HEAD OF PEOPLE, BLUECHILLI
I joined BlueChilli as their first ever Head of People almost 2 years ago. Often people ask me, "What does a Head of People do all day?" This is my favourite answer - I am the emotional bra of the organisation. I provide support for growth, operational underwire and prop everyone up. Depending on the situation, I may bring people together or separate them. In short, I run all our internal programs and provide products and services for our most important customer: the BlueChilli Crew! On this I will primarily focus on the training, learrning and development components of my role (so far).
The BlueChilli Team, April 2017.
GETTING STARTED: UNDERSTANDING THE TEAM
When I joined BlueChilli there was nearly no formal HR or People infrastructure, so I had to pretty much startup from scratch. Like with most other projects, I had to understand the problem I was solving before designing any particular initiative. I am a fan of combining surveys, behavioural data and 1:1 structured conversations. After two weeks of investigation, I had unearthed two starting points: First, the team was very engaged and cohesive but lacked any formal channel for feedback or performance appraisal. There was a lot of in-the-moment recognition, but the moment would pass and the moment would be lost. The same would happen with constructive, or even negative, feedback. Second, there were limited channels of growth for team members - which means that to formally advance in your role, you had to leave the company. The third pattern that came out was that the team had record engagement scores but had signs of sustained stress that didn't match the flexible work environment policy or the culture of autonomy in the organisation. With this new information, I could now start designing programs to combat all of this.
OFFICEVIBE: MEASURING EVERYTHING WE DO
BlueChilli is one of the few places I know that takes their internal data seriously. I report on team feedback and engagement scores weekly. Thanks to the consistency of questions, not to mention the high rate of team participation, I am able to pick up trends and behavioural signals from the crew to help determine best courses of action. We are also able to benchmark the numbers when we introduce new learning initiatives and how they affect participation and engagement. Having a trackable engagement tool is the single best use of money for any People Team.
FIRST STEP: EMPOWERING TEAM LEADS
I like to say that my job at BlueChilli is about the team as a collective. I am tasked with codifying our culture, designing the processes and delivering internal programs for everyone, along with guidelines and rules of engagement. It would be impossible for me to look after that and individual members of each team. That's why it's so crucial to empower team leads - and hiring leads! - through knowledge and input in the programs. When it comes to technical training, they know better than anyone what their team members need. It is my job to support them by making sure we make time for external training and secure budget for mission critical technical upskilling. The feedback loop for team leads is the most important connection in my role as Head of People.
GEARING UP: THE RIGHT (STARTUP) TOOLS
Startups and accelerators are awesome early adopters. However, once someone falls in love with a tool, they will use it forever. I understand this about startup teams - we live in such organised chaos that our tools become the railing we hold on to for stability. When introducing new programs, the last thing I wand to do is add to the list of tools - or logins and passwords - for the team. I rely on trusted favourites like Google Sheets, Slack, WIkis and Trello to design and interface for our internal initiatives. This removes some of the resistance for new programs, but it also speeds up program adoption.
FOUNDERS FIRST: FAcilitating for our corporate programs
One of my favourite things to do is to facilitate sessions with our Founders. I am one of the few people at BlueChilli who does not have regular interaction with them, so I milk it when I do. I have worked on sessions ranging from recruitment and team chemistry, to working with your coaches and EiR's. Some of my favourite work has been developing a matching methodology for mentors and founders for our accelerator program, and running a session on how to get the most out of your mentor relationship (inspired by Tina Fey's "Bossypants").
BUILDING EXPERTS: TUrning technical masters into great teachers
The last piece of work is probably the most important. Unlike most other accelerators in Australia, BlueChilli's UVP is our internal technical capabilities. In short, we not only invest in our Founders, but we build their technology too. This means that we have to hire awesome technical talent who is also keen to educate founders in the process and equip them with knowledge for them to use in the future. Additionally, our team has elevated experts who are now experienced facilitators in their own right, running product and startup workshops as part of the accelerator. This has been an intentional process that has grown from getting team members to raise issues at meetings to having them speak at panels and facilitate internal presentations. Considering the feedback from founders, the work is well worth it!
