Episode 112 - Robert Buckley - Enveda Biosciences

Speaker A: The Hennessey Report from Keystone Partners. A free flowing conversation with leaders in the HR community talking about themselves, the industry and their work. Brought to you in cooperation with nehra, the Northeast Human Resources Association.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Hennessy Report by by Career Minds. I'm your host, Dave Hennessey and today's guest is Robert Buckley, the chief people architect from invita Biosciences. In this discussion, Robert shares his unique approach to leadership, HR and organizational development, emphasizing principle based leadership, data driven decision making and the importance of continuous learning. And you'll discover his diverse experiences from sports to biotech, and how they shape his innovative strategies for building high performance teams. Some other topics we discuss are people, uh, first, leadership and decision making, the integration of data and math in HR and building a culture of continuous learning and development. And joined for this episode is our Career Minds, Denver area market leader, Jill Thompson. And uh, you'll enjoy this episode. Also at the end of the episode we have our Coach's Corner segment. And we have our very own Howard Seidel from the Essex Partners program talking about executive decisions with regard to careers. And now our conversation with Robert Buckley. Well, here we are. Welcome, Robert Buckley, to the Hennessy Report.

Speaker C: Thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to be here.

Speaker B: And it's so great that my colleague in our mountain zone, Jill Thompson, brought us together. Good to have you too, Jill.

Speaker D: Thanks Dave. Thanks for having us on here. And Robert, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker C: You are very welcome, Jill.

Speaker B: Looking forward to having you jump into the discussion as we go here. And our first question for you, Robert, is what's an early life moment? As you look back on it now, it was an inflection point for who you've become as a professional.

Speaker C: One of the things that I do in my job and in my leadership is I connect other things in my life. So as I look back, I grew up playing, uh, competitive, uh, in the US they call it soccer, I call it truth football. And so I grew up playing competitive. I played in college, I had opportunities, uh, for scholarship, all those kind of things and played. And when I think about what I do with people and culture and leadership, it connects a lot to my coaching because I coach. I retired last year, but I've coached for more than two decades and I've coached men, women, boys, girls. I coached the local peewee, you know, four year olds all the way up to international competitive level tournaments, uh, and taking teams to those. And there's a lot of life lessons between coaching and playing and then how we Lead both at home and at work. And so I'm very thankful for all of those lessons that I've been able to incorporate in into a unified vision of how I think about coaching and leading people.

Speaker B: Right, that's great. And of course teaming, which is so important in the corporate world as well. That's great, great story. Well, let's talk about you and your organization, Inveda. Can you please share what's Inveda's mission in the world before we get into talent topics and strategies.

Speaker C: We've been around since 2019 and what we are doing is drug development from the natural plant world. And our thesis is we already see in nature opportunities for drugs for humans. And the best example we always use that people know is aspirin. Aspirin comes from willow bark. And so right now we've got two assets in the clinic. Two more are going to start very soon and the first one we publicly announced, all this is for atopic dermatitis and asthma. And so far our phase one results have been fantastic. Phase two results and, and we're moving on to phase two B so we'll see about that later this year. And our other one is for obesity and that's in the clinic. And so what we are doing is finding natural based molecules in the plant world and then turning them into drugs. And we do that both platform and pipeline. So the we're what you call a tech bio company and so the front end is all this super interesting. We uh, built custom hardware. We use AI, machine learning, data science to predict structures of molecules that then give us a great indication of how it could work in the lab. We handed over our pipeline team and then onto our clinical team and it is so much fun at the company. And who's against like helping patients get better from diseases?

Speaker B: Like it's hard to get a better mission than that and it's fun to be at the intersection of technology and life sciences biotech. That's amazing. As far as the location of employees, are you uh, decentralized? I know you're based in the Salt Lake City area I believe and um, is. Does everybody work in the same building? Are you a. How does it, how does it all function?

Speaker C: Yeah, we are in Boulder, Colorado is where our lab is and our headquarters. I work out of my basement here in Salt Lake City in a little suburb outside of Salt Lake and there's a few people in Utah, maybe about 10 of us in various disciplines. Uh, and then we have a lot of people at the lab in Boulder. But you know the big Thing is, almost half the company is at our lab in Hyderabad, India. And so we've got m. A whole team of people there, and we're growing and expanding that, uh, we're growing here in the US as well. And we're growing in India. I go there about once a year. I just got back a couple weeks ago. And it is, oh, my gosh, so much dang fun to go hang out with those people for a week and all of our employees and our leadership. And when I'm there, I spend a lot of time coaching and leading and talking with our people. Leaders talk about books. It's always fun to talk about books. So a little less than half in India and then a little, um, more than half. Not just in the U.S. but around the world of that, we have maybe 10, 12 people not in the United States or in India.

