Hiring Your First 5 People Without Regret

This week, I sat down with the brilliant @Sarah Lamontagne, Founder of @Montagne Motion Consulting, to dive into what really matters when founders make those all-important first hires.

Sarah’s seen it all, from prisons to AI scaleups, and brings some refreshing honesty, and tonnes of experience to bear hiring, culture, and building the foundations for a people-first business.

Some personal highlights from our conversation:
 ✅ Why founders waste time (and budget) trying to DIY their early hires.
 ✅ The real cost of a 5-stage interview process (and why it needs to die).
 ✅ How finance and HR should actually collaborate (hint: start with muffins).
✅ What culture really is, and why Slack emojis don’t count.
✅ Why every founder needs to think about succession planning before they think they’re ready.

Transcript

Adam Cooper (00:01.867)

Okay, so today I'm joined by Sarah La Montagna, founder of Montagna Motion Consulting. Sarah's journey has taken her across the talent acquisition landscape and so really looking forward to discussing this one. So Sara, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show, how are doing?

Sarah (00:21.666)

Thank you very much, Adam. Very well. Thank you on this very signed spring life morning.

Adam Cooper (00:26.433)

Excellent. Yes, it's the sun shining quite rarely. So this is good. This is a good start. let's start with your journey. So maybe if you could just give us a bit of a background of how you went. I think I saw you were leading global talent teams to today. You've launched your fractional HR consultancy. So it'd be great to hear a little bit about your journey.

Sarah (00:30.734)

Good start.

Sarah (00:47.828)

Yeah, absolutely. So like so many of us in talent acquisition, I started off at an agency, very brutal. was one of those 60 business development calls a day, constant rejection, very sort of in the office from half eight, out of the office at half six, just a grind. And realized very quickly that wasn't for me being rejected 60 plus times a day. Wasn't very good for my ego. So decided it was thank you very much, but let's try internal.

And they very kindly said, right, let's put you with one of our clients and the rest is history. So effectively from that point worked my way internally everywhere from prisons to universities to not-for-profit, government, private tech, the works. So really had a broad spectrum.

did that for several years actually and really enjoyed, I was a career contractor and I really enjoyed that because effectively it was able to really give me exposure to a variety of different industries, but also to see what works well in a business and what doesn't work. And I think from that, it took me to sort of the biggest role that I had, which was a global head of talent running a team of 10. And this was just around the post COVID market. So remember that beautiful,

time of booming labor and everything was going rosy and peachy keen and then after that we sort of inflated all of our workforces and then we made them redundant and it was about that point I said you know I've just I think I've seen enough now it's a bit of the culture wars started to begin with employers bringing everybody back into the offices and checking times of coming in and going out and it was sort of like no I've no no thank you I do not want this and decided to

start at that point my own little consulting business.

Adam Cooper (02:38.925)

Okay, brilliant. That's a great journey and very interesting environments, I'm sure, to sort of see how prisons work from a talent perspective must have been fascinating.

Sarah (02:44.046)

Mmm.

Sarah (02:49.076)

It really was and it's a very interested, think a lot of people within talent acquisition are, but the interested in the psychology of how humanity works. And honestly, the prisons were one of my favorite roles, really incredibly horrific, incredibly sad in many aspects, but incredibly fascinating if I can say that without being too non-empathetic at all.

Adam Cooper (03:15.255)

absolutely. I'm sure. I'm sure. And so you've started your own consultancy. Can you tell us a little bit more about what this consultancy does? What do you specialize in?

Sarah (03:24.202)

Yeah, absolutely. So I've got quite the niche. really, my niche point is working with generally early stage startups, founder only businesses. So my point, I come in effectively when the organization, the startup has just received funding and they say, right, we need to make some critical hires. We need to create benefits. We need stuff, handbooks, need code of conducts. We need a policy suite. We don't know how to do that. Or they've

tried to do it themselves and it's gone horribly, horribly wrong, which is, I'm sure you'll know exactly the same thing, doesn't generally end too well. So at the point where they're really starting to develop their own people and talent side of the business, that's where I come in and that's what I do. So I will work with the founders directly and I will help them to understand what their mission is, what their values should be, what their culture is, and then start hiring for them. Just the first key critical hires and then work on.

the very fun stuff. So it's the benefits and the policies that people will actually read and enjoy. So it's really sort of a founders right hand, I should say.

