Latest / Roast the Post Podcast / Director of HR: The First Team Fallacy with Brandi Copeland

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Director of HR: The First Team Fallacy with Brandi Copeland · Roast the Post Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: Have I
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: got a job ad for you this week.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: when I tell you that this one sent me down the rabbit
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_02: hole, well, you can start calling me Alice now.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: At first, I thought I was reviewing a director
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: of HR posting, then I found myself reading
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: blog posts written by the CEO, and one line in particular stopped me in my tracks.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Our company's culture won't adapt to you, you must adapt to it.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: This, my friends, isn't just another HR job ad.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the most opinionated, transparent, and philosophically
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: driven postings we've ever featured on Roast the Post.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Whether that's a good thing, well, that's exactly what we're here to figure out.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: And because this one raises some genuinely big questions about leadership,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: culture, and human resources, we have called in reinforcements.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Joining Paul and me today is none other than Brandi Copeland.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Brandi has spent more than 15 years leading HR and People programs at organizations like
• 1:07
  Disney and NBC Universal before launching the Corporate Unspiral,
• 1:10
  a Substack for ambitious
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: corporate professionals who are tired of overthinking every awkward Slack message,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: replaying meetings over dinner, and wondering why work feels so emotionally expensive.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Her writing is funny, insightful, refreshingly practical, and a reminder that
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: you can care deeply about your career without letting it consume your life.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Brandi, welcome to Roast the Post.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on this one.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks friends for having
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: me.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Brandi.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: So let me share a little bit before we get into the Roasty Profile.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: I found this job ad because a friend of mine is job searching right now.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so like sometimes I'll send her posts or whatever.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: And she shared this one with me and she was like, am I going crazy
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: here or is is there something happening here with this job ad?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so I read it, and that's when I rabbit-holed and was like...
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: what is happening?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so yeah, I held on to that one for a while and wanted
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: someone with an HR background to guest with us on this episode.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so Brandi is here to help us out.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna share with you now the Roasty Profile.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: The job title is Director of HR.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: The report-to title is unknown, but I think we can make some guesses based on the job ad.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: The company sizes 51 to 200 employees.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: The industry is appliances, electrical, and electronics manufacturing.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: What they do, they design and manufacture ocean oceanographic instrumentation and marine
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: technology solutions that help customers collect and analyze data in marine environments
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: around the world.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Their head office location is in Victoria, BC, Canada, which is where I am from.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the job location is...
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: depends where you look.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it says it's in Halifax, Nova Scotia or Victoria, BC.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Their geographical operating area is global and the job type is full-time hybrid.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Got it?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Don't throw it out there.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: But so some of the rules... we don't name and shame.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's really easy to figure out who these companies are.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: and then we also read the job ad as written, like, verbatim.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: So if there are grammatical errors or formatting issues or whatever,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: we're just gonna read it exactly the way it's written.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: and also before we get started,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: you can vote on rating the show...
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we always do a rating for the job ad and the job design at the end.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: But if you want to check it out for yourself, the whole job posting is linked.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: you can follow along.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to open a new tab and it is... what is it Paul?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: vote.roastthepost.show
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so if you open a tab,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: enter that at the top,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: you can vote and you can read and follow along the full job ad.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: So here we go.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: The company story.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's how it starts.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: We've come a long way.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: This company has 52 years of experience designing and building ocean... oceanographic...
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how to say this word.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Why did I choose its job ad?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: oceanographic instrumentation.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And we have clocked consistent year-on-year growth of greater than 15%.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: We have customers on all seven continents.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: We have a 70-plus person team of employees that care deeply about customer outcomes.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: In our market, we are known for two things.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: One, going to the ends of the earth to make our customers
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: successful, and two, bringing fresh ideas to an established market.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Earlier this year, we were acquired by Blah Blah Capital.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Our mission to drive the success of blah blah's marine technology thesis.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: This company is the operating foundation of that thesis, and our focus is on growing
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: the core business while carefully extending our solutions set via acquisition.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: We anticipate dramatic growth and significant change in the next three to five years.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the company story there.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Petagoogoo, blah, blah.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna name the the companies in detail, but you get the idea.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: the job ad itself isn't really long, so I feel like we can go through all
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: of it, but I wanted to pause here and see if anyone had anything to say.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Did did something stand out just from the company story itself?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Did you glean anything that you want to share?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: why don't you go ahead, Brandi, if there's anything you wanna talk about there?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so Paul, I know you haven't seen the job description,
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: but Jennifer was nice enough to share it with me in advance.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I have read through this several times because I'm like trying
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: to get comfortable with what's happening here.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And like the first few sentences, I'm like, okay, this is fine.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what I like about it,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: because I there are things I like about it, fifty-two years in xbusiness.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is a stable company.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're growing year over year.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: seventy people.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's an interesting size.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: The it's a global company.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: But then we start to like dip our toe into some weird territory when
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: you say things like dramatic growth and what was... they said they were
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: acquired by Blah Blah Capital.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: So all of the sudden my spidey senses start to go off because the dramatic... the term
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: "dramatic growth" and "significant change" all of the sudden tell me this isn't just
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: your standard HR job.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: for me, this is a small, specialized manufacturer of very, very, very specialized equipment.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: They've been around for decades.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: They've been around for a long time.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that a nuance to this story that's unfolding, for me anyway, from that opening
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: "about the company" kind of paragraph, is that the folks who founded the company and perhaps
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: some of the senior leadership, they're going through a bit of a transition plan.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're getting ready to retire, to exit the business.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got a capital company coming in who's done an acquisition.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably private equity.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: When private equity gets involved in stuff,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I always have question marks.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: the goal for private equity is typically to extract value rather than grow and help
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: a business become more resilient.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there may be some shades of that happening.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: 70 people, not a huge company in the grand scheme of like, this is a big multinational
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: company or whatever, but 70 people for a designer and manufacturer of this type of
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: equipment that is actually fairly sizable.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: because in this industry, everything is so bespoke, everything is so specialized.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're not manufacturing volume, you're manufacturing a handful
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: of units a year probably in your very specialized lines of stuff.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this story is starting to become kind of interesting to me,
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: but Jen, why don't you carry on with the next section?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Next is how we operate.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: and then it goes into what you inherit and then your mission.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I think I might just read all three of those sections
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: because they're each just one paragraph, and then we can get into it.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: How we operate.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: At this company, we do things a bit differently.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: Think daily huddles, think Rockefeller habits, scaling up, and the one page plan.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Think town hall meetings with on-the-fly Q&A sessions.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: If you are familiar with these concepts or they are of interest to you, then you might be a fit.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: We want people who want to commit their hands, their heads, and their hearts to their position.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: You see this commitment in our employee Glassdoor rating, an impressive 4.70 on 5.0.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: it's actually 4.6 now, but whateves.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: I checked.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then we go into
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: what you inherit.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: A 70-person team distributed across Victoria, Halifax, Ontario, the UK, and remote.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Established scorecard framework plus ABC methodology.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: A CEO also playing the role of CPO, which is Chief Purpose Officer,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: who provides operating philosophy and is your right-hand partner.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: No HR team to inherit.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: You build it as you go.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Active acquisition pipeline that will keep adding people and complexity.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: This is an HR seat for someone who treats high standards as a form of care for the team.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Your mission is the next section.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Bring our people system to life.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: This company's HR
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: function is built to raise individual and collective performance, which calls for high
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: standards, honest feedback, and a willingness to coach through difficult conversations.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Hire "A Players".
