Change is not easy. So I think that accepting that it is just a part of life, a part of work, a part of personal life, and controlling the way that you respond to it is really [00:11:00] where your, your power is.

I always tell my team, you know, when we feel like we're losing control of certain processes or certain things that are going on because of all of the changing dynamics. Take a step back and just focus on what you can control, which in my mind is every single interaction and experience that every single employee at our company has with our team.

That is where our control always is. And if we can ensure that at the bare minimum that's happening, then we're already more successful than a lot of people that are that are interacting with different departments on a regular basis. So I tell my team with projects with with anything that they're doing.

Get it to 80 percent and 80 percent at 80 percent it should be rolled out because then you have a 20 percent flexibility built in where you're not so tied to this perfection of a product. Where you have, you don't have that emotional tie when somebody does change something where you're like, no, no, no, it's perfect as it is [00:12:00] because nothing is ever going to stay as it is.

And it should be constantly evolving. Yeah, I, well, I always talk about embrace the iteration. Right with clients and in and consulting stuff that I do, because I like how you're talking about you get it to 80%. I didn't always understand this or appreciate this. What in my younger days, I remember I really had this perfectionist thing going on.

That's still, you know, still recovering some ways, but this idea that, you know, your solutions. Can be elastic. I remember as a teacher, I was a middle school teacher for two years and I remember having you know, you had your, your, your, your steady Eddie's the kids, you know, which is the most most the class and a class of 30.

Then I had a bunch of gifted kids. And then I had some kids that were struggling. Right. So I had to design the lesson plan so that they were elastic. I got to 80 percent and then I could add in additional challenge for the kids that needed it and [00:13:00] additional repetition and reinforcement with the kids that were struggling.

So it's bringing that into what we do within just, you know, not just L and D, but general HR projects, I think is really great, great advice. Yeah, and the connection is really interesting, too, because, you know, when you look at performance management, you know, typically you have, you know, 60 percent of your employees are typically middle of the road.

They're doing their job. They're coming and going. They're working really hard, and then you have 20 percent that are top performers, high potential employees and 20 percent that typically take a lot of time. They need a lot more growth and development. And so being able to gear all of your approaches and solutions across the board And, and build in that flexibility is really, it's critical to your employee base.

Agreed. So actually that's a great segue because something that you had shared with me that you do at PlayFly is employ a lattice structure approach to your [00:14:00] succession planning and I think to performance management. So I was hoping that you could elaborate on on what that even means. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, the lattice structure. For succession planning is really just in contrast to the typical ladder and and wrong structure that organizations have have done and embraced for for years where you become, you know, a high performer and whatever job and then you're automatically elevated to a manager and then you're auto automatically elevated to a senior manager VP and then it just, you know, so it goes.

But a lot of structure really gives you the flexibility So, you know, it allows you to account for the same exact problem that I saw in sales, which being in an industry where we have sellers as the majority of our employee base, it works really well.

You might have sellers that are really strong individual performers. And then you might have sellers that [00:15:00] really love to develop people, but they're 2 completely different skill sets. So having 2 options when you're talking about career development, succession planning for individual contributors, and then for people managers, I think is really, really important.

Likewise, because we have so many different divisions and because we are a combination of a lot of different acquisitions and a lot of different companies. We have a lot of individuals that want to dip their toe into other areas of the business, and this is a perfect melting pot of a company for you to be able to do that.

And so, really, our, our thought process here is that you don't have to move in one particular way to advance your career. You can move in multiple different ways. We have individuals, one individual in particular, who was You know, very successful in our e sports division. Then he moved over to our partnerships division.

It was very successful there. We have another individual who was working at one of our school partners and he then moved into operations and then he achieved [00:16:00] all the skill sets that, that he really thought would help his career and operations. And now he's working on our transition team, helping new properties get up and running.

So he's utilizing all of those tools. So I think, you know, it's very beneficial for an organization to consider all different pathways for people because a it helps with cross pollination and knowledge sharing company. Why? It encourages collaboration and cross selling as well, but also really helps with employee experience and that cohesion from a culture standpoint.

Because you have different people from different backgrounds that can bring creativity, new approaches, new perspective to all of the teams. And so we're working on building out a very clear, formal lattice structure in all of our different divisions that enables people to really do this in a very formal, clear way.

Oh, I'd love to hear a little bit more about that because this is something that I really, really advocate [00:17:00] for. And in all the years I did succession planning for a long, long time, I was really focused on how, as, as people grow and develop, how do you create, help them create a greater breadth Thank Of perspective, and that's what this sounds like, you know, it's another way of saying, you know, you're giving people a broader exposure across the business and different, you know, into how it works and then the skills needed to, to perform well in each of them.

