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The WorkOps Podcast is your weekly conversation with HR leaders and People Ops practitioners doing the real work.
In every episode we dig into one story. A process that went sideways, a system that just didn't work, and what someone actually did about it. Packed with practical lessons you'll want to bring back to your team. Whether you're supporting 500 employees or 5,000, this is how the best People leaders are building for what comes next.
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Jeet HOST: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Today I am joined by Colleen McCreary, who's the chief people officer and head of internal systems at Confluent. Colleen, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we jump into things, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you choose HR?
Colleen GUEST: Sure. I actually love when people ask me that question. I have been in, recruiting HR in the technology world for almost thirty years. I fell into college recruiting, having a master's in higher education in terms of how college students develop. I actually did my thesis work in graduate school back in the nineties on the retention of women in engineering and computer science programs.
an interesting parallel. And I started at Microsoft, and I just loved the idea of matching people to their first job. Developing, working with interns. I still think it's really great. I have a lot of passion for that group. And I never thought of recruiting as HR, actually.
And in fact, as I got more into companies, [00:01:00] for a long time, I was very anti-HR. I was like, "Oh, I wanna go be a COO of a business unit or do something else." Part of it is I just really dislike rules and policies and I really hate to be told what to do, frankly, and doesn't matter who you are.
so it seemed very constricting. And then I had a, CHRO when I worked at EA who kinda tapped me on the s-shoulder and said, I really think you should try being an HR inter-- director." At the time it would've been a pro-- it was a promotion to go report to her. I'd be on her direct staff I figured okay I'll do it, and then they're gonna find out I'm horrible at this and then they'll, find me something else, send me back to recruiting or, I'll find something else.
And it turned out actually, I really liked the work. I think in particular, EA has a very great string of people who've come out and been chief people officers after their time there. I think the studio arrangement, you have a lot of ownership. You get to make a lot of decisions. And at the time I was moved into that job it was [00:02:00] when they were moving a lot from geographic reporting into functional reporting.
And so I was really leveraging all these relationships I had with, engineering leaders and product leaders and, studio GMs to say "Hey, you can trust me. You're not gonna lose your finance person. They're just gonna be building their own career. You're not gonna lose your HR person.
You're not gonna lose your technology person." And so I think that was one of the reasons why it was so interesting. And then I got sent on an expat assignment over to India, which was great. I got to learn a lot more. Brought my family, my son was three at the time, a lot more about integrating an acquisition into the company and HR and kind of the rest of the world.
And after that, I went to my first startup that was like 100 people. I was their chief people officer in 2009, and I've never really looked back. I did... Actually, that's wrong. I left HR a couple years ago to go to be an investor in venture capital,
Jeet HOST: Yeah
Colleen GUEST: I have a whole blog post about. It's like the dream job.
Oh my God, when does an HR person ever get to be an investor at a really great firm? And I [00:03:00] actually really didn't like it at all. operating. I missed being in the heart of it. I missed I, not for-- I loved all the people, and I still like-- I love the idea of developing companies and how they develop and how you develop leaders and things like that.
But investing just didn't do it for me and, so I moved back into being an operator, which I think a number of people on the surface really thought I was insane. it was a really good choice for me.
Jeet HOST: Why did they think you were insane
Colleen GUEST: for going I think it's just vanity, ego lifestyle, frankly. Being an operator is hard, and especially in HR. There is never an off switch.
Coleen GUEST: sort of
Colleen GUEST: just Stuff happens and if you do it well, you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of things to be available.
And so, you know,
in venture, sure, there are definitely some times that we were, trying to get in on a deal or trying to close something or something was happening in one of the companies, but never in the same way than when you're on the line and when your butt's on the line and you're [00:04:00] responsible, but I think a lot of people just optically, especially in tech, I think that they think it's this like dream thing and, why would I go back to HR of all things? I didn't really care what everybody else thought. Yeah probably a little bit did, but for the most part, it was a really great choice for me in every aspect.
And I'm still close with those, that whole team. And I, I figure out what's next, at some point I may go back and say, "What do you What companies?" Who knows?
Jeet HOST: I imagine it's given you a really great perspective, and what I really love about the career that you've had is and what you said earlier on, almost feeling anti-HR, , it feels quite commercially aligned, and it is not just about the people, but I was looking at your LinkedIn post recently, and even in the world of AI agents you were talking about keeping the human at the heart of things.
