Summary: In this episode of the HR Impact Show, Dr. Jim interviews Minji Lew, the Director of Learning and Development at Greenhouse. They discuss the importance of building for where you are versus where you want to be. Minji shares her experience of leading a startup division within a mature organization and the challenges and opportunities that come with it. She emphasizes the need for strategic thinking, customer centricity, and a focus on managers and executives. Minji also highlights the importance of being adaptable, embracing imperfection, and finding ways to deliver high-quality results with limited resources.

Key Takeaways:

Strategic thinking, data analysis, and customer centricity are essential skills for leaders in any role.

Building a high-performance team in a startup division requires individuals who thrive on variety and have a desire to learn and do many things.

Prioritization and focusing on key priorities are crucial when resources are limited.

Being adaptable and embracing imperfection are key to success in a startup environment.

Reading the room and showing empathy are important for building relationships and navigating challenging circumstances.

Chapters:

00:01:00 Minji's background and experiences in marketing and consulting

00:06:00 Prioritizing based on leveraging external partners and focusing on managers and executives

00:10:00 Building a high-performing team based on adaptability and variety

00:14:00 Importance of pursuing production over perfection in a startup division

00:18:00 Red flags to avoid when building a startup division within a mature organization

00:22:00 Key principles for success: desire, demand, and delivery

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Master Sequence Minji Lew X Jim

Minji Liu is a learning and development leader in the tech space. She is a certified coach, and that might seem like it's not a big deal, It's a big deal because there's a lot of work that's involved in that. So we'll get into that a little bit. She's a DEI advocate. She is also the child of Korean immigrants and LA transplant wife to a British and Australian expat and mother to a sassy silky terrier.

So I wouldn't recommend anybody saying that really super fast because you will probably stumble over the words, but Hey, shout out for immigrant prowler. Same. Minji, welcome to the show.

Dr. Jim: Yeah, I was I was practicing before the show like you've seen in some of those bits. I want you to fill in some gaps and get the listeners up to speed on some of the things that we didn't include in the bio that you feel is important for them to know.

Minji Lew: What's really important, and this is also why I got into coaching is that I'm a multi time career pivoter. And I started in marketing, I moved into consulting and then I went into startup and L and D and within L and D that bubble is like super, like wide and variety.

And I think that has really contributed to my approach and like strategic thinking and things to have a background that's unique and bring a variety of experiences into, what I do. And then the other thing I have to mention is I'm incredibly competitive and I bring that to the tennis court and I play tennis.

Dr. Jim: You see, you can't drop stuff like that in the conversation because my curiosity starts going, all right, so let me tie all this together then. So you mentioned that you're a multi time career pivoter and you noted that it's helped you with some of the strategic thinking that that you've built into your career arc. How did one help you do the other?

Minji Lew: Yeah, totally. I went to school in New York and that really was the Mecca of Mad Men and advertising. And so I grew up in that environment and I wanted to be the next Piggy Olson. And so I spent a few, the first few years of my career in that space and. What I really learned there was a handful of things.

That is a lot of what we do in learning and development. It's a huge part of us trying to get people really engaged in programs and change behavior. And that really has, I think, set me up for success in this type of role, in addition to the subject matter expertise of learning and or change and design and culture and all those things.

Dr. Jim: The part that I like the most about what you said is that last bit about customer centricity. And that's coming from your marketing marketing experience, because that's one of the things that I often talk about. From the sales side of it, when I'm talking about what's typically wrong with the broader sales sector is that we're not customer centric, we're product centric, and that's a problem in terms of how people how people show up.

Minji Lew: I think about this answer in two ways. One is personal. One's professional. So professionally, coming in, stepping into a leadership role. This is my first time as a director. My first time really owning and operating the standing up of a function creating these really compelling programs internally that have never been done before in that way that's org wide accessible to, a bunch of different functions cross functionally, right?

Those are the things that I feel like have really driven Impact and created a lot of value at greenhouse. And I'm really proud of that on the personal side. I came into this role in an interesting situation where 3 weeks into the role. We were notified of a riff and there was a lot of emotions around that.

And I'm very proud of the entire package of this experience and how it shaped me professionally and personally a

Dr. Jim: There's something really interesting about what you just mentioned, and that was your first time being a director and your first time being a director in a startup division within a within a broader organization, one of the challenges that commonly comes up.

In any sort of big pivots like that is getting your mindset, right? So as a director, you have to be more strategically oriented in terms of how you think. But as a director in a startup, you have to be more hands on. How did you make those two things work?,

What do we need to align on? What do we need to do? And then for the remainder of the time, I'm a planner. I personally am a planner. And so I think Being that way helped me just be able to set myself up for navigation for the year.