Adam Cooper (04:35.439)

Hmm. interesting. And what was it that kind of was there a particular aha moment that made you think that, you know, founders need this kind of support? What was it?

Sarah (04:46.156)

Yeah, I think, I think,

Like many things, you see a lot of people doing things and going, dear, that wasn't your best move, was it? That's not very, you need me, you need me to sort this out. I think it was watching founders, a lot of them will try and do it themselves, which if that's their background and they're more than capable, then absolutely grand. But the reality is it isn't their background and they do try and tackle it themselves. And it's just takes up too much time. It's an area that they'll either spend significant amounts of money

on, they've sort of just received funding and they'll, they'll invest huge amounts at either agencies or an RPO setup, RPO provider. And it's extortionate. Some of the fees you're looking at a 20 % agency fee per hire, for example, and you still have to run the, the, the interviews, you still have to run the whole process. So I think for me, it was sort of, hang on, there's a bit of a need in the market here that founders need a one-stop shop. They don't necessarily know where to go or how to do it. They don't know what.

systems are best implemented, they don't know what works for them. without having to go to an RPO provider where you're really sort of guessing, I'm ignoring to see which ones are going to be best for you, or without going to an agency where you still have a lot of that work to do yourself, it seems like a sort of a no brainer to me really. like, well, I can do all of it all in one nice little package.

Adam Cooper (06:13.605)

Okay, very good. I guess what was it, because obviously there's a lot of change and difference between a startup that's just got funding versus a prison. So what was it that kind of, I guess, surprised you most, having shifted across those different contract roles and those different public and private environments to fractional work and this focus on startups? What's been the biggest surprise?

Sarah (06:33.07)

Mmm.

Sarah (06:37.952)

I think the biggest surprise is everything's very contained and controlled in a sort startup environment. And I'll digress on what I mean in that in a minute, but I think ultimately when you've got an established organization, it's very hard to give back. It's very hard to try and change the culture. It's very hard to try and reestablish something. So I think that's where I really enjoy that kind of startup specifically founder only small doesn't necessarily need to be found out only, but we're sort of

talking, you know, five, 20 people max within the organization because you're bringing in a foundation or you're creating it, should say rather, rather than bringing it in. Whereas somewhere like a prison, it's well established. You're going to have to, try and change things. Humans aren't very good at that. We're not, we're not very, ultimately we're not very agile. We don't really like change. like stability. We like to know what we're doing every day and we get sort

complacent and I don't really like that. That's why I was good as a career contractor. I like the diversity, I like the stress to be honest, bit weird but there you go. It keeps me on my feet but it also keeps us, I think, the momentum going in order to sort of change, shift, be flexible when we need and I think having that ability with startups gives me that chance.

Adam Cooper (08:02.373)

Hmm. Interesting. So I'd love to dive in a little bit to what founders typically get wrong or right when they're engaging with you. when you mentioned about the first few hires, and that's the area that you typically focus on, when a founder makes their first few hires, what do they often overlook? What are the sort of the little tips or tricks you can give to the audience? And we do have founders and startups within the audience of this pod.

Sarah (08:09.678)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Adam Cooper (08:30.553)

What are a few tips that, in your experience, founders often overlook and you could advise?

Sarah (08:37.802)

Absolutely. I think the first one, the key critical one is do not underestimate how much just talent acquisition, just recruitment is going to chew up your life. It is huge. It is just a mammoth task that if you try and tackle yourself, be aware that that will, that will consume a lot of your mindset, your energy, your time, your resources. That's number one. Number two,