And you just mentioned that in your first job, matching people to their first jobs is really important to you, even to this day. And especially in a world of AI agents, when folks are talking about, "We're just gonna [00:05:00] automate all that repetitive admin, so what do we do with these junior folks? How do we train them up?" I'd love to hear your thoughts a-around that piece. Like, how are you thinking about bringing in the next crop of folks that are even wanting to or considering paths in HR for someone who was anti-HR and then
has decided to go back into it after moving out of it?
Colleen GUEST: Yeah. That's a multi-layered question in so many different ways. I do think one of the reasons that I have been successful in the companies that I have worked with is that I think I bring a really good perspective on humanity and trying to do the right thing. But I also understand at the end of the day my job is to support the business as a whole, and I'm very clear on that.
And, it's a triad, right? So it's employee, shareholders, and customers, and you have to, always be working through that triad in some form or fashion. And I think that the fact that I never mix those things up [00:06:00] while still holding, I think, my values and holding up a mirror to people to say "You've said you wanna be a great, employer for people.
If you do these things, that is not in alignment with what that is." And I've worked for some, I think CEOs who have brands that were not necessarily that. But, they really did care. It was just sometimes the way it gets expressed was different. I think in the lens of AI and AI agents and what's going on and where's the work and what do you do with junior people,
Colleen GUEST: I think part of the hypothesis that you just mentioned of like they're just, junior people doing this repetitive rote task things, I didn't grow up thinking that way in my professional career.
I was literally... Microsoft had an entire team of people, when I was on that team it was like 50, 100 people o- over the years while I was there, and I think it's even way bigger now. But like I was literally sent to college campuses to go find these people who are graduating who they believed were gonna be the future of the company, right?
Like a massive investment. It was very much like [00:07:00] athletic recruiting even then, where we were like tracking kids coming out of coding competitions in high school and these certain math and technology high schools, and where were they going and what they were doing. And so I don't believe that just because you're early in your career that you have to be, in these roles where you're not going to create a lot of impact.
And I think in the world of AI, that's even more true. Like we doubled down on our college hiring and our intern program this year because, we believe that this is the group of people who've only grown up with technology, and so they are gonna be the ones who are not going to be afraid. And I actually believe that should be, we did that on our technology organization, but in my opinion, you should probably be open to doing that across all of your functions.
and I think the people who are most at risk are actually, and I think we're seeing more and more data coming out of everywhere, which is this murky middle, which are the people who are probably like six to 12 years into their career who got. there's a great book out there I used to give to leaders all the time, What Got You Here Won't Get You [00:08:00] There, and it's this it's the same mindset you need right now with AI, that all of the things that were making you successful before are gonna get flipped on their heads.
And it's not 100% true because I do think in particular in HR I am a big believer I make lots of jokes about having job security because every single person would need their own LLM. We all have our own handbook. There's no universal LLM that's going to spit out an answer for each individual human.
It's just not. And, I think that's frustrating, and I always joke about how, I know so many smart people who, pattern-matching wise, you would think are gonna do all the right things, and then they use poor judgment, they make bad decisions. That's like half of the world of HR sometimes is
Coleen GUEST: like,
Colleen GUEST: yeah,
Coleen GUEST: you know,
Colleen GUEST: 80%
of the time this is probably what's gonna happen, but, you gotta leave room for human nature.
And I think until we move, somewhere somehow that, you only have technology, and then in which case that's a very scary world in lots of ways. there's a lot of room and space for human connection, how [00:09:00] humans interact, even how they're interacting with technology, how do they make it through?
So I just think the world's gonna be changing, and it's gonna be Like it's gonna be, it's a great time to be there, but change is hard. And I think we get really lost when we don't acknowledge that. Let's go back to COVID, and everybody was like, "Remote work is here forever.
It's definitely gonna be the world. La
Coleen GUEST: la, la,
Colleen GUEST: la." And I happened to work at a company that from the very beginning of COVID at that time said, this is Credit Karma, and we said, "No, we... Relationships matter. They have always been part of our culture." We used to invest in all these events and activities and those kinds of things because we wanted people to connect.
