EP 43: Diversity strategies, transparency in hiring, quarterly reviews & more w/ Rocki Howard

Rocki Howard, Chief People and Equity Officer at The Mom Project,  joins host James Mackey to discuss how to implement diversity strategies in a hyper-growth environment for growth-stage companies, the complexity and evolution of a business, why it’s crucial to hire experienced leaders and more!

00:22 Who is Rocki Howard?

5:55 How do you implement diversity strategies in a hyper-growth environment for growth-stage companies?

10:33 What does success look like for an organisation.

23:30 The importance of doing quarterly reviews.

27:19 The complexity and evolution of a business.

31:26 Why you need to be transparent with your sales team about their experience.

34:43 Why it’s crucial to hire experienced leaders that have done it before and can help you scale.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rockihoward/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Hello and welcome to Town Acquisition Trends and Strategy. Today we are joined by Rocky Howard. Rocky, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Ah, James, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Yes, I'm really I'm pumped to talk to you about our topics today. Before we jump into it though, would you mind sharing a little bit about your background and about, you know, where you currently work, just so people understand your perspective and where you're coming from

Who is Rocki Howard?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

today?

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Sure. Well, again, my name is Rocky Howard. I identify as she, her, black, Christian, Gen X, wife mom. Um, I've been in the talent acquisition space for 30 years. I've worked everywhere from temp to perm to contingent to corporate to RPO. Um, I am now the chief people and equity officer at the Mom Project. If you're not familiar, the Mom Project actually works with companies to help women get into good companies, right? And to work on in ways of their own terms. And we do that through two ways. We do that through, you know, our tech and our supportive services in terms of placing moms. We do that through connecting them with our communities. We do that through our RISE program, which helps to give scholarships and upskill women, especially women of color. And we also do that through our work labs division. And so it's a really exciting place. I actually get to head people for our organization and I still get to work in the talent acquisition space.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah, that sounds great. And um, it's a it's a pretty high growth company as well, right? I mean, I saw it's like a 80 million series C. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yep, we completed our series C last year, $80 million worth of investment. We have about 300 employees, and so yes, we're actually in that hyper growth stage.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

That's incredible. And that must be wow, so much responsibility and so much work as a chief people officer in that in that type of hype hypergrowth company.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

How are you keeping up with it all?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Well, uh, lots of prayer, lots of uh lots of caffeine, right? Lots of things. Um, you know, really it when you think about our mission to really help grow the economic opportunity for women, we're trying to create a billion dollars worth of economic opportunity for women and for moms. And I'm a wife and mom of four. And so being very passionate around that mission, my children's lives is a lot different than the life I had because I did have economic opportunity and I was able to kind of change the trajectory of my family, you know, in one generation through economic opportunity. And so on those days where the work is hard, I really just kind of go back to the mission. And while we're here, and that it's a it's a great way to keep us going, right? Like my whole job is about creating high performing and diverse teams so that we can be in service to mom. And that's an awful lot of uh energy it puts behind you when that's what you're looking forward to.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

I love it. And you said around 350 employees or how many employees? About 300. Okay, 300. So, so I guess like one thing before we dive into uh diversity and and how to implement diversity strategies. I would just be curious to like, okay, so hypergrowth 80 million series C, could you tell us a little bit about, you know, from a time perspective, like what are the core things you're focused on as a CPO and how is your time kind of divided amongst those things? Could you just tell us a little bit about your day-to-day and how you approach uh your position in a hypergrowth company?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Sure, sure. I don't think there is a division of time, right? Like my time, my time is is my time, and it it it is um it is never equally divided. And and anyone who's a chief people and equity officer know that it can change from day to day. But what I will talk about are my areas of focus, right? And so I think there's a um a couple of ways I can approach that. I think when you think about the team that I've spent building to actually support and scale our growth, right? The focus areas have certainly been around um our operations department. I take a very different point of view to this. And I think a lot of times we ask our HRBPs to be all-encompassing, right? Well, what I've done is kind of separated out that HRBP and that um operations, that HR operations function, right? And so that we're really developing strategic HR business partners and those partnerships throughout the organization while um actually growing a strong foundation and infrastructure through our talent operations department. And that's been a very important thing for us to do. I don't believe you can build a house on a crack foundation. So getting that infrastructure right and helping our talent operations team to build that has been certainly a key point of uh my focus, right? Obviously, we're in the talent acquisition business. And as an organization, we're acquiring talent pretty quickly as well. So really working to build a world-class talent acquisition function has been key and important. Um, I also believe that when you attract talent, it's important to retain talent. And so for me, the other key focus areas have been about our diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives, right? Our talent equity initiatives and our learning and development strategies and those initiatives as well. And so when you think about my focus as a chief people and equity officer, it's really um goes across the talent management continuum from the very beginning of attracting talent to, you know, unfortunately, the very end sometimes when talent just it decides to leave and making sure that it's a wonderful experience across that continuum.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah,

