Talent management

Matt Henwood

August 24, 2021 by

Matt has been working with services companies for more than 20 years, starting in telecommunications and evolving into software services. Over the last 15 years he has supported three services startups at Sumtotal Systems, Appirio and 7Summits, which all led to successful acquisitions. He is familiar with high-growth environments, has successfully attracted and grown talent organizations and the people within them, and implements operational models that can scale. Today, he leads Operations and Delivery at Envoy.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I gain the most satisfaction helping people to succeed, whether it’s career growth, customer success, or on a personal level. I believe that it starts with attracting and sourcing the right talent, and from there, focusing on how to remove blockers and motivate them. I love helping people succeed in their careers and I’ve found that I have been able to make the biggest impact with services companies.

Your focus on ‘people first’ has led to highly engaged teams with strong business results at 7Summits, Appirio and Sumtotal. What advice would you give to leaders looking to bring this concept into their organization?

Having a people-first philosophy means keeping the “team” front and center when making decisions and creating processes. It starts with bringing the right talent in, fostering their growth once they arrive, and supporting them throughout their journey. I believe that if you take care of the team, all of the other performance metrics will follow.

Here are a few concrete tips: When it comes to making smart, impactful hires, make sure you create recruiting models that allow for multiple data points. Hire for aptitude and culture fit over other attributes. Next, make sure there’s a high level of engagement with multiple points of interaction. It’s easy for consultants to get lost in their project world, especially when working remotely. Tools can help. Lastly, foster growth and performance through mentoring and training. Ensure there are resources in place that allow people to grow and perform in their specific roles. Centers of Excellence are one way to accomplish this, in lieu of functional organizational models.

What is one tip that you have for building a truly global delivery team and culture?

One of the activities I’ve found can positively impact a global buildout is to align respective teams and leaders with their counterparts in different regions. At Appirio I was able to spend a lot of time in Europe and India as we built out our customer base. Getting alignment and routinely engaging with my counterparts in those geographies helped us grow and scale the services and teams respectively. These relationships led to stronger communications, ultimately leading to achievement of our shared goals.

What advice would you give leaders seeking to transition a delivery team’s focus from being project based to truly sustaining ongoing customer relationships?

I believe there are two core ingredients that feed into strong customer relationships: understanding their business and understanding the outcomes they are looking to achieve. Customers have a lot of choices when it comes to who they want to partner with for technology services. The organizations that come in, learn and demonstrate a strong understanding of their customers’ business, and then shape solutions that lead to tangible business outcomes are the ones that will win. That, and having the right people.

Megan Nail

August 19, 2021 by

Megan has a knack for getting to the heart of a company’s culture and goals, and designing compensation structures that attract, engage, and retain the talent to achieve those goals. She is currently a leader in NFP’s Total Rewards Practice, advising clients on compensation strategies, pay equity, incentive pay structures, and how to use compensation as a key component of the employee value proposition. Megan’s career has been focused on professional services firms, and she is passionate about creating total rewards structures that support growth and scalability. Megan holds a range of professional certifications, is a board member for the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM’s) Indiana chapter, and is the co-author of Joy Powered Organizations. She’s also an active volunteer, sports fan and mom of two sons.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

People are the core of every business – but with people-based businesses, the connection is undeniable. I love working with services businesses because they are willing to invest in their talent, which they know is the only way to achieve their goals and ultimately success. This allows us the opportunity to think broadly and creatively about total rewards strategies, including compensation programs, that recognize and reward their greatest asset.

You’ve advised a lot of organizations on their sales compensation strategy over the years. How should CEOs and CROs think about compensation as they move upmarket and to larger accounts (>$1M+)?

As you move up market and grow your team, it’s important to make your sales compensation plans and strategy more sophisticated. An important note – this does not mean to make it more complicated! Sales compensation plans need to be simple and straightforward enough so they are easily understood by the team, but also clearly motivate and drive the behavior and performance you want.

The first step is to reassess your sales targets and cycles. Larger sales typically take longer to sell – and less frequent payments and achievements will impact your sales team if plans aren’t structured well. Then, evaluate your profitability on larger sales. Do you need to adjust your plan to account for different levels? If teams will be working on a sale, how will you share the credit and payments?

Finally, formalize your plan. In a start-up environment, it’s common to have little (or no) formal documentation of your sales compensation plans. Clearly communicating a plan so everyone is on the same page is key – and will avoid questions, dispute and ill will in the future!