OUR INTERNAL PROGRAMS
It would be impossible to list all pieces of work I get to do at BlueChilli, so here are the learning programs I am that have made me the most proud.
INDUCTION: YOUR FIRST HUNDRED DAYS
Studies show that if you engage a new starter in the first hundred days of employment, you are able to add up to a year to their tenure at your company. Our induction and onboarding process touches every corner of the company, and sets up our team for success. Most companies do not lean into this process and it ends up costing a lot of sweat and tears, not to mention dollars, to rectify. The initial 100 days are also a magnifying glass to determine whether the new hire is a good addition to the team. Everything at BlueChilli is an experiment!
Learning Personas
Our hiring process is geared towards finding diverse talent to build balanced teams. We do not hire to fit a mould, but rather to find people who will change the team for the better. This means that people are coming into our teams bringing different cultural perspectives, lived experiences and workplace habits. Most importantly, they bring different learning styles and habit personas. The induction process serves as a on ramp for the new starter to learn how to best hear their learning style to the fast-paced environment of an accelerator, and for BlueChilli to understand how to best hone each learning profile to get the best contribution of the new starter. We do this through a series of structured questionnaires, 1;1 facilitated sessions and low-touch feedback loops.
BlueChilli Presents
Part of the induction process includes participating in our monthly team celebration called "BlueChilli Presents." BlueChilli Presents is not only a fantastic bonding opportunity, but it also has allowed us to showcase the team living our values. Above all, we value learning, connection and creativity - so we have modelled parts of this celebration around each of these principles. #BurningLearning is the one most connected to Learning and Development. Once a month, one or two team members will get up in front of the team and present on a topic, book or event that presented them with a mind-changing learning experience. They then can recommend the same experience, book or topic to be taken up by someone else on the team. We have covered topics from artificial intelligence and blockchain, to essentialism and how to manage a team like Margaret Tatcher. The best thing about this is that it has taught the team to come to this session with an open mind and allow themselves to be surprised.
LOOPS: OUr Performance and FEEDBACK PROGRAM
Of all our internal programs, this is the one I'm the most proud of. Partly inspired by a Joris blog about the Atlassian performance review system, our Loops program is our most consistent touchpoint between team leads and their team. Instead of having one yearly performance appraisal, BlueChillians sit down with their Team Leads 6 times a month to have a themed conversation. Each theme repeats twice a year, which helps us mark progress and tick off goals. The sessions are initially facilitated by me, but I have trained the Team Leads over the last 9 months to run them on their own and report back trends, highlights and concerns. I now sit in sessions with new starters and occasionally join Team Leads in their team sessions for a refresher.
First Session: Startup Me
The first session is triggered up completing induction (First 100 Days) and it uses a reimagined version the Lean Canvas. The purpose of this session is to examine your role in the organisation as it has grown over 3 months, which is a lifetime in startup world! It also takes a snapshot of your vision for the future and what motivates you. It is amore holistic approach than a traditional Stop/Start/More/Less session.
Second Session: Blockers
The second session examines the factors that are stopping you from doing your best work. We talk through internal and external blockers, and determine what we have control over and what we cannot change. This session in particular has proven to be a great source for feedback for the business, as blockers tend to happen across teams. At the end of the session, we identify 3 action items and decide on a when to have follow sessions for each one.
Third Session: Growth & Goals
This one is the team favourite as they get to plan for the future and take active steps in their broader career. We take a holistic approach by taking into account personal, career and company goals. Our Growth sessions is a fantastics forum to plan training initiatives, request specific materials or make a case for personal development beyond the obvious needs of the role.
PROJECT SQUIRREL: WELLNESS, RESILIENCE, CREATIVITY
"Recharging is part of the gig." - I say this in every induction session.
I do realise that most people don't know how or worse, don't know the difference between resilience and endurance. As part of the initial reading of the BlueChilli engagement numbers, I realised that this was training that was both urgent and necessary. Part of the plan included bringing in professionals; so hat's what we did.
The Indigo Project
We started working with The Indigo Project in December 2016 to put together a long term plan for resilience and mindfulness for smart creatives. They also have an amazing roster of psychologists, counselors and coaches that we incorporated into our overall wellness program. We were ready for this particular type of training to find resistance in the team, even though we all needed it urgently. So I went to an old trusted methodology: getting buy in by making it fun!
