How Clarity Empowers Employees
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“Clarity in your goals and priorities as an organization is maybe the most important thing you can do to make sure that you achieve them.” – Andrew Bartlow
In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with author and People Leader Accelerator co-founder Andrew Bartlow on how clarity is essential for employee empowerment.
A few reasons why he is awesome — he is the co-founder and managing parter of People Leader Accelerator, the career-defining leadership accelerator for HR executives. He is also the founder of Series B Consulting, which helps organizations design management processes to support rapidly increasing scale and complexity. Andrew boasts 30 years of HR experience advising 100+ companies which informed his book – Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High Growth Organizations.
Connect with Andrew and learn more about his work…
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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Andrew Bartlow, and here is why he is awesome. He is the co-founder and managing partner of People Leader Accelerator, the career-defining leadership accelerator for HR executives.
He’s also the founder of Series B Consulting, which helps organizations design management processes to support rapidly increasing scale and complexity. That sounded pretty corporate, but super important. Uh, he also boasts 30 years of HR experience, advising over 100-plus companies, which I’m guessing has informed his book, which you can certainly check out.
I should mention he’s an author. He’s… The book’s called Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High-Growth Organizations, and he’s here right now. Hello, Andrew.
Andrew Bartlow: Thanks a lot, . Really glad to be here, and still drinking coffee here in California
Russel Lolacher: And still drinking coffee here in Victoria, British Columbia. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s 7:00 AM for both of us, so it’s a bit of a kickstart to the day.
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah, yeah. Really appreciate you having me
Russel Lolacher: No, my pleasure. Uh, we’re getting super clear, uh, with clarity today, uh, talking about our relationship with it and how it can help with employee empowerment. Uh, before we get into any of that though, Andrew, I have to start off as I do with all of my episodes, sir, which is, uh, the question of what is your best or worst employee experience?
Andrew Bartlow: Um, I don’t know why I immediately jumped to worst, but I did.
Russel Lolacher: Everybody does.
Andrew Bartlow: yeah, here I’ll– I, I guess I’ll share, I’ll share the experience. Early in my career, um, I, I, I worked at a very large global CPG company. Won’t be hard to guess if you look at my profile. Um, second job there, first or second job there in my early 20s, working literally around the clock, uh, 60, 70 hours on the weekends.
It had, had the benefit of having a P&L that I was responsible for a- as an HR leader. Um, yeah, so 22, 23 years old, killed every metric that we had. Time to fill, quality of hire, performance of the market unit, et cetera. I got a three out of five rating, and had a conversation with, uh, with my manager and asked like, “What– Help me understand.”
And her feedback was, “When you are older, you will understand.” And I was so tremendously disappointed in that. You know, we’re, we’re in HR. Like, that’s not something you say. Um, a-and, and, uh, that’s something I could not change, uh, other than over time, get older. And, you know, ultimately that was so disappointing, I, I felt like I was out of sync with what I needed to do to be successful, uh, that I left that job. Um, a-and actually that launched me. It ended up working out really well. Um, I took my first, uh, top HR role at a startup. Um, of course I rode the, the dot-com boom and bust along the way. But, um, yeah, even in HR, we do these things to each other, and, um, I went through that
Russel Lolacher: It’s funny, one of the reoccurring jokes I hear in the H- or about the HR field is it’s the least human and the least amount of resources, and yet we call it human resources. I’m like, that hurts ’cause I know some amazing people in HR and they’re just doing the best they can with what they can in the culture that they’re working in.
It’s– Thank you for sharing that story. It actually reminds me of one myself where I, similar experience, um, knocking it out of the park, doing everything, setting success standards, breaking them down, building new ones, and my, my direct report, the person that was supposed to do my performance review and stuff, was away.
I think it was an illness or something, was away. So she had somebody fill in, and that person that filled in did the performance reviews. This person I had no relationship with, had no concept of my work, no history with me whatsoever, killed me in the review. Like just said the most horrible things about me and my work based on nothing.
So I don’t know what his agenda was, but it was, for me, they’re like, “Can you sign this?” And I’m like, “No, I will never sign that.” And it, it, for me, it showed sort of like it was one of the first times I really stood up for myself within an organization of… And this person was a quite high up executive, and I’m like, “I’m just not gonna sign that.
Why would I agree to this when it’s…” And, and it all got fixed and it all got resolved. But if I hadn’t, if I’d just gone with the flow as, as and when, uh, what would that have said and what would that have been on my record and blah, blah, blah. So yeah, those, those moments are just so eye-opening when other people have a bit of control over how they’re, you’re being perceived.
