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Summer Rogers: Seeing the Forest and the Trees in Product and Leadership
6 Plays23 days ago
In this episode of MustardHub Voices: Behind the Build, host Curtis Forbes talks with Summer Rogers, founder of The Product Canopy and former VP of Product at Cornerstone OnDemand. Summer shares how two decades in HR tech and B2B SaaS led her to build a consulting practice focused on helping early- and growth-stage companies connect strategy, story, and execution.
She and Curtis dig into the warning signs of a “wobbly” product organization, how to balance innovation with customer needs, and why clarity in leadership communication can make or break culture. Summer also offers practical, actionable advice for leaders in this episode. It’s an engaging look at what it means to build products and teams that thrive when people can truly see both the forest and the trees.
About Summer:
Summer Rogers is the Founder of The Product Canopy, a boutique consulting firm that helps B2B SaaS and HR Tech companies build scalable product foundations. A seasoned product leader and former VP at Cornerstone OnDemand, Summer specializes in connecting strategy, story, and execution — guiding early and growth-stage teams from vision to velocity. Through her structured frameworks and Fractional CPO engagements, she helps founders and teams align product, go-to-market, and leadership practices for sustainable growth. Her philosophy is simple: great products — like great teams — thrive when people see both the forest and the trees.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to today's Fireside Chat. This is Mustard Hub Voices behind the build. And here I talk with people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host, Curtis Forbes, and our guest today is Summer Rogers.
00:00:21
Speaker
Summer is the founder of The Product Canopy, a boutique consulting firm that helps B2B SaaS and HR tech companies build scalable product foundations.
00:00:32
Speaker
Seasoned product leader and former VP at Cornerstone On Demand, Summers specializes in connecting strategy, story, and execution, guiding early and growth stage teams from vision to velocity.
Philosophy of Product Management
00:00:45
Speaker
Through her structured frameworks and fractional CPO engagements, She helps founders and teams align product, go-to-market, and leadership practices for for sustainable growth.
00:00:57
Speaker
and Her philosophy is simple. Great products, like great teams, thrive when people see both the forest and the trees. Welcome to Behind the Build Summer. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me, Curtis.
00:01:11
Speaker
i yeah I actually i really like that, seeing both the forest and ah and the trees. I think that I'm probably going to steal that from you, but I promise to give you credit. um So let's set the stage here. When you're um when you're when you're not ah trash talking with your family members on the pickleball court,
00:01:35
Speaker
or shuffling around the kids to soccer. Tell me more about the product canopy. what What is it? What's the origin story? I want to start there and then and then kind of get into what what brought
Career Journey and Insights
00:01:48
Speaker
you there. So tell me more about the product canopy. Yeah.
00:01:50
Speaker
Oh, gosh. The origin story ah has a ah few contributing factors that I think a lot of people can relate to as they move through the evolution of their career.
00:02:04
Speaker
So how far back do you want to go? you want to know the why the Product Canopy exists? Yeah, i I kind of do. all right. So um I've been in the world of HR technology and in the function of product management for, gosh, it's approaching 20 years.
00:02:23
Speaker
I know, hard to believe, right? Yeah, well, I don't simply do not think that that's possible, but go ahead. Thank you. um so you know about years ago,
00:02:34
Speaker
I was a bright eyed 25 year old entering um business. And there's a lot of things I didn't know. I went to school to study business because I couldn't find a major that I was particularly passionate about that was really specific. So I picked one of those big umbrella. You can do a lot with business degree.
00:02:55
Speaker
And um I spent time running small franchises for sort of my first post college role. And I learned all about k through 12 education.
00:03:06
Speaker
And then I met a boy that got me to move to LA. And I interviewed at a company that felt big to me. And that was Cornerstone On Demand. At the time, I think everybody would look at it as sort of a ah mature startup.
00:03:19
Speaker
um It felt big to me because there were about 150 employees and it seemed corporate, right? And I interviewed with the CEO and the chief operating officer and the one-man HR department.
00:03:32
Speaker
And it felt like a big deal. And i was almost, it worked out that I was almost ignorant about what a corporation was um because I had no fear, right? i didn't go into my interviews i worried that I wasn't going to meet a standard. I just went in and showed my brain and answered questions to a CEO, like how many mattresses there are in the United States.
00:04:00
Speaker
And, you know, in hindsight, realizing that, that's a weird question, realizing that, you know, in their hiring practices, they were looking for um potential, they were looking for, you know, people that could do different roles at a company.
00:04:17
Speaker
And so as a business person, I was looking for marketing, I was really trying to stay away from sales, but the CEO of that company placed me on product management. And i learned product management is about translating human problems, needs,
00:04:33
Speaker
into a language that instructs how, in the context of software, how um you address that need with a feature function. So I'm translating to engineers and back.
00:04:46
Speaker
And when i figured that out, my career really took off. So kind of started from a place of, you know, this innate ability to problem solve and navigate and turned into a 14 year career in product management.
