Listen below to hear what Jennifer has to say when it comes to businesses thinking about talent strategies.
0:00:06.2 S1: So to this is the Jason Cavness experience hosted by Jason Cavness. Joined Jason as you talk to small business owners and start-up founders, when other interesting people as we gained great insights about business people, leadership, HR, and how each guest tries to be great every day.
0:00:28.7 S2: Jason cabinets experience is part to you by cabinet HR small businesses loose in arts of 10000 per small business employing a small business owners spend 25% of the terminator time spent ten care of employees, customers and build their business. This is cost a small bus owners, valuable time and money, Kavita is solving this by delivering HR to companies with 409 for people across the US. The voice enabled a platform along with a HR business partner, cavities are focus on your business where you’ve got your HR before we start the podcast, I want to remind you to join my text… Commuting at 830-400-4523. I am texting about HR and startups and entrepreneurship and other interesting items, send me your questions on these and other items, so once again, text me at 830-400-4523. Now, on to this great podcast episode. Hello, and thank you. A joint Jason canines experience. I’m a host, Jason cabinets. I guess it is Jen Thornton. It’s great to be here today. Absolutely. Jen has developed her expertise in talent strategy and leadership professional development over her exciting 20 plus year career as an HR professional. She’s led international teams across greater China, Mexico, the UK, and the US, to expand into new markets, making franchise retailers and developing key strategic partnerships.
0:02:06.4 S2: All while exceeding business objectives and final results, Jan thinking, I really appreciate it.
0:02:11.6 S1: Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to it.
0:02:13.9 S2: So first question, do you know the languages from every country you’ve been in?
0:02:18.3 S1: I don’t know all the languages, but what’s interesting I found is you start to pick up words or you pick up the way people interact, and we start to be able to put a few things together over time
0:02:34.7 S2: In your tables. Jen, for ACC. What does ACC stand for?
0:02:41.8 S1: Yeah, so I’m an Associate Coach, so I am a credential through the International Coaching Federation, and when I was looking at becoming a coach and thinking about the quality of coach I wanted to be, I really… I did a lot of research and looked into the ICF, and they really have the highest standards out there and the highest ethical standards, and so I went that direction.
0:03:04.7 S2: So is podcast you did with me or… I can’t remember his sarcasm like that, and you were talking only as a course, have you been in… Besides China.
0:03:17.7 S1: So in Asia, I’ve been all through China several times. I really have enjoyed the culture there and learning about the history in Asia or in China, and then also Hong Kong, and so I’ve done some long-term work assignments throughout Hong Kong and China, and it’s just a fantastic area of the world. I really enjoy it.
0:03:36.2 S2: So the different country you’ve been in, is the HR the same anywhere and they try the same velocity of same process, and you have to change it based on the cultures and different items in each country.
0:03:45.2 S1: Yeah, one of the things that I did is I worked for a United States company, so a US-based company, and so we wanted to replicate our culture, our way of work, our best practices, and we wanted to replicate that in each country, but that’s easier to have been done. Every country has their own laws or own customs or own beliefs, and so I think the things that are similar is the way we treat people and respect and how it’s important to communicate and be honest and really think about creating quality work and ensuring the right people are in the right job. So all of that is very similar, no matter what country you’re in and what country you’re working in, the things that differ obviously are some labor laws and just a customs and the way people might work on something as simple as some countries really expect you to kinda say hello and check in on them before you jump into a conversation, other countries don’t necessarily want any of that, they just… Why did you call, what do you need? And so it’s more of learning how to communicate in their special needs that way, but in the laws, labor laws, things like that are different, but at the end of the day, if you really think about great work and great people in great jobs, it all comes together around the world.
0:04:57.0 S2: Yeah, when I was a Armand, my fan, Ray is so clear for three years, right, and we’re never gonna give me as a Korean, it’s like you’re gonna do some drinking, right, it’s just part a norm, right? It wasn’t not getting down to business, it’s like we’re gonna have a few drinks first and you know…
0:05:10.7 S1: Yeah, I’ve had a few of those nights in China myself.
0:05:15.1 S2: So how did I… What do you go for? Do you go from Mexico, United States and China, or do you just give you to go from one phone, country, another back to back and back.
0:05:23.5 S1: Yeah, you know, that’s kind of the last chapter of my corporate or corporate professional piece. It was interesting. You sometimes just say yes. And I remember I got a phone call from our chief HR officer and he was like, Hey, you’ve been to China before having you… And I’m like, Yeah, he’s like, You wanted to go to Hong Kong for a couple of months, or we’re gonna open stores. We need you to help figure it out, and I’m like, Sure, I’ll go. And I kinda hung up the phone and thought, Did I just say yes to it? And so I went over there for a few months and helped get some best practices established, and then during that time period, our organization had decided to open stores in Mexico. So they were like, Well, will you go to Mexico and do the same thing? Then we decided London, and then they were like, we’ll go to London. And then all of a sudden it was like, Well, now we need someone to manage these HR teams around the world, and so then I was put into a permanent position of managing all those teams that I had set up.
