Speaker 1: 0:00

Who are we as a company? What are we trying to accomplish? How do we behave? What's most important right now? Who will do what? You could substitute some of the questions, but the idea is just to get crystal clear on what are we trying to do, who are we and who's going to do it, and then the priorities. This is the Rebel.

Speaker 2: 0:20

HR Podcast the podcast where we talk to human resources innovators about innovation in the world of HR. If you're a people leader or you're looking for a new way to think about how to help others be successful, this is the podcast for you. Rebel on HR Rebels. All right, rebel HR listeners. Welcome to the show. We've got a good one for you this week. I think a lot of you are going to relate to our guest, andrew Bartlow has 25 years of human resources and talent management experience at organizations across a wide spectrum of sizes, maturity stages and industries a wide spectrum of sizes, maturity stages and industries.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Co-author of a book called Scaling for Success People Priorities for High-Growth Organizations. He's got a master's degree from the top program in his field. He's got all sorts of accreditations. I'm totally going to screw up if I try to read them. He leads Series B Consulting, which helps businesses to articulate their people strategy and accelerate their growth while navigating rapid change. Welcome to the show, andrew. Hey, thanks a lot, kyle. Thanks for having me, absolutely so. I'm always excited to talk to somebody with so many years of HR experience and the fact that you are still in the field after 25 years. What's up with that? What kept you in the profession that long.

Speaker 1: 1:46

You know it makes me sound really old. I have a birthday coming up next week, maybe two weeks out, and yeah, I started my career here.

Speaker 1: 1:54

I didn't fall into HR like so many other people did, you know, coming out of another admin type of job or recruitment, or a career changer admin type of job or recruitment, or a career changer. I found this profession and I stuck with it because I get some satisfaction out of it. I feel like it's a Cal Newport sort of thing where you just practice your craft and you get better at it over time and I've stubbed my toe and burnt my fingers a few times and now I'm at the point where I kind of feel like I've seen a few things and I can be just that much more useful to the clients I work with and other HR people that I help mentor. I love that.

Speaker 2: 2:39

I think that it is really profound and something that I think we need to talk more about, and that is the. You know HR as a as a craft, you know as a profession, as something that it's not just about being a quote people, person. It's about kind of honing your skills. You know truly being a subject matter expert and you know I what I heard you didn't come out and say this, but I heard that there's also, you know, some inherent pride in the work that you do and and you know the the interest to share that with others. So what do you think was the turning point for you where you kind of thought okay, I think I know where, what I'm doing, and now I'm ready, and now I'm ready to kind of, you know, take it to the next level and start to give back.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Oh boy, I don't know. Like every time you feel like you know what you're doing, I anyway, maybe you as well, have this pull to go stretch yourself a little bit more into that place of discomfort. So, yeah, I don't know, whenever I feel like I'm learning something, I enter a new field or I try to expand out, and I've done that lately with this exec ed program. I started up, so now I'm Professor Bartlow, in some ways the non-PhD teacher. But yeah, I don't know. You just see enough things in enough different environments that you can pattern match. You can have a variety of different tools and practices to pick from. You're not bound just by one way of doing things or one school of thought, but once you've seen enough stuff, you just have more options and more context by which to make better decisions.

Speaker 1: 4:25

And when did that happen? When was that magical time? I don't know, but I've. You know, I've been doing this for a long time in a lot of different places, from fortune 50 to less than 50 employees, and I find that you know it keeps me sharp by continuing to do the work.

Speaker 2: 4:39

I think that's really interesting. And one of the you know, one of the items that you know, I know that you kind of focus on, is the you know kind of the subjective nature of measuring success and how, you know, just problem solving in general. So what is your approach as you are focusing on, you know, on an organization that you're helping, be that a large organization, small organization how do you go in and start to figure out, okay, where do I start? What is the pattern that I'm going to follow?

Speaker 1: 5:28

Well, well, for me it's. It's easy nowadays in that, you know, I I have clients and those clients have a specific need that they're asking me to help with. And, um, you know, those fall into two camps. One is, you know, those where I'm actually doing the work, advising the board or the CEO, and it's often about an organizational or talent management topic, like, hey, help us figure out how to make the leadership team more effective, or we're going through an acquisition or a new investor. What do we need to know? What do we need to do differently. And I can help look under the hood. So that's one, and so I've got a really specific ask from the client in those situations.