Speaker D: Okay.

Speaker B: I'm fascinated by India. I've never been, but it's a country I want to visit and learn more about.

Speaker C: Before I was at Inveda, Now I've been at Invada, too. It is great. Um, you know, culture is different, food is different, people are different, and yet there's a hundred things that make us all human the same, too.

Speaker B: Tell us about your approach to leadership of the HR function at Invada, and, um, what your. The goals you see of your function.

Speaker C: Yeah. Can I give you a word picture?

Speaker B: I love word pictures.

Speaker C: Let's do it. Okay, so I have a few that I use. Let's use. Let's start with this one. So words, when I'm talking to people, when I'm interviewing, whatever I'm doing on a podcast with you guys, uh, here's one of the word pictures I use when we think about hr. So here's what you get with me. And so if this doesn't work, you know, for a company, it's totally okay because not everybody fits everywhere, and that's totally fine. But here's what you get with me. Let's do a Venn diagram. The first circle. I, uh, use the word aseity. And the word aseity means self existence. And that circle represents. I am not here to tell you what to do. If you're going to hire me in hr, I am not here to tell you to do my job is to help you. So that's the first circle. Second circle is the word expertise. And then the one line on that is, I'm here to tell you what to do. What's the point of hiring somebody like me if it's not to tell you what to do. You might as well just hire somebody straight out of college and order them around all day. So those are obviously intention. And then the third circle is the word ballast. And the one line sentence is different point of view. HR isn't better or worse than say sales or customer success. Those organizations live under a daily pressure. You've got to meet sales, we've got all the customer stuff, issues we got to do. Uh, they're not better or worse. What it does though is put HR in this position of having some ballast, some perspective. And so the wise leader listens to that point of view. Doesn't mean HR is always right, always wrong, but it is to say, man, I should listen to, to my customer success leader. And if HR has a different point of view, I should really think about that too. So all three of those circles are the Venn diagram and they're in tension with one another and the really great HR leader can navigate those well. And that's what's super valuable. When you think of CEO or other leaders on the executive team, do you think they're worried about whether HR knows what they're doing in hr? No, of course not. They all know the basic stuff that's either easy. What they really care about is this. Here's what they're, uh, you guys know the term qbq?

Speaker B: No.

Speaker C: What's the question behind the question? There's a book on it, uh, if you want to read a really great book, qbq. Here's what they're, here's the qbq. They're not asking, can you do HR stuff. The QBQ is this, oh my gosh, is he going to be a nightmare to work with? That's what they're asking. And so they want to know, are you going to be a partner? Are you going to help us think? Think, Are you going to help us strategize? Are you going to find solutions? Are you just going to be the dang HR police? And so that Venn diagram, that word picture helps them answer that question.

Speaker B: It sounds like what you're talking about is something that you, you post about and talk about in the world is principle first leadership. You alluding to this right now versus the uh, policy HR approach to things. Can you share more about what you mean about principle first leadership?

Speaker C: So I grew, uh, one of the things about me is I did speech and debate growing up in high school. Love speech and debate. And you need a good agd. And an AGD is attention grabbing device. And so let me give you a good AGD I never read the handbook. I don't care what the policy says. I never read any HR policies. Now of course I'm the one who wrote all that stuff, but I love to say that as an attention grabbing device. Because what I'm trying to connote is your whole point, Dave, which is don't worry about the policies in the handbook. Yes, we need them. I'm not saying don't have them. And do they provide some guidelines and guardrails and some ways to think? Sure. But the most valuable thing we do in HR is actually help people leaders. So what I do is I almost never answer a uh, people leader's question. When they come to me, I always ask them questions. I think what we're really valuable in as an HR leader is being a great interlocutor, which is a fancy word to say, a good questioner. And so like say Dave, you were asking me, Robert, I got this situation, what do you think? This happens almost every single day. And I'll say, well, Dave, what do you think about this? And what do you think about that? And have you thought about this? And if you approach it from this direction and by the end they're like, thanks, that was great. I did nothing. I mean, I didn't give them an answer, I didn't point them to a dang rule book. I asked them because I also believe not only should you have principle based leadership, I think, uh, almost everybody already has the answers inside of them and our job is to pull it out of them. And when you think about, well, how do we scale an organization so we don't need an army of a finance, legal and hr, well, if you have really great people leaders, they'll just handle all that. And so the best thing we can do is help them learn how to think, not be tied to the rule book and solve all the problems.

