Why Micromanagement Kills Performance (And What Works Instead)
Will Clive, Chief Human Resources Officer at LVT (LiveView Technologies), to unpack what it really takes to build high performing teams in fast growing, high pressure environments without burning people out or killing trust.
Will breaks down why clarity beats control, and why the job of a leader is not to micromanage talent, but to make the destination so clear that teams can figure out the path themselves. He shares how outcome clarity, values driven leadership behavior, and removing low performance quickly are foundational to building real performance cultures.
Most importantly, Will explains the hard trade offs leaders avoid, why keeping low performers quietly poisons teams, how recognizing and stretching top performers matters more than money alone, and why autonomy plus accountability is the only model that scales.
🎓 In this episode, Will discusses:
Why clarity of outcome matters more than controlling execution
The real cost of keeping low performers in high performance teams
How recognition, stretch roles, and responsibility outperform money alone
Why hiring for grit, learning ability, and hunger beats pedigree
How leaders scale by trusting teams and removing roadblocks, not micromanaging
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Will Clive 0:00
As a leader, one of the things that I think about in terms of, how do I create a high performing team is not just the talent, day in, day out. I think about communication. And my goal is to create absolute clarity on what we are trying to achieve, right and then my approach is I want my teams to figure out how to get from point A to point B. I'm not going to tell you how to get from point A to point B. I'm going to make point B in the destination exceedingly clear, so that we all know where we're going. They're going to get a lot more satisfaction, and I'm going to be able to engage them. I'm going to be able to, like, get the best out of my team if I don't micromanage, and if I let them figure out how to get from point A to point B. And so I think that one of the keys to engaging your team and turning team performance into a thing is as a leader, focus on creating clarity on outcome and then get out of the way you will.
Chris Rainey 1:16
Welcome to the show. How you doing? My
Chris Rainey 1:17
friend? Doing great. Thanks for
Chris Rainey 1:19
having me. I love the fact that you're on brand and you got the team got to be on brand. Yeah. Did you decide, is this your content room, or is it like, just for a meeting?
Will Clive 1:30
I think this is our marketing departments special room for podcast that
Chris Rainey 1:34
has amazing yeah. I mean, that's already a good sign. I'm already excited the fact that the team are doing that before we jump in, like, tell everyone a little bit about your background and journey to where we are now. Like, did did you choose HR, or did it choose you along the way? Love to know more.
Will Clive 1:52
Yeah, I'd love to share because I think that my journey to this space is a little bit unconventional. So I've done a whole bunch of different things in my career. I actually started my career in finance. So I did finance undergraduate degree, and then I went and worked on Wall Street. My first job out of college, I worked at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, and found that I didn't love that work. It wasn't particularly challenging for me. The type of work that I was doing, I didn't love the culture there, and I effectively failed out. I actually got fired from my first job out of college, and a lot of that was because, you know, wasn't passionate about what I was doing, so I wasn't showing up as my best self every day. And you know that for me, created a crossroads, right where I had to figure out, hey, what do I want to be doing? And I didn't know what to do. I was early in my career. I didn't know what options really existed out there. And so I went back to school, really, just to broaden my horizons and expose myself to the different options that were out there, and I went and did an MBA. And my goal during that MBA program was just to get exposure to as many different functional career paths as I could. And so I tried to do everything. I worked at some investment firms. I did an internship doing management consulting. I interviewed for product manager jobs at tech companies. I interviewed for marketing gigs, and where I landed after that experience was the best fit for me was going to be at a pre IPO high growth startup, and I had determined like, Hey, I don't want to be in like, a huge company environment with what I perceived as a lot of bureaucracy and red tape. I want to be in an environment where I can make an impact like that is what mattered to me, and I didn't care what role I was in either. And so that was my sole focus. Finding a job at an environment like that. I ended up finding one at a company called Pluralsight, which met that criteria. It was a pre IPO high growth startup based here in the United States, in Utah, and my first job there was actually working in product. So I worked the first couple years there. My boss was the chief product officer. I knew literally nothing about product. When I started, I took the job because in the interview process, I had expressed like, Hey, I just want to have an impact. And he had told me, Hey, don't worry about it, buddy. I'll give you enough rope to hang yourself with. And for most people, that would probably be a turn off, but for me, I thought it was great, yeah, really excited by the opportunity to learn. And so I did that for a couple years. Had a tremendous learning opportunity, and then I shifted the company, as growing companies do, reorganized, and I got lumped into sort of like a centralized strategy and operations team. And so I did strategy and operations for a couple years, actually building teams of data scientists and data analysts, building algorithms. And eventually I reached sort of an. Other career crossroads where I felt topped out, felt like I wasn't being stretched or learning in my role, and a opportunity presented itself to go do strategy and operations work with our HR team, and I
Chris Rainey 5:16
you were like, No, I don't want to be in HR. Seriously. I go knee jerk reaction.
