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
Carol MacKinlay has one of the most direct diagnoses of what ails most organizations: "80% of my job are communication issues." Misunderstood tasks. Unclear direction. People fighting because someone chose the wrong words. Fix that, she says, and almost everything else gets easier — it's a 1+1=3 effect.
Now CHRO at Velocity Global, Carol came to HR through industrial engineering and executive pay consulting — she's a self-described business person who runs HR, not someone who grew up inside the function. That outside-in perspective has made her a specialist in a very specific kind of engagement: IPO readiness, turnarounds, and cultural transformation for companies that need to get their people strategy sorted fast. Her framework is almost consultant-simple: culture is led from the top, so start with the CEO. Understand their vision, translate the unwritten rules of the game, and then make sure those rules travel all the way down — especially in a globally distributed organization where silos form fast and cross-functional trust is fragile.
Carol's other strong conviction is about diversity of thought — not just demographics, but the genuine difference that comes from people who grew up in different households, believe in different things, and have been shaped by entirely different experiences. She's found that teams with real cognitive diversity don't just generate better ideas; they argue better, and that vigorous-but-respectful debate is what actually moves the needle.
- The 80% communication problem — why most organizational dysfunction traces back to misalignment, and how to spot and fix it fast
- Culture change as a consulting project — starting with the CEO, decoding their operating style, and translating it across a distributed team
- Breaking down global silos — why face-to-face interaction remains the highest-leverage tool for building cross-functional trust
- What board service teaches CHRO leadership — the founder mindset, win-win thinking, and running through walls others say can't be done
- Diversity of thought over demographic diversity — the cognitive diversity that actually drives radical problem-solving
- The business-person-who-runs-HR identity — why Carol's unconventional path may be a model for the next generation of people leaders
Previ is a private pricing network, free for companies to launch and maintain, that saves employees $2,200/year on essentials like cell phone and auto insurance. Learn more here.
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
Expand transcript (0 words)
Transcript is not available yet.