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker C: And isn't that actually better for everybody? It's not, uh, like I don't really think about it from a cost, although it does help reduce cost. Cause you don't need an army of people. But isn't it better for the culture, isn't it better for employees that their managers handles things like it's way better.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And it's really, I, it reminds me of the coaching mindset is how you approach people who bring problems to you. It's really putting, helping them uncover what the solution is with. Yeah. If you think of advising or directing.

Speaker C: Right, Yep, you got it.

Speaker B: I think we've talked about this. My next question is about, think about HR's role as support, not center stage. That's really the kind of thing you're. You're talking about. But maybe you could talk a little bit about how you develop your HR team to, um, to live by these ways. How do you make sure this permeates through? Because you obviously are setting the example. Are there other things you do besides just setting the example to make sure this is fostered throughout the organization, this approach by your team?

Speaker C: Let's use recruiting as a really good example. Can, uh, I give you another word picture?

Speaker B: Yeah, I love them. This is great.

Speaker C: So when I got hired and, uh,

Speaker B: Caitlin, word pictures, they help us remember. We don't remember. Uh, I always remember, like, you could spell the word cat. Cat. You don't remember cat. You remember the picture of the cat. That's why word pictures are so powerful.

Speaker C: Yeah. So Kayleen was already here. I pretty much hired and built the whole HR team once I got here four years ago, But Kayleen was already here. And so she and I have a fantastic relationship. She's so dang good at her job. And what I was able to help her do is make it not just about recruiting. And so one of the things that I believe about recruiting is that we are on the same team. We are not order takers. And I think where recruiting goes wrong a lot is they let hiring managers say, oh, I am your customer. You have to do what I say. And I always say, that's wrong. Recruiting is not, uh, should not think of hiring managers as the customer. That is wrong. Here's the word picture. Instead, it's the end of the year. It's the Christmas holiday party. Dave, you're the hiring manager. You're on stage, and you're talking about all the things with the groups that's going on and celebrating, talking about next year and having everybody have a wonderful holiday season, enjoy Christmas with the grandkids, all those kind of things. And one of the things you mentioned is this. Hey, everybody who was hired in 2025, raise your hand, stand up. 11 people, stand up, whatever it is. And as everybody's cheering and clapping, you turn your head to the side, and I'm your recruiting partner, hr, And I'm standing over here. I'm not on stage. I'm behind the curtain. I'm off stage. And you just look at me and nod your head and smile. That's great. We are not on stage. Our job is to help you, the people leader, be amazing. It's to help you be the person who everybody goes, man, I love working Here, because I love working for Dave, but, you know, uh, that you wouldn't be on that stage if it was not for the help that you get from hr. Because we are so valuable, so helpful. We're, like, on your team. We are not, like, part of hr. No, we're on Dave's team. And so when you do that, that's our reward. That's where we go. I'm going to have a great Christmas season. Because I got that smile and that look from Dave.

Speaker B: I love the stage analogy, right? Because you have people who hire the actors and the performers that get on stage. I remember there was this. I can't remember his name, but he wrote a great post on LinkedIn about performance and feedback and said, think about it as a performance on stage. The feedback is instant. It's applause or disinterest or whatever. And, you know, like, I like that metaphor around talent.

Speaker C: Yeah. Well, think about this, too. You cannot not communicate. So imagine the days when everybody used to go to this thing called an office. And some companies still. If you're the boss again, Dave, and you walk through the floor and you're doing this the whole time, and you go sit at your desk and you walk by me, what message did you give me?

Speaker B: Yeah, disinterest.

Speaker C: Right now, again, we're just using a point in time. If you don't do that every day and we all know you're busy. Uh, I get it. There's context to the point, okay, into a particular situation. So there's always context. But the big point to think about is you cannot not communicate. The people leader is always on stage. You're on stage when you do what I said, you're on stage at the Christmas holiday party, you're on stage. When you travel, you're always on stage. And that's not to put pressure on anybody. It's just to say that's a reality of how it works. When you are the people leader, no matter what level you are, you could be CEO or Frontline. You're always on stage. And if you think about that and accept that as a people leader, rather than fighting it and saying, no, no, no, I'm not. We're all best friends still, like we were when I wasn't. That's just totally not true. So accept it and then be amazing. And one of the ways to be amazing is have a great HR partner who helps you.

Speaker B: That's great. You know, as, uh. Well, we're in your HR department. You talked about the recruiters. Um, and obviously, people learn most 70%. Some of the stats out there doing.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: There's also training and development. Right. And how do you. Whether it's a leadership skill or management skill or a technical skill, what's your philosophy there? And how do you measure the results?

Speaker C: Love this topic. Okay, can we switch from word picture to heuristic?

Speaker B: Big word, Robert.

