Skot Waldron:
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Unlocked, where we talk about unlocking the potential of people in order to unlock the potential of our organizations. And today I've got Hema Crockett, and she has just released a book, Designing Exceptional Organizational Cultures. It launched in February. It's April now, so if you're listening to this, at any point in time, that it's out at Amazon. You can go out there and get it. She is an HR executive. Well, she's worked in the HR executive space past 18 years. She's got a lot of experience. She's launched her own business. She's an entrepreneur, she's a business leader. She's been published and Forbes and in Thrive. And she knows her stuff when it comes to HR. And I am so happy to have her on the show.
We've been talking and exploring some different ideas together and she really understands culture. And really, what's cool is this difference between where we were and where we are now. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. She's going to talk about some principles inside the book. Also, some tips for you as leaders, what are some things you really need to pay attention to if you're going to lead in the 21st century that is now versus leading 10 years ago, 15 years ago, whenever. Okay. So it's different now. Let's get on with this interview. Looking forward to it.
Okay. Hema, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you. Yeah. I'm super excited to have you, not only for your insights about coming into the HR and the culture world and those experiences that you have, but understanding some of the gaps that you've seen in culture and in leadership, and also to talk about some of the guts of your new book, right, Designing Exceptional Organizational Cultures. And that was released in February. So it's already there, it's already out. But let's talk a little bit about that first. So again, thanks for being on the show. Introduce yourself a little bit of where you come from and then why that's so relevant and why you even wrote the book in the first place.
Hema Crockett:
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been in the HR space as an HR executive for about 18 years and have been in large organizations, small organizations, startups, organizations that have been around for a little while and was generally brought in anytime there was a transformation that needed to happen, whether it was ready to go IPO, whether it was post-mergers or acquisitions, or whether there was a leadership change happening in the company, as well as to grow the culture. And over the years, what I realized is I really like building culture, right? I really like diving deep into an organization to kind of look at its core, look at its guts and then help rebuild it into a place that is not only achieving business results, but where people are bringing their whole selves to work every day, where they're authentic, where they are really engaged in what they're doing.
And a few years ago, Jamie Jacobs, who's my business partner, she and I decided to start our first company at the time, which was really focused on building that type of culture for many organizations. And it's been an amazing experience, a whirlwind that has led us to writing Designing Exceptional Organizational Cultures. And part of that is we're really using it as like an everyday playbook, right? While we're doing this work for many different organizations, the truth is, quite a bit of the work can happen within the organization themselves without necessarily partnering with somebody externally. And so the way the book is set up and structured is to really have a leaders, business leaders, CEOs, HR leaders, look at different facets of their culture, but first really starting with the lens of themselves, themselves as leader, and really building that self-awareness muscle, which is what the crux of a great culture is built on. Leaders really understanding their role and making sure their actions and behaviors are aligned with what they're saying.
SKOT WALDRON:
So what do you think the difference is now are around the idea of culture that's different from when you started? You've been in the space for a long time. There's been a lot of chatter and buzz around company culture now. Right? What's caused that spike, in your opinion? And what's the difference between the way we treat cultures now versus say 10 years ago?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah, definitely. It's a great question. And I think that even in the last year, quite frankly with COVID, we've seen a shift in culture. In fact, let's go back a little bit further, right? If we're talking 20, 30 years ago was really didn't matter. Culture wasn't a thing. It was really about employees just wanting to go to work, earn their paycheck and go home. And then slowly we started seeing this shift in adding extra perks or advantages or benefits into the culture in order to really keep people engaged, but also attract the right type of talent that companies were looking for. So we started seeing the emergence of different employee benefits, whether that was things like pet insurance, for example, where we're starting to bring a little bit of our personal lives into the office, or really looking at mental health and mental health awareness a little bit differently.
And I would say that there's a point where maybe about five or six years ago, we really started to see a crazy shift in offering some pretty interesting things in the workplace that people defined as cultural adds, right? Things like ping pong tables or beer kegs, happy hour Fridays. And that's really what kept going forward more and more and more. And for starters, and we talk about this in our book as well, those things do not define a culture. They do not make a culture. They are not a culture add in any way, shape or form. But what we've noticed over this past year is actually organizations going away from all of those extra things and really going back to the core of what creates a culture. Things like communication, transparency, strong leaders, because in this time of remote or virtual work, we don't have all those other extra things. We don't have the luxury of being face to face. So it's about going back to our core and really looking at personal and professional development as part of that too.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. So it went from absolutely nothing to, "Hey, you're just grateful to have a job and we're paying you money to do this thing to make widgets" to, "Oh man, now we got to buy their loyalty. So I'm going to start giving you perks and I'm going to start investing in your healthcare" or whatever it is going to be, right, or your 401k sharing. And then it became, "Oh, now we have to make this kind of cool and experiential. We got to bring some elements of that into this." And now, COVID, which was a giant global experiment in various things, right?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yep.