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: Run the review cycle, equip managers to do the same.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Cascade our people system into every acquisition.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Stay compliant across five jurisdictions.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just gonna pause there because that was everything you need to know about
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: the company in three paragraphs.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: There it is.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: so share your thoughts, please.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: why don't you go ahead?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Brandi.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: Where... where do we start?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: for listeners to understand that Brandi and I both have HR backgrounds.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is like... quite... this type of job ad and this type of wording, I think, is
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: very activating for us because I think we've been there, we've done that and it's right
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: there in front of us.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I appreciate the transparency so that I can promptly click out
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: of the job description if I was even thinking of considering to apply.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for being open and honest about what it is that you bring to the table.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: They start...
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: right up front by bringing all of these different methodologies to the table.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, we...
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: the Rockefeller habits and this scaling up,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: that means their philosophy, they've already decided.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: That they're gonna live and die by these antiquated philosophies that are sitting out there.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And your job now is to implement it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the vibe that I got.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: It would... it was giving like EOS, you are an implementer of how we feel things should be run.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right in that first sentence.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no thought partnership and there's no help us think
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: through how we should be scaling our people operation.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's no... there's no team to inherit.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: How would you build this out?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: We want somebody to come in and evaluate our processes, evaluate how we're doing
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: things, and then work in partnership with our leadership team to execute this.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that stood out to me in that how we operate section was that they want
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: was in capital letters, they want someone to commit their hands, their heads, and their
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: hearts.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like red flag number two in that's in that section.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I probably had two before that too.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: But basically forget your nights and weekends at the door because they want you
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: to emotionally invest.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: everything that you have in the role, whether you're qualified for it or not, or whether
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: your performance is meeting their, what did they call it, their... their high standards or not.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like you,
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: you're about to sacrifice everything that you are as a person to go work
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: for this company.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: So and I'm still at the how we operates.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say about how we operate, the on the fly Q&A freaks me out because I was at a P/E
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: backed firm working with them not that long ago and the CEO was like very... he loved to do
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: this as well.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: But what it created for us on the HR problems was a lot of issues or on
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: the HR side was just a lot of problems because he would sit there and a
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Answer questions that people had, and then he would commit something to
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: them that all of a sudden he didn't have to follow through on, but we did
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: on our side.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just...
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was just sitting there taking a list of things that I
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: needed to do afterwards because he wanted to have these on-the-fly Q&A sessions.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Where typically a good HR partner will plan town halls and Q&A sessions, set some
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: boundaries, give them some standardized language of like... here's what we could do and
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: here's what we can't do.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we're hearing in surveys, so this might come up.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: This is maybe how you might want to think about answering that.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: So that that alone freaks me out too.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: For me, once I kind of
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: picked up on the same thing with the management frameworks, as soon as they threw out
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: there, like, you know, if you know what Rockefeller habits is, if you know what the one
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: page plan is, if you know what this and this is, the thing that popped into my mind with
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: that was, okay, so we have a senior management team who governs by shiny objects, great.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: That always ends well when you have a senior leadership team that wants to try out
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: a different framework every month of the year, right?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because who cares about consistency?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this feels a little bit like that.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: This feels a little bit like you have some people in the management team
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: who have very, very strong opinions about how a business should be run.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then that is also kind of fueled or informed by their entrepreneurial kind of past, history.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because people who start companies,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: and build companies and stay in the business as an owner operator or as a leader
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: over a long period of time.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: As they age,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: they become kind of more convinced that what they've done is perfect and it's
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: the way that it should be done.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So over time with founders and entrepreneurs who are long tenured, you tend
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: to have less willingness to be open and try new things and collabourate.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: This really smells like that to me.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now you've got probably private equity.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: that you've got a capital body of some sort that's come in and acquired.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they've said, okay, we need to create a structure of a company that we can
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: grow and extract some value from through an exit in whatever amount of years.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I think they've now said, all right, that means we need an HR department.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Enter the director whose job it is to build all this from scratch.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I would love to hear if the leadership team was open to being
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: a partner and collaborative.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it does not sound like they are.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: it sounds like this is going to have some different perspectives that end up with
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: one of these and we all know who's gonna come out on top in that scenario, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna be the HR partner who joined as a director.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: They also said, it's your mission to keep us HR compliant in five different jurisdictions.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's not crazy, except for the fact that this sounds like a one
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: person team and that those different jurisdictions are also in different
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: countries... that's going to be a fun challenge.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't admire the task that's ahead of this person.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that they come in with their constitutional every morning and be ready to go.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a lot for one person.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree with you both.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: and I will say that I don't know what the actual formula is, but once
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: upon a time there was this formula of when you need to hire an HR person.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's something like at 150 people or something, you need to hire one.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then like it... some kind of formula of when you need to hire your next HR person.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's so wild to me because
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: Humans are so complex.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what are you talking about?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: One HR person for 150 employees, one HR person for 70, even to me, is
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: because you know this person's gonna be doing all the administrative stuff.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know they're gonna be doing the holiday party type things and,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: it's someone's birthday, like... who cares?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: but anyway, they're gonna end up doing all of that stuff.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: and I also really, really dislike the fact that
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: The CEO calls themselves the chief people officer as well.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: I find it really insulting.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: I find that in like in HR, it's so you're just constantly being insulted about your role.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And when people can kind of assume that they can just do this because they can, it's or
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: because they've read a few leadership books, it really disrespects all of the other things
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: that go into
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: being in human resources and everything that it takes.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that the top of that list is a certain disposition.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's emotional intelligence, it's empathy.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: that quite frankly, oftentimes CEOs don't have.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so you're gonna call yourself the chief people officer, and it tells
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: you right there how they're gonna feel about that work and the fact that
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: maybe they need this person because they have to have someone
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: for compliance reasons, but they already have their frameworks.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: They already have all their... they said that they already have everything established.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: So what are you going to bring to the table?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: but they also talk about being, you know, committed with your hands, your heads, your hearts.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what if you don't actually believe in these frameworks?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Or what if they're frameworks from like 1952 and they're old and
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: they need to be redone.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that this person is going to be in it for sure.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: they also talk about something called the ABC methodology.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I was curious as to whether or not either of you had heard of this methodology before.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: No, you know why you haven't heard of it?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because the CEO
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: made it up.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's the CEO's framework.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because, I told you I rabbit-holed on this.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And spent way too much time obsessing over this job ad, to the point
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: where I mentioned on Substack that I wrote,
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: I drafted an email to the CEO about having a discussion about this job ad.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: I never sent it, but you know, it's...
