Leading with Your Own Humanity with Chiara Hughes of Revolution Parts

Adrian McIntyre: 00:00

From avad3 Event Production, this is Culture Amplified. RevolutionParts is an eCommerce platform serving the automotive industry, and they’re on a mission to transform the way auto parts buyers and sellers connect.

In this episode ... How do you build a happy, healthy culture that prioritizes well-being and work-life balance? What does it mean to “hire to the deficit?” How does an appreciation of cognitive diversity and neurodiversity help to create a more inclusive and dynamic culture? What is the right way to use behavioral assessments in the recruiting and hiring process? And why is radical transparency and leadership vulnerability so important to create a safe space for employees to deal with their own humanity? All this and more, coming up.

Adrian McIntyre: 01:00

Welcome to the Culture Amplified podcast. I'm Adrian McIntyre. I'm joined for this episode by Cameron McGee, owner of avad3 Event Production. Welcome, Cameron.

Cameron Magee: 01:09

Glad to be here.

Adrian McIntyre: 01:10

Jessica Kloosterman is Director of Sales for avad3. Welcome, Jessica.

Jessica Kloosterman: 01:14

Yessir, glad to be here as well.

Adrian McIntyre: 01:15

Our featured guest for this episode is Chiara Hughes, Director of People Operations for RevolutionParts. Welcome, Chiara.

Chiara Hughes: 01:22

Hiya.

Adrian McIntyre: 01:23

We're so glad that you're here. The reason for this series is we're getting into the world of people who are dealing with people. We're exploring the opportunities, the challenges in different industries so that we can all learn together. Chiara, why don't you start us off for this conversation by giving us a little context for your company and your role. What is RevolutionParts and what are you doing there?

Chiara Hughes: 01:48

I can't get out of cars. RevolutionParts is an online marketplace for auto parts. I mean, B2B. It's a SaaS company. That's the most simplified way to do it. We have the largest dealer network of auto parts in North America. And we make sure that certain OEMs and other people get the auto parts that they need. And if you're a car person like I am, and you've built cars and worked on cars, it is a huge market.

Adrian McIntyre: 02:15

What's different about your company than other OEM parts suppliers, supply chain, things of that nature?

Chiara Hughes: 02:22

Three things, I guess I would say. Ibrahim, my CEO, if you're listening, do not be mad if I get this wrong. So the first thing is the network, the breadth of the network. The second is the secret sauce in the engineering platform. And then the third would be our commitment to the customer and partner relations.

Adrian McIntyre: 02:43

Yeah. Great. And what's your role in people operations? Let's get into the nitty gritty of what you do, because this is the secret sauce of what makes great companies great.

Chiara Hughes: 02:55

It's an odd story, and everything ... I can premise most of my professional career by saying, "you're not going to believe this story." So I am the director of people operations. I was at another company for a long time, and retired. My parents were unwell, and I wanted to travel, and so I wanted to take my daughter and we went to Bali and we traveled the world and I wanted to do that and take care of my parents so I was out. I loved my former company, like truly loved, like I cried when I left.

But I got bored because I have a lot of energy, which I'm calm now, but that'll go away. I have a lot of energy and I have a lot to say. And I, and I wanted, I have a lot of energy, but it's not useless energy. Like I want to do things. I want to do things for people and with people. I love people. I genuinely love people. I say a lot of people, you know, are not in the right career. I'm actually in the right job. Like I love humans. It's never a pain. It's always fun. Even weird, quirky humans to me are fascinating and everybody teaches me something really cool. And I'm like a student of humanity, so I love it.

So I started networking and I just said, “Hey, I'm bored. These are the things I really love to do in my career. I love talent acquisition. I love the art of talent acquisition. I love the art of happy people at work. I love the art of representing underrepresented groups. I love all these things. So if you're a company or you know someone who needs that. I don't need to make a lot of money and I actually don't want to work full time. I just want to help however I can help.”

And so then I took a lot of the things I knew and put together like a training program for recruiters because those really don't exist. Like there's not a lot of them. You can buy a module online, but I think that since it's a people operations job, a human should train a human. So I put together a little training thing and presented it to some of my friends who own staffing companies for free because I just wanted to spread the word, right?

Through those meanderings, someone who was a former employee at my former company was at RevolutionParts. And he said that they needed, they didn't have a people leader and they wanted someone to, who'd been through a few reps of creating a happy people, diverse people team. And he knew me from our previous company. And he knew what I was known for there and asked me to talk to the CEO. And I did and said, I don't want the job, but I'm going to help. Like, I'll help. Like, I'll come as a consultant. And I did that for a while. And then midway through that, they were like, we really want you to come on board. And I said, okay. And so I did. And I started there in like April or May of last year. But my first official day is my title is October 30th of 20 23.

Adrian McIntyre: 05:52

One of the questions we've been asking in this series, and I'm actually going to ask all of you this question—but Cameron, you have to go last; you're the owner of the company, so you have a skewed perspective on this. If we ask people to define culture, their answers would generally converge around something that sounds more or less the same. But when we ask, “What’s different about this place than any other place you’ve worked? And the follow-up question is, “Why? What practices, what activities, what actual things do people do that makes it different?” we get some interesting answers. So, Jessica, what’s different about the culture at avad3 than other places that you’ve worked, and why is that different?