The most efficient and effective way to do it is to get a system. an applicant tracking system. I've seen Excel spreadsheets. I've seen Monday boards. I've seen Kanban boards. I've seen just email applications. Don't try and do that. It gets messy very quickly. We're in a market where honestly, it's, if you're familiar with the talent market at the moment, it's worse than Game of Thrones. It's a bloodbath out there. You will put a roll up and within several hours, you will have

hundreds of applications. Now, if you don't have a process or a system that can automate and keep that clean, you're then going through your emails or an Excel spreadsheet or a monday.com board to try and keep things automated, simple, streamlined, efficient. You can't, and you won't. So just invest in a system. It doesn't need to be a biggest investment, but invest in it. I think those are probably...

two key things really. The third I would say really is just to make sure that you have an idea of a process.

to keep that sort of system in play, but keep your expectations realistic as well. You're not going to find a unicorn. You're not going to find the perfect person for your business. You can mitigate the risk as much as possible, but ultimately don't have this whiz bang idea of, you know, this is the person that I need. And generally I think founders will always say, I want someone from Meta or Google.

Sarah (10:37.878)

They all do. Everyone does. Of course they do. That's great. If you can afford them, go forth and conquer. But the reality is you will have a very small budget, which you have to play with. Just keep your expectations realistic.

Adam Cooper (10:51.045)

That's great advice. One thing I've seen and I wonder with your experience around bringing people on board and giving them equity, giving them sweat equity, not paying them. As you say, you want someone from Meta or one of the big sort of tech companies, but you can't afford them. Are there other ways around it that you've seen that actually work or is it a bit messy?

Sarah (11:02.552)

Mm.

Sarah (11:17.038)

It is a bit messy, I won't lie. It is a bit messy because the reality is if you are at say a Google or a Meta, you're earning six figures without fail. Your package is probably getting close to £500,000 per atom.

That's pretty, that's a hard pill to swallow. That's a lot. So I think also for the person, the talent, they've gotten used to that. They might have a family that's gotten used to that. That is very difficult to then try and say, look, we may be able to give you say 1.5%, 2 % equity. But the reality is that's a gamble. Now is somebody earning a 500 grand close to package per annum going to come out of that to be given say 150 grand plus a 1.5 %?

stake in equity, it's possible, but it's a gamble. It's really big gamble. So no, I think it's not quite as clear cut as that. You might be lucky, but I think the chances of that are quite small for obvious reasons.

Adam Cooper (12:17.849)

Yeah, no, it sense. And obviously, as you say, your focus is very much on hiring those first few people. When you advise founders around that, what is it that they can do to make themselves most successful and that person most successful in those first 30, 60, 90 days? What those first few months, how can you best, once you've got that person on board, you've paid them the 150 grand and the equity.

Sarah (12:24.621)

Yeah.

Adam Cooper (12:46.789)

or whatever, how do you ensure that they get sort of up and running as smoothly and as effectively as possible?

Sarah (12:52.654)

This is a really simple one.

Get out the old pad and pen or your notepad and just start putting a list together. What is the most critical thing that you need right now? Because the reality is that's still going to be the critical thing that you need within three months time as well. So, especially when you're starting up, you're generally going to be focused around three things, which is your product, your funding and your people. Those areas, that's pretty much your blank canvas. That's where you're going to want to target. The reality is the founder is probably

going to be focused on the product slash fund funding and you might have say a CPO or a CTO, a director of engineering, whatever that might be to tackle the product. So then it's going to be your people. So realistically, I think it's just about understanding what do you need in order for your business to succeed? The reality is money and people. That's what it's going to come down to. So I think it's understanding your business.

seeing within generally speaking it will fall into one of those three categories but it's it's basically what position do I need right now to mean that I can then effectively get the products going that's going to help secure that funding and then also I'm going to need the people in order to do that so who do I need the bare minimum in order to get to that point

Adam Cooper (14:19.077)

Yeah, that's good advice. And you mentioned there about funding and money. And obviously, this is a CFO podcast, a finance podcast. I'd love to understand from your experience about how the finance and HR connection works. So from your side, where do you see the HR and finance sort of naturally align? Where is there a sort of natural crossover? And perhaps on the other side, where do you see it?

sometimes conflict and pull apart in the opposite direction.

