Elevated Talent Consulting: Welcome to talent optimization we are so glad that you are here with us today, and today we are chatting a little bit about how we implement some traction.

Elevated Talent Consulting: into our organization to really have or managers lead in the way the individuals need them to lead and really build that throughout the entire organization.

Elevated Talent Consulting: And with me today I have an individual who has led organizations for 25 years from an entrepreneurial standpoint for our predictive index users out there, she is used implemented that all the things with PI so welcome Kelly we’re so glad to have you with us today.

Kelly Renz: Oh, thank you for having me i’m honored to be here and looking forward to our conversation.

Elevated Talent Consulting: So do you want to tell us a little bit about kind of your journey to all of the different experiences you’ve had up to now being CEO of inVantage.

Kelly Renz: Absolutely, you know I always said that my entrepreneurial journey started back when I was 22 and I was hired by a tech firm owner.

Kelly Renz: who put me in charge of human resources, I had no business at age 22 being in charge of human resources, but that was the decision, he made and I came on board.

Kelly Renz: And quickly he joked that he felt I could see around corners, is what he would say so that meant I got all of the toughest hairiest most.

Kelly Renz: egregious of the challenges in the business, however, during the time I was there, we went from 200 employees to 2000 in 4 years.

Kelly Renz: And we ended up going public, so I always refer to the start of my career like in dog years those four years I learned so much I ended up leading HR I had investor relations.

Kelly Renz: I had all the shared services and I really did fall in love with the talent space.

Kelly Renz: So that became the first of several executive positions leading HR or being a chief administrative officer with responsibility for the talent functions of the business.

Kelly Renz: For several other organizations that we helped grow and sell as well, so that grow and sell and talent component really became a core.

Kelly Renz: component of my career journey but you know after doing that for other people for a number of years, I thought you know what.

Kelly Renz: i’m gonna do this for myself i’m going to start my own business.

Kelly Renz: And you know back in 2014 I started my own talent consulting firm and I was primarily focused in the merger and acquisition space so.

Kelly Renz: Helping companies by other organizations, by looking at their talent evaluating their talent, making sure that they really understood.

Kelly Renz: Where those synergies we’re going to be, as well as where the challenges were really going to come into play.

Kelly Renz: And then, once the deal was done helping those companies integrate together, because we all know that that’s really where if a deal is going to fall apart it’s usually on the cultural element of the components.

Kelly Renz: And I remember leaning heavily on PI during those times which, as you know, i’m a raving fan of the tool and its capabilities.

Kelly Renz: So, so I did that for about a year and we grew so fast as an entrepreneur, we talked about breaking things and I broke everything.

Kelly Renz: In that first year We grew fast, I mean it was everything from infrastructure to people to managing you know, a big workload and multiple projects, so I did what I think.

Kelly Renz: Most entrepreneurs think they should do and I merged in with another organization that I thought was really going to bring scale and helped me flesh out that talent component which ended up.

Kelly Renz: We ended up doing so I merged my firm in with another, where I became CEO of the combined organization and it was after landing there.

Kelly Renz: I realized that the company, I was merging into also needed some developmental help you know, it was a it was an organization that focused and recruiting.

Kelly Renz: had a great service delivery of recruitment and great talent, but operationally struggled to really get some traction in the business.

Kelly Renz: And so what we ended up doing is I was part of our vistage group and I went to my fellow CEOs and lamented a little bit about my challenges.

Kelly Renz: And that’s where they said, do you do you know about the book traction have you read it, or have you ever heard of the entrepreneurial operating system and I had it.

Kelly Renz: So I picked up the book traction by gina Whitman I read it, and I read it again and they said, this is what we need to do.

Kelly Renz: So in our own talent business we implemented the eos model in all of its components.

Kelly Renz: And i’ll tell you it was a really big game changer for us so in about 18 months we had grown, we did our own acquisition.

Kelly Renz: We expanded our service offerings and had really done some talent upgrades in our business and felt the i’ll say the full effects of running a really strong operation.

Kelly Renz: So I became a believer I was joking drink the Kool aid there, and so, when I exited that business successfully five years later, which was last year.

Kelly Renz: I knew that I wanted to bring eos to other entrepreneurs and with my background and talent in human resources, I knew that I could really focus on helping them not only implement eos but strengthen their people component, we talked about having right people right seats.

Kelly Renz: So I took all that passion poured it into in vantage where i’m CEO now, and I feel like I get to live the best of all of the world’s i’ve lived working with entrepreneurs and their team.

Kelly Renz: But also helping make sure that they’ve got the right talent leading leading their organization so that’s what’s brought me to where I am today.

Elevated Talent Consulting: awesome Kelly Thank you so much for sharing that story, because so often I think it’s hey we want to see ourselves in how did other individuals do that, what does that look like.

