Scaling With People
Tired of spinning your startup wheels but never gaining traction? Buckle up, founders and CEOs, because this podcast is your rocket fuel to profitability! Every week, we ignite explosive conversations with bold-faced founders, brainy experts, and even a few out-of-this-world vendors. Get ready to crack the code on growth, master employee engagement, and blast through your scaling goals. We’re talking real-world strategies, actionable tips, and perspectives that’ll make your business do a cosmic dance. So, strap in and prepare for lift-off!
Scaling With People
Culture as Your Competitive Edge with Lilith Christiansen
Ever wonder why some startups scale smoothly while others struggle despite having great products and funding? The secret weapon might be hiding in plain sight: organizational culture.
When you're racing to build your product and secure your next funding round, culture can feel like a luxury you'll address "someday." But as our conversation with Lilith Christiansen, founder of Human Genuity, reveals, this mindset could be costing you far more than you realize.
Culture isn't just about fancy values painted on your office walls. It's the invisible operating system determining how decisions get made when you're not in the room. It's how feedback flows, problems get solved, and ultimately, how your company functions at its core. Even with just five team members, you already have a culture—the question is whether you've shaped it intentionally.
The stakes are surprisingly high. Christensen shares compelling stories of culture gone wrong, including a multicultural team where different feedback styles led to six months of misalignment and frustration. On the flip side, she highlights how one founder's commitment to work-life balance—demonstrated through delayed email delivery—created authentic alignment between values and actions that employees could trust.
Perhaps most practical is Christensen's advice on recruiting: communicate "the way it is today versus the aspirational." Too many founders oversell their current reality during interviews, leading to disappointed new hires who expected something different. Being transparent about your challenges not only attracts the right candidates but helps you identify people with the skills to solve your specific problems.
Whether you're hiring your first employee or your fiftieth, this episode offers actionable insights for building a culture that becomes your competitive advantage. Because in the end, your culture will either accelerate your growth or become the invisible barrier holding you back.
Welcome everyone to today's Scaling with People podcast. I'm Gwynnever Query, your host and founder and CEO, to Guide to HR. So when you're building a startup, there's a lot on your plate product funding, growth but what about your culture? Today, we're going to be diving into why investing or organizational culture early isn't just a nice to have, it's a game changer. We'll talk about why you founders should care about onboarding even when you're only hiring a few people at the start, and how getting this right sets the stage for long-term success. Plus, my favorite topic, communication. We're going to be exploring how to communicate your culture and employee experience during your recruiting process, because the way you attract talent matters just as much as talent itself. So stick around. This is going to be a good one, and today I'm excited to have Lilith Christensen on the call and, lilith, please introduce yourself to the audience.
Speaker 2:Great thanks, guinevere. I'm real happy to be here. So I'm Lilith Christensen. I'm the founder of Human Genuity, which is a consultancy founded on the principles of the fact that people, I think, are the most critical asset to building a business and thinking about that, it's having the right people in the right role with the right skills, and if you don't have that, you're never going to achieve your highest level of business performance. So I work with companies on designing their employee programs, and particularly founders that started onboarding and go all the way through everboarding.
Speaker 1:I love that topic and if the listeners have been listening to the last few podcasts recently, you're going to find that, although AI has taken off, we're actually talking more about people and relationships than ever before, and it is such a key thing in regards to scaling your business even if you are a small startup in the AI space and feel like you might be able to grow into a $100 million with 10 people on your staff, right, it's all about the people, your staff, right, it's all about the people. So let's talk about this.
Speaker 2:Let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Organizational culture that feels very big company to me, not something that I would necessarily bring to a CEO founder of a startup that has 10, 15 people. Let's break this down and simplify it to why it's important at any size company.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it is starting with that. I completely agree with you, Bonnevier, really, because it is the ethos of the company, right, even if you're smaller. You've got five people. The founder had an idea and they're building that business around it. But behind that idea is how they are going to work, how they make decisions, what's important to them in decision making, and those are all elements of the culture. So it's really important to have that defined at the beginning. Otherwise you might bring in the wrong people that have values that are anti what's going to help support the growth of the business. So it's not always just about skills and what people can bring to the table. That you can see tangibly. It's really important to have that cultural alignment. So if it's not defined at the beginning, you risk a lot of missteps in the hiring process, and so I'm going to play a little devil's advocate.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's your values. Okay, who cares? Like? What does this really mean in regards to? I have five people. I need to focus on the product, the funding, the growth, getting more customers through the door so that I can get more funding and I can continue to grow. Who cares about these values thing? And no, you know, I bake it up and I put it on a wall and then I walk away Like let's actually define a little bit more from your perspective and point of view. When you're dealing with a founder with that attitude or mindset, what, like? What's your first approach or thought?
