Summary:

In this episode of the HR Impact show, Dr. Jim welcomes Anthony Onesto to delve into the radical mindset of "burning the box" when it comes to organizing workplace talent strategy. Anthony's dynamic background and experience in HR startup culture bring a refreshing and analytical perspective to the fore, asserting that traditional approaches may no longer suffice in the evolving world of work.

Bringing his "burn the box" philosophy to light, Anthony Onesto articulates why it is critical for HR leaders to reassess and often reinvent their processes to align human capital with business impact. The discussion explores the necessity of being data-driven and fostering a work environment that caters to the expectations of emerging generations such as Gen Z, who anticipate entrepreneurial and innovative support from their employers.

Key Takeaways:

Burning the Box Mindset: Questioning the status quo of HR practices and processes is essential for innovation and better alignment with business goals.

Impact of One Good Hire: The substantial influence a single efficient hire can have within an organization, especially startups.

Power Skills Over Technical Skills: The future of work may prioritize generalist capabilities and power skills such as collaboration and resilience over specific technical skills, especially as AI evolves.

Iterative Innovation with Execution Focus: While innovation is crucial, so is execution. It's important to periodically reassess initiatives for their business impact and make incremental improvements.

Generational Workplace Expectations: Gen Z's entry into the workforce brings fresh perspectives and heightened expectations for job fulfillment and personal growth opportunities within the professional environment.

Chapters:

0:01:03 Anthony Onesto's background and experience in HR and startup companies.

0:05:35 Anthony Onesto's portfolio of side gigs and his passion for HR tech and work tech.

0:08:53 The difference between being nice and kind as a leader and the importance of asking employees about their passions.

0:13:54 The direct impact of one good hire in startup companies

0:19:34 The importance of asking "why" and avoiding copying others in HR

0:24:31 Focus on what's working and iterate annually

0:28:24 Importance of power skills and collaboration in the future of HR

0:32:28 Getting started by questioning current processes and making incremental improvement

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Anthony Onesto: linkedin.com/in/anthonyonesto

Music Credit: winning elevation - Hot_Dope



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If you want to future proof your workplace, you need to be much more data driven, and as an HR leader, that means you and your business leaders need to get on the same page. And it's not enough to just say, hey, I want another Bob or another Sue, when you're thinking about your talent strategy, that's not going to move the needle. That's the argument that Anthony Onesto, Chief People Officer at SUSE, makes. So what's Anthony's story? Anthony is a human resources expert and published author who has worked at various technology and innovation companies to scale and improve culture, talent, and human resources. He has experience building and establishing operations in the U. S. and has helped several companies win workplace awards. He's founded a company that produces a comic book series to encourage girls to pursue careers in [00:01:00] STEM and entrepreneurship and co founded an AI HR agent. He's a board advisor for several well funded tech startups and has published a book called the employee contract, how to find, keep, and elevate Gen Z talent, Anthony.

Welcome to the show.

Anthony Onesto: Dr. Jim. Thank you so much for having me excited to be here.

Dr. Jim: This is one of those instances where a half hour show doesn't really do enough justice to all the things that you have going on. And actually, for a lot of folks who are in the. C suite or senior leadership suite in people leadership that probably holds true But we're going to muddle through and get a lot of value out there . A good place for us to start I want to make sure that the audience knows a little bit more about you than what I just covered in the bio So why don't you get us up to speed on the things that you feel are important that's going to inform the conversation.

And I didn't like it. I didn't like accounting. I love all accountants and I love our CFOs, but it wasn't right for me. And by the way, the company was like, you know what? You're right. You don't like it and you're not good at it. So I had a career changing moment. in the first job that I've ever had.

And it's rare that you're able to have that. And so I said, okay, what else am I going to do now? I was in New York. Everyone went into finance. If you weren't on wall street, you were an oddity here in New York city. And but I didn't feel like that was the place for me either. And so I went into recruiting.

I've seen it all. And I've built companies from, just starting out. I've sold companies. I've never IPO to company, so I'm excited about having that opportunity potentially here at Susie. But really thinking through at the very beginning, the core of how to build HR for a company, but also how to connect people HR to the business.

Because when you start with a blank whiteboard or a blank Blueprint of a company and you're there to not only build the company, but build the HR function. It just naturally happens that there's a connection of what you're doing to the business. And that has been my mantra. So a lot of folks believe HR is a back office function.

