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Welcome to The Culture Code podcast. On this podcast, you’ll learn how to grow, shape, and sustain a high-performance culture with the CEO of LEADx, Kevin Kruse. From designing and delivering highly effective leadership development programs, to measuring and improving the employee experience, you will understand what it takes to cultivate a thriving company culture. Through interviews with Chief People Officers, deep dives into key topics, and recordings of our invite-only community sessions, we bring you cutting-edge, data-backed insights from the most desirable companies to work for in the world.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Hello, everyone! I'm Kevin Kruse. Welcome back to the Culture Code. Our guest today is the Vice President and Chief People Officer at The Aerospace Corporation, Heather Leychak. Heather, welcome! And where are you joining from today?
Heather Laychak: Thank you, Kevin. It's great to be here and join you virtually, I guess. We are headquartered in El Segundo, California. So, we are basically in the Los Angeles area.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, I was actually, I'm out in the Philadelphia area now, which I think a lot of people know. But I was born in Redondo Beach and grew up in Orange County, so I still have lots of family. Got a sister out there, tons of cousins whom I haven't seen in years. But I know that area very well.
Heather Laychak: That's awesome. Well, I live in Redondo Beach with my family. So when you get out here, we'll have to actually meet in person.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: I would love to do that. I was just telling someone the other day that I was born in Redondo Beach in 1967. I was there in the early '70s. And back then, Redondo Beach was not a nice town. There was a shooting outside my grade school, there were gang fights, it was dangerous, bicycles were stolen, the horror. And then, years later, we moved to the East Coast and all my relatives were saying, "You guys should have kept that house because Redondo Beach is like a nice beach town now." Who knew? I was just very, very late to the party.
Heather Laychak: Yeah, it is a nice place to live. But we do have that sunshine tax.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: For those who might not be familiar with The Aerospace Corporation, how big is your organization and in plain language, what do you do?
Heather Laychak: So, we are a national nonprofit. We operate the only federally funded research and development center, which we refer to as an FFRDC. We work across the entire space domain. So, in simpler terms, we provide objective technical expertise and analysis to solve some of the hardest problems facing our nation's space programs. We work across national security, civil, commercial, academic, even international. We don't compete with industry. We don't manufacture products. But this also means, as a not-for-profit, we eliminate any conflict. So, we can serve on source selection. And we can dive into really any technical problem because we aren't motivated by profit. We are motivated to provide the technical solutions that our government and our government customers, and partners need.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: I think, for many people when they think about space exploration, rocket ships, they think of either NASA or SpaceX increasingly, right, and they might not automatically think of The Aerospace Corporation. Can you give, sort of, maybe, a simple but realistic example of how you might work with other organizations in their missions?
Heather Laychak: Sure. So, you named two companies that we work with very closely. We have a large portion of our business that supports NASA, and we also are partnered with SpaceX, as it relates to helping them achieve their objectives and providing technical solutions. We are those people that, you know, when companies are running into those really tough technical problems, we are there to help solve those problems for and with them, and we are the trusted advisors of the government and of industry. So, you know, those are some of the ways in which we provide that extra technical expertise across the entire space domain, whether it's space exploration or space traffic management, or how we support our customers in the Department of Defense, etc.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: About how many employees work there?
Heather Laychak: We're about 4,600 employees. While I've been here, we have had three historical highest numbers of hires in the history of the company, and we have beaten that record three times. So, we've had considerable growth in our organization, particularly in the last five years, and I've been here seven, having joined at the same time as our CEO, Steve Isakowitz.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Wow! Now we're going to do a deep dive into culture. Some of your secrets for fostering a great culture. But I want to set the context because among your peers, Chief People Officers, CHROs, there's still a big debate around back to office, remote, or hybrid. Now, I'm guessing by the nature of your work that it's less of a debate, and that people are working more in the office. Am I right on that, or am I wrong?
