Summary: In this episode of the HR Impact show, Dr. Jim interviews Amanda Keleher, the Chief People Officer at Consensys. They discuss the importance of community in extending culture to the edges of remote organizations. Amanda shares her insights on building high-performance teams, the challenges of diversity in the tech industry, and the future of remote work. She emphasizes the need for alignment between values and actions, effective communication strategies, and the role of HR business partners in driving culture. Amanda also highlights the significance of transparency in the talent attraction phase and the importance of asynchronous working in a global remote company.

Key Takeaways:

Remote organizations need complete alignment between stated values and actions to avoid pain points.

Effective communication channels and mechanisms are crucial for building community in remote organizations.

Transparency in the talent attraction phase is essential to ensure alignment and engagement.

HR business partners play a critical role in holding managers accountable for culture-building activities.

Asynchronous working is important in global remote companies to accommodate different time zones.

Chapters:

0:02:28 Global perspective on diversity in tech

0:05:31 Innovation in HR and total rewards

0:08:37 Importance of communication and balance in remote organizations

0:12:29 Tools and mechanisms for effective communication in remote organizations

0:14:40 Pitfalls of building culture in remote organizations

0:18:32 Building community in remote environments

Join us at HR Impact to learn and connect with a community of HR leaders just like you. This is the space where top people leaders share actionable insights and practical playbooks in fostering a high-performing workplace of the future.

Sign up as a member today for community updates on the latest HR resources and exclusive event invites: www.engagerocket.co/hrimpact

She's the Chief People Officer at Consensus, one of the largest and fastest growing companies in the blockchain technology space. She's a well-rounded business leader with a 25 year career in the technology space. She's been the driving force behind the human element at consensus, where she's responsible for building and maintaining the company's culture and harnessing human capital as a key business driver.

Amanda. Welcome to the show.

Amanda Keleher: Thank you.

Dr. Jim: Before we dive into the big things that we're going to talk about, and we're going to have a community focused conversation, I'd like you to fill in any of the gaps that you feel is important for the listeners to know.

So that they have some context in terms of the lens that you're going to be bringing into this conversation

Amanda Keleher: Actually the companies that you listed, there's a common theme there that everyone will notice, which is that they were all technology companies.

So I have spent my entire career working in technology companies. And I think that was very intentional on my behalf, because I really thought that, Matching like the progressive nature of technology was going to be the same in terms of thinking about talent, how we attract talent and how we bring talent in.

Dr. Jim: it's interesting that you mentioned your career trajectory in tech. I think one of the things having spent a fair amount of time in tech that I've noticed is that it tends to be pretty one note or pretty lacking in diversity, at least from a U S perspective, I'd be curious to understand how your global perspective.

Helped inform your people strategy from a diversity perspective across these tech companies.

Amanda Keleher: I think that the diversity element across the board of all aspects of diversity has always been fairly prevalent in the tech space. I think it's also made the tech space being pretty progressive in some of the programs that they have done in order to move the needle.

Tech is positioned in the family home, for example how it's supported in terms of the studies. And so I think that a lot of the efforts of the companies and continuing to do so today and working in collaboration around raising awareness and understanding of the space so that it can draw more diversity into the space.

In at the education level is what really is going to make a difference. And then I think that you have to match your programs internally to be able to support that.

Dr. Jim: Really good context that I appreciate you sharing. Let's talk about what you've been up to at consensus. So when you think about the things that you're most proud of in your current role, share with us a little bit about what that looks like.

The thing that really excites me most is the remote aspect and the importance of building communities where 800 people across 40 plus countries all remote, and I think that's brought in a challenge in terms of my role and what I'm doing now that's unlike anything I've done before, but also allows me to draw on my previous experience as well.

Dr. Jim: You're pretty quickly approaching your three year anniversary there. When you think about, uncharted territory and moon shots that you still have left to take, what are the things that you're eyeballing over the next 12 to 18 months that are really big wins that you're shooting for?

And I think also just in terms of. Where people work, how we pay them for working and what sort of connects them is going to be really exciting. So I, I see big, uh, innovation. Let's just say around kind of total rewards and compensation, I think will be really interesting space to watch over the next 18 months to three years in our space.

Dr. Jim: One of the other things that I'm curious about, especially when you've talked about innovation And there's a certain amount of pacing that is associated with innovative cultures. If you're emphasizing innovation, if you're emphasizing pace, but in a remote environment, how has that influenced your people strategy and how you identify, hire and develop

talent?

They don't need to be an expert, but they need to be able to demonstrate that it is something that is actually really connected for them and that they want to work in. I think that it's really hard. To work in any company or space. If you don't have that sort of connection to what you're doing. So I'm looking for kind of, people that are aligned with our core values are aligned with the mission and vision of the company and have good experience to like backup.

In their role,.

Dr. Jim: I really like how you called up the alignment between mission, vision, and also the business purpose. Because one of the common complaints that we often see are in our conversations, it comes up is that people at the line level.

For success in terms of eliminating that problem. I opened the show and you've actually mentioned it a couple of times, this idea of community and also how you execute community in a remote workplace. How is that related to that career game changer that really helped you Build high performance teams.

Amanda Keleher: I don't know that this necessarily is exclusive to remote companies, but I think it really brought it into the forefront for me being in a fully remote company is that you need to have complete alignment with what you state as being your values and your actions, I always say this, that if you're feeling pain points anywhere in, in the company, the first thing you should go and look at is there any gap between what you're saying you want to do as a company, what you value as a company and what the actions but not just the actions, how you're also rewarding those actions, the greater the disconnect that you have between them.

Really important to continue to reiterate over and over again, your core values, what does good look like and making sure that everything that you reward and acknowledge through all of your programs is completely connected to those values.

