Summary:

In this episode of the HR Impact Show, host Dr. Jim welcomes Kyile Stair - Chief People Officer at Litmos. This conversation details the complexities, challenges, and triumphs of scaling up, scaling down, and spinning off parts of a business without creating organizational chaos. With a sharp focus on nurturing teams through tumultuous changes, this conversation dives deep into the art and strategy behind assembling purpose-driven, agile businesses that maintain employee anchors amidst the storm.

Kyile's journey paints a vivid picture—a journey that begins with her grassroots experience in retail, evolves through the robust corporate world of SAP, and culminates in her current leadership at Litmos. These transitions are emphasized through thoughtful reflections on people strategy across different company sizes and industries. The conversation highlights how HR's role is pivotal in fostering employee engagement, culture, and effective leadership, debunking myths that place undue responsibility on HR to resolve all people-related issues.

Throughout the episode, the dialogue underscores the significance of intentional communication and shared values. Kyile champions the idea that true employee buy-in requires collaboration, transparency, and continuous input from all levels. This multifaceted approach offers a blueprint for businesses aiming to pivot from monolithic structures to nimble startups while keeping their teams invested and attuned to the organization's core identity.

Key Takeaways:

• HR's role extends beyond fixing cultural or engagement issues; it's about equipping leaders to cultivate a conducive environment.
• Delegation and recognizing the strengths of team members can significantly boost performance and engagement.
• Major organizational changes, such as acquisitions and divestitures, require intentional communication strategies and transparent leadership.
• Establishing and aligning with new values can be a rallying point for employees during times of significant change.
• Understanding what motivates employees is fundamental for fostering productivity and fostering a strong corporate culture.

Chapters:

0:00:00 Introduction to the HR impact show and the topic of scaling up, scaling down, and spinning off in organizations

0:04:26 Lessons learned from different organizations and the importance of leadership development programs

0:08:29 The myth that HR is solely responsible for employee engagement and culture

0:12:35 Advice for leaders and managers to break free from the firefighting cycle by being intentional in onboarding and training new hires

0:15:15 Getting to know your team to delegate effectively

0:20:26 Involving employees in creating company values

0:24:33 Transparent communication and goal-setting for success

0:29:10 Building a shared vision for success in navigating change

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

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Kyile Stair: linkedin.com/in/kyilestair

Music Credit: winning elevation - Hot_Dope



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Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today on the HR impact show. This is your friendly neighborhood town strategy, nerd, Dr. Jim scaling up, then scaling down and then spinning off.

Sounds like a complicated yo yo trick, executing all three of those things and not creating chaos in your organization is an even more complex quote unquote trick to pull off. Employees can feel unmoored during all of these changes. So how can you as a leader make the case for those people to stay with your organization?

How do you adjust from a resource, rich, global monolith to a nimble startup? Sounds impossible, right? It's a good thing that we have Kylie stair joining the HR impact community to share her story of how she pulled this off. So what's Kylie story anyways? So Kylie is the chief people officer at Litmos, where she's dedicated to driving business success by building highly engaged, inclusive, empowered teams in her role.

She strategically developed and executed a comprehensive People strategy for over 2000 employees worldwide resulting in diverse, high performing and engaged organizations that consistently achieve business goals. So TLDR, she's a big deal. Kylie, welcome to the show.

Kyile Stair: Thank you.

Dr. Jim: I'm super pumped to have you on the show and not to turn this into an infomercial, but for the listeners. But wait, there's more because we have more of Kylie's story to get into. So I think the first order of business, Kylie, is for you to share with us anything else that we didn't cover in your bio that you feel the listeners are going to want to know about you.

That's going to inform this conversation that we're going to have.

So i've seen a couple things gone through a couple of changes in my in my tenure at various companies and happy to connect with you today and chat through some of it

Dr. Jim: So one of the things that I'm curious about in terms of your career trajectory, you've worked in a lot of different industries and a lot of different sized organizations. I guess if you're going to draw a contrast between size of organization or even industry to industry, what were the things that most stood out as you went through that career trajectory, especially from a people's strategy perspective?