Speaker C: Big word. Let's switch. Okay. It starts with people create all value. So here's our heuristic. And we do not walk into the lab one morning, go, uh, that brand new machine grew up overnight. Oh, my gosh. This is what we've been dreaming about. Like, it doesn't happen that way. People do all these things. People invent, imagine, tear down, reimagine all these things. And so people create all value. Then you say, okay, great, I'll buy into that. What's next? Well, the answer is, well, you better have a work environment where people can create value. Because if people create all value. But I hate my job. Do you think you're going to create much value? I don't think so. And so you're like, okay, I'll buy into that.

Speaker A: What next?

Speaker C: And the answer to that question is more than 70% of how somebody sees the company is how they see their people leader. By far and away the most valuable thing a company can do. It's not even close. We're talking about the second place thing is have great people leaders. Okay, if that's true, then you better do a pretty dang good job of hiring them, um, coaching them, training them, trusting them, doing all those things. So you have great people leaders, including measuring, which we'll get to. So all that's true, then the most valuable thing we can do is develop our people leaders. Sometimes that means moving them to a different job. They could get fired. But most likely. And we've done this several times at Invada, where we actually go to somebody and let's just look at Jill, because I've been looking at you, Dave. You actually like leading those messy little things called humans. And you're like, oh, I don't. They're weird. And we're like, great. We think you're not doing a great job either. So why don't we put you in a job where you're amazing and you have a lot of influence. We don't take any pay away from you. You're an individual contributor. You lead strategy and thinking, but you don't have to deal with the messy things called humans training. So we, uh, I run cohorts, and I have a whole thing if you want to know my principles around cohort training, I'm happy to do it. But we run small little cohorts and we meet one hour every other week. Attendance is mandatory, not optional. And then we do a very specific topic on how you can be a better people leader. And then you actually have to use it. And so we just have this whole thing, which, if you want the details, I'm happy to go through it, but that's our heuristic. And then we, uh, leave it with this. You should train and trust your people leaders.

Speaker B: And is micro learning part of that, Robert, or is that what you're talking about? So how do you, how do you think about micro learning?

Speaker C: I love having this conversation. So there's nothing wrong with the three day biotech conference along the Charles river. And it's a lovely spring day in Boston and, uh, everything's out and we're gonna go to Lexington and Concord, you know, while we're here. There's nothing wrong with those things. Can you really remember though, uh, three days worth of content. Nobody can. And so I'm not saying they don't have their place. They do.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: But the far bigger impact is microlearning one hour every other week on a very specific topic. And again, I curate it and I have different ways I teach people. I don't do it all. We have inside, outside people. We have lots of stuff we could talk about because then you can go use it. Um, because it's not that burdensome. And anybody who were to say, and people don't say this really out in beta, but every now and then, you know, somebody kind of like gets close to the line. I'm like, wait a sec, I want to make sure I understand you don't have time. One hour out of 80. And we all want more than 80 to be a better people leader when it's the most valuable thing we can do. I'm not really saying that I had.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker C: But look, you have to make it fun, you have to make it valuable, you have to make it engaging. Because even if all of the sort of philosophy is true, but then that it's kind of terrible training. Who wants to go to that? So we do all that, we make it fun. We do all that. That's microlearning. I'll tell you a story. Literally happened to me last week. I was in, uh, our lab in Boulder. I go once a month. We had board meeting last week. So I was there. And we had training one day. We do training on Tuesdays and The next day, one of those people come up to me and went, oh, my gosh, thank you so much. That topic, I literally just used it in my last meeting. I went, yeah, that's great.

Speaker B: Well, let's bring in Jill Thompson, who, uh, introduced, uh, us. And I think she wants to have a question or two for you as well.

Speaker D: I do, of course. Yeah. And you're speaking our language, Robert. Just the whole reinforcing and making it fun and practicing that. That's so, so great to see that it's working, live in an organization. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about, it revolves back to something you shared with me. I, uh, know you've done a disrupt talk on it, and it's about math in HR and how your philosophy around it, how math has changed your mind and what you think about that. In the world of hr, if we