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't sent it yet.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, we reject acronyms.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what I wrote about when I was researching this on
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Roast and Post, because not everyone understands what
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: these acronyms mean.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's very much pattern language for that system and that organization.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: So we want to spell things out for listeners.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: And in this case, I actually don't know what it is.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think most candidates won't either, but based on my research, it could be a few
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: different things, but when I really dug into it, I realized that it's the CEO's own
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: framework and methodology.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: So they're saying come into this organization
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: we have a established scorecard framework and we use ABC methodology,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: the best thing ever, because I invented it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: and so that's really terrifying to me.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: high standards, honest feedback, all of that stuff.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: okay,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: fine, but what if my high standards aren't the ABC methodology, right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's already, like you'd mentioned Paul, you can already see there's conflict there.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: type of individual and that disposition would be required to succeed in a role like this.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: You also called out that maybe some of these frameworks are super, super old, right?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, The Rockefeller Habits is a Verne Harnish book,
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: and it was originally published in 2001 or 2002.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not like the 1790s or anything, but it is a little bit dated.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there is some stuff about Verne Harnish's work that I quite like and that I use
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: in my own practice at times.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: But...
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Adopting a wholesale something that's 25 or 30 years old without thinking about it and
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: without thinking how it applies to your organization is a little bit of a recipe for
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: disaster.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be casting yourself, casting your business in the in kind of the
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: framework or in kind of the mold of something that's already 30 years dated, right?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make a ton of sense to me.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Anything pre-COVID,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: pre this movement to remote or hybrid work, pre #MeToo, pre-Black Lives Matter.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's so many things that have happened in such... not even that long ago.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of these books are outdated.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, constantly they're being outdated,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: but I just feel like even calling it like the Rockefeller Habits is like
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: what are we talking about here?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like let's
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: just put on our capitalist as*holes hat and call it a day.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: I just it doesn't feel... it does not feel good at all.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go into then the next section, which is what you'll be accountable for.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: So a few bullet points here.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: there it's interesting,
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: because it says what you'll be accountable for and
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: then it lists some other daily duties.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting to note that what you'll be accountable
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: for has less bullet points than some other daily duties.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like that has way more...
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: ... points.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it's very interesting.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: So what you'll be accountable for... owns "A Player" recruiting pipeline.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Are we hiring "A Players" by design?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Owns onboarding for "A Player" retention.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Are new hires getting to "A" status and staying?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: Owns ABC review ops and scorecard currency.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Are reviews happening frequently enough and on current scorecards?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: So and on current scorecards.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Owns manager enablement on ABC.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Can every people manager run ABC well?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I just have so much.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: I want to interject and like start talking about it,
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: but I can't because we need to have a more fulsome discussion.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Total rewards framework and administration.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is this company's total rewards offering competitive, deliberate, and well-administered?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, I'm just reading it the way it's written.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Owns HR compliance.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Are we compliant across all jurisdictions?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Plays for the "first team" first.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Is this company's HR system being progressively cascaded?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: Creates a succession culture.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: Do key players on the team have ready successors?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna stop.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's what you'll be accountable for before we go into some other daily duties.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: love to hear your thoughts.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, maybe go ahead, Brandi, with this one.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, does this person have eight brains and eight arms to do all of this, first of all?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the thing
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: that sticks out to me is there's...
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I can applaud them trying to assign an outcome to the accountability portion.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe a quarter of a star there, but
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: It feels like how they have worded these things is they are taking enterprise outcomes and
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: what should be owned by the enterprise as a whole and placing sole ownership on this poor
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: soul that chooses to accept this role.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that shows up in the... even just the scorecard.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Are reviews happening frequently enough?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: So now you're babysitting managers.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no manager enablement throughout any of this language.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's very concerning to me.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also a big pro, like, champion of manager enablement.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Let's empower our managers to do their jobs and do it well and get people up to speed.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing with
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: it... the onboarding, our new hires getting to a status and staying.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, isn't that partially owned?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in large part rather, not even partially, in large part, that is owned by the function.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So are we saying here that the HR person is not only responsible for going and sourcing
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: that talent, making sure you're finding like "A" status, whatever that means, because we
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: don't have a definition for that,
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: you're finding that talent, you're getting them hired, you're processing.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: all the paperwork behind the scenes too, by the way,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's no coordinator or general generalist to help you with onboarding this person.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: But then you have to go in and make sure they're getting up to speed and
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: making sure you're babysitting their manager to get them up to speed as well.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then if their manager's not,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: well okay well we have to check in and go have our scorecard discussion.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's too much ownership on one particular role to make sure we're succeeding at
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: the enterprise level.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't...
