Carol MacKinlay
Chief Human Resources Officer
Velocity Global
Episode 171
Beyond Traditional HR: A Business-First Mindset Drives Global Culture & Success
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMay 28, 2025 · 9:19
Thesis
“Effective HR leadership stems from a business-first mindset, focusing on clear communication, process efficiency, and adaptability to drive culture shifts and enable global organizational success.”
Show notes
Navigating HR Transformations with Carol MacKinlay from Velocity Global
In this episode of the Build by People Podcast, the host welcomes Carol, the Chief HR Officer at Velocity Global. Carol shares her diverse career journey, from industrial engineering to executive pay consulting, and finally to HR leadership roles.
She discusses her role in transforming company cultures, breaking down silos, and enhancing communication within organizations.
Carol emphasizes the importance of diversity of thought, cross-functional collaboration, and the consultant mindset in driving company success.
She also shares insights from board experiences and provides parting advice on the significance of effective communication in organizations.
00:00 Introduction and Career Journey
02:14 Transforming Workplace Culture
03:48 Scaling People Strategy Globally
05:06 Insights from Board Experience
06:43 Leveraging Diversity for Success
08:18 Parting Advice and Conclusion
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What you'll take away
- 1HR leaders should operate with a 'business person' mindset, focusing on efficiency and aligning HR strategies with company goals rather than just traditional HR functions.
- 2Culture is led from the top; shifting it effectively requires understanding the CEO's vision, translating 'rules of the game,' and ensuring transparent communication across the entire organization, especially for distributed teams.
- 3Breaking down silos and building trust in global teams is achieved by fostering cross-functional collaboration and creating opportunities for face-to-face interaction to build rapport.
- 4Diversity of thought, encompassing different backgrounds and perspectives, is crucial for radical problem-solving and fostering an open culture where ideas are debated vigorously yet respectfully.
- 5Prioritizing and quickly fixing communication issues (identified as 80% of HR problems) is a high-leverage activity that significantly improves company alignment and accelerates progress.
What most organizations get wrong
- •MacKinlay's journey into HR from industrial engineering and finance, learning 'HR from the top,' challenges the conventional wisdom that HR leaders must have exclusively climbed the ranks within HR.
- •She champions 'diversity of thought' as the most impactful form of diversity, suggesting it drives more radical change than purely demographic diversity.
- •Her admiration for founders who 'run through walls' and 'do things that we all say, you actually, you can't do that' suggests a value for unconventional, adaptable leadership over strict adherence to established corporate norms.
In Carol's words
“I said, I've never done HR. They thought it was the same thing as what I was doing as a consultant. And so I learned HR from the top. And so I, but I, my sweet spot now has been helping companies kind of transition from late stage into IPO, doing turnarounds, getting things shipshape is what I say, just coming in and making sure things run smoothly, we're efficient, that we're doing what the company needs us to do in HR. So I'm really a business person that runs HR rather than somebody who's grown up through the HR function.”
Highlights her unconventional path to HR leadership and her business-centric approach to the function.
“Culture's led from the top. And so looking at almost taking it as a consulting project, looking at what the CEO is like, how they run a company, what the rules of the game are, and trying to translate that across the company.”
Emphasizes the top-down nature of culture and a pragmatic, analytical approach to shaping it.
“It's amazing how roadblocks fall away when people actually get why somebody else wants them to do what they're doing. That is the standard motion for me. Getting people face-to-face is invaluable.”
Underscores the power of understanding and personal connection in overcoming organizational hurdles.
“What I love and the soapbox I get on about diversity is diversity of thought. So I need people on my team. I need people in the company who come from completely different walks of life where they grew up in a different way. They grew up in a different household. I wanna see people who had a different experience in life than me that believe in different things than me.”
Articulates her strong belief in the transformative power of cognitive diversity beyond demographics.
“80% of my job are communication issues. People didn't understand what they were asked to do. They didn't understand the direction. They didn't understand what the company's trying to do, or they just got into a fight with somebody because somebody used the wrong words. If you can fix that, the company, it's a 1 1 3. It just makes things better.”
Provides a strong data point on the prevalence of communication problems and its high impact.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Companies struggle with cultural and process transitions during late-stage growth, IPO readiness, or turnarounds, requiring significant HR transformation.
- •Global expansion leads to organizational silos, preventing cross-functional understanding and hindering alignment with company-wide objectives.
- •Widespread communication issues result in employee misunderstanding of tasks, direction, and company goals, causing inefficiency and internal conflict.
- •Integrating new management teams into existing company cultures and effectively establishing new operational 'rules of the game' is a recurring challenge.
- •Maintaining connection and alignment with remote or globally distributed employees to ensure inclusion and understanding.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
You are the Chief HR Officer at Velocity Global, an EOR platform
In the Elevator With HR Executives
Carol says she always ends up changing workplace cultures
Have You Changed the Workplace Culture?
Carol, how did you approach scaling your people strategy as your company expanded globally
Carol, How Did You Approach Scalability?
Sitting on a board gives you a different perspective on how to lead internally
What Sitting on a Board Influences Your Lead
How have you leveraged diversity to build trust and alignment in distributed teams
Carol, How Diversity Builds Trust and Alignment
Carol says 80% of her job is fixing communication problems
A Consultant's Last Words
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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