Kendra Haberkorn: What's Measured Isn't Always What Matters

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to my Biggest Lesson, the show that brings you the key

[00:00:05] learnings for the most influential founders, executives, and investors in the

[00:00:09] Colorado Tech community. My name is Adam Burrows, and I'm Chris Erickson.

[00:00:13] Together we are the co-founders of Range Ventures. An early stage venture

[00:00:18] for a based in Denver. You can find out more about what we're up to at range.vc.

[00:00:23] Our guest this week is Kendra Ibercourt. Kendra is a fractured chief people officer in

[00:00:33] executive recruiter and an excellent one at that. I can say that definitively because

[00:00:38] I work with Kendra when she ran the People Team at Guild Education, and then subsequently

[00:00:42] joined us as head of talent at Range Ventures. Prior to all of that, Kendra was on the executive

[00:00:47] team at Craftsy, which was acquired by NBC Universe.

[00:01:04] Kendra, thanks for joining us today on the podcast.

[00:01:07] Awesome, excited to be here!

[00:01:09] Kendra before we get into your Biggest Lesson and talk about that, would love for listeners

[00:01:14] to learn a little bit about your career. What have you done at the start? What did you do recently,

[00:01:18] and what are you up to now?

[00:01:19] Yeah, well it's a term that I've started using in that I was drafted into HR and

[00:01:26] talent. So it wouldn't have necessarily been the career that I would have pursued if I hadn't

[00:01:31] started in consulting and had them place me into those projects and then continued into recruiting roles,

[00:01:38] HR roles, and over the last several years I've been a fractional head of people for startups,

[00:01:45] high growth startups, and I've worked with Range Ventures. As our head of talent working

[00:01:50] with all of our portfolio CEOs is trying to be ahead of people on call and support them as they think

[00:01:55] about the challenges and opportunities of growth on each of their teams.

[00:01:59] It's Kendra, I'd love to hear a bit more about that journey right because I know you started,

[00:02:04] you were in-house at McKenzie for quite a while, right? Then you had a lot of in-house roles

[00:02:09] more, you know, high growth startups right at Cranfsy and then Guild Education.

[00:02:14] Yeah.

[00:02:15] I'd love to hear a sort of a bit about what that journey was like because those are three

[00:02:19] phenomenal companies that you've had a chance to be a part of.

[00:02:22] I really have and you know I think you only appreciate the value of some of your experiences

[00:02:27] in hindsight. And so looking back I couldn't have known that they experienced I had at McKenzie

[00:02:33] would be one that I'm still in touch with people to this day and that I learn and I enjoy interacting

[00:02:39] with people when I go to different cities, I enjoy following all of their careers.

[00:02:43] And so, Avakenzie, I spent years doing recruiting in an environment where we had the opportunity

[00:02:49] to recruit, you know, incredibly smart and talented people in a world class process.

[00:02:55] I think I learned a lot about process, I learned a lot about experience,

[00:02:59] about delivering an exceptional experience. I think that really came into play and helped me succeed

[00:03:05] when I moved in-house and took on, you know, in-house recruiting in HR roles because I cared deeply

[00:03:11] about the structure of the process, the experience of the people who are going through the process.

[00:03:16] And so, when I moved into startups where you have no process where everything is changing every single day,

[00:03:22] I think that foundation for McKenzie really helped me have a toolkit and have some reference points to say

[00:03:28] how do I design an experience, how do I design a program or a process that best serves everybody who's involved.

[00:03:34] And so, I really enjoyed and had a wonderful creative experience at Craftssey.

[00:03:40] We got to do fun and quirky and crazy things and I think that was reflected in the culture.

[00:03:44] When I moved to Guild, we had the opportunity, I think I grew a lot in thinking about inclusive experience

[00:03:50] and in thinking about our customers in a different way.

[00:03:53] And so, for each of those experiences, I learned a lot and I think that all came together when I had the opportunity to work as a consultant

[00:04:01] and work with range.

[00:04:03] And when you're working with so many different companies, it's helpful to have all of these very unique and very different cultures

[00:04:09] and experiences to reference and to pull in to the decision-making or recommendation process.