00:05:00
Speaker
So Through that journey, things I learned about myself, um i i love solving problems, but I got to move up as a manager and I learned about myself that I really enjoy um teaching, educating, supporting, bringing up other product managers. That was sort of intrinsically rewarding in addition to you know all the things we learn about building products, product strategy, marketing.
00:05:26
Speaker
product operations, the use of product analytics, what is, you know, what does data mean, how do use it in all these different contexts? Um, but I also learned about the reality of business, business changes. It goes through inflection points.
00:05:39
Speaker
I like some of the inflection points. I do not like the inflection points that happen later in business with, which really impact people and sort of beg a leadership question.
00:05:50
Speaker
Um, And for my personal journey, I purposely took, stepped away from product leadership. I was a chief product officer at a small startup. Um, in addition to my role at an enterprise, uh, software that served enterprise as the VP of product at cornerstone.
00:06:06
Speaker
And I, you know, after I made the ego choice and didn't like it, I made ah personal choice to enter a growth zone, a learning zone. So I worked as an individual contributor in a sales position.
00:06:21
Speaker
selling something to my old self. um And that sort of educated me on the function of sales and also educated me on an area of product that I didn't feel strong at data platforms, the tech, the technical stuff on the back end, which I did not learn with my business degree, right.
00:06:39
Speaker
And some of these sort of more complex areas of technology that business background and product managers don't always feel confident at.
Company Direction and Expertise
00:06:49
Speaker
So the three kind of to summarize the three um pillars that inform the product canopy are certainly the domain expertise of product management, experiencing good and bad leadership in the context of business inflection points, going public, you know, the painful realization that a leader knows how to do a good job when you're 250 million ARR, but they're not the right leader for, you know,
00:07:18
Speaker
your journey to 1 billion in ARR, right? Like you just, you viscerally experience the human impact and also recognize why businesses make some of those choices. So all of that leadership kind of moral principle compass and how to navigate that is my second reason why the product Canopy exists.
00:07:41
Speaker
And my third reason why is um kind of the shift of what the way work is and the way society is. Building my own company allows me to live a, a principled way. My leadership, apply my leadership principles, do the product strategy, do the product execution that I'm good at.
00:08:04
Speaker
And on my terms in a contracted way with another company, um which feels like, as an employee, more control than I think a lot of employees feel like they have today when now're navigating their careers at companies in the environment we all exist in. That was a lot.
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, well, and no, ah but but it's it's it's a really good story. And it's kind of neat how at each stage, all of this experience that you got just sort of you know you were able to sort of catalog, right? And to bring you to where you are now, which is you know essentially being able to provide a full suite of services really that all fits in your wheelhouse because you were able to gain all that experience at all of those different stops, doing all of those different things at such a high level.
00:08:57
Speaker
Um, so that's pretty cool. Kudos to you. Um, tell me about the kind of organizations that, uh, that the product canopy that you, that you work with, um, who and who within these companies, you know, are you engaging with primarily like what, what, what silos?
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah. you know, the product canopy is in its first year of existence. And even in, even as i build it and build the partnerships and relationships with companies, um i'm I'm remaining flexible. And here's what I've noticed in the journey. So I started with, well, what makes sense ah is, you know, I know every, I have built every product that serves the employee lifecycle, recruiting, um onboarding, learning and development,
00:09:55
Speaker
engagement tools, everything that sits along that employee lifecycle, HRIS systems, like ah I've touched all
Role and Challenges of Product Management
00:10:01
Speaker
of those, understood use cases, understood um the businesses, how those businesses work that purchase those types of solutions.
00:10:09
Speaker
So it made sense that um domain expertise would inform sort of the the cohort of companies that I want to be introduced to. When I think about product management,
00:10:21
Speaker
you know, a lesson I learned is it sits at the middle of a company. It is the hub of the wheel. And if it's not working in a way for the place a company is at, there are very specific pain points that impact other departments.
00:10:38
Speaker
So if product can't explain the value of the new feature, the new product, if they can't tie that to the story, the value statements, Sales, the sales team, the solution consultant team is hurt and hindered in their function to you know achieve their goals. Quotas really improve their ability to sell some product, let's say.
00:11:01
Speaker
Right. I mean, it's true in B2C software as well. If you really don't connect with the problem you're trying to solve for your customers. And even if you do figure out the right solution, if you can't connect the dots and understanding, you're going to fail as well.
00:11:15
Speaker
So sales leaders are people I like to talk to because they can kind of communicate if they're seeing the red flags that signal something's wobbly with product.
00:11:26
Speaker
Similarly, CEOs, sort of the founders of a company, they they come from all different places, right? All different backgrounds. Some are technical, some are our sales minded. some are just really purpose driven in what they build.
00:11:41
Speaker
And they don't know what they don't know, but they sure can feel the pain, the anxiety, the um concern. or you know, it looks like lack of confidence in their roadmap, in their ability to, you know, compel investors to invest money in their company.
00:11:59
Speaker
There's all these um observations that I might make. And a lot of times it's tied to a lack of clarity definition tied to business goals that aren't clearly mapped to what fraud the product function is doing to contribute to those goals.