Speaker C: could only do one thing globally for HR to get better, we're only allowed one thing, it would be this. Do more math. And what we have, unfortunately, and this still exists today, I mean, I still see this is. People say, oh, that's why I got into hr, because I don't. I'm not good at math and I don't like math and I like people. And I gently, lovingly say, please don't say that anymore. Um, because here's the thing. I'm probably more skilled and more attuned to this than most people. I get that. But you, you don't have to be the math whiz. That's not what we're saying when we say, do more math. What we're saying is, how do we do both quantitative and qualitative both matter like the other. There are people in the world who also say, well, I just make all my decisions based on data. Like anybody who says, let's just take the emotion out. I'm always like, stop. We're not going to take the emotion out of it. What we do want is constructive. I am not asking for an automoton to come through the doors. Like, that's not what we want. We want emotion, but I want healthy. I want constructive. I want all of you. I want your mind, I want your heart, I want your emotions, I want your data. I want all those things, and I want it to be healthy. So we don't want this side where it's like, I just like people and we don't want this guy where it's like, I am a spreadsheet and you don't. And so what I tell HR leaders is, you don't have to be like me. Well, what you do need, there's all these kids who graduate every single year from data analytics, data science or psych programs. Go hire one of them. They're right out of college, they come into hr and we, we do not lack for data in hr. In fact, we're price super data rich compared to other places. We just have to. So go get one of these kids, give them the vision, they will do all the math for you. And then when you can talk about, well, what are the results? Well now you can be both quantitative and qualitative. And that's what we do. So we do tons of math. We have all kinds of data and charts. We do some really sophisticated math as well. And then when I'm talking, I can do both. And so back to where we were with Dave 10 minutes ago. Care about people, don't tell them the rules, let them make decisions. And what if we give them a bunch of data to help them? That'd be pretty cool. That's what we do.

Speaker D: That's awesome. And I think, I think Dave might have mentioned he was a math major. I have a son graduating from college that's a math major. It is very encouraging to hear that. You don't have to be a math professor to get to use that.

Speaker C: You don't. And I understand we're probably going to have in HR fewer people who are attuned to math than other disciplines. And that's okay. But you have to do is you have to say how do I use it though to make the business better? How do I use it to help people? Um, so just give you a little teaser. We built a whole ecosystem at Inveda that tells a people leader the answer to this question. Here's what people leaders ask. Are my people? Well, we keep it super simple. Are my people. Will, if you're going to have this whole thing around the value of people litters that I've been talking about, well then if we say go get them tiger. Okay, the philosophy is great and it's better for everybody, but we haven't helped them like do that. So you got to train, you got to trust them, you got to be available and then you got to help them with math. So we do weekly check ins. I have all that data. I put it in a super easy fun dashboard for them. We do some math around it for to help them. We do monthly questions, we do an annual employee survey. We put all this stuff on our data platform. We use Domo and we give it to people Leaders so they can know are my people well, and then think about this. Well, now that I have all that data, can I find a way to integrate it all in some sort of methodology? And then say, who's a good people leader? A lot of times you go, here's what happens. A lot of times you go to these meetings and who's a good people leader? Jill, let's talk about Dave behind his back. And, um, someone goes, you know, I think he got new glasses last week. He's, he's, he sounded pretty sharp these days. And they're like, well, you know, eight months ago, I remember he was kind of mean to somebody. He's probably not very good. And that's the best we get sometimes. What if we didn't have that? What if we had a bunch of data and we said, well, how's Dave doing on this, this, this and this and this and this. And again, it's not a, uh, competition. It's not a way to like, find the bad people and fire them. It's a way to help people. It's way to, oh, it looks like Dave's struggling a little bit in companies. Let's go help him. Let's have them get better. And so if we had both data and judgment, and then we could go help him be a better people leader. Pretty winning formula.

Speaker D: And do I have time for one more question?

Speaker C: Yes, you do.

Speaker D: So does a lot of this, Robert, tie into your performance management too? And your philosophies around that, which I know is a little bit off topic here, but.

Speaker C: Well, remember, we like a good AGD on this podcast. Remember we said that. Yeah, Jill, we don't do performance management. Like, why would, why would we do that? Um, most eight performance management is. Hm, hm. How do I think about, uh, Jill? I'll give her some sort of label. Uh, say she, she could be a Jedi warrior. Maybe she's a tiger. Like, what motif should we use? And then we slap some label on your forehead and then we attach something to it. Like, I don't know, maybe like your percent raise? Or is she even promotable? Whatever the heck that means. Like, uh, and like, does it actually help? No. So we don't do performance management. And so all of this philosophy and data that we've been talking about on the podcast helps people leaders be better and be better is. Are my people well. And so now that I've got a good agd, yes, we do a couple things around giving people feedback and stuff, but it's not a performance management process.

Speaker D: I love It, I, I just heard at a conference on Friday, someone using the analogy, you don't water a plant twice a year and expect it to grow.

Speaker B: So that's really good.

Speaker C: The ecosystem's way better. We have monthly questions, we have weekly check in. We have an annual place onboarding. We do this. We do this. We have so much stuff. Isn't the ecosystem, like, every day, every week, every month way better than, like, Jill, I don't like your haircut from last February. Like,

Speaker B: that's great. Great analogy, both of you. Um, I think we have some clues, Robert, based on everything you said so far, but what kind of leaders thrive at Invada?

