Mike Kohn on Building a People First Culture at Kevel

A tech company's first engagement survey looked strong until Mike Kohn broke it down by gender and found a wide gap between how men and women rated their experience at Kevel. Mike Kohn is Chief People Officer at Kevel, where he has spent more than three years scaling a global team across 17 to 18 countries. He talks with Kim Steppe and Marilyn Nagel about the infrastructure he built to close that gap, why he trades survey fatigue for a mix of quantitative and qualitative check-ins, and how he supported an employee coming out as transgender.

Chapters:

00:00 Welcome to Leading Beyond the Org Chart

01:03 Mike's path to a people first career

02:42 The engagement survey and a gender gap in the data

07:58 Cross-group differences and function-level analysis

11:15 Survey cadence, pulse fatigue and quarterly reviews

12:39 Why belonging outweighs compensation

17:07 Supporting an employee coming out as transgender

24:13 The identity button idea and leadership storytelling

28:20 Operating across 17 countries and local traditions

33:16 Balancing rapid growth with a people first focus

37:56 Change management feedback from the survey

40:14 DEI committee, resource groups and a calendar of celebrations

43:00 Advice to his younger self

45:18 What gives Mike hope

You can follow Mike Kohn here:

LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/mikejkohn

Learn more about Kevel:

Website - https://kevel.com

What is Leading Beyond the Org Chart?

Welcome to the Leading Beyond the Org Chart Podcast by Rise Results, where we bring you real-world strategies to improve employee engagement, boost retention, and accelerate team development - all with a clear focus on driving measurable business outcomes.

Each episode features leaders who’ve successfully navigated these challenges, sharing actionable insights you can implement immediately.

We’ll explore how better people practices lead to better business performance - and how to turn strategic thinking into scalable growth.

00:00:01:05 - 00:00:24:11
Kim
Welcome to leading beyond the org chart. Brought to you by Rise Results. This isn't just another leadership podcast. We're here to talk about real strategies that actually move the needle. Keeping your team engaged, retaining top talent, and building systems that scale. You'll hear from leaders who have been in the trenches sharing what worked, what didn't, and how you can apply those lessons today.

00:00:24:15 - 00:00:57:04
Kim
Because when you leave behind the org chart, you don't just build teams, you build alignment, culture and results. Let's get to it. Hi. Welcome. Our guest today is Mike Kohn He is a seasoned professional, and the people in HR space with extensive experience in leading and scaling HR practices within growth stage and startup companies. Currently, he holds a leadership role at Kevel, where he has been instrumental in building a people centric culture across a global team.

00:00:57:04 - 00:00:59:20
Kim
So welcome, Mike. We're so glad you're here.

00:00:59:22 - 00:01:01:01
Mike
Thank you so much.

00:01:01:02 - 00:01:03:06
Mike
Super excited to be here.

00:01:03:08 - 00:01:25:23
Kim
Yeah, we are too. Let's let's just launch into the the first question. So, Mike, we know that you have a profound background in developing HR practices, especially within those startup environments. Can you share what led you to focus your career on the people first approach in business settings, which we know is so important, and what key lessons have shaped your journey so far?

00:01:26:00 - 00:01:51:15
Mike
You know, it's one of those things that it just seems like common sense to me. And I learned very early on that it isn't for everybody. And so for me, one of the joys was discovering that this was a career that I could take. I lucked into this world. I found myself in a in a people in HR role while I was still interning in college, found myself right place, right time.

00:01:51:15 - 00:02:14:22
Mike
That turned into a job, which turned into a career. But for me, it was those formative moments of understanding that when you match people's interest, desires, passions with organizational needs and directions, everybody comes out over and it's we. It was that that moment where I realized that the the job at hand is to help people be greater than the sum of their individual parts.

00:02:14:22 - 00:02:39:14
Mike
And all of that comes back to treating people as humans, thinking of people as really the sense of who they are, what excites them, what drives them, and being able to translate that into a a mission. For me, that connects to the overall strategy. You can't have strategy without the people to accomplish it. And so being able to to put all of those things together, it was a puzzle.

00:02:39:14 - 00:02:42:04
Mike
And I loved the opportunity to unlock it.

00:02:42:05 - 00:03:16:21
Marilyn
At Carville, you implemented the engagement survey. And and as as typically happens, it uncovered a lot of information how to advance inclusion and where there were issues and gaps. Can you share a little bit about what the impacts were? And you know how it it really uncovered some issues and challenges, especially with the global team. Yeah. And what was your impetus?

00:03:16:21 - 00:03:23:17
Marilyn
How was it met to do this initially and what was your thinking and how it happened?

00:03:23:18 - 00:03:55:04
Mike
Yes. One of the reasons that I wanted to join Kevel to begin with, over three years ago now, was I started having conversations with my my CEO with James about what what exactly was his vision when it came to people and culture? He was the the driver when he founded the company to create that human centric company. They had done a very preliminary survey that pulled together some information, and he he shared the results with me.

