Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thank you everyone for joining us today. We’re so excited to be talking to see I’m the one that always messes it up. I said joining and I had written joining inside. Yeah I missed myself, okay?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): All Thank you everyone for joining us today. We’re so excited to be speaking with Mindy. I messed it up again honcooper.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Okay.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): you’re gonna have some major ammo to be messing with me on LinkedIn later.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): You’re not the only one the last name gets a lot of people.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Hey. I got a sneeze coming from the wait,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Maybe not.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Get it all out now get it all out.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay, here we go. Hello, everyone.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Sorry.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Get a drink and we’ll reset. And this is awesome. Okay, here we…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): You guys are awesome.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thank Everyone today joining us from Austin Texas. We’re excited to welcome a seasoned officer and advisor for a big discussion. Everything is bigger in Texas. So of course today’s conversation will be as well. We’re going to be talking about seats at the executive table. Thanks for joining us, Mindy.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Thank you so much Matt and Chris. It’s such a pleasure to be here.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We’re excited to have you Mindy Honcoop (Guest) leader and She guides leaders to optimize their work to thrive as a fractional executive facilitator advisor and speaker before founding agile and HR Mindy held a chief people officer role at TCP software and leadership roles, like care.com spiceworks zip Davis and Expedia. Mindy is also the VP of customer strategy and Ops. Mindy sits on the nonprofit Love Justice International board, founded the Austin women in agile Meetup and is the lead co-organizer and launching Disrupt Austin. When she’s not busy with people she can be found walking her dogs, traveling or hiking.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Fellow We love hiking too.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And you live in the heart of hiking in Utah?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We really do, we got out to Texas last summer and there’s not as many mountains. Sorry. Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): We have some lovely Hills in the Hill Country. I was born and raised in Seattle Washington and nature is your playground and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I spent a lot of time there hiking.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What’s it? Do you have a favorite hike in Texas? I’m just curious. Yeah, or do you try to get outside of Texas to do your hiking?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah, try to get outside of Texas to do my hike. I feel like the definition of hiking requires a significant amount of elevation gain. And so my husband and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I say that we go on a lot of treks here.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Go trekking. I think I picked that up from a colleague. That was Australian and I was like, wow, that’s a really great way to describe what I feel like I do in Texas.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Not to make you jealous. But I mean, you’re totally right Utah has more hikes and trails. So when you come out this way someday, there’s lots of stuff to explore like we did a little just…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): What?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What today because we’re gonna get a lot of elevation games that we do have a cool Trail right there house and we go one block and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest):
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It feels like we’re in nature. We hear water running, we hear birds.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Man,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s awesome.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): That is exactly what it felt like. When I was living in Switzerland for three and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): half a year. You just step right outside. and you do it. It had a reminder. I try to remind myself every morning to just take a moment and pause and just take that in because it’s so easy to take it for granted because you see it every day,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that’s
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): but not everyone gets the blessing of being able to do that. So that’s so awesome.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, you’re absolutely right and we want to hear more about how you ended up in HR and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What led to all your Career Success?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Course Crista. So I came about through the world of social work. I would see the University of Washington. I haven’t had a goal to be a social worker from a young age. There was a little paragraph in my psychology book in high school that talked about social work and I was like that it explains exactly what I want to do. And so University of Washington was ranked third in the nation at the time and as I was going through the program there were internships towards the end of your journey in that program.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And as I went through those internships, I just started to see that the people that I was working with were individuals. I really saw the volunteers that were coming in to interact with them had such a greater impact in their lives and that really started to get me to question. How can I have a greater impact in their lives and is social work the way to do that often? I was working with youth and there’s a lot of things that would come up in my conversations about their parents or…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Such a clear connection between the two really and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): lack of presence of their parents or the adults in their community and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): when work is such a big part of your life.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): and the workplaces and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It really does impact the community when your experience at work is better and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): how that was impacting them often in a negative way and how that really impacted the interactions that these young people were having with the adults and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): more positive.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): the behaviors that they were seeing as a result and how they were picking up some of what they thought was healthy behaviors that were not