How do you actually build the capacity to do that? What are the things that need to happen at all levels of the organization to build that constant discipline around aligning things with The organizational North star and what's expected.

Amanda Keleher: Yeah. Communicate, communicate, communicate. I think you also have to have really strong. Frameworks and mechanisms in place that allow you to do that. So starting at like the company level, having an operating framework, we use OKRs being really disciplined around that, making sure that you have.

A wide variety of kind of communication channels. So we use town halls. We use open forums. We do team meetings one on one. So scaling all of the way down, making sure you have the tools in place that people can communicate. Slack is a very big kind of like communication tool for us. We just launched a brand new intranet.

You need to validate that's actually connecting and that people are understanding that. So you've got to have mechanisms in place for pool communication, having You know, different kinds of like workshops or ways that you can do that. Find ways that you can connect with people when there's in, in life events.

We're just trialing pop up offices. We do conferences. We look to send people there. Even if they're not presenting just to be able to have some connection. In real life, but the main thing is be really disciplined around your operating framework and making sure that you're thinking about all of those different communication channels that both allow for pull and push communication.

And I would imagine that you probably have a matrix organization where somebody in Asia might be reporting to somebody in the US, maybe not, but anyways, where I'm going with that is. What were the things that you did? That ensured that leaders weren't going overboard with the volume of push messaging so that whatever messaging is going out is impactful? Tell us a little bit about the steps that you took there to make sure that balance was created.

I think you then have to cascade through the organization, meaning. What are the tools that we're using? So we have town halls, which are really designed at pushing out a lot of information, but we have a Q and a at the end, we found that wasn't enough. So we have separated out and have a completely separate, ask me anything town hall type forum that is exclusively for asking questions and doesn't have any content that we're looking for that balance, your engagement surveys.

We do them twice a year. We Being super transparent about the results and getting them out to people and following up on, on action items. So then you just take it down from an HR perspective. What I have found as being really critically important component of an HR team is your. We call them people partners.

So you're really looking holistically at the whole organization and looking at all of those different channels and looking for that balance.

Dr. Jim: The one thing that I really like that you called out is the role of the HR business partner and providing a little bit of accountability mechanism when it comes to one on ones, when it comes to communication channels, when it comes to actions, because, and this is important because oftentimes.

So I really appreciate you sharing that. Let's take a look at what we opened the conversation with. And that was this idea of building culture and remote organizations. We talked about how communication aligning with the North Star of the organization, all of that is going to be important in setting the tone.

If a leader listening to this conversation wants to start, what are the major pitfalls of moving down this path? That they have to be aware of and guard against. What were the things that you experienced and how did you get around those challenges when you started building this sort of culture?

And particularly with a remote culture, it's really making sure that is this an environment that the individual is going to be comfortable with? I think most people accustomed to it now, having been through what we've been through over the last couple of years, but it's not like for everybody.

So it's really important to always be looking at that gap between what you're saying. And that's even in a one on one or a manager with a team, what you're saying, and then what the actual actions and behaviors are around that.

Dr. Jim: I really like what you said about embedding this even in the talent attraction phase at the interview stages. I'm wondering, a lot of hiring managers might shudder at the implication there. The implication is you should be transparent from the beginning of that interaction with a potential candidate that you're bringing in house.

How can you strike that balance between being as transparent as necessary and still selling the organization? What are the things that you've seen that work really well in that talent attraction phase of the employee life cycle?

Amanda Keleher: I have a lot of faith in hiring managers. So I think that most hiring managers are wanting to hire the very best person for the role.

So I think this is also to where the people partners can help a lot. I don't see that talent acquisition is just. Exclusively to a talent acquisition team. I am I have an alignment team where I have all of the kind of leads of each of those groups as 1 leadership team. We work together. We take ownership around the programs that we're doing in P and T.

I think the more that you can work in collaboration, the more that you can educate the hiring managers on the importance of a good hire is holistically looking at. All like aspects is a good thing for everybody. It's good for the candidate because they're going to make the very best decision possible for themselves and they're going to be happy and engaged and it's good for the company as well.

So we opened the conversation talking about. The value of community and remote environments and expanding culture. We talked about some of the things that you need to be doing and what those things are and why they're important. Now let's build out, how do you actually do this?

How do you build a community successfully in a primarily remote environment?

team, because it's so such a critical part of making sure that we're connecting with people.

Make sure you're using the tools and the resources that are allowing for this kind of like connection happening. Also to looking for different kinds of creative opportunities. I said before, we're looking at pop up offices. We leverage a lot conferences to provide opportunities for people to have some in real life experiences.

There are people working within normal working hours all around the globe at. At all times. And so you have to be really clear around what that means so that you don't have instances where people feel as though they should be working or responding immediately to emails, et cetera. And so again, that comes down to the communication.

Dr. Jim: Amanda, this conversation has flown by. I think we packed in a lot of valuable insights and especially when for those leaders who are in remote or hybrid organizations and really care about culture, I think this is going to be a really meaningful conversation.

So if anybody that's listening wants to continue the conversation with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Amanda Keleher: Twitter would be great. My Twitter handle is a colorhurst and my initial of my first name and my family name, and feel free to drop me a message and I'd be happy to chat more.

If those things are misaligned, you'll never build a cohesive culture across the organization. And it sounds pretty simple in terms of concept. But the amount of communication that you have to do and the discipline that you have to have around the communication is where really makes an impact.

So those are the things that I would call out for those who have listened to put it in a place, if you're trying to execute at the level that Amanda has throughout her career. So Amanda, thanks for hanging out with us. For those of you who have listened to the conversation. Leave us a review, let us know what you thought of the discussion, then tune in next time where we'll bring on another great leader sharing with us their game changing realizations that helped them build a high performing team.