00:03:55:04 - 00:04:15:23
Mike
And I looked at it and I said, where's the the value driver on this? What this is a lot of information, but what do people care about? And he said, honestly, I when I look at these results, I don't know where would you point me to? And I would say, okay, I think the first thing I would do is find a different survey mechanism that helps us do some better data analysis.

00:04:15:23 - 00:04:41:12
Mike
And so I came on board. That's what I did. I implemented a new survey. We use lattice as our tool. And the primary reason that I went in that direction was because I wanted the ability to not just look at the raw data, but I wanted the understanding of how to slice it, but also what what is the correlated analysis between what people score high on and what ties them to engagement?

00:04:41:13 - 00:05:01:21
Mike
It's one thing to say, I'm really passionate, and I really think the company does well on X, but if they don't care, then what does that tell us? What do we do with that information? And obviously vice versa. So I rolled out this new tool, got the results back from it. Overall we got we got pretty good results.

00:05:01:22 - 00:05:29:12
Mike
Looking at two metrics as our primary first and an overall engagement score tied to some benchmark scientifically backed questions that say that these are core drivers of engagement. And then a single question score around employer net promoter score MPs. Those came back pretty positive. And I was I was pretty pleased with that. But when we dug into that next layer, when we did a demographic breakdown, that's where things started to look a little bit different.

00:05:29:12 - 00:05:51:04
Mike
As a tech company, we are a little more skewed when it comes to having a greater male representation and a greater representation of people who identify as white. This is not uncommon in the the tech space, but at the same time, when that's true, those populations are going to skew the data in their direction a little bit more.

00:05:51:04 - 00:06:20:20
Mike
So in particular, looking at that gender breakdown, the unsurprisingly, both scores tracked pretty pretty closely to what the male scores look like. When we looked at the female scores, the story was a little bit different. There was a significant gap between what our male responses and female responses were on both of these metrics, and that caused me a little bit of panic to say there is something going on here that means that these experiences are wildly different.

00:06:20:21 - 00:06:44:00
Mike
So we took a step back and said, we need to talk to some of our females here. What is going on? Why? Why is the experience different? Less seek to learn. And I should caveat it's important to do that from a lens of curiosity, not a lens of accusatory how do we get the score to be right? Because otherwise, well, that goes into a whole different conversation.

00:06:44:00 - 00:07:17:11
Mike
But for me, it was what? How can we make this right? I want that, I want the understanding so that we can make change. And what I heard in those conversations was a lot of infrastructure to support fairness. Equity and consistency seems like a clearer performance process, a clearer compensation philosophy, a clearer promotion pathway. A lot of the things that said, I understand how these things happen, and I don't want to feel like I'm overlooked because of my gender identity in any way.

00:07:17:14 - 00:07:42:05
Mike
So we put those things in place, and over time, we've gotten to the point that where we have rough parity between our our gendered responses, and I've started looking at similar demographic breakdowns for for gender, for race and by country as well, because of our global presence. When I talk about our goal in this space, my my priority is both getting our scores to go up.

00:07:42:05 - 00:07:58:13
Mike
Always want that to happen, but I want the cross cross group differences to be as close to zero as possible so that we are promoting that consistent experience across all of those groups and making sure that there isn't that ongoing disparity like we had originally.

00:07:58:15 - 00:08:33:17
Marilyn
Can can I ask a follow up question? Did you notice some? Because one of the things we start to notice when we do this exact same work is there's some disparity in function. Also the certainly gender disparity and geographic. But we also start to see functional differences. So that's where you notice, oh we have an issue in marketing or we have an issue in operations, or we have an issue in engineering or sales or wherever it happens to be.

00:08:33:17 - 00:09:08:07
Marilyn
And then that leader, you can work with those leaders on their own, what we call accountability plans, but could be any name to say, how can you close those gaps that you have leader A, B or C that's different, you know? Or how can we leverage T? They're doing great in marketing, but operations is having a finance or whatever it is, is having a real challenge.

00:09:08:07 - 00:09:27:07
Marilyn
What's going on in marketing that's working so well. And then have those leaders sometimes compete with each other, but sometimes just learn from each other. So have you done any of that kind of cross company work within the with the survey data?

00:09:27:09 - 00:09:50:07
Mike
Started doing a little bit of it for context. We are we are about 150 people now. And so as we've grown, now is the time where that becomes more possible earlier on when we're when we're in the 75 to 100 person range, being able to do that kind of breakdown. And I look at my own team to say, okay, I'm a team of four people within the people space.

00:09:50:07 - 00:10:23:00
Mike
My data. I don't want to uncover any of the anonymity pieces that I have promised to people. I want it to stay anonymous in ways. And so there are some teams that have been large enough to do it all along. What I have done is more a broader analysis, not inherently by function, marketing, sales and so on, rather commercial versus R&D, engineering and product organizations to see if there's some disparities, because there are large enough groups there.