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): and these are often what when I started to really dig in not that it is a causation, right? It’s not a direct cause but there is such a great high percentage of these things coming from the result of these adults being in unhealthy workplaces. And so I thought if I could create healthier workplaces, I could be positively impacting this youth in a greater way and creating communities healthier Society. So that’s always been a calling for me and I could have gone one more year and become a master’s in social work because it was an accelerated program, but I decided to leave without a job. So that was a big risk, but I had the confidence so, really be able to take social work into the workplace.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah, and we’re all humans and what I love about social work is that it really is.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): people centered you’re starting with the person and designing for them understanding the ecosystem that they’re in and you’re doing project management without realizing it’s really that current state analysis understanding and building with that person. What’s the future desired State and then really thinking what are those micro steps that we take to be able to get from where we’re at today to get to that future desired State and really build check-ins and see how things are going. Is this still serving you is it not how are we building the right healthy Community tools and resources for the people to surround around this human to get them to that future desired state in their journey to that and that kind of is project management from a very high level. It’s a rudimentary description, but it’s with the human at the center. It’s about going back to them and there’s just so much about being a human about what motivates us.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): What drives our behavior and I think often without getting to that level of granularity when we’re thinking about employees in our workplace ecosystems. Really when we think about what’s happening at an ecosystem level we start to ask, simply even just one thing you can start asking is why five times are we asking why down to that human person level and really understanding, what’s underlying those emotions and what’s getting to how someone is acting up or behaving in a workplace? And so that’s where I found kind of the benefit of that lens, coming in to work places with the social work perspective that really kind of helped add value and that was missing and so, as I learned throughout my career in the different opportunities, I had in the tech space and had awesome experiences to be able to learn about
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And that’s incredible I think and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Agile Frameworks and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I’ve got a lot of thoughts from you…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): about user Center design and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): what you’ve already shared…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I know how we can blend that and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): which is awesome that we’re jumping right into the meat so quickly …
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): put it from a human centered perspective is kind of brought me to…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It reminds me of not long ago last year.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): where I am today to be able to really think about you…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I was at the Bridgeland Sherm chapter annual conference.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): as we’re building people strategies. How do we use these Frameworks to really create Milestones breaking things down learning being a data center to take our people initiatives and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s our local Sherm chapter here in Cache Valley and there were some comments around moments of Crisis for certain individuals with stress and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): tie them back to you that business strategy that we from an organizational capability standpoint truly really need to think first about our people, the process and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): anxiety and depression and different concerns and several different people shared comments of just caring about the person.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): the systems and just when we do invest time in those things equally that’s when the magic starts to happen. That’s when you start to see the level of Engagement that we are so Desiring because we often see that companies work on processing systems.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And helping that individual in that moment and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And silos event. It’s not even together.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and the conversation wasn’t just about being reactive…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): There’s so much also just about having coming together and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But about how we can better prepare to support people in those crisis rooms.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): being able to build that strategy truly as one team and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I think it can be when it’s functioning properly kind of like the hearts of the company, this system of individual care prioritizing the people above prophets and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): So when we do but often the people are left towards the end behind not even and often in a silo on an island with maybe a moat around and I Castle a fortified wall.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): reminding the organization that when we have that order of operations that we are putting profits first…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And so it’s really about how do we break down those silos? Because often professionals feel the same way,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): because we’re taking care of the people…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): They feel like they’re on an island. So how do we start to break down those barriers to be able to truly look at people’s processing systems equally and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Who is the business? There is no business that operates at least that I’m aware of that operates a hundred percent without human input and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): and be able to think about when we’re thinking about strategy and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I think it also requires
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): about change and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Really good leadership at the head of the HR department,…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): changes just a part of work. It’s about running our businesses and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): which I think kind of guides us into the next question here is in your opinion Mindy.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): as we think about those things and we talk about taking that strategy and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What is the difference between a figurehead CR CHR and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): operationalizing it and It down from that executive conversation down to our managers down to even our janitor to get out to…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): a real one? And how often do you feel like that? Chrono role is just a figurehead verse,…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): why is an ecosystem down to use in a janitor.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): a real leader, a true equal member of the executive team.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): What’s your reason to come to work every day and feel motivated and understand how you’re creating an impact and what your purpose is here.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): movement
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): or
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): such a good question And I think from my perspective when I speak to people even like…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): if we could choose often That’s a title at these large Enterprise organizations. I find this even down to just your head of people in a 50 person or a hundred percent startup is for me, when people say Mindy do I actually have a seat at a table? I’m here, but I don’t feel like I’m being heard and that’s where you start to see this frustration. And when there’s a seat at the table and I think that’s where you’re getting to around. Am I just a figurehead and why am I here? If I’m not being listened to if I’m just supposed to go and take the tasks that are given to me. I’m trying to advise and guide but I’m just getting shut down.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Or the executive team seems to buy into it, but it keeps getting stopped because the board is coming back with a different direction. Do I have access to the board? Do I know who’s on the board? Do I get to speak with the board and interact with those members…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Sometimes those expenses seem more frivolous,…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): if there’s a board you should and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): right and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): or the investors,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): …