Heather Laychak: You are right. And it's mixed, right? It always depends on what people's roles are and where they can best perform their roles. We do obviously have a large portion of our business that is classified, and of course, that can only happen in safe, secure places where people are required to come on site. So, if you think back to when COVID hit, like every company, you're focused first and foremost on the safety of your workforce. And for us, there were clearly those groups of people that could quarantine at home, continue working safely there. But because of the mission that we serve, the important work that we do, we had to very quickly figure out what we were going to do to ensure the health and safety of our people that did not get to quarantine and had to come in every single day to fulfill the important mission we serve with respect to space and national security.
So, we are having that same debate. And you're going to hear, because I'll probably end up talking about it, we did just conduct what we call a work experience survey. We actually just got the results back in the last few weeks. That survey was intended to say, "Hey, we've been kind of at this in this hybrid work model, where we have people that are fully on-site, remote, distant, local meaning they can get into our major locations when needed. And then, you know, how many people are coming in X number of days?" And we wanted to see how it was working for people. We wanted to know what impact it had on culture, on recruitment, on retention, on collaboration, on innovation, particularly for a technology company like ours. You wonder how people can really innovate over Zoom, right? Particularly when we, as a culture, I would describe as extremely collegiate, which is one of the hallmarks of why people really enjoy being here. And so, how do you figure out how to ensure that collegiality extends beyond these different work models?
So, we got the results, we're diving in and seeking to understand where we can make changes as well as what we want to sustain. But there is a lot of debate about it, there's no doubt about it. It does create a bit of a divide between those that don't have to come in because they have the flexibility not to have to come into the office versus those that are like, "I have to come in all 5 days a week." And so, where's my flexibility? And so, you know, it's been tough to say, how do we cater to the needs of this very diverse kind of work model and really, the guiding light for us when we were making decisions about people's work models is that it has to be mission responsive. That is the first and foremost guiding principle for us, which is, all decisions will be made so that we can be most responsive to our mission. It also extends to people that are in our service organizations like HR, finance, and whatnot. Our mission is to enable the people that are right in the organizations that are serving our mission and serving our government customers, civil customers, commercial customers, international. So that has worked well because it's like you always need those guideposts and guardrails to help you make those decisions consistently, equitably, but with the mission for us in mind.
And that's another major cultural hallmark for us. Which I would say is why people come here, why people stay here, because they want to know that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves, and it is the mission. Why do people come here?
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, I love this idea of mission responsiveness as the first design principle in those decisions. How would you describe your company culture in just a few words?
Heather Laychak: We are laser-focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. And obviously, we, like many organizations, really put more of a highlight on that after the murder of George Floyd. But I would say it's always been important for as long as I've been here, and really worked to establish and stand up that office. It was, you know, it was not something that had those three areas of focus. And so it's a lot when you go from a kind of affirmative action focus to no. This is really about the diversity of your workforce, the diversity of experiences that people bring, the backgrounds. It is about equity, and it is about, you know, once you start getting a more diverse workforce, which is not easy in the STEM fields, and we can talk more about that and what we're doing. But once they get to your organization, how do you make sure it's an inclusive environment, right? Where people can bring their best selves to work, and be celebrated for what they bring. So I would say that that is a big area of emphasis and focus for us.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: What are some of the ways you foster or sustain this culture? Any unique rituals or traditions related to your culture?
Heather Laychak: So, I would tell you that our people would, if you were to ask why do they join? And then, when we ask them when they leave, you know, tell us some good things about the organization. Our culture is definitely one that people will tell you is a strength and why they joined or why they decide to stay. But you know, culture is about behaviors and mindsets. And so it's really about helping people understand what are those mindsets and what are those behaviors? And how are they different from your values? Right? And so we really see our values, regardless of all the changes that we are going through as an industry, or as a company, or as a nation. Change is constant, but for us, the bedrock, our North Star, are our values, those are enduring. They have not changed. And that, I think, is really important in terms of it's the foundation for any kind of cultural initiatives that you want to pursue. And this last year, we kind of identified three cultural attributes. I don't ever recommend doing more than that. Because you really, if you're really going to try to make a difference and shift your culture, you just got to get really laser-focused on one, two, or three and I know it's really easy to want to change a whole bunch of other things. But it's almost like what are the three most important cultural shifts that need to happen, aligned always to your business strategy. Grounded in your values but then you gotta start to say, well, gosh! How do we make this shift? You have to embed those mindsets and behaviors throughout your entire employee life cycle. So once we defined what those attributes were, and talked to a bunch of people like, how does that show up? You know, what does that really look like getting people to kind of connect to it visually? Intellectually right, and their heart and soul, so to speak. We embed it in our job requisitions, right? You can go to our job postings. You're going to see what our leadership expectations are. You're going to see what our cultural aspirations are and what we expect.