SKOT WALDRON:
From everything from greenhouse gases to how we work, has created this, well now you don't have that either. Right? So now it's like, so what really do we have left when you strip away all that stuff, what do we have left? And that is those things you defined, communication, the relationships that we have, the alignment, the consistency in how we talk and how we've branded ourselves individually. So organizational culture, as you talk about it in your book and other things, why is that so important for a company's success if they want to thrive?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah. I think it really goes to understanding what culture is in the first place, right, and how we define organizational culture. And I like to think of it, and we talk about this in the book as well, it's really kind of our rules of engagement, right, how we want to work with each other. And it's this intersection of values, actions, and behaviors that come together to form how we communicate with one another, how we lead, how we show up day to day. And if structured correctly, and if managed quite frankly much like we manage our financials or strategy and accompany, if actively managed, then our culture really becomes the defining element for why people want to work for us, why they stay working with our company and to achieve business results at the end of the day.
And we've seen so many countless examples of what organizations are doing with regards to their culture as we think about reopening offices later this year or early next year, as we think about mental health in the workplace, which has become really top priority for so many organizations considering what we've all gone through this past year. And so when organizations really help individuals and they focus on bringing out the best in each employee, then honestly, the entire organization benefits at the end of the day.
SKOT WALDRON:
So pay attention to them, invest in them. It's about them, it's not always about you.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
I come from the external brand strategy, sales, marketing side of things and we try to do that as companies where we say, "Hey, it's about you, the customer." We do market research, right? We try to dig as much as we can to understand the customer, empathizing with the customer and create messaging for the customer. And when it comes to internal communication, we're so behind, right? It's like, "What? I should pay attention to my employees and what they say?"
HEMA CROCKETT:
Foreign concept.
SKOT WALDRON:
I know. I know.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Let me ask you this then, is there a difference in how you communicate with older generations versus the newer generations coming into the workplace? Right? There is a lot of that communication going around. Right?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
How do you address those different age brackets and different cultures coming in?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah. Let me address something that you had just mentioned a second ago, on if there's a difference between how you communicate externally with clients and customers versus how you communicate internally, which will tie in a little bit with just this question. I think we, to your point, we absolutely forget that our employees, as leaders or as CEOs, our employees are our clients, right? In order to have external clients and customers, we need to keep our employees happy. And whatever we're doing externally, surveys, talking to clients, asking about their customer experience, we need to do the same things internally as well. And we do that in a few different ways, right? We don't have to wait for the annual or biannual engagement survey. We can do that through pulse check-ins. We can do that as leaders, just asking our team members, "How are you?" and waiting for an honest answer versus the obligatory "I'm good. How are you?"
And I think that with COVID especially, we've had to move into a different way of communicating where from a generational perspective, we're looking at communication truly the same way, right? We have technology where we can do hallway conversations and mimic what those would be like through different apps and computer programs. We have things like Zoom where we can have the face to face, and we have emails. We don't have the ability to have face to face, in person anymore. So I think in terms of how we communicate with the different generations, I think it goes back to where we started this discussion. It's about going back to that core belief of, we need to communicate first and foremost. And then let's do it in a way that minimizes any sort of ability to misinterpret or misrepresent information.
And a lot of that can be done quickly, right? Let's just hop on even a five or 10 minute phone call to clear anything up, a conversation that we would have had if you dropped into my office that we can't have today. So there's that way of communicating when you're already in a work environment. Now, in order to attract talent, I think that the generational differences regarding communication do come into play. And I think a lot of that goes back to your EVP, or that employee value proposition, and how you've structured that and the types of talent that you are trying to attract. And I think one of the things that organizations do is put out a blanket employee value proposition, right? This is who we are. They may have the same types of images on their pamphlets or brochures or website. But there's a piece of this which is about tailoring your EVP to a degree based on the type of talent that you're looking to attract.
Right? If you may have somebody who's in an older generation and you know that retirement is either near or their kids are going to college soon, potentially, maybe playing up a benefit around the ability to set money aside for their college tuition is something you want to tap into. So I think it's about personalizing the communication to a degree when you're looking to attract that talent. And that's what we talk about in the book as well, this need to personalize in order to really get to the heart of who an individual is. So that again, they're bringing their discretionary effort into the workplace every day.
SKOT WALDRON:
So good. So good. It's like I'm having a marketing conversation, right? Because that's what we're doing, in a sense.
HEMA CROCKETT:
That's what it is.
SKOT WALDRON:
Right?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
It is a marketing conversation.
HEMA CROCKETT:
It is.