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm confused who came up with the... with this list.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the CEO slash CPO that doesn't understand CPO work... is what I'm thinking.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing that I just have to mention plays for the "first team" first.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: That is... so basically, the "first team" is your executive, your C-Suite.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: That means you're protecting them at all costs.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Bad decisions be d*mned.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: So even if they're
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: making decisions that are very harmful to your employee population,
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: you're playing for them first, and then you're an HR people person second.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: I personally don't approach my work that way.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have a moral compass and ethics and I love people.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I do what I do.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's why most HR people do what they do.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: So to have no room to have discussion around how we're gonna treat our people, if
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: that's not a red flag to make every HR person that's reading this run for the hills, I
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: don't know what is.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, same here.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: first question that pops into my mind is how frequently are they changing these scorecards?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you need to call out that you should be checking if you're running an evaluation on
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: a current scorecard, like that kind of says something to me, like how frequently are you
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: changing the scorecards?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And how frequently are you doing performance reviews?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: This really sounds like an organization
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: where the senior management team, the founder-led group, has really structured it
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: around some of the same principles as making stuff in a manufacturing organization.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: do this activity every month,
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: you do this activity every week, you do this activity three times
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: a year on a set schedule without fail.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of suggests to me that they're doing the annual performance review thing.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they want the HR person to be
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: kind of intimately involved in that process.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you also said like, they need to be onboarding people.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be doing all the paperwork.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be doing hiring, recruiting, own the pipeline.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's already a ton of work just by itself.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: But now you're saying like, the scorecard thing, make sure it's current.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who's updating these scorecards?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the HR person?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the leadership team?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the leadership team telling the HR person to update them,
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: which is another thing that the HR director
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: needs to be doing, like, this is a lot.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is a big role already.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how one person is going to get this done in a way that makes a ton of sense.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Also, the question, how frequently are you evaluating your team or your staff?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, fair question, but what represents frequently enough?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: why are we saying frequently enough without having a conversation around
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: the outcome that's attached to that?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I personally don't care if you do
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: your performance reviews every week, every month, every quarter, every year, but there
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: has to be a purpose to it and there has to be an outcome that you want to get from that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you talking about the frequency of the activity rather than the outcome?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe that's not the place...
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: this is not the place to do that...
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't want to do that in a job ad because like it's a job ad.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would get that.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I would hope that behind the scenes, there's some conversation happening about that.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do you actually want to get out of this process?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: rather than do it monthly.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's dumb.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: This really strikes me as a culture that is going to be divisive and driven
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: by dictation from the top down.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, kinda, Brandi, you know, play for the "first team" first.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, be loyal to the people who are on the executive and the SLT leadership team, whatever.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in this role and their needs and priorities come first,
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: okay, that's gonna tell us something about the culture, right?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like what's that culture going to be like?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to end up being divisive.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to end up not really being a servant-led or servant leadership type
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: of culture, type of organization amongst that leadership team, I don't think.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: And for a 70 person organization, that's a shame.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like a 70 person organization, it's small enough that you can have
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: servant leadership embedded in the culture of the organization.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that would work really well.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that that's going to be supported from the top down.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I got some questions.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: I would not apply for this job.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: You don't say.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: yeah, and I think for
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: for me, the what you'll be accountable for section, it...
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: I can't even, I don't even have words.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like when it says owns a player recruiting pipeline, are we hiring "A Players" by design?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate the fact that they're saying, like, are we doing something by design?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: I like that, right?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's that makes sense.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: But then it the next bullet point is.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Our new hires getting to "A" status and staying.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if we're doing it by design, then they're already entering the organization as "A" status.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: So what are you talking about here?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: I cannot stand when retention is a metric that is owned or lies within HR.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like I can only do so much.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: And even in the role I'm in currently,
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: that was supposed to be one of my OKRs was like something about retention.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I can't.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's like Brandi said earlier, if you
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: make promises at an all hands, just ad-hoc, that I can't I back up... and then people leave.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's your fault, not mine.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Why is that my metric?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: If I can coach and guide managers but they're still sh*tty managers because you insist
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: on promoting the wrong people into these roles, why is that my problem that people are
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: leaving?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think again
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: HR gets villainized so much, but really truly, in the right organization, it's beautiful.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like at my organization that I'm at, I said, I'm not owning retention.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's not one of my metrics.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: Fine, cool.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it, respect that, explained why, and they see it.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_02: But in many organizations, it's just not that way.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like you're responsible for retention and
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost as though the organization is doing everything in its power to try
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: to like just spew people out of it.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like just not listening to any of the things that you're advising.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that's always a red flag for me when retention is kind of part of that.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: and another red flag is the fact that that ABC methodology, whatever it is, is referred to
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: so frequently.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like that just tells me that this CEO is like, this is the sh*t.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've created this methodology, it is phenomenal and we are sticking with it.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's all we use here.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and it's not just here, you're gonna see it show up again.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: and so yeah, can people, can every people manager run ABC well?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, can they?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: What if they can't?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Because ABC sucks.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like then what?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: Then it's my responsibility as HR to make sure that they're following this ABC thing.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: What about having a conversation about whether or not ABC is actually working
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: for our organization, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's super, super problematic.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: that's just part of my rant.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: But what you'll be accountable for was what we just covered.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: Now the next section is some other daily duties.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: So again, daily duties, and let me read them for you.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: So... owns the recruiting funnel from open rec to onboarded, manages sourcing candidate
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: experience hiring manager partnership, runs the new hire 90 day journey, owns the cultural
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: plus role functional plus systems plus this company's way orientation,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: runs the company wide quarterly review system.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's quarterly, Paul, scorecards, calibration sessions, completion tracking.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Trains line managers on ABC methodology plus difficult conversation skills, sits in
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: reviews to enable standardization, comp framework refresh with market data, individual
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: comp decisions admin, benefits enrollment campaigns, owns employee handbook and HR
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: policies across BC, Nova Scotia, Ontario, UK, and the US, annual jurisdiction audit,
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_02: handles employee complaints, escalations, investigations, performance plans, exit conversations.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: Employee survey, action planning, culture pulse cadence, partners with CEO on
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: cultural integration of acquired companies, integration planning during every acquisition
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: leads the people site integration pre-post close assessment scorecard build.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: This company's onboarding comp mapping jurisdiction onboarding.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's...
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: ... the f*ck?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: other daily duties.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm having a panic attack just like thinking about
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: the person that is going to accept this role.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like they have no idea.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is problematic.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: I might...
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: right now.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's actually we...
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think we all just need to do like a
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: break for some gooooosfraba
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: or something.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is that?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: So this person is the director of HR plus the babysitter plus also a management consultant
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: because they're going to teach the CEO's masterfully wonderful fricking framework that
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: nobody knows what it is except for them.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did they write a book on it?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why they talk about it so much.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And like part two of that question, if you're expected to buy a copy of the book as an employee,
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a fringe benefit that reimburses you for that or...?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm guessing no.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: Je ne sais pas.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Zesty.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Zesty.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: Do you... why don't you continue, Paul, with your thoughts on that and then we can go to Brandi?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I, geez, I'm, that's, that's a, I'm, I'm flabbergasted that this is expected of one person.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've all kind of said that in one way or another, but this just drives it home even more.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: A quarterly review, employee review cadences, like that's a lot, even for a company
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: that's only at a headcount of 70, like quarterly performance reviews is, that's something.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm, I'm a big believer in continuous improvement and
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: know, management... line manager or team manager, driven performance
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: conversations, but not, not a formal quarterly performance review.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's not... then there's the scorecard thing.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's all the other stuff.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then they threw in something there about, jurisdiction compliance audits.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder what that's all about.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: this like they're,
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: they're talking a lot and this might be the influence of the private equity company.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: capital group that's acquired this company.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: They might've just come in and said like,
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: hey, this is what best in class, blah, blah, blah, other buzzword companies do.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to do it too.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get at it.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's some influence there about this framework.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely insane for a 75 person company that I think...