And I find myself just. loving the connection of the human capital side of the business to the business itself. That's a key important factor now that's expanded into jumping outside of the business, outside of HR onto the business. So I've actually worked with a couple of startups, a couple of companies that were expanding in the U S to be their president, to do go to market, to do sales.

So I actually jumped out of HR for a couple of years. And did some really hard stuff. HR is hard, but if you ever tried to sell something, my goodness, it is really hard and also just ego crushing when someone's no, I don't want to buy what you're selling. So I jumped back into HR when I joined Susie.

And I've also I love HR tech. I love work tech. So I do a lot of advising on the side. You mentioned my comic book, so I have a lot of side give gigs. And the opportunity, Matt Brinton is our CEO here at Susie, loves the ability to have side gigs, loves people that do that kind of entrepreneurial stuff.

So I'm given the room and the capacity to do that. I have a portfolio, I have a Swiss army knife of things that I do and I absolutely love it. But the core is that connection of human capital to the business.

And that's not really the world of work where you immediately recognize that all the stuff that you had prepared for, and then you got into accounting and didn't like it. How did that early career pivot? Inform your people strategy philosophy throughout your career.

Anthony Onesto: And it's a great question. And you're right. Same thing in terms of boomer parents. My father actually was an accountant, was a controller for the New York times, worked for the New York times, his entire career. So exactly what you said was the expectation. So when I decided. To even just get out of the career, but not only the career, but the job it was burning the box from before I knew I was burning the box.

It'd be great to love what you do and make money at the same time. That's the Holy grail of these things. But I learned very early on personally that if you're not motivated, if you're not fit for a job. The company's reaction to me was let's get rid of this guy. He's terrible at it. Versing versus having conversations to say, Hey, what are you really passionate about?

Now we're talking 20 plus years ago. So it was pretty linear when we think of how human resources and companies ran their people operations. But in today's aspect, maybe that was a conversation instead of a firing. Maybe it was like, Hey, what are you interested to do? I, and maybe I could have explored something else within their company, but instead they're like, get out.

And so it was really eye opening. At the time, obviously, I wasn't distraught because I didn't love the job, but many people would get distraught. But for me, it changed my career trajectory. And in fact, fun story. I saw the head of HR since we're now in the same profession a couple of years later. And I thanked her.

Yeah. We were at a conference and I said, Hey, I think she was avoiding me. Naturally, but I went right up to her and I said, I just have to say thank you. You changed my career. I'm now in HR and we actually kept in touch. So yeah, that connection to your passion, what you're good at identifying that early on actually happens to have a connection to your motivation, to your productivity.

And that set the stage for me.

They actually did, and I don't know how it was delivered, but they actually did you a kindness so that you can find your purpose. And the lesson that I draw from there is that the question that you asked is, what are you passionate about? I think that's a question that needs to be asked more often by every leader within every organization across all levels so that you can best align your people to a purpose, whether it's the organizational purpose or their own purpose, you need to have that defined.

Because what I know of Robert Half and other SIA top 100 staffing firms is that it's very regimented process oriented. So burn the box as a philosophy probably would have raised some eyebrows in there.

I can't blame us. It was a construct that we were Yeah. Placed into and also, media has a huge influence on how we process these things. So definitely to get to your point about burn the box. That was really more of a philosophy that was developed by working within the startup and tech and innovation space.

You're a spot on. In fact my, my time at Robert half, I look back on that. As I call it a bootcamp in terms of recruiting. I learned the apps very process oriented. At the time there was no LinkedIn, so you were making phone calls. You were jotting down, logging your phone calls literally on a piece of paper, but it was a bootcamp to understand that you have to reach out.

There's a certain amount of phone calls you have to make every day to reach out and say, Hey, do you need temps? And then interview folks. So it was like the beauty of Robert half is that you own both the sales side and the recruiting side at the time. I jumped out of Robert half cause I was like, thank you for trading me.

So I went in there, but I did it on the HR side. So I did a lot of HR searches. And then what happened was I was with a friend of mine who was working for a VC and said, Hey we're starting to fund all these different startup companies. We're having a challenge finding. people to join them because you have to take a pretty serious pay cut, but also equity.

And the light bulb went off for me. And I said, what if we focus our business and do work with these startup tech companies? And I started actually a division of that boutique search firm. That's focused solely on tech and innovation startups at the time. And again, it was all. com startups. And what naturally happened.