Jessica Kloosterman: 06:35

Yeah, I love that question. We always say our people make the difference. And that’s internally, side to side with our teammates, like our team makes a difference in one another. And then to our clients, our people make the difference. That is what sets us apart from the next guy, from the competitor. And I think the internal practices, the inner workings of our team, there's a lot of things that we do. But the first one that comes to mind is one of our values, which is just a high standard of excellence, which is why I joined the team in the first place. Was because there was a standard of excellence that we had set that was set from the top down. And I used this analogy recently, but I said, you know, it's like, we've got this bar that we want you to reach. You can't reach it. You can't even really jump to it, but we're going to give you the tools. We're going to equip you and teach you how and get you stronger to be able to jump and reach that bar. And then we're going to raise it, you know? And so we have a thing in our team called next-time notes which is Kaizen, just this cadence of what can we do better? And also, what did we do well? And we do that for everything. We don't just do that for the events that we serve on. We do that for our meetings. We do that for our hiring processes. We do that for our conversations that happen in each of our departments. Like, what can we do better?

What can we implement that would change this or make it more efficient? And so there's just this continual cadence of wanting to be better to simplify things to make to make people to help people grow and help them achieve more personally and professionally and it just bleeds into every … a lot of times you'll see it in like a HR department or you'll see it in just like the skill department but it's like in every department that our team serves which is so cool that's cool.

Adrian McIntyre: 08:29

What's different about the culture at RevolutionParts than anywhere else you've worked and why?

Chiara Hughes: 08:35

Well, can I backtrack?

Adrian McIntyre: 08:36

Of course. Please.

Chiara Hughes: 08:37

Can I backtrack? So, kudos to you guys for doing that. But also, do you create a space where people feel OK to fail?

Jessica Kloosterman: 08:45

Oh, yeah, that's such a great question. And when we do our next time notes, it's on a platform that everybody sees. So it's a it's an internal company platform. And I wouldn't say there's a lot of pointing fingers, but there is so much ownership on that platform of like, you know, “I dropped the ball here. This was my responsibility and I didn't set my team up for success because of this.” And again, this doesn't just have to be with us on shows. That happens a lot, and there is a lot of room to fail on shows because the standard of excellence is so high. There's lots of ways that, you know, this connection could have been tighter. I'm not the technician so I definitely can't speak all the internal lingo in terms of like the technical side of things. But we're always refining how we can be more efficient with our tech side of things. But then if you look across the team in every department, when we do those types of call-outs, it's very much like, “I should have led my team better by doing this. This is how I'm going to change that next time.” And I think we are always continually trying to have a space where you cannot just lead down, but where you can lead across and up, which is really cool. And I think it's rare.

Chiara Hughes: 10:03

It is rare. It's difficult. It doesn't matter if you are a three-person company, a 50-person company, a 115-person company, or a 20,000-person company. It's hard because if your leaders don't set the example and act as if, it doesn't trickle down and it has to be authentic. Authentic so that's the first thing and then the second thing is the creating a space where it's okay for people to fail. Which is where—I don't know if we'll get into this but—where vulnerability for leaders comes heavily into play I’m a very vulnerable, lead with empathy leader where I will be the first to say to my team, “Oh I screwed up. I did such a bad thing today, like I really …” Like, I will say it and a lot of places I’ve worked think I shouldn't do that, right, because they think it diminishes my leadership gravitas. I’m like, “well, you mean you're diminishing my humanity.” I’m a human. I'm not going to get mad at …

It happened yesterday. My daughter … this week is her parent-teacher conferences at school. That means early dismissal at 1:50, because most people's workday ends at 1:50. So I'm literally at work and I get the text from my daughter. It says, mom, where are you at? I go, “What do you mean, ‘where am I?’” “It's early dismissal.” I literally had to move a meeting. “Sorry, everybody, didn't do great job momming today. Got to go. Got to get my kid. I'll be back on in…” But the point is, most places I've worked would not want me to do that. They would say they quietly go deal with it. Or can you call someone to pick up your daughter? It's very different.

So I think that … I love the standard for excellence and for raising the bar, but I also love that that's only part of the story. The other part of the story is leadership trickle-down, create a safe space, and vulnerability. And so, yeah, I think that's great. And it's interesting.

So I had the same, I thought that my last job and this job would be a little bit similar because they're both kind of in the automotive space, but they're drastically different. The last company was a major tech firm, that was bluntly an e-commerce. I mean, it's an e-commerce company, “buy cars online.” But this company, we're not business-to-consumer, we're B2B, and our end partner, or the people we're talking to, are in the auto parts industry. I mean, they might've come up, literally they were a mechanic, right? Versus a target demographic of a 28-year-old who wants to buy a car for 10 grand. It's just very different.

So, therefore, that means that the internal culture is different per department. Because if you're a customer-facing person, internal employee at RevolutionParts, you are talking to a mechanic or a service leader. And how you would approach that person in an authentic way is very different than how we talk to our software engineers. They just, there's a different frame of reference. So that's why, again, cognitive diversity. I get really, I don't like to just talk about DE&I like underrepresented groups from a different race, sexual orientation, religion, geography, no. It's about the cognitive diversity and difference in thought. And that difference in thought comes from your experience in your life.