00:10:23:02 - 00:10:48:00
Mike
Over time, there has been more of a calibration between where do those groups typically fall? IT engineers have a baseline response compared to how sales and marketing people are going to respond to certain things. Once we have that tell abrasion in general, there is not a significant variation in terms of the themes and the comments that are coming out of both sides.

00:10:48:00 - 00:11:06:23
Mike
There have been some things here and there. We've been able to address that. To say the commercial team is feeling X, Y and Z based on what's going on in the organization or we're pushing towards this major release. And so the engineering teams are feeling that being able to keep in close contact with leadership from that perspective and the data in the survey reflects that.

00:11:06:23 - 00:11:15:11
Mike
But there hasn't been a significant effort within functions. I do think as we continue to grow, that's going to be a next phase of using the survey data.

00:11:15:12 - 00:11:29:15
Kim
Yeah, I have a couple of follow up questions to to that. So we know that surveys can be exhaustive for employees. So you're and you do an annual engagement survey. Do do pulse surveys throughout the year based on maybe what's going on.

00:11:29:17 - 00:11:52:13
Mike
We do a twice annual survey. So we do one. I'm actually about to share the results of my my second half survey. And then we'll do one towards the top of the year as well. So we do it twice two year point. The survey fatigue is real. I basically try and have everybody do things on a quarterly basis that are more of that time intensive.

00:11:52:13 - 00:12:19:06
Mike
So the other quarters are spent doing performance reviews. That is not inherently a data backed mechanism. We're not responding to the surveys, but I think about them in the same light because people are responding to the prompts of reflect on the year. And also what can cavil what can your manager do to support you on your journey? And so there is a little bit of that direct dialog rather than an anonymous survey.

00:12:19:06 - 00:12:39:00
Mike
And then I'm going back to the managers and saying, what are you hearing from people? What do you need as part of this? And really pulling that from the leadership team to have that dialog in case anything needs to change. So it adds a little bit of a qualitative result in the off quarters, and then we get the quantitative results in the every other quarter.

00:12:39:01 - 00:13:00:16
Kim
Well I'll also just say good for you. I mean, to do this when you're 150 employees is so important to set the culture going forward. And that trust piece, which is so important for employees. So my next question, we've talked about this, Mike, a bunch around, you know, why culture is so important to employees and and how it's so important to retention.

00:13:00:17 - 00:13:23:22
Kim
We know that employees want to feel like they belong. They want to feel like they belong. Their ideas are heard, that they're valued, that they see a career path in order to stay. And we talked about this. They'll they'll go somewhere else and take less money to have those things, especially in certain Gen Z. I know I have two Gen Z kids that will do that in a moment's notice if they don't feel valued.

00:13:23:22 - 00:13:42:15
Kim
So with that, you've mentioned before that today's workforce value is belonging more more than just compensation. So how do you cultivate and maintain a culture where employees feel genuinely valued, and you've already started talking about a little bit that about that, but can you build on that?

00:13:42:17 - 00:14:11:16
Mike
You know, again, I can't say this enough. It sounds so common sense, but it is treating people as people. It's one of the main reasons that I wanted to rebrand my function from people instead of human resources. I don't see people as resources. They are there people who have needs and desires and cares and motivations. And I always come back to it's really an understanding of who your population is.

00:14:11:17 - 00:14:33:18
Mike
What do they want? What do they need for? I would, I would say like for, for us, we have the starting point of we know who we are. And there is a reality that our culture is not for everybody. Not every culture is going to match every person. And so there's a there's a two way dialog to be had.

00:14:33:19 - 00:14:54:12
Mike
People talk about this in interview processes all the time. That you have power as an interviewee to understand is this the place and is this the environment that you want to thrive? And so I always think it's important to start with that understanding of of sense of self. We are somewhere that really does value people. And what does that look like for us?

00:14:54:12 - 00:15:13:10
Mike
Well, we're going to we're going to work hard. That is a thing that has to happen. We are a startup, and sometimes that means you work longer than you think you do. But at the same time, we balance that with the wellness days that we have to say, okay, this, this random Friday, that's a day off for the entire company.

00:15:13:10 - 00:15:38:10
Mike
And why does that matter when you have unlimited PTO? Well, it means that there are no meetings, no nothing. Nothing is happening. Everybody has that shared day off. Go enjoy yourself and take that as a balance. And so we understand the realities of. Of what? Of what that means for us and also who that's going to attract. We have an incredibly complex and technical product.

00:15:38:10 - 00:16:00:01
Mike
And that means that we need people that understand that space. We have a dedicated market sector within retail media and commerce media. We are looking for people that understand what the implications of that are. Who is the customer base on the other side? And here's how we're going to treat you. Here's our recognition approach. Here's our compensation philosophy.