Andrew Bartlow: Yep. Yeah, well, and it affects your faith in the institution as well. That’s what it shook for me. It wasn’t just the leader who I didn’t have the best relationship with, sadly, surprise. Um, but faith in that larger organization and institution, you know, caused me to, you know, pick up stakes, and I voted with my feet
Russel Lolacher: I, I think we m- we miss the point that everybody within that organization represents that organization. And we talk about it like it’s about customers. We– “Oh, well, you know, when you go out there, you are representing your company.” But you don’t realize, based on our two stories, that it’s also how the company’s represented internally as well.
Y- you think that’s a leader? You think this person represents our vision and mission, and this is how they treat me? Why, why would you stay? Yeah, I hear that. So what have you sort of taken from that? I kinda like that sort of– That was impactful. Obviously, you pulled that out of the, you know, you pulled that off the roster of stories.
It didn’t happen recently. So
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah
Russel Lolacher: how have you carried that with you in your own experiences and your own leadership?
Andrew Bartlow: Oh, wow. Um, well, well, one, I got older. Um, yeah, I, I have, um, clearly, uh, grown the gray hair over time. Just actually just, uh, celebrated my 50th birthday a, a few weeks ago, and that’s, that’s always a, you know, when you have those milestones, it’s a time for reflection.
Russel Lolacher: Absolutely
Andrew Bartlow: was I at 30 and 40, and where will I be at 60?
Um, w- what– how I’ve applied that is, is having a lot of empathy for people that are early in their career. And maybe they, maybe we will understand when we’re older. But, but what can we do now? What can we do now to understand what our, what our managers need, what our stakeholders need, what the people that we serve in our roles need?
What can we do now? And, and, you know, maybe, um, maybe that’s one of the deeper roots of People Leader Accelerator, where I actively educate and support and mentor other HR leaders that are earlier along in their career than I am
Russel Lolacher: The story sounds very similar, obviously different paths between us, because I’m thinking of like, I’m trying to right wrongs. I’m trying to have other people not have the same experiences that I may have seen or because of my empathy and compassion. Uh, I always… I started with I hate people being bullied, and it got me into the customer service space quite quickly, and then it moved me into this realm about leadership and employee engagement, employee experience, because I, I– And this is around 2017, because we weren’t having these conversations.
COVID blew that up. But, uh, but yeah, I, I, I, I hear you in that, in that w- I don’t want other people being treated the way, experiences that I’ve had. And it’s funny because you bring this up, I’m sure it’s, like we said, it’s ages ago. That’s trauma you’re carrying around with you, Andrew. That’s not a bad day you had.
That is a, well, that was a cornerstone and a milestone of, of, of changing your own direction. Thank you for that.
Andrew Bartlow: Well, well thank you. Deep question
Russel Lolacher: Oh, that’s how we roll here on Relationships at Work, and I promise I never will say that phrase again. Um, moving forward though, it’s about clarity we’re gonna talk about today and getting super clear, especially how it relates to that relationship with employees and getting them empowered themselves.
But I like to sort of set the table a bit in my conversations and sort of, ’cause we don’t do it in the workplace enough, defining things. So for instance, what do you mean when you’re talking about clarity, especially for, as it pertains to employee empowerment?
Andrew Bartlow: Sure. Um, well, I’ll, I’ll even back up. Why are we talking about clarity at all? We, we had a, you know, pre-show chat and like, “Hey, what would be most useful to the audience of, you know, lar- largely HR leaders and, and, uh, management professionals?” Um, a- and I deeply believe that clarity is the m- is the magic wand in so many ways, a- and not just in the niche of employee empowerment, but in organizational success.
Like, it’s a much bigger, broader thing. Um, a- and, you know, so please stop me if I go too far a- afield here. Um, clarity in your goals and priorities as an org i- is maybe the most important thing you can do to make sure that you achieve them. Like, you can have a lot of motion and a lot of effort, and a lot of organizations do.
So many people trying so hard, but they’re, they’re scattered to the four winds, you know, all working on different stuff that conflicts in terms of time, attention, resources, all of that. And so clarity at an org level, what are actually our most important things? What are actually we trying to achieve? If you don’t have that, none of the other stuff that you’re working on will be effective A- and so that, that’s where I start from, the, with the foundation of clarity, organizational goals and priorities.
And, you know, I can throw in a, a spicy take of, you know, so many, uh, company-level goals and priorities are fake, are just giant categories that don’t actually help people make choices. If your company-level goals are increase revenue, reduce cost, and be a great place to work, raise your hand if you’ve seen that 1,000 times. fake. That doesn’t help anybody actually make decisions and trade-offs. An effective goal, it doesn’t have to be all the way to a SMART goal or a KPI with stretch metrics. An effective goal he- helps people make decisions that are deeper in the organization, and that allows empowerment, that allows delegation, that allows– That puts the grease between the wheels that allows everything to move a little faster and, and more smoothly.
