The cavnessHR Podcast – A talk with Mikaela Kiner

The cavnessHR Podcast can be found at the following places:

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cavnesshr-podcast/id1289104534

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/cavnesshr/the-cavnesshr-podcast?refid=stpr

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-119338849/the-cavnesshr-podcast-7

YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi4YJKpFLU0

Social Media links for Mikaela Kiner!!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/10151036/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikaelakiner/
https://www.facebook.com/uniquelyHR/
https://twitter.com/uniquelyHR

Free Resources Below!!!!!!

We would like to offer a free chat, free consultation for anyone who would like it. You know whether or not you need our services. If you have some HR questions, training questions, and questions about how to set up your culture. You can use the e-mail information right on our website. http://uniquelyhr.com Feel free to go there and schedule a call with one of us.

Jason: Hello and welcome to the cavnessHR podcast. This is your host Jason Cavness. Our guest today is Mikeala Kiner. Mikeala are you ready to be great today?

Mikaela: Yes I am.

Jason: Mikaela is a native of Seattle who has spent the last 15 years in HR leadership roles at some of Seattle's best known companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Pop Cap Games and RedFin. In 2015, she founded a uniquelyHR. Which provides flexible HR, for fast growing companies. She enjoys being creative and solving problems in a space that most leaders love to hate. She is an International Coaching Federation credentialed coach, who enjoys working with executives leaders.

Jason: Mikaela you have a lot going on and I know you do a lot of great things. Would you like to fill us in and tell us how you’re uniquelyHR is doing now?
Mikaela: Sure. Well, first of all Jason thank you so much for having me. I'm really thrilled to be here and have a chance to talk with you and share a little bit more about uniquelyHR. We've been in business for just over two years and I would say in those years I think we have really learned who we are and what we do best. So we are coming up on re-brand and re-launch of our website this fall. We found that there are three things that we do best.

Mikaela: We do HR staffing, we do highly customized management and leadership development and we also do leadership and executive coaching. Who we worked for is interesting because we work with companies ranging from a 15 person startup to Nordstrom and Amazon at the other end of the spectrum. It might be hard for people to get their heads around that and say: well what is the common denominator? What we've learned is that the common denominator really is growth. The people who need us are fast growing companies and it really doesn't matter whether they're big or small.

Mikaela: Probably the thing that I'm most excited about is the team that we have at uniquelyHR. We have a team of about 5 staff and 15 consultants and they're really just some of the most incredible people that I've ever had the pleasure of working with. We get a lot of comments about really just not only the talent and capability of the team. But what a nice team of people, they're genuine they're caring, they're very giving. So, you know I think there is this cliché that says you don't have to like the people you’ve work with. I think I have had a long enough career that I say I have earned the right to like the people I work with and that goes for both the team as well as the clients. You know we just work with people whose values are really well aligned with ours and that makes it really, really enjoyable.

Jason: You can just tell the love and passion you have for your people and your job is coming out right now. You can really tell it’s really you saying that. I really like that. I know one thing that you always talk about is culture. Why do you think culture is such an important factor for a company, especially for a startup?

Mikaela: Right!! Yeah, we do focus a lot on culture and that's really one of our values. as when we look at an organization we're going to work with, we really start by looking at their culture and talking about our culture. You know there was a famous Peter Drucker quote that's used a lot. Maybe it's a little bit cliché but the saying goes that "culture eats strategy for breakfasts. You know what that means to me and I think we've seen some unfortunate examples of this in the news lately. Is that you can have a company that is filled with talented people. But if the culture is toxic and is one that prevents the best people from doing their best work in that organization. It will hurt the organization. It will either cause an organization to fail or require a really significant turnaround.

Mikaela: That's what we think is so important about culture. I love working with startups because they have that opportunity to be intentional about culture and to think from a very early stage. Whether that's a couple of co-founders or once you have a six or eight person team. They really get a chance to step back and think about who do we want to be, what do we stand for, what's our mission and vision.

Mikaela: I think most importantly what kind of people do we want to attract and how do we want to treat those people. When you join a larger organization. It has a culture and the different departments have their different subcultures and that's fine. Especially if you're joining an organization where you love the culture. The difference in a startup is that you really get to build it from the ground up. I just think that's an amazing opportunity and it's certainly something that we love to be part of on our side.