00:16:00:02 - 00:16:29:22
Mike
Here's our performance philosophy outlining all of that for people. My I have one recruiter on my team who is fabulous and does a great job of explaining what all of this looks like, the transparency, the candor. And then lastly, we've got this document that shows values in action that lives on our website. People can find it any time we took our values and went one level deeper and then also said, these are some examples of where we put that in practice.

00:16:29:22 - 00:16:48:16
Mike
At this point, it's actually a couple years old. We could refresh that and add in some new examples, but the principles are going to stay the same because we want people to know these aren't just words on a page, that this is actually what this looks like when it comes time to to being at Keppel. So that's a lot of different ways of thinking about it.

00:16:48:16 - 00:17:07:03
Mike
But to me, it always comes back to, you know, starting with knowing who you are and then really understanding what what does it look like to to treat people as people within your space and continue that journey from applicant to alumni. And, you know, maybe you'll get some boomerangs, as we've had a couple in our in our travels.

00:17:07:04 - 00:17:08:16
Mike
Wow, nice.

00:17:08:20 - 00:17:45:12
Marilyn
You've talked about your approach to handling someone who's coming out as transgender. So now we're getting down into the specifics. So how do you create a supportive environment where significant personal milestones are both celebrated and respected, like someone coming out as transgender? How do you handle those things? Because I know there are people tuning in who were still larger companies than yours, but still struggling with how do we address that?

00:17:45:12 - 00:18:16:17
Mike
So I think that the baseline here is the recognition that work does not stop when people walk out the door, that that metaphor has even less meaning in today's society of remote and hybrid work, that it you can't just assume that people are done with their work when they leave, turn off their computer, and at the same time, personal stuff happens during the day.

00:18:16:18 - 00:18:50:15
Mike
This is the life. And so that flexibility to to treat people and let people operate as they are, I think is a foundational core. We we talk about it as act like an adult. We we trust people to be adults when they come in the door, and we're going to treat you as you are an adult. Sometimes that means that you you need to take your kids in at 8 or 830 in the morning, and you're not going to start working, but you're going to pick that up later in the day.

00:18:50:16 - 00:19:09:20
Mike
Sometimes people need to stop working at 4:00 for the same reason, but they're going to come back out and finish what they need to do. We trust you to deliver on the outcomes that you are going to deliver on, and that's really how we're going to measure success, not when you do it or how you do it. It's really where does that come into play?

00:19:09:21 - 00:19:33:01
Mike
So when you have that as a baseline, we are we are a company that that operates heavily in slack. I'm sure we are not alone, but we have a zillion slack channels. Many of them are customer related or internal function related. But then we've got a whole bunch of things that recognize that life happens during the day and after.

00:19:33:01 - 00:19:53:09
Mike
We've got channels that that celebrate people's birthdays and their anniversaries. Thankfully, that's just a bot. It just pushes that information out based on the data that we feed in. And so we get to see that every time we have channels that that emphasize that. Of course, there are people into sports. I'm not one of them, but people who can talk about that or fitness and wellness.

00:19:53:09 - 00:20:25:03
Mike
There's there's a music league channel, just as like a fun activity to help people get to know each other, people who want to renovate their homes. Again, I'm not one of them either, but I love seeing that we have all these creative types that, that are makers, that that do great things. So we we have this ingrained culture of there are things going on that aren't just work related that you can tap into your coworkers about, ask questions, talk about your kids, talk about your your travel adventures, those types of things.

00:20:25:03 - 00:20:50:17
Mike
And it builds that mentality that we're humans. At the end of the day, we're not just worker bees and drones that are going on. So when you get to something that is more that is more core to who you are. That is more of an identity question. That's a little bit more serious. We're working on these these dual foundations of life happens during the day.

00:20:50:17 - 00:21:24:07
Mike
And also we are humans who are interacting with each other as part of this. And I think we've had moments to recognize and celebrate people who want to share things about their identities that might be uncomfortable. I'm thinking of a couple of examples here. But last year at, we have an annual gathering where we bring people together from all over the world for a multi-day event once per year, which is just such an honor and such an amazing opportunity that I'm grateful for and speaks to to our culture as well.

00:21:24:07 - 00:21:51:07
Mike
And someone, someone talked about their their experience with, with that variety of things in their life. Someone came out not necessarily as a public statement, but because they just wanted to express that this is who they are. And so we've had several of these moments more recently. Can what you're referring to, I had someone approach me to to talk about what?

00:21:51:08 - 00:22:13:00
Mike
How could they share that they wanted to come out as transgender to our population? What would that look like? I did check with them before having this conversation to make sure they were okay with me sharing a piece of the story, and what we talked about in that dialog was starting from a place of, how were you doing?