A- and that’s, that comes from clarity
Russel Lolacher: Hmm. And, and I go back to the definition idea because a lot of people, I think, in organizations don’t understand what even they’re trying to be clear about. A lot of organizations don’t know what a goal is. They don’t know what a vision is or a mission is. ‘Cause I’ve seen a lot of organizations are like, “That’s our vision.”
I’m like, “That’s an okay mission. That’s not even a vision statement. That’s… Oh, but this is a purpose statement.” Like, we throw these terms around, and yet to your point, we need to be clear about them, but even then we can’t be clear if we don’t even know what the hell we’re talking about.
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah. Well, and marketing slogans get, uh, thrown in there a, a lot as well. Like, don’t let your marketers loose on your mission, vision, values. You will, you’ll certainly end up with something that sounds good but means almost nothing Yeah
Russel Lolacher: Your vision is three paragraphs long. Why? Like, I don’t… So what is getting in the way of this clarity? ‘Cause at the end of the day, most of it should be modeled by executive, should be the ones that are setting the path forward
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah. Let, let’s, let’s pull it apart and get really practical tactical here.
Russel Lolacher: Please.
Andrew Bartlow: So what, what is a vision of an organization? It’s, it’s roughly and what you wanna be in the future, and maybe that timeframe is three years, maybe it’s one year, like whatever it is, it’s w- what do you wanna be? Um, an example of a pretty good vision would be, uh, we want to grow to become a $1 billion revenue public company. That’s, that’s a vision. What’s, what’s not a vision is we want to democratize education by… You know, it, I could, I could go on with some flowerly- flowery phrases there, but I already, you know, kind of blew it up with something that was really high-minded but not specific. So specific, if you are at a for-profit organization, and that’s where I’ve spent the vast majority of my career, um, you probably have a revenue goal.
You probably have shareholders or investors and, and so, you know, part of your vision will be about growth and returns and markets that you serve and, and, you know, like really don’t get too high-minded with it. What you’re trying to do is help your, your team to be focused, not coming up with the most attractive marketing slogan.
All right, so that, that would be a vision. A mission would be how do we do that?
Russel Lolacher: Mm-hmm.
Andrew Bartlow: A, a mission would be, uh, if we wanna become a $1 billion publicly traded organization, our mission this year is to launch an additional product or, uh, open the EMEA market or expand into, uh, enterprise, uh, sales. Like that, that might be a shorter term discrete activity.
Um, a- and you know what? Honestly, we don’t need to quibble over the definitions of mission, vision, values. The, the point is clarity. The, the point is for your org, if it’s specific and it helps make trade-offs, uh, it doesn’t have to fit a, a special formula. Um, vision would be a little further out. Mission would be a little closer in.
Think of it like a three-year versus a one-year time horizon. Values, I, I think are often, uh, again, over-marketing, uh, washed. Uh, where values are really helpful is where they both attract and repel workers. If you try to appeal to everyone, your values are not helpful I’ll, I’ll pause a little bit on that. If your– Yeah, i- if your values are trying to be so inclusive that it doesn’t help your recruiting team and hiring managers make choices about who comes here and who gets to continue working here and who gets promoted, um, or, or disciplined, then it’s not really helpful.
Um, so all of these things, goals, priorities, mission, vision, values, they can be a tremendous accelerant for your organization if they provide clarity. If they don’t provide clarity, they’re just on the wall or on the mouse pad, and, you know, all the time that you spent designing them and publishing them was, was burnt, was wasted
Russel Lolacher: From your own experience working with as many companies as you have, what’s the damage of not being clear? Because I know we’re talking about vision and mission, but being vague or complicated can happen in day-to-day emails. Um, so I’m just kind of curious from an impact standpoint, ’cause the intent is to share information.
The impact could be very different. So where have you seen the damage, and what does that look like?
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah. Um, a-again, great, great second level question. Um, what I see where there’s a lack of clarity is that multiple priorities, multiple initiatives are running simultaneously, competing for the same human and financial resources. So if you’re not clear that what we’re– uh, that our number one goal is to launch this new product, then the HR team will be working on their employee engagement initiative that’s unrelated, and the IT infrastructure team will be, you know, launching a new security protocol, and your sales team will be, uh, doing something unrelated.
The, the idea is if you don’t have clarity, people will find something to do that they think is useful that unfortunately almost always distracts and detracts and competes with that most important thing. You know, think of it like, I don’t know, I live in the Bay Area and we have commuter trains called the BART, uh, Bay Area Rapid Transit.