Speaker 2:Well, they'll need some convincing, that's for sure, and I mean they need some psychology help, like they need to go talk.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. I mean, if they believe that it's just something you slap on the wall, they're going to really never achieve that outcome that they're driving towards. So values, I think, is like the easy definition of it. But it also goes to I think I mentioned this a moment ago like the decision making right. Are they building a company that is very data focused when it comes to making decision, or is this founder more of a fly by the seat of their pants kind of a person?
Speaker 2:Do they like to collaborate more Like understanding that, even if we just started with the founder, and how do they work most effectively? They want to build a business around honoring those pieces that are really successful and then augmenting it with some of the skills or attitudes that may be really different than them, because it's that like holistic approach that can really drive things forward. And I mean the founders have to live the culture. So you know, in that kind of situation, if some, if that founder, doesn't really believe in it, I think it would be talking them through and understanding what's gone wrong so far and really using those like examples that they've lived through in order to show them why they need to spend a little bit more time on the culture.
Speaker 1:Well, even in just like that one moment of talking about how I'm going to, how I'm going to make a decision as a founder for the business, well, the first thing is you need to get that out of your head in order to actually be scalable. You can't replicate that and be a hundred million dollar company and you're still the one making all the decisions. Like people need to know what's important, what to value, how you're doing it and be able to be in line with that. So when you finally relinquish that task or decision or whatever it might be, that they're they're, they're marching in the same path, in the same tune as you, as the founder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, they have to learn, and learn quickly where they can relinquish control, but they have to be able to provide the instructions around what they're looking for, what they expect, and that's what enables them to create a real good work. Synergy.
Speaker 1:So I'd love to get into a real, real world example with you. Where have you seen getting organizational culture done right early on being successful, and where not having it has has really impacted the business and the capability of growing?
Speaker 2:Let me start with the latter where it hasn't gone so well.
Speaker 2:And what was interesting about this organization is it was very multicultural and global and the founder was based in the United States, had brought really different country cultural values between our two lands, and because there wasn't something codified around how the company wanted to engage, particularly around giving and receiving feedback, particularly around giving and receiving feedback, the person that came from France was hearing, oh you know, positive feedback all along in their ears but in reality they were being given feedback around improvement opportunities.
Speaker 2:But it was so nicely sandwiched between those compliments that it never sounded like a criticism or an improvement opportunity to the individual from France. So that showed what they needed was really direct feedback and that was not the culture of the organization. But had it been explicit to them, hey, we act a little differently here. We really want to emphasize the family component and we support people first. And teaching her how they deliver feedback would have gone a long way to not waste six months of the founder kind of beating their head against the wall wondering why the marketing lead was not coming along and developing in the way that they wanted to and it was all really about communication styles that should have been codified as part of the culture.
Speaker 1:Well, and then you probably add some complexity. I presume that she's also English as a second language and that adds even more because you know we say opportunity here and that's our way of basically, like you know, basically telling you you suck and here's your here's where you need to improve, but our nice way of saying it is here's your opportunity to grow, right, yeah, yeah, wow, that is, that is a good lesson learned. And so where have you seen it be successful? Like, how has it actually been help a company amplify their success?
Speaker 2:So when I've seen it be successful, it really has started at the top with the founder and that they are really clear on what those values are and they live them and breathe them and in kind of every action that they do. So this one organization that I've been working with, the work-life balance and the importance of recognizing people have lives outside of when they're in their startup world was really important to this founder and was actually core to some of the business that they were developing. So in thinking about that, the founder really had to be intentional around, even though their brain is always thinking, you know, of new ideas whether they're in the office or not that they couldn't be sending emails at 11 o'clock at night because that would have gone very much against what they were setting out there in terms of having that balance and having some away time. So they took steps themselves to make sure that kind of any emails, even though they were thinking they could jot them down, but everything had a delayed delivery to it.