Will Clive 5:23
I remember really, like, really thinking through the opportunity and sort of stressing over it for quite some time, saying, hey, is this really something I want to do? Is this going to be career suicide? Like, all sorts of fears, irrational fears and risks were sort of going through my head is like, hey, if I go over there, like, am I going to fit into that culture? Like, that's a different culture than what I've been used to in product or finance early my career. And also, I had questions about whether or not I would enjoy the work. But the thing that, the thing that ultimately sort of convinced me, or gave me the courage to take that leap of faith. Is I had been a manager in the business. I had been with this company for quite some time, and I had had the opportunity to see our HR team and some of the things they were good at, and some of the things candidly that they were still developing in right and what I what I believed, and what I had noticed was some of the things that they weren't great at aligned with my natural strengths and abilities. So data driven, decision making, operational process optimization, like I'm good at those things, they weren't at that time, great at those things. And I thought to myself, Man, I just I really feel like I can make a difference in an impact over in this world. And so I took the leap of faith and and I found that I really enjoyed the work like, I found the work to be, like, really strategic, like a blend of strategy and human psychology. And I believe the work that we do in this function is, if not the most impactful, some of the most impactful work that happens at any company. And you know, at that time the company was growing and scaling, and so I had the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and get exposure to a bunch of different functional areas. I led the business partner team. I built the People Operations function. I built a people analytics team, and that was phenomenal experience. And so as the company grew and scaled, you know, opportunities for growth and leadership presented themselves, and eventually I moved into the Chief People Officer role there, and I ended up doing that the last three and a half years that I was with that company.
Chris Rainey 7:38
Firstly, I love that because I mean similar with me. I told you before we hit record, like, my background, right? Who would have thought, yeah, unconventional, like, I can't, I can tell, I can't tell you the amount of what they call themselves recovering lawyers that are in HR now, the amount of CPOs that I noticed that were previously lawyers, which always astounds me, because you'd think that's completely the opposite of what you think they'll be going into as well. So it's always interesting the journey. Tell everyone about the current organization, just if they aren't aware. And let's jump into some of the topics that we got plan, because I'm really excited.
Will Clive 8:16
Currently, I'm the CHRO at a company called LBT, and here at LBT, we are the global leaders in rapidly deployable security solutions. And you might be asking yourself, what is a rapidly deployable security solution? And so where there is no infrastructure, and so long as you know, we can have solar and cellular connection, we can set up security within a day. And here in the United States, you know, 94% of the Fortune 100 retailers use our solution, and it's incredibly effective. So when we deploy one of our security units, we typically see a 70% decrease in criminal activity after having that unit out. And so as you can imagine, for those large retailers or any business, physical physical security, right? Like a mobile security unit, a trailer with cameras that deters crime, yeah. And, you know, one of the things that attracted me to this company is the mission and the good that it does in the world. Just yesterday, actually, we had one of our customers come visit the company and attend our company town hall, and they were sharing about the security units and the impact that those have. And this particular customer manages apartment complexes, low income apartment complexes and housing throughout the southeast United States. And one of the things that this company shared that really impacted me was that, you know, when they deploy these security units, what they look for when they drive by is chalk on the sidewalk and toys left out in front of the apartments. Because to them, that's the sign that security is doing its job, because the kids are comfortable. They feel safe outside and. And they can play. And so feels good to be doing some good in the world,
Chris Rainey 10:04
yeah, I mean, and you're getting less and less of that. Now, I feel like when I grew up, it was like that you had the kids bike out of the front and toys, yeah, and the whole neighborhood was kind of out, and you kind of felt safe and secure. And like in London, especially where I grew up, we kind of less and less of that. Now, when I were from when I was younger, that was like, you could go out and play and your parents like, see you later, come back. Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. Whereas now, like, I've just moved out of London, but where I grew up, I probably wouldn't feel safe letting Robin, my daughter just go out there and play. So people may just see it as technology and hardware, but the real impact that that has on those communities and the customers that you serve goes way beyond that, which probably people don't,
Will Clive 10:53
probably connect 100% Yeah, there's definitely a need for it out in the world.