Speaker C: The best leaders at Inveda are going to be learners. That's the number one thing is, are you willing to learn? Are you willing to be coachable? Are you willing to say, I'm going to think differently? And sometimes when we hire people from where they've, uh, been a little longer in their career and they're from, say, big companies, we do have to help them retrain how they think about things. And some of that is like, I don't make a decision. HR does. Um, so an example, a little bit tongue in cheek, but not totally. I really don't care what you pay somebody, Dave, if you want to pay your very best engineer, um, $80,000 more than your next engineer who's really good, I don't care. I'll give you all the data, all the philosophy, I'll help you all. We have it all. But you make the decision. And then, Dave, when you pay that engineer, and when people find out, because they will, they will, then you have to be comfortable answering that question.

Speaker E: Right?

Speaker C: And what you can't do is like, well, I don't know. Don't ask me that. You can't do that. But you can do is say, why'd you talk about that? Don't do that. We should. And we help managers understand the language and the conversation. I want our very best engineer to be paid a lot more money. They should be there are that valuable now. You get one of them, you don't get 20 of them. And that's fine. But, you know, here's. Here's a saying I use all the time. The players always know. So going back to soccer, my coaching and my playing days, Right. Do you think the players always know who's really good and who's not? Yes, of course they do. And so it's actually when the manager says, oh, the reason I pay that, uh, uh, person $80,000 more is because she's the very best person on our team. And instead of everybody going, you know what they do? You know what they do Instead they go, you're right. Now person's a jerk. That's different. Right? You can still be the very best person, but if you're not helping the culture, then that's a different problem. So you can't have that. Like on this football, uh, pitch, um, you know, there's plenty of players who are super talented, but they don't win a lot of trophies because they're jerks and their teammates just don't like being around them a lot. And frankly, I love trophies, I love winning trophies. So you got to do both. Um, but you can do that. We can coach people, leaders to do that.

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker B: I think of uh, the Ted Lasso show where they sometimes had some incredible stars who weren't the best teammates and they found a way to fix that so it can be fixed. Right. At least in make believe tv. But anyway, yeah, those are fun. A little bit about your background, Robert, that's, you know, we can see a little bit who you've become, um, as a leader and as an HR thinker and you've had some interesting experiences at GE, eBay, you know, um, tech and healthcare and all other.

Speaker E: Can you talk a little bit about

Speaker B: the experiences you've had that really helped, um, you form your um, approach to the world today?

Speaker C: One of the really cool things you get with HR if you want is you can do lots of different things. And not every job, not every career is like that. But in HR you can do lots of different industries. And my number one strength on strength finder is learner. And so I love learning. What I generally do, if you kind of look through my history is I go to something that I've never been at before that I have a reasonable chance of failure and being fired from. And that's okay. That's how you learn, that's how you get better. And I love that. So, uh, you can learn from anywhere. The stuff I did with Bort Longear and uh, a global drilling organization, we could spend that all day telling stories about that, uh, business. Fantastic. And then ebay, this global tech company, GE, I mean the time when I was there, right, Number one company in the world, not anymore. Having better times over the last couple years than they did before. And you can always learn. I'm so thankful for the training I got at Georgia and jumping into the startup world. And one of the things that's super funny is like this whole Silicon Uh, Valley, non Silicon Valley dynamic that goes on in the tech world, like Silicon Valley. People think the whole world revolves around Silicon Valley. It doesn't. And then the people outside of the Silicon Valley think, oh, those darn people over there. And you're like, uh, they actually do invent a lot. You might want to actually be happy with them. So, you know, it's kind of which that thing happens all through all organizations. Sales versus finance, uh, customer success against product development, I mean, whatever. You can kind of use all these lessons from all these places and you meet all kinds of people, all kinds of leaders, you get to do all kinds of fun things. I mean, I would have never gone to some of the wacky, crazy places I've been in the world had it not been for some of these things. And you just meet all kinds of different people. Part of the reason I like going to India, part of the reason I like doing other stuff is to meet how different people think and solve problems differently. And that doesn't mean I always agree, but I can definitely appreciate it and respect it.

Speaker B: Right, and you're open to it. Um, if you could give advice, go back and get advice to Robert at age 30 years old and you could write a letter of career or professional advice, what would you write to your younger self? Robert?