Our philosophy, the philosophy that I established when I first got here with my people and organizational development team and with our CEO and our leadership team, was that anybody in any role, regardless of level, is a leader. So, we don't just have leaders at the very top. Anybody in any role has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership. and I would argue, you know, on any given day, my executive assistant demonstrates a lot of leadership. You know, in terms of managing and anticipating and right, and providing guidance and directing. You know, various things that are happening in a very dynamic, you know, environment. But everyone has that. So that's kind of the mindset we have. So we start with our talent acquisition process. We also have our leadership competency model and cultural attributes. They're embedded in the leadership competency model. But you then think about, well, okay, now, we're going to use it to inform development. So all of our development programs have a strong focus on our leadership competency model cultural attributes. We use it in our performance process. We use it in our work because again. What you do or what you get done is, I mean, is obviously important. Right? So what you get evaluated on, how you contribute right, what impact your outcomes have. But how you do that is really important. And how you conduct yourself with your peers, with the people that you work for. You work with and obviously with our customers, and our partners, and our third-party partners, etc. We also use it in our succession planning process. So it informs how we identify leaders early on and throughout and of course, it's tied to our rewards and recognition. and certainly, we measure it with a culture. We did our first culture survey, different from an engagement survey last year we had our annual culture survey. We will run those every 2 years because culture doesn't change overnight. And so you need to get that baseline. And then how are we doing? And one of the things we learned was, we don't have the most change-resilient culture in terms of how we self-assessed ourselves so literally. This was, how good are we at change? And it was not so great. And so now you've got something to work with, which is, well, then, how do we get great at that? You know. How do we equip everybody to be a leader? Culture, and you know, owning your culture, inspiring your culture, leading, you know, cultural efforts and leading change should not just be for HR. In fact, you actually want to transition that ownership and responsibility to your leaders. and to your employees. But we're the ones that are kind of like behind the scenes, I think, hoping to equip people with skills and resources and support. But I don't ever want it to be. Oh, let's look at HR. To lead change but we still end up doing a lot of it, Kevin. Don't get me wrong, but it really is about getting our leaders to become really great at leading change.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: 70% of engagement is correlated to the manager, and front-line managers touch more employees than any other leadership group. What are some of the ways you develop your front-line managers?
Heather Laychak: Absolutely. So I'll start by asking a question, which is, how many managers do you know would tell you that when they became one, they felt confident and ready to be a manager?
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Very few.