I rode it the other day. Um, there are only so many tracks. Some of these trains are express trains. They, they pick up in Walnut Creek and they’ll drop you off in San Francisco. That moves faster. You’re competing less for resources. And some of the trains are locals and they stop, they make a stop at every stop.
You wanna be clear what’s the express train and what’s the local, because there’s only so many tracks. You can only be on it at so many times. Even if you have deep pockets and a lot of funding and, you know, really effective people, you can do multiple things at one time, but there is a tax in terms of attention and resources.
Um, a-and so that’s, that’s what happens. Everything slows down. Everything slows down, and you find that the most important thing often doesn’t get done
Russel Lolacher: And I hate the idea of this interpretive dance where executive will come up with an idea and you’re like, “Okay, but is that what they really mean?” Because they did– were kind of vague, so I have to, I have to kind of figure out and translate what they really mean. I’ll give you an example. I remember this executive who would go, “I, I want you to do this project.
You know, kind of this, this, this, and this. But you know what? Do your own thing. Figure it out.” Nobody ever did their own thing. They did all the things word for word that they had just said it that they kinda wanted. But that was not what was being communicated. That was not what was being clear. And what was being clear was, “Go be creative.
Go have your own influence and ideas.” It’s not what they wanted. They just wanted you to do what exactly what they want you to do. So this clarity was confusing and frustrating because then, uh, we people had to go to their desks and go, “What did they really want?” Until they learned how to play the interpretive dance of this executive.
Frustrating and time-consuming
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah, it’s, it, it’s often because that executive or the executive team doesn’t have clarity themselves. So maybe, maybe another example, um, you know, u- using a fake goal, increase revenue. The leadership team isn’t really sure how they’re going to increase revenue. Maybe that’s open a new market, maybe that’s, um, expand geographically, maybe that’s launch a new product or a new customer.
We don’t know, but we know we’ve got a target that we promised to the investors and, and the board, and it’s in our pitch deck to raise more money, and so we, we need to raise more money or we need to, you know, sell, sell more stuff. And there’s this cloud beneath that. And so I would strongly encourage organizations to be more specific, be as specific as possible.
Maybe that goal is not just create more revenue, it is determine what growth vector we will pursue that will help us meet this revenue goal. And that could involve a, a series of experiments and, you know, multiple, um, pilots running in the organization at one time. But at some point you make a choice and you pour your resources in, i- into a more focused area.
And so tha- that’s, that’s where, again, clarity at the top affects everything beneath it. If, if you say just increase revenue, then again, lots of stuff is going on, lots of stuff is changing. You are whipsawing the organization between different ideas at different times. And, and again, instead of grease between the wheels, you have sand because everybody’s competing for the same resources and the same time and attention to try to meet that fuzzy goal at the top.
Russel Lolacher: And that really comes back to the leader being a bad communicator or being not, uh, well, I guess self, uh, s- self-aware of how they’re communicating. Again, they’re the ones setting the model. If they’re not clear, then they have– they are the ones that have to own that. I’m a, a… As a communications nerd, that’s my background, is that communication 101 is not just what’s said, but what’s understood.
So based on clarity, what’s said is broadcasting. W- If the other person understands it, then that’s communication. It is a two, two people are involved in this. So I, I ask this question because a lot of executives, leadership will broadcast and then get frustrated because they didn’t get it. They don’t understand.
How does, as a leader, we understand that we’re not being clear? Because we’ll put it out into the world, and we still have to do some self-assessment and understanding because maybe things aren’t getting done or maybe they’re getting done in the wrong way. What, what are we doing to make sure we’re not making these mistakes?
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah. A- again, getting practical and tactical with it. You know, one is ensure that you have effective two-way communication. So if you are sending, you know, all-hands messages, if you are, uh, emailing your entire organization, that- that’s, that’s one-way communication. If you have an employee survey once or twice a year, that’s okay, but that’s not really giving you any specific, actionable, timely info.
Um, leadership team meetings, if you’re the CEO and you’re speaking with your leadership team, ask them about clarity. Uh, hold a skip level. Um, ask the team what is most important right now. Not just, you know, parrot back our three fake goals, but, uh, what, what is the most important initiative or project that our, that our company has right now?
Um, a- and that sort of two-way dialogue Could be a light survey, could be like a one-question survey that you send out, could be roundtables, could be skip levels. Um, that, that’s one way to ensure the, the information is flowing back uphill. Um, the other part of it is, is awareness. Like ul- ultimately, if you’re in a hierarchical organization with multiple levels, and the bigger the org, the harder it is, um, you have that responsibility as a leader to be self-aware about it.