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: that's all I have to say about that for now.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned the quarterly review.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: The wild thing, it does seem like they want the HR person to personally sit in on all of those.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: then they're scaling.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: So they're growing every day through mergers and acquisitions.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: So everything this HR person is doing and processes that they're building need
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: to be able to scale.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: But if they're so personally involved at every single layer of that employment,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: employee journey,
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: they're never gonna be able to scale their people processes to be adequate for
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: a growing company.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: The language in and of itself, the owns, the runs, the trains, owns, handles,
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: integration planning.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is...
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: it's almost like it's designed to create that role that does get villainized,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: because if something goes wrong,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: there's somewhere to place blame.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: onboarding didn't go well, HR's fault.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: our handbooks are out of date, mmm, that's on HR.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: or the employee survey we didn't take any action on it.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well when do you have time to take action on anything that comes out of
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: the employee survey because they're
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: too busy sitting in quarterly performance reviews.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I... the
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: ... it's wild to me.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Version
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: 23.6 of the scorecard when you should be on 29.1.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's gonna be a big deal.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: must have happened
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: there for them to call out.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: And current
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: scorecard.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like what happened that they needed to include that language?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: and what happened for them to be bringing up jurisdiction so like that to me...
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: that's a given in any HR role.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like I
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: know that's part of my job, right?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: I have to make sure that we're
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: legally compliant across... that's it, but repeated several times
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: and so to me, it's there for a reason.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: yeah, I...
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: probably...
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: got whacked by the UK regulators at some point over like labour practices
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: and now they're just trying to figure out like, who do we blame for this?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the HR director person?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: HR's role is to
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: to partner with your employment lawyer,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: whether that's internal or external there's gotta be a resource there for that.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Why
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: is HR expected to be the end-all, be-all legal
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Expert.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're not.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're not legal experts.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: We know enough to be able to say we might want to check with legal on that.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: We might want to have legal review
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: this.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't go to law school.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then also across five jurisdictions, like lawyers, they only will specialize in one.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: But
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: yeah.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: tasked with knowing five plus.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't make any sense.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: In this
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: specific industry too,
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: this like oceanographic thing that I can't say properly,
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: that is quite niche as well.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like there... it's asking a lot.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I also feel as though you know,
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: they they mentioned like trains line managers on ABC methodology.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: WTF is ABC.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: If it's foundational enough that I'm expected to inherit it,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: to train people on it, to run processes around it.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: I would expect that in this job ad somewhere there would be
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: at least one line explaining what it is.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like tell
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: give me more.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Tell
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: me more about what this is.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: but it's not like that.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: yeah, I think that again, owns cultural and role functional and systems and
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: this company's like way orientation, all of these things, like you said, owns,
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned this earlier, Brandi, when things are going right, the things are going right.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: But if one thing goes wrong, that's when HR becomes visible.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so when you have responsibility over this many functions and
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: this many outcomes, it's gonna be impossible to be successful.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how are you being set up for success in your role?
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: You're not.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: The other thing I want to talk
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: about is like remember earlier we said first we read what you'll be accountable for,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: and they were like,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, six or seven bullet points.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: Then we read some other daily duties, and they're a whole bunch.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: To me, that speaks to the CEO's mentality of how he views those other daily duties, right?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like he's not saying that they're important enough to be part of like that other
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: section, but you'll be... he's adding them as though they're just like extras.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like off the side of your desk, you'll also be doing this.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: So
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's gonna have these really high expectations of you.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm saying he, just so everyone knows, because I know who the
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: company is, I know who the CEO is because I researched this job ad.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: so you're not being a sexist pig?
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: to be no, no, not today.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: so the even the way it's written,
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: even the way it's written is very dismissive of all of the things
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: that you will be responsible for.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Very much like an afterthought.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're telling you how you will be treated and what will be expected of you
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: in this role.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: next we have your skills and competencies.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And we... okay, let's just get into it.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: People perception, perception of fit and capability under social signal, distinction
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: between charisma and substance, standards resilience, standards resilience under pressure,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: resistance to hiring.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: Hiring bar drift, rating inflation, and comp exception creep.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: People systems architecture, systems design instinct for people
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: problems, comfort moving fuzzy human dynamics into repeatable process.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: Influence without authority,
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: influence without formal levers,
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: trust framing and persuasion as the primary tools of this function.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Directness and hard conversations.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Directness in difficult conversations,
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: modeling the feedback managers need to learn,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: comfort in ambiguity,
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: sorry, equanimity in grey area situations, tolerance for edge cases
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: where no playbook exists,
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: trust stewardship,
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: confidentiality,
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: fairness, consistency, presence, the foundation of every other competency.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: Strategy to practice translation, translation fluency between strategic intent.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: And operating reality, the bridge from philosophy to practice.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: that an excerpt from the CEO's book about the ABC framework?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: The WTF framework.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was the WTF chapter.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_02: go ahead, Brandi.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts on that?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well my favourite is influence without authority.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: influence without formal levers,
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: trust framing, and persuasion is the primary tool for the function.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: So again,
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: you're going back to this is what you're accountable for,
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: but you have no authority to make any of it happen.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: But if it doesn't happen, bad.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like they like want to hit 'em on the snout with a newspaper if they don't do it, right?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're a bad dog and bad
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: HR.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's like but that's what it feels like when you're saying influence without authority,
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: but you want me to do all this stuff and you want me to have the authority to do it, but
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: you're not giving me the authority to do it.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: So how am I even supposed to do this job at all?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: And like, why not?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why not give you the f*cking authority?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: understand.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: Why... why?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I totally... exactly.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I don't want to deal with the people stuff.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there has to be a buffer in between me and the people because
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: my brain is revenue, cost, whatever it takes to get it done.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, never mind that the people are what's driving that.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta think about the people.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: But they don't wanna think about the people.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's my buffer and this is the buffer.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want HR to make decisions because then they can't make the weird ABC
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: methodology decision that they wanna make, because then HR will have the authority to be
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: like, wait, what?