Even when we had offices that were geographically distributed, we still felt very strongly about this relationships matter piece, and we told people, "Do not move. You are gonna come back to the office." And I was crucified in a lot of ways by employees, by, the outside world.
The New York Times Sunday [00:10:00] business section wrote an entire multi-page article called Office's Last Stand about us. You can go find it. The Office's Last Stand, this company's holding on for dear life around trying to get people back into the office. Now, and at time, I was saying hey, if you go back into American history and you look at World War II, for example, women were allowed to wear pants and they were allowed to work full-time.
They went into factory jobs, they went to business jobs, they got on the sports teams, all these things. As soon as that war was over, both of those things changed back again. Women were not supposed to be wearing pants, and they were not welcome in the workplace for a very long time. And so I just very strongly felt at the time- I don't necessarily know if this remote work thing is gonna stick.
Now the irony here, by the way, is the company that I chose to go to next as an operator is a fully remote company. So funny that, everybody's going back to the office and now I'm... It's probably just who my personality is. I just like the rebellion of [00:11:00] it all. So anyway. So I think there's a ton for people who wanna go into HR.
think the human side is gonna be important. I think you have to be open to this mindset change. I don't care if you're a junior or you're like me, who've been doing this for 30 years we're all in this space of having to, figure out how to navigate the change. I've been super fortunate over the last year to move, not just have HR, but then take over all that AI transformation and our business systems, our financial systems, our go-to-market systems.
And I think you're seeing more of those things coming together, which is really about you've got all these resources, how do you deploy them in the best way possible to get the, most productive outcomes?
Jeet HOST: There's so many threads there that I wanna pull.
Colleen GUEST: Yeah
Jeet HOST: and I wanna spend a little bit of time on your job title actually around specifically calling out the fact that it does have internal systems in there alongside chief people officer. And to the point that you said, it's like resources coming together and how do you best deploy it. I really the fact from what I'm hearing is that if anything, actually human connection and skills feels even more important in the age of AI. [00:12:00] And actually there's this tension, but it can live together, that change is hard and we're gonna have to invest in ourselves and in our businesses, but actually that can live alongside the fact that it's gonna be an optimistic future as long as we see things through, and it is about using those resources correctly. , And so I'm kinda curious to hear your thoughts. What was the reason for calling out head of internal systems in your title? That feels like a positive signal and a very clear signal of your remit beyond chief people officer-y things perhaps.
Colleen GUEST: Yeah, I think I'm long in the tooth enough at around titles that, some things matter, some things don't. Internally, we actually when we decided to hire a CIO we decided to, my CEO decided to put that underneath me. And we didn't make some big grand announcement. We just said "Hey, we're bringing these groups together.
They're all about productivity. How we work is really important." And if you think about it, it makes a ton of sense, right? [00:13:00] Especially even more so in a remote capacity where, you know if a salesperson can't get a quote for a deal because their laptop's not working the tool that we're using isn't functioning.
If you have all these layers of friction in the way, that's employee experience, right? At the end of the day, all of these things should be coming together, how we are moving in using AI and what are the groups where we're gonna, have the... we started with IT, and then we moved to customer support, and then we moved to SDRs and then, obviously our engineering org.
And then you're, like, in HR and now in finance and legal. You're adding them one by one. You have to have somebody who's thoughtfully putting all of those kinds of things together and then working across the business leadership and like, where does it go? Now, I think the other piece in my case, one, I had a lot of experience in HR.
I've been doing this a long time. I've been a chief people officer almost twenty years now. there's a lot of things there that once the team is in place and things are really moving and you have capacity, like any leader "Hey, [00:14:00] I've capa-there's capacity there.
There's this issue we're trying to solve here. Why don't we, bring those things together?" And so that, I also complained a lot about certain processes and things that I thought were broken, and sometimes, the best punishment is be like, "Great, you go figure that out. You go solve that."
Which to me is very fun, but but I digress. But we also really, I think externally in part-particular it's very important to call it out. People are pretty shocked when they find out that the, the CIO in that organization is reporting into me, and oh my God, the HR lady.
Now, also, I've worked in tech for a very long time. I understand. I'm not . i've taken one coding class ever. It's not like I write code. Now it's like code, in theory. I do some things. , And that is not where I get my joy. But what I do get my joy of is trying to figure out, like, how can we best make people, focus on the right things that they should be focused on and not have to worry about all this other things behind it.