Elevated Talent Consulting: You know, one of the things that you talked about is you know, without necessarily naming it was what is that business strategy and the leader having the vision to really take the team.

Elevated Talent Consulting: From here’s the business strategy to here’s the business results we’re going to get to with that people components, so can you share a little bit more with us about.

Elevated Talent Consulting: What does vision mean inside of an organization and how do our leaders need without but also how does HR lead with that vision piece.

Kelly Renz: Absolutely well i’ll put in the context of it we talked about vision traction.

Kelly Renz: And being healthy in the world of eos, and this is directly correlates to everything we do in human capital, so vision.

Kelly Renz: is really about making sure everybody is rowing in the same direction and understands where you’re headed.

Kelly Renz: You know I say this to entrepreneurs, if you walk around your business and asked different individuals let’s say you have 100 person company and you go sample 20 of them, you have some Where are you headed.

Kelly Renz: What is your ultimate destination, what is it that you are on this earth to do you are probably going to get 20 different answers.

Kelly Renz: If you’re not leading with clear vision so vision is about rowing in that same direction that the other analogy, as I always picture in the Olympics if you’ve ever watched rowing, that is, that is a timed.

Kelly Renz: Unbelievable team all moving in the same direction, at the same time, and I say imagine if just one of those roars said, you know what today i’m going to go the opposite direction they’re not going to make it as a team and that’s what we focus on envision.

Kelly Renz: And within the human resources component about that that means making sure that the organizational cadences of communication.

Kelly Renz: The ability to transcend and cascade messages and clarity of how jobs and roles fit into the organization is absolutely critical.

Kelly Renz: Because people cannot achieve the vision if they don’t know what it is and so HR is rolling vision is critical when it comes to the communication element of helping a strategic message be you know cascaded through the organization.

Elevated Talent Consulting: yeah absolutely so i’ve got a question for you.

Elevated Talent Consulting: We talked a lot about kind of head of our briefcase when we talk about you know hiring the whole person into a job and the behaviors that an individual needs in the heart is really that cultural piece right.

Elevated Talent Consulting: And you know what I just kind of heard you say is the communication with HR but it’s also the communication on the hiring side.

Elevated Talent Consulting: Of what is the individuals values and what are the organizational values are those two things aligned, because if those aren’t aligned.

Elevated Talent Consulting: Even if everybody knows what the vision is, what are we rolling in a backwards direction if we don’t buy into that because it’s not also our personal vision.

Kelly Renz: Absolutely, so one of the very first things we do when we work with organizations, and this is where human capital, plays a very critical role in a successful let’s say eos implementation, for example, or without us this works as well.

Kelly Renz: Is we help investigate and flesh out, what are the real core values of an organization and we have a really neat technique that we take companies through.

Kelly Renz: To either validate what they already have or really inspect and see what they have to be.

Kelly Renz: And we use those core values when they’re defined and i’ve not worked with a company that kept their core values, exactly as they existed once we went through this.

Kelly Renz: exercise, then we take those core values and with the with the human capital leaders we translate that into a couple of things that they do number one.

Kelly Renz: We call it having right people and right seats and we say you have got to have both so we do that, first, by helping them.

Kelly Renz: Do a talent review and evaluate how their existing team matches against the new core values, as well as three other components, we call get it want it and capacity to do it, which we don’t have to get into today, but with the core values is extremely powerful.

Kelly Renz: goes together.

Elevated Talent Consulting: Right and we’re not going to get into all the details today, but I just want to put a plug in so Kelly will be leading our webinar in our talent optimization foundation.

Elevated Talent Consulting: call on Monday and we’re going to go into a little bit more of these details, with some very specific takeaways.

Elevated Talent Consulting: So if you’re loving what you’re hearing, I just want to name, you want to be in our talent optimization foundation, because we will go into more detail there, so I just had a plug you.

Kelly Renz: Kelly i’m looking forward to that because I get pretty excited about these things.

Kelly Renz: yeah ultimately when you think about human capital, when it comes to this, though, you know just to pin it is that.

Kelly Renz: You know, ultimately, having the right people right seats is everything we talked about you know right people as cultural alignment that kind of the heart piece you’re talking about.

Kelly Renz: The right seats is that they’re able to perform the duties of a job and making sure that we’re not creating jobs around people but hiring people into the right jobs as well, and that is all human capital.

Elevated Talent Consulting: And that’s such a key takeaway right is that we are hiring people to the job that the organization needs in order to get the outcomes that they’re specifically looking for as a business right.

Kelly Renz: Right, you can achieve a great vision, without great people that’s.