0:06:21.8 S2: So in these different countries as a pacemaker over the… The same as here here in the United States or anything else, or… Differently.
0:06:27.9 S1: Yeah, this was such a good question. I think that in many countries, they look at HR, kind of how we might have looked at it in that 20th century, where it was the policy police, it was when you’re in trouble, you go to HR. So some countries did have those beliefs, but then other country, especially in Europe, you know, they really believe that HR was a group of people to really protect the mental health and mental and physical clarity of people and really protect how we did our work to ensure that people were happy and healthy and productive. So it was interesting to see how different people looked at it over the world.
0:07:08.5 S2: So Jaffer, you decided to become entrepreneur, can you talk about… You know, you just sent corals like you’re having a great time. I definitely TerraNova lot of ventures… More than most people would do, I think. So what made you switch from corporate doctor, entrepreneurial and talk about their journey you’ve been on so far.
0:07:25.7 S1: Yeah, so when you travel like I did, it looks fantastic on Facebook and Instagram, and I had some amazing experiences that I’m amazing people, and I truly did love that job, but you know, it came to a time where I knew I was out of a crossroads in my career, that if I wanted to ever go out and do my own business that… I was getting to that age where I needed to go ahead and give it a try. And really working internationally and watching executives try to work together and thinking about talent strategies and how does talent strategies work across multiple countries, and that strategic planning to make sure the business results come together. It’s hard enough when you have executives that are all from one country and speak the same language, so when you have a board of executives and they’re in different time zones, different cultures, different languages, it really brought the complications to how people work together, just heighten those and I really became interested in how do we work together together better as executives, so that the team does Better Work and therefore our business results come together, and so I decided that’s what I wanna do.
0:08:38.9 S1: I wanna help organizations bring their teams together to create amazing talent strategy so that our business strategies come to life.
0:08:47.7 S2: I guess I can say even though on Instagram and Facebook looks great in those countries taking the excitation owned and
0:08:54.4 S1: You know, I actually didn’t mind them, I know most people would know Dallas to Hong Kong. It was booked at, I think, 18 hours. It usually took like 65 to 17 hours, but it was a moment for me to really just decompress and relax, and I actually looked forward to the flight, believe it or not, I got your books and catch up on podcasts. It was actually fantastic.
0:09:18.0 S2: Cool, so what advice you as someone who’s thinking by leaving corporate onespan, Ur case, a lot of people have great ideas they wanna do, but that someone holds them back, what would you tell them? Oh.
0:09:29.3 S1: You know, I think what I’ve learned is you have to get up every day no matter what is on your calendar, and you have to go to your office or wherever you work, and you need to do some work. When I first started out, obviously, that first day, my calendar was completely empty when I was like Today, I opened my business and it’s an empty calendar, and it would have been really easy to say, Well, there’s nothing on my calendar today, so I can go do this or go do that. But what I did, and what I recommend other people do is when your calendars empty, take advantage of that, who are you networking with? What are you learning, what are you researching, what type of education so that your experiences expand, and I think that getting up every day, making decisions right or wrong, just make a decision to move forward and using every minute you have of your work day to think about your business and how you can create it to be productive and help others, that’s how you… To start
0:10:26.5 S2: A… Talk about this, You are a lot of people to say, I’m just a… I can be so out so I can get… My boss is, Oh, I wanna have a lot… Keneally have even more bosses entrepreneur…
0:10:36.8 S1: Yeah, I have a lot of bosses, so every single one of my clients is a boss, and I want to make sure I deliver on what they expect, but really go above and beyond what they expect. I’ve always believed in great customer service, I grew up in the retail industry, so obviously customer service is always something that I found important, and so I truly believe you have to surprise and delight your customers, and those are my bosses, and so when we decide what we’re going to do and what we’re gonna contract and what our objectives are, I take that so serious and I look at How can I take what that is and where else can we add to it, and else can we deliver to ensure that the experience is good for everybody, but yeah, I wake up to emails from a lot of different bosses and not only that person you might have engaged with, but everyone on their team, when you’re working with a team, you have to work with every single person, and so… Yeah, so you wake up to a whole lot of bosses, so
0:11:35.5 S2: We’ll talk about more detail later, but you’re coming to focus on… Channel strategy is correct, yes. Why did you pick that as your background, we conform with… Why did you pick that to focus on… You know.