And that's, and I think that that's always fascinating and rich. But that's why the culture is so different in different departments where I work, because we have a different exterior persona that we have to be or want to be to be authentic to those people. But then internally, it's very … we all like being there. I mean, because we're small and our CEO sits at a table, you know, with the CTO, like they all sit right there. So we're small and approachable, which I love. And they're very willing to hear, “hey, maybe you did that wrong.” And so that's the culture. So the culture is we have six core values, right? And they're all focused. A lot of them are focused around the customer, right? Wow them as a customer. Work together, win together. It's like version. Most people have that one. One of the ones that's very controversial that I actually have put up my fists about out a little bit and I’m trying to decide if I want to fight this if I want to die on this hill is “move fast, fail fast” is one of our core values. Now the intent is take a risk

Cameron Magee: 14:48

Yeah, and iterate.

Chiara Hughes: 14:49

And iterate. You get that. But if you don't get that, it just means that we're saying do everything really quickly. It doesn't … and you're gonna fail. And you hear the word “fail” and it's this churn. So that one I've been fighting with the CEO about. I love the intent, but I just don't know if it's translating. So that's the culture. We do move fast. I mean, that is, we really move fast. In fact, one of the things I'm trying to do is slow us down, literally.

And we were talking about boundaries outside, Jessica. One of the things is like, for example, you've all had it at work, “hey can you can you do this?” And humans want to say yeah I can do that I can do that if you want to do well at your job yeah and so I say two things: either no, or sure, The capacity of the team is this many projects. Four. Here are our four. Are you saying that the new thing you want us to do is more important than one of these four? Great. Which of the four are we going to drop? We don't do five. We can do five half-assed or we can do three really well. Which would you prefer? I'm going to just go ahead and do the three really well. But I want you to do five half-assed. No, no.

So that is very, and that's hard to do. I mean, that's like hard to do. You've been trained to please your whole life. That's been hard to do. Which means your leader just has to make it okay for you to do that. So our culture is evolving. It really is. We're trying to do things better always. So we're evolving. Approachable, evolving, and a little bit disparate because of the people that are our audience, different audience, but internally it's a very happy culture I had my dogs in the other day we were hanging out I mean who doesn't love a fat pug sitting at a desk but yeah so it's that's what I would say.

Adrian McIntyre: 16:54

Let’s circle back to the different audiences part in a minute. but Cameron, I know Chiara just touched on something that's really important to you, which is creating a place where people feel safe and feel accepted for who they are. Let's explore this further and let's talk about cognitive diversity, not just the other sort of typical, visible, et cetera, forms of difference. Cameron, why is it so important to you in your industry to create a place where people can be who they are and then become better at the same time. “Start where you are, but don't stay where you are” was a poster in the gym at my grad school. But why is that important to you? And talk a little bit about your industry in that regard as well.

Cameron Magee: 17:44

Love that poster. I haven't spent a lot of time in a gym in my life, but I think that'd be a good poster for our office. That's a good one. Yeah, acceptance is really important to me. Edgar Papke has a great book called True Alignment that you might geek out on. He talks about different brand intentions and different things that our cultures are driving and that our external brands are driving. And he talks in there about this word acceptance. And I think a lot of companies, a lot of us in our professional lives with our LinkedIn profiles and resumes, we're rewarded for competency. And that's great. And we want to be smart. We want to be good at our job, because we want to take care of others and serve others. And so we want to be competent.

Everybody wants to be competent. But really the key, in my opinion, to growth starts with acceptance. I mean, you can look at any program, like Alcoholics Anonymous. You have to start with saying, I have a problem. Let's accept where you are, and now we can grow. And so what I'm passionate about in the workplace is this acceptance model and you just hit the nail on the head. We've got a high bar of excellence because we do event production. We do the A/V on people's biggest day of the year. It's like a national conference. You brought in Tony Robbins, whatever your keynote speaker is, or we do stuff with, you know, Fortune One. And we did a show last week with the President of the United States. When you're on these high profile things, they don't really appreciate incompetence, you know? We have to be competent. We have to have a high bar. But in my experience, my personal growth, and my journey in my life starts with acceptance. And I love that poster because I think you do have to say, we accept you where you are but we also want to teach you how to jump. I want to teach you to jump higher. And if that's interesting to you, then come on, because everybody on the other side of this door is doing that. And if you want to stay where you are, maybe don't come here. And that's okay. But every one of us, it's like running a gym or something. I mean, we're all trying to grow, because I think that's the key to life is growth, you know?

Adrian McIntyre: 19:46

So what are the specific practices that allow you as leaders to create that environment and actually work with folks. Because people bring all kinds of stuff to the party. So how do you think about that, Chiara? Where do you start and where do you go?

Chiara Hughes: 20:01

Authentically living it. Being that I can't ask somebody to trust me if I'm not trusting them and I can't ask somebody to be vulnerable if I'm not being vulnerable. So that's where I start. like that's an, inconsistency so radical I just wrote a LinkedIn blog post a month ago about radical transparency so I'm into radical acceptance of radical transparency and humans are humans they want the truth even if it's not good news right so that's how that for like and then encouraging my team because, you know, we hire people. So the workforce is literally built by my team. So I make sure that my team feels that way authentically. And they, I literally, we have scorecards, but I literally say, well, you can't put this anywhere on here and there's no way to quantify it. Let's just leave this blank space for recruiter gut, that gut feeling that you are like and you can't really you have a gut when you're gonna like somebody when you're gonna you have to be careful because that leads sometimes unconscious bias…

Adrian McIntyre: 21:03

I was literally gonna ask that, like the elephant in the room.