Chris Rainey 10:57
So interesting, man. So we spoke offline, and I know one of your passions is building high performing teams, right and cultures. So I want to kind of jump in there. How can, especially now distributed teams, all of the different social, economic things coming in our different directions. How can leaders cultivate and sustain high performance culture within their teams and their organizations?
Will Clive 11:23
Yeah, it's a great question, and it's something that I've been thinking a lot about since I've come here. So I'm like, three quarters into this job, so I'm relatively new, and you know, one of the reasons why I came here was to help build and grow that performance culture. And I think there are a few pillars that you got to focus on to create a performance culture. And in no particular order, I'll speak to some of those pillars. First and foremost for me, I believe that maybe the most critical thing to create a performance culture is you have to have your leadership, starting at the very top of the organization, walking the talk is what I would say, right? So almost every company has some semblance of values, right? And the values are great, like they're all awesome, and they sound great, but oftentimes what I've seen is a disconnect in leadership behavior relative to the values. And I think that ensuring that your most senior leadership team is committed to living your values, and typically those values support high performance like that, is the starting point, right? So that that's that's one of the pillars that I think matters a ton. The other thing that I think is hiring like you want to be bringing talent into your organization. You want to make sure that that talent aligns with your values. And if, if you miss in hiring, which is going to happen, it's an imperfect science that you have processes for with respect and in a kind way, moving those people who don't fit your culture, that performance culture that you're trying to build out of the organization.
Chris Rainey 13:10
What I want to pause on that second, that second point, what is the risk of keeping those people?
Will Clive 13:15
Well, I think there are a whole host of risks, right? Um, you know, one risk, obviously, is if you keep low performers in the organization that sends the message to your high performers, yeah, that you're actually not really committed to the performance culture. Yeah? Like, if you're on a team with a low performer everyone, everyone sees everyone, like, knows like, as a leader, you can put your head in the sand, if you would like, and not address the issue, but everyone sees it right, and so by addressing the issue and doing it in an expeditious way, like you're sending a very strong message that, like, Hey, this is the culture that we're committed to. And by the way, your highest performers, they don't want to be on a team where there's a bunch of people who are sandbagging it right? They want to be on a team with other high performers who are pushing them, you know, into a zone of discomfort, where they're being stretched and grown and, like, where the standards are exceedingly high. Yeah, no, I
Chris Rainey 14:12
love that. That's why I wanted to delve into that for a second, because I think that's really, really important. And I've realized that early in my career, when I first became a manager, I never truly understood, because I had a large sales force that was managing the impact of a low performer that they could have on the rest of the people around them. Okay, I really underestimated the impact.
Will Clive 14:34
It's like a sickness or a cancer spread,
Chris Rainey 14:37
yeah, 100% and it really, really does. And you remove that and a signal that that's back to your point of walking the walk or walking the talk, it sends a very clear message that we, you know, we're not mediocre. Is not acceptable in what in what we do. And many people, and I definitely have done this in the past, you wait way too long to make a decision, and. And you delay it, you know, you know it's the right decision. You should have done it. We're all everyone listening right now has been there
Will Clive 15:07
because it's hard, yeah? You don't want to do it, yeah?
Chris Rainey 15:11
So what were the other pillars? The other thing, so we went,
Will Clive 15:16
no worries. Like, the other pillar for me, is actually the inverse, or the flip side of what we're talking about here, which is moving people out who don't fit into that performance culture, and it is recognizing and rewarding the high performers that do. And I mean, this probably sounds obvious, right? Like, hey, you got to recognize performance and incentivize it. But for me, it's not just financial rewards. Of course, you have to have the financial systems in place, and for your high performers, they need to feel like there's an opportunity to earn more if they show up and exceed expectations. My experience leading teams and leading high performance individuals over the years has taught me that just as important as is compensation for these folks is the opportunity to actually take on additional responsibility and grow and stretch themselves further right. And so I think having defined structures and processes for moving people up and giving them additional responsibility and doing it, you know, quickly in a meritocratic way, is really important to fostering a high performance goal.
Chris Rainey 16:30
Yeah, dude, it's so funny. You just said that because I mentioned to you, we had an event today with 1000 CHROs. It was around recognition, and one of the data points that was shared on there was non monetary recognition is 40% more powerful than monetary which you wouldn't get I never would have thought that when I was in sales all those years ago. But if I look back at why I stayed in that organization for 10 years, it wasn't because of my commission, it was because the opportunity I had to grow and develop myself and my team. I didn't know that at the time. I was just Yeah, I can. Probably couldn't. If you said to me back then what was most important, maybe I would have said money, because that was my driver, growing up from where I did, and that was obviously driving why I worked so hard. But the reason I stayed there is, every time I got that call from a recruiter who offered me more money to leave, I said no, because it was really the opportunity to growth development in the team that I'd built that I wanted to stay here. So I love that point. It's super Yeah,
Will Clive 17:33
you probably felt like you had momentum within that organization.