00:22:13:00 - 00:22:31:16
Mike
Let's talk about you. Are you okay? What's your journey been like? What are you looking to share and how much do you want to share? And then it turned into, we can make this work however you want, because at the end of the day, it's about supporting you. Are you looking for my guidance? Are you looking for my my approval on this?

00:22:31:16 - 00:22:53:18
Mike
Because you don't need you don't need either one. So how how can I help you get there? They wanted to know the logistics. Okay, what do I do? How do I do this? Where we ended up steering was. Do you want to educate people and use this as a moment to share more about what it means to identify as transgender and where this is coming from?

00:22:53:18 - 00:23:19:00
Mike
Ultimately, they said yes, and that was their choice. They put together this amazing document with some FAQs that were part personal and part general. And much of that was, here's my experience. And also, if you want to ask questions, go educate yourself a little bit further before you're putting that burden on me, which I applauded significantly. But ultimately, they shared that news that there was no pushback, there was no blowback.

00:23:19:00 - 00:23:38:15
Mike
It was we are excited to celebrate you. Great. We're going to move on. And I think that is all that this individual wanted as part of this was to say, this is who I am. I'm going to share that with you. And we had a debrief. And for me, the shining moment for that individual was like, I can stop.

00:23:38:15 - 00:23:57:20
Mike
I can stop, like carrying this with me. You know, it never fully goes away. But the idea of having to, you know, deal with this in the back of my mind while I'm also trying to focus on work, being able to just put that down and move forward. Being who they are. I think that's that's where I want to celebrate and be excited.

00:23:57:20 - 00:24:12:23
Mike
And at the end of the day, that's where all of this belonging work is coming from is saying, be who you are. If you're distracted by any type of identity, then you're going to be distracted from work. And that that doesn't help any of us. So again, we're getting back to that win win mentality.

00:24:13:00 - 00:24:25:08
Marilyn
Can I ask another question about that, which was one of our other questions. But I think it fits right here. Is that how you came up with the identity button idea, and can you share a little bit about that?

00:24:25:09 - 00:25:01:17
Mike
No, I and I can't take credit for that. This is something I'll attribute to a company called Culture AMP for anybody who's familiar with them. But I went to one of their conferences and lifted this idea because I just loved it so much. What we do again at this annual event where we bring everyone together, we have a series of buttons that are identity based things ranging from introvert to LGBTQ plus to ally to pet parent, those types of things.

00:25:01:18 - 00:25:16:12
Mike
We have a whole bunch of buttons. The first year I did it, I wasn't really sure how it was going to go, but then I got a lot of requests for updated buttons. My favorite thing about this past year was that we ran out of the introvert button. Clearly, we're a company of introverts, but.

00:25:16:14 - 00:25:22:16
Marilyn
Not surprising. As a tech company, that is the common theme.

00:25:22:18 - 00:25:51:08
Mike
This is what I've learned is, you know, I'm myself. I'm an outgoing introvert, but an introvert nonetheless. So what? What I asked people to do was to come over, choose the buttons that they wanted to and put them on, affix them to their name badges and just wear those anytime we weren't in badges over the course of this multi-day event really is just a conversation starter, an opportunity to self-identify and share a little bit about who you are.

00:25:51:10 - 00:26:24:21
Mike
This past year, I added a layer where anyone from our leadership team who was speaking. I asked them to introduce themselves and also share one of the buttons that they were carrying, and tell a little story about why they picked it. As the person who answered the event, I went first. I talked about I as LGBTQ plus, and I talked about my experience as a as a gay man in life, but also a gay man who is leading a people function and is passionate about the I work.

00:26:24:23 - 00:26:52:08
Mike
We had someone who talked about experience being in immigrants and what does that shape his experience? We had someone who who talked about how she is a feminist, and she's so much of a feminist that she's marrying a woman, and what does that look like for her and someone who's a cancer survivor? So we got a lot of conversation going about who who we are and breaking down some of those power dynamics, but also normalizing.

00:26:52:09 - 00:27:13:07
Mike
Let's talk about things that are going on in our lives and infusing that into our day to day rather than just, hi, I'm, I'm the CFO or I'm the CTO. It broke. It made us more human, which I think helped with our our overall relationship building across this event.

00:27:13:09 - 00:27:31:20
Kim
I also want to say, I mean, it's a tribute to your culture and the culture you've created for people to feel like they, especially when you were speaking about your transgender employee, to be able to talk about those things and feel safe enough to do that is a tribute to the trust you've created in that organization and your leadership team has created.

00:27:31:20 - 00:27:44:05
Kim
So kudos to you. And I must say, I think act like an adult is probably one of the best phrases I've heard. I probably need to repeat that multiple times a day to anyways, I digress.

00:27:44:07 - 00:27:58:19
Mike
The official value for us is we are all adults, which I just like. It rings true for me. I just describe it to people as as act like an adult, because I think it gives that that that I offer to you and feel free to take that anywhere you want.

