Operational Excellence, Executive Hiring Series: VP of People and Culture - INTERVIEW

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VP of People_LinkedIn post

Sara Lindquist:

I'm Sara Lindquist from Fuse. We're an early-stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest. And just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability - more of everything. And we aim to deliver.

Welcome back! Today we're continuing with our Operational Excellence series focused on the hiring journey. I'm joined once again by FUSE Operating Partner Satbir Khanuja, to talk about hiring an early stage VP of People and Culture. With learnings gathered throughout his time as a startup leader, advisor, and mega cap operator, he's truly seen it all. Join us as he shares insights on what to look for, and how the paradigm for this role has changed. It's going to be a great discussion.

Let's get started!

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Sara:

Satbir - Long time, no see. Good to have you back!

Satbir:

Yeah, I'm super excited to be here.

Sara:

Well, appreciate you taking the time and excited to continue on with this awesome series on hiring excellence. Last but certainly not least, we are discussing the VP of People and Culture role, which is an incredibly important position with lots of nuances that I'm excited to dig into with you.

So Satbir, to start things off, could you provide some color on the importance of this role overall, especially given the current talent environment that we're in and dynamics?

Satbir:

Yeah, I think one way to think about how this role has changed is to look from a lens of about 25 years. Since the advent of internet, technology has become a big value driver of growth for a lot of newborn companies, as well as existing companies. And what that has driven is the type of talent that you need to attract to make your company successful has become more and more critical because the value creation is primarily done by software.

The number of companies and the demand of this talent has far exceeded the supply of the talent pool. So the value of companies to be able to attract this talent to work and be part of their journey has become extremely instrumental. The Head of Human Resources or Head of People, their job to attract this talent preferably for their company becomes more and more critical because you have limited supply of this talent.

And this has really, really accelerated because the rate at which these technology companies, new technology companies are getting born, as new platforms are getting introduced, as well as the digital transformation of pretty much all industries, where technology is taking a front and center position in terms of transforming businesses, has really led to a very unique situation where talent supply is limited and you really need an amazing leader to be able to tell your story in a very compelling fashion to attract talent to your company.

The second thing that has happened, and it has accelerated during COVID, is the tenure of employees at individual companies. Like if you go 50, 70 years back, people join a company, and they will retire at that company. They will be there for a couple of decades. And over the last 30, 40 years that tenure has continued to reduce, and especially during COVID, as people have started working remote, the connection with the company has become more and more transactional, and people are turning over really, really fast. So combination of limited supply and even when you're successful in attracting the talent to your company - being able to retain them has become absolutely critical. And the type of leader that you want in your company who's really trying to bring in the right kind of talent and create a culture where this talent sticks around and creates value for the company over long periods of time is becoming absolutely critical for the success of the company.

Sara:

Yeah, and it's so interesting Satbir, granted I don't have any concrete data to support this, but it really feels like in terms of your comment about the loyalty of talent right now, it feels especially acute in the Tech world. Again, I don't know if that is the case generally, but in terms of just there's so many opportunities and the desire to just look where there's better pay, better opportunity to move up in your career, titles, whatever it might be, it feels like it's especially acute in Tech.

Satbir:

Absolutely. And that's why when you talk about the title of this new role is not just attracting talent but building a culture where individuals can realize their full potential, and the value proposition of the company is continue to be compelling for them to stick around even though their normal behavior is to turn over. Right? That's why I think the role has become more strategic in nature just because it's become a very dynamic environment and it's become a lot tougher to retain these employees, and you really need to nurture the culture as a product development, and keep on evolving it and keep on making it stickier. And you really need a person who's very quantitative and strategic in nature to be able to lead and drive and create that kind of influence for the company.

Sara:

Yeah, that's right. That's great. And that actually leads in perfectly to my next question I was going to ask you. Now that we better understand the broader picture in market dynamics, can you explain a little bit more about how this role has changed over time? Particularly one thing I wanted to call out is what would you say the difference is between a Head of HR, like a CHRO versus a VP of People and Culture? Because I do want to call out that those titles are very distinct and you just touched on it a little bit, but I would love for you to dig into that a bit more.