Heather Laychak: So, and we've all worked at places where high performers, okay, let's make them managers, right? Not all high performing individual contributors, you know, either want to be a manager or would be a good one. So we seek to develop our managers before they become them. And that is through what we call our aspirational manager program, which is for individual contributors. Any level, if you have an interest in becoming a manager someday, leading a team, whether it's a team that you just are going to have influence over, teams that might not directly report to you, or they will report to you, or it's cross-functional, whatever, you are going to lead people. And so we offer it through what we call our Aerospace University. It is probably one of the courses that fills up faster than any other course we offer. We put people in real situations. So it's actually a lot of fun. So it's, you know, managers, they get to practice, right? They get to practice real things that happen to a manager. You've got to give performance feedback to an employee who might be struggling. How do you handle that? How do you do it with grace and dignity, so that the person actually feels like, okay, I'm going to walk out of here, and I feel supported, and I know what I gotta do. And my manager's got my back. You have to tell a high-potential person, you applied for a job, they weren't selected, you know. There are all these different scenarios you face. You have to terminate someone, you know. Go practice, you've got to hire somebody, go through that, go through that process. And so they develop their skills, their manager muscles. I measure success, and we measure success in two ways. For this program. One is, is that when they become managers, we go back and say, how much did that course help you? Did you feel prepared? We equip all our managers with the book "The First 90 Days." I know you're familiar with that, Kevin, but it really is timeless in that it does set up, you know, people to kind of have some guidelines for how they can approach their first 90 days. And so, in asking them about their preparation and feeling good and confident. I mean, look, even on any given day. I've been in this job seven years, and there are still days I don't feel totally confident. And so, what do you do on those days when you don't feel that way? And so, we also try to create some cohesiveness with these programs. If you go through the program together, you know, and you become managers, celebrate with each other, but also, you know, be able to reach out, and then those that have gone through it. You know, how do you mentor those that are now, you know, going through the new program? The other success criteria, I will tell you, and this may sound funny, but are the people that say, after they've gone through the course, I don't want to be a manager. That is not a bad thing to have happened. That's actually good for that person to kind of say, you know, either, ten, my gosh! I did not realize that managers have to do this stuff right. I gotta write performance, you know, all these things. Or I'm not. I'm not ready now. I realize I'm not ready. So I actually think that happens. Actually, we get one to two people during these courses that will tell us that I think that is good because you've just learned something. And now, you know, maybe you're not going to go pursue it and then realize as soon as you're in it, I'm now developing my exit strategy.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, Heather, let me do that. I think that's great, that people have the opportunity to discover. Discover that roughly, how many people are you? It sounds like a pretty elite program. How many people are you putting through a year?
Heather Laychak: I don't have the exact stats. It is for anyone that's an individual contributor. So, you want to take, you're an individual contributor you're looking for, to learn what it means to be a manager. You know those core skills that we all know right and can read about in books. But what does it mean to be a manager here?
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Well, I was just going to say another, and I'm so glad to hear that because I have friendly fights with a lot of my friends in your roles, because they'll say, and I'm just going to make up the numbers, you know. Let's say they have a hundred frontline or a thousand frontline managers, which means they know every year they need to replace 100 to 200 of them in a big company, through attrition or promotions, or whatever reason. Then they'll do an aspiring manager program. They make it nomination based, highly competitive. They'll get a hundred people to sign up for it. They select 10, meaning they just disengaged 90 of their high performers. They spend a fortune on these 10 people to get them ready, and then they're trying to recruit and backfill, and I'm like, no, no, no, no.
Heather Laychak: Yeah. That sounds like a lot of work, and maybe some unnecessary process. But I mean, I get it, especially in big companies. Right? You've got to have a way to manage it. But no, we just, it is first come first serve for anyone who wants to go through it. The other thing is that, because of our human capital management system, people's curriculums are tied to their profiles. So when people go through the process of interviewing internally, you know, for another job, whether it's lateral or advancement, the hiring managers can see like, "Oh, they took a course that is preparing them, you know, to be to really hit the ground running, and to be the best that they can be, out of the gate." And I think that's you know. I always tell them. We tell them. Tell the internal hiring managers, "Hey, I went through this program. Here's what I learned. Here's how I'm going to go in and spend my first 90 days or my first year and what I hope to accomplish." And we do like self-assessments, too. You know, you want to look at, you know, kind of what are my strengths and styles and those kinds of things. I don't know the numbers off hand. But it, I just, I really love that we have that course. But then, once you become a manager, we, of course, like many organizations, have training that just continues across a variety of areas that people can take for our aerospace university. We use LinkedIn Learning. We curate paths, and you know, here, go have at it on your own time when you want it, but it's there. And we also have aligned our training. We've curated training related to our competencies as well as to our cultural attributes. So I think that's important. And that's the role of AU. Otherwise, you're like, "Hey, go look at LinkedIn Learning where there's like a million courses." Now, these are the ones that actually, we've taken our experts and think these are really good ones to take. And then it shows up on their transcript when they go to take it. So yeah, I think we do a lot. We can always do more. You know, when you go through kind of, you have to tighten up your costs. What? Ha! What gets cut first, Kevin? Tell me, I've been in that business for 30 years, I would say, with our CEO. He is so focused on developing our future leaders. You know that, and our board has paid great attention to it, that has not always been the first place we've gone to because of how important it is to ready our leaders and have deep and diverse succession plans, not just for C-suite roles or leadership roles, but critical roles which could happen at any level because of the criticality of the role and the kind of knowledge that's needed. Or, you know, critical skills that are needed.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: This sounds like a lot of robust programs. And I'm glad that you're starting that with the aspiring leaders. You know, that casts a wide net. It goes back to supporting the idea that everyone is a leader. So, you know, obviously very successful companies, by definition, have successful cultures. You're not going to have a dysfunctional culture and a successful company. But how do you specifically get data or feedback about your culture? You mentioned employee engagement and pulse surveys, and then you also referenced this culture survey. I don't know if you wanted to share any more about that. How else are you using data?