0:11:46.5 S1: Early on in my career, I was working in operations. And in operations, you wake up every single morning to your score card, what were all your KPIS and what decisions did you make, and how did that influence that next morning? And I was not a competitive person, I wasn’t someone who always had to beat my peer, that’s not how I enjoyed getting results, and I knew I always did it different, but I was always a top performer though, it didn’t come from a competition-type mindset and what I was realizing over time, it’s because I love building teams and I thought really strategic about how to deploy those teams and really, really early on my career, man, I looked at who I was deploying and what time, what day… It was so specific because I really knew if I had the right people and I treated them right, and I developed them and I engage them, that all of our business objectives would come, and so it’s always kind of been my beliefs and who I am, and as I progressed throughout my career in all these years and opening new divisions with the companies I worked with, or new countries, it always came down to, how did we look at the talent? And when we failed, it was…
0:12:58.2 S1: We felt around talent. And so it just became a huge passion of mine, and I thought, why not do it every day?
0:13:05.1 S2: So what the… It kills me is when people say I’m a hire an expert like, No, you’re not like, no. Asteraceae you say your time, all your hires, and I still work for the Como getting promoted. Why do people say that? I don’t get it.
0:13:19.9 S1: I think sometimes there’s a little ego involved, and if we look at people and we say, I’m a hiring expert, and I get it right, a 100% of the time, what you’re doing is really closing down the opportunity to be subjective about that person and when they come on board. How are they doing? And what do they need to learn? And not only is that not great for the company, ’cause you need to be subjective, it’s also not good for that person, and you have to remain really subjective so that you can provide feedback and experiences and growth opportunities for that person, so I help organizations hire all the time, and we don’t know it 100% of the time. We do everything you’re supposed to do, and we definitely make progress and we definitely get better at it, but there’s a lot of things that happen that make… Hiring, not a perfect science.
0:14:08.6 S2: Yes, gene, talk about your own comics to build an innovative workforce, one solutions.
0:14:15.4 S1: Yeah, so I think a lot of times when people think about talent strategies and they think about HR, it’s that policy police, it’s just call the recruiter and get someone in here, and I look at… Talent strategy is very different. I look at them as the piece… One of the most important pieces of the business strategy, and so so many organizations spend hours and hours with their business plan, what’s our profit margins if we sell X of this at what price point in five years, here’s where we’re going to be, and you know, especially if you’re a startup and you’re going up for funding, man, you have that, that business plan is dialed in, but no one ever puts a town strategy on top of it, and no one says to make all of that happen, here’s what’s gonna have to happen to the talent, and that’s where I come in and I think… And I really work with people like, what is your business objectives? Now, let’s talk about talent. Because the two have to go together.
0:15:13.3 S2: So Jane, from what you’ve seen, when how prices go wrong goes wrong, who who delay was the top is a higher major other recruiter or a combination or disciplines.
0:15:23.1 S1: You know, it’s always a combination, but I really believe it’s the… I think it’s really more the organization has failed in some ways, and at the end of the day, it’s always a hiring manager’s decision, and so oftentimes organizations know the work that needs to be done, but they don’t always know how they want that work done, and so what that can look like is I can be hired as a vice president of HR at four different companies with the exact same job description, but I may only be a match to one of them, I’m highly creative. I have a lot of adaptability, I like to try new things, so if I was hired in a company that was very traditional and needed someone just to kind of manage the day-to-day, and they didn’t want things changed, I feel horrible higher for them, that’s not who I am, now I could physically do all the work, but I wouldn’t be a good match, and so, so often we hire people that aren’t a match, I’m a better matched to a company that may want to kind of restructure how they think about talent or a growing company that doesn’t like to do things repetitively, that always wants to find a new and better way of doing things, I’m a better match to that type of organization.
0:16:37.1 S1: Jensen.
0:16:38.2 S2: We start thinking about telethon, the close a around what is the two founders? That story. I
0:16:46.2 S1: Think it should start the day you decide to open an organization, the day you say, I’m gonna open a company, I’m gonna launch this company is the first day you think about talent strategy, and it really starts with those founders because oftentimes can… The founder is someone who was passionate about an item or a technology or an idea, and over time, as the company grows, they actually move further away from why they started the organization, and they move into having to do tasks and projects and some vision strategic work that may not be in their will house. And so I think that the very beginning, if the executives or the founders of a company start to take care of themselves, and where am I at and where am I with my mental clarity and How am I growing, then the organizations and create that culture and everyone underneath… And as you start to hire those cultural way of work, that growth mindset kinda goes through everyone else.
0:17:51.9 S2: I think a lot of people get wrong, and of course… What’s that term was to always be close to sales in a… You should always be recruiting right to the wrong…
0:18:03.4 S1: Yeah, you should always be recruiting and you should always be meeting people, and just today, in fact, I was talking to a client and they wanna hire a recruiter actually, and they’re having a hard time, and I thought about someone that I met at a networking event, two years ago, and they want someone really creative, and I thought, Wow, this woman is like, she likes to break what works, and I thought she do, she has to find just the right place to make sure she does a great job. And so I’ve connected the two of them, and I don’t know where that will go, but you always have to be meeting people, you always have to be thinking about who fits your culture, and so that down the road, you can think back and say, You know what, I met that one guy at that event and I wasn’t… We didn’t have anything for him that day, but you know what I think we do now, I just wanna have a conversation, but constantly be meeting people and constantly be recruiting and thinking about the future of your organization.