Speaker 1: 6:11

The other type of client that I have nowadays is an HR professional. So it's the head of HR at a small to mid-sized company who may have done that for a couple of years no more than a couple of times and they're looking for a sounding board and somebody with more experience, more laps around the track to bounce ideas off of and help them navigate their own internal, whether it be politics or interests of their stakeholders or how to approach different things. You never want to appear stupid or inexperienced in front of your own CEO or your own leadership team. So having a community of practice, having a mentor that you can turn to, who doesn't judge you, that gets to know you and your business really well, can be really valuable. So that's kind of the second arena and in that case those types of clients, the HR leaders. It's more about what they want to talk about. What are your needs? What do you want to bounce off of me today?

Speaker 1: 7:09

I'll often steer them in a direction or two if I see a gap in their thinking. But nowadays it's really easy. So long answer and you'll edit this if you want. But back when I was in-house, I guess putting myself in the shoes of your internal HR leaders how do you figure out what to work on? Boy, I talk about that in People Leader Accelerator and I'm sure I'll pitch that later.

Speaker 1: 7:36

The most important role of the head of the function is deciding what the function will work on. Pause on that and think about that for a minute. If you're just constantly chasing down all the asks that are raining down on you from all sides, what is the likelihood that you'll actually be working on the most important things to the business over the long term? Really low right. And so, especially at small and mid-sized companies, got all this stuff that you could be doing and all these needs of other people, but what's the most important? And so that's where I think in-house folks can often benefit from taking a little bit of a step back and thinking about what's the business trying to accomplish? What do my stakeholders care about? What should me and my team be working on, versus just what's at the top of my inbox or who's in the front of the line at my door.

Speaker 2: 8:36

Absolutely yeah, and you talked about stumbles. I mean, that was for me that you hit the nail on the head, because I would say, especially earlier in my, in my HR leadership roles, it was like I was just trying to make everybody happy, right, somebody had a complaint and they'd come in my office and I'd try to help resolve it. Right, and it was very. It was like binary, right, oh, there's a problem, let's fix it, and then and but you know, when you're, when you're dealing with a team and you're trying to build culture and do all these, all these really important and critical things, and you know DEI, you know all these, all these things that are so critical to an organization, but if you don't have any priority, then you know you don't, you don't have any priorities, right, so it's, it's um's.

Speaker 2: 9:25

That was a pretty hard stumbling block for me early on and I would say it still is, especially, you know, over the last year or two. I mean everything. You know, I think a lot of us, when we were tasked with dealing with work from home or pandemic or whatever, you know, you had to pivot away from some of those things, but you still needed to like, look at where we're at right now, if you didn't prioritize other aspects of your business, like employee engagement, retention, empowerment, picking the right people, keeping the right people, you know, structuring work from home so that it works for everybody, guess what You're losing? Now you're, you're losing people.

Speaker 2: 10:07

And so if you didn't keep the ball rolling in the middle of a global pandemic. Then now you're kind of behind the eight ball by about 18 months, and so it's tough.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Yeah, and that's where there's an opportunity for the human resources team to lead, not just follow, not just react. And so we're in a global pandemic. All right, we can't come into the office. What does that mean in terms of how our people work and the needs that our managers may have and how we get aligned to do the work that we can do at its best can be proactive and thoughtful and make recommendations and drive the company forward. So how will we communicate to people? How will we ensure that people know what they should be working on and they're getting feedback along the way? And now, in the midst of the great resignation, what are we doing to help our organizations attract and retain people, as wage rates seem to be skyrocketing and attrition, which was pent up, seems to be just increasing rapidly? Yeah, there's kind of a longer analogy I could give on. That there's a restaurant analogy. That there's a restaurant analogy.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Traditionally, the history of the HR function is rooted in service right. You want people to feel good, working for your company, interacting with you, interacting with your team, and in a restaurant that could be. You're the server, you take the order, you smile, you make a friend, you bring it back and everybody's happy. But that's just order taking and there's pride that the server should have. It's a need in any sort the menu or designing the restaurant concept. What types of jobs are there at this restaurant? What should the items on the menu be priced? What order should they be put in? Do you have booths or tables? There are lots of connections to the workplace where an HR leader can just answer questions and leave people feeling good, or they can think ahead and what is a career path? What do the facilities look like? What do the training opportunities look like? And be more proactive and connected, all together to help the business meet its goals. And so you still need great service. But there's this opportunity that not enough HR leaders take full advantage of.