So all of those things worked, and I don't, Whereas a lot of companies- It's not the most natural connection. I think we are more and more of that starting to happen. Someone's [00:15:00] gotta break the mold.
Jeet HOST: Yeah,
Colleen GUEST: well be me
Think it's, There's some other, can't remember who it is, but one of the drug companies does this as well.
Coleen GUEST: They moved everything underneath their CHRO. Yeah. Yeah
Colleen GUEST: Yeah. It feels like it's a trend that we're moving towards, but it does feel like the minority. , And I wonder if, two questions. Would you work in a company that is more, let's say, traditionally functionally divided moving forward? How much does that matter for you given you've experienced where things are reporting into the people space? and secondly, what would you have for people to enable them to bring those things closer together, the functions together? Because you're right, it is part of the employee experience, but we keep hearing that actually folks are still in those functional silos.
Yeah I don't think it matters, as I think about what I do next. It doesn't really matter if I have it or not. I would just want it to be a really strong partnership, I most important. Look, for example, my [00:16:00] prior job, I ran all comms. So I ran internal comms, I ran external comms, I was the company spokesperson, I ran social media.
I was actually responsible for, the, product-led growth and then that was attached to social media and how many members we were getting and those kinds of things. I didn't get that in my next job. That's okay, I think I'm now much more focused on, still, I don't think this is a change, but what's the impact that I can make?
Is somebody actually gonna value the skills that I'm bringing to the table? Can this organization and this team really use me? 'Cause I get bored very easily, and that is a bad call. Bored Colleen is not a healthy Colleen. And I warn CEOs about that. Of course, they're like, "HR problems, people problems, you're never gonna get bored."
Coleen GUEST: And I'm like if I do, if I have a great team I might." But I do think the future is looking more and more like you have to figure this out. And I think one of the reasons why it's so painful at a lot of companies is because it's a turf war
Colleen GUEST: Mm-hmm.
going to the first principles of what are we trying to solve for?
And what is the best way to set ourselves up to do That [00:17:00] is like I wrote one of my blog pieces, and I reposted it about swim teams versus soccer teams. And those are two sports I played in high school, so probably that's why sits on my mind so well. But on a swim team, it's a pretty...
It's not really a team so much, it's a very independent sport for the most part. Yeah, you have a relay, but other than that at the end, they'll be like, "You got more points than the other," but it's a very individual sport. That's how it is. You jump in the water, you go in your lane, you do your thing, how well you do, and then the points tally up at the end.
Versus the other sport I played was soccer, and soccer was a much more cohesive where the ball is and where you are on the field and where everybody else is very important. Who's behind you? Who's in front of you? Who's to the left of you? Who's to the right of you? And are you able to move with the ball as it's going?
And can you come back? I think hockey would be another analogy, or basketball. There's a lot of good sports in it where everybody is and how they are working together and whether or not they can, sub in for each other, move around, and understand the landscape is important.
And [00:18:00] what I think what happens in a lot of companies is they're so swim teams, they're so siloed. And leaders act this way, too. "I'm just saving you time. I don't wanna talk to you about these other things that people are doing,"
Right
they end up causing a lot more complexity and making things harder than if they acted like an actual sports team where they were much more willing to share ownership or share glory or share like, "Hey, we all just need to flex and go after the thing together to get to the goal."
That's the most important thing. I don't know if that's necessarily the case everywhere, but that feels a lot when I hear this come up, like I was at some, unlike me, but went to an HR networking breakfast last week in Las Vegas, where I currently live. And I was the only person from the tech company there, and it was actually very eye-opening to get a reminder that I live in this bubble of how, we use technology, how we work with technology, how we use AI, how we do all these things.
And, A couple of the companies that were there were talking about still trying to [00:19:00] move employees from paper checks to direct deposit. Like that is just a very different... And I, worked at a company at one point in my career where we were making technology for farmers, and we had a tractor parts factory and a soil lab.
And so we had an actual like factory with these tractor parts and, how you reach employees, how you talk to those employees, what those employees care about, just a very different world. And, it really was a good kick in the face to remind me that I was spoiled and selfish.
And, I keep talking about these really high-end problems, but the majority of the workforce in the world isn't thinking about AI on their desktops, right? They're not. It's hospitality and retail and a, gaming and entertainment and a lot of these other worlds. So in a much bigger struggle as an HR leader than even I ever have.