0:18:59.0 S2: Yes, what I’ve actually have our founders… So like about starting a company, I think about recruiting people, is this a matter of going Horvat, doing press your brand? I housing about Porton that…
0:19:11.3 S1: Yeah, I think the one thing they should stop before they go out is really stop and think about the culture of their organization, and that’s a big piece of it, because we can go out and hire experts in the field, but if we don’t know about how we want that work done, then that’s a problem, because then you’ll have a harder time developing a culture, it’ll grow organically, if they just not grow to what you want, get purposeful with it, and then when you’re out, meaning people constantly be saying, Hey, in a year, so I’m thinking about hiring a person to run my social media platforms, and who’s the upon comers, who do you know that you think in a couple of years are gonna be amazing, and just constantly be asking people Who do you know, or when you’re in conversations with people, and they start talking about their passion, take note of that, and make sure that you’re constantly staying in touch with those people.
0:20:07.7 S2: So Jonas, a company grows. Can you talk about some challenges and differences to management leading small teams versus the marker teams?
0:20:14.7 S1: Oh gosh, there’s so many. I think one of the biggest things I start to see when companies go from small to mid-size, maybe mid-sites to larger, is they start throwing payroll at their problems, and so all of a sudden one team seems to be really overwhelmed, and so we’re like, We’ll just hire someone over there and just hire someone and give them some help, but what we have to stop and think about when we get to that spot, when we start to grow is how do we re-organize the work so that we’re… We know that team maybe need someone, but maybe they don’t, maybe that team actually needs some additional… And they’re overwhelmed because they’re inefficient, they actually don’t need someone else, sometimes there’s work that we start doing as we’re a smaller mid-sized company, and we keep doing that work even though it’s not needed as a large company. And so I think that’s a big piece of it, is you have to really decide if you’re a growing company, and some of those differences is really, how do you think about the work differently, and how do you let go of work, do you buy new work in and how do you really decide when you’re gonna hire someone, because I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve talked to, and when we had this, we hired that, we had this, we hired that.
0:21:26.8 S1: And then all of a sudden they can’t afford their payroll anymore, and they’re very inefficient.
0:21:31.6 S2: So jaded a comment, I think you meet all… To not somewhere I read the other day where you say, A lot of Manohar people next day from day one to now, just a Maxim, and so… That’s right, which is of course… Makes no sense at all. Can you talk about that?
0:21:43.9 S1: Yeah, and so we go out and we hire someone and we’ve looked at their resume and we’ve done all of our due diligence, and we’re excited they’re gonna be perfect, and we expect the perfection to show up day one, and what we have to remember is that person is bringing their experiences to the table, that’s what you’re hiring, but what you have to give them as institutional knowledge, and so they don’t show up day one knowing how all the inner workings work or with those relationships to create efficiencies or the best new idea because they don’t have institutional knowledge at… And so when you bring someone on, be thrilled and excited about everything they’re bringing you, but don’t forget, you have to make them whole by helping them also.
0:22:29.7 S2: So I believe next month you’re talking… Talking at a woman and Retail Leadership Conference.
0:22:36.3 S1: I am… Yes, executive women in a retail leadership. Yeah, it’s a great conference. It’s actually a month-long conference, typically those conferences are in person, but in the year of covid, we’ve all gotten creative, and it’s an incredible group of women, and one of the things I love about that organization is a really fantastic at finding up and-coming female executive leadership in the retail industry, and they bring them in and allow them to share their experience and different types of opportunities, they bring in a lot of thought leaders to help all of these women who are leaders in retail think about their job in a new way. I’m doing a workshop on communicating when you’re in fear, we’ve all had a little bit of fear this year, and when we’re in fear, we have to be really careful how we communicate because we’re communicating from fear at times, and we can’t push that fear on to others and so we’re gonna talk about that in the workshop.
0:23:36.8 S2: So Jen, now in the news about how retail is going away, so really bad is I really do better the retail industry as it Brolin.