Speaker 2: 12:46

Yeah, that's so funny, it's a perfect analogy. And you know, when people ask me how I got into HR, I say my. You know, my first HR job was being a bartender, because it's basically the same job, Except you had something that could actually make them happier. Except you had something that could actually make them happier. No, but I love that proactive and actually structuring an organization or a process or you know, whatever you're working on in order to serve your culture and your business and your people and, like you know, kind of that win, win, win approach, which is really really easy for me to say on this podcast. And I know there's probably at least half our listeners rolling their eyes right now going Kyle, yeah, that sounds easy, but it's really hard to do.

Speaker 1: 13:44

At least half our listeners are rolling their eyes right now going Kyle, yeah, that sounds easy, but it's really hard to do. Yeah Well, you know it all starts with a plan. Though you will be reactive, you'll be at the mercy of the top of your inbox or the next Slack message or whatever comes across a transom if you don't have some basic plan. So what is your company trying to accomplish? What is your team doing to try to support that? What are the most important? Three or so things that should be front of mind, even if you're not working on it every minute and you can't be right. Some of those emergencies and fire drills need to be attended to. But what are the most important things? And if you don't have that really clear and at the top of your list and everybody on your team's list like visible and top of mind, then chances are you're doing some spinning. So I'd argue that's actually not that hard, but not enough of us do it.

Speaker 2: 14:40

No, that's so true. And yeah, and I can think of a number of times where, you know, in my head it made a ton of sense, it made perfect sense. But you know, you start moving forward, you start working on something, and then you look to your left and your right and you're like well, where is everybody? Why aren't they here with me? And it's because, you know, it wasn't articulated clearly or it wasn't laid out or it was too muddy.

Speaker 2: 15:03

You know, my issue is, a lot of times I want to do everything right now because it's all good stuff and I, you know, if I'm struggling anything, it's saying it's sometimes it's saying no to a great idea even though we just don't have time to do it that sort of, uh, that kind of Achilles heel, if you will. So I want to. I want to talk a little bit about um, a little bit that, about that, in the context of best practices. And this is one of those areas that you know we were talking about before we hit record and I really want to explore this. You've seen, you've seen the big companies, you've seen the small companies. You're running your own company and I think we always talk about trying to define a best practice or trying to act like a Google or an Airbnb or an Apple and some of these places that have these dynamic cultures. So why don't we start off first of all? Why do you feel like everybody needs to make everything a best practice?

Speaker 1: 16:12

Well, I think there's. I think there's credibility in best practices. If you can attach a well recognized name or brand to hey, xyz is doing this, it comes with a sense of borrowed credibility. And if you're trying to figure out what your organization should do or convince somebody what your team should be doing, then having an example, even if it's anecdotal, is at least a place to start. Even if it's anecdotal is at least a place to start. So it's rational. But the next step of rationality we don't always get there which is are they?

Speaker 1: 16:53

like us Is their context similar to ours Was having a conversation similar to this not that long ago and the person I was talking to said yeah, context is King, not content.

Speaker 1: 17:08

I loved it, and so I said I'm going to steal that, and I just did. I used it again right here. There you go, yeah, so content. Whatever the best practices, whatever the idea is, whatever the you know I remember holacracy from Zappos, the self-managed work teams, you know is Is that the right thing for every company to use? Probably not. Did it work for Zappos For a while in some ways? But at least apply a filter of why did that thing work for that place? What do we have in common with them, and does it make sense for that to potentially work for us as well? So I think it's just looking for evidence, looking for some clues about what might work at your own place, and it doesn't hurt to start with a brand name, but it does hurt to do it without thinking twice about whether it's a good fit or not.