And now I don't... I also give those people a lot of credit. I don't have the patience to work in any of those environments. Like all the things that these, they're talking about, they're government people [00:20:00] and a lot of people with a large number of hourly workers, and I am impatient, and like, a lot of red tape and need this rule or that rule.
And I just can't even imagine. And I ke- I spent the whole breakfast being like, "You know what you could do? You know what technology you could use? You could use this thing. You could do a push notification." I was like trying to sit there and brainstorm. I was so ex- It was actually e-exciting in a way.
It reinvigorated like, "Oh, there are, look at all these things that these people could be doing." product actually would do really well at some of these companies from what I was understanding. But they don't have these connections with "IT." They don't even...
They're not even in the discussions around what technology gets used. It's just they're expected to just, just get stuff out there. So you have to get yourself into a place where you're at. . And I don't like to use seat at the table. You have to get into the discussion. I don't care where you're sitting.
Coleen GUEST: Force yourself into the discussion.
Jeet HOST: right. And,
not everybody may want to be in the discussion, and that's also okay, right? Some [00:21:00] folks will prefer to be in that lane, and some folks will want to evolve into it in a different way of how HR is working these days. What I
really liked what you said there was it all comes down to first principles.
If we strip away these silos, it's like, what are we trying to achieve? At the end of the day, we are serving the business as well as the shareholders, as well as the employees, and all moving towards the same goal. that is really refreshing to hear, and I hope more and more businesses stop thinking about hey, HR, IT or HR and IT and more what are we trying to achieve as a whole?
Colleen GUEST: And let's aim towards that piece.
Jeet HOST: Now, Podcast is obviously about talking about any of the dysfunctional HR processes or systems, and we've already had a fascinating conversation. And I would love to continue talking about those things with you. But yeah, tell us about a particular process or a system that's been dysfunctional. ~And before the call, we also started talking about a particular way of identifying those things. So maybe we can touch on that piece.~
Colleen GUEST: Yeah. So I I probably could, we could spend a lot of time on this. could,
we
yeah. could have multi-segments. So but there are two, two things. The overarching at my current job and I've written a little bit about this and talked a little bit, but not as much and [00:22:00] maybe maybe I will do more of that over time.
But when I first got to the company, Confluent, where I'm at now we were a public company, almost 3,000 employees, 29 countries, all remote. And I just felt like we operated as if we were like a huge... And we'd only been around for 12 years or something, and I just thought we were operating like some huge behemoth.
We had, when you started as an employee, there was like 14 hours of mandatory training that you had to take, which I was like, "This makes no sense to me." And a lot of it was overlapping, it was super annoying. The expense policy was really was not clear. If you were, like, gonna file expense report, you could expire it, file it easily, but then there were like nine sets of rules that governed it, so that people are just frustrated with those kinds of things.
And- The way we made decisions in some of these meetings meant that you had to go through a whole bunch of meetings before [00:23:00] the decision actually got made. The value of being a young, supposedly tech, scrappy founder-led company is that you're supposed to be moving fast and, able to make decisions quickly, and you shouldn't have to have all those, I was like, "God, we operate like, an 80-year-old person." Everything's just a little slower. Everything is, has to be explained a lot more. I was just like, "There's gotta be a better way to do this." I was so annoyed. And so I came up with this idea and it predates DOGE or whatever, so I always feel like this is efficiency but,
say
was a little bad.
Which I was like, "Hey, we should just go through and start finding all the bullshit in the company and see if we can get rid of it." I originally, And I was originally calling it the bureaucratic misery index. Like, all these things that just make you miserable.
And I had just started, and I was also on this kind of one-on-one road tour, so my first couple months I did one-on-ones with 200 employees around the world. And from a technology perspective, I was [00:24:00] using an iPad to take notes, and then I would convert it to text, and then I, at the time I put it into ChatGPT to give me, like, all the themes stuff.
I had a way of doing it on my own, just I kept hearing about this "Oh my God, it takes us forever to get this done," or these processes or... And I will tell you I had one engineer who gave me the best line ever, where he was like, "We substitute process for trust."
Jeet HOST: Wow.
