Katie Burke

▶0:00HostWelcome 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 Katie to the Built by People podcast. Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:46GuestOf course. So thank you so much for having me. Really excited to be here. As some listeners may know, I'm the Chief People Officer at Herbie, which is an AI company focused on legal and professional services. And prior to that, I spent 11 and a half years at HubSpot. On their marketing team and then running their people function and had an awesome run there. And then on the side, I just finished up my run as a board member at Paycor, and I currently serve on the board at the Red Sox Foundation. So that's a little bit about my career journey, former marketer turned people leader.

▶1:17HostKatie, at HubSpot, you experienced a scaled, well-defined culture. Can you share a specific example of how that culture showed up in everyday work and decision-making?

▶1:26GuestAbsolutely. When I started at HubSpot, it was in 2012, and the culture was less defined then, but we We certainly started with a really positive culture. I also just think our founders had strong opinions about culture very early on. My job was to shape it and then make sure we delivered it, but they had a really strong vision to start. And I would say one of the ways in which that showed up was they had some strong core beliefs about work that just inspired everything. So, a good example would be they felt like at big companies they had worked at before, the lack of transparency was part of what led to misaligned incentives. So, the default setting was to share everything. And that was not just from a culture and HR perspective, that was also from a marketing perspective. It was the foundation of what HubSpot was built on. And so that's a good example of something that infused itself so much into the DNA of the company. You almost had to defend when you didn't share something versus why you did, which is pretty different than the traditional corporation is.

▶2:19HostKatie, now that you're at Harvey and building culture from the ground up, how are you approaching defining what culture actually means for your team? And what's been a key early moment in that process?

▶2:30GuestYeah, so when I started at Harvey, Winston and Gabe had a clear vision that they wanted to build a generational company, and they had some equivalent ideas, I should say, to Brian and Dharmesh, but our culture was less defined, and that makes complete sense given that we're only just about 3 years old. So, at the time when I joined, we were just over 2 years old, so it makes total sense. So, we set about trying to define what Harvey's culture stood for and codifying what that meant. And I think it was a humbling experience for me because it's so easy to talk about culture. It's really hard to actually set something in stone. And so one of the things I had said originally when I started in November, our goal was to have them set by January and have our values out the door. And the reality is they need to feel authentic to the founders. And my first few cracks at it didn't hit the mark. And so I think one piece of advice I have for listeners is just to take it slow, make sure you get it right. It's so important that your people team and your founders and your management team be aligned and rally around something meaningful versus launching something anything that does not. And I would say where we netted out, I feel really excited about, which is we actually have 3 values. And one of the questions the founders asked was like, is there some magic rule that means you have to have 5? Because most people seem to have 5. And my feedback was, I don't think it should be more than 5 because I think people have a hard time remembering anything more than 5. But it's okay if we start with 3 and add as we grow, as we get more confident around what our culture is. And so we landed on simplicity, decisiveness, and jobs not finished. And I feel really great about where they landed. And I think our employees felt they were authentic to who the founders are and what kind of company we wanna build. And so I think fewer things better is a good lesson from that codification and from our lessons at Harpy.

▶4:06HostKatie, when was a time you faced a tension between the culture you wanted to build and the realities of startup growth and scaling? How did you manage that trade-off?

▶4:17GuestYes, actually, I would say I'm experiencing it right now. So in the spirit of vulnerability, I'll share something One of our values at Harvey is decisiveness, but as you might imagine, as a company that is doubling in size at any given time, we have to add some level of process and rigor. And so, I would say one of the, like, healthy tensions that we have as a management team is how much process is too much process to slow things down, and when are we moving forward with a level of decisiveness as a company? And so, I think the, the best way to approach those types of things is with a level of humility. So I would say how I'm approaching it right now is, okay, what does this actually mean in the context of where we are? What are we hearing from employees? How do we make sure we're reflecting what our customers demand from us, which is a level of speed and innovation given how fast the market is moving? If you find yourself in those moments of tension, I know for sure in the past that I've had almost like the vision to just keep moving, keep trekking, keep going. And I find the best approach is actually to stop, take a deep breath, and understand where you may be wrong or not listening closely enough. And so approaching it with humility is how I usually tackle those.

▶5:20HostHow have you made it tangible at Harvey so far, especially for new hires or cross-functional teams?

▶5:27GuestYeah, so a good example, job's not finished is one of my favorite of our values, and the context behind it, because it's a little bit funky, is after a playoff game, Kobe Bryant was asked, you must feel great about being up in this series. And he basically said, job's not finished. Like, how can you possibly celebrate when the job's not done? And our founders have signed things off, job's not finished, job's not done, since the very inception of Harvey, because they believe so much that you need to have that humility, that reflectiveness. And as an example, when we rolled out our performance review process, we used our values to gauge how well someone was doing at Harvey. But to set the tone on it, I presented to the entire company a bunch of things that I didn't do well in my first few months at Harvey. And so if you're going to say job's not finished and you expect people to always have a degree of things we could do better for our customers, you yourself have to be willing to lead with something you could do better. And so that's part of the way we tried to model leading the culture and making it not just the values on the walls, was each of us as a leader to share with our respective teams, and in my case, to the entire company alongside our CEO Winston, what we each could do better as part of our overall reviews. And I think that helped set the tone that, hey, we're not just launching these values for the fun of it. We want to make sure they're instilled in everything we do.

▶6:38HostKatie, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶6:42GuestI think right now is an interesting time in the world of culture and people, because the reality is there's a lot of talk about AI is going to change the workforce. And of course, at Harvey, we believe it is. But I think it will surprise us in the ways in which it transforms our workforce. So, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is I think the market will reward early adopters. So, one of my pieces of advice is if you're not using AI, find ways to experiment with AI. Number 2 is reduce fear. So, I think sometimes people are so worried about AI taking their jobs, they're shutting down, not using it. And so, part of my advice to people is to make sure you're talking about how you're rewarding failure, how you're normalizing people to learn more. And then to experiment. And then the third thing I would just say is I think sometimes when you're assuring people, there's a desire to provide certainty, to say, don't worry, everything is just going to be fine, your job is completely safe, or I know this. And instead, what I actually find is helpful is to normalize change. So our meeting yesterday as a team was all about how we normalize and embrace change and how we support each other through it. And I think setting that expectation, given the market we're in, the economy we're in, the political environment we're in, I think is much more realistic than trying to say, oh, smoother seas are ahead. I think preparing people for a little bit of the choppiness is useful.

▶7:57HostKatie, thanks so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast.

▶8:00GuestThank you so much for having me.