How do you implement diversity strategies in a hyper-growth environment for growth-stage companies?

SPEAKER_01 6:41

it's uh I really find the chief people officer role fascinating in a hyper-growth environment where things are changing so quickly. And you, as you said, you have to build up like the infrastructure for the operations to do it well at scale. And you know, obviously, people are the the most they they're the primary driver of value with any any organization, and you have to get it right. And it's uh it's just it's a big job. So I'm always fascinated. And that's why I wanted to ask you just a little bit about your day-to-day because I I find it very interesting. I just to dive a little bit more into diversity, I would just at a high level love to get your thoughts on how to how to make diversity a focus in a hyper-growth environment that's constantly evolving and scaling quickly. And you have like a lot of, you know, obviously a lot of priorities, a lot of things that need to get done. Um, how do you go about implementing diversity strategies uh in a hypergrowth environment for a growth stage company? I'd love to get your thoughts on that, and we can dive more into tactics and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, so for me, I think it whether it's hyper-growth or larger companies, but I think hypergrowth um organizations, small, mid-sized businesses have a unique opportunity to kind of take a step back and go right from the beginning and embed it as a priority, right? And really looking at diversity both from a business imperative perspective and a human imperative perspective. Because I think for diversity of work, and diversity is just one piece of it, right? Diversity is about representation. It's got to be about diversity and equity and inclusion and belonging. So diversity, in my opinion, looks at the beginning part and how do we drive um, how do we drive representation? Include equity, inclusion, belonging is about how do we keep our team members, how do we represent all dimensions of diversity and keep them throughout the talent lifecycle, right? And that priority really comes at the top of the business and getting the commitment of your founders, your CEOs, your chief staff to be able to have the um resources that you need to be able to drive it and to have senior leaders who understand it and recognize it as a priority and are willing to be accountable for it, right? So if you look at what I talked about earlier, is that my job is to build a uh a high performing inclusive culture where we can be inclusive to moms. That's our number one OKR as an organization. When it's tied to your OKRs, then it's tied to the priorities and how we're held accountable across the business, right? And so it's really important when you ask about how do we prioritize, it happens at the front of the business. It happens from the top, it happens when you included in your OKRs, it happens when you included, you know, in your function. I'm a chief people and equity officer. And I think, again, I'm a big believer in setting foundations and being able to keep diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at a core of what you do starts with those foundations.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Can you tell us a little bit more about the OKRs and how that's incorporated into this into diversity for your team?

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yeah, well, I think when you talk about OKRs, our organization has OKRs. These are the you know the key performance indicators for our business. And that's not just about diversity, that is about the whole business, right? So when you think about this is what our business is focused on, this is how we're gonna measure success, this is what we're driving towards as an organization, we have core OKRs, right? And I I'm not gonna share all of them, right? It's fair enough. I obviously can't do that, but what the one that's tied to people and tied to equity is about building a high performing and inclusive culture. And then when we come down, like so that's the organizational OKR. And then my team has very specific OKRs that tie up to that and say, how are we actually going to do that? What does that look like? And so another way to think about the answer to your question is I think when when, especially when smaller organizations do this, they get um what I call a bit of ooh shiny syndrome, right? We want to go look and see what Coke has been doing and what Amazon and what Mang has been doing and think that we have to do all of those things. And that's certainly not true. I think it's a little bit simpler than that. I

What does success look like for The Mom Project?

SPEAKER_02 11:19

think what you have to really do as an organization is to be able to go, what does diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, an authentic outcome look like for us? What does success look like? Right. And then you start to break it down and you build your program down there, but you have to really understand what does success look like for your organization?