[00:04:16] So, every company goes through a lot of the same things.

[00:04:19] You hire, you fire, you launch new benefits, you launch programs, you try and develop and cultivate talents

[00:04:26] and they all do it differently.

[00:04:28] And every company is going to have a slightly different angle on each of those programs and what their objectives are

[00:04:34] and it's been really helpful to have a suit to database of things to just grab from

[00:04:39] and say, you know, I think if we tweak this type of performance review process or this type of interview structure,

[00:04:46] we'll get to an answer that works in your specific context and for your team and for your company.

[00:04:52] It's interesting to talk about sort of the world-class process at McKenzie, right?

[00:04:56] I have a similar view right having started my career at BCG.

[00:05:00] Like, you've learned what world-class different types of people and output and outcomes look like.

[00:05:05] And that, for me, it sounds like similar to you was just always super helpful wherever else you went

[00:05:11] because you had that benchmark of quality and could aspire to that.

[00:05:15] And so, that's something that I think, sandier point, like in hindsight,

[00:05:19] like appreciate a lot in the moment didn't appreciate how valuable that would be going forward.

[00:05:24] Honestly, in the moment, it felt rigid and it felt like too much but then you can pair it down, right?

[00:05:32] And so, like, at the time, I was like, this is too much. This is too perfect.

[00:05:36] This is too intense and then you realize that you can cut here and cut there and ultimately end up still having a great outcome.

[00:05:43] Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that.

[00:05:45] I want to talk a bit about Colorado.

[00:05:47] So, you moved here in, I think, 2010 from the Bayer, right?

[00:05:52] What do you hear how you've seen Denver change over the last 13 years?

[00:05:59] So much. So, I'm a Colorado and so I've seen it change a lot over decades of time.

[00:06:05] And when I left the Bay area and came back to Denver, you know, it was the recession.

[00:06:11] It was a little bit of a depressing period of time for those of us who were working or job seekers.

[00:06:18] And I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so, I came home thinking I was just going to rest.

[00:06:22] I was going to take a break and I would most certainly bounce back to one of the coasts New York or San Francisco Seattle

[00:06:28] because Denver wasn't a place where I thought I could like build an interesting career.

[00:06:33] And so, I ended up working with some former colleagues at corporate sports authority and having a great experience where there was a lot of chaos, there was a lot of tumult.

[00:06:41] But I learned a lot and in those few short years the start-up scene was starting to emerge and there were just a few companies that were standing out.

[00:06:49] And I had the opportunity to get into crafty and I'll tell you when we were building crafty, we had such a hard time recruiting.

[00:06:59] We needed, you know, post fundraise to hire tons of people and it was a challenge because we wanted to bring in great talent across, you know, technical talent, business talent, production and creative talents.

[00:07:11] And we knew we weren't going to be able to necessarily find all of those people here in Denver, there were people who had been through the growth stages and the cycles of being parts of startups.

[00:07:20] And so, we were often looking to the coasts and trying to recruit.

[00:07:23] And it was really, really difficult because people at that point in time thought that they only had one or two or three destinations if they wanted to be in a startup if they came to Denver.

[00:07:32] And so, they considered it career limiting.

[00:07:34] And at the time it might have been, but thankfully some of those companies really helped set the tone for what the startup scene would continue to evolve into.

[00:07:42] So over the last 10 years it's been a radical transformation not only in the number of startups and in the breadth of startups and the type of companies.

[00:07:51] And I think that's one of the advantages here in Colorado is we are not hyper focused on a certain type of business that we have diversity in the type of companies you can work at.

[00:07:59] Over the last several years we've been an inbound talent destination and so there are people who have that experience who worked in like high growth companies who've been at some of the most successful tech companies in the world.

[00:08:10] Relocate and choose to continue their careers start companies were be part of companies here in Colorado.

[00:08:17] And it means that we have like an ecosystem where people can start where people can grow their careers where people can start companies, where we now have investors even 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

[00:08:28] There were to investors here were here locally focused there was a handful but there wasn't the intense, you know opportunity or the view from the coast that Denver and Colorado is a place where you are going to see and develop and cultivate great companies.