00:12:15
Speaker
So that's another really person, that's a person I talk to a lot. And then I also, you know, and it's an unproven hypothesis at the moment, but I think the investor group, the VCs of the world who have portfolios of companies that they're working with, a lot of times they'll see some of the red flags that signal, hey, product's getting a little bit wobbly.
00:12:37
Speaker
um It's an important area to harden and solidify.
00:12:43
Speaker
to achieve what are the most common goals, right? You want to go zero to one, you want to get around and investing, you you want to have a particular growth rate, like this function has to work well with the other functions, which are often, you know, sales um first.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So this makes a lot of sense and i can kind of I can kind of see and understand how all those conversations would happen. I'm kind of curious some of the challenges that that bring organizations to you.
00:13:14
Speaker
um Is it primarily when, you know, you you i used a really great term and I've never really described product as being wobbly, but ah wi It creates this visual in my mind that that I guess i've ah've I've even felt before.
00:13:32
Speaker
um Is it primarily when their product is is wobbly? Is it when they're growing too fast and they don't have the manpower to help manage some of these products or their they' customer pipeline is growing too fast that they're getting feature requests for things that they don't know how to prioritize?
00:13:55
Speaker
it can be all the above. And I kind of think of, you know, I try to, When we are building something, you know, time passes. When we look back and reflect, we often, i know I've had this experience, um you know, hindsight's 20-20.
00:14:15
Speaker
You look back and you go, i you know, we were growing so fast. um As a result, we layered on code and now I got a bunch of tech debt and now it's five, seven years down the road.
00:14:28
Speaker
And, you know, maybe i I'd like an exit. Maybe I'd like to be acquired. Now I got buyers looking at the back end of my platform and it's it's a little messy, right?
00:14:39
Speaker
Being thoughtful upfront about laying a good product foundation um can avoid that future mistake. That's one tiny, tiny example, right?
00:14:51
Speaker
let's say the beginning of a journey um for a company. And, you know, I focus on early stage and growth stage. um yeah not Not like blank page, find a product for market fit, but we've got some market fit. We we have momentum.
00:15:06
Speaker
Things are starting to feel a little wobbly. I don't know what I don't know.
Communication and Feedback in Leadership
00:15:10
Speaker
And early stages, it might look like, hey, we've got, we know we need to expand our channels for revenue. And so we we want to,
00:15:20
Speaker
think differently about our strategy and maybe we want to form partnerships or maybe we want to sell the enterprise where we currently sell the SMB. um As a leader of that organization, there may be a whole host of things you're kind of loosely aware you need to do, but you don't know what how that should impact the roadmap.
00:15:38
Speaker
you know A classic example is um you know if you were to go up market and want to serve mid-market enterprise customers, there are security standards. You got to meet you know GDPR, ISO, blah, blah, blah. i cannot commit to my memory all the acronyms for all of these certifications, but they materially impact the roadmap.
00:15:58
Speaker
You need to speak intelligently about them. You got to like make your sales team sound intelligent about them. So product often educates the front line in addition to figures out what is the sequence we we execute certain projects on in a roadmap.
00:16:16
Speaker
And then like if I put big umbrella, if I so super simplified it, every roadmap needs to have three things on it. it needs to have It needs to be fed by three things.
00:16:30
Speaker
um One category is innovation, right? Like how how will you not be obsolete in three years? Who's thinking about what comes next? So you know our direction of our strategy kind of informs What are the innovative areas in the product that we need to add in further out, further out on the horizon, but we need to figure out what that is now. So that's the innovation column, right?
00:16:55
Speaker
The next column is customer satisfaction. Like you can't just ignore your clients. if You tie it to business metrics, net net retention, customer satisfaction.
00:17:06
Speaker
um All those things is are actually the are achieved by listening to your customers. And often that means representing on your roadmap, fixing, enhancing, like taking their feedback and really making incremental adjustments that improve your customer's experience with your product.
00:17:27
Speaker
And then the third one is i want to come up with a good name. I don't have the right name yet, but it's like hardening the foundation. It's how you avoid long-term tech debt because too many companies just layer on spaghetti code and worry about it later. And that creates, that slows you down later. yeah Right. And that's how, you know, new, new companies, new products built within new ways to overtake, um, you know, the leaders in the space.
00:17:55
Speaker
in I'm, you brought up a couple of things about leadership, which is kind of interesting for me to talk about, you know, and I think that when you're putting together roadmaps, um,
00:18:09
Speaker
it's really important to get all levels of the organization really aligned and on the same page, obviously. um And I mean, it it's um it is ah a responsibility. you can call it a responsibility. can call it a burden or whatever of of leadership, um you know, and sort of kind of pivot into this conversation about people.
00:18:29
Speaker
um You know, I think that a lot of the challenges organizations face, he not only in um in these three three phases, actually, you talk about, um but also within their organization, um the people that they're that they're working with and making sure everybody's driven by the same aim, right? The same ultimate goal.