0:23:45.7 S1: That it depends what sector… I think if you look at some traditional retail and a brick and mortar, big retail, I think there is some struggles, a lot of them are figuring it out, they’re doing… Learning how to do virtual calls, the jury industry actually is doing a phenomenal job, you can actually have a virtual selling experience and virtually go through a jewelry store, and I think that’s just fantastic. A lot of brick and mortars have thought about how do we work more with social media and influence versus just waiting for someone to walk in our doors… Like we used to back in the days of all of us hanging out. The malls, but the areas where I think are really interesting, as the cosmetic industry is growing like crazy, and so there’s some really interesting things going on there, and then I think also smaller organizations, organizations who are very purposeful and wanna give back and kind of do more of a boutique experience. I’m seeing those grow, and so I think it just depends on how you look at the definition of retail. Traditionally, are they struggling? They’re figuring it out, but there’s some really neat stuff coming, gnomon…
0:25:01.9 S1: Is it 50-50 culture and talent or… It’s like a different combination, how’s that go… Come about. Yeah, and so we’re really divided in in thirds, and one-third of our organization comes from the OAD assessment, and it’s a fantastic assessment that an organization can deploy for pre-employment to help make sure we’re hiring the right traits for the right jobs. And then that assessment becomes a lifetime or a journey, a career journey tool, where we can have coaching reports and we can use that to ensure that we’re providing people with great experiences and really leading people to their natural traits, and then another third of the business comes from our leadership academies, we focus on helping mid-to upper management learn about leadership skills were a very specific way that they’re built, they’re really built to keep people in the business, and they’re built for adult learners and that drip content where every month or learning something, and it builds over time. I think the days of trying to teach people everything you need to know in 72 hours in a hotel room as those days are over. And so I really specifically build leadership academies to deal with some of the problems I saw in corporate American and the challenges to develop people, and then another third comes from the executive coaching piece, and there’s some amazing executives we work with.
0:26:26.8 S2: So Janelle ship and the coaching, tell me who would be a perfect person for that and then who will be… You’re not so perfect person for this. Yeah.
0:26:35.7 S1: So when it comes to coaching, the people that do really well with NR group, their individuals who are doing incredibly well in their career, they are individuals who know… No matter how good you are, you have to continue to grow and develop. They’re very open-minded, and they have a lot of spirit around creating incredible working experiences, not only for themselves, but within their Executive peer group or their teams, people that don’t… Well, with us are people who want to stay in the past, who are fighting change, people who want to kind of show up every day the way they’ve always shown up, and what got them here should be just enough, because we really focus on moving forward and expanding our mind map and learning new things every single day. So those are the people I think that work well and don’t work well with our leadership academies, those are really great for small to mid-sized companies, because a lot of companies don’t have a learning and development function, and we come in and provide that and really think about… We help organizations understand, what’s my business strategy? And so what… What’s… Everyone on my team that are leading people, what are the competencies they need, know what are the skill sets they need to know to make sure that fits with our business strategy, and then we come in with academies.
0:28:01.0 S1: And we help make sure that all of that stuff is coming together very strategically, it’s not just a here a month to everyone, what learns this, we really strategically put it together to meet the big business needs.
0:28:14.4 S2: And is that different? One, having a coach and have our mentor or the same thing.
0:28:18.5 S1: Oh, I think they’re very different. And I love that you asked that question. I mentor is someone who has gone on that journey before you, and someone that you look at and there are traits about that person that you respect, and traits about that person that you know you can learn from, and so you’re really a mentors on a journey, because they have gone on that path before, a coach is very different, because a coach is a safe place, your mentor might be your boss, your mentor might be a friend or someone who if you have a really honest conversation and you may have fears that later that will influence how people see you. When you’re with a coach, it’s a very private space and been, it’s a space where you can get incredibly honest about your frustrations or your excitement, or how you feel about something without judgment, and so you can get it out of you. You can work through it. A coach really helps you kind of unravel all that stuff in your head in a very safe space company.
0:29:24.0 S2: Have a different challenge to actor, however, workers versus non-remote workers, or is it all the same process in your mind
0:29:30.3 S1: You… I think there are some things that are similar. There’s some core basics around making sure that we know what work needs to be done, or culture or those types of things, but there are people who really enjoy working from home and remotely, or if it’s not even from home, office space, just wherever. And there’s other people who really don’t enjoy it, and I think that it’s important that if you look at a position, and this may be… If it’s a position where you can say, this could be remote or in office or blend that have that conversation during the interview process, if it is a truly remote position, then look for people who have experience working remote, or especially now, almost all of us pretty much have experience working from remote now, but really talk to someone about what works for you remote and where do you struggle working remote, and making sure that all of that fits into your business needs, but it needs to be part of the conversation going forward when we’re talking with people.
0:30:30.8 S2: Like I say, be more working out for everyone, is it?
0:30:33.6 S1: No, it’s really not. And I’ve always worked pretty much remote, so it feels very natural to me, but I watched all of friends and clients trying to figure it out in this last year, and it was good for me to see that because it kind of made me back and think, Well, what I’ve naturally done isn’t for everybody, and how do we start to help people figure out how to work remote, and I think the biggest thing that managers have to get past when someone works remote is visually setting, seeing people set in seats, just ’cause someone’s at their desk and their computers on, doesn’t mean they’re productive, it doesn’t mean are producing the Tonto. But the way we’ve always thought is, as long as you’re in your chair, you’re doing your job right? And so I think that in today’s world with remote work, we have to get really attached to the results we expect, not the hours we expect…
0:31:32.3 S2: One thing too, I think a lot of managers out there, they think, Okay, I think they can do manage the same as we oversee… Correct. And also take… You know, if you’re a bad manager, you’re a bad manager, right. It doesn’t matter if you’re moderate, you’re a bad leader, a bad manager met Bass and you’re just had… Correct.