What advice do you give to companies who are rolling out an equity incentive program to their employees for the first time?

Equity is a powerful tool – and employees are attracted to opportunities that provide equity because of its unique opportunity to create sustainable wealth. However, studies have shown again and again that equity compensation recipients do not understand their rewards. My advice is to take the time to educate your team on the awards and how they create value – and the important details like tax consequences. Also, invest in a meaningful and equitable way to structure the grants based on tenure, job level or whatever factors are most important to your business. The bottom line is intentional and clear communication around equity incentives will help ensure you and your team both perceive the high level of value that exists in these programs.

What impact do you think the move to remote work as a more acceptable practice will have on companies’ total reward programs and policies in the long term?

For many years, remote work was a key differentiator for consultancies; but that competitive advantage is fading as more and more companies are moving to remote or hybrid work cultures. For those jobs that can be done remotely, I believe this will become an expectation by employees and an imperative for companies to compete for talent. Total rewards programs and policies will become more consistent across the employee population and less focused on physical events and perks (such as free food, swanky offices and happy hours). Employers are demanding that all benefits be equitable for both remote and in office employees. Businesses must continue to evolve and rethink their employee value proposition.

How can companies structure their compensation and workforce policies to appeal to a more diverse workforce?

The workforce will only continue to become more diverse over time – which is a huge advantage. However, we have to recognize that with this diversity comes different needs and opportunities to structure compensation and programs. Giving options and flexibility will allow employees to customize a total rewards package that works for them. For example, while older workers may value a rich retirement contribution and the stability of a higher base salary, younger workers may value student loan repayment programs and a lower base salary with higher upside potential.

Andrew Falcon

February 26, 2021 by

Andrew has made a career out of injecting energy, ideas and discipline into small- to medium-sized high growth services companies for more than 20 years. He spent more than 11 years as the global COO of Fjord, an international innovation and design agency that was acquired by Accenture in 2013. As COO of Fjord, Andrew worked with the founders to develop the strategic direction for the agency, and oversaw financial and operational performance, investments, IT, HR and international expansion. While at Fjord and Accenture, he grew the agency from 50 FTEs to more than 1,400 FTEs and 36 global studios. He is now focused on helping founders and investors weave together a long-term vision with the right operational targets to produce an efficient and responsive delivery capability that attracts talent, strategic partnerships and fuels business growth.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I believe there are so many ingenious ideas, products and services that can make the world a better place, which are all fighting to be experienced. Partnering with entrepreneurs to enable those ideas operationally and to build teams that can bring those products and services prime time gives me a natural high. I’m always seeking ways to make every business activity more impactful, and making teams feel more recognized and appreciated motivates me. To me it’s all about people and purpose. I want to give more people the opportunities I’ve had in building companies, to share my experiences and to unleash the next great service or product offering!

While you were at Fjord, you saw the firm grow from a small company to more than 1,400 people in 36+ cities. What were a few surprises for your leadership team during this journey?

The excitement of growing a business will always throw up surprises — both good and bad ! Most were manageable but there were a few that required a great deal of thought. For example, we knew our choice to be acquired by Accenture Interactive was founded on sound principles and business objectives, supported by a collaborative and protective acquiring team. However, I don’t think we fully appreciated the challenges that came with bringing together such different cultures. Navigating those decisions and challenges required more collaboration, communication and education (in both directions) for a longer period than anticipated but the positive results flowed from there.

Another example was experiencing the Peter Principle first-hand. Leading small studios and design teams by designers is cost effective and can work, however, elevating our best designers to lead large studios and countries with non-design demands became increasingly challenging, particularly given the speed of growth and increased client demands. We needed to become more intentional in this over time and we had to find proactive alternatives to our designers’ career aspirations.

When Fjord was acquired by Accenture, you helped lead the integration of the team into Accenture Interactive. What should services execs plan for when bringing a new firm into the fold after an acquisition?

For any acquisition to deliver on its intended purpose, the journey should start well before the deal is inked. It requires active senior leadership support and participation on both sides, a clearly articulated common purpose, and an underlying trust that both parties will seek solutions to every eventuality that wasn’t anticipated.Post-acquisition almost everything rests on authentic, effective and regular communication to the acquired team. Plan for this time and ensure the right people are delivering the messages. So much is assumed at this stage and assumptions often result in misunderstanding, distrust and attrition, which is the single biggest concern when acquiring a people-based business!