[00:08:43] And so I think it's an incredible place.

[00:08:46] I haven't looked to the coast in a long time because I think that this is a place where I can have an interesting career where I get to work with exceptional people of all different backgrounds and it's interesting and there's options and there's opportunities.

[00:08:58] And so I'm excited about where Denver has grown and where it's going.

[00:09:03] One last Colorado question before we switch to the biggest lesson is there are near companies here in Colorado at the early stage is your particularly excited about.

[00:09:14] I don't know if I feel like I get in trouble if I don't pick some of our favorites.

[00:09:22] Any?

[00:09:24] Yes, your game.

[00:09:25] I mean, I you know, I have a bias.

[00:09:27] I think a lot of times you can get excited and I've gotten to look and peek into a lot of different companies and I think there's great stories everywhere.

[00:09:34] But I think the closer you get to some of the stories, the closer you get to the people and the problems that they're solving, the more interesting maybe come.

[00:09:40] And so I am pretty excited about some of the companies that we have here and some of the teams that we have within the range portfolio, the comichette team, the nomad team, onward guest house.

[00:09:51] There's just a lot of really cool companies and it's been fun to learn about different industries through these talented founders and these talented teams eyes in a way that I'm going to tell you a lot of the problems that they're solving.

[00:10:03] I would never have otherwise encountered.

[00:10:05] And so definitely encourage people to seek out range portfolio companies.

[00:10:10] I think we've got a lot of great things going on.

[00:10:12] I agree, nobody has here at all though.

[00:10:14] So let's jump into the reason.

[00:10:16] And I'm really excited to ask you this question Kendra because I feel like is someone on the HR and talent and people side right?

[00:10:25] You sort of have a met of you of all of the great things leaders do and all the mistakes leaders do, things that they've learned and things that they should have.

[00:10:34] And so I give in your data so I'm curious to hear what you have to say but we'd love to hear what's your biggest lesson that you've learned in your career?

[00:10:44] How did you learn it and how has it changed how you work today?

[00:10:48] Yeah, I do think the head of people that is an interesting role and has a unique view that's unlike any other in the company.

[00:10:56] And so when I thought about this, I thought about it as a people leader, as I showed I guess or as is my experience.

[00:11:02] And so I'm going to tell a lesson about my experience going through one of the people ops processes that really changed the way I felt about that process and changed the way I think about a lot of other related people ops programs and processes.

[00:11:14] And so the lesson, if I give kind of like the highlight is what's measured isn't always what matters.

[00:11:21] And so this story is a few years ago, I'm in a high growth startup and it's been a busy six months.

[00:11:31] Six months are often very busy periods of time in a startup.

[00:11:34] The company is an entirely different company.

[00:11:36] And so with regard to the people ops team, we had a entire on board about 100 people.

[00:11:41] We had changed our HR tech stack.

[00:11:44] We had broader benefits in house and we were teaming up the performance review cycle.

[00:11:49] And everybody loves performance reviews and it tends to be really positive and exciting experience for everyone.

[00:11:56] And IT is because if anybody dislikes performance reviews more than the average employee or leader, it's the people ops team because not only do we have to go through them.

[00:12:06] But we have to help all of you go through them too.

[00:12:10] That was my favorite part of BCG was the performance review in every case.

[00:12:16] I loved that.

[00:12:17] Oh man, well, I've had good leaders.

[00:12:21] Yeah, and it can be.

[00:12:22] I think it's an incredibly valuable experience.

[00:12:24] I will say that I don't think that it's everybody's favorite process to go through.

[00:12:28] And so I was heading into my performance reviews the end of the cycle, you know, typically head of people who are one of the last people to get your reviews.

[00:12:35] And I'm going to be honest, I was disengaged.

[00:12:38] I wasn't loving my role.

[00:12:39] It had been hard work.

[00:12:40] And there were a lot of things that worked, worked for me in my job.

[00:12:45] And so I tried to be super honest in my self review.

[00:12:47] I had like zero apps left to give.

[00:12:49] And so I said, you know, if here's where I'm struggling with my relationships, here's where my attitude is really, really bad.

[00:12:56] And why I think it shows up that way.