Chris Rainey 17:38
You'll start from zero again, you know, yeah, like you, you had built
Will Clive 17:41
relationships, you had proven yourself like you. You were progressing, and you had that positive momentum. And it is really, again, in my experience, it is the growth and like the development, that brings us satisfaction and work. And to your point, I think it's a common trap, especially for folks more junior in their careers, where, like, they don't see that, right? They don't recognize it right off the bat. But it's real, and it's there. And I think if you can foster that and give those opportunities
Chris Rainey 18:09
like, make the mistake I had team members and sorry, my other managers leave for that extra 10k pay rise, right? The extra 20k pay rise, and they'll call me a few months later, be like, I'm miserable here. You know, I'm, you know, no one takes my advice. I'm starting from zero. I've got to build my network again. You know, you've got to prove yourself all over again. Is it really worth the extra 10k when you now don't have everything around you that made you successful, right? That you took years to acquire in that organization as well? So that's something I see. A lot of people jump in jobs very quickly, and they kind of found out the hard way. And that's not always the case. You may believe in organization for the good reason that it is you saw a lack of progression, and it may be a toxic culture, etc, but a lot of times, people will kind of jump without really assessing those things. And for me, when I left, I started a company. Because I was like, do I want to go and do that all over again, somewhere else? Yes, I can make a lot more money doing that. And I was like, You know what? I'm going to take the next step and just start my own business and build my own vision, which was at the time, frowned upon by everyone
Will Clive 19:16
around but you mentioned of your growth journey, right?
Chris Rainey 19:19
Yeah. What would you say to somebody, the traits and skills of a high performance when you think about high performance, what are some of the traits that you look for in someone?
Will Clive 19:35
It's a great question. And I think that my background and my career shift into HR taught me a really important lesson about this, which is, I think the temptation is to look at degrees and pedigree or relevant experience, and I I don't that is not the end all be all to me, and I have a huge. Appreciation for what I would call sort of intangibles, like the grit, the determination, the desire and willingness to learn and apply oneself. To me, that's what matters most and for myself, one of the things that I like to do with my HR teams is I will intentionally hire a good portion of my team, bring in people that have absolutely zero background or experience in HR. I don't care, because I'm optimizing for just capability, desire, hunger to learn, and a lot of skills are transferable. You and I were talking before we kicked off this call about your background in sales, and you were sharing how you felt like that experience in scale sales, those skills were transferable and had benefited you in everything that you've done right. And so I like to go find people with master skills, whether it be sales, whether it be the ability to analyze things right and work with data, and I don't care what domain they've applied that in I'm going to take your skill and, sort of your intangible traits, and I'm going to apply that to the domain that we're in, and I've got a high level of confidence that you're going to be able to add value.
Chris Rainey 21:10
Yeah, right, and that's where we're moving, right? Anyway, we're moving to skills based organizations. We're going to be working way more project based, moving the silos of functions, and a lot of we're seeing that a lot in HR, actually. To your point, many of the recent CPO appointments are some of the largest companies in the world. Are non HR background. You know CHRO of L'Oreal, Stephanie, good friend of ours, first, first ever time in HR, and she's CPO, but worked in the organization for many, many years. So I think over 20 years. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's less than that in L'Oreal but similar with Lawrence, used to see it through Lego. Worked in sales and marketing. Now, Chief People Officer of Lego, they're transferable. And both their responses when I asked them, How do you you know, how are you keeping up? They're like, well, I have an amazing team around me, Chris. I don't have to have like, I surround myself with incredible people that have, well, the expertise
Will Clive 22:03
on the point about skills. I think what's interesting is that with the advent of AI and technology and how it puts book learning and knowledge at our fingertips, that, like deep domain knowledge, becomes straight away, yeah, it becomes less relevant. And so then the question is, like, well, what are those high level skills that you have? Like, can you think strategically, right?
Chris Rainey 22:29
Power skills? Right? Like them? And I agree, like AI is now democratize access, and you can those, those skills that you've mentioned, you can now access that information and find it anywhere instantly, right? Whereas I think the real currency now is going to be those power skills, right? And that's the area where most companies are now focusing on. We've kind of gone full 360 where we try to we went really hard, focused on technical skills. AI has now come along, you can do most of that, including coding, using and now, actually, now we're going back to leading with empathy and resilience and critical thinking and all of the things now that are going to be the most important moving forward. So it's going to be, it's going to be an interesting one as well. What about from how do you make high performance a team sport?