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): what I would ask is…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): whoever that group is depending on the organization that you’re in.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): how can we convince those who are in charge of the budget that those spends are not frivolous.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): We think the answers to those questions determine if you’re a figurehead,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): How can we and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): or are you shaping and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): why should leadership contribute more to these bigger decisions and planning?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): directing with that executive team the Strategic Direction and how you’re operationalizing and communicating and creating an execution against that strategy. And so I think if you’re answering no to those questions. No, I’m just sitting here. Then I think that you are limited in the ability to be able to be shaping and directing which is very frustrating for people. Maybe one of your questions is how does it lead to that?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Kind of what I’m seeing right now is and it’s kind of sad because when you do have someone that’s in that seat often, they’re hired with the best of intent. They’re hired with all these great ideas, but often, when they’re interviewing they may be kind of picked on . Hey, are there clear outcomes that you have for this role? Maybe there wasn’t and they felt. Okay. I’m gonna come in and clarify those outcomes. But is that what this executive team wanted? Did they see this position as driving towards outcomes or just tasks and activities?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And so often we get hired into this position that someone has some really great intent. But once that person enrolls if they just start, being asked to be just task and tactical, that’s not even connected to the strategy that’s often limited. It’s kind of like they’re put in a box and that person is trying to break out but sometimes it does get stuck in a box and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): then sometimes what I start to see is that person gets burnt out and then and they’ll go into another organization, They unfortunately lose this great talent that they didn’t even know that they had and sometimes it’s just because the CEOs and as you get Executives, let’s just assume best intent. They didn’t know because they’ve never seen Ben in an organization where someone actually was utilizing their Chief people officer in a strategic way and you don’t know that sometimes happens. And so when you start to look at the budget and you’re in a tough company, where do you start to try and be able to hit those numbers and you’re getting guidance from your investors and your board often. You start thinking about it? Okay, where’s the spend?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And unfortunately some of those first places that get cut are then just what they think is just task and tactical spend which is often the people team and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Right Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Then you see that senior person that role gets cut and then the junior person is often left and yet they’re still getting asked the same questions. And so there’s a need for it. They’re struggling, they’re trying to but I think it’s hard to be able to get out of that box that the executive team doesn’t know…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So sometimes when there’s a disconnect you can kind of break it down and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): how to shift the narrative or…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Then you help leaders realize…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): shift their mindset.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): what the foundation of their money earning is and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that it’s people every issue that you have to make money. It winds back down to the people.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so if you can invest in that…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): right
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): then that Foundation is solid and it can then build and lead to those profits.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah, yeah, and you’re exactly right? How do we move the narrative from being a spend to an investment so that we buy investing in people?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, the question isn’t just always throwing some ping pong tables in the lunch room or…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): How are we actually driving profits forward? How are we thinking about our customer experience and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Whatever. It’s got to be catered and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): internalizing that into employee experience and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): customized to the needs and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): how is that actually tied together as one experience?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): the processes within that organization.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I think that in working with our executive team and our finance team. It’s often thinking about it from an opera operationalization and kind of about your capability standpoint and for me when I go into organizations as a fractional leader, it’s really about understanding kind of that current state where you frustrated where some of those major pain points and often when you start to think about even from a productivity standpoint.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah a hundred percent I think you…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Wow, what I’m hearing you say is that you’re frustrated with all the humans who are behaving in this organization.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): there’s so many different things that we could talk about with this I think I feel like for today’s conversation it may be the most helpful to focus on how we can help that chrome that’s realized maybe they’re organization isn’t seeing the vision of prioritizing people, how can we help them, get to a better place where they’re aligned with their leadership team, one thought that I’m having is this is kind of like a doctor’s diagnosis a little bit like you’re in this room of Executives helping them understand something that’s complex some,…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And they’re like, that’s training. No, I’m talking about the same thing.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Health disease for better term that they can’t see or…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): It doesn’t seem that people understand when I’m saying, why aren’t people aligned…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): is very,…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): why do people like leaving?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): difficult to it’s not tangible imagine going to your doctor and saying
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Because they don’t feel like they’re getting heard that there’s no direction.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I …
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I feel like an executive team.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I’m 50 years old or…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): We’re providing them with Direction …
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Whatever. However old you…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): but…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): 60 70 whatever age you are and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): what happens if that’s changing every month or how are we delivering the message down to the individual contributor,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): then saying yeah, I