[00:12:58] Here are the ways that I think I and my team are delivering.

[00:13:02] And here's where we're missing the mark and what I think some of the connections are between those experiences.

[00:13:08] And so I hoped by being honest that I was going to get feedback and partnership and a conversation around what to do differently, and how to turn those situations around to improve my performance to make me a better colleague, et cetera.

[00:13:25] And so I went into my review with my manager, sat down.

[00:13:28] This is back when we were in the office, so sat down face to face.

[00:13:31] And my manager got by performance rating out of the way right away, right away.

[00:13:36] And I had received the highest performance ratings, so the top performance rating that we had on the review, so it was possible.

[00:13:42] And in theory, that means it should be a good review.

[00:13:45] But as we started to go through the bullet point feedback, my manager called out all of my bad relationships.

[00:13:53] The meetings where I had showed up with a really bad attitude, the places where I had over engineered the process or the places where

[00:14:00] I had been too scrappy and really missed the mark.

[00:14:04] And so instead of it being a conversation around what I should do, how I should change how that manager could support me and the people I was struggling with in getting to a better outcome,

[00:14:16] it was just a reminder of everything that wasn't working.

[00:14:19] And so I remember I walked out of the review and as a people leader, I was thinking, you know, if you get the top performance rating,

[00:14:25] you should like leave feeling pretty engaged, pretty excited.

[00:14:29] You should be like, let's go. I'm ready for whatever is next.

[00:14:32] And I felt like shit.

[00:14:34] I felt like misunderstood.

[00:14:36] I felt undervalued and underappreciated.

[00:14:39] And so it was really resentful hope and angry.

[00:14:43] That was a huge miss from my perspective, because instead of me being so excited and ready to like head forward, I was ready to leave.

[00:14:51] So when I thought about it, I realized that like while what was measured, my performance came out on top, what mattered was the fact that like that single conversation that experience left me feeling so disappointed and so disengaged that I knew I was going to leave.

[00:15:08] And so when I think about so many people, ops programs and processes, it's important to remember that it's really about human beings.

[00:15:15] It's about our experiences and you can try and sometimes it's very hard to think about what to measure within people, ops or talent.

[00:15:24] But sometimes you're not thinking about what matters and so much of what matters when people are thinking about their work experience is their relationship with their boss.

[00:15:31] Do they feel like they're valued?

[00:15:34] And so that helped me shape the way I think about all different kinds of metrics or ways to evaluate the experience throughout the employee journey because it's not necessarily a number that tells you the answer that you need or that shows whether you're succeeding or failing.

[00:15:53] Because if you can't retain your highest performers, if you can't keep people engaged, if you don't have a good experience, whether it's onboarding or performance or hiring, then you risk losing those people and so much of what fuels the business is not just a great product, great idea.

[00:16:09] It's the people who are doing the work behind the scenes. And so it sticks out, not just because it was a uncomfortable performance review, but because it made me think about the work I do differently.

[00:16:20] That's a really interesting lesson. And you know, you would have thought if any group would have got it right, it would have been the people group. But I think you know to your point, like, you know, we all miss some of these films tactically for like founders listening or other people leaders listening.

[00:16:34] You know, what are the things that they can do differently on a day-to-day basis or quarterly as part of a review cycle that will help make sure that there are team doesn't have the same experience that you had during a review like that.

[00:16:50] Yeah, I think if it gets to the review cycle, it's too late. And so I think so much of the work that has to be done is in the day-to-day and it's an interact day, it's an engaging, it's an being presence and listening.

[00:17:04] And I think so much of what we have to do as managers and leaders is like our goal is to remove roadblocks. And so if an employee ever comes to you with a list, and I came in with a list of roadblocks that were preventing me from doing my best work, from being the best colleague I could be, from being at the best manager I could be.

[00:17:20] Like, your job as a leader is to start to like break those down, coach advice partner to develop that person and support them in changing their behavior and hopefully changing the outcomes.

[00:17:33] And so I think one of the things, and this is interesting in the conversation that we have about like does it happen in the office? Does it happen remotely?