Satbir:

Historically, if you kind of look at Human Resources, that role was all about process. It's a recruiting process, it's onboarding process, it's really making sure that companies are following compliance and labor laws. It's about really making sure that there are the right benefit plans - very tactical and very process-oriented.

Sara:

Generally speaking.

Satbir:

Exactly, generally speaking. And then you needed someone who has had a tremendous amount of experience in facilitating those process. And what has happened, as we talked about the importance of finding talent in a very limited supply, the type of leader who's very process-driven and traditionally they relied on third party recruiters or they found some junior recruiters who found talent. That role is inverted now where you want a person who is amazing at finding and nurturing talent and making your company the destination company for all the top talent to come and create value for. And the type of attributes you need in this new leader is very, very different than from a traditional CHRO who were very specialist in terms of understanding the processes and traditional methods of human resources.

So the fundamental observations, if you look at people who are creating a lot of value for successful tech companies, both that have become big as well as people who are getting tremendous amount of traction, are this new kind of Head of People and Culture who are amazing in terms of attracting talent to the company, as well as helping them realize their full potential. And a successful Head of People, you will be able to look at their track record where lot of subsequent leaders in the company are people who they recruited at a very early stage and they're able to detect talent way before they become very, very popular. As well as they will have a track record of individuals who became leaders in other companies or they became founders and CEOs of completely new companies. But the people who will drive the most impact in today's environment are the ones who have great leadership capabilities in being able to attract talent, and retain talent, and building a high performing culture all in tandem working with the CEO.

Our thinking is that you want to hire a person who's superb in that attribute and then they can supplement and hire a talented individual who can help them with the benefit planning and other process related stuff, which are equally important for the company to be completely viable. But we just want to make sure that traditionally people used to hire individuals who were experts in process-driven Human Resources and they used to bring in ahead of recruiting. And what we are saying is, the new paradigm is, we need to hire someone who's excellent in attracting talent and nurturing talent and they can supplement their team with an HR specialist.

Sara:

Yeah, it's a complete flip of the paradigm. I think that's a really important thing to call out and makes complete sense. Thank you for adding more color to that. Okay, Satbir. Now focusing even further to what we were just talking about, now that we kind of understand broadly what to look for and what the structure should look like. For this leadership role, how should a CEO or founder frame it? In terms of responsibilities now. Obviously you mentioned recruiting and then some of the bread and butter process-driven activities that are still required, but could you spell that out a little bit more concretely for us?

Satbir:

Yeah, I think the very first thing, it's all about people, right? That's why basically the title has changed to VP of People. They need to be able to attract, develop, retain talent. One way I look at how the role has changed is it's very similar to how people think about their SaaS business. Whether you're a CEO or a GM in a big company managing a SaaS business.

In SaaS business, it's all about bringing in new logos, really making sure that individuals are getting amazing value proposition so that way they can stick around. And over time basically the SaaS business expands, where the customers want to basically derive more value from the business. And if you kind of take that abstract and take that construct and apply it to the VP of People, their job is to bring in new logos, which is new talent. Really make sure that the company works to deliver great value to them because otherwise those talent will take their business elsewhere, which is a turnover. This VP of People has to minimize turnover. And the expansion piece to me is, it's all about progressively company creating a culture where they're able to create more and more impact, which is helping them realize their potential. So it's a win-win, which is...

Sara:

That's a good point.

Satbir:

You give them more opportunities to create more impact, and that way they continue to find the company an exciting place to work, and then they're expanding the business and expanding the impact for the company. I actually feel there's lots of analogies between how SaaS business is run and how VP of People need to run their business, especially in this category of attracting, developing, and helping people realize their full potential.