Dr. Jim: So let's play it forward. So you've already gotten some momentum when you look at the next 12 to 18 months, what are the moon shots that are on your radar that you want to get knocked out?

And that program we piloted, it was called Bloom. And what we are doing for next year is taking the results and the feedback of that pilot and then scaling. So next year we will have three cohorts going through bloom, which that's a moot shot. That, that requires a lot of scaling activities and mindset in behaviors of how do we deliver this to a wider group to its optimal.

Experience and then there's other things that we have in the works too, is like scaling other opportunities for other groups to go through. Like I see development, individual contributor development or, really taking what are we going to do for our senior leadership team, which is our VP plus group.

We're really going from building to okay. Now, like we're bringing this to life and filling in the pieces.

Minji Lew: I think that we are really strategic and how we use our external partners. So leveraging them to be able to scale is really important to us in terms of audiences. We know that being a manager is not something that is easy. You are not born a leader. You are made a leader.

And so we are really focusing on our managers and we're focusing on our executives because they VP level they are really. Steering the ship on the execution of our business objectives. And so those two audiences are really going to drive the most impact in helping us really achieve the moonshots we have as a business next year.

Minji Lew: We're really creative on my team where we are always coming up with branding ideas and we're brainstorming. And so I think that we just like to have fun coming up with, these, these really beautifully thoughtful branded experiences that, that hopefully like resonate and stick with our customers.

And then we also have a lot of really funny people on our team and I really try to bring the humor and every day when we're working together.

I opened the show talking about build from where you are or build for where you are versus where you want to be.

And that's in contrast with what you're often told about begin with the end in mind. So when you think about those game changing realizations that helped you build a high performing team, how does all that fit together?

That's what I set out to do in March when I joined. And then, now we're really setting out to think about 2024 and beyond that. We're treading lightly on, on anything beyond that kind of timeframe, because so much can happen and change. In terms of, building a high [00:11:00] performance team based on those sort of environmental circumstances, having stood up the org this year, I knew that.

When it came to the talent that I selected, it was going to have to be someone and team members who thrive on variety, are well rounded, Have a desire to learn a lot of things and do a lot of things rather than just like the same thing every day and crave that kind of I would say stability in a sense of just knowing what you're going to do every day coming into the day. That's just not how we work. And I'll say, I'll have to shout out my direct report, Theresa, she has been able to flex a lot and grow in so many ways. 'cause she is a hunger to just get her hands on many different things. And that's just what we need as a startup team right now.

Greenhouse is a large sort of mature tech organization. The L and D practice is a complete startup. So I'd like you to get a little bit more granular and map out a little bit in terms of how you married your talent strategy to where you were as a function.

Minji Lew: I'm going to answer this in the way that I think would be most helpful to the audience. And you can tell me if I answered your question. So in larger organizations, specifically in the learning and development function, you will have a team and those individuals are focused on specific things.

And then you may have like program managers, you may have what we call like learning partners in some orgs who are like business partners but specifically around learning and development. And essentially like. The larger you are, the more scaled you are, the more specialized these roles are, we just don't have that luxury.

It's a team of two right now. And so what I'm looking at, whether it's Teresa or a program manager that we want to get in the future as I grow, my team is looking at how do we create a role and how do we find the right talent that encompasses all of those skills that I mentioned into one.

And one of the things that she said is that for any small team, you have to have the mindset that's rooted in the pursuit of production versus a larger organization, which is obsessed with the pursuit of perfection. So as a small team, You just need to build good enough and get it out and iterate on the fly versus a larger organization, which is what how I gathered what you were saying, a larger organization has a luxury of building the perfect thing and putting it out.

So hopefully I'm not taking words out of your mouth, but that's what I gathered out of it.

But the reality is like the fact that we got it out and it had the impact that it did and it had positive results, like huge win for us.

Dr. Jim: Yeah I'm glad that you brought out the concept of a pilot. And when we think about that pilot that you launched, what did you learn from that pilot that informed. Your three moonshots or your moonshot that you're planning on launching, draw the connection there. And especially in the context of a small team in in driving high production in driving high performance,

And this group of managers, some of our like highest performing managers in the org, they have really embodied greenhouse values. And we made sure that there was of course, like really great representation in that cohort. They've helped us out a lot. We've learned a lot, but one of the things that we Learned was designing the program bloom to make sure that first and foremost, the curriculum is relevant to where managers are.