And then you bring it back and it's just like the person becomes more and more agile, more and more valuable to the business over time. So. So when you said you're going to apply sort of more, you may not be ready to talk about it, Kate, so feel free to tell me to go another direction, but I'm just curious, like, for listeners, you know, I can picture some of them picking up a notepad and going, Oh, my God, like, what does this actually look like on paper?

Like, how do you organize this? What are your thoughts? It's it's not easy. I think it is very it is much easier to have a very clear ladder stair [00:18:00] step structure, which is, I think, why most companies do it. And there's nothing wrong with it. I just don't think that it's as progressive as as what we're doing here.

think it starts with collaboration within all departments. So it really starts with a true partnership with hr and our total rewards managers very, very involved. Our HR business partners are very involved because we need input from people that are in the roles to build out. A clear structure.

So for an example, if you look at our college properties, we have some properties that are very, very small. They're 1 person properties. We have other properties that are very, very large and they support, you know, millions of dollars in revenues and and lots of employees that somebody would be managing.

And so what does that look like for somebody that's in a smaller university if their goal is to get to a bigger university? What does that pathway look like? And in order to figure that out, you need to understand not only all of the roles [00:19:00] that are housed within all of the different schools, but you also need to understand what are the roles for individual contributors and people managers.

And then on top of that, what are the competencies? Not just the job descriptions, but what are the actual competencies that are required to grow into those roles? And that helps from a lot of different standpoints. It helps people understand what needs to happen as they look to progress their career.

It's very clear what skill set they need to develop. They can really tie their performance management, their conversations with their manager to improving on those skills and ask for help around those areas. But it also really helps for from a diversity and inclusion standpoint. One of the things specifically in the sports industry is that historically on the sports business side it is not super diverse.

And we've been working very, very hard to increase diversity across the board, and it's very easy to impact at the entry level standpoint, because you can control [00:20:00] where you're recruiting from, and you can build partnerships with colleges and HBCUs and really encourage that and have those conversations.

But as you move into leadership roles and bigger roles within the organization, because the industry has been historically not very diverse. You can't really pull diverse talent into those roles. So you really have to look at what are the competencies so that then you can look at people from other industries that have comparable competencies that can come in and really be a part of the organization and really contribute this new perspective and diversity of thought as well.

Yes. And on top of competencies, it's, it's results. Like, what are the results that, you know, a person in X role is, is expected to achieve, right? What, what are the outcomes, right? And, and therefore, what are the, the complimentary skills or competency? So, yeah, it's interesting. So when you kind of start to map it out, because there's so many directions you could go, I mean, lattice, you just picture a [00:21:00] lattice fence, right?

Like, you know, there's, there's multiple directions. And I think, you know, in a lot of organizations where they use more of the traditional nine box, and it may look like a step, I still think that there's a lot, especially if they've got to pass for, for senior professionals and leadership, there is a lot of that lattice stuff naturally happening.

Mapping, it's another Another thing, though, if you're going to provide options to people, because I remember doing, you know, I put this in place several times, but, you know, learning, learning paths for for core roles. So people could see what are the competencies? What are the trainings? Like, what's involved in being this kind of role?

And so they made it transparent to everybody in the organization. So they could see, you know, I'm interested in that. What's what's involved? So how, how are you going to corral all that stuff? Thank you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I think that there's the base framework, which really revolves around the things that I, you know, talked about around, you know, competencies and figuring out what the roles are and and how they're defined.

And what are the different nuances [00:22:00] around the roles? But then I think to your point, there's a real L and D component. And there is a, how are we going to help you get there? And what are the skill sets, the certification, the, you know, the, the testing out, if you will uh, certain roles. If you even look at our finance team, what does it look like to go from.

AP to AR. If somebody decides, Hey, I'm more interested in collections or in our operations team. I'm more interested in the sales operations side as opposed to business operations. Like what are the system requirements? And are we providing you that? So we use a couple of different tools. So we use a tool called 15 five, which is a real time performance management platform that I absolutely love, especially for sellers because I kind of call it the lazy person's performance management.

It actually puts the onus on the employee to complete 15 minutes week of performance goals and talking about how they're feeling. [00:23:00] And then each manager for each employee. Should really only be giving 5 minutes to quickly scan over it, give additional feedback and just move on with their day. And it just keeps this constant communication happening regularly.

