Andrew Bartlow Podcast Transcript
Andrew Bartlow joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Andrew Bartlow. Andrew Bartlow has 25 years of human resources and talent management experience at organizations across a wide spectrum of sizes, maturity stages, and industries. He is the co-author of Scaling for Success, People Priorities for High Growth Organizations.
He has a master’s degree from the top program in his field and has been a CECP, SPHR, Six Sigma, and Executive Coaching Certified. Andrew leads Series B Consulting, which helps businesses to articulate their people strategy and accelerate their growth while navigating a rapid change. He has also founded the People Leader Accelerator, which is the preeminent development program for startup HR leaders.
He’s worked with clients like Masterclass. And many others to help them overcome obstacles in a hyper growth phase. For the first time ever, he wants to share his lessons on podcasts.
Well, good afternoon, Andrew. Welcome to the show!
Andrew Bartlow: Thanks a lot. Great to be with you, Brian!
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you so much.
This is… you’d made my day another podcast in the works here. That’s what I love to do. And I appreciate you jumping on from San Francisco, East Bay area. I’m in Kansas city. So, we’ve got some rivalries right there in football, but I love you just making the time to do that. So important. Andrew jumping into your first question.
You’ve mentored over 50 top HR leaders. What recurring themes or struggles do you see HR leaders facing in high growth startups? And how does your people leader accelerator program help them overcome these challenges?
Andrew Bartlow: Well, thanks for the question, Brian. And boy, as I think about it, it’s closer to 150. HR leaders at this point, it’s, it’s been a lot, but a lot of people, both in venture backed tech companies, as well as, you know, mid-market, private equity backed organizations, and y’all all sorts of other types of orgs.
Probably the most common recurring theme I see in mentoring HR leaders and people leader accelerator is strongly focused towards this, our executive development program to help HR leaders. Think and act more like broad based business executives. But the recurring theme is that we often want to serve.
We often want to help people feel better, meet people’s requests, and that leads to a reactive lack of planning among even pretty senior HR leaders. And the big opportunity is to be more proactive and more thoughtful and do the things that aren’t being asked for. Know the business well enough to diagnose.
What will be of the greatest value to that organization and then work on that rather than the things that are coming to you in your inbox or your slack account. So, picking the right things to work on versus picking the most popular things or whatever your CEO has on their mind after the most recent investor dinner.
That’s probably one of the greater challenges of an HR leader. Many of us who got into this role, you know, because of our service orientation.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I appreciate that you did share. You’ve mentored and coached a plethora of leaders, especially in the HR space, but it’s no easy task. As you know, leaders today are challenged across industries with various again, obstacles, whether it’s in the workplace, outside the workplace.
And I just really appreciate coaches like you that mentors that get out there and make us all better and make the world a better place. So thank you. And Andrew, your book scaling for success outlines key people priorities for high growth organizations. What are the most common challenges companies face when scaling and how can leaders address them effectively?
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah, great question. And boy, I get, I get asked maybe more than I’d like, Hey, what’s the Cliff Notes version of scaling for success? I don’t want to read the 200-page book with footnotes. So, what are the big takeaways? One, and I think this is a central theme when an organization is growing Or maybe not even growing, changing and evolving rapidly.
Like there’s a lot less growth happening today, unless you’re an AI company. And there’s a continued struggle for product market fit and pivots and, you know, trying to adapt to the latest economic and, and capital situation. Change and evolution is a challenge and companies tend to be really weak at planning.
At planning at the top levels of the organization, what are the top two or three or five priorities for the organization? What I found instead is that there are fake priorities, you know, more of a bottom-up build. What are all the things that every group think needs to get done? And then these big overarching goals end up getting created to fit everything into it.
That’s just ineffective. That’s not making a choice. That’s not identifying what the express train should be versus what the local train might be. And so 1 of the largest and most consistent challenges that companies face when going through change is planning and prioritizing. And I think that’s just a choice and that’s just discipline in terms of identifying what are the few most important things and then being really rigorous about communicating and ensuring clarity throughout the organization.