Colleen GUEST: That's telling
It was very telling and at the time. And so they were all in... when people disagreed or didn't get along, they just built some sort of like checkoff process which would have all of these steps in it. So instead of going to the root of again, the people problem of like, where are these leaders not getting along or where is the real friction point?
Instead, we would just build all these layers of process on top of it, which was incredibly challenging. I talked to my CEO and my-- and got some of the other leaders on board, and we went to an all-hands and I was like, "Hey, we have a lot of bureaucracy here. There's a lot of bullshit, and I think we do better."
And so [00:25:00] we've created just a Google form that you can fill out either anonymously or it's actually more helpful if you put your name so we can run down what you're saying. And anything from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, if you think it's bullshit, you can submit it at any time. And then every business leader on the executive team gave us somebody on their direct reports who we, called the tribute, like The Hunger Games.
we would, I had someone on my team who would pull everything that was submitted and then categorize it into where it went and then what kind of thing. And then people just had this list, and we would report back at all hands here are the things we've gone after. Sometimes they were just contextual, like there-- it needed to happen.
I'll give an example of on from the expense reporting side. We made people submit their phone bills for their mobile phone to be re-reimbursed to a certain amount, and they were just like, "Why don't you just give me that amount every month instead?" And we said, "It's actually not beneficial for you in most places because then you're [00:26:00] gonna get taxed that money.
So you're actually only gonna get half of that money in some cases, depending on your tax situation is. It's actually better for you- To have to go, take a couple steps and submit that
Yeah
Submit your bill. Now, also, there are some financial sides of the company, too. Like a lot of people like me, I'm too lazy to do that.
And hey, it works out for both sides. But that's contextually why we didn't do that. So I have this Ask eStaff Slack channel the whole company is on, and people... I would just you didn't have to ask a question in this case, like every week for months, I would just like, "Hey, here are some of the bullshit that we're going after right now," or, "Here's some context as to what we did or why."
And then people could interact if they wanted and respond non... It's non-anonymously that way. But yeah, so we cut hundreds of hours of meetings. We got training stuff I mentioned, we got that down to four hours, in certain cases, two hours. Really just you put some effort into it, and it is a little bit like cleaning or I think the advantage sometimes if you get chance to move a lot, you end [00:27:00] up finally going through all your crap and purging.
I just think it's super healthy. And then we ran it again. We- it died down for a while, and then we like kicked it up again. We're just like, "Hey, it's been a little while. Are there things that people we could do better?" And just trying to keep it fresh in people's minds. And there are a lot of HR processes that are, were included in that.
So I'll focus on one in particular that has annoyed me
everywhere. So I hate performance reviews. I think they are the
devil.
I got a lot of writing about that, too. And the first time I was chief people officer back in 2009, I got to rip out the performance review at that startup. I was like, "No one's ever gonna spend time on this.
No one ever cares. No one ever reads this shit." We figured out different ways to pay people. I've never seen a performance review actually be the thing that like changes behavior, helps you fire anybody. Like it's, if you're really talk, talking about growth and development, that set of conversations would not be tied to your pay anyway.
So there's just all these things that like philosophically are so broken, but yet we have taken it everywhere because that's what we've seen [00:28:00] before. So I've ripped that out everywhere I've worked. Just I cannot handle I think it's dumb. Now, I do think there is value, obviously, in better real-time conversations.
You be giving feedback more regularly or, and figuring out ways to get, managers and employees in particular, figuring out ways that people can feel safe and they can feel like they're getting either the coaching or the context or whatever that they need in the real, in real time versus in these once or twice dumps.
The CEO I worked for when I joined Confluent wasn't really... We had lots of discussions, and he read all my stuff, and he wasn't 100% sold. But he also, he half agreed, but then he was like, "Oh, but people need ratings," which I also think is bullshit. But the whole process that Confluent was using was taking five months.
Again, going back to 3,200 people.
Thanks a
you take half a year to get through your rating, your performance conversations, whether or not you're getting a raise, like all this stuff? It took f- five months. It's like a 12-year-old company. Like, why [00:29:00] this so hard? It just is... that first year we got it down to six weeks, and
it
was just like two bullets that you had to answer, and we took a five-point rating scale down to three, 'cause, it was happening in three months after I started, and I couldn't get him off it.
