Why HR Skips the One Step That Could Fix Engagement with Kelly Price

Recognition isn’t a perk; it’s a system signal. We sit down with Kelly Price, founder of ThriveHR, to unpack why so many companies chase “engagement” while skipping the first principle: measure how work truly happens, then align rewards, roles, and routines to that reality. Kelly blends hospitality, psychology, and hard‑won HR experience to show how culture improves when operations and people practices stop living in separate worlds.

We start with the big blind spot: leaders try to fix feelings without fixing the system. Kelly explains how an HR audit stabilizes compliance risk and sets a baseline for smarter change, then makes the case for simple, disciplined metrics like ENPS run quarterly and sliced by manager, tenure, and team. Numbers alone aren’t enough, so we dig into one‑on‑ones that employees own, turning meetings into real feedback loops and early-warning systems for friction. From there, we tackle “right people, right seat,” clear job design, and the COO and HR partnership that removes blockers, sequences work correctly, and invites the frontline into problem solving.

AI gets a reality check. Drafts and templates help, but outsourcing judgment creates false confidence. Kelly shares why business fluency, not dashboards, earns HR a seat at the table, and how to give executives candid, respectful perspectives that actually change behavior. We also get specific about incentives: when values say collaboration but comp pays for solo wins, trust dies. Opaque bonus plans, golden handcuffs, and celebrating the brilliant jerk all erode engagement. The fixes are clarity, transparency, targeted recognition, and the courage to change plans when outcomes show they’re wrong.

By the end, you’ll have a practical blueprint: audit first, define how the business makes money, align incentives with desired behaviors, upgrade meetings, measure engagement simply and often, and rebuild onboarding so people know expectations, goals, and leadership style from day one. Subscribe, share with a leader who needs a systems lens on HR, and leave a review with one misaligned signal you plan to change next.

Transcript

Meet Kelly Price Of ThriveHR

Career Roots In Service And Psychology

Nancy Nouaimeh 0:14

Welcome back to the Excellence Foresight, where we rethink leadership and culture through the lens of systems, not guesswork. I'm Nancy Naime. And today we're asking a deceptively simple question about something every organization claims to care about, its people and their engagement. Our episode today is to help you unpack a question most organizations overlook. YHR skips the one step that could fix engagement. And I want to begin with one sentence that frames our entire conversation. You cannot reward what you have never truly understood. And I know this from my quality background. Many organizations they want better engagement, stronger culture, higher motivation. Yet, they've never measured their current state, never mapped their people systems, and even never examined whether the way they recognize people actually aligns with how works gets done. To explore this, I'm very pleased to be joined today by an expert who brings clarity and discipline to the HR space, Kelly Price from ThriveHR. And let me tell you a little bit about Kelly. Kelly is a dynamic leader. Her professional journey started at Merriott International, which ignited her passion for positively impacting people's lives. A core value she carries into her career work. And let me tell you a little bit more about her company, the ThriveHR. Kelly founded the Thrive HR, which is a tailored HR consulting and outsourcing services company, specializing in fractional HR leadership, compliance, and strategic talent management for small and medium-sized businesses. And you're gonna hear more about ThriveHR from Kelly here today. And Kelly understands why so many recognition practices failed. Not because HR is wrong, but because organizations reward behaviors without understanding the system underneath them. Kelly, welcome to the Excellence Foresight. Thanks, Nancy, for having me. Glad to be here. I'm very pleased to have you here with us today. So let me let's dive into the first segment of our episode today. Sounds good. So Kelly, you've dedicated your career to HR in environments where systems, behaviors, and culture intersect. What originally pulled you into HR and what made you stay?

Kelly Price 2:29

I like I said, I was like you said, I was in um hospitality. And when I was about 22 years old, I was living in Miami and working for Marriott and loving it, but really missing my family. So I moved back to Kansas City to be close to them. And I got a position in recruiting, actually at a staffing agency. So that was an opportunity to help people find careers. I was working in a light industrial staffing agency. So we primarily worked with warehouses and manufacturing. And it was, it really was truly rewarding helping people find a way to have income, to provide for their families, to do something that they really loved. And I enjoyed the pieces of the puzzle and putting them together and meeting people and helping them figure out what their talents are and then helping them find a role that meant something to them. And it just kind of expanded from there. I went over to a corporation after that in a recruiting role and then expanded through the HR industry and the field and in multiple different industries from there. But what kept me there really was working with people and helping make things easier. The service aspect of Marriott, which was helping people have a better day, making their stay better, making their trip better, whether it was because they were on vacation in Miami or they were, you know, doing business when I was in Dallas. Um, I found a lot of joy in just making things a little bit easier and a little bit better for people. And recruiting led to that, and then definitely getting into HR. So mixing that service um aspect with business. And then my original love was actually psychology. So I really found that human resources is truly a mix of psychology, business, and hospitality. And um, it's just been really a ton of fun being able to help business owners and leaders and employees and people in the organization do things in a more professional and and um positive way. So they want want to be there every day because we work because we have to, not because we want to, or at least most of us do.