00:27:58:21 - 00:28:20:17
Kim
I will. I definitely will. Mike. So moving on, we talked about your global presence and one of the things that most of our clients are global. And one of the things we've we always say is you kind of think globally but act locally. So as we think about where the different countries that you operate in, and that brings up a lot of different cultural backgrounds as well.

00:28:20:17 - 00:28:29:20
Kim
And how do you address those cultural needs and expectations while still promoting that coherent company culture across your organization?

00:28:29:22 - 00:28:59:09
Mike
You know, the this has been one of the the things that has evolved most rapidly for us over the last several years. When I started a couple of years ago, we talked about operating predominantly in in three countries in the US, in the UK and Portugal. And since then we've now expanded part through acquisition and then part organically with how our structure has has evolved.

00:28:59:10 - 00:29:41:03
Mike
We're now operating, I want to say 17 or 18 countries with a heavy concentration in those same three plus also Denmark and Portugal. But but we are operating in this global environment where we do have a couple of people in a series of countries. So I my my answer is it's still evolving, but where we do have those concentrations of people, one of the things that we've really tried to do is, is honor that kind of local presence by bringing people together with some local activities, doing the things that that are consistent with who they are in Portugal.

00:29:41:04 - 00:30:07:12
Mike
There are some traditions that they honor, the holidays that they celebrate, and making sure that that that does not change in Denmark. This is a like, you know, pretty, pretty normal thing for how do people operate in a, in an office that they have lunch every day. That is into the that comes into the office? When I went to go visit them, I was struck by the fact that they took the time to sit down and have this meal together.

00:30:07:14 - 00:30:28:02
Mike
You know, sometimes people filtered in and out, but this was an hour of time that I just got to spend with people. And it wasn't just because I was visiting. That is just normal for their operations. So really honoring the local elements without trying to disrupt that and say, no, you must be X, Y, and Z, because that doesn't really make any sense.

00:30:28:02 - 00:30:55:12
Mike
But to your point, it's letting those cultures operate in the way that our normal and traditional. And then also overlaying this over this bigger sense of this is how we structure things. This is what that looks like. I think one of our learnings is certainly we are at the end of the day, we're an American company, but we are skewing a little bit more towards incorporating those European traditions.

00:30:55:12 - 00:31:21:16
Mike
So it's it was a little bit jarring when we learned about European summers and how people take in Europe. And that's never going to be a thing that we do in the US. But it makes more sense for us when people do that for our European colleagues and making sure that that is normal for them. But talking about how do we balance communication and workload and outcomes and requirements and all of that stuff.

00:31:21:16 - 00:31:24:15
Mike
So that's really the type of balance that we've found.

00:31:24:20 - 00:31:39:13
Kim
I love that in the US, we're mostly eating protein bars in our car, public transportation, right. And never taking a vacation or rarely taking one. So we can all strive to sit down for an hour. And that's that's a lovely.

00:31:39:15 - 00:31:41:08
Kim
Local tradition.

00:31:41:10 - 00:31:47:04
Marilyn
Yeah, I like that. And then have wine in the afternoon and take all this off.

00:31:47:10 - 00:31:50:08
Kim
And a nap during the day.

00:31:50:10 - 00:32:15:06
Mike
And you know, the thing, the thing I love most about it is that they work so hard and get so much done, and they still do it this way. What what can we learn from them? The more the more of a global environment I find myself in, the more I find that it's the American work culture that is the the snowflake in all of this, despite that being my my comfort zone.

00:32:15:06 - 00:32:31:06
Mike
And so for much of my experience, it's been learning from the great things that they do and trying to bring that into the broader kettle operations, because it just it makes more sense and it supports more of that. People. People are people, not people are workers mentality.

00:32:31:06 - 00:33:16:03
Marilyn
And I think you said something earlier that just absolutely is is, you know, fundamental to this. And that is you measure people on deliverables, not on time spent or where they spend that time. And so who cares if you're if you're truly measuring people on on their outputs and what they do, then, you know, if you get renewed, taking a break for lunch and you do better or you're, you're driving your kids to and from school or whatever it is, what's the difference as long as the output is there?

00:33:16:03 - 00:33:57:19
Marilyn
So I want to ask you a question about the fact that you have this amazing people first culture, and you're doing it at a startup where there's always this perception that it has to be, you know, very much rapid growth change. And we hear often from folks we can't focus on the people strategy or inclusion or culture because we're in this growth mode and we are dealing with rapid growth.

00:33:57:19 - 00:34:20:14
Marilyn
And when you're growing from 75 to 150 and you're expanding into all of these countries. How do you balance the the push from one end around that to be your focus to continuing your people first and culture focus and emphasis?

00:34:20:17 - 00:34:47:18
Mike
It's a great, great question. I'm not sure I have a super strong answer. What comes to mind when you said that is like they are not mutually exclusive and they shouldn't be, and they they don't have to be. So I you know, this is where again, I need to give James a lot of credit for how he founded the company and as CEO, how he's led the company.