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Why are we doing it that way?
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden HR is pushing back and they don't like that.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: Paul, what are your thoughts, feelings?
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Big 'ol pile of bullsh*t, that's what this is.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a couple of things that stood out for me in there and I just
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: kind of like saw red and glazed over, so I probably missed a whole whackload
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: of the other stuff that was in there,
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: but they talked about rating inflation.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they want you to have a plan and some sort of mechanism to push back against the
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: scourge of performance rating inflation, which to me, I read something like that in the
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: backdrop of this...
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: and what comes to mind is like, okay, so do they want you to put in place
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: a system to artificially deflate performance ratings on your reviews?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: so that you can then in turn control labour wage growth so that you can give people
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: smaller raises because you're pushing back, you're deflating that or you're pushing
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: against rating inflation.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what's going on in my brain is like, alright, do you want to systemically
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: suppress people's good accomplishments and growth and whatever so you can save
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: money?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't dig that.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: Don't dig that at all.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: This was also framed as
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: a job that...
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: It intersects with leadership.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: This way that it's described, it should be a leadership role.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: But as you mentioned, Brandi, there's really no authority.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: And how can you have someone in a leadership position without authority
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: to A) develop policy, B) implement it, and C) actually enforce it?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: This person's not gonna have that authority.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: So even though this needs to be a leadership position,
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: it won't be a leadership position because they can't do anything.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: other than the daily checklist and all that stuff.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a problem for me.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: The influence without authority thing, there's a deeper problem with that.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a phrase that I hear quite a bit, I see quite a bit in job ads.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: They talk about, you you will have influence without authority.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a whole bunch of problems with that.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the biggest one for me is its impact on the broader culture.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: when you tell people that they need to have influence without authority,
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: you're really creating a culture of palace intrigue.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you're incentivizing, you're giving permission tacitly to go around and walk in the
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: shadowy corridors of power and cut deals and do all this goofy stuff so they can get their
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: jobs done.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: That'll end up being pretty toxic over the short term.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if it takes root and gets embedded,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: it'll be very toxic over the long term and it'll cause people to fracture.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: It'll cause teams and purpose to fracture apart.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not great.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one little thing, but it's hinting at a much, much bigger systemic problem in
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: this organization that whoever cleans up all this mess, I hope they're getting either a
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: lot of money for it or they're getting a lot of purpose and joy or they're being vengeful.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, like,
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: tossing the CEO out the door along with all their sh*tty frameworks
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: that they're throwing out here.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like it, Jen...
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: I know you don't...
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: I know, I'm so sorry,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: but I think that...
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: so one of the things that I notice here is they talk about...
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: where is it... comp exception creep.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if this counts towards the CEO too, right?
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: I say, well, actually, CEO, you
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: shouldn't get a raise because we're talking about comp exception
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: creep and like does any of this apply to the CEO as well?
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: and when you talk about influence without authority, you talked about
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_02: like kind of how that can change things culturally in the organization.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't remember,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: I just have to search quickly because it was interesting to me that they also say,
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: People perception, distinction between charisma and substance.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when you're asking people to influence without authority, you are
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_02: actually enabling a certain type of like charisma-first behaviour, right?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: What are you then asking people
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: to rely on?
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you're asking them to be... to have
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: an agenda, to have a bit of a motive, to
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: to be charismatic, to build relationships and do it that way.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so on the one hand, you're you're saying this is acceptable behaviour, but then
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: on another hand, you're saying you need to be able to like, you know, know the difference
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: between charisma...
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's just so conflicting.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: This whole thing is so conflicting.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I really don't think that this CEO truly understands the role of HR.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: You said it should be a leadership position.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing in this reads as leadership or strategic.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's just following my structures.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: Making sure that we're not overpaying people,
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: making sure that we're, you know, hiring "A Players".
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: The rating inflation thing...
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: So you're saying hire "A Players" by design and get people up to "A
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_02: Players," but then you're saying make sure that we're not inflating ratings.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if everyone is an "A Player" at your company, then how
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: How am I making sure that there's no rating inflation?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like what do you actually want?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because then they're gonna be like, okay, everyone's a bunch of "A Players"
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: We need to give everyone raises according to, whatever,
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: and then he's like, no, no, no, you're inflating the the ratings.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what you can't have it both ways.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: They're either "A Players" or they're not.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: And if they're "A Players", then you have to compensate them as such, right?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: Just completely contradictory and... just a hot
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: sh*tty mess.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: yeah, what other experience is required?
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: As a reminder, that was your skills and competencies.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now we're going into what other experience is required.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: Education.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: Bachelor's required in HR business or related field, CHRP, CHRM, SCP.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: or equivalent designation strongly preferred, MBA or HR masters, a plus.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: You're a business person first and an HR professional second.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: The experience that they're looking for is seven plus years HR leadership, including three
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: plus years at director or senior manager level, track record of running HR end to end at a
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: 70 plus person organization,
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: expertise in talent grid systems and behavioural assessment methodologies.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: And in brackets, they say top grading, structured behavioural interviewing, or equivalent,
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating a performance assessment system
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: from the ground up, not just administering one inherited.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: Weird.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: Multi-jurisdiction, Canadian provinces plus US plus UK, HR Law
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: Experience, strongly preferred given this company's distributed workforce.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I forgot to delete the name of the company,
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: so everyone can probably see it now in that link.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_02: industry background, growth stage experience, preferred, familiarity with the
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: challenge of new people via acquisition, definite plus, and then other Canadian work
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: authorization, Victoria, BC or Halifax, Nova Scotia based, preferred, comfortable as
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: the one-person HR function with executive presence to handle hard conversations across
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: every level of the company.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: Travel expected between Victoria and Halifax, as well as two acquisition targets.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thoughts and prayers.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone?
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: What is executive presence?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jen and I hear executive presence a lot in job ads.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: The intention of it is that they want you to be a person who carries
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: a certain amount of gravitas.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you can walk into a room and start speaking and people pay attention just
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: because you exude that "executive presence."
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: It drives me nuts, that phrase.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Bullsh*t, it's dumb.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it feeds the narrative that they're putting out here, right?