Jason: I know you are big on diversity. I think unfortunately most startups get to 20 employees who are all white guys and then oh crap we've got to start being diverse.

Mikaela: Yes!!

Jason: Of course the first two or three people hire will be people you already know. But maybe after that, look at candidates outside your immediate circle.

Mikaela: I think that's a fantastic point. We actually had an opportunity to talk with a 15 person startup earlier this week. They already have a diverse team. They already have a diverse leadership team. It's so important to them not just from a standpoint of doing good. But the fact that they know it's a business mandate. So they are already being intentional about diversity. And I think you're right. It's never too early because we do hear those stories. You are a 25 person company. It’s mostly white male engineers.

Mikaela: Maybe there is one woman and they have good intentions. How do we find more women? How do we become more diverse? I think the wonderful thing in the Seattle area is there are so many people providing resources around. How do you find and attract those diverse candidates? How do you create an inclusive work environment for them? How do you help set them up for success? You know there are talks you can go to. So, there's a lot of discussion which I think is fantastic. I think there's a lot of action that's following those conversations too.

Jason: Yeah definitely it takes a little extra effort to do that. You know one thing it is worth in the long run because I think all the stats prove that the more diverse you are the better company you are going to have.

Mikaela: It does take effort. Just to build on the point that you made. We all take a risk when we hire only from our networks. Myself as well as every founder, every person that I've ever met, our networks are usually limited just by nature. Being intentional, reaching out asking peopl It may be a little awkward but to say you know: where do I find female Engineers? I don't have them in my network. That's fine.

Jason: Now for me looking outside it looks like your company has had some fantastic growth in two years. How have you been able to achieve this and you know grow so greatly?

Mikaela: Thank you. We're definitely excited about the growth. We have more than doubled year over year and plan to do the same thing here again in year 3. You know I really I do credit the team. We've built a team of professionals, who have spent the bulk of their careers in the Seattle area in HR. They have so many friends, colleagues, former clients who know and respect them.

Mikaela: I think just having that team with me and having that amazing bench of people is one thing that attracts clients to us. It's a very special relationship and it's also a very high trust business. We're going to look at your people practices and policies; we're going to look at how you hire, how you pay. We really receive a lot of referrals and word of mouth. We also try to be very active in the community. Whether that's attending meetups and startup events.

Jason: So how does it work for you since you've been open for business? Have you gone out looked customers yourself or have customers come to you? How does that work for you?

Mikaela: That's a great question. I always say I'm a HR professional Before launching this company two and a half years ago I had never sold anything in my life. I don't view myself as a sales person or a business development person. Yet I don't have a sales or business development person so it really, it does rest with me. We experimented with a lot of things and I know we're going to talk about failure. We experimented with a lot of things that we found did not work.

Mikaela: Whether that was just trying to meet up with a lot of our LinkenIn connections, cold calling, doing online and email campaigns. What we learned was that in the process of doing those experiments. The experiments weren't really working. The growth was coming from our own networks. It was coming from referrals and it was coming from the growth of existing business. I haven't quantified this. But what we have observed is that every company we have worked with, if there's been an opportunity for them to either extend our engagement or use us for a future engagement they have done so. You know I think to me that's just a testament to the quality of work that our consultants do.

Jason: Has there been times in the past that you've disqualified someone from doing business with you? Of course, don’t use their name. Has that happened before?

Mikaela: It has happened. You know where we've either intentionally turned down a piece of business or actually extracted ourselves from an engagement and it's not frequent that we would do that. I would say it comes down to a couple of things. If in any way the values aren't aligned. For instance, you know we're there to do a strategic level of work.
That really requires engagement from the client because they own their people and they own their talent strategy.

Mikaela: So, if we can see that maybe they don't even have time to partner with us. They're kind of nodding and taking our advice but not acting on it. Then we feel like what we do doesn’t really benefit them. In the case where we turn down business. We have just heard some unfavorable things about the potential client. We had actually heard that other service providers had stopped working with that client because their staff was not being treated well. I really don't want to subject our staff to any environment where they may not be treated respectfully. I think life is too short for that. So, in that case we just chose to say that we're probably not the best fit and we wish them good luck in finding somebody who is right for them.

Jason: That is a very good insight. Next talk to us about a time you were successful in the past, what you learn from success and what our listeners can learn from your success.