Cameron Magee: 21:06

Yeah, but I like that you're empowering them with the squishy.

Chiara Hughes: 21:09

Yeah, the squishy. Like, I don't know now I mean give me the reasons you felt that way but don't and I'm not saying that's might only be 10 percent, but that 10 is the difference between hiring someone and them quitting in three months like you can't so it's that gut feeling that you have to empower people to also have but that also comes with reps of like being a recruiter forever right like it's a muscle memory for me personally because I've been doing this for so long but frankly that's why I only hire senior recruiters I actually don't hire mid-level recruiters I hire junior sourcers I can train from scratch or seniors who have done it I don't hire the middle because I need to be sure of what where that is yeah.

Adrian McIntyre: 22:45

Conversations around cognitive diversity, neurodivergence are relatively new. And I mean, the research has been around for a while, but in terms of breaking through into a public conversation or a workplace conversation, it's not the typical. I mean, everybody knows Myers-Briggs or some other silly thing, but we're actually talking about some fairly substantive developments in the way we understand that people's brains work differently. You brought this up as something that's extremely important to you. Say more about that.

Chiara Hughes: 23:20

Well, so this can go two ways. It can go the whole cognitive diversity way. Creative diversity and thought in action, right? Then there's also the pragmatic side which is where you bring in neurodivergence. For example I have whether I made it very obvious or I did it and didn't really say anything about it just kind of did it not calling attention to it on purpose but I've always especially when I've built recruiting teams from little to bigger right I mean you can always hire one, and that's a huge hire. Your first hire is a huge hire. Then when you get to 42 you're like okay but always hire to the deficit. So, for example, if I hire an amazing senior recruiter, and that senior recruiter is very calm and very measured and very like I've done this and you love that and that's great people respond to that it makes you like they are chill and chaos it's great I'm probably gonna hire the next person to be a little more like me.

Cameron Magee: 24:21

Oh, that's so wise. I understand now.

Chiara Hughes: 24:22

Yeah, like, a little more like, “hey, but what if we …” You know? And you're just like … because I used to laugh. At my former company, I swear to god every time I'd go to my boss and say “what if we …” she was like, “oh god.” But I always want the “what if we” people. I always want the, “can we do this?” There's two kinds of people in the world: those will come to you with an idea or solution of all the reasons you can make it work, and those humans who will say all the reasons why it won't. I don't hang with B. “Cool, got it. No.” I want to be with A. How do we make it work and now if we go through eight million things and it doesn't work okay cool we tried god I want to try and so I'll usually hire a chill and then a more, inquisitive dynamic and then the third might be someone who's more tactical yeah that is the person that's like oh well we did all that but who's documenting this?

Cameron Magee: 25:21

This sounds like Working Genius.

Chiara Hughes: 25:23

Yeah so that's how that's the so it's like a puzzle right and it's only as stronger as I mean it's just like you know when you see something level it's not as firm as something staggered right so that's how I've done it whether and I've never admitted this before but I do it deliberately but it makes I make it look like I didn't just because I don't want people have a preconceived notion about it.

Cameron Magee: 25:43

Right, because that could be bad too.

Chiara Hughes: 25:45

It could be bad. But I mean, I do that on purpose. Hire to the deficit. And I don't mean deficit in a negative way. I just mean the area that we need more help in. So that's how.

Adrian McIntyre: 25:55

What's the place for, you mentioned Working Genius just now under your breath, but what's the place for these sorts of assessments? I can see the potential for helping people understand themselves and others better. I've certainly taken them, not in the context of being an employee. I'm a self-employed to the core kind of a person. But, you know, from StrengthsFinder to Predictive Index to, you know, all of the ones. What's the place for that? Some companies over rely on it? They take your disc profile and now it's like you are stuck with this. This is who you are.

Cameron Magee: 26:32

Yeah. DNA or something.

Adrian McIntyre: 26:34

And it's almost this weirdly deterministic, like, “Now we've got your box. Oh, you're one of those.” Which, as an Enneagram 4, I just have to say is my worst nightmare. There is no box. I am absolutely unique, don't you know?

Chiara Hughes: 26:49

Yeah.

Adrian McIntyre: 26:49

So anyway, what's the role of assessments of this kind?

Chiara Hughes: 26:53

So here's what's interesting. I've changed my opinion on that. So when I was, again, large company prior, even when it wasn't as large, I was anti. I did not want to do it. I didn't want to pigeonhole people.