00:18:54
Speaker
um How much of these challenges, you know, are really just a function of of of leadership? How do you how do you tell a leader that, that they may be part of what's holding their company back.
00:19:14
Speaker
ah Have you ever had to have these conversations or have you ever been part of or seen these conversations happen? Like what what what was that like? or and with that um Yeah, I, you know, in my own, everybody should be doing some form of feedback. um There are tools in the world that focus on feedback.
00:19:38
Speaker
There are, the the good habits leaders have where feedback is part of how you communicate.
00:19:49
Speaker
And it's, it's bi-directional yeah when it's working well, it's bi-directional. um So I have had, i failed and succeeded in giving feedback to the stakeholders of a product.
00:20:05
Speaker
So stakeholders of a product, are the employees and the company that builds the product. They are your customers, right? They're an internal and external. And if we talk about the internal stakeholder of, let's say your, your CEO, your CSO, right? Like titles and big businesses, but you know, even a smaller company, like you are operating as a a crew feels like a flatter organization, but nonetheless, the people you are working with, these are your stakeholders.
00:20:36
Speaker
So, um failure and succeeding for people really comes down to communication. And in particular, product bears the weight.
00:20:49
Speaker
um It can help a lot or hurt a lot if product leadership is not good at communication. And I actually just wrote an article about this on LinkedIn because I was... i was think I've thought about it for years, but finally arrived at like, how do I explain the nature of effective communication and product?
00:21:13
Speaker
And so the- need to read this article, by the way, don't forget to send it to me. I'll tell you a little about it ah bit about it. So I chose altitude as sort of the metaphor, right?
00:21:24
Speaker
So like you can relate to this, um leading a company and a business, you have a vision. Right. That's the 30,000 foot elevation. When you deliver a vision, what is your intention?
00:21:37
Speaker
You are trying to get your internal stakeholders, your crew of employees, everybody, every level in your organization that may exist. um You are trying to motivate them.
00:21:48
Speaker
You're trying to get them behind the vision and the mission. So the purpose is motivation. um If it's your external customers, right? Like you want something succinct that really catches their attention and connects them to the problem that you're solving so they can self identify as someone that needs your solution for solving.
00:22:06
Speaker
So that's 30,000 foot. That one's not that Marketing can help people, you know, leaders that are bad at it It's a tagline, you know, it's a few sentences. But when you get down to the next level of elevation, let's call it 20,000 feet.
00:22:19
Speaker
This is where you are defining strategy. So what are the business goals of the company? Business goals don't always influence what product's doing, right? could be something else. It could be like, you know, we want partners. So the sale, we need an alliance team and alliances are gonna go get partnerships, right? But another business goal might uniquely be achieved by product management. It's roadmap. Maybe it's like, we wanna,
00:22:47
Speaker
sell something to our ah current customer base. And therefore we want to create the next product that makes sense because we want to upsell and increase the, you know, the value of our existing customers, right? That would probably turn into a product goal. So business goal parsed into the different functions, goals that they execute, right? That's 20,000 foot. And what's challenging about it is the actual,
00:23:15
Speaker
parsing of the business goals into the appropriate functional goals, like who's in charge ah of achieving this thing, and then breaking it down into initiatives.
00:23:26
Speaker
And that 20,000 foot part is so hard because you're making that you're making that transition to like destination to, and here's how we're going to get there.
00:23:38
Speaker
then the leadership level right there that's defining how we're going to get there has to actually break it down into work that employees are motivated to do, that they're empowered to do, that they understand well enough that they can be creative and make it even better than, you know, what it might've been if someone was just telling them what to do.
00:24:03
Speaker
Does that make sense? That 20,000 foot layer? It makes perfect sense. And, um, and I see those challenges, you know, All the time. um And you're right. I mean, that's, it's not easy. And then, like you said, translating those into initiatives or, or, or, you know, tactics, right. That, that accomplish, you know, those, whatever those bite-sized pieces are that you, you, you broke them into. so so a lot of times the argument,
00:24:35
Speaker
with the the fights that happen internally, the debates, the things that are lack of clarity come from people not figuring out how to, how to talk at the 20,000 foot level so that the leader can effectively give the goals to, you know, the functional leaders and, help the functional leaders and understand how the functional leaders are breaking it down into initiatives.
00:25:00
Speaker
So you either succeed or fail right at that elevation. And what it looks like when you fail, like if we go down a level in elevation. So now in the context of product, um as a product leader, I've got a set of goals.
00:25:15
Speaker
I have a set of initiatives that inform what we're doing first, second, third on the roadmap. And the roadmap gets, you know whatever we build is released on a schedule. Now I'm setting expectations for work I want my team to do.
00:25:28
Speaker
But by extension, i am setting expectations for what marketing is talking about in a quarter, let's say. And I'm setting expectations because maybe I'm like touting what's coming for my customers.
00:25:40
Speaker
Am I delivering it on time? Is it going to be as awesome as I said it was going to be delivered on time? Like the stakes get really high to go right or to go wrong based on what you did at that 20,000 foot mark.