0:31:47.9 S1: Absolutely, yeah, and I think that it depends on the skills you struggle with, if you struggle with communication and you now go remote, there’s a good chance that that really becomes even more of a struggle for you if you struggle because you micro-manage or you’re too in the detail and don’t love people to make their own decisions, then working remote, that person may feel really off-kilter ’cause they’re not right there in people’s business anymore, and so if you struggle with something, really think about how that struggle changes because we all have that one thing that we’re just not great at, I mean everyone’s got it, that thing we’re always working on, but think about how does the remote situation influence that one thing that you’re always making sure that you’re watching and developing… Let’s
0:32:33.7 S2: All employees too. I’ll tell people know, if you get a text email from your boss, I not in the morning, he’ll wait to knock like a nitrite responsive and it works, or the way he…
0:32:45.7 S1: Yeah, absolutely, and I think when you work remote responsiveness is very important, ’cause again, someone just can’t look out the window and say, Oh, I see them over there, I’ll ask them on the way to get my coffee, and so using technology, whether that be an instant mess internal instant message as that teams, if it’s Slack, if it’s text messaging, there’s a million ways we could do it, but just be really responsive and really make sure that your supervisor knows the hours that you will be at your desk and be consistent with that. And so if you are having to possibly homeschool your children, and so maybe you’re having to kind of step away between the hours of 7-30 and 11, and I don’t know, make sure that your boss knows that you’ll be in and out during that time period, but from 11 to maybe 63 at night, you are on and that is your 100% focused and make sure that people know, because you don’t want people to make assumptions if you don’t respond right away…
0:33:43.4 S2: That’s a great point. Transitory work. Oh wait, I say, and be a teacher. Be a housekeeper Center. Right.
0:33:50.9 S1: Yeah, and I think that’s what’s so hard about a lot of people who had the experience of working remote for the first time and during covid, they might not truly gotten the experience because they were maybe homeschooling. We’re dealing with a pandemic or dealing with the health of our loved ones, and all these new ways of working, and how are we gonna get our groceries to delivered and who’s gonna deliver them? And so they may not have really gotten the true experience of what remote working looks like, so if you did remote working this year for the first time and you’re like, I’m not sure, just remember that there’s a lot on top of that. Exactly.
0:34:26.7 S2: Exactly. So Jen, let’s talk about some of you have a passion for asking for it and the Historic Preservation. How do you get at… Interested in that. How long have you been doing that?
0:34:37.7 S1: Yeah, so historic preservation. I still live in my same house I bought when I was in my 20s, and I was a historic house, and so I’m gonna go buy my first house, only knew very little about buying a house, and everyone was like, you bought a historic house. Do you know what that means? I’m like that. Fantastic.
0:35:01.9 S2: You know, what are you gonna put in there to keep it up, do
0:35:04.8 S1: You to about custom wood windows cost? So I had no idea what that meant, and I didn’t have any idea of why you should even preserve history from a structural standpoint, and so here I am in a historic house and I start learning about my neighborhood and I’m… In Dallas, in the neighborhood I live in is an older neighborhood, it was started out… The neighborhood I live in cliff, it started out as a resort for Dallas, it was actually… Has a hotel in a resort. In our little park, there was amusement rides, all kinds of stuff, and so I started learning the stories of neighborhoods and it became a real passion of mine, and how do we protect history, just like we protect our written word and history, but how do we protect what we see, and you go into a museum and you’re fascinated by maybe tools or clothing or just the way someone lived, but we have structures all over our country and all over the world that are telling the same story, you just can’t put them inside of the museum, so how do you start to protect those and tell the story? So yeah, so I am really involved in historic preservation, sometimes it gets me a little bit of trouble, but I really believe and protecting architecture for our future generations.
0:36:33.4 S2: So what makes a structure eligible to meet historically preserved as manager, certain a test to someone as having a historic significance in the building. How do that work? Well.
0:36:44.0 S1: A lot of people define it in a million different ways… A lot of it is what people believe. What I believe is that you look at maybe ’cause we’re living in history right now, and I think that’s what people forget too, and so if I was to look around today and think about what would I wanna preserve in 100 years based on what was built today, and so you really have to think about maybe an influential architect and their structures or a new type of dwelling to change the way we live as a country, so I think of town homes, town homes are becoming incredibly popular, so looking at some of those really progressive first generation town homes, because it changed the way we lived, we started living in a place where we didn’t have yards, and so then how do we spend our spare time that changed, and so really thinking about a structure as how it influenced our way of life and maybe how it influenced design and those types of things, and then you think about old stuff, and obviously any building that has historical significance, if someone lived there or visited there, or historic significance around architecture, to forget we’re living in history right now.
0:38:01.3 S2: And you just do this in a Dallas area.