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): how are our managers set up to be successful to deliver these messages? Have we trained and given them the right resources? It’s just such an onion peeled. But if you start it from a productivity standpoint and the profit and the shared pain points and you then start to see and surface these people’s issues that are underneath.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Don’t feel good. Did I exercise last Tuesday or do you eat healthy? three weeks ago. I ate a salad. It’s like the executive team needs to understand. It’s not these one-off things like, we let the company do training. Why don’t they understand this? We let the company do one company party. Why aren’t happy the health of a workplace is very similar to the health of an individual and there’s momentum involved. There’s patterns involved, there’s consistency that’s involved and the health of an engagement of an entire Workforce could ebb and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And why are your processes no longer working or…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): flow just like the health of an individual could even flow over a lifetime…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): you put in a new system, but we didn’t think about the people it was impacting.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): if we can help them see that, you…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Did we talk to the people we know…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s not as transactional.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): how are they doing their jobs every day?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I did one run now.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): It’s just some of these questions or…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What’s my Roi for that one salad?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I hadn’t thought about it in that way.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Let’s see Roi, it’s not the same.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): It’s really about so it’s like from a key stakeholder management right building that trusted relationship being able to …
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s a continued pattern of
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Fostering a healthy workplace. But yeah, what let me work one year may not work the next year and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): when you go to ask someone we shouldn’t just go and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): so it has to be a constant serving customizing and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): ask them the day before I want to make this change as an HR person.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): doing like you mentioned earlier. So yeah, I guess back to Matt’s questions.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): We need to build that relationship to build the buy-in to bring the executive back to here’s the current state analysis.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So what should they do about it? How should they convince themselves that they need more decision making, more implementation and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Where here’s…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What can they do about it?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): where I hear you want us to go but here’s what’s holding us back and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): but
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): and here’s our shared pain points that I’ve heard from all of us as Executives. Here are some thoughts about where we could go, but you’re taking them along on a journey. You’re not going to Hey, we need to do this right now because people are leaving now we’ve gone back and really understood. First of all, let’s take a step back and understand together as a group where we are and what’s holding us back. And what does that shared pain mean? Let’s start with that thing. and what are the people processing systems and being able to see the tie of that the harmony of that and so how do we invest in the solution? Because you just told me that’s from being profitable that’s keeping us from hitting that Revenue number.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yes.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Right, right and there’s so many different doors to come into that without saying people. They feel like if you tell people they just shut down. And then they just go to an engagement. We’ve been throwing money at that and we don’t even see it improving. So why should I spend more on that problem, but okay. Let’s talk about it from a different perspective. We can talk about it in a different way because often it is not engaging. That’s a problem. It’s something else deeper down, right? That is just a symptom. and so
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): yes.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah. Exactly Crista is so all said and it’s about understanding. Who are we as an organization? Is this system? What is the flow of Revenue here?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): mmm
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And what is that really the business acumen? And think how do the executives and the key stakeholders? are they not in that flow of Revenue working well together. How are our systems set up and then the people are our foundation.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yes.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Mm-hmm
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): mmm
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): he yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): That’s great. Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): right
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): So first of all, I feel like you both just summarize many layered issues that we could dig into and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yes, no, definitely and I’ve seen in my own experience and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): dive in so I mean There’s so many nuggets of wisdom in there.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): workplaces and just conversations with Matt that those HR leaders…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I guess is what I’m trying to highlight but going back to your question of…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): who takes the time to just go out of their office and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): what could a HR leader do?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): talk to the people and get to know them individually and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): It’s truly about,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): then of course one-on-ones and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): you…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Then you have wide surveys.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): being able to take a step back.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): There’s so many ways to dig that information like you’re saying and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And do you understand the current state of your people and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): then you’re now an informed member of the people and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): and what is the health of the people…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And you can become a spokesperson at that table.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): if you’re thinking about it from organizational capability?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): I often am seeing that the people are anemic. I’ve been saying that the organizational capability of the people part of that equation is anemic.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What about the other executives?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So in any last thoughts you’d like to add about that.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And so what is the right way to be able to connect it to an IV of nutrients? and you’re right it’s ongoing but yet so much of it if we’re thinking about it as tasks and activities that are not connected to the business strategy. They’re just there. They were created, they were launched and they just happen and we’re not actually thinking about them as a program or as something that we do that is strategic that we’re actually monitoring that we’re actually thinking about. Is this still driving that strategic measure or is it not so that as we adjust the strategy we should always be thinking about how we are adjusting how we work from a people perspective? and as we drop change.