00:25:55
Speaker
And like everything below that, you know, what, what goes wrong for employees when, when leaders don't handle it well up at that higher elevation, they don't trust the company is doing the right thing.
00:26:11
Speaker
They don't think their leaders know what they're talking about, right? they become They become complacent and complacency comes after your employees try to tell you like these things are not connected well, right?
00:26:27
Speaker
if If leadership doesn't listen, Then you have employees go, well, you know, you don't, you're not listening. You don't care what I say. I probably have mastery over the thing that I work on.
00:26:40
Speaker
And that's where ultimately a company can slow down because of poor leadership and the impact it can have on people.
00:26:50
Speaker
I want to... that that and And I think that this whole section probably needs to be memed and in in some way, you know, or or clipped out and and shared because...
00:27:03
Speaker
um I see those kind of things happen so often, especially in small organizations where it's sometimes it's just bill build, build, build. And there really isn't a lot of forethought put into why and what and what are those goals behind all of those things. And then communicating those things top down so everybody understands the why and is driven by the same thing and and gets how these things work.
00:27:27
Speaker
contribute to this, contribute to this, right? And then contribute to to that, right? And then like you so even said before, the alignment between those things and also marketing, right? Innovation and marketing, those things have to work together. And the two things that ultimately drive value in in business. And when they're not speaking the same language or talking about the same things, that's even another breakdown.
00:27:48
Speaker
So what happens when there's, you know, kind of give me an example of things that happen when there's just not good communication. You know, if there wasn't good communication or, or healthy team dynamics, what happens?
00:28:06
Speaker
What happens at the 10,000, 20,000, 30,000? Does the plane crash? I mean, talk talk to me about that. um You know, unfortunately the plane. So, okay So I'll give a little bit of framing. I kind of picture a coin, one side of the coin,
00:28:24
Speaker
um is the business interest and the demands of the business placed on people that are, you know, probably in most instances doing their best in their leadership role, right?
00:28:38
Speaker
um On the other side of the coin is the employee's experience and what material outcomes that impact the business and the employee that happen when um this altitude of this orientation and navigation kind of the best leaders can traverse right the the elevation levels.
00:29:06
Speaker
So let's start with the side of the coin that's and about employees because I've I've been an individual contributor. I've been an employee supporting a manager thrice removed from a CEO. I have lived this experience.
00:29:22
Speaker
So so There there's a good, there's a good amount of leeway that your bright, motivated, you know, the best employees that you have, your high performers, if you will, they, because you often observe that they are problem solvers, they are flexible, adaptable.
00:29:47
Speaker
They start in a space of, I want to help. Let's work on this. Let's, let's, let's do OKRs, right? Leader, come in the room. Like, can we talk through business goals? And then I'm trying to break this down in a tactical way. So I've got a statement that we can measure so that I can go do the work and not only meet your expectation, but exceed it because I'm a great employee and want to be acknowledged for my good work and I'm motivated, cetera.
00:30:16
Speaker
Right. um When leadership doesn't show up for that, when they ignore the signs that the crew doesn't get where the captain is going and therefore can't parse out what they should do to grow faster or like figure out how to get there effectively faster or whatever.
00:30:38
Speaker
um When time passes and they don't show up to close that gap of clarity, the motivated ones, will stop trying to solve the
Leadership Impact on Employees
00:30:50
Speaker
problem.
00:30:50
Speaker
They will navigate themselves out of the business into a different role in the business. They're going to look for the manager, the leader that enables them to do their best work.
00:31:03
Speaker
And they have the skill set to do that. Right. There is also a cohort of. Employees that I i really respect as a leader.
00:31:15
Speaker
I try to figure out where people are in their life because I respect if, hey, work is a transaction. You do good work. Your life isn't your life's goals are not about advancing your career right now.
00:31:29
Speaker
They're about something else. Or maybe that's just not even ah you know, your top three priority to move up to the next level. You're happy where you are. you get enough in your paycheck to meet your financial needs and you're gonna do your work and then you're gonna close your laptop or you know leave check it, you know clock out, whatever the scenario is.
00:31:48
Speaker
um And I don't have a kinder word. I'm gonna use the word complacency. I'm not trying to mean it in a negative way, but like they just roll with the punches and they're gonna be there until you know something happens, they get laid off or whatever. And they're like, yeah, I acknowledge this is kind of a fire. We've seen lots of memes.
00:32:08
Speaker
The boat's on fire and the soldiers kind of just walking through things. yeah um So those are kind of the two simplified classifications of employees.
00:32:18
Speaker
And the material outcome is, you know, they build tools about this. They build software companies are built on the notion of like talent marketplaces. Right. Like how do we keep our highly motivated employees engaged and um skill tools so that they can develop their skills so they can move to the next role like whole categories in HR tech are built around this. But at the end of the day, the material metric is retention of your top talent.
00:32:44
Speaker
So like, wow, you could really positively impact your retention of your top talent. If you recognize the necessity of connecting the dots in a in a like, well executed way between business goals, department goals, and then the initiatives that real people are going to work on flipping the coin.