Th- this may not be the, the richest, uh, image or analogy. I, I’m, I’m thinking of, of a, a whip. Um, I can’t recall ever actually holding a whip, but it’s, uh… I- I’m thinking about there’s a handle, and then there’s this long strand off the handle, and as a, as a senior leader, you operate in the space of the handle, and you can move that back and forth pretty quickly and pretty directly.
But the bigger your organization is, the longer that whip is and the further it has to travel when you’re changing directions. Like, if you’ve ever heard the snap or the crack of a whip, that’s actually the sound barrier being broken because the tip of the whip is moving so quickly. Um, and so, you know, think of, in an organization, you as a CEO or senior leader, you’re moving that handle, and yep, that’s very direct.
You can do that. You can manipulate that yourself. But if you’re in a big org, and this is a bit of self-awareness, the entire organization needs to move at the speed of sound if you change directions. And so consistency is part of it. You may wanna be agile. You may say, “We’re at a startup, and we’re still looking for product market fit.”
But if you don’t have some degree of stability and consistency, you will whip your organization from direction to direction, and that will cause confusion, that will, um, that will tear away clarity. And, and so that, that’s just a, you know, i- an awkwardly intended, uh, uh, visual of what it means in an org We as leaders need to understand, you know, maybe there’s another image of, like, a drop of water falling.
Like, the further up that drop of water is, the bigger the splash and the further out the ripples. And so the more layers and the larger your org is and the higher up that you are in it, the, the broader the impact on the org. And so that, that’s something that many leaders learn who grow up in organizations and have the benefit of 20, 25 years of training and gradually getting bigger.
Um, but I do a lot of work in the startup arena, and there are a lot of 20-somethings that may have never graduated college, may have never had a job before, um, who find themselves as CEO founders of organizations with, you know, 1,000 people or several hundred people. Also, I work with a lot of private equity-backed organizations that are founder-led.
Same thing, may have never had another job, may have never had management training, uh, may have not experienced kind of that, that crawl up the ladder and, and understanding what that does. And so there’s something about the self-awareness of the massively larger impact that a, that a senior leader has on the entire team.
Russel Lolacher: And, and I don’t wanna let executive off the hook either. I know executives that have been around for 25 years, horrible communicators. Like it, it’s ’cause they’ve had no training, and it– I don’t blame them for that. But we don’t, we don’t treat communications as a serious skill set. We talk about delivery.
We talk about productivity. We don’t talk about communication, which is the bedrock of any leadership, regardless if they’re a startup or they’ve running an organization of 10, 100,000 people. So where’s HR’s role in this? You’re an HR guy. HR is involved. Communication tends to sometimes fall into that shop, sometimes it doesn’t.
But HR tends to set or try to set culture and, and try to reinforce culture or the subcultures. Where is clarity defined for them, and what is their role in helping the organization be clear?
Andrew Bartlow: L- love it. And, and leading question. Um, but my, my answer is HR is the function, is the team that is probably best positioned to lead and facilitate internal communications. If you’re a small or mid-sized business, call it under 1,000 employees, um, and that’s 95% of the businesses in, in North America, um, are that, you probably don’t have a dedicated headcount that is focused on internal communications.
That’s PR- there are probably bits and pieces of that role that live in different areas, and it is being under-attended to. We in HR, at our highest and best use, are internal management consultants. At our highest and best use, we help our organizations function more effectively How can we function more effectively?
It’s providing clarity. It’s articulating clearly and specifically what our goals are, who will do what, um, how we make decisions, how we’re doing, when there’s a redirection. Now, HR may not be the communicator there, like as, as head of HR or, you know, some- somebody that’s a direct report. You don’t necessarily need to be the messenger on the all-hands call or on the, uh, weekly, monthly, uh, newsletter to employees, but there should be some pretty strong attention to ensuring that that happens.
So we can be the, the prompter, we can be the facilitator, we can poke the CEO and say, “Ooh, this feels like we’re changing something,” or, “I’m hearing through my various communication channels that it would be useful to reinforce XYZ.” And so we, we can serve as the consigliere, uh, to the CEO or business leader, and often ghostwrite messages, um, often create the venues, maybe it’s a, a skip level or a round table or a, you know, sp- u- use our time, uh, around the management table to prompt the reinforcement of clarity.
Um, I’ve found internal communications to be a pretty meaningful part of my role as a chief people officer and senior HR leader that was never really recognized. It was never part of the job description. It was never something that I was assessed on, um, but it was one of the most impactful things I ever worked on.