Heather Laychak: Yeah, I will happily share that. And I would go back and say, we are not at all a perfect culture. We do have, I think, every organization, because we're made up of people, is going to have dysfunction. And so I don't want to come across like we have this amazingly perfect culture here because we don't. And it's more that it has to evolve, right, and it has to be aligned to the business strategy and anticipate what kind of company you need to be to ensure your relevance for the next 60 years. Because we're a 60-plus-year company. In terms of our data, well, we're predominantly our industry as well as our company dominated by STEM professionals. So data is everything, right? Data is everything. So we just conducted our seventh pulse engagement survey. So we've done that. We use the Glint platform. We use that also for our onboarding, exits, culture, and engagement surveys. So now you can start to see how all that data is connected to one another at different points in the employee lifecycle. And I think I did tell you about the culture, you know, engagement really is about the person, like, how engaged do you feel in terms of working at the Aerospace Corporation. The culture survey was more through the lens of how you experience working here culturally as well as how you view it and how you describe it and what you think the strengths are and what you think some of the pain points are. So you might learn in a culture survey, you know, it's really hard to get things done around here. We're overly bureaucratic, or we're right, or we have too much hierarchy. And so that leads to, okay, well, what can we do about that? Because, by the way, one of our cultural attributes is to operate with speed and agility. Well, if you get feedback from your cultural survey that says, right, it's hard to get stuff done. We're very hierarchical. We seem to be bureaucratic. That is not going to bode well for this, operate with speed and agility. And so now you know how to start to tackle some of those things because people are actually commenting. One of the things that I love, and this is not at all a Glint promotion. But one of the things they do is they take all the comments that they get, and they generate prescriptive comments. Those are my favorite prescriptive comments from the people that are not complaining. They are the people that are actually giving you ideas for how to improve. And right. It's not just that I don't like this about the company. I don't like this. And here's what you might want to think about. Or here's what you might want to do right. You can't do everything that people ask, and a lot of times it's like stuff that costs, you know, lots of money. But you wish you could. But I do think that it is important to help have your workforce see these surveys as a way to generate ideas and solutions, and not just use the surveys as a platform for complaints. I mean, you're always going to get those. But to make it more solution-focused. So, and then, yeah, we survey. We survey a lot. In fact, I would say, Kevin, maybe too much, because when you do it as often as we've done it, you then have very little time in between to actually take some things and really show your workforce. You've done something with what you've learned. The good news is that over, we have over a 75% response rate to all of our surveys. It's really high. And one, we have a very compliant workforce. So I think when they're told to go do something. They do it, you know. And so it's good because we get really rich, reliable, valid, you know, feedback and analysis. But when you survey that much and that many items, it becomes hard to say, well, what are we really now going to focus on and now we're at a point where we're like, you know what these are. The 3 or 4 things that have come up for the last 7 surveys. So unless we start to tackle those things, we're going to lose our credibility. And people are going to say, why should I fill this out anymore. So I think it's really important to strike that balance between your surveying and getting information. It's good. I also would say that it is not a substitute for having real conversations with people. It is so important to get that feedback, and we generate, you know, communication, guidance to our people like to our managers, literally like, here's how you can go about talking about your results at your level with your people. It's not about the data. It's about what you do with it. It's how you talk. It's how you ignite information. You never know what's underneath it until you talk to people.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah. And I was just going to make a distinction there, Heather, that I'm a fan of pulse surveys, but not necessarily on continuing to ask about the big corporate level things that can take time. And yeah, sometimes you can't change them shortly. What I like pulse surveys for is actually for manager effectiveness surveys. So when people are evaluating their manager, we can change behaviors in as little as 12 weeks. Now, usually, I always tell managers, pick one. You're going to get your scores, okay, I need to work on career and safety and meeting efficiency, whatever those drivers are, pick one. And then I'd like to see in 12 weeks, 24 weeks at the longest, am I improving in that area?