The second area is, they need to build a high performing culture, working very closely with the CEO. It's very clear that if you look at where people want to work and where the top talent gets gravitated to is environments where they get to work with really high performers, they can learn from them, and they can take their game to the next level. In most of the companies...this is something that is not taught in any undergraduate work, any master's work. So sometimes you get lucky.

Sometimes you get lucky where you work in organizations and then as an apprentice you learn how a high performing culture gets built. We really want to bring in a talent that's Head of People who's seen that journey, who has a point of view, and they could be a true collaborator with the CEO to institute that high performing culture.

And the components could be, how do we set appropriate goals consistently? How do we measure, how do we reward, how do we take high, really amazing talent and keep giving them more opportunities so that they continue to find this company goal very exciting, instead of basically trying to pursue those opportunity elsewhere. How do you set the reward system? There's number of things that need to come together, and CEOs will have a point of view, but a VP of People and Culture will really, really be their thought partner in providing basically those insights to the CEO to be able to build this high performing culture.

Last but not the least they do need to do, and then make sure that the company's doing all the blocking and tackling work. You really need to set the right benefit plans, that could be a differentiator. You really need to set the right kind of compliance, and follow all the legal laws. All the process-related stuff, it needs to be done. If they can do it on their own, that's great, along with finding an amazing talent and then building a company culture.

But if they can't, they can totally lean in and build their team and then find specialists who are really good in the HR activities. But those are the three primary things that the CEOs need to look at, but lean in on talent who are masters, and are very creative, and have a track record of building very interesting innovative approaches to stand out and then bring in talent into a company before it becomes a world class brand.

Sara:

Yeah. That's great. And so how, as a CEO or founder, do you take one step closer in terms of the key attributes of a VP of People and Culture leader? What would you say those are, on top of the responsibilities?

Satbir:

Look, I think one of the things a VP of People will have to do is they can't recruit all the talent on their own. So they need to be...

Sara:

Important call out.

Satbir:

So they are amazing collaborator, and orchestrator, and the catalyst, and leader...

Sara:

Almost like a quarterback, you've used the quarterback before.

Satbir:

Absolutely, they are the quarterback to help build this company into a magnet of attracting key talent. And then that may involve a number of things depending on where the company is. As we said, there is no formal training of individuals in terms of really crystallizing what is an ideal job description for an open role.

Sometimes you have a rough high level idea, they can help shape and distill "what do you really need? what impact that you're trying to create?" And then they're able to basically help frame a position, but while they're doing it, they're teaching. Because the more people think in terms of how to attract the right talent and are able to leverage the collective network of the organization, the faster they can fill the positions, as well as build a culture of high performance.

Second is they will teach them what attributes to look for in their respective talent and how will they assess it? If they're hiring a salesperson, how will they know that this person will be a high performer in our organization? And preparing it just so that people are not just showing up, and asking questions. Making sure that different people in the team are assessing different attributes, or teaching them how do you interview as a group and collectively figure out all the attributes of potential talent before bringing them in. How do you assess that they're a good cultural fit? It's a nice thing to say, yes, they are a good cultural fit, but how do you assess through interview questions?

All these things are basic building blocks - there will be many steps ahead. They will have experience, and they will help bring all those insights as individual talents are getting recruited, but they're also training and propagating that knowledge and making it institutional, just so that more people can do more thinking along those lines. And collectively, the IQ of the overall organization regarding hiring and nurturing talent keeps on improving. That's basically one of the critical areas that I see that CEOs ought to be looking for.

Sara:

Well I think it's really cool. As you've been talking, I've been thinking about that story you told me about, I think you were at Amazon, and how effective that interview structure was in terms of, every time you're interviewing, whether it was a senior candidate or someone on your team, you knew exactly who was interviewing and everyone had talked about ahead of time what particular attribute or approach they were going to have going into the interview. And then you came back together and then you had almost this system, like this tiered system for how you would rank or... Can you explain that story a little bit? I just...