SPEAKER_01 11:46

So let's say for growth stage companies that that really want to put diversity at the forefront and make it a priority and start when they're a younger organization. Um like what would your be what would be your advice for getting started? Like these are the first three things you should do. I mean, obviously, so like let's say the company's aligned that this is a priority. How do you go about implementing um process around making it happen? For sure. What would you be tracking? I mean, like what would be the the primary uh outcomes? Like, you know, you said like companies have to decide what success looks like, but how would you define success, right? Like, what would you tell talented people leaders saying, like, could do you have any advice and say, like, this is what success looks like, these are the metrics you implement, this is where you start? Is there anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Again, I think this is a bit of a mistake because what works for the mom project may not work for your organization, right? And so I think you start with four key questions, right? What does DEIB mean to your organization? So, in our organization, for example, we look at five focus areas around the multiple dimensions of diversity that we want to focus on. What does that look like for you? And then I think you have to ask the question, okay, well, who is responsible for that? To your point, in hyper-growth environments, not everyone is lucky enough to have a dedicated diversity resource. So who's responsible? How do we create a force multiplier effect where very specific people are responsible for driving our initiatives? How are we going to measure success? So, back to your question about what metrics you're driving, right? That may look very different for very different organizations, depending upon how you measure success. So let me use an example, right? If I want to see one of ours, is we want to see more people of color in our executive team and in our senior leadership team, right? So then we look at a multitude of um KPIs as we go across the continuum that say, what might get us there, right? And that's everything from how are we sourcing candidates, who goes at the top of the funnel? What is their experience throughout the process? How are we converting those candidates? What do when they're here in the organization, what's their feedback in terms of employee experience, et cetera? Do we have a plan about growth for that particular person? Um, what does um their performance indicators and their their their um you know, what am I trying to say? Their their uh uh uh uh performance management scores look like, right? It's all of those types of things. And so when we look at um how are we promoting people, you know, so so when you think about it, you've got to think about it in terms of a continuum and thinking again, what does success look like? And there's another key here. Not only what does success look like, but where are you now? So you have to be able to think about if success looks like here, maybe success is I want, you know, this particular organization to be 40% diverse. And here's how we define diversity, but today we're 10%, right? Then you've got to look at the activities that drive you filling the gap between where you are today and what you want to get to, and then how do you measure the success of those particular initiatives? So this is why I never will answer, like, oh, here's how you measure success, and here's your specific key performance indicators that are one size fits all because it doesn't. And then I think there's a couple of other things. You've got to be able to measure accountability. Who's gonna be accountable for this in your organization? I'm a big believer that no one person is accountable. The challenge is we don't teach people what their responsibility is in the diversity initiatives and then how they're accountable. I think everybody is because when people come in and experience our organization, when people come in and interview, when people look at our brands, etc., they're going to look at their experience across the board. And if I'm the receptionist and I'm greeting people and I don't understand that I have a responsibility there and then I'm held accountable, then I'm not contributing to that, right? So I think sometimes we want to make it really complex and, you know, hire strategists and feel like, oh, I'm in a small organization and I can't afford a $50,000 consultant. And sure, there are consultants that are out there that are worth it, but could you accomplish the same by asking a couple of key questions and revisiting them and diving deeper and making sure those answers are smart? And then once you've moved, then you know what? Let's dig a little bit deeper. And there are certain things that I do think that we can do and we can talk about that, especially from a TA perspective, when we think about evolving our what I call diversity hiring maturity. There are, you know, pillars that we can very specifically look at. But I think when you're talking about overall DEI B strategy, that's my fundamental approach.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head too, right? Because it's you have to look at the entire employee lifecycle and you have to look at optimizing each part of it from a DI perspective. It's not, you know, it's not, it doesn't sit in just town acquisition or just people ops or just in uh very specific processes, but it's something that's kind of all-encompassing, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:44

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

From an accountability perspective, like I think you said this, it's not just one person, it's you know, a lot of different roles within the company can be accountable for segments of it because again, it's it's really the entire employee life cycle from when people are candidates to working at the company to going through their career track and moving up within the organization. So um it sounds like there's you know, account it has to be kind of like uh almost like part of, I don't know, performance necessarily, but accountability to me is is linked to performance metrics, like in my mind, right? Like it has to so if we're talking accountability, that maybe does that mean that several people and and several different roles and functions throughout the organization have DENI tied to performance in terms of like how do you how do you go? Could we talk a little bit more about the accountability piece and and how you incorporate that and and and make that part of performance for people in different ways?