And, and often that role can get delegated by the CEO to a chief of staff or a COO or, um, someone else that is tracking the projects and initiatives and reporting them. You know, maybe in finance you have a dashboard somewhere that says, “How are we doing against revenue and cost?” and et cetera. But the missing link there is the internal communication to the people. Finance does a, does a really nice job of keeping score and reporting to the board But HR has that opportunity to be the translator to the organization. Uh, and again, that just helps with alignment, it helps you move faster, helps ensure that somebody seven levels down from the CEO is actually working on the right stuff.
Um, a- and so I think, uh, to get more direct to your question, uh, Russel, like w- w- where, where should HR play? One, it’s accepting that role, not being– not waiting to be asked to do it. It’s understanding that this is an area that we can have tremendous impact on our organization, and taking the reins, being proactive, showing some agency, and, and translating some of the things that the organization is probably already doing.
You’re already reporting up to the board or your investors certain things. Uh, it’s, it’s making sure that you’re talking about EBITDA in a way that your third shift warehouse, uh, can connect with. And, and that doesn’t mean educate everybody to, you know, understand what EBITDA is, but that, that means translate and articulate to your org, um, how people can make an impact and what’s important.
Russel Lolacher: HR are just employees like everybody else. Like we can’t treat them like an other. So what kind of clarity are they needing to feel empowered? ‘Cause it, it sounds great for all you’re saying, and that sounds great from an initiative standpoint, but they also need clarity from those around them. Where have you seen that that doesn’t seem to connect for them?
Because that sounds great of what they’re doing, but they can’t be set up to fail either.
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah. Yes, I mean, th- this is, I think this is a sad but true reality where many of us in HR, I include myself in this, um, we’re drawn to it in part because it’s a service and helping profession. Um, we, we want to do good, we want to help others, we want to be of service. Um, and, and that often leads to us having this imaginary list of programs and priorities that all good companies or all good HR departments will deliver upon.
And we find ourselves working on these things like job architecture and l- leveling and, uh, development plans and, you know, uh, performance, um, assessment in a way that is, you know, fair and eq- You know, there’s all sorts of things that we work on, um, that aren’t always, I’d venture to say aren’t even often directly connected to the most important things for our organization right now.
How is job architecture clearly and directly supporting increasing revenue in EMEA? M- maybe, maybe it is. Uh, m- maybe you’re trying to stand up a team and hire it for the first time, and you wanna understand what roles we need and what we need to pay, pay them. Um, but often we’re working on this shadow list.
And so I, I actually point the finger right back at ourselves and say, “We are often working at odds with our own organization because we are des- distracting and detracting from those more, most important things if we don’t have our mindset focused on, ‘My job exists to help this organization meet its goals.'” And if you need someone else to tell you that, that’s problem one So, like, let’s get our mind- our mindset right about we– I- it’s not business or people, it’s business and people work together. If the organization is successful, if it makes money, if it grows, then people will grow, they’ll get promoted, they’ll feel better.
And if your organization is mostly focused on… I- if, if you’re functioning like a union steward inside your org, you will never have a true seat at the table, um, in, in your organization. If you’re advocating for the workers in a way that is ultimately at odds with what’s in the company’s best interests, there will be this skepticism and a, uh, a separation, and that frankly happens a ton.
So yeah, I’d say it starts with our own mindset. It starts with our own acceptance of the role. Um, and that’s frankly a big part of what we do in People Leader Accelerator, is we spend the first month of our intensive program really digging into what is the role, what is the work, and we, you know, peeling that apart.
Like, w- okay, then what’s most important to work on? And, and we love people. We wanna, we wanna do things that help people and h- help employees, but I don’t think there’s anybody that can, that can do it for us. We in HR need to get our minds wrapped around, like, our role exists to help the org, uh, meet its most important goals, and that means connect our work, um, clearly and directly to those most important things rather than our shadow list
Russel Lolacher: And I wish, and I’m, I’m gonna oversimplify this, I wish it was that simple in, to some degree. And I bring it up because to your point about mindset, we all have different ones, and that’s where I’m, I’m getting to the diversity question. Because we’re Gen X, got it, but our idea of clarity is different than, say, a Gen Zed, Gen Z for…
Gen Zed for us Canadians. Um, what, what clarity looks like, how clarity’s delivered is different. How do we as leaders get a better understanding of what… And I guess surveys are the way to do it, but how do we better consider, um, that our audiences are different and can’t be homogenized in how we provide clarity?
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah, the, I mean, um, there will be degrees, there will be differences. Is it better to communicate on Slack or email or on person or more video? Like that, that’s dialing in, that’s optimizing. I, I think I’m speaking more in the broad strokes of like, let’s first start with step one a- and agree that this is important.