Will Clive 23:26
That's a great question, I think, yeah, one of the things that I try to do, and I guess we've been having so much fun that we drift away from my pillars, but I got one last pillar.
Chris Rainey 23:36
Oh, sorry, man. It
Will Clive 23:39
relates. It relates. I think, as a leader, one of the things that I think about in terms of, how do I create a high performing team is not just the talent, like day in day out. I think about communication, right? And my goal is to create absolute clarity on what we are trying to achieve, right? And then my approach is, I want my teams to figure out how to get from point A to point B. I'm not going to tell you how to get from point A to point B. I'm going to make point B in the destination exceedingly clear, so that we all know where we're going. But my experience, again, going back to what we were talking about earlier, with high performers and wanting to be stretched, is they're going to get a lot more satisfaction, and I'm going to be able to engage them. I'm going to be able to, like, get the best out of my team if I don't micromanage, and if I let them figure out how to get from point A to point B. And so I think that one of the keys to engaging your team and turning team performance into a thing is as a leader. Focus on creating clarity on outcome and then get out of the way. Be there as a resource, like if someone runs into trouble, your job is to remove the roadblocks and to step in and to help, but don't smother. Folks like let them have the autonomy and the space to solve problems and add value in their unique way.
Chris Rainey 25:06
Yeah, what's the unintended consequence for people that don't do that, for leaders that don't do that?
Will Clive 25:12
Well, I mean, I think what, what ends up happening is you don't get the unique knowledge, skills and power out of your team, like everyone's got unique abilities, right? And if I come in and I'm micromanaging everything and I'm telling you exactly how to do X, Y or Z, there's no opportunity for you to apply your unique skills and come up with a novel solution or a better way of doing it. And I think the other byproduct is you and I don't scale like I can only, even if, even if I knew the right answer to everything, which I don't. I can only micromanage so much, there's only 24 hours in a day, and so that might work for you with a really small team. But I think what you'll find quickly, and I think for many leaders like this, is a lesson learned through necessity is it just doesn't scale, and so you get to a certain point where it's like you have to rely on the skills and the capability and the good people on your team to do the work and to solve the issues.
Chris Rainey 26:12
Yeah, I love this, and it's something in the early days of HR leaders that I struggled with because I was holding on to too many rains.
Will Clive 26:25
Lesson through necessity, right?
Chris Rainey 26:26
Yeah. And we got, and we got, like, to a certain level. You can, you can scale it to a certain point by doing that way to your point. But the moment that I hired the right people in the right roles, let go of the reins, we 5x our revenue, literally in that one year where I made the decision to do exactly what you described, and I was scared, and it was like, I feel uncomfortable around that, because obviously, early on, you know, you it's your baby, it's your company that you're building, but you got to learn to Get go and trust in the unique capability, insight, perspective, you know, creative, the diversity of thought and skills that exist, and let them reign, and all of a sudden things just changed. So first hand, I can see like, how that worked for us, but it's not, but you have to set up systems that scale as well, right along along the way, it can't just live in my head and in Shane's head, which it did my co founder for a long time.
Will Clive 27:27
Yeah, I can really relate to that, because I ran into the same sort of issue in my leadership development journey, where, you know my initial inclinations in earlier in my career, I wanted to be involved in all the details because I cared, and I wanted to ensure that, you know, we were going to hit targets and, you know, get projects across the finish line, and when things started to scale and get to a point where I couldn't be in all the details, that felt really uncomfortable to me, yeah, right, like it was like, like, I don't know what's happening. I feel like I'm losing control. And so you have to do two things like and you articulated both of them. One is you have to make a conscious, intentional decision to extend trust. But the other thing that you need to do is you got to put in place systems for getting the information that you need right. It's like, I still need to understand how things are tracking and pacing now, since I can't be in the details and just know what's happening all the time, I got to put in place either the right reports or the right, you know, one on one cadence with my leaders, or whatever it may be to get the information that I need.