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about how you need to be able to use influence versus
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: authority to make things happen because you're not gonna have any authority.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well,
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: executive presence or personal gravitas,
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, if you've got that, that's gonna make it a whole lot easier.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're just reinforcing that they want someone who can talk a good game but not actually have
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: any authority to do anything.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: They want somebody who can socially engineer magic and money and
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: perfection out of this system that this CEO has created, which is just bonkers.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't dig this at all.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: "Executive presence" is garbage.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's dumb.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it broke me.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: That term breaks me.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Every time
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: I hear it,
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just blow up a little bit.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think this section too, it reinforces that this team is not gonna get any
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: bigger because they say you must be comfortable as a one person HR function.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: Even though earlier they said, it's... they said something like, it's an HR
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: team of one now but it's gonna grow but here they're contradicting that.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're... you must
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: be comfortable doing this all by yourself.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, you're gonna travel on top of it.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: So good luck getting all your desk work done.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: But now we also want you to travel.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's... this is not a reasonable job.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone with a
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: brain in their head should be able to see that this is not a doable job.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: for someone to be able to do successfully.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: if you live in Victoria
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: and you get this job, you might want to relocate to Halifax just so you can have some
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: separation from these crazy people and like preserve your sanity with all of this.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's nuts.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: I found it interesting too that they talked about, or they said,
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: know, we want a business person first and an HR person second.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to have an MBA.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: We want this, and this, and this.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's...
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's weird.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are really pulling together a bunch of different people and squishing
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: it into this one role, which is something we see a lot in job ads.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make it any less stupid or dumb or shallow-sighted,
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: but they're doing it again here, right?
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: So this is not a role that's set up for success.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: The person that gets hired into this is gonna have a really,
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: really difficult time with all of this crap.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna say that they want all of this experience.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's pretty specific experience too.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not gonna give them any sort of way to be
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: successful and anybody
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: with that level of experience is gonna see right through this job ad.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're not... yeah, they're
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: not saying this is why you should want to come work here.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we're expecting of you.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like there's no give and take in this
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: at all.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_02: ... heavily extraction-based.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone who is experienced will see,
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_02: like you said, right through this job ad and be like... this is not for me.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so they might have to settle for maybe a more junior person to take
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_02: on this role, and this role will destroy them.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: They will leave the field completely after having this type of experience.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting that they also say demonstrated experience building, designing, operating
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: a performance assessment system from the ground up, not just administering one, but it
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: feels like they're pretty stuck on what they have already.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that's an another interesting
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_02: contradiction as well.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: We go into the how to apply.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_02: It just says, please send your complete history to hr@thiscompany.com.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then it says important in your cover letter,
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: please 1) speak to what you'll do in your first 100 days in the role.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: 2) identify the three most impactful,
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_02: impactful professional lessons you've learned with specific examples
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: from your career.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: And 3) name your personal core values along with relevant examples of
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: how you've applied each value to guide high-stakes professional decisions.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's just when you're applying for this role.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: so that's interesting.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: sorry, don't work for free.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: we scream that from the rooftop?
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, please stop making people do work in the application
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: process and in the interview process.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're getting paid to interview them.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're not getting
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: paid to interview with you or apply to your job.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, can we stop that?
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's so inappropriate.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's so inappropriate.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: then just for the application, why don't you get to that into the interview process?
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you can't tell by a resume whether or not someone is qualified to screen through
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_02: Then you're not like...
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: you're not capable of identifying the "A Players" that you so desperately want.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: So why is the application process doing all of that heavy lifting for you?
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_02: The amount of energy and time people are going to put into that just
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_02: to be like ghosted to never even have a confirmation that that the
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: application has been received.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_02: because it is through that's the other thing, it's through an email, it's not through an ATS.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so this person who's getting hired for this
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_02: role won't even have an ATS to help support them through the recruitment
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: that they're supposed to like own, right?
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: So that's another indicator.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many flags and so many things.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_02: ... the story behind the bullet points...
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly why we call it that.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: go ahead Paul.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: The hundred day plan thing too is,
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: that's ridiculous.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: Saying that you need to put together what you're gonna do in your first hundred days
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: when you apply for the job.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: that's going to be completely ineffectual and you're just gonna be kinda doing one
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: of these.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I do in my first hundred days, because you haven't had the opportunity to
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: interview stakeholders, to talk to people in the business and really unearth what the
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: problems are that need to be fixed and you're not going to be able to fully understand or
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: grasp the strategic positioning of the firm what they want to do over the next like couple
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: of years or whatever... that's something that's really
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: important for writing a hundred-day plan.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're going to be
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: missing all of these inputs all of this context and it just sounds like whoever
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: wrote this job ad has like a big case of the burden of knowledge going on
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like they understand everything about the firm because they've been there for 30
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: or 40 years or whatever.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't realize that a person who is coming into this role is not going
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: to have that same knowledge and context.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the hundred day plan thing is bananas.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree with you Brandi... don't work for free.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I am a big fan actually of doing work during the interviewing process, but paid.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_00: Pay an honourarium, know, pay fair market value for that work that's going in.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're smart about it, structure it so that the business gets value from that process.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: No problem with that.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: but send in a hundred day plan, strategic plan, for free as a part of the application?
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: F*ck right off.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not simply... because even if it's paid, simply because it is very... there's
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: a very like narrow I guess group of people who can actually do that, right?
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like you have... you add family, you add your full-time job if you're currently employed.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like trying to do all of that, even if you're getting paid for it, is
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: it gives some people an unfair advantage, right, than others.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that's always why and Paul and I... like we've had this discussion before.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: I totally get why you're into it as a reflection of somebody's ability to do the work.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: but I just think it's... then you're not interviewing properly.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_02: Then you're not
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: interviewing well if you can't determine that based on the interview and
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_02: you need someone to like do a project for you to prove that they're capable.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just don't like it.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: but yeah, your first hundred days like Des says in the in the chat... dig escape tunnels.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah like hand out
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_02: hand out provisions to people because this is a natural disaster.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like give them those tinfoil blankets and some water.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_02: Jeez.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: and it's funny that they talk about their Glassdoor reviews too,
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_02: because they really don't mean much, right?
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: It usually is a bunch of people who are going in there to try to correct and
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_02: bring the score back up because it's gone down for for one reason or another.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_02: but yeah, so my question for you both then is based on this job ad.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna do some comp guesses because they do list the salary.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_02: They don't list accommodations or like an inclusion statement or how they use AI,
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_02: but they do add a salary.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I will give them that.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_02: and because it was listed in British Columbia as well,
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_02: and they're over, I think, 25 people, they have to.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: So they're someone is paying attention to jurisdiction.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_02: they have to put it.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: so based on what we know.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: Director of HR, either Victoria BC or Halifax Nova Scotia.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: It is full-time hybrid.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: What are we thinking in terms of salary for this role?