Sarah (14:50.958)

So every time I go into a business, Adam, you are the first person that I go and find. I will bring you muffins. I will bring you coffee. I will become your best friend because your position and my position need to be best friends. And the reason for that is very simple. Ultimately, we have to have a very significant professional relationship in order for the business to grow. In that,

You're going to need to supply the cash in order for me to be able to supply the organization with the foundations that it needs to succeed. For example, systems cost money. People benefits cost money. Salaries cost money. We need to have an understanding of what that cost is so that we can do an appropriate budget that is tailored to that organization. So if I go in and say, Adam, I need a budget. need to hire some people. How much do I have to play with?

you're then going to be able to say, right, this is your number, this is your fee. I can then go and advertise and specifically target people within that salary range. Same thing for the benefits and the bonuses and the packages, all of that, that needs to be very clearly defined by yourself so that you can then give that to me so that I can actually bring in people who are relevant to that organization without saying, okay, we need to go get a guy from Metta or woman from Metta. And I've just blown five.

of hundred grand and you say, Sarah, that's great, but thanks very much. You've just blown half of our people budget for the year. So that's where we need to be quite closely aligned. And that continues throughout as well. So it's always going to be, you know, how much money do I have to spend? I need to make sure that that's very much costed so that we have that runway effectively is within limits and it's not being chewed up or eaten out. So I think where it goes wrong,

is when I start saying, the market is doing this and you're saying, but Sarah, we only have this amount. it becomes a bit of a tug and pull with, who trumps who? I can't get the people that we need for this amount of money. And if we don't get the people that we need, we don't have a product and therefore we don't have the opportunity to be able to secure funding as well. So that's where it can start getting a little bit.

Sarah (17:18.956)

a little bit insy, but that's where I start bringing in baking you muffins.

Adam Cooper (17:24.293)

Well, I love a muffin, so that's good. I just, terms of how, in those, because inevitably there's in my experience, there are the requirements and what you need. And then there's the financial constraints. And as you say, it's, you know, how do you, how do you balance that? So it'd be great to hear any sort of tips that you've got around how to navigate those kinds of situations, maybe any case studies or examples, either from sort of startup world or, or from your.

corporate and public experience, how have you best seen navigating those environments where you've got that constraint and that clash of requirements?

Sarah (18:04.952)

Hmm. So I think the best thing that I've, the best case study I can provide is, really what I've done in the past, which is I've had, it's not necessarily been in a startup, but I've come into an organization that's already very well established. and we'll just tackle that, that area for the now, but effectively there has been huge amounts of waste, on systems, on agency fees, on things like sign-on bonuses.

things that perhaps were once great to have, but now no longer are particularly feasible. So it's then about me coming in and saying, right, okay, let's do a full costing of everything. need a full budget analysis and I'll do my own little internal budget and say, right, this is what X amount is costing. Here's the systems, here's the talent, here's the sign on bonuses, here's everything else.

here's what we can get rid of and then I'll start chipping away and seeing, are there any, any savings that I can make with agency fees? Are there any areas that I can actually make some significant reductions in cost? So I can then come to you and say, look, Adam, this is the amount that I've had. This is previously the amount that I've spent or we've spent as a division. And this is how much I would like to have in return. If I've made this amount of savings, can I have this amount to

with and it's generally something like that it's it's about really working in a way that's sort of let's try and make savings where we can so that we've got a little bit of money in the pot extra.

to, to work with. And that's really just, again, having the relationship with you to be able to say, how much savings do you need from me in order to be able to do that? And exactly the same process would be if you were in a startup as well. think it's just, you're always going to find, what you need in some way, shape or form. I think it's just about putting a list when you're starting up as to what is the key critical things that we need. An ATS, for example, applicant

Sarah (20:09.38)

tracking system that we cannot not have. However, you've previously spent 60 grand on agency fees. We no longer need that. So let's recoup that 60 grand or any other extra cash that we have. And let's see if we can put that into a pot towards salaries to get the people that we need. Ultimately, you're always going to find what you need in some way, shape or form. Just have to be a little bit clever about how you put it together.