00:34:47:20 - 00:35:27:23
Mike
This has been a priority for him from day one that, you know, being being working with a founder who believes this at baseline probably makes my life a lot easier, because this is the foundation of our entire company, is that growth is facilitated, enabled and magnified by focusing on on people. If you are clear, if you are providing guidance, direction while also treating people as humans, you're building engagement, but also you're building momentum and you're building a team that's going to do it together.

00:35:27:23 - 00:35:50:13
Mike
So I when I hear things like that, I always feel like there is a inherent focus on the short term. Well, if we stop this and we send people on this road, they're going to get it done tomorrow, okay, that is true. But then they're probably going to leave. And so what are you going to do after that?

00:35:50:13 - 00:36:11:12
Mike
And what happens for the next? You can only put people through that so many times before they think, oh this is normal. Do I want to reconsider my employment situation here? And is this something I want to continue? Whereas if you built that, that trust that, hey, I need you to do this, but I want to be up front.

00:36:11:12 - 00:36:29:17
Mike
This is going to be a slog. This is going to be a big push. And then here's what's coming after that. You're earning a little bit of goodwill to say, all right, I understand that this outcome needs to get needs to happen for x, Y, and Z. Reason. I've internalized that. I'm excited for what that looks like, and I can make that happen.

00:36:29:17 - 00:36:43:02
Mike
And I trust that things will change in the future as long as they actually change in the future. So I come back to these things, work in tandem. They support each other and need to need to live together.

00:36:43:03 - 00:37:09:09
Marilyn
We're right there with you. We believe that one is speaking about the what you're going to do, and the other is the how you're going to do it. And there's no reason it doesn't matter whether you're in rapid growth or you're in, you know, incremental growth. You still there's still the how you're going to work it. How you work is always going to be an element of culture.

00:37:09:09 - 00:37:52:18
Marilyn
And what you do is going to change depending on where you are in your trajectory as a company. And so we we are right there with you that you do not have to sacrifice one for the other. They can be in tandem from the right from the start. And we encourage companies with five people to start thinking about values and culture and, and put that stake in the ground as, as founders and say, this is the kind of company we want to be and this is the way we're going, you know, the way we're going to work is the way we're going to work no matter what comes at us.

00:37:52:18 - 00:37:56:21
Marilyn
So we're right there with you. But thank you so much for your perspective.

00:37:56:23 - 00:38:19:03
Mike
What one thing that makes me think of what connecting to something we were talking about earlier, one of the biggest pieces of feedback in one of the action items that we took from a prior engagement survey had to do with change management. There was a feedback from people surrounding one of our questions about change, pace of change, and how it's tied to our values.

00:38:19:09 - 00:38:43:16
Mike
I started reading the comments underneath it and I did some qualitative follow ups with people. There was not a significant pushback on the pace of change. People do understand or startup. We make pivots. We make choices. No one was criticizing the changes and honestly, we were very transparent. They're not going to stop that. This is the world that we occupy and we know that and we embrace it.

00:38:43:17 - 00:39:06:19
Mike
What I honed in on was that the second half of the question, the way we change the how that you're talking about Marilyn, felt inconsistent with our values and how we want to be. And so that was some very helpful feedback that it wasn't we got to stop the change because that that's just not practical. But it was how are we communicating this?

00:39:06:20 - 00:39:27:13
Mike
What's the effort we're putting into explaining the why, the transparency? How are we supporting people through the change and giving them space to process, learn, digest, all of those things? Those were the tweaks that we were able to make because I don't want anybody to hear this or I don't want, you know, leaders to think, well, well, this is what I'm talking about.

00:39:27:14 - 00:39:40:11
Mike
We just got to go. Yeah, we're we also just got to go. We got to make change and we got to do what we have to do. But how did we do it? That's the piece that I wanted to change so that we were uniting both of these things.

00:39:40:12 - 00:39:42:14
Marilyn
Love that. Thank you.

00:39:42:16 - 00:40:14:06
Kim
Just building on a couple of things you've said throughout this, our conversation and starting with the engagement survey and the quantitative and qualitative data, the follow up that you did around the gender disparity. We know in the work we do how important data is and how important it is to know kind of the state of your workforce, for lack of a better way to say it and what's happening and involving those executive leaders and segmenting that employee data or strategies that you've employed to make decisions about diversity and inclusion.

00:40:14:07 - 00:40:23:22
Kim
So what, in addition to some of the things you've already talked about, but what are some of the specific insights or outcomes that have resulted from this data driven approach?

00:40:23:23 - 00:40:55:11
Mike
Yeah, I think the the really that emphasis on building the infrastructure that I was talking about is really kind of the defining piece there. The other half of the work has been dedicated to thinking through things on through with our Dei committee. And so we've launched a group and it's been through a couple of iterations. Right now, we're we're in the process of talking through some two big areas.