The Hidden Burnout Of HR

Nancy Nouaimeh 4:51

Well, that's very interesting. And I think we we say like uh um in a lot of businesses, we should be in the business of people, making people happy, making people willing to come to work every day and and do the right for things for us. So that's really I think what what makes people what makes businesses really unique. And um, you are in HR now and you founded your company. Now we expect HR to be strategic, operational, digital, and human all at once. And that's that's a big challenge. So, what do you see as the most underestimated challenge HR leaders face right now? The one thing that you feel needs really to be tackled.

Kelly Price 5:29

I think that's an important question because uh, like you said, HR people do wear a whole bunch of different hats, and I think the biggest issue that many of us face are honestly is the ability to not internalize all of it. And ultimately that does benefit the organization because we can stay longer and do a better job. But many of us, including myself, hit such an extreme level of burnout either during or post-COVID that we had to leave the working world. Honestly, I couldn't function. I was in such a bad state of burnout in 2022. And I was lucky enough that my husband was very supportive and wonderful, and I was able to stop working and take a little bit of a break and then go out on my own. So I would say, you know, for those leaders and business owners that are working with HR people, don't forget that they're people too. You know, we're employees also. And I encourage the HR professionals out there listening to not forget that you're an employee too. You also are supposed to be taking care of those or taking advantage of those resources that you're offering to everyone else and not taking advantage of yourself. Um, find a way to have some self-care and some some time for yourself and and stop just just doing for everyone else.

Where AI Helps And Where It Misleads

Nancy Nouaimeh 7:01

That's a good advice, I think. Um, Kelly, thank you for that. And I think everyone in the organization is to be taken care of. But yeah, definitely we forgot the people who are usually supposed to be taking care of others. Yes. Um, and we see like now these days, like everybody's talking about AI. This morning, I was um I was I was reading about uh an event, and they said, I mean, the house was full because we put AI in the titles now. AI is very important and it's transforming recruitment, transforming performance management, employee um listening, the tests we do, right? The sentiment analysis and all of this. But where do you see AI creating false confidence rather than real insight for HR? Because we believe that we're gonna get everything good from HR, but not necessarily. So, where do you see the gap in in HR AI tools now?

Kelly Price 7:53

Yeah, I think that there are some really great opportunities to be able to use AI from an administrative standpoint. I think it can help you write job descriptions. I think it can help you come up with systems and ways to do things better and faster. But I think it can create false confidence when you are using that, but you don't truly understand what HR could and should be doing. This is the core of my business, to be honest, to educate founders and lead business leaders on what HR could and should be doing. So I have a great personal example for this. I am a 40-something woman, and me and ChatGPT had a very long conversation a couple weeks ago about what supplements I should be taking and how I should be helping ensure that I don't get paramental pausal weight gain and all of those things that women of my age are dealing with. And it did a fine job. And I brought that report to my doctor, and she said, I appreciate the fact that you are proactively working on this, and this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. I wouldn't take this at this time. So it's the same thing. You can't, if you know nothing about HR and you think, oh, AI'll just do it, it it'll do some of it, but you have to understand what you're even trying to accomplish before you can just say, let a machine do it. Garbage in, garbage out. It's the same old adage. Yes, yeah.