Chris Rainey 28:32
Yeah, but back to your earlier point, what that also resulted in is way more engaged employees, right? They're so much more excited about their work because they're now in control, and they can play around and experiment and bring new things and like, it just opened up a whole nother level of conversation. I remember we hired someone a few months back. He came from Indian guy. And a reason I say Indian guy because there's a cultural nuance that was part of this conversation. We had our Monday meeting where the whole team comes into the office and we're showing updates, and one of the team members said to me, actually, Chris, like, in front of the whole team, I completely disagree with that, that direction we're going in, and this is why, and this is what we should do, etc. And even though I disagree with that individual, I was like, go away, make it happen, right? Like, you know. And the new employee during my one to one was like, I can't believe that person spoke to you like that. How dare they challenge the CEO of the business. And I was like, interesting. And I was like, That's so interesting. And because that's just a normal way that we give candid we have a very candid feedback, radical candor, sorry, kind of culture in a business. And he was like, in India, you would never speak to your your CEO or your manager that way. And I was like, Why do you think that that was important? And they were like, do. Really took it. We probably took about five minutes to think about this answer. But he was like, because then that's that's the whole point you hired them. And I was like, yes, the whole point of hiring that person is that they have a unique view, perspectives, insight and skills and talent that perhaps I don't, and if I don't, if I stop them every time they come to the table and try and bring that, then what message is that sending to the rest of the organization, and why do they even hire them in the first place as well? So it's really interesting to see someone new coming to the business.
Will Clive 30:29
Hey, Chris, sorry to sort of reverse roles here, but you mentioned that you've got a culture of radical candor. And I actually think that in this conversation of building a high performance culture, one of the things that contributes to that is having a culture of transparency and radical candor, right, like being able to call a spade a spade or flag when something is off track and and sort of take the emotion out of it and just inspect like The problem to come up with a solution. Sounds like you've been able to cultivate that. What do you have thoughts as someone who wants to learn?
Chris Rainey 31:08
Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I would say that's, it's not for everyone, and we just put that out there. It's not for everyone, because there's people that have joined a business that are like, whoa. This is, this is too much. So I would say that because, but I think for us, we talk about in our meetings, for especially when we knew people joining, is that whenever we entering, having a conversation with someone, the first thing is, assume positive intent, right? So we talk about that a lot. So someone comes to you to give you feedback, I want the first thing you to focus on assume positive intent. Shane or Chris is not saying this to put you down, make you feel bad, you know, to attack you as a human being, right? It's because they want to help you succeed, and the organization succeeds. So we always talk about assume positive intent. So that's kind of something we always talk about here. The other thing is, whenever we have give feedback, we or we have a meeting, we explain why we're having this meeting. So, so, so like to set the stage straight away. The second we have a meeting, it's like, this is what I want to get out of this conversation, right? Or this is what I want to get ended. So you just set the State your intention. State your intention immediately. So, so people aren't just sitting there thinking, where's this going? You know, like this is from very quickly. The other thing is, is it goes both ways. In other in some companies, it you can do radical candor, but it's only like a certain level I and that's why that employee, who's very junior, felt comfortable to say that to me, and it shows everyone in the room how I react, and based on the My reaction to that, that okay, it's okay, like, you know, so I have to, have to walk the walk, right? And me and Shane will have heated my found co founder, heated conversations in front of the whole team. And Shane will be like, I completely disagree, and I'll be like, but this is why and then, but what happens is, is, even if you are wrong and you make a mistake, we still, we, we always still, can we, we recognize it and we and we actually celebrate it. That's a very important thing. So even if someone messes up, we still, we still commit to it, we still support them, and we actually recognize that person tried something, yes, it didn't work out. What can we learn from it? But we encourage that, because some of our best products, innovations and solutions, you're not gonna, you know,
Will Clive 33:31
failures not frowned upon, right? No, failures celebrated.
Chris Rainey 33:35
Yeah, in anything, if you're if we're not failing, then I'm more concerned, like, like, what like? So I think that's kind of like some things. I wish I had a bit of structure for it, but I think that's just part of every day, every conversation here. We're super fast paced organization. We're moving really quickly. We haven't got time to mess around and wait for an employee performance review, or even our one to one, like, you know, I say to the team, if you need something solved or a conversation, pick up the phone. I'm available. Let's just do it. We'd have to wait for a meeting to make that happen. So we can move really, really fast, like, we've, we've gone as fast as, like, having an idea to it money, hitting our bank account in two days, because we can, because we can just have a conversation, get everyone in a room, have a hard conversation, like people can give their insights, and we come away with a with a plan. Not everyone's going to agree, but everyone's fully on board and committed. And we make shit happen. That's one of our things we have on the wall, is make shit happen, actually, upstairs as well. Sorry for my language, but that's so yeah, I think that's kind of part of it. And we come from a sales background as well, where we're moving super fast, high intensity, you know, high level of urgency, yeah? Like, yeah, we haven't got time to mess around. I can tell some people that we've had in the past that first joined, it's a bit of a i. Whoa, they're not ready for it, and that's why I say it's not for everyone. There's some people that they
Will Clive 35:07
can't the earlier thing that we were talking about when I said, Hey, you have to hire people that can assimilate into your high performance culture, whatever that means, right? And it sounds like, in your case, you got a you've got a filter for folks who can adapt to that high level of transparency and sort of high urgency environment, and maybe it's not for everybody.