But I mean, we went rapid growth. I mean, again, I wrote a blog on that too. “Hyper growth is rad,” was the name of it. Again, we went from 800 people to 20,000. So how do you, because I maintained that that first chat with a recruiter is not 10 minutes. That's a 30- to 45-minute conversation. And they're like, Chiara, you're going to do that for hiring 20,000 people. You're going to do that. I go, well, maybe not for like touch labor or like more the certain types. But I was on the, I was the head of technical and corporate recruiting at one time, which is the G&A and the higher, the more skilled. And I was like yeah yep sure I am I'm gonna do that yeah but no no no there's no substitute for this. Like, I have, we have to talk to people. I want to hear it. I want to hear their story. I want to hear because a resume is great but it's not the full story. It's just never the full story and it's so out of context. I mean, it's a great starting point, but so was the foundation of this building without being built on it. I just needed more and so I was anti that and I stayed true to the minute I left. We didn't use them at all. We didn't do it. And I had a peer leader who was very upset with me and she really wanted to use them.

Cameron Magee: 28:35

Good diversity.

Chiara Hughes: 28:35

Right. Yeah. Right. I said, you do you, boo. You use them for you. I get it. You should do that. I totally understand. Knock yourself out. But I run this part and I'm saying we're not doing it. We never did.

Adrian McIntyre: 28:45

So what changed?

Chiara Hughes: 28:48

Well, so this company. So this company that I joined, we were huge changes when I joined. And it's part of my job to steward some of those changes. And so... Time. I don't have time to build that from scratch because I haven't hired. So this is where I was spoiled at the last job. I had one person, I had one recruiter and one coordinator for what is now a very famous tech company, right? And so it wasn't, it was all of us in a tiny building on Indian School Road in an old grocery store, right? Where I could stand up and see the And so I, the team built it literally from scratch. So we had a blank slate. Now it's not a blank slate. People are in place. So I have to, I actually, that's harder because you have to change how they've been thinking. People don't love change. Most humans don't. I love it, but most people don't.

So you're not only telling them that they're changing, the implied assertion is that they're doing it wrong. So that's not fun, right? And I always approach it with just vulnerability and humor, but that's a thing. So what changed using the assessment is they acknowledged they were hiring wrong. And for me to do it better, it's going to take time. I had to build a team. I had to put all the processes in place. I'm telling you, things that I thought were in place when I joined that I thought were just obvious. And not to be like, I wasn't being arrogant. I just genuinely thought these are the obvious things. Like how can you even build a company without this, this literal template document, find out they didn't even have that document. And I'm like, Oh, I almost swore. Oh crap. I was like, I don't just have to tell people how to use this document. I have to literally create this document, show them how to use it. I'm like, what else are we missing? And it was a lot.

So, so I don't, and I want to do it right. Right. So using the behavioral assessments helps because we're not confident that how we're hiring is the best yet. Right. And so we specifically chose Criteria Corp, which is who we use, because they give assessments that test people's how they think, not what they think. Good. Right. And we like it because, yeah, it gives a score. Cool. Cool. I actually, we, my CFO and I, we, we skipped the score because it gives the insights on this person is 82% more likely to speak up when they disagree with their boss. This person is 2% less likely to speak up when they're overloaded and that kind of stuff. That is what I care about. So a lot of people don't love doing it. It's 23 minutes. That's two things, 23 minutes total. And I'm very careful. And it's literally in that template that we created for the recruiters, the talent screen template. It says... So I'm very, again, radical transparency. You'd go through the screen and then at the end, it literally says, tell the candidate exactly where they stand and what the next steps are and how long this process is going to take.

Cameron Magee: 32:07

Love that. We do the same thing in our hiring. It's so important.

Chiara Hughes: 32:10

Yep. And you think that is such a game changer for people. And it's, to me, it's like so obvious, but like.

Cameron Magee: 32:14

But it's not normal somehow.

Chiara Hughes: 32:16

It's just not normal, right? And then explain that the Criteria Corp test and we, so there was thought, do we do it at the beginning of the hiring process or at the end? A lot of people wait to do it at the end. Because why put people through that unless you think they're going to give them an offer. And my thing is, no, because then they feel like getting an offer is contingent upon the results.

Cameron Magee: 32:36

That’s the sticky thing.

Chiara Hughes: 32:38

Yeah, and I'm not doing that. So now we do everybody does it like you're not moving on to the next level which is a hiring manager screen unless you do this this on purpose because it is not contingent on you getting a job we're too early in the process to even think that far second why if you're if the results of that assessment say that you are great at this or terrible at this we're not going to spend at 45 minutes hammering you on what you're not good at we don't that and if and if you're not good at that and we need that we're gonna have an honest conversation with you about maybe this isn't the right fit right? Before we waste anybody's time.

So I've decided that it's early in the state, like right after the talent screen. It goes straight to that. It's almost simultaneous. We set up the hiring manager screen at the same time. We set up the Criteria Corp assessment because we want that information going into the whole thing because we also, honestly, it is for the candidate's benefit. We want to interview them in a way that's comfortable for them that's good like if they're very linear in thought I'm not telling stories about like but if they're more creative in thought like a graphic designer for example I'm interviewing a graphic designer very differently than I'm interviewing an account yeah and if you think that you can interview all humans the same way you're I'm already going to go out on this HR limb and say you're wrong yeah because not everybody thinks the same which is where neurodivergence comes in and create and cognitive diversity comes in but so that's why so early on in the process and I don't like binary things like yes or no it's more like what is this person geared toward doing is the way and then and then again senior recruiters know to interview people that way and then you tell the hiring manager hey heads up.