Heather Laychak: That's what we tell. Yeah, Kevin, we tell our managers in their action planning, yeah, you and your team pick one thing, but have it come from your team so that everyone feels some ownership and accountability to contribute to a team objective. I've definitely been in organizations where they've used engagement scores as a proxy for evaluating manager performance. What we have to be a little bit careful about is how that can turn into some not so great behaviors that occur, and or you get a manager that goes into an organization that needs to change the way that organization is operating. They might not get good scores, and that's a sign that maybe they've gone in, they're reestablishing expectations, they're creating more accountability. And people don't like it. And so I think it's about just seeing, hey, it's not because they got a bad score. It's because they might be going in there, and maybe shaking things up because there was a need to do so. But that always comes with looking at it from the lens of where people are sitting and what's going on in the environment.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: That's right. Related to culture, are there any special initiatives or results you’re most proud of?
Heather Laychak: Yes, I would. And it is our Space Workforce 2030 initiative, which we can send you some information about. We are in our second year. It was started by our CEO, who wanted to create an impetus for the industry, the space industry, to come together to focus on diversity. And so we have 30 companies, their CEOs all signed a pledge that by 2030 we would collectively, in the aggregate, increase our diversity. So ethnic diversity and female representation in our technical workforce and in our leadership teams by 50%. Aerospace is in a unique position because of our not-for-profit status that we are trusted advisors, that people trust us with their data. So you can imagine, would a Northrop Grumman or a Boeing want to exchange that kind of information? But if they come to a place where we are in a position where we are collecting all the data from all 30 companies, reporting it in the aggregate, people trust us in terms of keeping it safe, keeping it secure, keeping it confidential and anonymous, and then reporting it in the aggregate. We were blown away that after our first year, we collected the baselines from all the organizations. In one year, we made progress as a collection of 30 companies coming together. We are all sharing the same talent pool when it comes to our interns. Because if you figure, you get your interns, and then you can convert them. And they're all diverse or female, people of color, we're already starting to create change and momentum. And so we have a number of partnerships with government organizations, with the White House, etc. It's just something that we at Aerospace are really proud of in terms of being the people that got this up and running and are still managing it and leading it on behalf of these 30 space companies that have joined us. And we report out transparently with our results every year at the Space Foundation that takes place in Colorado Springs, and we also have generated an annual report.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Wow! Heather, that's impressive because, well, important work, important topic. And I often hear leaders, especially in STEM, say, well, there's only so much you can do in the short term because of the feeder system. You know, we need better representation in the STEM programs, right? And that we do need that. That's true, like, we need to start younger so that we have this graduation. But you've just shown that there's still plenty that could be done in one year, 5 year, 10 year chunks.