Speaker 2: 18:00

Absolutely no, that's really. I love that. Context is king because it's, you know, my, my organization, we're manufacturing, you know, and we're 130 years old. So you know, if we were to just copy and paste a you know put a slide in the break room, cause Google did it one time, or at least I read that they did, but I don't even know. I just read a fun article about a ball pit and a slide and I can't remember now maybe that was the McDonald's Play Place and I'm mixing it up, but it sounds cool Ping pong tables, et cetera. I mean, people would just think I was crazy. Right, the context doesn't fit and I've got a good story.

Speaker 2: 18:40

I think you'll get a kick out of this and maybe you've heard of this with your experience. But I won't name the company, but one of the companies I work for, a very, very large company, like hundreds of thousands of employees, and I was relatively young in my career, so I didn't know what I didn't know, and they came out with an office best practice, like, literally, like okay, this binder has this in it and it sits on this shelf or it sits in this file cabinet and and like it was like. At the time I was like, oh man, this is like I mean I'll do this, but, um, and then they would go around and they would audit and they would check to see, did you? You know is like, this was like an audit item, right. So, literally, check the box, is the, is the HR office the way it needs to be?

Speaker 2: 19:29

And it was at that moment in one of those audits that I said I think I need to find a different company, but it was like it was. But it's like that was a best practice. It was literally written and defined as HR office best practice, but I would not recommend that to anybody, so we could call was a best practice. It was literally written and defined as HR office best practice, but I would not recommend that to anybody, so we could call it a best practice. That doesn't necessarily mean it is.

Speaker 1: 19:54

That's fair, Boy. You're bringing me back to my manufacturing days and ISO 9000 audits and just thick books of three ring binders.

Speaker 1: 20:07

There's value in organizations, especially really mature organizations, having stuff written down and knowing how to get it done. And if you have suppliers that you're a vendor to, that want to know that you're able to deliver, there's some merit in that. But yeah, let's put it into. Let's put this example into a different context. What if you're a high growth technology startup who's changing their product or service every three weeks and they're changing the technology on which the product resides and they're moving into new countries? Do you really think that documenting all of those processes are going to work for them? Heck, no, they don't even know what the process is yet. But if you're a 130-year-old, really stable manufacturing company, there might be benefit in doing that For some things anyway. Maybe not binders on the HR shelf yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:04

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Speaker 2: 22:16

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Speaker 2: 23:11

Yeah, I'm using that intentionally as a kind of funny. I don't know if that company still has that as a requirement, but if anybody knows the organization and can tell me do they still have the HR office diagram, I would love to know organization and can tell me do they still have the HR office diagram? I would love to know. But I think that's something that I want to explore a little bit more is kind of that ability to change as well, and I think that's one of the potential pitfalls of being adhering to that best practice at the detriment of being change ready and being, you know, being willing to be flexible and in this, you know, ever changing world. And so so what have you seen work for companies who are maybe struggling through this, this growth journey? Maybe they've, maybe they've kind of hit a roadblock and they're trying to change, but they're facing that some sort of resistance somewhere and you're called in to help work through it. What you know, how do you approach that? What? What have you seen work?

Speaker 3: 24:16

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Speaker 1: 25:02

Yeah, there's an approach that I really love and I've used it both at early stage startups, venture-backed tech companies, as well as at mid-size PE-backed companies that are transitioning from founder-led to more of a professional outside management team. And you may have heard of the author, patrick Lencioni, who wrote Five Dysfunctions of a Team and a whole bookcase, a whole HR bookshelf, full of books. His should be on the upper left side, I think. Yeah, it's not really science-based, but it's just so simple and practical that it resonates with a lot of my clients, regardless of what context they're in.

Speaker 1: 25:46

And he has what he calls the six questions for clarity, and I probably won't remember all of them off the top of my head, but it's basically aligning the team around who are we as a company, what are we trying to accomplish? How do we behave? What's most important right now? Who will do what? You could substitute some of the questions, but the idea is just to get crystal clear on what are we trying to do, who are we and who's going to do it, and then the priorities. And so that alignment, that clarity, helps organizations, whether they're young or old, whether they're, regardless of what sort of change they're going through. It helps at least the leadership team, and then you can cascade from there, get on the same page, and that's usually what gets in the way is people not understanding where they're headed. Sometimes there's a lack of willingness, and that's a different issue, but it's usually an awareness or clarity issue.