Adam Cooper (20:37.517)

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that plus the muffins, you're right on track. I think just joking aside, I think having that mindset as, you know, as a CFO, if you go into that meeting, that budget meeting or that request and the, the HR business partner or the, know, the, the department is has done that analysis has come ready, prepared with these are the savings I can make. And this is a cost benefit analysis and this is how we can do it.

and also doing that early so that you've involved finance early enough so that those decisions haven't yet been made and you can make the savings and make the business case up the chain. think that's really good advice. Excellent. Okay. Good. I want to take it a step back and you mentioned in a recent LinkedIn post I saw about the madness of a five-stage interview process. Why do companies do this?

Sarah (21:29.286)

Adam, you've hit a raw nerve. Right, so back, I mentioned it earlier, there was a time just, was around about COVID, pre-COVID, it was a golden era for talent. If you remember, there were...

Adam Cooper (21:31.685)

Ha

Sarah (21:47.37)

people that organizations that could not throw enough money at people. was a bloodbath, but in a good way, sort of. If you were the talent market, if you were a job seeker, you were having a good day. It was a very, very good time. If you were an organization, you were hitting your head against a brick wall because you just couldn't offer enough money. You were getting counter offers left, right, and center. You couldn't snap up the talent that you wanted.

Now somewhere around then, and I don't know why, and whoever determined that this was a good idea needs to have stern words with and they need to be sent back to school.

They thought that this concept of a seven plus interview process was going to help them weed out and get the candidates that they needed. Now I still to this day, I am yet to find the person responsible, but I am very much ensuring that wherever I go, I absolutely annihilate it because what that's actually doing is you're just making a huge, huge dilemma with the entire process.

You're costing huge amounts of money. You're wasting huge amounts of people's time internally and externally Everyone's getting frustrated. No one's making decisions. You're not getting your hire. You've just elongated your hiring time by several weeks. So What it comes down to is people's inability to make decisions and I think this is where Three steps three steps absolute maximum is where it should be. There should be an introduction there should

be some piece around somebody's actual technical ability, whether that's you talk them through your portfolio or you get them to do a task on the day. You don't want to waste the candidates time too much, but you do need to say there are technical capability. And then the third and final to meet with any other stakeholders, founders, or the broader team. Those three things maximum. That is all that you need to make a decision. If you haven't made a decision by those three processes, you should probably be having a look at who actually

Sarah (23:54.218)

actually is making the decision because they're possibly not the best person in order to do that. And I think that's where we start to get this very inflated process. think it was just...

we were in a very interesting time, a time that we've probably, well, certainly not had in my lifetime where the labor market was just buoyant. We've now got the reverse. It's very much the employers market rather than talent. And so I think there's, well, I know there's huge amounts of candidates within the market at the moment who are looking for positions and aren't able to find them. So it's a real picking for employers. So they're saying, you know, we want this perfect candidate.

We need to be able to find this perfect candidate if a candidate can get through all these seven stages Then you know, they're obviously a god. It's not the case It's just horrible for everybody involved and again, most importantly, it's costing you not only time but it's costing a huge amounts of money because who's doing the job that you need and You're then taking panel members time to be able to interview those people. It's a total waste It is an absolute schmozzle. It needs to go

I'm working through it. I will get through it Adam. I will make waves. I will stop this. It needs to be stopped.

Adam Cooper (25:12.805)

I see you've got a mission. You seem very passionate about it, so that's good.

Sarah (25:15.736)

Clear mission. Yep, very clear mission.

Adam Cooper (25:19.011)

one thing you, you, touched on there is about the, the need for, you know, to have an effective hiring process to balance that speed with quality, three stages make, makes perfect sense. One thing I've found when I've been trying to hire is, the sort of the necessity of having a really good, clear job description to, try and attract the right candidates in the first place and to try and sort of sort the wheat from the chaff. Have you got an approach to help founders?

sort of write better job descriptions. Do you do that for them? Do you use AI and chat GPT? And what's your kind of feeling about that stage of the process?

Sarah (25:59.262)

Yeah, absolutely. So the job description is critical and I will never advertise a role without a job description purely on the basis because if we haven't got a clear idea by the time that we get out to market, how are we supposed to find exactly what we need and how are we supposed to target them? It's my job to find that talent going out into a world where there's how many are we at? Seven billion without a clear defined understanding of what I need. I'm going to be here well and truly past the time that I become dust.