00:40:55:11 - 00:41:35:13
Mike
One, we call them Chris Cavil Resource Groups. But most people know them as early. And getting those into a place where we we can bring together like minded groups, like minded people. Excuse me? Who who want to talk about whatever it means for their their identities. And I wanted to make sure that there is both an active group of people that want to plan and organize, but also that there is an executive sponsor so that there are asks or requests from that group, that there was someone who is serving in a leadership capacity who can surface that and bring that in addition to any connection I might have with them.

00:41:35:13 - 00:42:14:22
Mike
So we've launched a couple so far. There is a women's trans femme group very aptly called because their abbreviation is, of course, the F group. And then we we recently had a neurodivergent group that that is about to launch. So we're we're slowly rolling those out, learning from that process and making things happen there. The second thing that I'm doing now is building a, we'll call it a calendar of celebrations that we can do, dedicated to a lot of the the heritage months that we have over the course of the year.

00:42:15:00 - 00:42:34:14
Mike
I, for one, have always been active when it comes to Pride Month, but that is a personal area. And so I want to do something that is more holistic. We're going to do something with Mental Health Month, and we're talking about that later for later in the year. And then we're also going to look at things like Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Pride Month.

00:42:34:14 - 00:42:57:10
Mike
Like I said. So things, things along those lines that it's not just, hey, here it is, let's talk about it, but some curated programing that supports it and really enables that from a leadership perspective, whether that's articles, resources, book clubs, podcasts, roundtables, things like that that actually help people understand and connect as part of that process.

00:42:57:11 - 00:43:00:05
Kim
Love that. Marilyn, you want to ask the next question?

00:43:00:07 - 00:43:34:05
Marilyn
Yeah. And and I'm I'm feeling like we might want to switch to our, our last question, which is really if you if you look back at your career and you were were had that crystal ball that you could go back and and forward with, is there anything that you would tell yourself, your younger self that, that you know now that you would change how you do things or see things?

00:43:34:06 - 00:44:00:10
Mike
You know, I think the thing that strikes me the most is, is where I've started, which is this is not common sense for everyone. And that's not a bad thing. Everybody has their strengths. Everybody has components to their work that they don't see. We don't all see the world the same way. That's a hallmark of the way that this this work is done.

00:44:00:11 - 00:44:21:22
Mike
But for me, I wish I had come to that recognition sooner because this is just how I see the world. And it meant that I rub people the wrong way in a lot of the things I did. Early on. Hey! Let's move. Why is this taking so long? And hey, why is it not obvious that we would do it this way and, like, let let's go.

00:44:21:23 - 00:44:43:18
Mike
Turns out if you don't see the world this way, that's really annoying. It's also a blocker. It means that people are less interested in working with you because they are thinking that you're being pushing, aggressive, obnoxious. And so once I had that pointed out to me on several occasions, took way longer than it should have. It helped me to understand the need to build.

00:44:43:19 - 00:45:06:18
Mike
We'll call it a business case, but it doesn't need to be that formal, like help people along show them the reason why this matters. Give them the rationale. Understand what speaks to them. Some people it's data. Some people it's cold, hard cash, some people it's outcomes. Some people just want to talk it out, but really do the work to help people along so that you're showing them how you seek the world.

00:45:06:18 - 00:45:18:05
Mike
And then ask, how do they see the world? And then figure out how to make those happen together? That again, this just feels so obvious to me now. That's of course, how you do it. But at the time that it was just completely lost on me.

00:45:18:05 - 00:45:41:20
Kim
I think most of us could agree that it takes longer than it we think it should to get to get to places like that. And I do have one last question for you, Mike, and so thrilled. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your experiences and your work at Carvel. And my last question is, what gives you hope for today?

00:45:41:21 - 00:46:18:20
Mike
It's the fact that we are having this conversation right now. There are so many people that are dedicated to doing this kind of work, both on a professional and organizational level, as well as on a personal level. And whenever I feel isolated, alone, feeling like that, that this is not the way that I want certain things to go in the world, I connect with, with people like the two of you, like with other folks that are in similarly situated mentalities and the standpoints.

00:46:18:20 - 00:46:40:08
Mike
And I say, okay, it's not just me that there is connection. There is an opportunity to build bridges and relationships with other people, and there's more of that to come. This is the community and the bubble that I do know. What does that mean for the community that is outside of my bubble? There is more to figure out and more to work with on that.

00:46:40:08 - 00:46:43:15
Mike
And that that gives me some optimism about where we go from here.

00:46:43:15 - 00:46:51:00
Kim
I love that. So with that, I will say thank you so much, Mike. It's been a pleasure. We hope to see you again and thank you for the work you do.

00:46:51:01 - 00:46:54:05
Mike
Kim. Marilyn, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Yes.