0:38:03.9 S1: Yeah, so I focus very much in the Dallas downtown area where we have a lot of historic neighborhoods, and they’ve got great stories, every neighborhood was founded by someone for some reason, and it’s really fascinating to go back and think about that, and often times in our neighborhood in fact, it just happened the other day, we’ll get a knock at the door at one of our houses, and someone will say, My great-grandparents lived in this house when they got married, here’s a picture of them, and it’s a picture of their great-grandparents in front of one of these houses. And we’re just fascinated by that because you think about all the family and the love that builds up over time in a structure, but it just happened the other day to one of our neighbors, and so we all celebrated because we think it’s so fun. When we hear those stories.
0:38:51.1 S2: Can you tell about a Friday you’re working on right now?
0:38:54.5 S1: So one of the things I’m doing right now, which is really interesting, is I’m actually building a new structure in the Austin area, and I’ve never lived in a new structure and I’ve never wanted to live in a new structure, and so I’m really torn, but for specific reasons as my husband and things, we decided to buy land on Travis for retirement purposes, and so I specifically picked out an architect who designed new homes that looked like old houses, and I told him, I’m like, I wanna build a new house that looks like an old house that’s been updated. But what’s interesting is really going and thinking about What do houses look like in that time period that you enjoy, and how do you build that new… ’cause I don’t like New Home styles, I don’t like open concepts, I enjoy rooms and walls and a very specific library, I’m a big reader or on a library and very specific. The reason why I wanted to build the library the way it was, so that’s been an interesting project to kind of replicate historic traits of a home inside of a new build.
0:40:05.8 S2: Jane, so we talk about your coming a little bit, can you go into more greater detail, like Why did you start a company, what’s going with you coming now, and what’s your vision for your company in the future?
0:40:14.6 S1: Yeah, so now I started the company ’cause I really wanted organizations to be able to think about their talent strategy, and it goes deeper than just business results, but that’s what it is, town strategies will get us to our business results, but what I also know is that if our leaders are better to everyone who works for them and they have a better experience during the work day and they feel purposeful and respected, and they’re learning when they go home and enter the house with their family… They’re better for their family. And when you’re better for your family, then your children or your spouse or anyone who’s living around you, whether your friends or family, they have a better experience. And when you have a horrible day at work and your boss has been rude to you and you don’t even know why you do what you do, you go home and you don’t have a great experience and your family doesn’t get the best of you, and so I think that I started the company on that surface of helping organizations, but what I’m realizing is we’re helping society, the better leaders we are, the better the society is, and so that’s kind of where I’m at, where we’re going, is we’re building out our coaching models and we’re building out our coaches and really making sure that we have coaches that have similar beliefs and values and the way we look at leadership, and we’re building out additional programs for development, and making sure that we’re developing people for the new way of work and not looking back but really looking forward and what are those competencies and way of work we have to learn today to be successful in the future.
0:41:50.5 S1: Okay.
0:41:50.9 S2: So who’s your tremor? APHIS, a certain story series company, teary revenue.
0:41:56.5 S1: Yeah, so we work with all kinds of companies, we work with a lot of retail restaurants, communication and startup, we work really well with companies who have multiple units, a company that may have four small divisions across the country, and I think why we do well with them is because that’s my background as I’ve always led retail industries and we’ve never all been in one place, we’ve always been kind of scattered, and how do you lead from afar, ’cause it’s very different than leading inside of one box… Or you see everyone every day. And so those are the kind of companies. And I love startups because if you can get your culture and the way of work and how you hire and who you hire, and really create a company that’s about growth in the beginning, then going forward, five, 10, 15, 20 years out, you’re gonna have an incredible organization so that’s why I love startups because let’s just start in the beginning and do this, right. And so I work with organizations, I work with larger companies all the way to some small stuff, I have some work… I have some companies I work with with 50 employees, I have some that have five, 60, 700 employees.
0:43:11.5 S2: Is this sense thing as a company that for tutor early in the process to start working with you
0:43:17.3 S1: On… If you are thinking about even starting a company, really start to think about What’s your talent strategy, even if you’re thinking, well, for the next three years, it’s only gonna be five of us, well, but when those three years are up, what decisions what you make. And so it’s never too early, the earlier, the better, just because it’ll start to make you look at your business so different when you think about the people you’re going to do it with, and when you get up every day and you know the people you’re gonna work with… And you’re excited to work with them. They inspire you, your team inspired you to be a better leader, and when you build that, it’s just a lot more enjoyable.