I'd pull that together for them. So I started doing what is now known as a very cool term, fractional. C. P. O. Work back then. It was just known as like temp work. When I was helping these companies not only recruit, but also do H. R. Things. And so that tendency, especially in those startup companies where they had nothing to link recruiting to H.

R. It just came natural to me. And what I took from that, Yeah. Was that there was a direct connection, especially with the tech and startup space, you saw the direct in the early stage companies, the direct impact of one good hire within an organization. Like you, you literally like in larger companies at the time, which is why I didn't love going into financial services at what you just don't know.

And that's, and I love that world. I loved coming in, finding someone and that someone having an impact almost within their first week working for your organization. It just is. And on the other side too, when you had a bad hire. You saw the same thing happen, right? The, you just didn't have the capabilities, the budgets, to have bad hires.

And so you had to make quick decisions and be, do it in a kind way, but understand that this person's not working out.

So it's not just the cost of getting rid of the person. It's all of the stuff that's tied around it. And it's interesting to me that you're now working in an organization. That is led by a person who is on board with side projects and things like that it's an actual activation of bring your whole self to work and I think it ties into a number of different things. The companies that are well prepared to succeed in the future are going to operationalize the whole bring your whole self to work philosophy by creating space and allowing space for all the different interests that individuals have, because that's actually what's, what it's going to take for those individuals to be retained.

Anthony Onesto: It's very different. Like you said, I think you saw some of this manifest with Tony shade Zappos where, I think they were incredibly progressive around going out, learning things and bringing things back into the organization. Traditionally, it was like, does that relate to your job? And there's still some of that.

And I believe some of that. I think there are certain aspects of things that you're going to learn that really have no impact on your job, but you should go out and learn them. They just, we, the company wouldn't, budgetarily support that, but we're supportive of it in so many ways, I think.

And I think what, one of the things, and there's a ton of research out there that supports this, but. I think, especially after COVID, companies are now changing. Companies are no longer planning three to five years. They're planning like quarters ahead and they're having multiple plans for each quarter.

And so think about like years ago, you would back to your point about bad performance in large companies. Yes, there's an impact, but you could hide somewhat in large companies and startups, you can't hide like you're out in the open and it's limited in terms of their budget because they're backed by VCs and private equity funds.

It's the ripple effects of looking at these things and understanding how that applies to someone's job and those competencies like resilience, innovation. Entrepreneurship initiative are the key factors in this. And then if you take what I researched in the book, the new employee contract this is what Gen Z expects as an organization.

They're expecting you to support some of the stuff that they're doing. So it's just these two worlds combining now to say, this is good for business, but this is also what this next generation is looking for.

Dr. Jim: The point that you talk about in your book, the new employee contract, I think it sets the stage really well for the rest of the conversation that we were going to have. And I opened the show by talking about just simply thinking outside the box isn't enough.

To position organizations for success in the new world of work. Walk us through a little bit about how that ties in to your insights when it comes to building a high performance team,

And I'm not saying there are some things that absolutely work in HR that I wouldn't change that. I wouldn't burn the box or even think outside the box. But for most of the things in HR, I would always ask myself and I would go to conferences and talk to other HR leaders. And I would always say, why are we doing this way?

It was always a question in my head, and I think it was having that accounting background, having that startup background. It was always, the ability to have a blank blueprint where I would have to create these things as opposed to. So I was never a big fan of looking at what others did and say.

And Google was thinking outside the box because they were looking at how goals would work. And they said, okay, we're going to do okay. Ours that's outside the box. I'm like why do. Do we need those? What is it, what are we trying to accomplish there? So it's this scientific approach that I feel like I have, which is always asking why are we doing these things?

And some people get frustrated when I do it, but it's because a lot of things that we do in HR, so you think of performance reviews, we were in a company that I was working with. I was brought in to do special projects and. They were doing performance reviews and we're at, we're sitting around a table and everyone was frustrated.

And in fact, research has shown that it actually lowers productivity. And we're going to spend millions of dollars on this. Do you think the CEO would approve that? Like I want to spend 2 productivity. So why are we doing this? And it's that status quo that's the box status quo is the box. And I'm like, let's not even think outside of it.

Let's even, and that, that applies to everything. When we look at the new generation coming in Gen Z, they're burning the box. And I would. Probably go back and maybe rename the book, burning the box because they're coming in without hesitation to say, why are we doing these things this way? And they're very vocal about it where maybe you and I had joined and we were trying to get to that Michael J Fox corner office thing, but we saw things that we questioned, right?