00:33:06
Speaker
feel like it's a long answer, but it's important on the other side. um And if you refresh my memory, I wanna answer the question, like, what does it um failure or success look like, right?
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I am kind of curious, like, well, I think the the question was primarily focused on kind of what, what does failure look like? You know, when, when, when there is poor communication or a lack of communication at those levels, one multiple, all of those levels, you know, what, what, what ultimately happens? What have you seen happen?
00:33:42
Speaker
Like in the most visceral way, if you're holding a meeting in person or in zoom, the leader of that meeting is finding it hard to get feedback in that moment because you're past the point of inviting feedback and getting feedback from your teams, right? already kind of broken trust. that's kind of a visceral observation one should make when you're kind of past the point of being effective at aligning what people should be doing as it relates to the business goals.
00:34:12
Speaker
Um,
00:34:15
Speaker
and in the form of business metrics, it is your your regrettable turnover, right? Like that's the metric that you should be tracking. But all of those are lagging indicators. Don't wait till you see the lagging indicators.
00:34:30
Speaker
Like b have high emotional intelligence, EQ, that is such an important skill at a leadership level. And often it's a result of ineffective communication and leaders not working with they're subject matter experts, which tend to be the crew or the employees.
00:34:51
Speaker
Which kind of answers another question about, you know, what can leaders be doing, you know, who are missing, you know, certain, I think, you know, skill components, right? Maybe communication being one of them.
00:35:05
Speaker
um You know, I'm kind of curious, you know, sort of sort of um ah multi-pronged ah topic, topic, question, issue, whatever.
00:35:18
Speaker
But, you know, great leaders don't necessarily have to be good at everything, right? Great leaders probably know that they're not great at everything and hopefully surround themselves with other people who are.
00:35:29
Speaker
um You know, so i'm i'm I'm kind of curious, you know, when you, when you work with When you work with folks who maybe aren't great at communicating, aren't great communicators, but you do find them to be effective leaders, or maybe they want to improve their leadership, you know what are some strategies that that maybe you you give or that you or ways that you're able to contribute to help in that area?
00:35:58
Speaker
you know What makes a good leader? How do you... or what kind of tools would you would you recommend or strategies you would suggest for those leaders to improve in the areas that they want to ah to improve in?
00:36:10
Speaker
And then, I mean, I'm kind of curious then, thinking forward, what are some competencies, you know, that leaders should be focusing on you know, just in the future? Yeah.
00:36:22
Speaker
ah yeah Like, take a drink of water. ah and Sit back, relax. I have a number... of thoughts. um And I want to spend time in with tactical tips.
00:36:36
Speaker
And I see this at, you know, the first line manager, right? Like, I love when ah high performing individual contributor invites the opportunity to become a manager, but you are not a good people manager, just because you were good ah your job. um You have to find out if you're rewarded by helping others and take that.
00:37:02
Speaker
That's a responsibility. It is not for a higher paycheck. Like it's a thoughtful responsibility you should accept, right? But then you need to develop as manager. You don't have to be perfect. doesn't have to be kind of like nature versus nurture. It can be nurtured in someone.
00:37:17
Speaker
But let's kind of move up the hierarchy a bit to the leaders that affect maybe a larger group of employees. And the tips I'm going to give at any level of leadership Please hear these tips.
00:37:33
Speaker
Okay, we'll start some tip number one. It matters how you run a meeting. If you schedule a meeting and you are an organizer, right? You sent the invitation.
00:37:45
Speaker
You are the leader of the meeting and you need to run a good meeting.
Leadership Development and Practices
00:37:49
Speaker
And that looks and sounds like you opening the meeting with what is the purpose of the meeting? What do you want to accomplish in this meeting?
00:37:57
Speaker
And at the end of the meeting, when you've arrived at like, okay, well, here's what we should do. Who's doing what? Who are the tasks? So it's really, it's structuring a meeting and then setting clear expectations out of the meeting.
00:38:09
Speaker
When you do that, everybody feels like the meeting was useful. And also they have clarity about what is expected after the meeting. I cannot tell you like I'm sure you've met with many CEOs. Maybe you do this.
00:38:24
Speaker
i don't know. But like your meetings are just people getting on a call talking. There's a lack of structure. There's a lack of purpose. And then the worst part is who's organizing what comes next after the meeting.
00:38:38
Speaker
And i'm I'm telling you, tip to everybody, if you set the meeting, that's your responsibility. That one good habit is going to addresses poor communication, right? It ticks away at the risk of poor communication.
00:38:53
Speaker
Okay. The other one is the best leaders I've worked with, they do, they show up with a work with approach.
00:39:03
Speaker
Okay. I've had this great leader in my old CEO of Cornerstone. We are whiteboarding designs on a wall together. in you know, another mentor project, managers I've admired from a distance, sales leaders, they are working with their sales team um to understand their prospective customer, right?