Speaker 1:I love that feature.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, it's so great, isn't it? In order to to illustrate to their employees that, that they didn't have to answer this right away. They weren't expected to be, you know, on their phones at 11 o'clock at night providing a response back there. Yeah, the organization to grow in a way that was consistent with his values and help them really kind of live part of the product that they were ultimately developing for market.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. And a little side note here if you are a Slack user, it also has that delayed send your message functionality too. So I presume there are a lot of other tools out there that do, but that's one I'm familiar with. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that can be a hard one too, because everybody's got it on their phone. It can pop up all the time. So that's really well.
Speaker 1:That's what the snooze functionality is for you know, like you just like, don't, don't give me anything until I'm back from XYZ, your vacation, or you know, even when I'm traveling for work, I put the little plane on and I snooze it, because now on the plane you can get your internet too. So sometimes that if you're not on the plane for work, you should do that. But yeah, and and and also thinking about how do you create that when you're in different time zones, like you, it might be work time for you, but it might be, dinner time for your team, right?
Speaker 1:Your, your employees. So how do you do it? We're like, okay, even if it's work time for me, I'm still going to delay it and maybe I'll send it at 6am my time, which would be maybe eight or 9am their time. That's a good work time and you know that's yeah, I'm full on. You got to live your values. You got to live it as a leader. You're being watched hardcore and whatever you do, whether it's spoken or unspoken, that is the expectation of what you, what others, should do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly Right. I mean everything is being watched that the founder is doing with a very critical eye and I think, in addition to those actions, I think the words then are the other component to it, right, how that founder communicates and the importance of communicating, kind of the why behind a lot of things as well. If that's the actions are important to see the visual and be able to model that, but the founder really important to see the visual and be able to model that, but the founder really needs to also get into the proper communication around it and understand, provide understanding around the context in order to help people as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember, I mean this. We're not just talking to founders either.
Speaker 1:Like if you're in a small, like a smaller, like a bigger org, where it's not just you as a leader, you have other leaders, like it is your managers too, and your leaders and managers are impacted. I remember my first job out of college where there was this unspoken rule you do not leave until the SVP leaves and my desk was literally right outside his office. I'm new, I'm like you know, entry level. I don't have enough work that's going to make me have to stay for 10 hours a day, but you better believe my butt was in that seat until he left.
Speaker 2:So how did, how did you learn that unwritten rule of one of your?
Speaker 1:Oh, great question. I'm pretty sure someone told me yeah, I think it was like hey, by the way, because you're very visible to him where he's sitting. I think it was like hey, by the way, because you're very visible to him where he's sitting and it would be best for your career that he walks out going home and he still sees you're there.
Speaker 2:So that was good onboarding. Just that one little example that somebody took the time to tell you that, because, I mean, it would have been so easy to say oh, particularly in one's first job right, yes, I finished all my work.
Speaker 1:Awesome, gonna go home now. Yeah, it's five o'clock. That seems reasonable, you know. Let's just say I read a lot of ebooks while I was in that job not the perfect, uh, perfect scenario or perfect employee there, but I got all my work done and then I was just like well, I I've been told not to leave until he does so. I have two hours to kill. I'm just gonna read a book. And look like that was personal development.
Speaker 2:Guinevere yes, it was.
Speaker 1:It was lots of personal development but but that's a great example is that the kind of culture you want to create, even for your entry level roles like? Probably not. I mean, that's hopefully what is not happening post-COVID years. But you know, think about that. Think about you might be slaving away and what are the people around you in your physical setting thinking about that and how is that impacting them and what they're experiencing as an employee for you? So that's another key one there.
Speaker 1:So, as we have so much I want to dive into, but I'd really like to talk about the communication piece here and especially how it ties into recruiting. I think this there's a lost art here of the importance of employer branding from the HR side. We talk about employer branding all the time. Your your branding. We talk about it as talk about employer branding. All the time You're branding. We talk about it as branding. You're branding of your business, who you are as a business, what are you trying to do? Who are the customers or clients you're trying to get? That branding is obviously key because you need money coming through the door, but that branding is also impacting who you're going to bring through the door as your employees, the talent that you're going to get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and that, thinking about you, just like you do for the business, what's your value proposition that you're selling to your customers? You need to define what your employee value proposition is and particularly to help inform that recruiting process, because that then defines how are you going to assess fit for an individual. It needs to align with that how that employee value proposition set up and what's important to the business, but also being able to attract the right types of people. To attract the right types of people which is again why culture is so important to define is because if you defined it well and you're attracting the right kind of talent, you're going to fill those roles much more quickly and the people are going to stay on board or stay with you longer, Right, I think. When there's a small number of people and you're in ramp up, each one of those hires is so critical to get right. Otherwise, that cost to replace them is more than just the dollars associated with recruiting.