You’ve led a very diverse set of teams around the world – people who are technical, operational and creative in nature at startups and extremely large companies. What has that taught you about effective organizational design and how to scale teams and culture?

Peter Drucker infamously said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I couldn’t agree with this more. I’ve learned that having a collaboratively structured, well communicated, and empowering culture, will serve as the most important lens through which nearly every decision is made. Within this unique culture, team members need to be bold, generous, collaborative, communicative and always curious. Client engagements need to be fast, flexible, and people-operated. It’s even OK if they are a little unstable, as that ability to experiment without a fear of failure can go a long way. When designing companies, we should think more of a flotilla of multi-disciplined Hobie Cats than a single super-tanker.

Heidi Spirgi

January 29, 2021 by

Heidi has spent her career helping organizations tap into the power of their workforce. She is the former Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Cornerstone, a talent management technology company whose solutions are used by 75 million people around the world, and has held leadership roles at The Marcus Buckingham Company, ADP and PeopleSoft. In 2004 she co-founded Knowledge Infusion, a strategic HR consulting firm that was acquired by Appirio and eventually became the foundation for Appirio’s Workday cloud services practice. She has been recognized as a Top 100 HR Tech Influencer by HR Executive Magazine, and is a sought after expert on how leaders can promote gender equality.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

People are the heart and soul of any business, but no more so than in services. Tools and technology lack value on their own, it’s the people behind them that really make the difference. People-first businesses, whether products or services companies, are also just a lot more fun to be a part of and lead. When you look at employees as humans first, workers second, teams are a lot more trusting, collaborative, engaged and motivated. That’s when innovation flows!

You have a track record of creating strong, high-performing team cultures. What factors are important when it comes to creating a strong culture?

The first thing is to ensure people, leaders included, have a beginner’s mindset. If you approach everything as a student, rather than believing you know everything at the outset, you don’t close your mind off to new ideas. This was one of the reasons why Knowledge Infusion was so successful. We had industry expertise and a passion for our work, but we didn’t necessarily have a playbook for the kind of consulting we wanted to do. And that’s not a bad thing. The second thing is to create an environment where it’s safe to take risks. I tell my teams to actively seek those OSMs (oh shit moments) where you try things you haven’t done before and have no idea how it’s going to end. It’s in those moments that you grow and create breakthroughs for the business.

What advice would you give founders who are just getting started in a highly competitive ecosystem?

Don’t try to be all things to all people. When you expand your offerings too fast, suddenly it becomes more difficult to differentiate. The market doesn’t understand who you are or your unique value proposition. You still need to be opportunistic, but in a thoughtful way that allows you to identify the downstream trade offs. It helps to establish a set of guiding principles, a set of beliefs that act like guardrails to keep you on track when those shiny objects and short cuts seem tempting. And try to act bigger than you are — invest in marketing to establish your brand and build credibility early on. If you’re competing against the big guys, you have to look and act the part and B-level marketing will sink you.

Toni Pavlovich

January 28, 2021 by

Toni is a results-oriented, culture-first kind of leader who started her career as an F117A Stealth Fighter avionics engineer but now spends her days navigating the world of enterprise software. She currently leads Splunk’s Professional Services and Sales organization, a $200+ million P&L with more than 850 sales, services and partner delivery professionals in more than 20 countries. Toni has experience across nearly every aspect of a business and the customer journey, whether that’s technical pre-sales, sales, professional services, global support, mission critical services or customer success management. When she’s not busy building, mentoring and managing her teams, Toni can usually be found competing at any number of sports or volunteering at the Longboat Key Turtle Watch.

Why are you so passionate about helping people-based businesses?

I started my career in engineering and product sales, but spent the majority of my time as a leader in people-based businesses. People are the heart and soul of any company, and there is nothing more amazing than creating a culture and environment where high performing teams are learning and growing, providing huge value to customers, and feeling accomplished but challenged. That’s a sweet spot for me, and results in great talent and a thriving business.

You manage teams on five continents. What advice would you give to founders looking to expand internationally on managing a truly global team culture?

This is too hard to summarize in a few sentences but I’ll start with a big one: think and act globally, but with a local lens. By that I mean leaders have to be clear on overall objectives and direction, while being thoughtful and respectful of the culture, language and diverse needs of local employees and customers. Too many U.S.-based leaders come at it with a U.S.centric mindset. Be conscious of what you say, what policies you put in place and what actions you take. Even small things like creating flex meeting times that respect time zone differences can make a big impact.