This is a candidate. I really like this person. I'm going to just tell you though, if you think you're going to be like, well, tell me this time you did, you're not, you're not going to get that out of it. So may I make a suggestion on talking to them in this way? , and then, , it seems so like labor intensive to do it that way. Cause it's a lot of work, but the end result is, is way less wasted time in the process and way fewer offers turned down. Yeah.

Adrian McIntyre: 34:56

Let's talk a little bit about, going back to something you said earlier, the diversity of your customer base. Because, of course, building great cultures is important because you want to have a place to work that you want to work at. But it's not just for the people inside the house. It's also part of a business strategy. You want your team to interface well with the folks that drive growth for the company. And that's the client. That's the customer. That's the outsider. Jessica, in the events world, you're dealing with so many different layers of folks. Some of the enormous companies that you serve, you've got folks differently positioned. They might be in a department. They might be part of a core events execution team. They might be part of senior leadership. And there are cultures of those different sections of your clients' companies. And you're representing avad3 when you are dealing with them. How do you manage that interface such that they feel respect to the known, but your culture is also shining through?

Jessica Kloosterman: 36:08

I think there's kind of two things that stand out to me. And one of them would be... Being inquisitive, asking really good questions. It's like two side by side. You got to ask good questions and you got to listen really well. And I think in an interview process, it's got to have the same cadence, especially those that are client-facing. We have a lot of people on the technician side who are, they're just locked into the gear, they're locked into the execution of their skill and their craft. But in terms of like our team that's client-facing, they've got to be able to ask really good questions and they have to listen really well they have to slow down they have to make sure that they're not just listening to hear but they're listening to understand yeah and so that's what's what I look for a lot in our team and continuing to develop to develop that we can all get better at asking really good questions and it sometimes it's hard when you're working with someone you're either uncomfortable with or you're not naturally, gifted at just kind of matching them where they are, you have to, that's a learned skill. And some people are better at it naturally than others, but you can always get better at it. You can always get better at ways that you can ask deeper, more involved questions to get them to talk more and to get them to connect at a deeper level. And so that's really what, that's kind of the thing that I look for in our team.

Adrian McIntyre: 37:34

One of the things I found very interesting that you folks have told me over recent days as we've been together doing episodes and just talking afterwards is that in the event production world. The technical team is usually, there's a desire in many cases, not yours, to keep those people at a distance. The event planner, who's usually working directly for the client, who's hiring the production team, is almost trying to protect their client from the people wearing the black shirts and pants. Because those people are grumpy. They're arrogant. They think they know everything. It's kind of an engineer-ish mindset. And I have experienced what you're referring to. Your goal is that avad3 is different, that everyone could potentially be client-facing. Cameron, why is that important to you and how has that set you apart from the rest of the industry?

Cameron Magee: 38:27

I think when you go to certain, I don't want to say resorts or something, I'm not trying to say that privilege or whatever, but when you go to even a restaurant, you go to certain restaurants or certain places where the culture is so evident. It's because the first person who greets you is just as passionate about it as the head chef in the back or the CEO or whatever place you are. That's culture. Culture is how we do things around here. And so, yes, the event planner's job is to be very put together because a lot of the vendors that it takes to do an event are relatively commoditized, sadly. You know, tables and chairs are a commodity. And so the event planner, whoever's hosting the event, hires this event planner to be this middleman, to be this layer between them. And it's their job to kind of don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain over here like Wizard of Oz. Don't pay attention to these people who are bringing in the tables and chairs. Everything's fine. But if you really think about it, the keynote speaker, that's who they're going to get mic'd up by backstage.

And really... The crew is the front lines. The event planner cannot be everywhere. Like when you attend a conference, you go to a breakout room. The crew is really running that breakout room at that point. The event planner is not everywhere. And so I just realized early on, we need to make sure that everybody's ready to be client-facing. You never know what kind of impression you're making on the venue, someone who's doing a site visit the day you're there doing this national conference, the next week's national conference is they're doing a site visit and I just want our brand represented really well. I can't be everywhere. Jessica can't be everywhere. We can't just say that the top leadership is carefully making sure you don't see these people back here. They're on the front lines and we want to make sure they're seen. And then what I think the challenge is in our hiring process in the team interviews something we realized years ago that was starting to happen by accident was a little bit of bias a little bit towards okay we want to be client facing so does that mean everybody's bubbly like what does that mean and we've had to really steer the team towards ... I love what you said earlier. You said staggered is stronger than level. And we've got to really steer the team towards, no, we can accept everybody exactly where they are we can have a just a like a rainbow vibrant spectrum you like just a charcuterie board I don't know what ridiculous metaphor but we can have a we can have a great balanced diet of everybody here and a brand that's known for professionalism. Our name, avad3, the "avad" is Hebrew for serve, but people talk about our service, but they talk about our service through the lens of professionalism. I love having those A/V people on my show because their professionalism makes me look better. It makes our CEO look better, makes our executive director look better. And I think that comes from, starts in the hiring process. It comes from brand consistency, but it's extremely important.

Jessica Kloosterman: 41:21

And I'll say, I'll say internally, it also stems from like the leadership and that listening and asking questions happens internally with our team too. What we talked about earlier with like each department, like our managers, our leaders, our directors, they're all encouraging those questions and listening well to their team and like inside the team. And that is going to come out when they're serving on site too.