00:39:29
Speaker
And in that working with behavior, the employee is receiving the messages that they are learning your logic, the leader's logic, you know, why and how do you look at a company when you're strategizing how you're going to sell to them.
00:39:47
Speaker
That is such deep, rich learning. That is that teaching moment for the employee is so much more valuable, right? um And rewarding for them and will be carried with them into the future.
00:40:04
Speaker
um And leaders, they get busy and they don't really take the time. they They often delegate maybe when they shouldn't or they delegate the wrong thing, but it's not something you you pass down or give a responsibility to someone else until you've worked with them in a way that they had an opportunity to learn that you taught your thinking behind how an approach you have.
00:40:27
Speaker
The simple example being like, how do you, you know, how do you prep for a prospective customer? So they teach and explain. I had a great CEO. You know, one of the best CEOs I worked with, his name's Adam Miller at Cornerstone On Demand.
00:40:41
Speaker
um He's doing a lot of philanthropy work now. um and has other other businesses that he started at, started up, but he would host sessions at training days.
00:40:55
Speaker
And I learned about the rule of 40 from him. In 2008, he spent 90 minutes on stage teaching, you know, a company that had an average age of maybe like, I don't know, 32, like a young population, freaking out about the market crash in 2008. And he spent minutes on stage educating us on what happened.
00:41:17
Speaker
I mean, he was teaching us about real estate and financing of homes and why that all went wrong and how, how that was impacting um the economy in general. Like that is education learned so much. And, you know, he, that company at, for a period of time, their employee tenure, there's still people there, but it averaged like eight years.
00:41:40
Speaker
That's, that's unheard of. That's unbelievable. against, you know, your, your peers in markets, like two, four years in role. And there are people that stayed there so long, not because of their paycheck, frankly, you could have paid more competitively, but they were there for the learning that they were gaining in, in that experience there.
00:42:01
Speaker
Okay. The next one.
00:42:08
Speaker
I'm just going to start saying this more often. um i think it's, You know, when we look at the success of a business, think about the formulas like EBITDA, right? Or like return on investment.
00:42:21
Speaker
How do you calculate that? Right? Like there's the formulas. When you break down the variables, it's all just financial metrics and the money being spent.
00:42:32
Speaker
And we measure the success of a company if it's going to be invested in right by those metrics. But then, know, We have entire software built and an HR departments that are sending messages about great work experiences.
00:42:51
Speaker
Right. Let's measure um measure the experience employees are having. So those messages tell us the employee experience is important. So again, we're kind of back to that coin scenario.
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:07
Speaker
If I could reinvent. how we assess business performance i would merge i would change the formula i would merge the financial indicators and improve the weight we apply incorporate and then weight more the metrics that communicate a business that is good for its people I have a quote on my wall, how you take care of employees is a direct correlation to your customers experience with your brand and product.
00:43:41
Speaker
Right. ah present Everybody agrees with that. But if we check the math, we actually don't measure for that. Right. Like you get a badge and award if people survey your company and say it's great place to work.
00:43:54
Speaker
Right. Or like we look at things like retention rate or we look at things like employee sentiment, commitment, engagement. But those are not variables that investors, the economy, like people that classify high performing companies give any weight to. And I think that's wrong. Why?
00:44:17
Speaker
Because we're kind of all on this, like we're all humans and we're on this journey for about 80, 80 years together. And we spend a lot of time at work and it feels like we don't,
00:44:31
Speaker
There's a lot of people giving a good attempt at it, but it doesn't feel balanced at the end of the day when we define what a successful company is. And I guess I'd argue that we should change the definition of success to acknowledge the humans, customers and employees, yeah and they should be part of the definition of a successful company.
00:44:50
Speaker
Well, kind of continuing to look ahead then. Tell me about predictions then on what the future of work is going to look like. We already know how we should redefine what success looks like and what investable companies, um you know, how we might want to measure them. But what you think leaders need to prep for in the coming five or 10 years?
00:45:12
Speaker
Well, you know, i hey I sort of have my aspirational, emotional, and not emotional, I don't know, like I also want to say woo-woo, but i kind of have the like,
00:45:24
Speaker
what is the right thing to do? And at the same time, acknowledge the right thing to do isn't always the, um I don't know, the, like, the, um it's not the reality because history tells us you don't always make decisions based on just what's the right thing to do? What do I wish I could do? But let's, let's start there.
00:45:47
Speaker
um I think leaders need to think more broadly about their, what leadership is. And leading a business specifically um should give more, your responsibility is not just to shareholders or you need to think of your employees as shareholders. I think all employees should. So what might that look like?
00:46:09
Speaker
I love companies that have employees as shareholders, that they share some ownership in the company um because then they're positively affected by the financial realities of a company, right? Yeah, yeah.
00:46:24
Speaker
um
00:46:27
Speaker
I think that h you know, with AI impact everything, like everybody's talking about that. um I find it interesting and laughable that the messages we receive are marketing messages might be like, oh, we need to put human in front of the word AI because everything up until this point, we've said it's going to add efficiency. Well, let's point out that it's going to add efficiency.