Mikaela: It’s so funny that you know this was a harder example I think for some reason. I think we all tend to skate through our successes and not really look back. I do think for me the big success really was in choosing to go out on my own and in launching uniquelyHR. I say that for a few reasons. I think the biggest reason is that I am the wage earner in my family. Like many people I had been very comfortable working in larger organizations. Where I had the security of a regular paycheck.

Mikaela: I had fantastic medical benefits for myself and my family. I had stock options. I had 401K. I could take vacation when I needed. All of those things get very comfortable and they feel very reliable. For me because I had never been out on my own before. It was really a big process to say: can I leave those things behind? Will I be successful on my own? Will I earn enough in the timeframe I have to make it and to support my family? When we go through a transition like that I think that there's a very practical set of things we need to evaluate. How much money do I have in the bank? How long can I go without taking a paycheck?

Mikaela: But what I found for myself and even other folks who I've coached through transitions is that the bigger barriers are the things we tell ourselves. It's those self-limiting voices that say: I'm not good enough to do this on my own or I don't have clients, I'm not known in the community. I'm not going to make enough money to survive. You have to really work hard to put those voices aside and take the risks.

Mikaela: I think the things that gave me the confidence in doing that was saying: I know I can survive for X amount of time. I know Seattle is a great job market. If this doesn't work out for any reason, I will be able to find another job in Seattle. The other one again was just that passion. You know when I tried to picture the next 15 to 20 years of my life and say: will I continue in the kind of jobs I've been in and continue doing you know what I've been doing? That didn't excite me.

Mikaela: But the notion of going out on my own, starting something new, all of the learning that would come with that. I was just so passionate about that, in the end that I had to give it a try. When people ask me today, do you miss your corporate jobs or would you ever go back in the near-term? The answer is No. You know I love what I'm doing, I'm learning every day, it’s fun and it's challenging and it's flexible. I actually feel like going out on my own was the best kept secret. People talk about how hard and stressful it is. Very few people talk about how incredible it is and I would say it's really been a lot of fun and I haven't had a bad day since I started.

Jason: That’s good to hear. I read somewhere that starting your own business is like jumping off a cliff into a cloud without knowing what's at the bottom.

Mikaela: I think there's truth in that. You can't know what to expect until you do it. So be ready for the unknown. Be ready for the fact that it's unpredictable. Know who that support network is and know that you may have to be a little bit resilient while you get things going. But you know that can be true in corporate jobs as well. I think that's what we forget. Corporate jobs can also be unpredictable and you know sometimes we lose our corporate jobs. Companies merge and they shut down. I think that we have a little bit of bias and sometimes we believe that those jobs are more stable than in fact they are.

Jason: That’s a very good point. Now talk to me about something you failed at in the past, what you learned from this failure and what we can learn from this.

Mikaela: It was so interesting because this actually came up in conversation the other day. My failure I think was not pushing back or not asking enough questions when I got a particular mandate at a company. A very senior level executive was telling me here's an initiative that we have to do and we have to do it this way. It’s up to you go figure it out. I know when a senior leader says that to me I take it verbatim. Maybe I'm a little more black and white like that's the senior person.

Mikaela: They gave me a charter I need to go and run with that. In this particular case, the work was harder to figure out. It was more complex, there were compliance and regulatory and other issues involved. The team I had working on this, I mean we worked on it for months. Now it's not to say we didn't check in. You know we would have our monthly call and we'd say you here are the challenges this has proven to be very difficult. But I don't think I emphasized it enough because at one point probably four months in, we were on a call and I said again I said this is proving extremely difficult and I really need to hear from you.

Mikaela: How much harder do you want us to work on this? Or what are all our alternatives? the leader very quickly said: if it is too difficult, we'll forget it, we'll figure out something else. I was happy, but I was very stunned. I said I need to repeat that back to you to make sure I heard you right. Now you're saying we don't even have to do this, we don't have to worry about it. We can choose an alternate path. He said, absolutely. So we did.

Mikaela: The lesson for me was that you know I probably could have saved myself and my team three of those four months by emphasizing earlier on how challenging this was and pushing harder for alternative options. Even proposing those alternatives and just saying look I don't I think this is the right path. Let's explore something else because we did lose a lot of time. As anyone knows when you get shifted from one project to another or your work just ends up being dropped. That is something that's frustrating to people and is frustrating to me. I'm sure it was frustrating to team at the time.