Speaker 1:It's all of that lost productivity and as a startup, you don't have that luxury to waste that time and be like, well, that was six months I lost, like, how am I going to get that back? And I want to clarify maybe you'll disagree with this and if you do, let's talk but I want to clarify that this we're not talking about rubber stamping the same type of person. Diversity is still important, even in today's world. What we're talking about is all these two extremes. You want to treat your employees and you want your culture to be like a family base that I got my own problems with this terminology, but I'm just going to use this as two extremes family base or cutthroat. I'm going to kill you so I can step over you and be higher than you.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Those are two very extreme types of cultures and that's where you want to be able to understand where does, where does these candidates fit in your culture? Because if they're going to come in and be ruthless but you're, you have a group of family related. We're helping each other, we're lifting each other up, I'm helping you climb up the mountain, you're helping me climb up the mountain Then the cutthroat person is not going to be healthy and you're going to create a really hostile environment for everybody in it and you're going to probably have some lawsuits and loss of time and money. Like, oh, I could just see all the red flags right there, right.
Speaker 2:But also too as a startup.
Speaker 1:most startups are very, very fast paced and you bringing someone in from um I don't know an old school grandfather type company where it's like it's fine if you know you put up your feet for a half an hour and take a nap and you know you might need to take a longer lunch or you got stuck in traffic or whatever. That's not going to fly in a startup world, right. So understanding those kinds of qualities and what you need in your business is where it's going to really help you thrive to find the right people.
Speaker 2:But what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? In that? I wanted to kind of clarify what we're talking about in a cultural fit. So I agree with you wholeheartedly around the importance of you don't want to be hiring clones of each other, because you need to have diversity of thinking, diversity of experience that comes into your organization. That that's what helps your product be better, your customers have better experiences is because you're bringing in people that have different experiences that you're bringing to the table.
Speaker 2:That said, though, like those cultural elements, like you know, are we cutthroat and super direct and that's how we live our business, or are we more, like you said, congenial, familial? We want to talk about things a lot, we want to collaborate a lot, and it takes a little longer. So I won't go your extreme of the old man with his feet sitting up, but even you know those nuances and I've experienced this myself, where it was a merger and there was a west coast west coast culture and an east coast culture. Oh gosh, east coast was much more around, like, used to being professional all the time and wearing suits and being much more methodical in the decision making, very formal, structured, very formal, whereas the West Coast folks that came in were like, oh no, we're going to make a decision now and then, if that fails, that's OK, we'll do the next thing tomorrow. And it was so the pace was able to balance.
Speaker 2:But those were really different styles, particularly like how they interpreted a failure or something not going right. You know, the West Coast culture was already used to saying that, oh well, we just learned from that, now we'll just do something different, whereas the folks on the East Coast were like, okay, we got to understand why. Let's get behind it, you know, and then make sure we don't make the same mistake. But I digress, yeah, story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's such a great example, and so I think we both digress because we wanted to clarify what I really wanted to clarify what we meant Communication, and so let's talk about communication.
Speaker 2:So now you know you're the.
Speaker 1:You know formal attire or the. You know surfer dude or whatever. Right Now you know that. Know surfer dude or whatever. Right now you know that. How does that go into communication? What? What does the structure look like? What are some ideas and thoughts that our listeners could take away with?
Speaker 2:let me rephrase that what our listeners can go away from this podcast and take action on and do you want me to specifically focus on, or at least start with, the recruiting part of the process?
Speaker 2:because let's do that I think that's where we began. So what I think is really important around communication during the recruiting process is first, that it helps you attract the right type of people that are going to be a good fit for the organization and bring something new to the team that helps fill it out. That's kind of the beginning points, but then the nuance behind that, where what is communicated is really important is, I think, the easiest way I describe it, as is being sure, you're communicating the way it is today versus the aspirational, because I think at the recruiting point in time it is so easy to want to talk about how it's going to be or when we achieve X, this is how this will work and it's a selling process, right Recruiting is a sales interaction between the company and the candidate.