Adrian McIntyre: 41:46

We've got a good window into your industry. Chiara, tell us about yours. How do these dynamics, the team versus the customer and how they interface, how does that play out for you?

Chiara Hughes: 41:57

Well, so one thing I want to say. To tie what you both said together is that I think the definition of professional needs to change, right you think of professional like old school IBM you know like you think of buttoned up as professional.

Cameron Magee: 42:13

Suit and tie.

Adrian McIntyre: 42:15

Dark suit, white shirt, red tie.

Chiara Hughes: 42:17

Yeah, correct. Right

Adrian McIntyre: 42:17

That's IBM.

Chiara Hughes: 42:19

Oh I when I moved here, I had to wear pantyhose. I was like, “What? It's 120 degrees. I gotta wear pantyhose? No.” So that needs to change and I think it is changing like say what you want about millennials and like Gen Z, but they're changing how we think about showing up to work I will also say one thing that's interesting you both said something so at my last job the person at the front desk's title was First Impression Specialist and our CEO who's very famous interviewed every single one of them wow And he's like, if that's the first human you're seeing when you walk into our company, they better be amazeballs, right? So, he would say that. He's a great person. And then the second thing is that you touched on that I had said about my team, and I joked and people laughed all the time. I'm like, I'm glad you think I'm being cute, but I'm being dead serious. My team, and I said, was interchangeably awesome.

Interchangeably awesome. If I couldn't be at a meeting, I could send anybody on my team, even if they were hierarchically four levels down. And I know they're going to show up great to that meeting because I hired an authentically beautiful human. So authentically interchangeably awesome. So that's, that's the thing. So it may just keep your hiring bar very, and I don't, I hide and I hate almost use the word high. I keep it authentic and real and where your core values are being met and your human values are being met. So that is that was I just want to piggyback off of those two things because those are hugely important. So now I forgot your question.

Adrian McIntyre: 43:55

In your industry in general, I mean, on one hand, you're a technology company, but you're serving a very traditional automotive industry. And you've got to have the interface between those two worlds. And as you alluded to earlier in the conversation, on the customer side, there's a whole range of folks who represent a variety of different backgrounds, different mechanical and technical abilities, different levels of passion for cars, which you personally share. I know. So how do you think about the interfaces? I mean, I know the platform itself, the secret sauce part of this, the tech is the primary interface, but there's more always, there's always more.

Chiara Hughes: 44:41

It is, actually. So my current CEO and I talked about this last week, truly understanding the product. Like if you truly understand how to do something or what something does, then you can riff off of that. How to address a different audience, right? You have to just know it. Anytime somebody wants to talk to me about the things I'm passionate about, I'm not nervous to have these conversations because I know it so well that I'm like, yeah, you can't throw anything at me in 25 years. I'm not comfortable answering. But if I am really uncomfortable with the subject matter, I don't feel like I know it that well, then I'm more likely to stick to the script because the script is safe. That's why you learn great foundational reps of foundational, like, it's just like learning a new language. When I learned Spanish, you know, you get your cognitive verbs, your tenses, and you just, and then that's your foundation. Then you can go off of that once you memorize vocabulary. So it's kind of like that. If you, you have to know the product really, really well and believe in the product a lot. So then now we're just talking about something we're both interested in.

Adrian McIntyre: 45:47

Now in this case, is the product your platform or is the product the parts sold on your platform?

Chiara Hughes: 45:53

Our platform.

Cameron Magee: 45:54

That's a good question.

Adrian McIntyre: 45:55

And as we think about the future—and of course, in tech and innovation, we're always thinking about the future—you can't have a culture of innovation if your only innovation is happening at the engineering level.

Chiara Hughes: 46:09

Right.

Adrian McIntyre: 46:10

Innovative products and design processes are part of the equation. But if you're not innovating at your people level, you can't call it a culture of innovation. You can call it a really cool machine or whatever. So as you look toward the future and as we wrap up this conversation, what are some of the things you're working on that maybe aren't in place yet? Or some things that are on the horizon coming at us all that we haven't fully yet figured out how to address. What's your future thinking right now?

Chiara Hughes: 46:44

Well, so most companies do an eNPS, like a pulse. Often two things are a result of that pulse. Nothing happens. So now the employees just feel like we just want to know your deep, innermost thoughts because we want to know what we're up against.

Cameron Magee: 47:02

Yikes.

Chiara Hughes: 47:03

Right. We just want to hear what you're thinking, but we're not going to do anything about it.

Cameron Magee: 47:05

Yikes. Worst case scenario.

Chiara Hughes: 47:06

Worse case. Or most of the time, “Oh my gosh, we didn't know you felt this way. We love you. Let's fix everything.” No, no. So we didn't need the NPS pulse. And so I said to the team, I'm not going to sit here and tell you we're going to fix everything that you asked us to fix, that would be disingenuous and impossible so we're going to look at by rating what the math said were the two things that are scored the lowest and we're going to only address those two in that first half of 20 24 and then we're only going to address the second two in the second half of 20 24.