Jason: That is a great lesson learned for you there.

Mikaela: Yes, it was.

Jason: So you already covered this a little bit, but can you add some more to about how you add value, how you and uniquelyHR add value and solves problems with your customers?

Mikaela: I think the first thing that we do is we really want to hear from the customer> Understand the current state with regard to their HR processes and their HR infrastructure. What's working really well and maybe what's not working or what isn't in place today. We really want to start with what they need most. I think the thing that the team enjoys most about working with startups is that we know startups are frugal. We know they will never hire us if they don't need us. We know that the work we can do for them is going to have an immediate and a high impact. So, we want to be really, really good listeners.

Mikaela: We also want to ask a lot of questions. I would say one of the things we hear most frequently from clients about HR is they tell us. I don't know what I don't know about HR. I might not even know what to ask you guys for because I didn't know that I could automate a certain process. I didn't know that there was an amazing tool I could use for ongoing employee feedback. I didn't know that you have an ordinance in Seattle around sick and safety time.

Mikaela: We want to really use our insights, our expertise and what we've learned from working with a number of startup companies over the last couple of years. To anticipate the needs of an organization. We also want to really customize our work for them. So even though we help companies with their employee handbook, no 2 handbooks will ever look the same. Even though we do a lot of management fundamentals training, no management program at one company versus another will ever look the same because we want to talk about that company, their industry, their values and cover the things that are most important to them.

Jason: Next I'd like to talk about something that no one knows about you. Certain maybe your family does but something about yourself most people don't know about you.
Mikaela: Alright. That's a good one. So, most people don't know that in college I worked at a freak show in Coney Island Brooklyn. I was not one of the freaks so to speak. I actually sold concessions there. So, I did get to hang out with the snake charmers the sword swallower and the bearded lady. That's a fun fact. I was on the business side.

Mikaela: A lot of people don't know that I had an opportunity to spend 3 years with Amazon in India. My husband and I moved with our two kids, they were 4 and 7 at the time. We moved to India in 2009 and came back home 2012. I would just say that that was an incredible experience that really shaped all of us. For anyone who's ever considered doing an international assignment I highly recommend it. I think you'll learn about different cultures, you learn about yourself. You also learn about how different cultures work and it tests a lot of your own assumptions

Jason: So for the Coney Island experience I bet you can write a book just on that by yourself; couldn't you? All your experience there.

Mikaela: I should and you know I wish I still had all my pictures because I think it would be a really good photo album.

Jason: That would be great! I know that was a great experience for your family being in India. It's always great to go to different cultures and experience them. That helps you grow at least from my point of view.

Mikaela: I agree very much.

Jason: I understand you have something for our listeners.

Free Resources Below!!!!!!

Mikaela: I do. We would like to offer a free chat, free consultation for anyone who would like it. You know whether or not you need our services. If you have some HR questions, training questions, and questions about how to set up your culture. You can use the e-mail information right on our website. http://uniquelyhr.com Feel free to go there and schedule a call with one of us.

Jason: Thank you. Do you have any social media platforms for them to reach out to you.

Mikaela: Absolutely!! We are there. We're on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and so like us, follow us and we'll do the same.

Jason: For our listeners we will provide all this information on our show notes once we publish the podcast. We’re coming to the end of our talk. Have you any last words of wisdom or wisdom? Is there anything you'd like to talk to our listeners about?

Mikaela: Well you know my tip for HR is I call it "vote early, vote often." Think early about HR about culture and hiring, think about it often. Most leaders I've met have very good instincts. I would just see be intentional about what you do and you'll succeed.

Jason: Mikaela thank you very much for being on my show. You gave a lot of good advice and good insights to our listeners. I really appreciate it.

Mikeala: Thanks Jason. It was my pleasure.

Jason: To our listeners thank you. I really appreciate your time. Remember to be great every day. Thank you.

Social Media links for Mikaela Kiner!!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/10151036/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikaelakiner/
https://www.facebook.com/uniquelyHR/
https://twitter.com/uniquelyHR

Free Resources Below!!!!!!
We would like to offer a free chat, free consultation for anyone who would like it. You know whether or not you need our services. If you have some HR questions, training questions, and questions about how to set up your culture. You can use the e-mail information right on our website. http://uniquelyhr.com Feel free to go there and schedule a call with one of us.