Christen Cole

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Kristen to the Built By People podcast. Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:55GuestYeah, absolutely. I'm excited to be here. I have just been fortunate to work in a lot of different HR functions over the past 27 years. But the common theme with all of my roles, whether it's business partnering, training and development, HR leadership, they all center around achieving strong business results through the people in the organization and supporting their growth and development. Most recently, I was the chief human resources officer at a small institution, and I just recently moved into a growing family-owned company where I will be leading the leadership development function. And so my, the thing I'm most passionate about in HR is good leadership. So I'm really excited to start this journey.

▶1:33HostYou were instrumental in implementing results-only work environment at Best Buy. Can you explain what ROE is and how it transforms traditional workplace culture?

▶1:46GuestYeah, absolutely. So ROE really is a workplace philosophy. And so there's a lot of misunderstandings about what it is. We spent a lot of time dispelling the myths that ROW was a work-from-home program or something like that. It's not a program at all. It was developed by two of my brilliant coworkers, Jodi Thompson and Kali Ressler, as an answer to our new campus at that point. They wanted— we were in a very busy part of the Twin Cities, and they went way beyond the traditional, what you would think of as flexible work arrangements. And instead, this is actually a philosophy. It focuses on a few main tenets of Clarity and appropriate measurement of outcomes. And yes, every job can be measured. I will fight that fight all the time. True accountability, autonomy for everyone, and trust. It's huge. But it really is just a philosophy where you strip away the arbitrary work rules that we've put in place over the years that aren't relevant in the 21st century. And you focus on being really clear about the work. Who's doing what by when, open communication, and a lot of trust that's going to get done.

▶2:55HostAs a master trainer for ROWE, what were some of the biggest challenges organizations faced when trying to shift away from butts-in-seats mentality to an outcomes-based approach?

▶3:08GuestYeah, and that is the biggest kind of challenge that organizations would come up against. They're so used to doing things in a certain way or thinking that work had to be done in a certain way. There is unclear communication and expectations. People, leaders especially, think they're being really clear in what they're saying is expected, but rarely do they have the real conversations with employees to just make sure that what they think they're saying is being understood as they meant it. And they don't take the time to ensure that there's understanding on both sides. Other challenges were things like truly being able to relinquish the control and command leadership style. It's really hard for people to kind of do that letting go and trusting a little bit. And what we found was many leaders especially know how to manage people, not work. So they would think that if they saw somebody sitting at their desk and they could watch them and just observe them or knew where they were physically, it meant that they were managing them, but they weren't paying any attention necessarily to the results they're getting. And That is what the focus should be. That's what people are paid for is to get results. So we would also have to help them connect what they were doing to a higher level outcome. So many groups we worked with would think that their job was to do X number of activities over a certain period of time. And it completely changed the mindset when we helped them think about, but why are you doing those things? What is the ultimate thing that you are trying to impact? With your work. It's not writing 3 articles. It's not processing 5 claims. You're doing something bigger. And once they could connect to that ultimate outcome, that's when it would help them strip away all of the things that were getting in the way of doing that well. But that's a big shift for people because there's just so many things that we have thought in the workplace are showing us that work's being done without actually truly focusing on the outcomes and the results.

▶5:11HostIn your experience, what's the relationship between employee autonomy and accountability, and how can organizations strike that balance?

▶5:20GuestYeah, I mean, they really need to have both in order to be a really good productive culture and work environment. And if you think about it, if there's too much autonomy and not enough accountability, it's like chaos and poor performance, and people are just doing what they want, and they're really not necessarily achieving the goals of their organization. On the flip side, if there's too much accountability, but employees have no autonomy, it's that command and control kind of environment where people burn out or they leave, or even worse, they become really complacent and they do the quit and stay because they feel like I have no control. Whatever I say or think doesn't matter. I just have to do it in a way that someone tells me. So they just, again, become complacent and they don't want to try anymore. You cannot have strong performance and engagement when that happens. It's really critical that both autonomy and accountability coexist. Exists. And if you're employing adults, it's trusting them to act as adults. I mean, we go through school where we're told how to do our work, but you get to the adult workplace, you should allow adults to figure that out. Help support and coach and guide and mentor, of course, but to treat them like they're kindergartners, it just makes no sense. You're not going to get the best out of people in your workplace if you have that command and control.

▶6:34HostKristen, how has your approach to workplace culture and employee empowerment evolved? Throughout your career?

▶6:40GuestI think just over the past couple of decades, I've just truly come to realize how crucial a good work culture is for people to enjoy what they're doing and their lives in general. And honestly, the ROW concept helped people do that because they were in control of their work and their life. There's better engagement, there's better productivity, people are just happier in life. And so honestly, that culture has now become the number one thing that I look for in an employer. I make sure that it's a place where employees feel empowered, trusted, supported, and they can really be their authentic selves to do good work. And they aren't just robots who are expected to adhere to arbitrary rules. It's absolutely crucial for me now as I'm at this point in my career.

▶7:23HostKristin, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶7:26GuestFirst of all, to learn more about the results-only work environment, you can go to gorowe.com. That's G-O-R-O-W-E.com. And there's a whole bunch more explanation. A lot of our white papers are out there from when I was doing training for them years back. Lot of just really good data for people to understand how this truly impacts the bottom line and productivity and engagement. But secondly, and, and a bigger picture, if you wanna have a truly healthy workplace culture, you must do at least these 5 things. There's probably more, but there's 5 that come to mind for me right away. One being that you need to clearly define and ensure complete understanding of goals, outcomes, and metrics for all roles. And yes, Every single job can't— I've had a lot of those discussions with people who say, I can't really measure what I do. And then I say, then why do you have a job? There is a way to measure it in some way. So you've got to clearly define and have everybody fully understand what good looks like. Secondly, you have to allow for employees to own their work and their job. Let them contribute ideas about how to do their work better. People doing their jobs are typically the ones that have the best ideas about how to improve it. To remove waste, to improve customer satisfaction. Thirdly, trust that your employees will do good work and provide the right coaching and support to help them be successful. Clearly communicate to ensure course correction and accountability. That's another thing. If things are going off course, you need to make sure that there is the clear understanding of what's being missed and how to fix that. And the last thing I would say is give feedback regularly and respectfully, and then deal with performance issues as soon as they arise. Here in Minnesota, we have this phrase about Minnesota nice, and that has no place in the workplace. That's sweeping things under the rug, pretending everything's okay. You're actually doing a disservice to employees and creating a culture of mistrust and disengagement if people aren't truly clear on what is expected of them and how they contribute.

▶9:22HostKristin, thank you so much for joining us on the Built By People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶9:27GuestThank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed being here.