Dr. Jim: The one thing that I want to pull out is your emphasis on the question. Why? When we look at what's a fundamental principle of root cause analysis is continuing to ask the question. Why? Until you actually uncover the actual truth.

So I think there's value in looking at things that way. And one of the things that I always talk about when I'm building teams, Is for every new hire that I bring into whatever organization that I happen to be in my expectation of those folks Is that from day one? You should be looking at the world around you as if you're brand new and, do that every 60 days.

So you're actually thinking and actually voicing what would you do differently? And that comes out of the world of work. When I was coming up, you have the boomer work expectations of what is considered normal.

I'd like the burn the box. Concept. I like thinking about things in radically new ways, but there's a danger there because you run the risk of having to reinvent the wheel every time where there's something that might be just perfectly fine. So how do you guard against constantly having to reinvent the wheel and discern what's viable is something that we should keep versus just wanting to throw everything out every single time.

Anthony Onesto: It's a great question and a great nudge around the concept because you could be in. Innovation perpetuity and never land on anything,. So innovation is great, but execution is important. We see that just as an example. And I would argue a lot of folks are, Apple, .

Because at some point you're putting in a process or you're putting in a program. And I think oftentimes in, in HR, particularly you put in a program that doesn't work, but you're afraid to draw it back. Amazon's great two door philosophy. If it's something where you could. Go in the door and come out the door and it doesn't have huge impact.

I would absolutely look at that. Let's try to execute on these things. And if it works great, continue. I'm a big fan and I think a lot of companies don't necessarily do this. So when you look at data or you look at employee data and you're always looking for the negatives, what's our turnover, what are our issues?

Like in some cases, it could be 2. 5. That's if you want to do it every half year. For me, it's every year looking at is this working? And I think it oftentimes we just leave it if it's not. And if it's not working, Let's go back to the drawing board and do something different. I think that's where we really need to drive.

So you're not in perpetuity and innovation perpetuity. You're looking at things that if they were great, then you're just iterating. You have to be looking at things if they work great, put them in execution, make sure you execute it well, but then look at it again and see if it needs, minor improvements.

And those two things in my mind, conceptually keeps you out. Of being in that innovation stage and transition into execution.

Anthony Onesto: What it does too is you're not asking why for science listen, there are folks that would just ask why to cause disruption and for science sake, I'm asking why, because I'm saying, is this impacting our business? Did the intent of the, or the thesis we had when we launched this, did that come true?

If the answer is no. You have to reinvent, . And that's the why question. It's is this having business impact?

Dr. Jim: now we've defined out. How do you operationalize the burn the box mindset and still have it be productive? We've talked through that. How do you translate that into a coherent people strategy? Like how should this inform who you hire, how you hire, how you onboard across the entire life cycle?

When I think of HR, particularly, I think of, there are two elements. If I double click on that to say there's HR operations, I don't necessarily think burning the box there. Is productive on a regular basis. Now I do. So we're going, I'll give you an example, but those, that area needs to run on time. That is, I say, HR operations is like plumbing and electricity.

It has to work. If it doesn't work, it ruins everything else. So if you get something wrong in payroll or benefits, like it doesn't, I don't care what you do on the performance side of the house. People are going to be like, why isn't it working where If it just works, no one even notices. If you walk into your apartment tonight, put on the lights, they go on.

Now, I will argue that the mandate with Do More With Less in 2024 2024 Now we're thinking of automation. How can AI, one, make sure that the electricity and the plumbing is working, but it's working without having human intervention or requires any additional human capital. If I could do that, then I'm moving that human capital to what I'll call the strategic side of HR.

And that's where the programming I see. An opportunity once you get that core stuff, and we're a small company, so we're very core focused to make sure that the electricity and the plumbing is working, but once we scale up, I'm going to start thinking about, do I need a designer on HR? A lot of stuff we do requires a design thinking methodology.

I would think about, so when I think about burn the box for an HR structure, I think of it where, instead of hiring again, you can think outside the box and hire a generalist with this. Or you could say, maybe I don't even need a generalist. Maybe I need a program manager or a, maybe I need a designer because I want to make sure that everything we put out there.

Feels professional consumer life, things like that. So there's definitely one side of it. Electricity plumbing has to work core HR. I'm not burning the box there on the other side, really thinking of, okay, business partner relationships is an example. How can we reinvent the business partner relationship?