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: for I what I think it at least should be at the very least...
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I wouldn't...
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'd do this job for anything, but $175,000 to $200,000
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is what you think it should be.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is that US Dollars you're thinking in?
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, so that's two, $220,000 give or take
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: Canadian.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: between what you think it should be and based on what you know about this job ad,
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_02: what do you think it is, right?
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: think it is.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's probably USD $130,000 to USD $150,000
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: What about you, Paul?
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the range that they listed is probably,
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they listed probably CAD $120,000 to CAD $140,000.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the job ad as written should be well north of CAD $200,000.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think probably CAD $220,000 to CAD $250,000 would be what I would list this at.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting to me because I like based on the job ad, I don't necessarily think it
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: should be that much higher because they're not giving that like leadership and they're not
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: giving that authority, right?
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a whole bunch of tasks to do.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's where I'm like, if it were a legitimate HR leadership role with those
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: really cool outcomes tied to it and authority and all of those things, maybe a little
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_02: bit higher.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_02: but what they've listed the compensation as and it's a
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_02: pretty wide range here.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_02: They gave a range of CAD $109,000 to CAD $147,000 a year.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: the salary range.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean CAD $147,000
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_02: is obviously better than CAD $109,000, but the audacity of 109 is like jarring.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_02: curious how they would determine what's 147 worthy and what's 109 as well.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_02: We need to do ratings for this job ad.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is absolutely a lot to say about this.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so live audience poll, the average for the job ad rating is 5 out of 10.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the average for the role design is 1 out of 10.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious about the five out of ten.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess it's because they did list a salary.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_02: It does talk about... like, it's honest, right?
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_02: They're not trying to hide what the job really is about.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_02: pretty black and white that it's gonna be a horrifying experience.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_02: but yeah, job design, I mean same.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_02: job design is it's unsustainable, it's unrealistic, it's greasy...
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_02: as my sister and I always say to each other.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_02: so it's a big old zero for me.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_02: what about the two of you?
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_02: What are your thoughts?
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Brandi, how about you tackle this one first?
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take up the rear.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_01: job
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: design can we give it a negative because, wow...
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: not a job that's an... in the job ad it said your mission and it was like
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_01: mission impossible that's what it is ,so zero out of ten.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_01: The job design, zero
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: out of ten job
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: ad
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give it maybe like a 2.5 out of 10 because I do appreciate the transparency
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: because they're... they make it very clear that you should turn around and run.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I like that part, but they don't at all make this a compelling case for someone to
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: come and join their team and like... why it's exciting to work there and why this is a
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: company that is deserving of a really kicka*s HR partner too.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like you... you make no case
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: for that at all so
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: me, the job ad, I give a 3 out of 10.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: It did have okay structure.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the sections that they wrote out in the job ad, it did try to provide a lot of the
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: information that you would need as a candidate to evaluate this role in this organization.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It tried.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: The job ad, had an okay structure.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even though the style wasn't one that I would choose, like the writing style,
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was still consistent.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't a lot of grammatical stuff, syntax stuff.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: You could read this and you could understand what they were trying to put forward.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So give it a couple of points.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's the participation ribbon in my mind is, like... the 2, the 3 out of 10.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Role design, I'm with you, 0 out of 10.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's an unsustainable role.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something that a person, a single person who comes into this is gonna be able to do.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: for longer than a couple of months before they completely flame out
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_00: because it's just insane what is expected of them.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: The pay is okay for this role,
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: but that's not gonna change the fact that it's completely unsustainable.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: There are also calls for expertise in this role design that are mentioned as
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_00: a throwaway that are a huge deal.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about the multi-jurisdiction expertise needed for like compliance and A and B and C.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_00: and you need to understand how this operates all over the place.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Those are treated as throwaway statements, but they're actually pretty darn
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: important and it is insane to expect one person to be an expert in all of that.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is the stuff that you contract out to with specialized counsel, whether it's a
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: lawyer, whether it's a consultant, whether it's a partner, whether it's someone in those
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: jurisdictions, you work with them to ensure compliance.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of wonder if
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: some of the problems with this were that what they wanted was poorly communicated.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I look at this job ad and this titling and the framing of it and say, okay, if I
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: was gonna do this, I would have this set up as this HR function is going to be more of a
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: people operations function,
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_00: like what Jen and I talk about a lot and what Jen's really big on,
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: people operations.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: You have a chief of staff.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: running this.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the leadership function inside the chief of staff role.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have a couple of support roles alongside it.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: That might have turned out okay, but squishing it into one role?
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's going to be a dumpster fire.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think same, like, 2 or 3 out of 10 for the job ad because it does
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: have sections like mentioned in the chat, like how we operate and what you inherit.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_02: I like what you inherit, only because... very honest.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_02: What I don't like about it is that it's implying that you won't be able to
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_02: like build something new, like you're inheriting this and this stays, right?
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I would rather see something a little bit more open to it.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_02: and then the job design, yeah, 0 out of 10 for me.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_02: When I read the full blog post from the CEO and I wanted to read like the
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_02: the boring parts at the beginning because it's
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: really indicative of the fact that they think that how they designed their values and
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_02: how they tied that to like business outcomes and strategy is some kind of like innovative
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_02: idea, but like that's how it should be.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_02: If you're going to have values, it should tie into all of those aspects of the work.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_02: So it's nothing like groundbreaking that they're sharing, but they're acting as though it is.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so that is an indication to me of how behind the times this person is and
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_02: how they maybe read a book, like I said, in 1952 and are they keep using like
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_02: those concepts and thinking that they still apply in like today's modern workplace.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_02: because yeah, a lot of companies do that.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's not... that doesn't make you special.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_02: and so it just gives an idea of whether or not this person is going to be open to new ideas.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think that they will be.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so they really do want that traditional administrative function.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_02: they want you to wear a whole bunch of hats.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah it's just not sustainable at the end of the day.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_02: So
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: that's my rating.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_02: and that was
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_02: today's episode with our special guest, Brandi, and lots of good activity in the chat.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't already, please check out Brandi's Substack, The Corporate Unspiral.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is that... that's correct, right?
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_02: and thank you so much everyone for sticking with us.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_02: This was an hour and a half.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_02: We had technical difficulties at the beginning, so we really appreciate you staying.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_02: for the long haul.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_02: and I think we can consider this post roasted.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: is absolutely roasted.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Toasted, done.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: so much fun.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.