How has the cloud changed things when it comes to meeting the needs and demands of enterprise customers?

As customers move from perpetual or on-premise to cloud technologies, their expectations of vendors have shifted alongside. They now expect a regular cadence of new features, seamless updates, instant fixes, proactive pushes, even telemetry. If expectations aren’t met, they feel much more empowered to leave and find a new vendor. This means companies have to get the right services to customers, at the right time, with the right resources to speed customer adoption; it’s imperative that they’re getting value every step of the way so they renew and expand. However, that takes sales, services, support and product teams working together, which means everyone now owns customer success. Not one particular group.

As a vocal advocate for women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), what do you think companies can do differently to help women excel in technology organizations?

Making progress in this area takes real work, not just talk, and it can’t just be owned by HR. It needs to be infused throughout the company as a business imperative and treated as importantly as other drivers for success. It requires leadership and holding everyone accountable. A good place to start is to benchmark where you are currently and be realistic but set aggressive goals. Collect the data, use it as a foundation, measure your progress and communicate how you’re doing. Be purposeful in creating a diverse pipeline of candidates and ensure you are creating a culture that is inclusive.

Emma Sprague

January 25, 2021 by

Emma Sprague is a partner at KNP Communcations, a private firm that helps its clients become great communicators by providing in-person and virtual training and coaching for organizations and individuals globally. Before KNP, she founded Upswing Strategies, a media and communications firm.

Why are you passionate about helping entrepreneurs?

It takes guts (and time, and heart, and so much resilience) to launch an idea out into the world and fight for it to thrive. A lot of that has to come from the entrepreneur, but there are places where guidance and investment from others are essential. I’m grateful to be in a position to help entrepreneurs, both with my first-hand experience launching a business and because that business is focused on helping good people with good ideas deliver their message, tell their story, and make their pitch with the impact they desire. I am animated by the process of helping people shape their most authentic and compelling way to communicate and to lead, and to feel confident in both.

You’ve done a lot of social science research into why people listen to and follow some leaders more than others. How can founders hone their speaking and presentation skills to be a more inspirational leader?

Leading is a lot easier and more effective when people want to follow, when they are inspired, when they admire you and feel you’re headed somewhere together. That feeling is informed by the emotional character judgements we innately make about one another. Is she my kind of person? Does she have the ability to influence my world? One of the best ways to inform that judgement and inspire is by communicating your vision, your values and your story well and authentically. Becoming a magnetic speaker demands deliberate attention to how you prepare, how you show up, and how you deliver. That approach requires harnessing your individual strengths and personality, honing strategies that align your words, body language and voice with your message, and building a routine that ensures you approach each engagement with energy and poise.

During the pandemic companies had to shift quickly from in-person to virtual events. What can we learn from the companies who’ve been successful in this new format? How do they keep engagement high?

The first thing to do is acknowledge that virtual engagements – while powerful in a lot of important ways – are a really difficult mechanism for holding people’s attention and making true connections. That means the bar is much higher and you have to be all the more intentional in building a plan that meets your goals and captivates your participants. And that’s exactly where you start – what is your team hoping to get out of this and what do you want others to get out of this? If those answers aren’t crystal clear, you will flop and be lost in the sea of virtual panels rattling on behind someone’s email screen. Once your goals are set, some good things to consider: shorter presentations and shorter events; super engaging speakers only; incorporate multiple formats; get people on their feet; find ways to break through the screen; and build individual follow up into the plan.

You are a mentor and coach for Bates’ Bobcat Ventures entrepreneurship competition, and are deliberate about reaching leaders early in their careers. What advice would you give to founders on how to help and source future leaders?

I love working with students and young people. Confidence in public speaking, and so many other skills that make better leaders, better entrepreneurs, are ultimately a matter of routine and practice. The sooner you introduce and build those habits, the more they become second nature, muscle memory and mindset. I like to introduce students to a more holistic way of communicating – not just the words, but your energy, your movement, how you feel about what you’re saying – tactics for welcoming and handling nerves, and telling stories as a tool for persuasion. My advice to founders: think about what skill you wish you’d mastered earlier in your career and pass it on. Where to start: connect with schools you attended, incubators in your region, and by word of mouth. Coach one person and more will come. The long view goal is to create better prepared leaders for our teams and our world.