Chris Rainey 35:30
And no egos. Yeah, you know, you can't. If you've got an ego, you can't what? We can't work here, because you've got to be used to be getting feedback from all part all levels of the organization, and some leaders are like, Oh, I'm the Marketing Director. How can some sales guy tell me that? Well, that sales guy speaks to every single customer every single day, and probably knows more about our customer than you, right, you know? So that's actually a conversation I had a few months back with our marketing team that that person is no longer here. So like you're telling me that the feedback from our sales team is not important to marketing, to that sales, to that audience as well. So I think it's, I think, I think it's really, really interesting. What are some of the areas that we missed? What did we miss? I feel like there's
Will Clive 36:19
some areas now we were complete,
Chris Rainey 36:23
yeah, well, okay, now one thing we did miss is this is all great what we're talking about, but how do you then prevent burnout? We didn't talk about that when a high pressure, fast paced environment, because that's something I've experienced many Yeah, and I've also personally experienced it myself, burning out, yes,
Will Clive 36:41
and just big caveat here, I don't know that I have this solved or that I'm an expert, but I'll share a couple thoughts that come to mind or lessons that I've learned as a leader over the years. I think that you know when you're working in a fast paced environment like you and I have been talking about, there are going to be moments where you got to sprint right, and that might mean some late nights, or you have to do some work over the weekend to get something across the finish line. And my general experience has been that people are okay with that if then there's an opportunity to decompress on the back end, right and say, hey, great job, team. Like, appreciate the effort, you know, the sprint that you put in, like, make sure you take some time, or take a day, or whatever, whatever it may be once that moment of urgency is passed. But what I've discovered is, you know, a lot of leaders are sort of drivers by personality, and they work hard and they put in time, and if you are not intentional about making it okay culturally to disconnect and take time off, even though you verbally say it and say, hey, yeah, you should take time off or like, Hey, are you taking your time? People aren't going to feel like it is culturally acceptable to really disconnect. And so you as a leader, actually have to demonstrate it by occasionally taking some time and disconnecting from work and showing by walking the talk to your team that it's okay. Like, like, You need balance, right?
Chris Rainey 38:14
Yeah, I'm probably not a good example. I like it like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, your hundreds. Everything you just said, I completely agree. Of I think one of the big insights for me and aha moments was when I can't remember. It was right now. I was interviewing Sitra on the show, and she said to me, the main thing is, Chris, knowing when you are or when you like, knowing when you are and when you're not in a sprint, sometimes you don't even know that you're in a sprint. And so let me give you an example, right? We were releasing our AI solution, Atlas copilot. So was first AI Copilot to upskill HR leaders in their teams. And there was a crazy sort of six months period where we were scaling the engineering team going to market, and I didn't even recognize I was in a sprint, right? And I didn't realize the impact it was having on the team, right? And then I had that interview. And outside of that, I then started changing a few things. So the first thing I did, actually, is speak to my wife and give and let her, let her know, hey, in next couple of months, I've got this coming up. I'm going to be a little bit this. I just wanted to let you know I may not be able to be at x, y and z things with Robin. I'm going to be working some late nights. And just wanted to communicate that, because she's like, where's Chris gone? So let me start at home. Make sure everything's at home is good, and I effectively communicate that there. And then I did the same thing with my team, and just made sure that we recognize that we are in a sprint, and that we know that we need to take care of our well being still make sure we're getting, you know, like we spoke, we spoke about, like sleep, you know, working out whilst we talk about. Uh, sleep, working out and nutrition, because also when you're sprint, you're just eating crap, like getting your sleeping. It's like a vicious circle, right? So I wanted to make sure they made time for those things. So now I started to recognize when I am in a sprint and not in a sprint, and I start to set up systems and processes around me and communicate that clearly, that we are in a sprint, so people know, and then also make sure which we didn't do a good job in the past is at the end of that sprint, celebrate, yeah, take the moment to celebrate and recognize what we've achieved, and meet up together and go out and have fun and do that, because so that's been good for me in the past. I never did that, and in the sales environment I had, I was out with, like, on sick for four months because I just completely burned out. Literally started having anxiety attacks constantly, couldn't sleep, getting heart palpitations, exhaustion, and I was just didn't even know why, because, because I was in like, a four year sprint, even realizing you
Will Clive 41:03
likely work care of yourself. It's funny, like those things that you've mentioned as I think about myself and over the years, how have I learned to prevent myself from burning out? Not just my team, it is those things that you mentioned and creating what I call non negotiables, right? Yeah, so I like, I've structured my life in such a way where I work out every single day, right? I make sure that I get enough sleep, I try to watch my nutrition for me that helps prevent the burnout. And what's funny is, like, if you go talk to my team here, they all know about those non negotiables, like I talk about those things partially in an effort to sort of help them see, like, hey, what am I doing? You know, share some of my learnings. The things that I'm doing that helped me stay in, like, a stable, healthy place.