So the job description is critical. And yes, that's exactly what I helped do. I create the job descriptions. How I do that is I work directly with the manager of that role. So for example, or direct line manager.

So for example, if it is a director of product, that person, according to the organization scale would be working and reporting into the founder. I will work directly with the founder to then establish, what is it that you actually need? What kind of technical capabilities do you need? Because that's ultimately what we need to focus on first and foremost. But also really important, what salary do we have to play with? Because again, we should never

ever and I never have and I never will ever advertise a role without a salary put on and again you need to be very clear what your expectation is and you just need to not waste people's time so you need to have a clear defined understanding what are the key core skills capabilities that somebody needs in order to be able to do the job

And then you start working on the cultural piece as well. That obviously goes into a little bit more of actual in-person interview. You can start to define that, but at least you have the main sort of, this is what you're going to be doing. This is who you're going to be working with. These are the key skills and criteria that you're going to need to be able to do the job. And here's the salary that you, that you need to sort of fit within salary bracket range. So that job description is absolutely fundamental before you start going out. So yes.

Sarah (28:04.976)

Yeah, I'm with you on that one.

Adam Cooper (28:05.645)

Mm-hmm. Okay, no, definitely. That's good to hear. I think you mentioned there about salary and being clear and transparent on the salary. there's obviously quite lot of adverts in the market right now about putting salary on job descriptions and making sure everyone's upfront about it. So critical. And I really sort of applaud you for having that as a mindset shift within the industry and you sort of promoting that. You mentioned there about culture.

And like something that's a bit of a, guess a favorite myth of mine to bust, which is around what culture is, because I've been in agencies and businesses both full-time and then subsequently as a fractional CFO where the understanding of culture is very different from the reality. It's like people think that it's, know, beer fridges and emojis and, you know, being sort of having away days. That's not culture. So

Maybe before we dive into the culture section, could you give your understanding of what makes for good culture, what is good culture within an organization?

Sarah (29:12.114)

I can hear you've got some stories on this one, Adam. I know you've seen things. Yes, absolutely. I am completely with you there. culture really, I think fundamentally comes down to the guidebook to how your employees and therefore your ultimate organization behaves and operates. So I think that's probably the easiest way to explain it. I think what that means is effectively having things

such as your values, say for example. So if I give you a key kind of example, John Lewis, their employees are...

part owners. So they have a vested interest within the success of how John Lewis is. They're enormously successful. isn't probably a human in the United Kingdom who doesn't know John Lewis and it's incredibly powerful. It's a great brand. Now the reason for that is because they've had this sense that they, from their leadership, they want their employees to have a vested interest in the business. That is culture. That are the sort of things that you assume

establish a culture, not necessarily in benefits. That does help. Don't get me wrong, because if you have a benefits package that is very people focused, that is going to help with your culture. So that plays a part. But I think the elements that are really critical here in how an organization is successful is defining what are the key components that you want. So if you've ever heard Tom Blomfeld speak, for example, who was the co-founder of Monzo.

Adam Cooper (30:49.669)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (30:52.044)

He is incredibly candid. He's very blunt and bold and you can tell that culture has really been instead instilled in Monzo. Even their sort of marketing communications and notifications today. They're very transparent and you can see exactly he developed and implemented that as a culture and a piece that he wanted the culture of Monzo to be and it still has that today. That those are sort of practical examples of how to get the right

culture. Yeah, go on.

Adam Cooper (31:23.301)

And I was just going to ask you mentioned there about Monzo. Obviously it's a scale up. It's a large organization now. I'm thinking for the sort of audience of this podcast, slightly smaller organizations and the smaller organizations you go in and help. Are there any sort of small ways that you can help set the culture early on? Because obviously there's one thing having a culture when there's 200, 300, 1,000, but it's a different thing.

starting out. How do you start out on the right track in your experience?