SMEs, Ownership Of Culture, And Gaps

Nancy Nouaimeh 9:35

No, absolutely. So your story resonates very well with me, Kelly. And I know I think what you said, garbage in, garbage out, definitely. Where sometimes you ask AI questions and we expect them to give us the answer. And AI will never challenge and tell you what really you you need to do. So he gives you options, he gives you things, and finally it might not be the right thing for you. And I think we have to be very careful with AI and how we're interpreting and what questions we ask. So I think we've all experiencing uh similar uh scenarios. And then if I go back a little bit to your core business now, Kelly, you mentioned that you are helping businesses, small and medium businesses. And I think um they rely heavily on fractional HR, right? And I think small businesses need that support, uh all kinds of fractional COO, HR, uh CFOs, all of these. Uh so uh what's one HR misunderstanding you see most often in SMEs that closed culture or engagement? What is what's the problem? Why ASM SMEs cannot really get uh uh people engagement right from the first time?

Kelly Price 10:40

A couple things. First, that they don't have anyone who actually takes ownership of the culture. Um, it's like again, when everyone owns something, no one owns something. Um, so not saying that HR should be the owner of that management and leadership, but should be the owner of it, but HR can help you manage it. And um, you know, often small businesses have someone air quote doing HR and it's really just benefits and payroll and maybe a couple of other things from new hire and you know, getting everybody in the system, those types of things that are truly administrative. But having a partner who one understands your business, because that is critical. You cannot be a successful HR business partner if you do not understand the business of the organization and how they make money and what's important to the leadership and the difference between the desired culture and the actual culture, um, because those are two often very different things, then you can't move the needle. I think a lot of small business leaders, they may have been a part of the growth of the business. They may have been part of the inception of the business. Maybe they're buddies with or cousins with or brothers or sons of the business founder. And so they could not have ever necessarily been set up for success at the level of leadership that they need to be at right now. So taking that intentional time to one, understand what the culture should be and how and how what are some actual things you're going to do to make that happen. So if you want your culture to be openness and flexibility, then you have to make sure that your employees, one, know that that's your culture, two, have an actual open door policy that is executed, have managers who are emotionally intelligent enough to have an open door policy and receive both upward and downward feedback and give both of those things as well, and then actually be flexible. That's a that's like a bad word anymore, almost. It's like COVID forced us all into it, and now people a lot, a lot of people think um flexibility and accountability are mutually exclusive, but they're not. They're really, really not. So walking the walk, talking the talk, and and being intentional about it every single day is very, very critical. That actual execution of that, I could talk for about another two hours on how you actually do that. But those just those key things and understanding them is incredibly important to get started.

Nancy Nouaimeh 13:25

Yeah, and you mentioned that the culture, I mean the to-be state, right? What we want to achieve, but how we want the culture to be. And your examples are all about behaviors, right? Leadership behaviors, they need to walk the talk, like you said. But we we have sometimes also leaders who have negative behavior, and that behavior really also is felt by the people, and and they they have the wrong example in front of them. So, what do you do usually when you see leaders who have that negative behavior, especially when they are founders? Sometimes we we see challenges on the top. How do you bridge that?

Measure Before You Manage: Audits And ENPS

Kelly Price 13:57

It's really funny that you asked that because I had a former client tell me just last week that he appreciates my ability to tell someone that they are the problem in a very kind and respectful way, which I take a lot of pride in that because it's not easy, it's not easy to do, and I don't enjoy it by any means, but um taking accountability is incredibly important in any role in your life or work or anywhere, especially I think in the world that we live in right now. If you if you can't, you self-management is is critical. Um, so I think you have to look at how did this person get into leadership? I mean, you really have to peel back the onion here. Because if you've got a founder who is the problem, that's real challenging. If you have the founder's leadership team that are the problem, that's a little easier, still really hard. But you have to go back to where did this start and why are you having this reaction to whatever the situation is. If we've all had clients, if you're a consultant, that you think this business is so successful in spite of you. Um, but really getting to know the person and figuring out what's important to them, I think is really helpful. So, like I had a client the other day, I just said, I need to know what's important to you and what isn't important to you. And what do you not care about? And he was like, What do you mean what I don't care about? And I'm like, what do you literally think I don't give a shit about that? Like if someone walks into your office and they ask you a question, what is that stuff? And it started a really interesting conversation because I was able to understand what his focus is. And then he has an employee who's been driving him crazy and in his opinion, isn't doing anything meaningful for the business, which is actually not true. But I was able to give her that feedback and say, here's why you're not feeling valued. Because you're telling him stuff that he doesn't care about, and he doesn't care about it because he owns the business and he shouldn't care about it, and you should just be doing this and talking to him about stuff that moves the needle, which is what he's directly told you in the past. So, anyway, I feel like I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent, but the core of that is figuring out what's important to the person who's having the issue. And perhaps they need to do a better job of communicating that. Um I encourage everyone I work with, whether they work for me or with me or they're a client, to just be very open about how they are as a leader and a coworker. Because if you can say, I am very direct, I feel that I am very busy all of the time, and I don't have a lot of time for details. Just tell me the stuff I have to know. And I might give you feedback that I don't care about that if you tell me something that I don't need to know. If you told me that before, I am much less humiliated and feeling bad about myself afterwards because I knew you were gonna do that. If that makes sense.