Step one is awareness. And, and then as you move down the path of, you know, any good 12-step program, um, somewhere along the way you’ll be optimizing for your channels and your audience and, um, yeah, th- those are things that, um, you know, make sense. You know your audience and communicate in, in various ways.
If you have third shift warehouse that doesn’t have an email or Slack account, then you probably should communicate a little differently than if you’re a, you know, professional services firm, uh, where, where everybody is, you know, at a desk and very financially astute. Um, yeah, so I, I, I think clarity will mean…
Clarity will be represented differently with different audiences. But it starts with leaders, both of the business and in HR, agreeing that clarity is important and we’re striving for clarity, and then you can optimize how it’s executed upon in your org.
Russel Lolacher: Um, and that gets me a little bit… We’re speaking pretty meta, so I wanna just get a little, little more granular. There are a lot of leaders out there that have teams they’re responsible for in organizations that are vague as hell or overcomplicated. So there’s not one culture, there’s 17,000 subcultures within every organization.
It drives me nuts when we talk about work culture. I’m like, “Which one are we talking about?” So in this particular situation, organizations have their marketing optimized vision, mission, goals, everything. What is the role of a leader when they’re literally having to either co-create clarity or translate?
Like, what would you recommend to a leader that is, still has to do their job, but works within a culture that doesn’t get it?
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah. Yeah, so if you’re in a big org and there isn’t clarity at the top, you’re, you’re in the messy middle yourself, how do you, how do you operate the most effectively? How do you, um, how do you translate and articulate what is the most important? Great question. All right, so let’s, let’s say you’re now in one of the 5% of companies that are pretty big, where you’re in middle management and you can’t, uh, you can’t directly influence it yourself. I, I walk people through this in, in our program. It, it starts with use your resources and use good judgment. Can you get your hands on the last, uh, all-hands, uh, document? Um, if you’re a big public company, you have, uh, public filings. You can get an S1, you can get the 8-Ks. You can pull that down off the internet, and you can see what the executive team is, is sharing with your investors.
Um, that, that is rich information that usually highlights your economic goals. Um, open your ears to what leadership is communicating and use your filtration, uh, devices to try to translate more clearly what are likely to be either, um, ambiguous goals like make more money, um, or overly, um, uh, what’s the word I’m searching for?
Like, if it, if it’s, you know, articulated in EBITDA, what does that mean to our marketing team, right? So you as a leader, use your resources. Talk to other leaders. Like, have a conversation with the head of, uh, financial planning and analysis. Have a conversation with the, the CFO. “Hey, I’m trying to provide my marketing team with more clarity about what’s most important for this organization.
Um, can, can you help me, uh, identify those top three things?” That’s actually a really, um, positive conversation to have with other members of a, of a leadership team. So, like, start with understanding that it’s your responsibility to translate to your team. You don’t have to wait for someone at the top of the house to do it for you.
Do your best. Do your best. Be directionally correct with your team. And so then you can say, “Okay, well, in marketing we’re trying to drive a, you know, 20%, uh, increase to revenue. Um, what are the two or three things that we can do that would most directly support that?” I have a, I have a little one-pager that I’ve drawn up and a free download on, on the People Leader Accelerator we- website that it is built kinda like an org chart with one box at the top and then three below it and then nine below that. And it, it kinda works that way. So if, if your top-level goal is increase revenue 20%, what two or three things in marketing can you do that supports that? And write it down And test it with your internal stakeholders. Like if you write that down and say, “Okay, we’re gonna do a paid marketing experiment here, and we’re gonna use this new tool there, and we’re gonna engage with an agency a- as our third thing,” run that past the head of sales, run that past the head of finance and say, “I’m trying to tie our activities to the, you know, company goals.
Does this make sense or, or would it be better spent– would time and effort be better spent in another area?” They’ll likely give you some tweaks, but that just gets you more directionally correct along the way. They won’t shame you for trying to, uh, drive your, uh, you know, tie your work to what’s most important.
You know, that, that will probably be a great role model example, and other people will be asked to do the same thing. Um, so write it down, make it simple, and socialize it, and then share it with your team. Um, but I, I, I hope I answered the question of like what do you do if you’re a middle manager and, and there isn’t clarity at the top.
Take the reins for your team. Do– Don’t let better– Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better. And so better clarity is certainly, um, a, a lot more effective than just abdication.
Russel Lolacher: Well, I think you’re differentiating something I try to do a lot on this show, which is the difference between what a manager is and what a leader is, ’cause they’re not the same thing. And what I’m– A manager will take their marching orders and manage their resources, manage their time, manage whatever they need to.