Speaker 2:So there is a tendency to want to just be positive and always talk about the great things, but that can actually cause so much damage, because that's the time then when somebody comes in, they're expecting the moon and then in reality you know people are bringing their own laptops, they're not given one, they're working on top of cardboard boxes, they don't have a standing desk. I mean, those are just some silly examples, but too many of those disconnects is what's going to have somebody leave you. So during the recruiting process you really want to talk about like how it is now and how you aspire to be, and be really clear about the differences.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I would even add if you're not talking about what it is now and what are the opportunities, your challenges, however, you want to talk about the problems in your org, then how are you really interviewing their experiences and their skill set to then help you not only identify those opportunity challenges but actually solve them right? If everything's roses and sunshine and unicorns, then you know that's not always great and I find that, like with startups, I tend to really try to be maybe too blunt, but I'm like look, you're coming into an org. If you're a process driven person that wants to come in and be given the process and you follow the process to a T and that's your jam, awesome, do not. Let's stop the conversation right now. Right, because I basically am going to fly you to the moon and expect you to build a neighborhood and there might be some, like you know, water pipes and maybe some roads, but guess what? I'm pretty sure that we're not done right and they're probably not in the right location.
Speaker 1:You're going to have to start all over again, right? Like, is that appetizing to you? Is that exciting to you? Great, let's continue the conversation. If not, this is not the right fit. Right, and so it's okay. What you've just done is you've gifted yourself, your team and that candidate time. When can you give someone time and it is in that moment to making sure they're aligned with where you're at today and have the right skill sets and appetite to help you get to your vision of tomorrow.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right and I know we. I don't want to like take us off track on a recruiting, but I have to say in that situation, like what is also important on communication is communicating the why behind why this individual is not a good fit. Don't just start ghosting them because you figured it out in your head and you don't want to waste time. Really you don't want to waste their time either. Well, make that a gift to them. Let them know you know that we're ending the process and don't forget about them because at some point during the growth of the company you may be much more structured and have more process in place and it could be the right time for that person's skills. Right? You don't have to approach every new job posting as a completely new search, right?
Speaker 1:So don't worry about those folks. Exactly, exactly. So other ideas or thoughts like I think about when I think about communication, I think about the career website. What are we saying and sharing and talking about there and helping our candidates understand who we are as a business and what it would be like to work for us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the career website is an easy place to start, or an important place to start, although I might actually back it up, because some organizations may be so new in their growth they don't really have a very robust website. You know what that's okay.
Speaker 1:Or even a tool to support the website, right Like they might not have an ATS platform applicant tracking system platform yet.
Speaker 2:Right? Most probably do not. Then let's make sure in the on the company's LinkedIn profile, in the about us section, give it two paragraphs in terms of what it's like to work here and what we're looking to accomplish as a business and what makes for a successful candidate. So it doesn't have to be a lot of information, nor does it have to be put into a super professional, fancy applicant tracking system or a whole career portal. But make that information available, whether it's on your LinkedIn page or whether it's if it's on your corporate website, if you're attracting talent that way, and then website if you're attracting talent that way, and then also make sure you're putting it in that job posting. Always include some sections around the organization, the experience, what it's like to work here and I would even say like what success looks like for us too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I feel like we could probably talk for hours on this, but I just looked at the time and we're at time. Any last thoughts or tips you want to throw out to the audience before we wrap up tonight?
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually. So one thing we've talked a lot about the beginning of the process. So, whether it's the recruiting process or the new hire onboarding piece as the company grows and scales, the one thing I would like your founders to take away is the importance of thinking about those next growth moments in the exact same way. You are at the very beginning. You want to really resell your employees on their role, their contribution to the business, so that they can grow with you. If you are stagnant on engaging them, you're only spending time at the front end when you bring them right on board and not thinking about well, now that they're getting promoted, or now that I'm transferring them to another line of business, what's new for them? How do expectations change? Who do they need to know in the company that they didn't have to interact with before? You really want to pay attention, not only at the very beginning of the process or the career development, but each one of those inflection points too. So that's that's what I'd like folks to take away.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and, lilith, you have so much more skills and experience and knowledge to share. How does someone reach out to you if they want to learn more and connect with you?
Speaker 2:Well, they can go to my website, which is humangenuitycom, and that is with a hyphen in the middle between human and human and share it in the link below of our description of our conversation Exactly Great.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, Lilith, for your time. It was a pleasure and I hope those listening got several takeaways I feel like you probably did and we'll see you on the next podcast. Have a great one everyone. Thanks, Gwynnevere, Thank you.