Nancy Nouaimeh 17:11

Yeah, and it does. In fact, um, when you're talking, I'm just thinking about many. I mean, a few times we we we had episodes where we talked about self-awareness of leaders, it's very important, not only the leaders, right? It's everyone needs to have a good self-awareness and be able to communicate that. And um, in leadership courses, we teach the Zhuhari window, which is about how people, you know, like how much you know about yourself, how much others know about you, how much you show to others. And I think part of the good relations we build with others is to be able to have all of these elements and figure out where we are and what they know about us and be able to course-correct a little bit and have those hard conversations. I think it's very important to have those hard conversations, people to be able to move forward. And and you mentioned accountability, Kelly. And I think uh when it comes to accountability with quality, we say we we can't manage what we don't measure, right? So when it comes to HR and the reality, do we really measure that? Do we know that do organizations um do what it need what it's needed really to make sure that they know the reality of the HR? Do they do audits or do they jump straight away to solutions without really understanding their reality?

Operational Friction And Right Seat Method

Kelly Price 18:19

Yeah, no, I think most organizations really do jump to solutions, especially when it comes to HR, because one the general population doesn't know employment law, first of all. So a lot of things are fairly obvious what you should do in HR in dealing with people. However, there are these caveats that will get you sued and lose a whole bunch of money and waste a whole bunch of your time if you don't know them. So, you know, I appreciate you bringing up the audit. We start every engagement with an audit. And the reason why we do that is because we want to make sure that your foundation is built so that your business can be successful. Because somebody sues you because you didn't give them a leave that you didn't know existed, or you had them sign a non-compete that's completely illegal. These things have nothing. Well, the non-compete has more to do with your business than the leave, but many of these things have nothing to do with your business and what you produce or sell or service, and they will take your time and your money if you don't pay attention to them. So, you know, we want to help you build that foundation. And then you want to pull the thread all the way through your business. So, what is what does your business do? How do you make money? What is important to you? And what are your business goals? And does everyone in the organization that's doing the work that is supposed to be achieving those goals understand what those goals are and what their role is in the organization to help you achieve those goals? So it's very easy to skip steps and it's very easy to miss things because you're moving fast. I'm I'm very guilty of that. I think any entrepreneur can say that they're very, very guilty of that. I have a friend, I'm I'm thinking about expanding my business into COO services, and I'm very excited about it. And we just had a meeting earlier today about building a business plan. And I'm like, I didn't build a business plan when I started Thrive HR. I just went. I just started telling people who needs HR services, this is what I do, and then you're kind of like running backwards. So we're all guilty of it. You're like, maybe I should put some procedures into place.

Nancy Nouaimeh 20:35

Yeah, I think procedures are very, very important. And uh yes, they are. Yeah, definitely. You need to have a baseline, you need to have your procedures, you need to be able to start doing some um checks on the reality and start uh making your baselines for performance and all of this. But um, Kelly, if we if we look a little bit at the organization, and we know that there are issues with engagement. I mean, wherever we go, especially after COVID, engagement is less, and we there's many reasons for that. Now, um, the biggest engagement issue, if it's not really um, I mean, all of these factors, what is the one thing that you think is very important for engagement, which organizations are not doing really well now?