A leader, which is what you’re talking about, will get curious, will start asking a lot of questions to get the clarity for themselves that they can translate to their team to help with that empowerment. What are the mindset shifts do you think leaders need to be focusing on to be able to even be those people that provide clarity?
Because I, I, I love when we talk about things where like, “We need to go from A to B.” I’m like, “Are we even the right people to go from A to B? Do we have the things to go from A to B?” We never have those conversations. We just look at the goal, not if we’re the right passengers on that journey. So looking at the leaders, again, not managers, leaders, curiosity pokes up for me.
But I’m kinda curious as to where your success stories have been from the work you’ve done that have led to be able to be even clearer
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah, I, I, I love the differentiation between a leader and a manager. The, the difference is not title.
Russel Lolacher: No
Andrew Bartlow: difference is not n- necessarily spot on an org chart. Like, you could be functioning like a manager, but you’re actually in a very big senior role. You could be functioning like a leader, but maybe you’re an in- an individual contributor.
Yeah, so I, I, I think curiosity works. Maybe even a better fit would be the concept of agency. Agency or being proactive, um, i- identifying a need and attacking it. Um, so it– regardless of what role you’re in, if you don’t have clarity, you can take steps to try to create more clarity. You can write down, “Hey, I’m a customer service agent, and I’m not really sure what’s most important for me and for the company.
But I, I see this scoreboard on the wall, and so maybe it’s calls handled, or maybe it’s, uh, customer, you know, NPS, or maybe it’s the…” And maybe you write that down and you check it off with your manager and say, “Hey, I think these are the most important things, but, uh, is that right?” That, that is agency.
That’s being a leader. Um, yeah, so I, I think th- that’s something that you can do in, in any role
Russel Lolacher: So to wrap this up, somebody– I want to empower anybody listening. See what I tied it back there? Uh, just to wrap up our conversation, I’m curious from anybody listening, if you want to empower them to understand their own clarity, to get better at being clear, where do we start? Uh, no, and I don’t mean, you know, buy the book right now.
I mean even be the person that would buy the book. Like where, where do we dip our toe in, say, tomorrow morning to go, “Okay, I need to figure out my ability to be clear or get clarity for my own teams”?
Andrew Bartlow: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, let’s make it really simple. Um, regardless of what role you’re in, you should have a pretty good picture of what are the two to five, let’s call it three, what are the three most important things that I can and should be doing in my role? Write it down. If you struggle to write it down, like you might, might have it in your brain in a fuzzy way, but try to write it down in a succinct way.
If you struggle to do that, then there’s an opportunity for more clarity. In any role, you can do this. Um, take that scrap of paper or that, that, um, uh, note, maybe put it in an email if you like, and run that past your manager and say, “Hey, I was, I was working on my growth plan or my deliverables for the year, and I w- I was striving for more clarity for myself, and here’s what I came up with, and would love to, you know, see how well that aligns with, with what you think is most important.”
Um, and if you’re in a mid-level role that interacts cross-functionally, you could share that also with your peers. So, like, just start really simple with, like, write down what you think the three most important things are. Like, so for me, at, um, Leading People Leader Accelerator, uh, we are an educational community.
Um, you know, we, uh, one for me is get the word out. And so I appear on podcasts and I do some marketing stuff, and so I want to have, you know, so many impressions and, you know, so many appearances, and so that, that’s one of my measures. Um, a- another measure is I want to have raving fans of the program, and so we, um, do some surveys of, uh, of our graduates, and if we’re not, like, five out of five, then we’re, y- we, we change something.
And we always change something. Um, a- and, and so, like, th- those, those are two examples of something really clear. Another one is, like, w- we wanna have this sustaining community, and so how many events and activities do we have that are, that are engaging people? And so that, that’s, that’s easy for me. Um, but I socialize that with my partners and say, “Does this still make sense?
Is this right?” And, uh, and I’ll often get some, some pushback and some, uh, some tweaking. So I f- I feel like that’s something that, that doesn’t matter where you’re at on an org chart. Write down, write it down, socialize it a little bit, and tweak it, and, and you can provide yourself some more clarity, the people around you more clarity, and if you have people working for you, oh my goodness, they, they will appreciate that tremendously.
Russel Lolacher: I love that you need to be clear about what you’re trying to be clear about. It should, should be where you start. That is Andrew Bartlow. He is the co-founder and managing partner of People Leader Accelerator, founder of Series B Consulting, and he’s got a book you should check out called “Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High Growth Organizations.”
Thank you so much for being here, Andrew.
Andrew Bartlow: Thank you.