That kind of came from headquarters on out into a very small organization. Zulily, which was for me, a quite big change around being with a much smaller and headquartered HR team that was in Seattle. And trying to create and build which was difficult to do when you hadn't done it when I hadn't done before coming from an execution type or organization prior into kind of what I'd say than a mid sized organization that concur of building and kind of flexible, but yet some structure into a massive organization of SAP in a tech world and really at this place, starting to create the strategy myself and and implementing it and executing on it as well through through my [00:04:00] team or others and then back into a small but mighty organization of Litmos and taking a lot of those learnings along the way into the role I'm in today.

Again, starting off really in execution mode of executing someone else's strategy. And I realized that's not necessarily what I want to do in the long term. And so being fairly thoughtful then about what types of companies and roles I wanted to be in going forward.

Dr. Jim: You spent some time in retail, both in large and small organizations. Is there anything about that time in retail, Executing people strategy that you feel prepared you well for, being on the people strategy side at at a large global tech company like SAP.

Kyile Stair: Yeah, there are so many great lessons that you can, that I personally can take from every company that I've worked for. I've been, I personally think quite fortunate in the companies that I have been able to spend some time in and the people that I've been able to connect with in those companies as well.

So I have, I constantly think to myself, I take something from every organization I've been in as a great learning and how I can continue to build my own library of resourcing and my own head and what I can take to others as well.

Dr. Jim: One of the things that I find interesting about that transition is that oftentimes when people find a sector and they spend a fair amount of time in that sector, they tend to stick around in that sector .

Kyile Stair: honestly, I was getting fairly burned out in retail. Retail is in full transparency, working weekends, working nights, working at that stage of my life. It was something that I was really committed to for years. And then I, it wasn't working for me anymore. And so taking that, taking a step back regrounding myself when I left Target, To reground myself, I got my degree in HR.

I started my work with Target in HR eventually moved into a couple different types of management roles within Target as well, and really wanted to get back to my HR roots, I'll say, and so took some time off with them, and really, Started to double down on a search of getting back into HR generalist, HR business, whatever, like some sort of HR role that I felt at a smaller organization.

And so that's when I made the transition into Zulily,

Dr. Jim: Got it. The other thing that that I was curious about when we look at that period of time in your career You know, when you think about your time in retail and you apply some of the things into big tech, what can big tech from a people strategy perspective, learn from what worked really well in retail?

And now understanding the nuances of how to manage, to lead global teams and various various countries with various cultures and how to support other people doing that as well. And so that was definitely a switch, but you take that baseline. And it resonates really globally and across any industry, I'd say,

Dr. Jim: I appreciate you laying out that context, Kylie.

I think one of the things that I'm curious about, especially with your experience in multiple industries and multiple paces that you've been involved with, what's the leadership myth or HR myth that you just wish would go away that keeps coming up even today

But when you get down to the day to day, you get down to the nitty gritty of what people are experiencing in their day to day. HR is not there in that the manager is the team is the collaboration you build amongst each other. And so I think the thing that gets me is, oh, if engagement is bad, or the cold, there's something wrong with the culture, HR, you have to fix it.

When everyone owns it, everyone fixes it together. And you can collectively drive it forward. And maybe HR can help with the, strategy to start moving it in the right direction. But it comes down to Every person, it is not on just HR to fix.

Go ahead and figure that out. That's your job. And what's interesting to me is. When you look at the major reasons why somebody will leave an organization, two out of the top five are related to their relationship with their immediate manager. So the thing that I'm wondering is why is there such a resistance from managers to take more ownership of their Reports, the relationships with their reports, the kind of environment that they're building.

Why is this reflexive behavior of pushing it out into HR? Why does that exist? What's your lens on?

This is just not an intentional top of mind topic for them because you do have to put intentional work into building great teams. It doesn't just happen. You need to commit time with your employees. You should be having one on ones. You should be having skip levels. You should be having town hall. You should be communicating.

And connecting with people on a regular basis. You should be as transparent as possible help connect people to others, . And that takes time and it takes energy. And sometimes it takes emotional energy. And so sometimes if things aren't going well, it can, in my mind anyway, be easier to say someone else needs to help fix that.

And I think that's where HR really can come in and help coach and guide and support and teach and really build in and implement and support processes with leaders. But it's not something that just happens. It has to be an intentional action.