Speaker 2: 26:49

You know, I think that's that's really interesting. You know, just kind of playing off of that clarity piece have. Do you find that typically it is inherent in somebody that they are naturally change resistant? Or you know organizationally that there are organizations who just tend to have kind of that vein in their culture, or is it the opposite, where you apply that clarity and you see that it really doesn't matter and that it's, you know, maybe our own? You know kind of self-made barriers, assuming that we're not good at change. What has been your experience there?

Speaker 1: 27:26

I'll make a bad analogy here and you know, again you may want to edit this one out I think of clarity like penicillin, it's kind of the wonder drug, but it still won't fix a broken leg.

Speaker 1: 27:38

So clarity can be applied to a bunch of different situations and usually help rarely hurts. But will it solve everything? No, so it's usually not a bad intervention to think about pulling from your tool belt as you're trying to figure out how do we drive change or what are we struggling with at this point. But at the same time, some organizations will be more resistant. Usually you'll look to the key stakeholders as to where that resistance comes from. Where there's strong and recalcitrant resistance, it's usually coming from the founder or the leader in some way, or key leaders on the team, on the team. And so start at the top to try to figure out where your biggest roadblocks will be. And it's really tough to have any sort of like big group session, or you don't need to train a whole thousand person company about change management if your top 10 leaders can't get on the same page.

Speaker 2: 28:42

If our listeners were watching this right now, they would have seen the look on my face when you said you know key people, and I think we can all picture those individuals at some point in our careers where we just know this person's going to be a little bit of an obstacle for this, but that's, you know. That's one of the things that I think is really interesting. Probably, I don't know, in a in a twisted sort of way, probably kind of fun for me is like figuring out okay, we got to get this done. Who are those key influencers, positive or negative that I need to make sure understand where we're going and kind of will be that will, will be that, uh, that support, or at least not that roadblock, um and uh, and sometimes, uh, sometimes we have to be honest about who those individuals may be, even if sometimes we just love those people but they, they can't get out of their own way sometimes.

Speaker 1: 29:59

So I felt that how do you figure out what they care about and how to deal with people with different perspectives and different interests and that's one of the things I work with other HR leaders on is, you know, how do you drive change? How do you create support and alignment for your agenda, which is in support of the business agenda? And yeah, the answer isn't always fire somebody.

Speaker 2: 30:23

And thankfully it's not always live with it either.

Speaker 2: 30:25

Right, yeah, I hope not. And I think, you know, I don't know about you, but I do remember, you know, early in my career I was still kind of figuring okay, what is HR, you know is? Am I like the? Am I the traffic cop, you know? Am I the compliance person? Am I the, you know, is it the principal's office when someone comes in? And you know, there are certainly some practitioners that operate that way and some organizations that expect HR to operate that way. But I found for me it's, you know, that is not the brand that I want to do and, quite frankly, I was just miserable operating in that mindset, right? So so, as an HR professional as you're, as you're coaching these, these individuals and you're helping them kind of process through these problems, have you found that there is a kind of a, a common theme or or a trait that you see in the successful HR practitioners, or is it not a one-size-fits-all?

Speaker 1: 31:30

This may seem counterintuitive, but a common trait that I've seen is a sense of imposter syndrome among the successful HR leaders.

Speaker 2: 31:45

That is fascinating. Okay, I got to hear more about this among the successful.

Speaker 1: 31:48

HR leaders. That is fascinating, okay. I got to hear more about this. Yeah, and I've seen it time and time again. I've had 20 plus people move through my exec ed program. We go really deep, get to know them and their businesses really well. Highly successful folks Some of their companies have gone public. Lots of unicorns within the group. Enormously successful folks Some of their companies have gone public. Lots of unicorns within the group.

Speaker 1: 32:06

Enormously successful folks, some with multiple graduate degrees, blah, blah, blah, and just about all of them are feeling like they are not good enough, don't know enough, fumbling and stumbling throughout the work that they do. But I think the reason why they are successful is because they're constantly trying to get better. So they try to learn more. They read the articles, they read the books, they participate in ongoing development of themselves. They are strivers and drivers. They are conscious that they don't know everything, and it's not just the way that they want to operate. They are thinking about how to think about things, and so I think that imposter syndrome might be at the root of it, where they're really consciously trying to get better, and I think that's powerful in any role, but especially in a subjectively often, often subjectively measured role, which human resources is.