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): even if we buy a new system let’s say we’re moving to a Salesforce system is the HR person in that strategic conversation. Are they understanding why behind that I think of all, the first thing is ask the current state why would it affect the well-being of your people? But also what is a strategy? What is a business Acumen? How is that flow of Revenue? and what strategic conversations are happening right now, and if you don’t know go get in them. Just show up. Go ask. When are these happening and start listening in?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Because now you’re starting to understand what is the future desired state of this organization and what’s being discussed? Because if I don’t know what that future desire state is I need to know the answer of that because I now know the current state and then I know where we need to be and so as I hear them talking about the strategy now I start asking how is that going to impact the people even a change around pricing and packaging that changes? With the people who are working with the pricing impacting. How are you communicating those pricing and packaging and changing to our current customers? However, the sales team is talking about that with new prospects.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): And how are we inputting those new pricing and packaging? How are you thinking about it from an incentive standpoint? How are we putting that and keying it into our systems? That’s a lot of people there right and do we have the skills to be able to support that? Do we feel what happens if we have young talent that was used to having this pricing impact? Are they able to wrap, if we’re really pivoting and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s the perfect here’s your to-do list to go through our character steps to move forward and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): going in a different direction, are we gonna give that how much time do they need to really feel confident and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): if you’re an HR leader or individual listening to this now,…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): be able to speak to that change? Are their managers going to give their managers time to understand the change to be able to support their employees?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): and you have a chance to look at where your people are now, and maybe you’ve implemented some things in the past,…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): but it’s always a good time to look at what you’re doing now and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): So these are the types of questions right that we can really start to dive in and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): start asking and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): if it’s still working or some changes need to be made…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): then being able to think …
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): which they more than likely do need to be and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): This is how we can help. This is like we might want to pause here to be able to think about the communication plan and the change management of…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Just thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate Yeah,…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): how it’s going to impact those people and…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): we appreciate all the words of wisdom that you’re shared today.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): from an IT perspective.
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And for everyone listening be sure to check out Mindy’s websites.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Let’s find out. What is that digital impact going to be like? Is it the person in the conversation does you…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): We’ll put those links in the Highlight article so you can learn more and…
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): it’s gonna be like to maintain…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): follow her on LinkedIn for ongoing tips as well.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): if this pricing impact you’re going to require a new tool to use do we know…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thank you everyone for being here with us.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): how to maintain that new tool that we’re then implementing into our ecosystem?
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): All…
Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I’ll stop the recording here.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): So I think it’s about having that set. And getting the signals and you don’t have to leave you can’t do it overnight. You have to start with one thing. Where’s that biggest gap, the opportunity to really show a change and be able to help understand from the key stakeholder perspective. It should be a common shared pain to begin with, then they see the direct positive impact and then you start to build that trust and they’re gonna start asking more questions. The first thing is like do I even know the answers to start being able to work with them to then suggest and propose solutions. I hope that made sense. I feel like I
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): yes. Yeah. Yes.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Yeah. Yes, yeah. Yes.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): so human centered design I think is a great way to kind of frame up some of those conversations. It does help you to be able to take a step back to be able to really design. What is that employee journey in my organization, what are the stages an employee goes through from the moment? They view my job description on a career page to the moment that they depart and really think who are the people that design that stage? What are the key moments within it? And then what are those digital touch points who’s designing that with me? Because not just me alone. Most likely’s a combination of individuals from the department leaders to it and then how are we talking to employees really understand and their feedback of what was their experience like we don’t want to assume and so we have to talk to our people just like you said and understanding who are the different types of people in this organization because it’s not just employees and managers. We’ve got Executives. We’ve got a wine man.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): She got middle managers, some of them have been doing it for a long time. Some of it’s their first time doing it versus someone that we just hired from college versus someone that’s been with us for five years how we walk them through a specific experience should look and feel different and then understanding that business Acumen and where we’re heading in order to understand the why and how that journey through a
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): depending on the stage. How do we shift it to support us always realigning and being able to execute together as one team to make those business initiatives possible to achieve them and you know that you’re right. The first step is first of all to know who your key stakeholders are and get into those conversations. Listen and be able to ask difficult questions. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions, there really are no stupid questions. We got to learn and you have to be afraid to fail to learn and then also to use some of these tools like we’ve talked about to be able to kind of map out that current and future state to inform a road map, of how can we get there and then use data to be able to iterate and be able to always constantly be thinking about hey, I delivered this program one slice of value in a specific period of Time. How do I know?
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): If I’m successful or not, hopefully you’ve measured some key success measures that then are your monitoring and then you’re able to say hey now we’re gonna iterate. This is the next slice of change so that you are continuously improving. You’re never just finishing a project and moving on to the next project.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): You’re welcome. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Mindy Honcoop (Guest): Thank you so much.