SPEAKER_02 18:34

I think it's it's it's you can do it in a couple of different ways. We um like to call it carrot or stick, right? And so I think when you think about kind of the carrot piece, um, you know, I'll give you an example probably on the carrot side. Um, you know, at TMP, we have both competencies and values, right? And so our competencies are our or like these are the competencies that we believe that every employee needs to be successful here at TMP. And then of course we have our values, and you have to be able to bring those to life, right? And so we just implemented um a performance management system um and process that's a quarterly evaluation process. And I'm really so very proud of this because it's not just about looking at, oh, you had a goal to sell $1,000 worth of product, you sold $1,000 worth of product. So you're a five, and that's all we're measuring you on. Because the truth is, is that when we let people go from the organization, it's rarely be simply because they don't have the skills to do the job. It's usually all of the other stuff around the skills, right? So it is how does that person work? How do they interact? Are they a good um representation of how we do business tied back to values? So our performance management system takes all of that into account. We call it hype, our high performance evaluation process, right? And so um, when you come into the hype process, you get feedback on how your behaviors align to our competencies, how your behaviors align to our values, you get a peer and 360 review, and you get assessed on your goals. So I know this is a long way. Let me get to the answer of your question of carrot and stick in accountability. One of our competencies is to be inclusive, one of our values is respectful. It all ties back in to equity, inclusion, and belonging. So, in that way, every single solitary employee of ours is tied and connected, and their performance is getting tied and connected to our diversity initiatives, right? It also keeps it top of mind. We're having conversations about it every single quarter. I think higher level, and we haven't gotten here as an organization that's part of our process, is that I believe leaders should be held accountable to your overall diversity strategy as well. Is it about attracting talent? Is it about retaining talent? Is it about how that talent feels when they work for that particular manager? I think that those are all ways that we can hold leadership accountable. Well, that's more of a that's more of a stick, though. It's a direct stick, right? Your performance, i.e., a lot of times your bonus, your contingent comp is going to be tied in part back to this initiative that we keep saying is so very important to our organization.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

I love that because I I think honestly, a lot of companies probably don't do a very good job of incorporating their values into performance. And I feel like a lot of the times values are just something that are put up on the wall or right, or just like something that it's like, okay, it's an employee handbook or it's on some like Google Doc or you know, whatever it might be, but it's not actually like a living part of the company.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

And if you ask most people, they can't rattle them off, right? They can't even tell you what they are.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yeah, so I think tying that into performance is is really smart, and I think more companies should do that. Um, and I I guess real quick though, just so we know what performance management system are you using? Like what tool is this?

SPEAKER_02 22:32

We use lattice, right? And we've we've built out um our hype process. We designed our hype process and then we use lattice to execute it. And I think the the more important pieces of this is that. You know, those conversations need to happen all the time. So we also use Lattice's one-on-one functionality. Um, we use their grow model or their grow module, and then we use the performance management. So it's not that you're just in lattice once a quarter when it's time to do this. Like we are saying to all of our managers, you should be having one-on-ones with people. This is where your feedback should go. And we actually monitor that.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Sure. And what are your, I mean, what are your thoughts on Lattice? Just so people tuning in, if they're considering the product, like, have you worked with other products beyond Lattice? Like, how do you think it it does in the marketplace? And do you feel like it's a really good tool? Are you happy with it?

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Yeah, I'm happy with Lattice. I think, you know, for me, what I'm probably more happy with is I've had a great experience with Jill, our customer support and our account manager. And I think that always makes it always come into play. Um, Lattice is not the most intuitive, if I'm honest. We have to do a lot of back-end work a lot of times to make A equal B. Um, but it is robust in terms of its functionality. So there's pros and cons, but I think what tips it over the edge and you know hasn't had me go searching for a new tool as of today is that we are really lucky we have great customer support. And our account manager, when we call her and say, like, look, we're having a problem or a challenge, um, or this is how we view performance management, can Lattice help us to accommodate this? They're always there to help us through that process.