Satbir:

Yeah, absolutely. Again, great companies who have become great is because they have been able to attract amazing talent, and they have a very high bar or attracting best talent. Thinking in terms of details, which is for this role, what are the key attributes we need to assess, and how are we going to assess it, and who's going to assess what, is predetermined. And then one of the other things that Amazon did, which is very unique and I think it becomes very appropriate as organization becomes big is, instead of hiring a talent just for a specific role, we had a specific role called bar raiser. And these were people who were looking at talent from a broader fit with Amazon, not just from an immediate opening that they're trying to fill, but they're trying to assess this talent's potential in terms of how they can excel over time in broader Amazon.

And then many hours were spent pre-interview just doing this as well as then we would have detailed discussion post interview. People had to distill out their thoughts and just say whether they like it or not, before getting swayed by other people's arguments. It was very systematic in terms of how we went about hiring talent and a lot of the practices, I ended up applying it to my company at Datasphere as well. But the point is: hiring takes a lot of thinking. Hiring takes a lot of strategic insights. Hiring takes a lot of practice and all that stuff, usually you don't learn in any coursework in your undergraduate or your graduate studies. It's very important for a VP of People and Culture to bring in that kind of insights and make it institutional in the company they join. That's one of the important contributions they will have, not just to hire a talent, but how do you build a system in a company that allows them to be universally good across the board.

Sara:

And be actually effective in the screening process and also efficient in it. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for letting me derail you for a second. I thought of that story and thought it was worth sharing.

Satbir:

One of the things the CEOs need to assess is how good are these VP of People and Culture candidates in playing quarterbacks in their previous roles or have an ability to basically step up to that role. And then really bringing in amazing talent as well as setting up the system and institutional knowledge that allows the whole organization to become a magnet for attracting and retaining the best talent.

The second one as a role has changed from the Head of Human Resources to the VP of People is, you really need this individual to be fairly quantitative. As we talked about, the talent management is almost as if you're running a Saas business where your customers are your employees, and turnover is churn, and expansion is realizing their potential. You need to know the numbers and you really need to know the current state, and you really need to manage it, and you need to be fairly quantitative.

Now, the qualitative part is extremely important. That doesn't go away. You need to be able to connect with individuals, you need to be able to understand what's working, what's not working. You need to see patterns, just so that you're not looking at one isolated data set point and then trying to extrapolate big. When I look from what they bring in - it is a problem solving mindset where they're using both their qualitative and quantitative skill sets again to maximize the talent pool and how they can realize the overall potential value in the company. Really giving them an opportunity to grow while creating impact for the company. That's why this skillset becomes very, very important. And as I said, basically, the last piece as we are feeding into the problem solving is these things are very dynamic in nature. Whatever strategy you have right now, changes because the context changes, as well as - individuals who join the company keeps changing.

What is culture? Culture is basically, pretty much gets defined by the people in the company. The tactics that work when you're a 50 people company, versus when you're a 500 people company, they keep evolving because during that duration, who you're competing with constantly changes. They need to just kind of go to the first principles, very similar to how the product managers think about product and how it should evolve to satisfy the customer. The way I look at it is, turnover of an employee means the value proposition of the company for that employee was not compelling and therefore they chose to take their business elsewhere.

They need to really constantly think about, what is the value proposition, what role they should be doing, how should they be rewarded? That needs to be constantly in their thought process and therefore, as I said, they need to be very innovative in problem solving. They need to think as if people are products, and how do you define culture as a product and how do you constantly evolve.

And you're doing it all in collaboration with the CEO and the executives, because as a VP of People, you can't institute all the changes because all these people are not reporting to you, they're reporting to other lines of businesses, managers, and other functions. So you are thinking very creatively about it and really quarterbacking and collaborating with all the key executives to be able to create that sticky culture, so that people can perform their best in this company and then stick around with you the longest.

Sara:

Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you summarizing that because it's really helpful detail. Now that we have understanding responsibilities, attributes, how should a founder think about timing for this role in terms of when this leader should come into the company?