Speaker 2: 33:14

That's really fascinating. I've, you know, I've never really heard that articulated talk about like kind of a context shift, but as I think about you know, I've had an opportunity to talk to, you know dozens of really successful HR folks on you know, on this podcast and just through my career, I've been very fortunate to have a great network and, yeah, the good ones admit they don't really know, or maybe that they know. Hey, this is what I've done in the past, but I don't know if it's going to work in the future. You know, and it's kind of like uh, it's like this constant learning mindset and I think that's just that's really fascinating. So, as, as you're coaching, uh, so you know, maybe you should name your.

Speaker 2: 34:00

You know your coaching program. You know imposter syndrome. You know incorporated. You know you'd have a. You'd have a bunch of millennials signing up. You know you can. There's a. You got a big, big market there. But how do you help individuals who are, who are hungry to learn, maybe a little bit of self doubt and and and that drive how do you help them work through that and ultimately impact their organizations in a positive way?

Speaker 1: 34:27

Well, a variety of ways that come together to be helpful. So a strong peer network and community. So it's not just a professor or mentor telling them what they ought to do. It's this trusted tribe of other people that do their work at similar types of organizations that they can turn to and ask questions and and trade ideas and know that they're in the same boat. Like that. That's super valuable. Um, maybe the most valuable part. The other piece is expose these individuals and the groups that go through as a cohort in one of my programs to research, to academic and popular work that might be relevant.

Speaker 1: 35:16

There's a lot of stuff out there and how do you filter through it to figure out what will actually be useful. So it's the advanced form of a book club. So what are the things that you should know about? If you're working on total rewards, when do you involve an outside consultant? When do you do it yourself? How's an equity plan work Like?

Speaker 1: 35:37

There are a handful of things that you can read to get smart on it. You know pretty quickly. Third is really do the work. So put that into practice with some applied learning. So you've got your peer group, you've got some curated readings and then create your own case study from your company. So we ask everybody in our program to write a reflection every week and fill out whether it's the stakeholder analysis or what is the employment value proposition for your company or what does the leveling look like at your company? You know a variety of assignments where they're creating their own case studies and tinkering with it and getting feedback from their peers. So it's lots of different touches where they can be both practical and somewhat academic at the same time, and they have a guide, which is, you know, or multiple guides myself and other faculty members that help steer them through it and ultimately it's testing and learning and just being exposed to more stuff.

Speaker 2: 36:42

Yeah, it sounds really interesting, you know, from my perspective, you know it's really resonating and for me I'm a I'm a verbal processor. You know, I talk, I talk through problems and a lot of times I don't even. You know, it's hard for me to even articulate a problem unless I'm speaking about it with somebody, and then, and then at that point, it's like light bulb, light bulb, I get it. Oh, that's this, you know, and but just having that, having that peer group of people who actually get it and have gone through this, I think that's the other challenge for HR, especially as's within your company. But a lot of times you don't even want to talk to people in your organization or you're restricted from doing that. That you, you really do need that kind of that feedback At least I do, um, in order to truly get my arms around something.

Speaker 1: 37:41

What's that? It's that concept of a, of a safe space where you can talk about your approaches and your ideas and the struggles, and we have full Vegas rules in our program where what happens there stays there and you got to trust each other enough to share what's really going on. And I think that's how you move past the surface level items like, hey, what vendor do you use for XYZ? Or anybody have a law firm that they go to for COVID guidance? This is more about I'm struggling with my chief financial officer and I just can't seem to get the headcount plan through them. How do I approach them differently? That's the deeper level stuff that's more useful to people. Or I'm being asked to present to the board for the first time. What should I talk about? I don't even know where to begin and I don't want to ask my CEO because they'll tell me I'm no longer invited. So it's that sort of stuff where there's a lot of value in having other people that you can learn from and that sort of safe space sounding board.