Now, I will tell you, I had said to my boss at the time, the CEO, "I think this..." Again, ratings don't really matter. They don't drive anything. It's ridiculous. And who cares once a year? Whatever someone's saying. Now, six months later, after we did that rating cycle, I went back to him and said "Okay, we're getting ready for, we're gonna start talking about next year.
We should set everybody's expectations. I just want you to know that 90% of the people we have managed out for, performance-related issues over the last six months were rated successful or exceptional."
Oh,
That's how great your rating system is. people are just horrible at bad news.
They just are. No one-- everyone avoids conflict. I was like, "It's broken. It doesn't [00:30:00] work. People don't know where they stand." We actually just... All we did is we changed the game, and twice a year we started adding a Slack question of "Have you received feedback around how you're doing from your manager?
Yes or no?" And we run down the people who said no. Like, why? Why bother? And we built, we used Culture Amp here where we had a tool for managers, employees, weekly or bi-weekly or whatever they used it, that had a, a set of easy questions to answer. Sometimes I always say it's, like being a parent, sometimes the best conversations happen in the car when your kid doesn't have to look you in the eye or when you're walking.
I think it's the same thing, like just giving employees an outlet where they feel comfortable, like saying some things that they wouldn't necessarily say in a conversation was helpful. I use 15Five. I think there's a lot. I think there's a bunch of things. There's this thing Windmill now.
There's a lot of places that can go. There's, I think Slack has a lot of ways can do it. I'm sure Kinfolk has different ways that you can do it. Like I just think giving people another solution, that's not my HR thing. I think it's the other thing we get all wrapped up in. I hate these [00:31:00] tools that are like this'll be help you monitor your employees," or, "You'll be able to do all these things," where I'm like, actually, what I really care about is that conversation between a manager and the employee.
Whether I'm involved in that conversation shouldn't matter. Coming back
have the time, nor do I care to see what everybody is saying,
you're in my own org, and then it is
a problem So It's, again coming back to first principles. It's what you said earlier on and amazing to hear, yeah, from five months to you said six weeks, right? Yeah.
Six weeks, and then we got it down to three and a half weeks this year. So
That's very cool. That's very cool
Full calibrations on promotions it's amazing what the forcing function can be when are like, "Hey, this is the You have to make it." Yeah.
Jeet HOST: That's pretty
amazing. And then coming back to your bullshit detector and your BMI, which you then renamed. It's might sound like to some folks who are listening in that, hey, this is an extra piece of work on top of all the other, quote unquote, HR stuff that I have to do. Any advice on [00:32:00] how to blend those things together or how to make sure that piece of very important work, which is to unlock people so they can be productive, how do you align that with the day job? Or is that the j- day
Colleen GUEST: job?
Yeah. I think it is part of your job if your job is around making people the most productive, like using the company's capital resources, which in many cases, AI expense is separate at right now, but like data center. But, that's one of your most expensive resources and how you deploy those people and what they're having to do.
I kinda think it is your job. Now, it didn't mean that we had to stop on performance reviews, it didn't mean we stopped recruiting, it didn't... but so a lot of the things that people were complaining about all kinda sat in our world. A lot of those training things actually weren't ours, it was legal.
So it was having to work and n- navigate this with legal and get them to in the CISO's office to get them on board. There are extra cycles I think it is your job though. I do think that's [00:33:00] what you're there for. And I would also argue that if you were really good at that, you're probably gonna free up some resources from other things that you can devote to doing this well, so I think that there are ways to negotiate or navigate some of the things you want. I also think there are way... i'll give another example. Contractor management. This is a big pain point for people. And when I was at Credit Karma, we were like, "We gotta stop doing these one-off things.
We're gonna move." A lot of people just move to an RPO or one of these kinds of things, and you start working with that company. But hey, you still have to put in all the infrastructure, and what most companies do is you charge a fee for all of that infrastructure. I said I'm gonna be making money now.
I'm a revenue center. I'm a profit center. I'm bringing in money for... I'm taking a cut from all these contractors that you guys are all using." A, I wanna fund the person who's gonna have to manage all of that, and then I wanna use some of this for these other projects. I just think sometimes too, you just gotta be a little more creative around, I think budgeting in general is, just gotta get smart with your...