Satbir:

Yeah, I think the best way to look at it is, what we have done historically is, look at what stage of the company you are at. When you are a very early stage, the CEOs and executives have to do the recruiting, because you're a very small company, your pre-product market fit, you're sub 10 people and you can't afford this role yet. And pretty much the culture of the company is defined by the Founder/ CEOs.

Sara:

Yeah, makes sense.

Satbir:

It pretty much reflects their values. It's very hard to have a company with completely different sets of values than the founder values. If they're obsessed about customers, chances are very high that the company will obsess about the customers. The very first few people, if you look at any successful companies, at Amazon, Bezos recruited most of the early employees. I recruited most of the early employees at Datasphere. CEOs and founders have to hire.

Sara:

Leverage their own networks and...

Satbir:

It's very important they set a very high bar because anyone else who's going to come after them, they're looking at the talent pool that the CEOs were able to attract. Just setting the tone in terms of what is best in class talent looks like in their company, and how do you basically do the evaluation. All that stuff needs to be set by the founder CEOs and the executives, like that can be embraced by a future VP of People leader.

I think typically when you get to a 20 to 50 people, bringing in a VP of People, especially in a high growth company where you're going to start hiring like crazy, CEOs and executives get stretched in so many different directions that they need a point person who can lead that role. That's a good point for a VP of People and Culture to be brought in.

And you want to bring in a person who can be a player-coach. Meaning they can actually do some recruiting on their own, meaning some of the top talent on the executive side.

Sara:

Yeah, definitely.

Satbir:

Or there's a special architect will be a top talent that the company may need, this VP of People can successfully recruit. At the same time, it's important that they have the experience to be able to build a team around them over time because they won't be able to create all the impact, all on their own. But you want a fairly hands on person who can create impact with their own activities, and over time start building a team and a culture and influence everybody else. As the company starts scaling all the way to much later stage, to getting IPO-ready. And if they're becoming global, then you really want to make sure that this VP can scale with the role.

And if the company is doing business in multiple geographies, they have experience, or they can tackle global talent management. They understand the rules and regulations and the talent pool. The good news is in today's world, even if your customer base is getting distributed over a large number of companies, some of the talent can be fairly distributed. They don't need to be physically at the company, especially the software talent. But if you have actual customers, you may need sales people, customer success, locally sometimes to be able to connect depending on what kind of products you're selling. You just want someone who can scale with the organization. If they're not, then you find someone who's a lot more seasoned at that specific stage who can basically manage a global talent pool for the company.

Sara:

That's great. That's helpful framing. And so my next question, I'm excited to get to this one, given just the new paradigm for this role. Let's talk about the hiring process. So what would your recommendations be for a founder or CEO - how do you even look for a candidate like this in the modern environment, and then how to screen and interview them?

Satbir:

Yeah, let's start with where do you look for first and then we can talk about how best to screen it. The way the role has changed, it has opened up opportunity to completely new sets of candidates and I have found people with very unique background being very successful in this role even though they did not come traditionally, from a Human Resources background. So as we said...

Sara:

That's interesting.

Satbir:

There have been instances where the best interviewer is not a human resource person. The best interviewers are someone in the line of business. They could be a functional leader, they could be a general manager of a business, but people who treat recruiting as a problem solving exercise, and really dissect the problem into: "what attributes do you need? How do you basically understand whether these people have the right attributes or not?" And they have that problem solving mindset and use very creative quantitative approaches to be able to assess the talent.

Before the CEOs look outside, they should just look at the track record of individuals who have brought amazing talent into the company already, and see if they'd be interested in taking that unique talent that they have, and applying it broadly for the whole organization? Because A, they have a proven track record. The second thing is they're already familiar with the culture of the company.

Sara:

Yeah, good point.

Satbir:

A combination of that makes them very unique. And then what you can do is you can surround them with an HR specialist who can take care of things that they may not have a whole lot of knowledge on. And I've seen this approach taking place at Amazon and other places.