Project Balloon
With that in mind, I teamed up with our Operations Facilitator to create a super fun Awesome Day (team building day) for the BlueChilli Crew that would include The Indigo Project. Instead of having a boozy Christmas party, we designed a day built on surprise, delight and hidden lessons. We had a kick off session at the BlueChilli headquarters, complete with breakfast and some cheery words from our CEO, which set the tone for the day. We then took a bus to The Indigo Project - during the bus rise team members found a menu inside envelopes hidden in their seats. These menus had a selection of workshops they could join upon arrival at The Indigo Project: office yoga, capsule meditation, nap training... We then all partook in a session with Mary Hoang, their lead practicioner, who took us through the science of happiness (also known as positive psychology). To wrap up the day, we facilitated a hidden learning session around tea blending that was secretly about hiring for diversity. If you are every curious about how this worked, I'd love to tell you all about it over coffee... After spending such an amazing day with The Indigo Project, the team had had a taste of the upcoming program and had built trust in the process. The seal of resistance was broken!
Stinky Fish
It is crazy how the silliest sounding things can be the most impactful. If you have not tried Stinky Fish as a confidence building tool for your technical team, I won't spoil the ending. The method is readily available online, or I'm happy to come and facilitate it for you. It's easy peasy, cheap and cheerful to run, and it gives otherwise hard-boiled people the vocabulary to talk openly about their vulnerabilities and imposter syndrome. We have now run this twice for the team and it only gets better.
PROJECT VELOCITY: Instructional writing for the startup world
As BlueChilli grows, so do our processes and systems. As a provider of internal products and services, my team has to make sure that our processes are not only human-centric and iterative, but that they are built for feedback. It became apparent that content creation was going to be a big tenant for our internal operations. This responsibility fell on our awesome Operations Facilitator who had at that point not had any lean startup experience. This was a great chance for him to learn! Additionally, he had to learn to write instructionally. Instead of sending him on a course, I decided to take a riskier but much more creative approach. We spent a morning at the Surry Hills Library sifting through cookbooks, learning what makes a good recipe and what makes a bad one. How much knowledge does this coq au vin recipe assume you have? What is the best breakdown of steps? How much information do you include so that people know what to do but you don't stifle creativity? How do you keep consistent language? Recipe books tackle this better than any instructional literature. So after once morning absorbing recipes, we were ready to codify our processes! Using Trello cards was another strike of creativity. The entire company practically runs on Trello, so using a familiar tool was a no brainer. Our Velocity Boards (internally known at Mission Control and Ways of Working or "WoW") having been growing even since.
CREW ROULETTE: CONNECTION in unexpected places
I could go on about Crew Roulette, but BlueChili's Operations Facilitator Leo Mansilla has summed it up here. Crew Roulette costs nothing to run and has been a game changer in terms of connection in our company. We now have our CFO coaching our Head of Development on finances, and our Senior Startup Developer starting Run Club with our Product Designers.
CURRENT PROJECT: BURNING LEARNING BOARDS
The next project I'll be tackling next is our Burining Learning Boards. As a result of our Growth Loop sessions, it become immediately apparent that we need to figure out how to scale training plans. There was no way I or any team lead could sit down and methodically plan over 3 dozen career trajectories and training schedules. So the current experiment is an marriage between Velocity and modular facilitation. The idea is to create themed cards with training and development resources - from books, to articles, podcasts and videos. Team Leads and individual team members can gran entire modules "off the shelf" and go through the checklist at their own pace. This is meant to complement on-the-job and external training, but it has has the added advantage that it is iterative and scalable with little effort. Once the initial MVP has been tested and validated, the next step will be to train the Team Leads to start their own Burning Learning Boards.
CURRENT PROJECT: LEADERSHIP TRAINING
We have recently onboarded new people to the Leadership team so I am developing a training plan that will bring everyone up to speed on our leadership capabilities. This will include knowledge transfer (policies and guidelines), emotional labour coaching (stress and anxiety tactics), technical education (understanding company financials and instructional writing), team lead skills (hiring for balanced teams, conflict resolution) and team building for the team. This will include a team off site and probably some glitter.