So, we utilize that tool, but it also allows us to do mid year and end year performance management, which, which really helps with succession planning. So we ask very specific questions. That are consistent with the employee and the manager, but then we also ask separate manager questions so that they are actually rating their employees based on the amount of impact they have to the organization.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they are, you know, super performers necessarily, but what's the impact? Are they are they staying true to the values that we hold core to what we're doing? Is there impact on their team members? Important to note. And so we really truly go through every single employee in the organization.

We just went through this process. We went through every single employee, and now we're [00:24:00] looking at every single employee again, and we're asking the questions about, you know, what are your next steps? Where do you see yourself in the future? What are your career aspirations? What are your relocation preferences?

Like, what would you consider what wouldn't you consider so really, really diving in and we're, we're starting with our properties division to do that. we also have a high potential program that we're working on redeveloping. So we have. a program, a leadership program for individuals who are looking to go into management, but are not yet managers.

Then we're going to have a new track for new managers, and then we're going to have a high potential leader track. So we'll have a three track, a three tier leadership development program. Yeah, the ones interested and, and, and so aspiring to and, and seen as up and coming leaders. Yeah, I called that the aspiring leaders program in my last organization.

So, so if you want to aspire to steal that. So, yeah, yeah. And I think it's still called [00:25:00] that actually. But I, I think that's a very, very important. Part of the puzzle, right? Like, how do you start preparing the pipeline for people to move in? Right. Now, too, we had a really locked down selection process because it was a year long program.

And it was, it was like a big deal to get. 13, 000 employees and there were 12 spots kind of thing for the year. So it was a big, big deal. But, you know, I always thought it was, it was an, it was a good thing. If you had one person who self selected out at some point, you know, for some folks, they might come into the, you know, think, oh, yeah, I want to be a leader.

And then once they start. Exploring really understanding what's involved. They may realize it's not for them, which actually links back to the whole sales role into leader sales leadership and sales management is a whole different ball of wax. It is. And I've seen this happen many times. You know, you take your top seller and And they go and then they're like, Ooh, I [00:26:00] don't like having to be responsible for other people's performance or dealing with men or having a different, having a new ceiling on their comp, all this kind of thing.

Yeah. It's really challenging. Sales leadership is not easy. Oftentimes sales leaders make less than their sellers that they're managing and really understanding that you're getting work done through others. You really have to be good at that in a sales leadership position. And that's really hard for high potential sellers because they're used to doing it all themselves because that's how they've been so successful.

Even just getting them to delegate is so challenging. So like you, I think really, really exceptional sellers who want to move into a leadership role really have to have the fire to truly lead. And that has to be what's driving their decision as opposed to just moving up in their career. I love how you stated that they need to have the fire, not just to, to sell and be the best [00:27:00] possible seller.

It's actually prerequisite to have a true passion around leadership and getting work done through people. it's tricky, right? So, you know, that, that brings me to, to thinking about. This connection that not everybody will see you know, off the bat, it's, it's not so obvious, but there's, there's, there's some I don't know, some overlapping skills between sales and H.

R. How do you see it? How would you describe that? Well, I think HR is, is all sales. In my opinion, I think your entire role is selling why you should be strategically partnering with divisions, with managers, with leaders, with the C suite. It's talking about people as a strategy. If you don't have people at the forefront of your strategy and you are producing and especially selling something, salespeople are your product.

You're selling a [00:28:00] thing, but it's really the sales people that are bringing that product to the customer. And so, so keeping people on the forefront is huge. And that's not always top of mind for executives, understandably so, right? They're thinking bottom line. And so being able to make that connection, I think is critical.

But every time I've come into HR role when I've been leading the HR function. I use the techniques that I used in sales to really establish trust and partnership with, with everybody within the organization. So, 1 thing that I, that I do before I do anything is, is meet with people and and hold stop, start, continue meetings, like.

What is it that really matters to you? Like, what do you want to stop doing? What do you want to start doing? And what do you want to continue doing? That's already working and having those open ended conversations and then following through because nobody likes the salesperson that, that promises you all these things and doesn't do the thing.

So I think the follow through is also really important, but that trust building comes from in my opinion, a really [00:29:00] old sales term. So I might be dating myself a little bit, but called the WIFM. So what's in it for me, and I have literally taken that and applied it to every single job that I've had since being in sales, because I might want somebody to take a training.

It might be super important for me that every single person in the company drop everything and take a compliance training. But at the end of the day, people don't want to do it. So what is their benefit? Like, why should they, why, especially producers, why should sellers take time away from how they make money to do the things that HR is telling them that they should do?