So it creates this sort of loop of constantly being in that firefighting mode. What's your best advice for those leaders and managers who find themselves constantly firefighting and want to get out of that sort of hamster wheel that they're stuck

Kyile Stair: One thing I would say is be very intentional during your onboarding when you're hiring someone new I know it takes time to onboard someone and it actually can take more energy and time maybe you were doing that before I think also sometimes there could be a, a person that's on board, you probably have so much time, but you shouldn't for a little while because you should be onboarding them and teaching and training and being in there with it.

Just want to get it done. Let me do it. Let me handle it. And so how are we delegating? How are we helping to empower our employees to take on some of these challenges and be involved in some of this so they can continue to contribute even more? It's not about just It's me. I'm doing it. I'm very much personally the mindset of is a team achievement.

It's Kylie didn't do really half of this, . It was really all of us collectively coming together to do it.

Dr. Jim: So I really like how you mentioned the delegation point, and I think that's a consistent weakness amongst. A lot of managers, a lot of leaders is that they know that they can get it done faster. So they

Kyile Stair: let's

One of the most underrated ways that you can grow the capability of your people is to delegate things down and give them those hidden stretch opportunities. Because if you're. Creating space for yourself and allowing them to take some of the tactical and execution load off of you, you're building a better team.

And When I think about just leadership overall, really getting to know your people just helps in the long run around. Also that delegation.

Dr. Jim: I really like the point that you made there because it's a, it reminded me of a conversation that we had with DeMar Phillips, who was the former VP of people at Hyliion. And one of the things that he mentioned from a people strategy perspective is that He's very intentional and he coaches all of his leaders within his organization to be very intentional about understanding the strengths of the people that roll into you that way you can deploy resources and tasks and assignments and whatnot that play to everybody's strengths versus taking on those things that might be drudgery for you.

Kyile Stair: yeah. And just to be clear on the process as well. The kind of journey that I've been on here is when I started my career at Concur at the time, it was just acquired by SAP. So I Was not intentionally joining a large organization of SAP, joining Concur, who had just been acquired a few months prior to that by SAP and going through the acquisition process.

And so I got to experience over, four or five years there of, integrating in to a bigger organization going through this process. What does that mean? To start creating synergies amongst teams and functions. And so then transitioning into S. A. P. into, a senior director role, as you mentioned, working alongside some really very smart, very insightful leaders as well.

And so I was part of this divestiture process with Litmos that had been announced, and really came in just to support the change management of the transition of Litmos, those who had been identified to transition out into a standalone organization now being backed by a PE firm. And originally it was not intentional to go with Litmos in, in be their head of head of HR.

But through the process and connecting with the team and recognizing I also made a very intentional career choice to do this, to continue to grow and learn. And it made sense. And so moved into the role full time as, the chief people officer, as they became a standalone organization.

And it is, it was so insightful in. Honestly, energizing to see [00:19:00] that even if people didn't work in the HR realm or didn't work in like a people role, raising their hand to help build the culture of the organization, . Because they recognize that they have, and they have the ability to impact that from day zero.

Really? And one of the biggest work streams that came out of setting up that network was creating our own Litmos values. And so we, I recognized obviously very early on that we would not be taking SAP as values in, into Litmos. And I also knew we were going to be hiring some more people in Litmos coming out.

So we're going to have a lot of very tenured people who had worked on the Litmos product for a very long time on this journey and then brand new people coming in and who are we? And so we went through an exercise where I wanted to be a very interactive in, in kind of bottoms up exercise. And so surveyed all of our employees at the time did actually small group feedback sessions, listening sessions with them as well.

And we were able to launch our new values just a couple of weeks after going live and you can see them on our website and everything as well. But it's just a prime example of the fact that people who are hungry to be part of something will contribute and want to.

Dr. Jim: There's a lot there to unpack. So I'm going to break this down into a few different pieces. So when I hear about that trajectory, you started out at Concur, Concur then became part of SAP. And then a period of time passes and then you get spun off into Litmos. So when I'm thinking about the employee life cycle there.