The importance of doing quarterly reviews.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

That's really good to know.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Um, and I I also I like the fact that y'all are doing quarterly reviews.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Well, let's let's be honest, right? Like um, if you're not doing it on a regular basis, you know, you set some goal in January, nobody thinks about it until October and November until you start talking about performance review, then everyone is scrambling. You get a lot of recency bias because you're really evaluating people on their latest piece of performance, right? Either they did this thing really well in you know October, November, or they really sucked in October and November. And there's no way if you're not doing it on a regular basis that you can remember what heck, I can't remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday. Nonetheless, you know, what people did six, seven, eight months ago. I think the other thing is that going back to those of us who are in hypergrowth mode, right? What we do changes quite.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yes, that's what I was gonna say. Like it's just uh my um buddy of mine, uh Steve Cadigan, um, he's he was this uh first uh chief people officer of LinkedIn, and he always made this joke it's like you know, the turnover in tech and like how fast things change in hypergrowth. He's like, if somebody's been at a company for 10 months, it's like, oh my gosh, like you're still here, amazing!

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Like it makes these definitely like dog ears, right? Like dog ears, right? I've got I'm a doggy mom, I've got two floating around. But to be able to take advantage of that and harness that into growth and development, you've got to be having ongoing conversations, right? Right. Um, and quite frankly, when you're in hypergrowth mode, the other thing that happens and changes is what I needed in a role 18 months ago, it could be the same role and title, but there's an evolution in terms of the skills and the nuanced skills that I need. And if I'm not having conversations and coaching and developing people, then you know, again, we go back to that talent life cycle. I'm much more likely to lose people because I'm not having conversations in terms of how I develop them.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

I love this. So if we could, I want to, if it's possible, I'd like to slow down on this topic because I don't think we've actually really focused in on this on the show before. But role, I don't know what the way to say this is like role evolution almost like in hyper growth, things change so quickly, right? And people have to adapt with that change to um fill the needs of the position, right, as it evolves. Um, you know, one thing as a CEO myself, and we're you know a smaller company, around 40 people all in with uh employees and contractors and whatnot, but um I one thing I've intentionally tried to do is almost try to slow that down a little bit. So we have like more specialists where they're like they're they're maybe not doing quite as many things and they're able to really hone in a focus because there are changes, right? Like we're constantly, it feels like we're constantly we're doing it less, but we try to we try to slow down on like, okay, if we have to change something related to performance management or we have to change something related to process. You know, it used to be like a couple of years ago, it seems like every you know, couple weeks or every month you're like rolling something out, and now it's we're being a little bit more thoughtful and trying to slow that down. And we're trying to just do like one thing at a time, right? Like, okay, this month we need to roll this out, but we're not gonna roll two things out. We're gonna do this one thing. Let's make sure that everybody, you know, can understands it and can ask questions, and then next month or next quarter we could do something else. So I guess it's just it, yeah. How do you go about like the ever-evolving uh change that's that's happening with with roles? And do you do you try to like intentionally slow that down, or how do you go about evaluating you know what each position should be doing and making sure it's changing with the needs of the organization? I feel like that's really complicated,

The complexity and evolution of a business.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

and I don't feel like a lot of people actually talk about this, right?