Speaker C: Jeff Bezos has this quote. If you're going to innovate, you must be willing to be misunderstood and having enough courage to take risk. And that doesn't mean the risk always pays off.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: There's going to be some things that do pay off and some that don't in life. But be willing to risk and willing to be courageous. And not everything happens on the timeline you want and you have to be respectful and you got to work with other people. All the context that goes around it, but the idea that says you have to be willing to risk and take a chance. And if you look around the world, not just in business, but like other things around life, and you look around and you're like, yeah, that kind of is true how I manage my money, I gotta be really smart about it. If I get like most days your money doesn't do well, but if you get out of the market, just using equities as an example, on the one day when it goes crazy good, you will lose lots of money the rest of your life. And so take a chance, be in stuff, have discipline, but also be willing to risk. It's all okay, it's true. And one of the things I coach my players is after they're um, they're not brand new players. They've been m with me for a while. I'll stop a drill we're doing. I'm like, what are you guys doing? I don't. I'm like, well, we're doing the drill, coach. I'm like, why? What made you think that? Why should you do this? I'm like, you're right. We did not use our imagination. And so I've taught them, yes, work on the thing we're working on, but improvise. Use your imagination. Try stuff. When's the best time to try? During the match when it's two to one and we're holding a lead or a training. If you learn to do it at

Speaker E: training, you'll do it.

Speaker A: There's.

Speaker C: And so it's combination of risk and innovation and being wise and all of that.

Speaker B: If, um, you could share something interesting about yourself that we would not find on your bio or your resume and you'd be willing to tell us, what would it be? Tell us in all of our listeners.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, all. However many thousand people are going to hear.

Speaker B: Millions. Millions.

Speaker C: Millions. Millions of friends. Okay. I'm willing to bet to guess that I might be the only person who has ever said what I'm about to say. I, uh, could be wrong.

Speaker B: Good setup, but I don't think we're on the edge of our seat now, Robert.

Speaker C: Edge, uh, of our seat right here. We're ready. I grew up square dancing. I grew up, not just square dancing, going to square dance festivals. And this is a high schooler, so I started square dancing in middle school and then joined a club. And then, um, you know, would go to dances on the weekends and things like that. And then, you know, they have big festivals, you know, at like a lake in the summer or something like that, where it's like two or three days. And, you know, there's all kinds of different stuff that goes on all day long, and then, of course, the big dance at night. And, uh. So I grew up square dancing all the way through high school, middle school, through high school.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker B: Do you still do it?

Speaker C: I don't, because I've been asking her for 33 years. We'll be married 33 years here in a couple months. I was like, she goes, I'm not doing that.

Speaker D: She doesn't want a do si doe.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker C: I'm like, honey, like, it's, uh, it's actually a lot of fun and. But you know, the other thing about it, it's really good exercise. You are tired after dancing for A few hours. And like, you are moving. And again, the higher up you go, just like lots of things in, like business, soccer, football, everything. It's faster, faster, faster. And so, you know, it's really. You are tired at the end of it. Um, she's like, no, I'm not doing that. Ah, well, what am I going to do? Go dance with someone else? I'm not going to do that. So. Nope.

Speaker B: Well, I got to say, Robert, you are correct. Square dancing has not come up on the head of the report.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yet this. You're the first person to mention it.

Speaker E: I, uh.

Speaker B: How about what's a. Ah, guilty pleasure? Like, um, your favorite nighttime snack.

Speaker C: Okay. Are all of the listeners not going to tell people this? Right. They're just going to hear it, but they're not going to tell anybody.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker E: No.

Speaker B: Just between us.

Speaker C: Just between us. Potato chips. I love chips. And I'll eat a Doritos chip. I'll eat a corn chip. Eat potato chips. So I take pretty healthy. Outside of potato chips or, uh, ice cream, I run. I run a lot every. I run every day and stay healthy.

Speaker B: And how far do you run every day?

Speaker C: So I run a 5k every day. Um, unless I run a little farther, depending on what's going on, but usually

Speaker B: at least a 5k every day. Yeah.

Speaker C: And, uh, do all that. And I bike in the summer. Um, so take a break from the running to give my body a different experience. And so all these things. And when I used to coach, I train with the players, so all this stuff good. But, man, you put that bag of chips out, Dave, I am gonna eat it.

Speaker B: You know, I'm right there with you. I'm a. I'm a chipaholic myself. I like the, uh. I don't know if you're, you know, you're out in Salt Lake and in Colorado a lot, but, um, I love Cape Cod chips. That's one of my favorite.

Speaker C: I love Cape Cod chips.

Speaker B: Yeah, the extra kettle. The kettle chip.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: But I do like all chips.

Speaker D: There's a Boulder potato chip, too. Let's not.