So I'm Oh, okay. I made it through. I feel pretty good. Then we hear about a divestiture where we're going back to. To a smaller organization. And here I am as an employee sitting there thinking, Oh crap, am I going to have a job? So when you look at sort of those big swings with within the employee population, you did a lot of work in terms of getting feedback and making sure that you're actioning through it. There's no getting around the stark difference between working at SAP and working at a startup. So when you look at that, how did you thread that needle and not really have a mass exodus of people when Litmos ended up getting spun off?

They have very long tenure. And they were dedicated and committed to this product and what they had been building for a while anyway. So there is this really an underlying energy and current of kind of excitement of, Oh, to go back to a smaller, nimble size to go back to maybe the size of an organization where.

Interested in getting back to that. Now we had to do a lot of hiring, as I mentioned, and build a lot more organizations, the HR organizations, a prime example, there is no HR team that left SAP and went to Litmos had to build it from the ground up finance and all of our operations and all of our systems and everything came with that.

Obviously there is. When you're at a big organization, there's just different types of resourcing. There's different, like you mentioned it, when it comes to compensation, or access to learning and development tools, or other things, programs, things that just big companies really can implement. It's different.

We're going to have X, Y, Z that we have to do. We're all going to learn together. And That's exciting. And that's exciting. So yes, there's a comp side from a retention perspective and things that we, you have to intentionally think about regardless when you're in an HR role, when it comes to total rewards that you need to think through and implement.

Outside of that, I think it's being very transparent about your goals and your priorities and how this person in this role can be successful at Litmo. Okay.

Dr. Jim: You mentioned earlier, one of the things that you did and it happened, it went live pretty much when Litmos was officially spun off.

Kyile Stair: Yeah, I agree about quantifying, but I think, one, it just started to break down silos and barriers. So we have the company is in at this point in time, four different countries, people were connecting with each other, and they had never talked to each other in the past, . They were just working in their little silos and the organization or whatever.

And so being part of the those cross functional teams really just helps To build awareness around who else is even in this organization. What else do you do? I didn't even know we, we had X, Y, Z role. And some of that happens when you move into big companies, right? And so coming back together and starting to break those silos down by going through an exercise like that, you could see people start to network with each other and reach out to each other.

In my mind to drive a little bit of that. I want to see how this plays out. Let me see where we're going together.

Dr. Jim: Great stuff. So we covered a lot of ground and I think one of the things that we haven't got to is the how. So we've talked about, Why certain things needs, need to be done when you're when you're navigating some pretty drastic change. We talked about what are the things that you need to be doing?

If there's a leader that's listening to this conversation and they want to build sort of a roadmap on how to execute these sort of changes what are the key principles that they need to keep in mind?

Kyile Stair: It comes back to again, intentionality having a plan on a page or in some way, shape or form around what you're trying to accomplish. And what are some factors that go into that? So for example, Communication, as we know, is a really big component of change management, and so being very intentional about what sorts of communication am I going to have with my leaders, with my employees, how often, what channels and so really putting intention behind The plan that you need to really help everyone get through and then are you communicating the right thing at the right time?

Sometimes we can't communicate certain topics at the right time for people But being transparent and sharing that is important as well I can't tell you or I don't have an answer at this point in time when I do I will be able to let you know and being as transparent as possible through the process it just shows and demonstrates to people That you're helping to build that trust with them as well.

Dr. Jim: Real good stuff. Kylie, if people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you.

Kyile Stair: Happy to connect on LinkedIn. Now you can find me at Kylie Starr.

Dr. Jim: And that's K Y I L E. So it's not spelled the way that you think it should be spelled. So I just

Kyile Stair: Tricky.

Dr. Jim: Say that out loud. So real good stuff. I appreciate you hanging out with us, Kylie. When I think about this conversation, there's one big thing that I think do it. Stood out to me that a lot of the listeners would be well served paying attention to.

And it was when you took us through the part of that journey where you're co collaborating and building that shared set of values, that mission. I think that's an underrated part of that journey. And here's why a lot of people will, discount the value of mission vision values as a way forward.

Because if you're only. Doing it from a top down perspective, you're going to have a lot of people that aren't bought into your vision for success. And I think that was the one aspect of the story that I really enjoyed hearing about. So for those of you who have listened to this conversation, thanks for tuning in.