Incentives vs Stated Values

Kelly Price 21:20

Getting to know their people. That's a really easy question for me. Um, getting to know their people and then measuring their satisfaction. Um, I think that there are a lot of a lot of companies do employee satisfaction surveys. There's a bajillion of them out there that you can purchase. Most of your HR systems, if you have them, have some sort of tool to measure. My favorite tool, it's oldie but a goodie, the ENPS. It's a way to ask a question. Once I recommend doing it once a quarter and then digging into it. And you can break it down by department, you can break it down by employee tenure, you can get so much great information and by manager and really look into what is happening and where. Because if your ENPS is low and your turnover is high, you have a pretty easy target. Right there. Um, if your retention is really high and your ENPS is really high, that tells you some good stuff too. But what if your ENPS is really low and your retention is really high? So you still want to dig into that and say, are we paying people exceptionally well, but treating them like crap? And now we've got golden handcuff situation. Um, there's a lot of different ways to look at it. But going back to the original question, how to getting to know your people? One, that's step one. Do ask them uh in a survey form so you have data, because data is is just as important as actual conversations. But I would also ask the managers, are you doing one-on-ones? Are you taking the time to sit down with every single one of your employees and talk to them about what's going on with them? Not necessarily personally, if they want to share that, that's great. But how are they doing? What do they need? What are they working on? Where do they need help? What could you do better as a manager? And I often encourage my clients to have the one-on-ones be the employees' time, not the manager. Manager doesn't need one more thing on their list to do. And the time should really be for the employees to come to their manager and tell them what they need. So setting that expectation and then the employees feel some ownership as well in the fact that they do have control over their own destiny. They're not, they're not just robots pushing whatever button their manager tells them, um, and giving them that openness and flexibility and psychological safety, if you will, to be able to share with their manager when there's something that they need or they're not getting something, or that they want to grow and learn. It's incredibly important. And it's amazing how quickly people become much happier when they're allowed to raise their hand and say, I need this, and I'm not getting it.

When Praise Backfires

Nancy Nouaimeh 24:15

Yeah, I'm being this the power of speaking up, right? And saying, I mean, what they need from the organization, what are their expectations? And from what you're saying, Kelly, we know we saw that organizations have responsibility, like the leadership have a responsibility towards employee engagement, the manager, direct manager have responsibility towards employee engagement, but also uh there are issues with engagement sometimes that come from operational frictions and from the overall, I mean, I would say the culture in the workplace. So, how do you help leaders see that? And and you mentioned that we want to have a culture which is you're the desired culture. So, how do you work with organizations on that piece?

Earning Influence With Executives

Kelly Price 24:52

Um, yeah, there's a couple ways that I would address that. One, we do something called the right people right seat evaluation. So we're really looking at one, does everybody have job descriptions, which many people think is just a piece of paper, but it's not. If you don't have written down what you're supposed to do and how you're supposed to do it and um what qualifications you need to be able to do this job, it's pretty hard to evaluate that. So we start there and then we start looking at the people that are in those seats and looking at their performance and um determining if they are the right person in the right seat, because you could have the right person in the wrong seat, and that could create some operational friction. I mentioned before that we're spinning up Seat Thrive COO, which I'm very excited about because this is actually exactly what the reason why we're doing it is because HR is really great at it can be, should be really great at help building programs, helping the managers get to know their people, what their talents are, where they're going to be the most successful, and help them put processes in place to be able to get the work done the most efficient way possible. But the COO, that operational piece, we don't have that operational knowledge. Maybe you make water bottles, and I don't know how to make a water bottle, but an operations manager who's an engineer or you know, whatever experience that they may have, they can get in there and look at the actual operational functions and say, oh, you're but you're pushing this button before you're pushing this button, and this is causing this. The other thing, just back to people that we've done, is asked, what meetings do you have? Who's in them, and how often are they? Now, I think most people would probably want to poke me in the eye if I told them they needed to have more meetings, but I'm saying you need to have better meetings, not more meetings, better meetings with the right people and talking about the right things. Yes. So are the right people even in the room for this conversation? So, really thinking about who's interacting, what kind of collaboration are we allowing for? Um, are the managers the only people who get to talk to each other and all these employees just do what the managers tell them and they have all these amazing ideas and they know how to fix the problem and no one's asking. So it really truly has to be a partnership between operations and human resources to be able to solve a problem like that.

Nancy Nouaimeh 27:22

Um, yeah, I totally agree with you. And you're talking, and I'm just thinking about um what we do also, like um up in operational excellence, right? And and when we want to change the culture, we really need to involve everybody, HR, operations, other departments. Everybody has to be part of finance, everybody. So, but exactly. I think when you talk about people, you need to have HR. And I've seen a lot of sometimes um bridge, I mean, um gaps and a lot of disconnect between HR and other functions. And I like your approach of having COO working with HR, like partnering uh to make to make a difference in the organization. And and Kelly, when um I think what we've we spoke a little bit about cultures earlier, negative behaviors, but when values uh say one thing but incentives reward something different, uh, which message usually you see employees follow?