Heather Laychak: Absolutely. And I would say, I mean, we have lines of effort. Right? So we do have a STEM area focused on STEM, and we committed as a group of 30 companies to touch 5 million students. And we achieved that. So if you think about it, all these companies are doing something, and they're all doing something good. But how can we leverage, right, our collective efforts in what we're doing and join forces? So that we're all not doing our own little thing, we're all doing something right to kind of make progress, accelerate progress. Steal shamelessly from each other in terms of our best practices. Some companies are way more mature in their DEI efforts. Others are not, so how do we go lift them up and help them, you know, put things in place, particularly in companies where, you know, a small start-up space company. You know, they might not have a diversity and equity inclusion leader. They might just have their CPO, that's doing all of it, you know. So how do you provide lift to those companies? So it's been really exciting, and something that we're particularly proud of, and I'd love to send you information on it to just kind of read more about it, because, you know. Now I'm getting contacts from my colleagues, HR colleagues in the entertainment industry, for example, like, "How did you do like? How did you do this? How can we do this?" Because we struggle. You know, we're not dealing with STEM, you know, but we're trying to figure out how we diversify our workforces. So yeah, with STEM, I mean, you do have to start young, and I think we're working in that line of effort. We're working with our colleges, universities, HBCU partnerships, all you know, just trying to share and establish all those partnerships. So we do that. And then it's once people are in your organization. What are you doing to ensure you retain them? Right? You have to have that environment for them. Yeah. But it's such good work. It's fulfilling and important.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: What book would you recommend that your colleagues read? (or podcast, video, etc.)
Heather Laychak: Well, you're going to love this. I actually have three. You're going to love the first one, which is "The Culture Code" by Daniel Coyle, right? 2018. The other book that I picked up, and it's because I have such a highly technical, highly educated workforce, right? With the majority of our workforce with advanced degrees, it is "The Science of Organizational Change," because they get science. And it's how leaders set strategy, change behavior, and create an agile culture. And that was a 2019 publication by Paul Gibbons. The other book that actually I have given out quite a bit is "The Bezos Blueprint," which just has those tools in there for that, and has different ways of thinking about how you communicate and how you influence, whether it's written, verbal, you know, etc. You know, we live and die by PowerPoint here, and I oversaw a leadership development program here recently. And I said, "Okay, you got your action learning project, which was a real business issue we wanted them to solve for." I said, "but when you generate your list, you know, your solutions coming out of your sandbox, you can't use PowerPoint." And I will tell you, they all said that that was the hardest part of the project. Yeah, find a different way to convey what you want to say. It is real, Kevin, that pain is real. So, anyway. But the Bezos book got me thinking about communicating differently.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: I love that one. Great, three great reads right there. So, let me ask you this question. You've been in a VP, CPO role for a while now. What is something that you know today that you wish you knew, like maybe on day one, if you could send a Teams message or Slack message to a younger version of Heather?
Heather Laychak: So, two things. One is, you know, having gone through the process of learning about the Aerospace Corporation, talking with the executives here, and then ultimately getting invited to join them. You know, what was conveyed to me was how much change they were. It gets to this point when people tell you they want change, you know, and I heard it all day. "We want a change in HR. We want a true HR business partner, a progressive organization. Change all across the board. You name it, blank sheet of paper. We, you can probably come in and you'll find a need to probably change nearly every process in every program, and you know what we're doing and how we're spending money there and how we're serving our workforce." But once you get here and you start changing things, they suddenly don't want to change or, "I don't want to change that way." So, I think that was a big, I got in and I was like, I hit the ground running. "These people want change, everyone I've talked to. They all want change." And then, when I started really kind of, and I and I accelerated, you know, there was a lot of impetus to get changes done quickly. It was, the resistance factor? And then, no, not "we didn't really mean that," kinda or "we didn't mean it to change that way." I wanted to change this way. And they all want their own change and unique to them. That's why I wish I would have known and really figured it out. "How do I be effective when I, you know, when I'm faced with that?" And I've learned a lot, and I think, you know, that's why mentors, having my own, I've always had an HR mentor. I've always had a business mentor, you know, somebody that I've worked with that has, who I've worked for, and they've been my boss as a business leader, because they come with such different perspectives.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Heather, I've got to poke on that just a little bit like. First of all, it's a hilarious story, sort of like you show up. They're like, no, no, we wanted to change everybody else's department. But I think a lot of people probably have been or will be in that role. And so I know we can't do a whole other episode. Well, we could do an episode on this topic. But, like, was it more like, "Okay, wait a minute, don't push for so much change so fast, because they're actually not ready. And let's just do this more slowly." Or did you have some new Jedi mind trick for like, "Yes, this is the change you've been wanting"? How did you respond to that?