SKOT WALDRON:
We're trying to recruit and sell ourselves to this employee. Right? It's no longer, "Hey, you're grateful to have this job interview with me." Right? It's "Hey, what do I need to do to, first of all, earn a chance for you to come work for me and then earn your loyalty over time."
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
So it's not enough to get that first date. Right? And then we have that date. Maybe we have a second date and a third date. It's like, am I consistent? I call it the stairway to brand heaven or to brand hell right?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
SKOT WALDRON:
And it's those consistent interactions, the authenticity, we picked the credibility and then the trust, and then ultimately the loyalty that we get from those people.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Because once we have loyalty, there will be no other. Once there's loyalty, I can even mess up sometimes. Right? It's called marriage. Right? That's what happens, right?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Any relationship, right?
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. That's what it's called.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
And I think we forget that as a corporate structure.
HEMA CROCKETT:
We do.
SKOT WALDRON:
So we forget that. So let's shift a little bit to leaders themselves. In this day and age, what are some of the top skills that you feel leaders need right now in order to thrive and drive company culture?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah. First and foremost, crisis management skills. Right? I think that we have seen examples over this past year of organizations, as leaders who have really stepped up, they've communicated. Even in the absence of a lot of information, they told their employees in March and April, "Listen, this is where we are today. I don't know what the future holds as COVID continues to unfold. But my goal is to keep open and transparent communication." We saw leaders who couldn't make decisions, right? They continued to post new jobs and continued to interviewing and hiring, and weren't really sure what the future held. So were unsure of how to make a decision on, should they do a hiring freeze, should they pause all hiring efforts for a little while. And crisis management isn't a skill that is just about pandemics and these large global disasters. Crisis management, we're all going to run into a crisis in our companies at some point or another, big or small.
They're inevitable in this market, quite frankly, and in this environment. But if we know how to manage those, if we can clearly communicate and articulate with our team, and as leaders, if we can be more proactive and less reactive, then I think that as leaders, we're going to succeed and we're going to keep the loyalty of our employees and of our external customers as well. I would say another one really critical skill is really around execution, right? It's no longer the leader who can sit around and strategize, "We should do this," or "We could do this." It's, as a leader, "We can do that and I will take the lead in helping execute on that." I think it's about really showing that you're a member of the team and not just somebody who is telling others what to do. And part of that really does fall back in line with the communication, the transparency, and the ability to really align your actions with your words at the end of the day.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's really good because that's got to be really difficult for some individuals that are really not great at the tactical, right, that are super great at the strategy side. And I can speak vision all day, but really for me to get in there in the nuts and bolts and stuff, I'm not supposed to do that. I'm only supposed to sit on my mountaintop and do vision stuff, right? That other stuff is for you.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Now, I think that there's some validity there, there are people in specific roles that are really great at the nuts and bolts.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Absolutely.
SKOT WALDRON:
And that need to be doing that. But I think what you're saying is what's the role and what's the defined role of that leader to help them feel like they're all part of it and not that they're just storming in the boardroom, dropping the vision and the idea, and then leaving.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Right, right.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's what I think we're talking about, right?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah. And really understanding what goes into the execution, right? Because in order for your team to effectively execute on something, you have to understand what goes into that. How much time is realistic? What promises are you making in the boardroom that your team may struggle to deliver on just because you may not understand the full scope or vision of what is happening?
SKOT WALDRON:
Right on. I love it. A few mistakes that companies are making, and you mentioned the set it and forget it approach. Many people believe that they're, and I hear this too, "Our culture's fine. People doing their jobs, it's all good. We don't have a high turnover. We bring in breakfast once a month. We're fine. We're good." And I sit there and I say, "That's cool. So you're kind of running on flat tires. You're moving, you're good, but your tires are kind of flat. Wouldn't you want them to be pumped up so you could get more gas mileage out of them and go further and the wear and tear won't be so bad? Wouldn't that be nice?" So talk to me about that mistake that you've seen over the course of your career.
HEMA CROCKETT:
And the truth is, to your point, if you're great with status quo and keep doing those things, right? The competitive market doesn't allow for that, the landscape that we live in today doesn't allow for that. But one thing that we do see is a lot of exactly what you're saying, right, "It's working well. Turnover's low. We don't need to, we're a small company it's been working fine the way it is. This is how we've always done it." And again, all of that is great, but the competitive nature of this business landscape of what is coming at us and what choices employees have, sitting on our laurels and being status quo doesn't work. And when you think about the conversations at an executive level that we're having around our financials, we manage our financials, we're looking at our budgets annually, quarterly, right? We know where we are from a financial perspective.