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Because it's it is extremely complicated. And I I think the challenge is you don't always recognize when it kicks in, right? So, so I'm not gonna talk about the mom project specifically, but I'm just gonna talk about the evolution of business, right? So you're in this stage where you have 40 people, let's say, and now you all can iterate pretty quickly, you can get the whole group together, you can slow down, you can speed up, you can do this. As your business grows and changes, especially if you're going through hypergrowth, what happens is a lot of times you have people who step up or that become your trusted people. And so you toss things at that person because they're always there, they're always willing to help, they're willing to support, they have this skill over here, right? And it's kind of for lack of a better term, we're all running the business together, we're all in it together. People go wide, right? Now all of a sudden your business scales. It scales to one X, it scales two X, it scales three X. Now you're getting to the point, James, where you're talking about what you're talking about. Now I need a specialist who can go deep, right? And so even if you think about the evolution, let's think about it in its most simplest terms, an HR. So small companies, you may hire an HR generalist. That HR generalist, when you have 50, 100 people, that person's usually handling payroll, comp, Ben. They're handling operations, they're doing your hiring, they're handling any, you know, terminations or employee engagement issues that you're having, right? You have what you start off with one person who's, you know, I'm a Whitney Houston fan of here. I'm every woman behind me, right? Like they're everything. Then all of a sudden you get to be 200 people. And that growth from 100 to 200, you go, oh crap, my HR business partner can't handle all this. So now I'm gonna hire a recruiter to help that person recruit. Okay. Now you're at 200 and you're like, okay, I'm still growing. And so now I need a separate person to do payroll because they have to go deep. And guess what? What you figure out along the way is my HR generalist can't go deep enough in all of these areas, nor do they have the time. And so now I need to hire a specialist. What also happens, unfortunately, that we don't always like to talk about is maybe that HR journalist that you started out with who could do a little bit of all of it, now you're starting to segment it out and go deep. That person truly may be a person who can do all of it at this size company, but now that you're asking them to go deep. So now you want them to be truly an HR business partner, right? And you want them to focus strategically with the leaders and you want them to build talent management strategies and you want them to work on employee engagement, et cetera, they may no longer have that core skill set. And that's the dirty secret that we don't like to talk about, and that this in this hypergrowth phase, people outgrow their roles, which is why it's important to kind of have that communication with them. So you can either help coach develop, stretch them, help look at the right opportunity in the right role for them, or be having an ongoing conversation to set the stage of this isn't, we're growing. Here's what we need in the role. And why we may absolutely love you, you're no longer that place. It was the reason why the Netflix people strategy was so brilliant because they gave space for that. They gave space to say, you know what, this is no longer with you. We're gonna write you a big A check because we appreciate your contribution. But instead of making you miserable and us miserable, let's give you an opportunity to go do what you do really well in an organization that appreciates this particular skill.

Why you need to be transparent with your sales team about their experience.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

For sure. And I think you see that most often with revenue leaders, at least. I I mean, I see that a lot in in sales leaders, uh, particularly where uh companies and and VCs are are looking for individuals that have gone through a certain scale motion before. Uh, and some sometimes you see uh people go through several uh you know stages of revenue and scale. Uh but generally speaking, you you know, you end up seeing VPs of sales that have okay, they're they're the person that takes the company from 500,000 to a few million ARR, and then you have the person from like three million to 10 million, and then you have the 10 to 25, and you got the 25 to 100, right? Um, so so I I see like I I think obviously it's very situational, right? Like there's no right or wrong way to do it. But yeah, I think I think just transparency around these types of conversations is really important. And and hopefully, and if you're really lucky as a leader, you're working with other leaders that the ultimate goal is to achieve the mission of the company. And hopefully, and this doesn't always happen, um, but hopefully it's like people understand like, okay, if we have to bring in the specialist or somebody who's gone through this level of scale, that's an opportunity for us to learn from them.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

And I don't think leaders always see it that way. They feel like, oh, somebody's coming in on top. Like they feel you know, some people don't like that. But the reality is like, look, if we're gonna be able to learn from them, you know, upgrade our skill set and take the company to the next level and achieve our mission, like that's really that's what we're here to do. Like, whatever's the most effective way, whether you know we're leading the show or somebody else is coming in to help us, let's just do the thing, right? Let's get it done. And so I think if we really like to get people that want that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Yeah, I think it's also where you have to separate your heart and your head, right? Because most of us who are good leaders in this kind of business, we're a lot heart-driven, right? It's passion, it's focus, it's it all comes from the heart, right? And I think this is the state that becomes a start stage in the business where you have to take a step back, you have to take, you know, James, Rocky, whoever out of the out of your mind and go, what do I need in this role at this stage of the business? What are the skills that I need? Okay, cool. James doesn't have it, Rocky doesn't have it. So what do we do? Do we have time to upskill them? Do I still need I need James to or Rocky to do this? But I need, to your point, that person to come here so that we can all grow and develop and bring the business forward. Um yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

It's important. I mean, so like just a real life example. So at Secure Vision, within the next six months, I want to hire a chief operating officer. I want to get somebody with like 20 years of experience scaling service companies, recurring revenue, and maybe even some SaaS like and services so they kind of understand both worlds. Um, you know, I see my role as the company gets bigger, focusing more on growth, relationships, content. I mean, that's really my strength. That's how I've gotten us to where we are. But we're getting to the size now where it's like, I kind of want a chief operator that has done this for more years than I have, that can bring that experience to the table. And I want to listen to them. Like, I don't want to tell, I want to get out of their way, just