And there are things that you just say, like, you have to do it because you have to do it. That's just the reality of life. But, but in the grand scheme of things, Stopping for a second when you're dealing with a problem and saying, you know what? I really need that strategic partner to talk to, to figure out the best way forward, as opposed to [00:30:00] I'm just going to do whatever I'm going to do, and then I'll just call them when something blows up because helping somebody understand that you're a partner that will walk with them is really the best way, in my opinion, the best way to approach HR and the way that you achieve most people's success.

So it, they're all things that I did when I was in sales. I mean, just building relationships and making connections and connecting other people. And also when there's no benefit to you, like I don't ever approach anything as like, this is going to get me X, Y, Z. I approach everybody as like, how do I get you what you want?

And then that builds the relationship even more. So I think this is so critical, you know, this themes come up before. So just, just underscoring it again for listeners, this idea of always thinking them, not me, you know, like what is, what are these folks need? What's in it for them? With them is what's in it for me, but it's thinking about their with [00:31:00] them.

And I think when we do that, then we become. In a very natural non slimy way more influential because people can see that there's a genuine curiosity and interest and so even with like a compliance training like it's it's not just we'll just do it because I say so like the parent to the petulant child but it's rather and kids don't like it either but it's it's Well, you know, this is something that under governance guidelines and according to the board and our operating principles, it absolutely has to happen.

So we don't like it and we have to accept it and get it done. So that's still better than just do it. But people then understand a bit more of the context and so on. And if you're trying to think about like, what, because then it goes into, okay, if they're protesting, because they can't figure out how to fit it in, you know, especially for producers, because they've got, you know, all the things, then that that's where I think also HR can be a true strategic partner and say, well, let's, [00:32:00] let's walk through this together and figure out how you can create capacity.

What can play what, you know, where, like, given that this thing isn't going away. Okay. 100 percent And that leads to the other piece that I think is also really important from a sales perspective is I rarely maybe 5 percent of the time if that say no, it's always let me see how I can fix that. Let me see how I can do that.

Tell me more about what you really need. And that makes then the times that you do have to say no. Or you do have to say like this is a non negotiable like it has to happen. People just tend to respect that more because they're not hearing it constantly. It really is a thing and, and people trust that because you're, you're, you're being firm about it, that, that they just need to do it.

Well, it's what really with any relationship, right? You know, the more you kind of establish that, that trust and are reliable in how you show [00:33:00] up and are conscious of your intention, matching the impact that you want to have, then when there are those bumps, people are more willing to tolerate them and go with the flow, right?

It's not, it's not like this big, massive, like, oh, like, like, oh my God, yeah. Went into the biggest pothole ever. It's, it's, Oh, okay. Yeah. Didn't love it, but, but there's not this ongoing friction that doesn't need to be there. That's yes. A hundred percent. Yeah. Beautiful. Okay. So we are nearing the end of our time together.

So I do want to touch on one other item, which is. You know, doing more with less you had brought this up to me before we hit record and, and how that is a thing. This is a real team and, you know, needing to think about how do you keep the team motivated? Could you tell us a little bit about, about what that looks like for you these days?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard. And I think people in every industry [00:34:00] and every department I don't think it matters where you are. I think right now, I think since COVID, candidly, it has really been a challenge to make sure that you're meeting everybody's expectations, that you're being flexible, that you're sort of blowing in the wind in a lot of cases where you don't have a whole lot of control and you're just responding to things.

And that can make people feel really overtaxed. And in addition, less and less resources. So that's just across the board. I think having a lot of honesty and a lot of openness with your team and, and even saying like, Hey, listen, you know, this, this isn't great. Like I'm not, I'm not loving this either. And, but I also know that we're going to get through it and we just need to be smart about what we're focusing on.

And so, you know, I've been doing a lot of work specifically with, we call them our enterprise catalysts, our shared service. Teammates who, you know, service the entire organization. So whether that's HR operations, [00:35:00] finance, our creates team, our insights team, we're all natural helpers. We all naturally want to be of service, which is why we're in the roles that we're in.

And so our tendency to say no. It's just really not there. It's like non existent. Like we'll just say yes to everything without thinking about how we're going to do it. And then we make it happen. So then we just get work. Right. And that's just the reality of it. Which I don't think any of us would change that.

So it's really around like, how do we focus on what we can control? And one exercise that I did with my team was I laid out a bunch of post its, just stacks of post its. And I said, on every post it, I want you to write an initiative that you think we need, or a suggestion or recommendation that has come to you over the past couple of weeks that you think that, you know, this would be a great thing to implement.