The larger an organization gets and the more dispersed it is geographically or by function, the more important it is to have clear alignment around goals and priorities. So, it seems like it should be a layup. Like, it should be a basic and I think it is a basic, but it’s a basic that that’s not being attended to as often as it should be.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. That’s helpful. And what I really extrapolated out of that is that planning and priorities and it does take discipline to understand what those priorities are so you can focus on it. Communication is absolute must in this case and explaining the why sometimes, but that’s how good leaders get it done with through that discipline and prioritization.
So I appreciate that. And Andrew, in your work with Series B consulting, you’ve helped companies like Masterclass navigate hyper growth. What are the unique people related issues that arise in hyper growth phases? And how can businesses manage these while maintaining their core values?
Andrew Bartlow: I think about my time at masterclass, I was an interim chief HR officer for them for about a year.
I, and I helped them grow from roughly 75 people to maybe 200, 200 plus through a new round of financing. And You know, that was in less than a year. They, they more than doubled. That’s hyper growth. Yeah. In anybody’s definition, common people related issues that happen when an organization is going through growth like that is that you’re introducing, well, there are a few things.
One is you’re introducing a tremendous number. As a percentage of new people into an existing organization, and those new people bring with them their own prior experiences, but no experience with the organization that they’re entering. So, again, clarity. Ends up being really critical understanding how work gets done, you know, processes can be very fuzzy in an organization that that’s growing that quickly.
You know, so the onboarding and integration of a high percentage of new people is unique and tremendously challenging. The 2nd area is related to that growth as well. If you’re growing quickly. Then hiring managers really at all levels, a tremendous percentage of their time is taken up in assessing, selecting, attracting onboarding and training team members.
So, you find your organization not really moving your product road map forward that quickly, maybe not really selling or saving or delivering why your company exists. You find yourself spending most of your time growing and adding to staff and taking care of staff. And so that’s, that’s a massive percentage of leaders’ time that have, that have team.
And so how do you manage that? I think a lot of it is having a well-defined process. And make it as efficient as possible. So, you know, often popularized are team-based interview processes, multiple rounds, projects, assessments, and those can be useful, but they can also lead to a tremendous amount of inefficiency.
If 16 people have to meet a potential hire and that hire ends up not even getting an offer, that’s a lot of time wasted. So be really thoughtful about the structure of your selection process, as well as the efficacy of your onboarding and training. Because you really want to allow an organization to still function even when you’re growing as rapidly as a company going through hypergrowth is.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Really appreciate that. You’re absolutely right. Having good, strong, structured processes, having some clarity around them makes a world of difference. And we see, again, a lot of hiring managers struggle through this process sometimes when it’s not fully defined across the organization. So, I appreciate that.
And Andrew, last question of the day. For HR leaders at startups or companies in rapid growth phases, what advice do you have for managing the delicate balance between recruitment speed and maintaining a high standard of talent?
Andrew Bartlow: I’d actually use some of the words that you used in this question, you know, back, it’s a delicate balance, being aware that speed can impact quality and the search for quality can also impact speed.
So, you know, first being aware that there may be a tradeoff and then making conscious decisions about the design of your process to optimize for whatever is more important to you at the time. And that might be different function to function or year to year inside your organization. So, engineering may decide to optimize for standard and be willing to move a little slower.
Sales might want to optimize for speed and be willing to churn team members if they don’t work out. So, I’d say be aware that there are tradeoffs and then make conscious, intentional decisions about the design that you that you choose to use at your organization.
Brian Thomas: That’s helpful. Really is. And Andrew, you and I both as leaders have been through a lot of this at various companies and orgs.
Thank you. And the hiring process and how that works and it is kind of a delicate balance and I appreciate your thoughts and in your professional opinion really do. And Andrew, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Andrew Bartlow: Brian, thanks so much. My pleasure.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Andrew Bartlow Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