00:46:55
Speaker
30%, 40% efficiency impact on the employee's role. But then when they measure the return on investment, the formula is full-time head, like full-time employee. How many full-time employees can you reduce? So when you see 30% productivity, like you're going to lose for business, from a business decision perspective, you could cut a third of an employee the population, have the same amount of productivity and, you know, more,
00:47:21
Speaker
more returns for shareholders, right? Like we can see that math. So I would challenge leaders to really kind of zoom out and reflect on what is your purpose in running a business?
00:47:36
Speaker
The purpose needs to be broader than just shareholder return. It's important, yes, but because is the way we take care of our families, it is the way we put a roof over our heads. It is the way we transact and exchange goods and and value.
00:47:51
Speaker
Like it's it's a little bit more care and priority should be placed on that larger equation. Does that make sense? I mean, i I fully align with that. I think ever since the early 80s or late 70s when shareholder supremacy took over, it really changed how employers and employees really interacted with one another. kind of you know I mean, I think that that was really kind of the start of the degradation of, you know, a lot of the employee experience, I think.
00:48:21
Speaker
So is it going to happen? I'm a skeptic. So what's going to happen? So how will employees adapt? So now let's go to the other side of the coin. yeah um I think we've seen, you know, a lot of companies in the HR tech space talk about how work is changing.
00:48:36
Speaker
um That sounds like a few things, um you know, There's been a transformation in work where gig work is more common. um There's now established models for gig work.
00:48:49
Speaker
um AI tools are making people more efficient and removing things that were hard skills people would have to learn to accomplish. I'm not an engineer, but now I can build an app all by myself.
00:49:01
Speaker
You know, I'm not the, you know, I'm not a product marketing master, but now ChatGPT can kind of get me a little bit closer to really Crafting a message, right? So um the tools the tools that are coming on the market today, the way companies are modeling their business and sort of breaking the old contract be tweet between employer and employee, these things I think are um motivating shifts in how we work. So I think we see more contract work.
00:49:36
Speaker
For me, I'm doing that. It gives me a sense of control, right? I don't have to I'm not investing and hoping a company will invest in my career trajectory. I'm kind of taking control by being an independent person aye and starting my own company.
Future of Employment and Team Alignment
00:49:53
Speaker
I think we'll see a shift in that model of W2 full-time employees to maybe something that's more contract-based because it gives the employee control and line a sight of the duration.
00:50:05
Speaker
you know if we kind of look at like how even healthcare care is transforming um like all these things are connected right if you're not healthcare care was provided by your employer that's kind of feels a little less secure but like if if i have to take control over it like that again is another example of being an independent um contractor um otherwise employees kind of You know, I aimed at doing this when I was interviewing for few other product leaderships.
00:50:37
Speaker
I kept saying, what am i looking for in a company? um And the common things like a certain amount of pay are reasonable. Like other than pay, I can't even say if like I would qualify in or out vacation policies or like um perks like, I don't know, pet insurance.
00:50:59
Speaker
You know, or like if you work in an office, they've got paddle ball and snacks, like some of the old things that added to the experience of work. um But when you when I took inventory of why would i work for someone?
00:51:14
Speaker
Right. Yes, it's pay. um but if I can meet that criteria, my my next qualification is who am I working with and do they have a set of leadership principles and moral principles that I can get behind because I want to row hard with my crew and for my captain.
00:51:38
Speaker
love that last part, especially. Um, so we only have like a you know minute or two left and I want to ask you, cause I love this question. I feel like you'll definitely have a lot to add here.
00:51:49
Speaker
um if you have one piece of advice, you know, the leader's coming to you really with one piece of advice on, on how to really get it right with their team, with their vision, with the alignment, with their product, you're on an elevator up to the top floor before you see that door open and they walk right out, you know, of the, ah of the elevator car, what, what do you tell them?
00:52:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to go real tactical with this and it ties back to that altitude of communication that's relevant beyond product. Um, And it's, it's the tip, write it down, like write down your vision to strategy so that your crew understands your thinking.
00:52:34
Speaker
Because when you take the time to explain express written format, it's the best way to do that. When you take the time to do that, you will, um, multiply.
00:52:49
Speaker
yeah your ability to execute it because now you've got more brains that fully understand it and are empowered to row for that mission row for, you know, yeah the captain I've thrown in a lot of metaphors today.
00:53:07
Speaker
That's okay. But I think that that's really good advice. I mean, and I think that that makes a lot of sense and it kind of perfectly sums up a lot of the stuff that we talked about today. um Thank you, Summer. Thanks for joining me. i really, I mean, I appreciate you taking all the time to chat with me. This was great.
00:53:22
Speaker
ah Well, thank you for letting me vent. Felt like like um therapeutic. for ah For all of you who are watching or listening to this episode, thanks for tuning into Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. Subscribe, like, share, comment.
00:53:37
Speaker
Be sure to check us out at mustardhub.com to see how we help companies become destinations for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge. And sign up to get started with Mustard Hub for free while you're there. Until next time, thank you.