0:43:56.3 S2: It has co-would affect you in any kind of way…
0:44:00.1 S1: Covid did in the beginning, obviously with all the programs and education when we put everything on hold, and what I did in that time period, because again, I could have very easily said, Well, things are on hold. My calendar is empty. What am I gonna do? But I thought about How do I give back in this time of need, and I can’t… No one wants me sewing face mask, I don’t know, medical training, what the world am I gonna do? Right. And so what I decided is, What do I do best and how do I give back? And that’s, I love doing leadership development, and so I actually put together a free leadership series that we put out to the world and had over 650 people sign up for it from seven different countries, and we did four workshops over a month-long period, and it was fantastic. And really, I grew a lot, I learned a lot from that working with that many people, and I got a lot of exposure, and so it’s been interesting, a lot of organizations are actually pausing right now and saying, Wait a minute, we really need to look at our talent, because things are changing.
0:45:05.0 S1: And so through the summer and back half of the year, we’ve never been busier because I think companies are really recognizing they have to think about their talent in a new way, and they’re willing to do it.
0:45:17.2 S2: So JP company where you know people come work for your coaches and over the cab, what methods do you use as a certain verticals you go to all the time? Or how do you go about doing that?
0:45:27.2 S1: Yeah, when I go to recruit coaches, I have really high standards from their education, and I only hire coaches who meet, who are credentialed through the ICF International Coaching Federation, ’cause it is the only coaching body that has an ethics and standards to get in. You have to have over 100 hours of coaching just to start to apply for your credentials.
0:45:50.4 S2: So a pretty high standard to get in there, it’s pretty hard to get dead…
0:45:53.4 S1: Yeah, and you have to maintain it. And so every three years have to re-certify and you have to go through a mentor coaching, so anyhow, I know those who are going through that are getting some really excellent training, and then I reach out to the best coaches I know and I say, Who are the best coaches you know, and I work with individuals who are educating coaches that work at universities or have their own education platform for coaches, and I go out to them and ask for the best…
0:46:22.4 S2: Yes, so back to cover 19, cover niches hard in all its co-playing field, but it’s always a challenge of is isn’t… There’s already something right going on that’s challenging to do, this is I will come that channel or whatever that case or the child might be.
0:46:37.7 S1: Yeah, so there’s always something going on. Rarely is it, all of us. The same problem at the same time and how that affected you could be in a million different ways, I could have totally shut down your business to make your business go on fire because maybe you sold medical equipment, maybe you’re a mask developer or mass supplier in your business blew up, so everyone had something with it. What I would say though is what I found during covid and any time we have a problem, ’cause there’s always gonna be something, is that we move into crisis management, and there is a time and a place for crisis management, and crisis management is highly directive, it’s just do what I say. Don’t ask questions. We all just have to do this and buildings on fire, get out of the building. Crisis Management, but what I’m starting to see this year is because we crisis manage so much and you have to think about the same thing no matter what your problem is, if all of a sudden you’ve had kind of a run of some crisis in your company, people get in the habit of crisis management and it doesn’t work outside of that crisis, and so people…
0:47:39.7 S1: I’m seeing people that crisis manage for the first couple of months of this year, and now they’re still doing it, they’re still being highly assertive and not asking questions and demanding you do this and you do that, and not even knowing what that person really thinks should be done. And so I think that’s the biggest challenge, if we’ve got crisis coming at us to crisis-manage in that moment, but then go back to who we truly are as a leadership outside of that crisis.
0:48:05.8 S2: And can you say your social media so people can reach out to you? Yeah.
0:48:09.2 S1: Absolutely, so I’m on LinkedIn. So I’m at Jen Thornton ACC, and you can reach out to me there and connect with me, send me an instant message, love to continue the conversation there.
0:48:22.4 S2: Have you missed around those, you like some stories yet.
0:48:25.0 S1: You know what, I just heard about them this week, and so I haven’t even
0:48:28.8 S2: Started… It was a minister day, but I’m like, I… Is this another Instagram? And I really have time to do it. Not the system thing. Right, it’s like…
0:48:38.7 S1: Yeah, I’ll tell you, I’m a little limited on social media, I do LinkedIn, but you won’t see a lot of social media outside of that is just not how I work and not where I enjoy sipping my time.
0:48:51.3 S2: And for all listeners in on the call notes and you’re fine. So at www, abandoned ever sold your friends and your network? So Jan, what comital… Can you give us any advice or wisdom or anything you wanna talk about?
0:49:05.6 S1: I think that my advice, wisdom, I don’t know what you wanna call it, is that remember every word and every action that you take as a leader, you’re creating someone’s world, and that world expands outside of that moment, and so make sure as a leader that you are engaging people, you’re empowering people, that you’re appreciating what someone brings to the table, even on their bad days, so that when they go back out outside of that, whether that’s affecting your team or their life at home, just make sure that you understand the power of leadership just it resonates outside of that moment in that exchange dancing
0:49:42.9 S2: For you town day, I really appreciate it.
0:49:45.1 S1: Thank you for having me as a great joy
0:49:47.3 S2: And sells, take care your time, we remember to be great every day.
0:49:50.3 S1: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Jason canes experience, be shared to connect with us across the social media cabinet, HR. Thank you and remember to be great every day. NOO.
0:50:11.2 S2: Great. Every day you know you have to do notate.