We know what our strategy is. Why is our culture just fine, ho humming along? If our strategy changes, we need to revisit that culture. We need to see if our values, if the skills that we need in order to drive that strategy forward, exist in our company. And if they don't, how do we go about getting those skills into our company? And so if you can routinely go back and really take a look at your culture, ask yourself various questions, which honestly, in our book, that's how it's laid out. We have a lot of questions to ask, because if it is a playbook, you need to start asking and answering those questions. Not only for yourself, but for your team as well. And if you can go back to it and touch on your culture, maybe it's every other week or every week in the executive team meeting, just to see how employees are doing, "Is there anything we need to be cautious of, that's coming up? What have you heard from members of your team?"
Then if and when something happens, it's not a giant explosion. You've been trying to manage it actively throughout each step of the way. And so it doesn't become a crisis. It doesn't become a big turnover situation that one employee left and now everybody is leaving. So I think it's really about that crisis control, right, that crisis management yet again. Don't even let it get to that point. Let's talk about it. Let's really bring it to the table. And even if things are okay, let's just say, "I think that everything's at a really good place right now and here's why." That's fine as well, but let's not ignore it.
SKOT WALDRON:
You have a company called Gig Talent.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yes.
SKOT WALDRON:
How does that fit into what we've been talking about?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah. So Gig Talent, Jamie and I started Gig Talent to help a few different sides of the business. Number one, consultants like ourselves really have a community, a collective to tap into knowledge because being a consultant of any sort can be lonely, right? So we really wanted to create this community where consultants, HR consultants and leadership coaches can get together, talk about their experiences, really help one another, bring them in on other business if necessary. And on the flip side of that is we help them as their business development and marketing arm. So we help them get business. Our goal is really, we consider ourselves a modern talent collective, right? We're not a talent agency. We don't place employees, we don't do anything like that. But what we do is we really, in a very compliant and legal manner, especially here in California, we vet all of our consultants and then we help place them with companies who can use their expertise.
So some areas that we focus on are things like leadership and executive coaching, helping organizations with their return to the office plans. What does that look like? What does that feel like? Is it aligned with our culture and who we are? For smaller organizations, we have HR advisors that are in place where it doesn't make sense to have a full-time HR leader onboard. But you do need guidance on how do you develop your culture and to handle any issues that can arise.
We do a lot of diversity and inclusion facilitation, and really get those conversations started. And so, we use Gig Talent to really help further the culture work, the necessary people and talent work that has become so important over the last number of years. And it's really been amazing to see it become so important, quite frankly, and for leaders throughout the organization to realize that people come first. And so that's really what Gig Talent was born out of, and it's been a wonderful journey to really get our consultants some amazing clients, get them some amazing work and really help those organizations become better versions of themselves as well.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. That's awesome.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Thank you.
SKOT WALDRON:
Because you could easily just keep all that for yourself, but it's about, how do we multiply all of this out there, right?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
And change everything for the better.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yes. Yeah, it's the abundance mentality, really around it.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. That's fantastic. I love that. So Designing Exceptional Organizational Cultures is out now, people can order it. I assume we can go to Amazon. Where else can we go to get that?
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yeah, it's really available anywhere books are sold. So Amazon, and then what we can also do is on the Kogan page website, so it's koganpage.com. They are our publisher. We can offer a 20% discount to any of the listeners as well, just by entering code AHR20 on that website specifically.
SKOT WALDRON:
Very cool. Thank you for that.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Yes, of course.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's great. That's very cool. Well, good luck with the rest of the book launch and with Gig Talent and everything that's gone there. Congratulations. It's fun. I know it's a big endeavor getting to this point, so well done and thanks for sharing your insights with us today. It's been really, really good.
HEMA CROCKETT:
Thank you so much, Skot. I loved talking to you today, too. Great questions.
SKOT WALDRON:
If you heard that, the idea around culture is really an intersection of three things, okay, values, actions, and behaviors. And the way we shape culture is by being intentional about those things, not accidental. So being proactive instead of reactive. How many of us are just out there reacting to things, to people, to situations, right? We're reactive instead of proactive and that puts us in a bad spot. That's when we become vulnerable in a bad way, right? We start to expose things, we start to get stressed and those unhealthy behaviors start coming out. Not good, okay? So when Hema talked, she said leaders really need to pay attention to a few things. Crisis management was number one, which is kind of what we just talked about, being proactive instead of reactive. And execution, learning how to execute as part of a team, not the high and mighty executive that just sits up there and relies on positional power in order to gain influence. No longer is that what works. We need to build trust and influence with others through healthy communication and transparency, alignment, and building healthy relationships.
So thank you again for being on the show, Hema. If any of you want to get access to our book, it's everywhere. Go out, get that book. I believe that it will help you in some way, shape or form. I'm super happy to let you know that this will be published on my website, on YouTube, on medium.com. Please go there, like, subscribe on my YouTube channel. I would love some support, comments, feedback. I look forward to seeing you again on another episode of Unlocked.
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