Speaker C: I saw that in the airport. Yes, I ate those in the airport because, of course, I couldn't resist when I ordered a sandwich, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And I gotta say, um, the most innovation I'm seeing on the grocer shelf right now, Cheez it. Is really stepping up their act with the extra toasty. I know that's not a chip, but I just want to say, um, there.

Speaker E: There.

Speaker B: There's a Lot of great innovation at the Cheez IT company right now. So I recommend that to our listeners, too.

Speaker C: Well, I love to say that I do all this exercise so that I could eat chips. And my son, um, he's become like an ice cream m connoisseur. So he makes ice cream pretty much every weekend and comes over on sun for Sunday dinner, him and his wife. And so I pretty much eat ice cream every weekend, too. So chips and ice cream. That's what I.

Speaker B: Well, we have a lot in common. Math, ice cream and chips. I'm right there with all of you. I just don't run the 5k. I gotta get work done.

Speaker E: You can work it in.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, Robert and Jill, this has been so much fun. Thank you for, uh, podcasting with us today.

Speaker C: Thank you. This has been, uh, great. I super appreciate that you invited me to come on.

Speaker D: Yeah, thanks, Dave. It's been a great, fun morning.

Speaker B: And for our, uh, Keystone Coaches Corner segment, we have Howard Seidel. He's a senior partner and delivers our Essex program here at Keystone. And he's going to talk about executive decision making around careers and give advice around that.

Speaker E: I would say that the big key when I think about working with my clients is intentionality. You know, you can't have perfect information, but you want to make informed decisions. And those decisions, you want to be very intentional. When I work with my clients, I tell them, I'm not going to be presumptuous enough to tell you what to do. Uh, but what I'm going to do is help you think through how the decisions you're trying to make align with the things that you're saying are important. And there are a couple of I, uh, think tools or, um, principles that I work with clients on. One is get as much m information as you can. Assess the gaps in your intelligence about an opportunity. Uh, if you're thinking about, uh, starting a consulting business, um, build a small business plan and do some plausibility testing, test some traction with people. If you're looking for an opportunity, uh, and you feel there's gaps in what you know, if an offer comes, you can ask the hard questions. You know, I'm very much a sell first, buy later person. You can acquire a lot of information in the course of the interviews without being provocative. But don't take the job unless you're. You've got at least some of the gaps filled, uh, that you think are important. Uh, distinguish between shoulds, wants and needs. Uh, I think that's really important. Do I really need to do this. Do I want to do this or do I have in the back of my mind some obligation to do this? Uh, evaluate your priorities. You know, Harvard Business School many years ago did a, did uh, a study where they came up with 13 values, uh, that, that professionals and executives have for uh, what they think is important in a job. It's the job itself, the intellectual engagement, the culture of the company, money, security, how it positions. Not everybody wants every priority or finds every priority important, but you want to pick the ones that are important to you. And even if you don't have all 13, you can take, uh, just think about what's important to me in that next role. Take five or six of them. And then what I have clients do is evaluate each opportunity against those five or six individually. Where do the criteria stack up and where don't they? That's not intended to replace, uh, my client's gut reactions on things, but it's trying to get, again going back to intentionality to align that. If my gut reaction says one thing, but the analytics say other, why is that the case? Maybe there's a priority. It's so important for me that I'm weighing it, uh, beyond everything else. And that's okay as long as you're really intentional about it. Recognize the warning facts. You know, if, uh, you're looking at a job where uh, you're the third, uh, you would be the third CFO in a two year period. What's going on there? You know, maybe it's very, um, understandable about what's happening, um, but maybe you need to dig in to find out what's, what's the dynamic. There's, and then I also make sure that clients weigh the risk on both sides. It's easy to say, well, what if I don't take this job? What if something doesn't come up after that, uh, and that pushes back in the fear? But there's also a danger of taking the wrong job, uh, or pursuing the wrong path. So you want to weigh both risks and part of the taking the wrong job. What if it's not right? And I think for there the other question is what's my commitment that I'm making, uh, can I get out of uh, an opportunity quickly if it proves not to be right or there's a better one that comes along, uh, am I going to burn a bridge? Am I going to hurt my reputation and have I signed a non compete that's going to preclude me from taking something that is better? So again, these decisions are hard and you can't make a perfect decision in advance, uh, where you know all the variables, but you can make an informed decision. And the biggest, you know, I think, uh, criteria of whether or not you've made a good decision or not is really the intention behind it.

Speaker B: Thank you, Howard.

Speaker E: You're welcome. Thank you, Dave.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Hennessey Report from Keystone Partners. Be sure to subscribe to listen to all of our conversations with leaders in HR. Go to keystonepartners.com and click on the podcast button.