Like, how does that look different in our organization? That's where I burn the box.

Am I on the right track when I think about that?

Anthony Onesto: there are two elements,: on the. People off side or that side of the business, having core skill sets and focus skill sets are important. Absolutely. So you're in marketing and you need to run SEM. You need to know SEM. Now I, we can have another podcast on whether or not AI is going to take some of that away.

It's a great book, I highly recommend it, especially AI proliferation that's happening. But the combination of machines and people is the final equation. It's not machines. It's not people. Some machines are going to do things better than us, and we're going to do things better than them, but you're right on the other flip side, longer term.

It's really thinking about more of a generalist approach and really a stronger focus on the, what I call. Power skills. Traditionally, the profession calls them soft skills. I call them power skills. It's the collaboration. It's the working with people, it's that it's the coaching. It's the feed.

Of it over time. And so we're going to have to refocus on those power skills.

Dr. Jim: Real good stuff, Anthony. I think we've set the stage really well in terms of why burning the box needs to be done and what you should be doing.

I think the one question that we haven't answered yet is how do you get started? So if there's a people leader out there that's listening to this conversation and wants to build a culture that has this mindset embedded in it. How did they start?

Anthony Onesto: I think, because HR is a unique function in organization, we do set the stage and build a framework for the culture of the org. So there's two elements here, that piece. And then within your own department, I would start with your own department. I would start with your own teams and identify the things that you've been questioning.

That's totally cool. So then there's incremental ways to think about it, . There's incremental ways to look at processes and say, how can we make this incrementally better? How can we make benefits 1. 0 into benefits 1. 2? So looking at that and saying. Is there a business question, everything that you're doing and say whether or not it has business impact, if you say yes, it's having a positive business impact, leave it alone.

If you're like, I don't know, find out. And if you're like, Hey, I don't think it's having a business impact or employees aren't, aren't excited about this. When we do employee surveys, then it's an opportunity for you to look at things, but don't try to boil the ocean. Don't take too many things at once.

If the answer is no, stop doing it. And then figure out how to reinvent that, or do it differently, or burning that box. If people are enjoying it to a degree, how do you make it better? How can you incrementally think about these things? And I would just make sure within your organization that you're giving people license to do that.

If you want them to. Because the people that work underneath you, and work with you, and are in the day to day see these things. So make it a mandate for them. Hey. Every year, we're gonna be looking at these things. We're gonna take this approach. We're not wholesale changing a lot of things, but we want to make incremental things.

So there's definitely a way to think about that. So I would start in your department. I would make sure that you have the mindset because change is hard and it's scary. And sometimes when you're like, Hey, Like when I was sitting around that table and I said, why let's just stop doing the performance reviews the way we do it, everyone panicked and I said, what if we just stopped doing it?

Like when any, no one would miss this. So what would happen what is the true impact? And, people like we wouldn't have legal or we wouldn't have performance reviews. And I'm like, okay, great. These are all important things. How do we reinvent that? So I would start within your departments with within your role.

If you're not a leader of department and use your own role as a way to say, okay, how can I make and change things from the inside? But you have to be comfortable, absolutely have to be comfortable with that mindset.

Anthony Onesto: LinkedIn. Really great place. I put my a lot of my content out there. You can subscribe to my newsletter. Ironically, it's called burn the box on LinkedIn. I also have a podcast, same name, burn the box. But LinkedIn is really the best way to reach out, follow, subscribe to the newsletter, or you can go to anthony onesto.

com and you can reach out to me there too.

Dr. Jim: I appreciate you hanging out with us. When I think about this conversation that we had, there's a few things that stand out that I think are fundamental in executing this burn the box mindset that we've been talking about through the entire conversation, and they're all question driven.

There's four questions that I think are central to adopting this philosophy.

And then later on in the conversation, I think a couple of the things that you mentioned is important to call out. What if we stopped doing what we were doing? What would be the impact of that within our organizations? Would it be missed those questions? Are central to the burn the box mindset, and that should set every listener on the path of being actually be able to marry both an innovation culture and an execution culture that's going to set yourself up for success in this new future of work.

So I really appreciate you hanging out with us, Anthony. If you like this conversation and want to get more of it, join our HR impact community. You can find that at www. engagerocket. co slash HR impact, and then tune in next time where we will have another great leader joining us to share with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.