A little [00:34:00] bit crafty over time. I was like, I think that's having worked at a lot of startups where you have to be really smart around how you use money. I love-- We have a company value at Confluent that I have a whole list of values from all these companies I worked at that I think are great, and this new one that I'm gonna take from Confluent with me wherever I go is tasty, not wastey.
What that mean?
it means, what you wanna do is invest in things that are tasteful and sense, but not wasteful. And I think that goes all the way from how you resource teams and what you're thinking about there, all the way through to if you're having an event, like what are you spending on that event?
Do you need all that swag? Do you need all this stuff? It's just I used to get so-- I used to call it stupid spending. Oh my God, we spend money on dumb things. Like tasty, not wastey, I just think is a
Jeet HOST: Tasty not
Colleen GUEST: I'm gonna, I'm gonna
Yeah, it's a good one. It's a really good... I think it's a very good metaphor.
Our CEO is great at Confluent about, I remember when he was-- we were-- I [00:35:00] was going through the hiring process, and- I don't remember at what point in the process, but he-- I said what are you really looking for?" He'd been around for a little while. He'd had a couple of these people, and he was like: I want someone with good taste.
And he-- what he meant by that is good judgment and could make the right decisions, and that he would trust, like a trusted advisor on the way I got to that decision-making
in a
tasteful way. And I had never actually heard that until him, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's really good."
Coleen GUEST: Which, so it, makes sense on the other side.
Jeet HOST: It, it totally makes sense, and it's really timely actually because in the world of AI agents and AI building more and more code and building more and more software, actually it seems that the piece of the puzzle that we need to dial up is taste, is people who have that
Colleen GUEST: to be able to make the decisions and to be able to connect people and intelligence and systems and knowledge to be able to, , decide what is the right thing to build what is the right
A hundred, 100%. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeet HOST: ~So Nancy, I feel like I could talk to you for another three hours minimum but we are, we're slowly running out of time. So before we wrap~
Colleen GUEST: Is there [00:36:00] any final pieces of advice Colleen, that you would wanna share with anyone in HR who is going through this transition, particularly in the world of AI when they're trying to look at a particular process or a system and they wanna make a change and they wanna transform it?
Yeah, I think I don't think it's limited to AI, that's for certain. But I do think the going, what we were highlighting through this conversation, which is go back to first principles of what you're trying solve for or why you're here or what's the vision for your f-function, and is this the right...
and then it's look at all the tools that you have to choose from. I think one of the mistakes that a lot of HR people make, and I hear this a lot, which is like, "Oh, at such and such place, they do X, Y, Z." And I think that's a very damaging and harmful decision-making fil-filter or criteria.
What I think, has made me more successful over time is that I try to look at the problem, and then I try, and then, like, where are we trying, what are we trying to solve for? And then I pick the [00:37:00] tool. And what a lot of people do is they've already chosen the tool, and then they're like, "I'm gonna apply this tool to that problem
and so you get stuck then because you're trying to contort something into what might not necessarily align with what actually you're trying to solve for. Or you get trapped in this I did all the things on the list I must have accomplished the goal," and instead of looking and being like, "Did we really accomplish the goal, or did you just check all the things on the task list?"
I see that in a lot, especially on the technology side, where people are like I did all the things." And I'm like, "Yeah, except for we still have this problem," or, "It's still broken," or, "It still doesn't really function in the way that we need it to function. So maybe your list of things was wrong." But I would really push people to focus on what problem were we trying to solve, and is it the outcome that we're trying to get to?
Yeah. You remind me of a product manager going back to jobs to be done and what are we really aiming for here?
Yeah, there's a whole-- First Round Capital did a thing with me years ago and that's actually how I define the job. I think a chief people [00:38:00] officer is the product manager of the systems and tools that, operate the internals of a company. I think that is what your job is
Jeet HOST: So good. So good. Colleen, thank you so much for
Colleen GUEST: joining us on the Work Ops podcast. And where can people find you? You said you have a blog
I do. I have a blog on Medium, so you can just go there and look for, it's my full name, Colleen Wheeler-McCreary. But if you find Colleen McCreary, you'll find a ton of stuff there. And then yeah, I'm a pretty prolific LinkedIn poster. A lot of times it's a cross-posting, and then I'm Chief PPL Officer on X, so you can find me there too
Jeet HOST: Awesome. Thank you so much, Colleen, again. And to everyone listening, we will catch you on the next one