Why it’s crucial to hire experienced leaders that have done it before and can help you scale.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

be like, hey, what do we need to do? How can I empower you to help us scale this business? Um, and I think that that's like again, if you can build a culture where it's it's just people are just really, as you said, focused on the passion and the outcome and the mission. And um, the focus can just be on like, look, how can we elevate this team to get the best possible results, right? And and who do we need? What skill sets do we need to make that happen? Um, I think that companies that that can do that most effectively are going to be the most successful, obviously.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Well, and I'm bravo to you for recognizing it. I sit on the board of an organization called Wedge, and they're doing a very similar thing. The CEO is brilliant, and he's like, these are the spaces where I need tenured professionals in this business to help come help me take it to the next stage. Here's what I'm really good at. I'm bringing in these two people who are really good at this, and it's it's not about ego, it's really about how do we collectively believe in the business and the business model, and then how do we all collectively bring that business forward? And when we all bring the business forward, we all win.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yeah, I mean, I think you have to know when to solve the problem versus when to just sometimes what you have to solve is getting the right person. And I I there's several times I would say it happens to me a lot less. I'm getting better at it, but I would still say, like, once a quarter, I get like stuck in this rabbit hole where I'm trying to like solve a problem or trying to figure something out. And then I'm like, wait, why am I why am I doing this? Like, there's somebody who already like I was in one of my CO peer groups, and I had like questions about stock options and how that would go about terms of like granting equity to you know leaders and stuff like that within the company, and you know, how to go about presenting that and what that would look like. And I was like, There's I just had some blind spots, and I was like, Yeah, how do you learn how to do this stuff? And then one of the other COs just looked at me, he's like, Why wouldn't you just hire a law firm that specializes in this? Absolutely. And I it was just such a like, I was like, Oh my gosh, like I did it again. Like you fall into that trap of like problem solving sometimes when nine times out of the 10, our job as leaders is to find the specialist, as you said, right? Find the specialist who's already done it. Like, we don't have to solve all these problems. We just have to, you know, at the core, like every problem or opportunity is around people. You have to find how to connect the right resources, empower the right people, uh, attract and retain the right people that that have the answers. You don't have to have all the answers, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:58

For sure. It's um, I'm a lean practitioner, you know, like lean six sigma. So one of the first things they teach you is don't solution when you're in the let's identify what we're trying to solve for, and then let's not solution, but so our brains are wired to you know, oh, here's the problem. So now I've got to solve it. Let's identify and then let's figure out what the right solution is. And am I the right person to come up with the solution? And a lot of times it's no, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

More times than we we may like to admit, right?

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Like, yeah, it's no, I'm not right, right.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Well, look, this has been a great conversation. I've I've learned a lot. I think we're probably coming up on a good stopping point. Um, and I just wanted to say, you know, thank you so much for joining us today, for having this conversation with me. Um, and I I before we jump off, if if people want to engage with you, um, reach out to you, what what's the best way to do so? Is it on LinkedIn or what are your what's your preference?

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Yeah, I am most active on LinkedIn. It's Rocky with an I Howard. Um, and I'm always there, I'm always interacting. It's probably the best way to connect and reach with me. Absolutely. And obviously, if you're interested in diving deeper in your company who really prioritizes hiring women, hiring working women, you have flexible options, you know, please reach out to us at the Mom Project. Um, if you're looking for some corporate social responsibility where you'd really like to help working women achieve more um, you know, economic power, please reach out to momproject.org and engage with our RISE program.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

I love it. I love it. And also you have your own podcast as well, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:37

I do for sure. I am the host of the Voices of Diversity podcast, which is really about um understanding how people who are of multiple dimensions of diversity experience corporate. And I have the Grown Woman Life podcast, which has really been geared towards bold, brilliant, and badass women, um, career women. And who knows, James? I'll keep you posted. There could be some books coming out soon. Um we put the podcast on hiatus. We've been focusing on different directions, but uh there's there's there's more coming soon.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Well, yeah, whenever you have something going on, like a book or a new podcast, definitely let me know and we can we can jump on another show and talk about it. Really looking forward to doing that. Well, Rocky, thank you so much for joining us today. And for everybody tuning in, thank you as well. And we'll see you next time. Take care.