Like how, like, how do I look at a balance sheet? Or how do I, yeah. Do OKR planning. Like these are sophisticated, higher level skills that we're going to focus on in Bloom and really be able to deliver the sort of more basic skills or wide,

Dr. Jim: Let's flip this a little bit. Let's say there's an organization that is looking to do what you're doing, or there's a people leader in a similar circumstance you're not through the entire arc of maturing this division, but you're on your way.

What are the big red flags that you didn't realize existed that you know now that other people should avoid if they're trying to do the same thing that you're doing?

In a production type team and mission, that's not going to work all the time. And so really trying to be patient and have grace for myself has been like the hardest thing I would say.

Dr. Jim: So there's something interesting about that I want to, I'd like you to expand on. I can totally relate to the competitive aspect of it. I could totally relate to wanting to make an impact and I can totally relate to how your tennis experience flows into the need or at least the desire to, I want to accomplish a hundred million things. So you said, give yourself grace. What were some of the practical things that you did? To wind yourself back and be more realistic about what could be delivered given the business situation that you were in.

And I think that really applied to, as an example, when I was trying to form like relationships and build things during a riff. That was really hard. And I'm not showing up as my best self today because I'm, emotional about what happened in the riff and intentions are high and, we're emotional beings.

So we're feeding off of each other's emotions and to form relationships in that environment to. Honestly, stay focused and be productive and like actually crank things out can be really hard. And so for me, when I was going through that, it was like, if I just accomplished this today, if I have one good conversation over a cup of tea with somebody today, like that's a win.

Dr. Jim: I like how you called out here's what I want to accomplish. And here's the context that's happening in the organization. The immediate thing that I wrote down when you mentioned it is learn how to read the room, learn how to understand what the moment looks like. And still, pursue what you want to pursue, but don't have it be this win lose relationship.

You have to be able to look at what's the win that I can use or I can achieve in the context of these difficult circumstances. Maybe I'm taking that too far, but that's how I read it.

Minji Lew: I want to make that actually really tangible for folks who are listening because I know that there are companies who are going through riffs and layoffs right now. And so something that I did was I would go into a one on one I'd say, Hey, listen I know it's weird that we're meeting under these circumstances it's like that riff the riff and what's going on right now is top of mind.

Dr. Jim: Everybody talks about empathy, you got to be more empathetic as a leader. I think that right there is a great example of how you are empathetic in the moment, just by simply asking, what do you have space for in this moment? And then adjusting your approach.

So I think that's a really strong take takeaway.

Minji Lew: I just thought of this now, so hopefully it resonates, but I'm thinking about this 3D framework, desire, demand, and delivery. I think desire is really about, do I want this role? First of all, like not everybody wants to. Work within a startup team, a startup environment, and then have to think agile and be a part of building something.

And so that's about delivery, which is our third point. And so I think it's about like really trying to distill that demand down into key priorities. What are the things we're saying yes to, and what are the things we're saying no to, and what are the things we're saying later? We'll get to that later.

And then finally, delivery is after the riff, we downsized, and I think the whole organization is going through more of this idea around doing a few things, but doing them really well, and that ultimately the end product is what people will see and what they'll have a reaction to. If you're delivering a bunch of things that are 50 percent baked.

not going to be great for your credibility as a function, but if you're delivering three things that are phenomenal, that is everything for building your credibility and your reputation .

Minji Lew: I'm a big fan of LinkedIn and particularly the voice note feature in the Direct message. I like to, it's hard to always make time for calls, but if I can send you a voice note to answer a question you have, like that scalability right there and that's delivery. That was a great one.

And also my email is minji. lu at greenhouse. io. And I'm sure you'll share that in the podcast. So they get my name spelled right.

Dr. Jim: Thanks for hanging out with us, Minji. There is a lot in this conversation that I think is going to be impactful for our audience. When I think about the stuff that we talked about in this last 30 minutes, here's. Here's the framework that I built. It it's in no particular order, but here are the things that, that stood out to me.

Three, you need to be focused on what's relevant and what's going to make the biggest impact. So that's three and four and then five. Read the room, make sure that you're centering yourself with an empathetic view so that you're not only operating on what's most important to you.

You're also focused on what's most important to the person that you're sitting across from. So that's what I learned from this conversation. I really appreciate you sharing that with us. For those of you who have listened to the conversation, if you liked where this went, leave us a review and then tune in next time where we'll bring on another great leader to share with us the game changing realizations that help them build a high performing team.