Sara:

I was going to ask you that. Yeah.

Satbir:

I think that clearly that's one area. Now if you don't have an individual who either had those capabilities, or the aspiration to be the Head of People and Culture, then you look outside. And I would say there are two ways to look at it. Someone who's already done a VP of People and Culture, and they're now managing a team of 50, it's hard for them to go back and actually build another journey from scratch. The best is to pick someone from their team who was part of building that organization but not as a leader, and they're ready to come in into a company which is high growth, and ready to bring in those kind of insights contextualized to the new company that they're joining. But lead as a leader. Really look at people who have built those organizations and find talent within that group.

On the third things is, people who come from a Finance background, or general managers, and they're raising their hand externally because this is the very interesting and creative position that you've created for them. Do talk to them because we have seen lot of people with those kind of backgrounds being very, very successful - meaning they enjoy recruiting, they really enjoy making other people successful, and are very creative and have track record of doing it within a very limited function in another company. And they want to look for an opportunity that'll make it a full-time role. The thing that I did not say is go for a very seasoned Head of HR from a division and a Fortune 500 company that's not what we would recommend.

Sara:

Yeah, that's important call out.

Satbir:

That's the one that want to you avoid, especially if you're a high growth technology company. That's a profile that you want to stay away from. But the primary profile is again, people have a track record and they truly enjoy attracting talent and building a culture of a high performance.

Sara:

That's great. Once you have some candidates in the pipeline, is there any particular advice with this role on screening or interviewing outside of some of the usual advice that we've given for other roles?

Satbir:

Yeah, I think the best way to look at it is, this should not be their first gig where they're hiring their first talent. The good news is we can just go in and ask them about what talents they have they hired in a company, how would they figure out what attributes they're looking for? How did they bring in the talent? How would they close that talent in a very competitive environment?

You can go through that cycle. How is the talent doing after being part of the company? Do they have really strong trajectory or not? Because we want to see both. Their ability to bring in talent, and then nurturing talent so that those talents are doing more and more impactful work as a function of time. Whether inside the company or outside the company. Actually in this case, it's very easy for us to look at their track record and be able to go deeper and asking these pointed questions, and then really try to see if they are good at attracting talent or are they also good in institutionalizing?

And as part of the reference check, we can talk to other leaders who they made better hiring leaders because they learned so much from this person who was in the People org, and they made others around them really good in terms of assessing and nurturing talent. We need to see both, their ability to attract and nurture talent, as well as "how do they influence others and help build a high performing culture?". And I think we can see some track record here and use that as a way to see whether this individual will be a good fit or not.

Sara:

More have been coming to mind too, I remember in our initial conversation about this role is, looking for some of, sussing out in all these roles. You're looking for qualitative skills, but especially this one, I remember we were talking about this person honestly needed to be really, really competitive, and just being so maniacal about wanting to get the top talent. And then also being really devoted to proper pruning of an organization too. That was one thing I wanted to call out too. So many companies, if they don't see people that are harmful to a culture, or one bad apple spoils a whole bunch, you know that saying. But being really on top of it with that, and then asking questions around how did you deal with that or how did you leverage others in the hiring process? I think just calling this out, cause you said this, getting really creative with the angles of questions you asked to get to the core of how transparent, high integrity, and how much sense of urgency they're going to have about really keeping the ship tight.

Satbir:

Yeah, absolutely. I think the point that you made regarding, I think they are managing a portfolio of talent, and portfolio of talent is the culture. Your example of one bad apple, really amazing talent, really high performing, but really bad influence on the rest of the organization.

Sara:

Classic. It happens all the time.

Satbir:

What you will find is their managers may be willing to tolerate their bad behavior because they're so impactful for the success of that function, but it may be a completely bad call from a company's perspective to keep that talent, because others are observing, how's the company behaving with a person who's high performing but a really bad influence.