Sarah (31:55.651)

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll take a recent example, an amazing AI company that I've just worked with, very small founder only when I came in and one of the co-founders there and the CEO, obviously I worked very, very closely with him, but he had a really clear concept of the sort of organization that he wanted to run. Accountability and ownership were some key components, but so was being

Scrappy and he really was just constantly even with myself You know, he said he said something like Look, we need a staff handbook. We need a pronto We need to be able to go to market with this and it's like yeah That's all my that's all my things to do but that's a 30 40 page document that that takes a lot of time It might not be done in in two days and he sort of was really clear He's like no just just get it done. Doesn't matter if it's scrappy. Just get it done

And so it's like me being the perfectionist not wanting to give him a very subpar kind of piece of work. I was a bit panicky, but it was like, okay, right, challenge accepted. I'm going to do this. And I did it.

It wasn't perfect, it wasn't huge, it wasn't big, but him constantly just sort of having, having I think really just the strong character that he did and understanding that, so I don't want anything perfect, I just want you to put this piece of work together for me. But he was the one that was like, look, we did it, we managed to do this, you did it in sort of three days, he went through it and was happy with it and we did it within three days, we were managed, able to sort of put this piece of work together.

Sarah (33:40.16)

And I think it's those that are really critical. And I think what that comes down to effectively is having somebody who clearly understands where they want to take the organization. It might be accountability, trust, respect, ownership. There is going to be a leader in that business who has started the organization. They're going to have a very clear idea of what they want. It's my job then to interpret it, but it's the whole organization's job to enforce it, nurture it.

and really have a good strong leadership team and management team to be able to say, yeah, okay, these are the values that we want, the kind of culture that we want, and it must be enforced. If you don't, and I cannot stress this enough, if you do not enforce the behaviors, both good and bad,

then you will, you don't even bother having a culture. So for example, if you have somebody who you want trust and let's say trust and honesty within your company. But somebody says something to another person, it becomes a little bit of Chinese whispers and then there's not sort of any robust honest conversations happening directly between people. You've got a bit of a situation

here. You need to be able to...

have people come to you and understand exactly what it is you're trying to achieve within the culture. Nurture that, again, all for the positive reasons, but then pick up something and tackle it head on if it's not something that you want your culture to be. Say, for example, dishonesty or somebody's not taking accountability or ownership. That must be tackled because if it's not, you've got a situation where people are going to

Sarah (35:31.6)

get a little bit lazy with how that culture is.

Adam Cooper (35:34.947)

Yeah, absolutely. And as you mentioned there at the beginning, I do have some war stories I'll tell you offline, in terms of how culture can go wrong. But you actually touched on the most important things in my experience there around having the management team and the leadership team aligned with the founder, and then having it very strictly enforced around how those values are sort of manifested, rather than just having a piece of paper on the wall talking about the culture. It's making sure that they're lived experience.

Sarah (35:40.65)

Yeah.

Sarah (36:04.418)

Yeah.

Adam Cooper (36:04.453)

That's really good. really good. That's what takes us onto quite nicely the sort of succession planning. You mentioned about management team, you mentioned about leadership team. And I don't know what you found, but in my experience, a lot of founders and smaller startups don't think about the leadership team, the management team, the succession planning of having that sort of strong second tier of leadership or top tier, second tier of leadership.

How do you help founders think about that at the early stage? Obviously, we're talking about hiring the first few people. How do you get the founders to think about that succession planning right from the outset?

Sarah (36:45.902)

It's really interesting one, isn't it? It's a golden concept that we just don't do enough of weirdly because it's the value that it actually has is enormous. I think once you, to be realistic, once you get within an organization, it's all cards go all at once. Everything's happening and it needs to happen two weeks ago. So you need to sort of get past the first few weeks of chaos. Number one. Then number two, I think it's just putting in, it's planting the seed.

early, think it's really having conversations with your management team to say, look, I know you've just started this, this organization or the founders even, but we need to start thinking about the long-term and it's really difficult because ultimately they're in a frenzy trying to get funding and everything that they need, but you need to sort of instill very early on by having those conversations of, look, this is critical to the success and continuity of your organization. It's not saying they're going to replace you, but

here is something that you need to be thinking of now and having in the back of your head because that ultimately is going to help you generally just be successful. And it's also going to most importantly help run an organization proactively rather than reactive. Now, again, that's a concept that...

