Lucia Guillory

▶0:00IntroWelcome 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.

▶0:39HostI'm excited to welcome Lucia to the Built by People podcast. Lucia, 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.

▶0:48GuestWell, I mean, I've had a very meandering route to the people space. I started off in academia and then went into analytics. And then got into the chief people officer role and have been here ever since. So 10 years or so leading people teams.

▶1:07HostLucie, when was a time you faced a significant challenge in transitioning to remote work at Virta Health, and how did you manage to maintain team cohesion and culture during that transition?

▶1:19GuestYeah, well, so like many companies, Virta transitioned to being fully remote in the context of the pandemic. So we had both this change to the way that we worked, and then we also had a reduction in force around the same time. So a lot of big shocks to the system all happening at once. And part of what was really beneficial for us as a company in that phase of our life was just being extremely transparent with the team. So Talking about the riff, exactly why it happened from a quantitative perspective, from how that was gonna influence our business moving forward. And then also talking about the decision to become fully remote for the long term and taking into account how the business and the various teams felt about that. So we had a number of live conversations, we even gathered data, and then we said, you know, this is what people actually want. And what is best for us right now, given the space that we're operating in. And we also around that same time started to think about, well, what are the core elements of the framework that we wanna use to keep our team connected in this new context of after, you know, after I would say the first year post-rift, we started growing reasonably rapidly. So in the context of growing rapidly and, and being fully remote. Do you want me to tell you more about the framework or?

▶2:47HostThat'd be great.

▶2:47GuestYeah, I'd love to. Okay. So I would say there are 3 core tenets. One for us is we want to drive connection, not only amongst individuals, but also connection to our purpose. So whenever we have points of connection that are IRL, there's usually something going on that is directly associated with the purpose of the company. And the ethos of the company. The second dimension is really oriented around gratitude. So there's tons of research on the link between gratitude and happiness, gratitude and connection. And so most of the experiences that we deliver have some kind of gratitude as a core component of what is happening for the teammate. And I would say those two are the top two that we focus upon, and we have a number of events that have that as the ethos. And then the third component that is part of the delivery is that we tend to deliver our connection as some sort of ritual or some sort of recurring experience as opposed to something that is one-off or purely social.

▶3:56HostLucia, can you share a specific story of personal growth that led to improved leadership skills and how you applied those skills to achieve a positive outcome for your team? Sure.

▶4:08GuestWell, personal growth, I would say one thing that a lot of leaders face is this challenge around strategic work and wanting to make their work as strategic as possible and wanting to have that not only for themselves but also for their teams. And I would say definitely in the context of hypergrowth, I've had to change my orientation around strategic work. I think people often conceptualize it as something that is super bespoke, is the exact solution that the business is seeking at this point in time, when in many cases the business doesn't know what it's seeking or it's seeking the wrong thing. And so for me and my organizations, one thing that we've pivoted to over the past year where Virta has been growing really rapidly, we've over doubled in size. Our revenue is growing 80% year over year, we had to pivot to focus on operational excellence and make that our number one thing. And we found that instead of focusing on these bespoke kind of business partner solutions, focusing on operational excellence across the surface area that everyone touches, it's really built confidence and trust and increased our influence as a function. And that's, it's also given us more time, I would say, to do the strategic work that we would like to do. And it's easier to get that strategic work on the books because of that influence. And then third, we found that that shift to operational excellence has had a bigger impact on engagement than these more long-form, more strategic seeming projects have over their their lifetime.

▶5:52HostUsha, how do you address self-doubt or unlearned habits that tend to hold you back as a leader? Do you have any strategies in mind that you found most effective in overcoming those types of challenges?

▶6:06GuestWell, I would say self-doubt is part of self-awareness, so I recognize the benefit of it and I have been most focused on trying to dial it down within myself to being in a reasonable range where the things that I'm thinking, the way that I'm feeling, all make sense and are logical. Because I do think that self-doubt can lead to catastrophizing and feeling like things are a lot worse than they could be. So for me, I've been focusing on How do I find a place for this feeling and see the value in this feeling? And then from there, what do I want to do with the self-doubt? Is it going to motivate me to take some action? Is it going to lead to further reflection and deeper understanding? What's the place for it, as opposed to necessarily trying to get rid of it altogether? Because I don't think that that's possible, and I think there are a lot of downsides to its absence in our lives and our way of thinking through things.

▶7:12HostLucie, can you tell us about a case where you successfully created connections and collaboration within a distributed team and what actionable steps you took to foster that environment? Sure.

▶7:25GuestWell, I mean, Virta, as I noted earlier, is fully remote, and not only are we distributed,, but we are actually two entities in one. So there's an organization that is provider-led and is, you know, doctors and nurses. And then there's another organization that has more technical components like engineering. And so there's a lot of diversity in terms of the perspective that folks are coming to their work with, in addition to the geographic diversity and disparities that we, we see here. And so we have kind of a number of different programs that we run to help the team connect. One that I really love is called Hub Week, and it is one week a quarter where Vertons all over the US can decide to come together in their local communities and create something for that community. And typically a lot of these experiences are around food and health because that is the ethos of our organization. And folks, folks come together. I think in the last one we had 15 different cities represented and they do something for, for the community. There's really no vertipitch going on. There's no flying that's necessary. It's something that organizations can deliver for free. They, you know, just have to create kind of that infrastructure and communication to make it happen. And we found that the hub events have been really well attended and also kind of beloved. Another type of event that we do is around gratitude, and that's something that we do fully remotely and it's every other month and it's led by a member of our executive team and folks from all over the business are able to come together in small groups that are business unit agnostic and talk about what they're grateful for, not only as it relates to Virta, but in their life broadly. And we found that folks who participate in these experiences are significantly more likely to trust our leaders. In fact, there's a, a 12% difference in those who take part and those who don't in terms of their feeling of connection and trust in our leadership.

▶9:44HostLucia, what parting advice would you like to share with our

▶9:48Guestcommunity? Parting advice, I'd say, hmm, maybe something around releasing the illusion of control. I do feel like a lot of leaders want to feel like they're in control of not only their lives, but also everything that's going on in their organizations. And that can really detract from our ability to not only be satisfied with the lives that we're leading, but also to be successful in the roles that we're in. And so, you know, my thought would be if you can, if you can release that presumption of control, you can become more adaptable and more effective at dealing with the inevitable waves that you're going to be experiencing. You know, we're not, we're not out on a placid lake. We're out in the middle of the ocean and there are going to be waves and sometimes you're going to ride those and sometimes you're going to crash out. And figuring out how you manage the waves, and particularly how you do that with empathy, is really critical in leadership and in life.

▶10:57HostLucia, thank you so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶11:02GuestThank you. Thanks for having me, Dave.