To me, a VP of People and Culture has to demonstrate really high integrity, value, thinking about what will maximize culture for the entire company, to be able to go in and actually have those hard conversations with those leaders, as well as the CEOs or other functional leaders. But you're totally right about the problem solving skills, that these things are dynamic in nature are constantly happening. So keeping a good understanding of where things are within the company by constantly interacting, and being able to look at things from a holistic, nurturing the culture, even though on a point basis, this may be negative and near term for that specific organization - all those things are part of VP of People's job.They need to be very observant, problem solving, very decisive. And you need to be able to bring in what's right for the company over a long period of time from a people management perspective and a culture perspective is extremely important and they will play a big role in it.

Sara:

Gosh, it is so important, and such a challenging job. Building it, but also you are the heartbeat, right? You are.

Satbir:

That's right.

Sara:

Rather the stethoscope to the heartbeat. Right?

Satbir:

That's right.

Sara:

Monitoring it from all angles. Well, I think it'd be helpful Satbir to kind of tie this all up in a bow. I know you have some awesome stories I'm sure to share about your experiences. What are some examples of either great people leaders that you really admire, or businesses who you think have just really nailed their people strategies? Could you share some of those?

Satbir:

Yeah, I think there's a selection bias in my notes here, but I look at...

Sara:

Called it out, called it out.

Satbir:

..pretty much all the top successful companies, they have an amazing track record of bringing in amazing talent and then creating a culture so that people can become hugely successful in their environments. You look at Amazon, they found their CEO, Andy Jassi, who joined as a product manager. And over time the company did such a fabulous job, not only identifying him at a very early stage, and nurturing him and creating opportunities that over time they found their future leader in one of the early hires.

Microsoft with Satya and so many other leaders that they have within the organization. You look at Salesforce, you look at Apple, Steve Jobs hiring Tim Cook, and then Tim Cook is basically nurturing the next set of leaders. What you will see is any of these top technology companies or companies where technology is at the core, where they attract the best. These companies have done a phenomenal job of through number of people, leaders, VP of People and Culture who have been part of these companies' respective journeys. And then creating that culture of attracting the best talent and creating a culture of excellence.

And one of the things that I'd like to wrap up with is, one of the things I basically tell my Head of People at Datasphere was, what we really need to do, and I'm using a sports analogy because I think it's so critical in identifying talent in sports world, is how do you find LeBron before they're LeBron? Or how do you find Bobby Wagner before they're Bobby?

Sara:

Go Bobby.

Satbir:

That's basically what these VP of People need to do, which is really breaking down into components, and understand the attributes and the talent of individuals - way before they're superstars. Can you identify them? Can you help the organization identify them because that's the name of the game. Because once they become elevated, you can't recruit them at the initial starting positions. You need to keep doing it on a repeated basis. And the organizations who are really good in identifying it, those become basically valuable franchises over time, whether it's technology or sports.

Sara:

Yeah, yeah, that's great. I love that analogy. Finding the diamonds in the rough and grooming them and doing that within is really a cool strategy. Well Satbir, thank you. This was once again fantastic, and so fun to sit down with you, and great to wrap up this series. I thank you for being here, and thank you for paying it forward as you do, and onto the next!

Satbir:

Thank you again, Sara. I think it's been super exciting for us to have these conversations and these things have really allowed us to collectively go in and look at insights that we have all collectively learned and try to have it come out through these conversations so that our founders can find them valuable and then build on it.

Sara:

Gosh. Well, and I've learned so much. Thanks for letting me go to school on you. Both, you and John. It's been great. And more to come, more great content to come. Excited to get to that next. Well, thank you Satbir, this has been great.

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Sara:

Thanks for joining us. That concludes this portion of the Operational Excellence series on Hiring. If you missed prior episodes, be sure to check them out on Spotify, Apple, and right on the FUSE website. Also, stay tuned for the next portion of this series coming soon, which will focus on how to scale your business efficiently and how to structure and run effective boards. Lots more to come.

Thanks again and we'll see you next time!