Speaker 2: 38:51

Absolutely, absolutely. So if you're listening to this and I know you're, if you're listening to this, you're probably an HR practitioner. If not, thank you for listening, but I would be surprised. But you know, go out, get that network right. There are a number of number of avenues to do that. Um, we will certainly share some of the details on the show notes.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Uh, here for for Andrew and and his organization. But, you know, make a friend, make an HR friend and and find those, those people. Because you know, in my experience, that's for me, that's when my world started to really open up and it it actually shifted away from doing a best practice as defined by a fortune 500 company into defining the best practice for my organization, given the goals that my team had laid out. And for me that was just a huge mindset shift and very empowering, to the point of. You know, you're not just executing a playbook, you're actually designing the place right. So with that, we're going to shift gears, we're going to go into the Rebel HR flash round. Are you ready? I hope so. All right, we touched on this a little bit, but I have a feeling that you've got a lot of books. So what is your favorite people book?

Speaker 1: 40:20

Favorite people book. It's an oldie but a goodie. Dave Ulrich wrote HR Champions way back in the day and that was sort of the proving ground for me tying HR functional activities and initiatives to business goals. That's kind of the essence of how strategic HR can work, so that's a really good one. I'm also reading a friend's book Redefining HR. Lars Schmidt wrote that and it's behind me on the bookcase. Lots of great progressive practices and examples, good case studies discussed in that, and then my own. My own book is finally in print as of July, so it's great to have that out in the world.

Speaker 2: 41:17

Absolutely, I'll do the pitch for you. That's Scaling for Success People Priorities for High-Growth Organizations by Andrew Bartlow and T Brad Harris. So we'll have a link to that in the show notes so you can just click right in check it out. Yeah, I follow Lars. I have not had a chance to interview him yet. So you know, if, uh, if, you happen to run across him, you know, put a, put a plug out there. We'd love to have him on the show. But yeah, read that book. Great book, a lot of innovations in there. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, you'll thoroughly enjoy it. That's, that's all there is to it. And I love any book where it's all about being a champion. You know HR champions and and you know, for me I would agree it wasn't that book, but it, you know the the approach of HR as a strategic business partner, as a, as a business catalyst, business catalyst as a competitive advantage versus just an administrative function, right?

Speaker 2: 42:15

For me that was the light bulb for me. Yeah, all right, awesome. Question number two who should we be listening to?

Speaker 1: 42:24

On podcasts. Well, obviously, this podcast, Rebel HR TuneIn Lars we already mentioned him. He has a great podcast with a lot of listeners, great content in there. A mutual friend, Q Hamrani from Airbnb, was on just a few weeks ago. So just awesome guests on that show. I also find myself drawn to the business-oriented podcasts, whether that be Masters of Scale or 20 Minute VC. Those are some of my favorites whenever I get drive time, which frankly isn't all that often anymore but, I'll dial into those podcasts.

Speaker 2: 43:10

Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that. I don't have much time period. I have three kids under 10, so time is not plentiful. But I actually like to listen to just general business podcasts because I find that I'm out of my echo chamber a little bit and I kind of hear you know, hear other, you know other perspectives. So yeah, I'm with you on that one, all right. Last question there's a hard hitting one here how can our listeners connect with you?

Speaker 1: 43:38

Oh great, linkedin is fantastic. Andrew Bartlow, I also have a page up for my consulting company, series B, as in boy consulting, but really the best way. If you're interested in some of the concepts that we talked about today, people Leader Accelerator is that exec ed program that I kept talking about, and we will start accepting applications for our January cohort here towards the end of the year 2021. So peopleleaderacceleratorcom is that website. Check it out and you can reach out to me through there.

Speaker 2: 44:18

Perfect, and we will have all that information in the show notes, so it just sounds like a great program. Really appreciate you coming on and sharing some of your expertise. You know your perspective on all of the individuals and organizations that you've supported. It's just been great to kind of pick your brain and really appreciate you sharing your insights with us here this week. So thank you so much, Andrew.

Speaker 1: 44:40

Yeah, hey, thank you, kyle, really appreciate it. Thanks, take care.

Speaker 2: 44:45

All right, that does it for the Rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at Rebel HR podcast, twitter at Rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebelhumanresourcescom. The views and opinions expressed by Rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast.

Speaker 3: 45:15

Baby.