Rebuilding HR Systems From Scratch

Kelly Price 28:13

Generally, I'm gonna say the compensation one. Is I mean, that's I feel like that's pretty standard that people are gonna do what brings home the most money. But I would also ask that company, what's your turnover? Because how many people have we all talked to, especially in any sort of commissioned or bonus role that says this plan is the worst, and it doesn't actually reward what we're doing, or it doesn't make sense because part of my incentive plan is completely out of my control. Or it's even I have a client that I worked with recently and did an audit and found that the only person in the entire organization that understood the bonus plan was the CEO. And he had 60 people in his organization, and 50% of them were on this incentive plan. So it's there's no clarity around it. Um I heard somebody say the other day, this I feel like this tracks so much with this. I saw um like a meme, a video that the the female, the woman said, it's amazing how many people worry about how they look, but they don't worry about what they say or how they act. And it really was such a mic drop moment. And I think it applies to values versus compensation as well. I think you really have to think, what are you incentivizing? If you're doing a team incentive, are you actually incentivizing everyone to work together? Or are you punishing the people who are working really hard and not holding accountable the people who are doing nothing? Um, if you have individual incentives, are you creating a negatively competitive workplace? Neither one of those things are right 100% of the time, but it's all about what values are you trying to create? How are you incentivizing it, and then how are you communicating it and make sure making sure people understand what they're supposed to be doing and how they're supposed to be doing it?

Nancy Nouaimeh 30:15

Absolutely, because sometimes we create systems, they create negative behaviors, negative values. So it's very important for the organizations to keep evaluating what they're doing and the policies they put in place and the systems they put in place, because otherwise, definitely we we see sometimes uh recognition which becomes harmful, like recognition systems become harmful for the organization to create that uh negative competitiveness even for between departments.

Kelly Price 30:39

Now, uh, and just really quickly with that, too. It's always unintentional. No one creates a bonus plan to piss off their employees. So going back to employee feedback, you have to ask your people, what do you think about this? Especially if no one's meeting the incentives or people are blowing them out of the water, or some people are doing great and some people are doing terrible. Every scenario, ask them, what do you think of this? Are you happy with this compensation plan? And then get over it when they tell you no and change it.

Closing Reflections And Listener Invite

Nancy Nouaimeh 31:10

I think we leaders need to listen. I think this is also one of the things, right? Like when we ask questions and we have the answer, we need to listen to that. Uh and um, I think um what organizations usually do also is that um, like you said, no one has a bad intention and no one does something which believe it's gonna have a negative impact. So I think it's a dialogue, the conversation in the organization is usually really what makes things work or or doesn't work. 100%. And um just a quick follow-up question: under what conditions does praise reduce engagement instead of increasing it? How can you give us a couple of examples?

Kelly Price 31:48

Sure. Um praising everything. You if you praise everything, nothing is special. If you praise nothing, everything is terrible. Also praising the wrong people. Again, it's it all goes back to communication with your employees and understanding what's going on on the team. Because maybe you have someone who's exceptionally talented, but such a jerk, and you're not paying attention, and you're not paying attention to what's going on in your team, and you're praising and lifting this person up, and all these other people are so mad and so unhappy, and they're amazing, but they're gonna quit because this is the behavior that's being reinforced and rewarded. So, again, it all goes back to how well do you know your people?

Nancy Nouaimeh 32:39

I'm gonna throw a question at you, Kelly. It all goes back to leadership, right? So, leadership are the one giving their approval, designing, authorizing things. What makes I mean, how can we change the leadership behavior to not have these variations and to stick to systems and listen to HR people maybe?