[00:17:41] I don't think like either one of those necessarily matters, right? I think there's reasons to be in the office. I think there's great reasons to be a remote and distributed team. Well, matters is the way you work together. And so we can't just say the office is where magic happens. The office is where mentorship happens because I can tell you as a manager when I was in the office, I have 13 meetings that I was definitely not super present or super available to my team, right?

[00:18:03] You have to be very intentional whether you're going from Zoom to Zoom to Zoom or from meeting to meeting to meeting to carve out time and to think about the way you engage with your team differently. And so sometimes we get caught up in like our 101 conversations in a litany of status items,

[00:18:19] and we should have a separate conversation that's about development, that's about experience. And so one of the things I'd recommend managers and leaders do is not try and get everything in a one-end conversation that happens every week by weekly once a month.

[00:18:33] Think about the different types of conversations you need to have with your team. You need to have a how are we getting the work done team? You need to have a like how are you feeling about the work?

[00:18:42] Where do you think your career is going? And where does like this company, this role, this team fit into that journey and separate out those conversations and dedicate time to having those.

[00:18:53] Carbout, you know, it might be an hour and a half a month to have three separate conversations and the value that you get out of those interactions and the difference of those conversations is pretty significant.

[00:19:05] And he was rated advice. How do you, especially at the early stage, how do you impress upon founders? The importance of beginning that early is in putting that in place at the start because it's an early stage founder.

[00:19:21] You know, it might be the last thing on your mind to be thinking about those things because you're like, oh shit, you know, I've got to get my first customer signed up.

[00:19:28] I'm worrying about burn my VCs breathing down my neck because I'm missing plan thinking about you know, those specific things to have conversations with your people or make sure your other people leaders are having those is probably not the thing that is always top of mind you're keeping you up at night.

[00:19:44] How do you think early stage founders can best remember to do that or engage the importance of it because in my experience, the earlier you do it, the more consistent it becomes and doing it late is sometimes too late to create those relationships and those paths and those cycles.

[00:20:03] Yeah, look being a founder is an incredibly hard job and there's a million things on your to do list every single day. And sometimes they are of existential like business continue or not importance.

[00:20:17] And so if you think like losing a customer or losing a deal is going to risk the future of the business, I understand why it's hard to make the trade off of investing in your people.

[00:20:26] But I would encourage founders and leaders to make it a habit the way you said right like the more you make it a habit. It's like working out, fossing your teeth, etc.

[00:20:34] Like the more becomes part of your routine, the more you see it as a valuable important and like meaningful part of your week to week efforts.

[00:20:43] And so carve out time do it early, make it a habit. Don't skip right as much as you can like make it a true emergency if you skip and see it not as a cost to your time but as an investment in your people.

[00:20:57] And the closer you are, the more context you share, the more information, the more you enable and empower them to do what they do best. The more they understand what your priorities are, where you're going, what on your mind, the better they're going to be able to level up to rise the occasion into support you.

[00:21:13] And so, so often these conversations again it's hard to see it in the moment. But when you look back at a series of conversations, you can see that person grow and ultimately as a founder especially for your director boards, you're getting leverage the more you spend time with them, the better capable they are of doing what they do in their role and of being a great executive leader across teams or cross functional partner.

[00:21:34] That is worth your time. And so, I do think it's a little bit of a mindset shift. It's not 30 minutes of my time means I can't do X. It's 30 minutes of my time now means I get hours and hours and value back later in the future. And that's I think that the shift that some people have to make when they think about their calendars every week.

[00:21:57] Well Kendra, thank you so much for joining us. I think this was not only was it incredibly valuable lesson overall but I think in terms of a very tactical one that founders and executives at early stage companies can really use and can implement pretty quickly. So really appreciate you sharing this lesson with us.

[00:22:15] So now that you're off to your next set of adventures, where can our listeners stay in touch or follow what you're up to and see what you do next.

[00:22:24] Yeah, I am on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest place to find me as much as LinkedIn is kind of a crazy place these days but that or Kendra.

[00:22:33] I have a great Gmail.com is always a place all these so thanks so much.

[00:22:38] Awesome. Thank you for joining us today Kendra.

[00:22:53] You