Wise super wise so that's so the first step was seeing what actually was important to the people on the team and the whole company, the whole company, right? And saying, okay, so how are we going to quantify and make this actionable that these are things that people care about? And we did, and we put a plan together and we said, like, for example, one of them was, , it's work to home life balance. I mean, so here's what I always find interesting. So I'm a recruiter at heart. I'm a recruiter. Like I I'll talk, I love to talk and network and I'll, I love, I actually love the roots of recruiting, right? Like I'm a leader in recruiting now, but I actually still love to just recruit. I'd rather do that than like manage people sometimes.

So in every time we ask people, and I've put this on every template I've ever created ever, what motivates you to take one job over another? Just tell me, what are your motivating factors? I want to know what they authentically are. And then the next thing, and when we talk about money is, I always say, tell me what you need to make. Give me your happy dance down the street. You name your next child Chiara number. Give me the, okay, I'll consider it number and give me the kick rocks. You're undervaluing me bounce Chiara number. I need those three numbers, but I just want to know what motivates you. Cause I'm not going to sit here. And if you say that it is, , you want like to add this gravitas to your resume, we're probably not the place. I'll just tell you right now. And I'm blunt about it. So the point of this story is, do you know how rarely it's money?

It's never money. It's so rarely money. It's always culture, stability of my job, work to home life balance. That's what it is every time. So why are we talking about money? So, I mean, we need to know money. We need to do a budget. We're pregnant. We got to pay the bills, right? But like, so the reason why I'm taking this a few steps back before I answer is that.

When every candidate we talk to is saying that money isn't important and work-to-home life balance and culture is important, and our eNPS is saying that they want to feel more valued at work and not feel burnout, and they want a home life balance, those are the things that we need to address first. How are we going to do it? And very simply, one of the first things that, like, I was there like a month, was our company is lovely. They give every person two days off for the year, like, free PTO for volunteer activities. These I love that so I said let's run a report how many people are actually using that and it was three percent like it was low right so why do you not feel like you can take the time off of your job to do that like why but the bottom line is we said okay so let's make it more meaningful, let's swap out one of those days for a I just can't do it today boss like you don't need to give me a volunteer reason you don't need to give me proof that you volunteered you don't need to call it PTO. It's a no-questions-asked, “I am burnt out today. I just can't life today.” That's it. It didn't cost our company any more money because we were already allotting for the time, but it was a more meaningful use of people's what they wanted.

Cameron Magee: 50:47

Well, you're showing that you heard them.

Chiara Hughes: 50:48

And we heard them, right? So other things that we do are when we do like team engagement activities, what are you actually interested in doing? Like we were doing this, this, this. Nobody was that involved in it. So we did our annual off-site, our annual kickoff meeting in January. And one of the new hires that we hired recently, he's a rev operations manager who's lovely. He was like, “Do you care if I run a poker tournament?” I'm like, “Where?” He's like, “Here at the office, the night that everybody shows up.” I go, “No. We'll just buy pizza and whatever. And you run this poker tournament, thinking they're already here. They've already flown in from all over.” That went off like crazy. So I'm like, okay, I've been knocking myself out. Do we spend a jillion dollars at Topgolf where no one's going to go and they feel like they're not, they're away from their families? Or do we just host this $200 on pizza? Okay. Do you see what I'm saying?

So get in touch with what people actually want and then provide something that addresses what they actually want. And it sounds so simple, but that, so that's, that's it. So that's what we put in place. Initiatives that promote work-to-home life balance, being ruthless about prioritization of tasks and project planning, and then giving people time in the safe space to take the time they need or say no. I mean, I have like, I made a list here. Like I have literally a DEI initiative that I'm putting in place where I work now. And I had like literally steps one through nine, like step one, step two. And that's, I wrote it out if you want it, but, ground zero step is only working for a company where the leadership authentically believes in its people and believes in how important this is, because if they didn't, I'm telling you right now, I would not work here.

Adrian McIntyre: 52:32

Chiara Hughes is Director of People Operations for RevolutionParts. Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.

Chiara Hughes: 52:39

It was fun and easy. Thank you.

Adrian McIntyre: 52:44

Thanks for listening to this episode of Culture Amplified. If you enjoyed the conversation, please share this podcast with a colleague who might also find it valuable. It’s easy to do! Just click the “Share” button in the app you’re listening to now.

Culture Amplified is brought to you by avad3 Event Production, located in Northwest Arkansas and serving clients nationwide. avad3 believes that event production should be flawless so your message can shine. They provide many free resources for corporate and non-profit event planners on their website, including planning checklists, technical guides, and templates. You can download them free of charge at avad3.com. That’s A-V-A-D-3 dot com

Special thanks to Cameron Magee, Tabitha McFadden, Amy Bates, Jessica Kloosterman, Steve Sullivant, Kimber Reaves, and Olivia Martin at avad3 for helping bring this podcast series to life.

Podcast strategy, on-site recording, and post-production by Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm led by Adrian McIntyre – that’s me – and Jen McIntyre. Music by Diego Martinez.

Most of all, we’d like to thank our featured guests, who so generously shared their time, stories, and insights with us. You can learn more about them in the written notes for each episode, at avad3.com/podcast.

For all of us here at Speed of Story and avad3 Event Production, thanks for listening – and for sharing the show with others, if you choose to do so. We hope you’ll join us again for another episode of Culture Amplified.