Kelly Price 33:02

I I think one for HR people specifically, the best advice I could give to any HR person ever is understand how the business makes money. Understand how the business works. If you do not understand that, you cannot be successful. And no one in that leadership team will respect you if you don't understand the business. So that's in my opinion, number one. Again, accountability. You have to do your part to be respected and be able to make a difference. Two, once you can do that, you have you should be building strong and good relationships with the leaders. Something that I learned early on in talking with executives is that you cannot be scared to give them feedback. I hate the word feedback, to be honest. I think it's, I feel like for me it has a negative connotation. But I like to ask leaders when I'm in a situation that I need to tell them that they're the problem, that I ask permission. May I give you, may I share my thoughts? I never say can I give you feedback? Like I said, I don't like that line. Uh, it's a personal thing. Can I share my thoughts? Can I say something that you might not like, but I want to give you a different perspective because I don't think what you're doing, I think the outcome you're getting is not what you're intending. And then I share my thoughts. And sometimes it's you're being a really big jerk, or what you're doing is the same thing over and over and over again, and you're expecting different results. Why are we doing that? So being able to have those conversations and get to know them and get them to trust you because you do understand the business and they know that you're you're trying to be their partner or you are their partner, so you can give them the feedback that they need to hear. Some people are just never going to change, and that is what it is. But I have yet at this point to have somebody tell me no when I ask if I can share my perspective. And even if they get mad, they generally walk away and reflect and come back and appreciate the fact that I had the courage to say that to them. Because as the owner, the CEO, the founder, an executive, not very many people feel comfortable saying, I don't think you're right. I think you're wrong. And I think you should consider X, Y, and Z. So work on your relationships with your leaders, HR people, so you can make a difference. Because you can. You just have to get in the right frame of mind with them.

Nancy Nouaimeh 35:39

Absolutely. And I think that that's a great advice. Thank you very much, Kelly. And as we come close to this uh to the end of this episode, Kelly, I have a final question for you. And uh, if you could rebuild HR systems up to recognition from scratch, based on what truly drives sustainable excellence, and we're talking about excellence foresight here today. What stays, what changes, and what disappears entirely for you?

Kelly Price 36:03

This is literally my favorite thing to do and what I do in my business every day. So I love this question. Um, it would start with uh making sure that the people who are in leadership positions and decision-making positions care. If you I used to have something, well, I still use it, but the GSF, it's called the give a shit factor. Is it high or low? If your GSF is low, you gats to go, basically. So making sure first, is everybody in the room, do they care? Are we gonna do the things that need to be done? And then it's a lot about communication, it's a lot about education. We start with hiring, we start with how are we talking to people about the business, how do we want to represent our organization and make sure we're doing that out into the world to attract the right people into the organization. And then we're gonna build a really incredible onboarding program. And it doesn't have to be expensive or fancy or long or any of those things. It just has to be meaningful. So making sure when somebody joins your organization, they know what is expected of them. They know how the business makes money, they know what the business goals are, they know how their manager chooses to lead, and they're making a decision to work for that organization based on the fact that that's going to be a good fit for them. And then the manager continues to get to know and develop that employee and we hold them accountable, we give them the flexibility that they need to be able to be a successful human, just not employee. Accountability and flexibility do go together. Um, we continuously compensate them in a way that is fair in the market and equitable within the organization. We promote from within, we refer great people into the organization, and we help people grow and lead. And it's a successful company. There's obviously a lot more into that, but I think really that integration and that onboarding piece and representing yourself and then continuing to be the leader that you want to report to through the entire life cycle is really going to create a great organization where people want to go and stay.

Nancy Nouaimeh 38:13

I think it's important to make people feel that they are home. I mean, they are really happy where they are to stay. And I like that you've highlighted that leadership style is a choice, right? Leaders need to have that uh intentional thought and decide which type of leaders they want to be. So, Kelly, thank you so much for bringing such clarity to a topic many organizations treat as simple, emotional, or intuitive. HR is very important to every organization. And today you reframed recognition for what it truly is a signal inside a system, right? Not a standalone gesture. We can't just do recognition alone. And to be able to engage people, we have to do it right. And without baselines, recognition creates distortion. Without operational clarity, it creates contradiction. And I think your approach to having the COO work with HR, I think it's it's a great initiative because that's how you're gonna make a difference absolutely. Um is there anything else you would like to share before I wrap up uh today's episode?

Kelly Price 39:10

No, just don't be afraid to say I think I might need HR. It's I promise it'll make a difference in your business and call me, call someone, we'd love to help.

Nancy Nouaimeh 39:21

Great. Thank you very much again, Kelly. And that brings us back to the heart of this episode. Excellence is not an event, it's the outcome of aligned systems, aligned behaviors, and aligned leadership. Kelly, thank you again for being here today and to everyone listening. If this conversation gave you a new lens on HR, culture or recognition, would love to hear your thoughts. Like this episode or share it with a leader or colleague who needs to hear it. And tell us in the comments what you thought about it. Your insights help us shape better conversations and a better future of work. This was the Excellence Foresight. I'm Ninsy Naemi. Until next time.