And I gave them 10 minutes, and they said, well, 10 minutes is way too long. And I said, okay, well, if we finish up sooner, then we'll stop it sooner. So 10 minutes goes by, they're still [00:36:00] writing. I was like, you can take as long as you want, right? So we stick 'em all up on the wall. We have over 200 unique recommendations, suggestions, or things that need to be implemented.

Okay. And how many staff created these 200? At the time there were six of us. Holy jumping. Okay. Yeah, yeah. . So we, we bucketed them. So I said, okay. I said, I'm gonna pull one by one off the wall and I'm gonna read it out. And I want all of you to come to a consensus whether this is something that needs to happen.

It's urgent, has to happen, or we can put it off. And so we go through that exercise, and I just can't even believe it. There were two things that were pulled out of that list that were not critical to do right now. So I said, okay, great, you guys have 198 things that we're going to achieve immediately.

Does that make a lot of sense? Like, it's impossible. And so you have to see the volume of Things that we can do. We work with a lot of really smart people. There really aren't any [00:37:00] bad ideas. So we just need to be more realistic about what's achievable and what's not achievable. And I think that that's up to the leader to set that tone.

But it's hard when you're a leader, especially a leader of a shared service team, because you think you can do it all too. So I think it's being open and honest and really being very clear about what you can and can't handle. And I think it's, you know, also putting metrics to it, right? So like, I can handle so and so number of employees on my team with so and so number of staff people and that's all I can do.

Same with our creates, you know, they can only handle so many projects before we need to add somebody else to the team. So really working through that, I think, and putting things in language that's understandable to decision makers is also brilliant. Oh, absolutely. And some listeners that have been with me since the start almost 2 years ago know that I've talked about that my annual project planner and happy to share it with anybody if they reach out.

But I used to walk around with this. My last role is VP of talent. So then I could share it with [00:38:00] different shareholders as well as my team and so on, because it was all about what's in the pipeline, what's getting delivered and sorry, what's getting delivered and what is in the pipeline. What are we working on?

So there's somebody who's saying we want to delay this or jam this in. They could, I could show them the domino effect and how it pushed off other things that may also be important to them or to the organization. Very, very valuable. It's a simple, simple tool. And I had my whole, you know, my senior directors would feed into it, but it's, it's, Really helpful for people just to understand because going back to what you were just walking us through with the, you know, how you did the exercise with your team and so on to help them sort of see, okay, hang on, it's impossible that only two of these things are noncritical, you know, in coaching.

One of the most important questions we ask in the first 20 minutes of an hour session is. You know, usually something around, well, okay, what's so out of all of those things that you've been talking about, what's the most important or what's the essential piece you want to [00:39:00] dig in on? So there's this, but it's a skill.

It's hard for people, right? And this is why we get to overwhelm. We get scattered, we get distracted. We, you know, we lose focus. I mean, it's this distillation, pushing things through a funnel to then say, okay, what's the most important. And I'm just going to look at that right now. It's so true. And it is.

It's hard because you have a lot of people pulling on you as a resource. And you know, you have to set some type of boundary. And when you go from a very small or a relatively small organization to a larger midsize organization with high growth, oftentimes the The Support functions don't grow as quickly as the production functions do.

And so you're being stretched thinner and thinner and thinner with less and less resources. And so there has to be some way that you're balancing that out. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Beautiful. Well, I really appreciate you walking us through that very specific example. I think it's [00:40:00] so helpful for people, right?

Just to get like thinking about, well, oh, what would this look like in my world? So thank you very much, Kate. This has just been such a valuable conversation. Before we wrap, is there, is there anything, you know, in terms of resources that, that has been really helpful to you recently or over the course of your career that you'd like to share?

Oh, gosh. You know, so many things. I think, you know, always, always reading is really helpful for me. I, one of my favorite authors right now is young Pueblo, who has a lot of like really mindful quotes and, and thoughtful process around how to stay present and how to really make sure that you're not stretching yourself too thin.

But I lean heavily, too, on SHRM, on other HR professionals that are amazing, that I have worked with. LinkedIn has incredible thought leaders that I really, really dive into on a regular basis. And so those, those are the tools that I tend to use most. [00:41:00] I think just staying curious, reading is, is really important.

Yeah, I think it's different inputs and not worrying about necessarily completing absolutely everything, but sort of looking as a buffet and you're sort of picking up and staying current and kind of just, it makes the ideas percolate. And I think that's really important in the kind of work we do, right?

It is. It's moving always, always changing and evolving. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for your time. It's been a real pleasure today. Likewise. Thanks Lisa.

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