I'm sure you've seen a thousand times before, we don't really do it very well. We're all pretty reactive, but it's just about trying to be proactive. So I think, as I said, really having the conversations with them from the get-go to say, look, this is something that's important. Here's the benefit. Here's why we need to do it. And also just for the obvious one.

Touchwood, but if anything did happen for you tomorrow, we have a plan. We have a backup and more importantly from the people side, you're going to have a much stronger trust in brand. You're going to have a brand that you're really able to exhibit as, know, look, here's how we develop our people. That's going to be easier in order to be able to attract talent or certainly help. But more so it just means that you don't necessarily have to go to the external mall.

Sarah (38:52.012)

every time that you need to hire, which I mean you put that in front of a founder and they're going to be like bloody hell that sounds great let's go ahead. So I think it's just those couple of things have the conversations early on give them a reason to understand why you're doing it but also give them a range of reasons as to the benefits that it brings.

Adam Cooper (39:11.769)

That's great. Now really succinct and clear reasoning there. So thank you for that. And that takes us onto our final section, which is our business book bonus section. And this is where we ask our guests to recommend a business book or a podcast or some other resource that's really helped you on your journey. So what would you like to recommend that's helped you, to the audience?

Sarah (39:21.334)

Mmm.

Sarah (39:34.294)

So slightly left of center, but there's two that came to mind. I was really giving this a lot of thought and I just went, do you know what? don't really have too many of these that I read. have to say I'm a bit more of a fiction Harry Potter fan myself, but two that I could recommend for very odd reasons. One is Bad Blood by John Carirou.

I don't know if you recall, but there was a, yep, yep, Silicon Valley startup gone horribly, horribly wrong. Elizabeth Holmes was the founder and CEO. And she's now in prison, quite rightly, because it was effectively this great big concept, but also the madness, the absolute, you know, barking madness that comes with this kind of tech Silicon Valley startup environment.

When we talk about culture, it's everything that you basically want to not do. So I think that's, that's if you want how badly a culture and what culture means when it goes wrong, this is a great book. So that's number one. And then the other one, very, strangely, but I think Rory Stewart's, Rest Politics on the Edge, my apologies, is a fascinating book, which I am a big fan of Rory Stewart myself, but more to that.

I think just in terms of leadership.

You have some great examples within that book and some horrible examples. So specifically within politics, it really it's very, very adaptable to within corporate world. I think it's very interesting to see the kinds of examples that some management and leadership have in the flesh, I think, or as close as to sort of the inner depths of Westminster that we can have. But I think it was just a really interesting portrayal of

Sarah (41:27.214)

what potentially makes a good leader and a great one and a terrible one. So a bit left to field, but those are my two choices.

Adam Cooper (41:36.067)

No, those are good. I'm reading politics on the edge at the moment, actually. So that's a good one. Yeah, no, he's a good storyteller, definitely. yeah, Bad Blood as well. I've read that. two great books there. So I'll put links to those in the show notes. And before we wrap up, is there anything that you'd like to say or where can people find you to learn more about what you're doing?

Sarah (41:39.514)

it was fantastic. Good. I won't put any spoilers out there, but it's a great book. Really good.

He's...

Sarah (42:01.77)

Yeah, absolutely. So really simple, although I have to say a slightly complicated name. Montagne Motion is in just think mountain, but in French. So montagnemotion.com. Obviously I'm on LinkedIn as well. You'll have the links of myself on my website, but it's pretty easy to find. you just tap in Google or whichever browser you use, Montagne Motion, I'll come up and you can see the services that I provide as well as my LinkedIn profile. And you can do a bit of a deep dive there.

Adam Cooper (42:31.845)

Amazing, amazing. Well, Sara, thank you so much for joining me today on the Fractional CFO Show. Really appreciate your insights, your perspective and your time. Thank you.

Sarah (42:40.704)

Adam, thank you so much. was an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.