Elevated Talent Consulting: No, you can’t but you also can’t create jobs around people, because the business may not need that specific skill set for where it’s going and guess what businesses outgrow people all the time, fortunately, and unfortunately right.

Elevated Talent Consulting: but also how we step in it’s also how businesses grow.

Kelly Renz: Exactly I couldn’t agree with you more.

Elevated Talent Consulting: awesome so tell us a little bit more about kind of traction so you talked about healthy, I mean we’ve talked about vision.

Elevated Talent Consulting: You mentioned traction and healthy do you want to share a bit more about that, and what that means for those specific leaders that you know are really kind of stepping in a leading individuals inside of the organization.

Kelly Renz: So, so the traction component, when we look at that we always say vision, without traction is hallucination.

Kelly Renz: Okay, so you can have this amazing vision, but if you can’t Russell it down to the ground with accountability and execution that’s what traction is about delivering on that vision.

Kelly Renz: In a way, that gets real results so that really comes down to having the right tools to measure your business measure performance understand and predict.

Kelly Renz: How the business is doing on a very regular basis, having the communication cadences and meeting cadences that really make sure everything flows, so that traction component is where a lot of our work gets done.

Kelly Renz: And again that’s the place where human capital can help make sure that there’s connection points to everything that touches the people strategies of the business and the healthy component is just about having a team leadership team that is open and honest and candid and.

Kelly Renz: has the ability to share and have the tough conversations, yet at the end of the day, have a little more fun working together, because let’s face it, a lot of teams.

Kelly Renz: don’t always have fun working together so we help create and foster that environment by getting vision and traction together that’s usually the results so that’s what we’re working towards is enjoying our businesses for.

Elevated Talent Consulting: Absolutely and it’s really getting at what are those four drivers of engagement right.

Elevated Talent Consulting: So when we know individuals are engaged in their business they’re much more productive and profitable and those four drivers of engagement, are job fit manager fit.

Elevated Talent Consulting: That we’re specifically looking at the teams that our teams are aligned to the strategy that we’re executing on and our organizations and really understanding hey.

Elevated Talent Consulting: You know, do we understand our individuals working towards the right goals inside of our organization which essentially is our culture.

Kelly Renz: Right well you know I think with I when I look at what your organization does in the predictive index opportunities.

Kelly Renz: It gives the data piece of data insights to people so everything i’m talking about still needs a support underneath it of data, so you can measure and understand what motivates that individual may be different than what motivates the position.

Kelly Renz: And so it’s a really interesting connection, so what you do and what the human capital component can do with that information is so powerful to make sure you’ve got those right people in those rates seats and job matched appropriately.

Elevated Talent Consulting: Absolutely, so this has been such a great conversation and we love to leave kind of our plane here with what’s one key actionable takeaway for executives listening and what’s one key takeaway for HR folks listening and I know you’ve got some good golden nuggets here.

Kelly Renz: yeah I love the so so let’s start with the HR because HR is such a foundational component to strategy, and I would say this.

Kelly Renz: If there’s anything that an HR executive is really accountable for it’s making sure that the organizational structure.

Kelly Renz: supports the business and oftentimes we don’t take the time to step, all the way back to look at do we have an organizational structure that is meant to deliver into the future.

Kelly Renz: and looking at that on a regular basis, so my point here is if you’re not looking to make sure your org structure is correct to year to year.

Kelly Renz: you’re probably falling behind businesses evolving so much faster and It never ceases to amaze me how long we just leave a structure set.

Kelly Renz: and, obviously, over time, that will no longer support the needs of the organization so spend the time making sure you’ve got the right organizational structure we call it, developing the accountability chart.

Kelly Renz: But for executives this one’s going to sound simple.

Kelly Renz: run better meetings run meetings that are not report out sessions, but there are meetings that actually get the executive team together.

Kelly Renz: So you can solve really meaningful issues chase them down get to the root cause and solve them once for all executives are notorious for bad meetings, but we all have been there run better meetings and we’ll get into that a little bit more during our session together.

Elevated Talent Consulting: awesome will Kelly Thank you so much for chatting with us today, and really giving us those key points of vision traction and how we lead healthy organizations.

Elevated Talent Consulting: And for listeners that aren’t in our talent optimization foundation program first off, you need to be get yourself in there.

Elevated Talent Consulting: You can find that information in the show notes, but if you’re not in there, and you want to you know learn more about Kelly, and the organizations that she’s running and really helping Kelly work, her listeners find you.

Kelly Renz: yeah best places i’m www dot inVantage team calm is our website where we provide insights and overviews to all the things that we do with our clients, both on the eos side of the business, as well as talent.

Elevated Talent Consulting: awesome Thank you so much for joining us today, and we hope that you all have a great rest of your day.

Kelly Renz: Thank you for having me.