Chris Rainey 41:52
Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, it got so bad at one point I didn't I had to schedule lunch as a like, in my calendar, don't forget to eat. Yeah, literally, I was, I wasn't even like, there was whole days where I'm like, Oh, I haven't even eaten today, right, you know? And now said to my assistant, I was like, schedule lunch every day and make that a non negotiable. And it may sound silly for people listening, but I was just like, not doing that, right? And then now I work out either in the morning or late. I actually kind of strange person that I actually wait until my daughter goes to sleep, then I work out because no distractions as well. But those three things are my core, right? Since I've been doing that, it's been more, more than that seven years, and I haven't had an anxiety attack since, like, since, since I started talking about it, making sure I recognize the signs, have an accountability partner as well, I think, as part of this So Shane and my team, if they notice certain things, like, they will say it to me, which is great, like the fact I have to trust in my employees. They like, Hey, Chris, CEO and founder company you haven't been told
Will Clive 42:54
maybe, maybe take a step back for a moment, buddy. Yeah, yeah,
Chris Rainey 42:58
as well. Which is really good that I have to trust, that they can say that to me as well. Listen before I let you go. We covered a lot, but like parting piece of advice for those HR leaders, they in your seat one day, there's HR leaders tomorrow. What did you wish you knew before you sat in the seat?
Will Clive 43:16
I don't know that there's one piece of sort of, like tactical knowledge. I would say this. I think that as human beings, we all have a tendency and a temptation to be inwardly focused meaning, focused on ourselves, right? Our career growth, our development, performance. And what I have found to be most useful is to try to cultivate a mindset of being outward focused. So have my focus on, hey, how do I help the people around me? How do I create impact and value? And what I've found that is that if I can create an outward focus, all the rest of the stuff takes care of itself, right? You don't need to worry about the career growth, the development, the personal opportunities, the team performance, everything sort of magically falls into place when you orient yourself to being a force multiplier for everybody around you. So that would be my piece of advice.
Chris Rainey 44:15
I love that that's such an important because you can get so caught up in the day to day running of everything that you don't have time to do that. So that's also something else that I schedule every Wednesday is actually time to do specifically that, because otherwise I don't do it. And that's really
Will Clive 44:32
funny is I was not naturally good at this, and I made a decision years ago, like, hey, I want this to be part of how I operate. And I also had to do the same thing. I had to start scheduling. And I manage a to do list for myself every day. I list it on there, right?
Chris Rainey 44:46
Yeah, schedule time to think, which sounds really trivial, but actually is where the most value, a lot of the bottlenecks and challenges you're facing is because you don't do that and have that time. But listen, man, where can people reach you if they want to say. I reach out to you? LinkedIn, yeah, well,
Will Clive 45:04
you can hit me directly at my company email. I wouldn't
Chris Rainey 45:07
give, I wouldn't even give your email, because it's gonna get all. You're gonna get a lot of I'm just warning you now don't give you. Yeah, we have like, 400,000 people that listen to the show every month. You don't want to give your email. I'm just saving, I'm saving
Will Clive 45:21
your inbox. It's tough. I'm not on social media. The only media that I'm on your LinkedIn is LinkedIn,
Chris Rainey 45:27
yeah, well, that's that's the one we'll connect. I think there may be some people want to reach out and say hi and connect other HR leaders. I think I'll include your LinkedIn in description. I'd say I'm gonna save your email, but thank you, Chris, what have I done as well? So no worries, man. Alyssa, I appreciate you coming on the show. Love what you're doing. Congrats on the new role. You said you're pretty new into it. So excited for you, and look forward to doing it again soon.
Will Clive 45:55
Cool. Thank you so much. I love the conversation. It was great to get to know you and chat a little bit. I.
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Will Clive, Chief Human Resources Officer at LVT.