Heather Laychak: Yeah, I wish I had Jedi mind tricks available to me. That would have come in handy, I think, Kevin. But it probably was there. There was probably a lot coming at them. A new CEO. Very different agenda, you know, style, approach they had not had, you know, at that time a VP, you know, of HR, so there wasn't like I was coming in and replacing a former CPO. So there was a lot of change that happened, I think, very quickly. And it goes back to just this culture survey that we conducted last year, which is, we're not the most change-resilient organization. We don't embrace change easily. And so yeah, the resistance is real. I would say that I ended up rebuilding my organization. Literally like 90% of my organization, within the first year, was new. And I just had to hire people that I knew could come in with really tough skin like it is, you're gonna come in, and people are not going to want to do what we're doing. And so I need people that are going to know how to work through that, and that you're going to stick with it, because you want to know. And I did. I mean, just have such amazing people that were just so resilient, courageous. You know, when you get down, you're like, "Oh, my gosh! We're pushing so hard to make these changes that we know are really, really good for the company and the business and the workforce." And we can't seem to get them to see it that way. You know, you're gonna just kind of come and huddle up together, right? So I don't know if I'm answering your question.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, no, it's helpful. That is helpful. What excites you the most about your company right now?
Heather Laychak: So our fiscal year is aligned to the government year. So we're really, we're in our fiscal year '24. We're kind of coming out to the end of it for ourselves. So, you know, we have some pretty significant changes facing our organization, whether it's our operating model, transitioning our, let's see, 1980s SAP ERP platform to a new ERP platform. You laugh, but it's true. I mean, just, there are just some big changes that are on the horizon. And so much like we've talked about change, it is really about equipping our leaders and our workforce to be resilient. And that really starts with how we assess the talent coming into our organization, and what we expect from our managers. So we're asking questions like, "Hey, you know, talk to us about when you adopt the gray. Are you comfortable with that? Do you thrive in those kinds of situations? Do you find that to be, you know, are you somebody? I mean, I like being in, you know, kind of a space where you can explore and kind of, you know, not know all the answers, and not know, you know, not be certain about things." Not everybody's like that. And that's okay. But I think we're trying to just give people skills but bring in the right people and promote the right leaders that can lead people through some pretty big changes because our organization may look different, you know, a year from now. And, you know, there's always the impact on people but there's how we operate as well. So that's really big, that's the big focus for us.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: You talk about the recurring theme of change and gray area. So as you think about, I mean from the outside, it seems like it's an incredible time for all things space-related. So what are you most excited about when it comes to the Aerospace Corporation?
Heather Laychak: You are ending with my most favorite question that you're asking about. Yeah, thank you, thank you, Kevin, which is, it is such an exciting time in space. In fact, we often say here, it's probably one of the most exciting, if not the most exciting time in space for Aerospace Corporation. Specifically, the highest levels of the government have asked us, as literally asked the Aerospace Corporation, to generate solutions to ensure we have a resilient national security space infrastructure, given the global challenges that are facing our country and our allies. And it's never been more exciting when you think about the advancements and opportunities you mentioned in space exploration, combined with all that's happening in the commercial space arena. It is ultimately creating a new economy for a multi-planet society. I mean, and to think about that and to be part of that is really exciting, and Aerospace is in the middle of all of that work, all of those solutions, you know, establishing the vision and the path to achieve it, and working with all the people, all the partners, and companies, and customers that we serve, that are, you know, just really trying to ensure a resilient space infrastructure to keep us, us and our allies secure and safe. So it's, if you like space, now, I will tell you, I was not like a, I liked Star Wars, but I was not a Star Trek person, but you know, I have worked in the space business now for a pretty long time, both at Northrop and here, and I just find it to be really, really exciting. And you're surrounded by some of the most, you know, smartest people on the planet, I'll say. And it's, it's pretty cool.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: It's an exciting time for sure. I want to thank you for the important work that the organization's doing, and you, of course, supporting them through culture, and thanks for spending some time with us today. Vice President, Chief People Officer at the Aerospace Corporation, Heather Laychak. Thank you.
Heather Laychak: Thank you, Kevin. So much fun talking with you.