Reflections from My First Three Months

"Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there"

~Will Rogers

I joined BARK earlier this year as Chief People Officer. BARK is a dog company - literally! - our mission is make dogs happy. As a fur parent to two French Bulldogs, I was intrigued and excited by the opportunity to join BARK. Joining a pre-IPO start-up and moving halfway across the country, was also intriguing and exciting but for different reasons.

As I was considering the new position, I was also preparing for the possibility to join the company. I was creating my onboarding plan. In this article, I am sharing the lessons I have learned over the last several months - including the templates that were most helpful in creating a structured onboarding.

HIRED DURING COVID

"It's all about your network" ~said many a career coach, mentor, or advisor. I was told some time ago that creating and maintaining a professional network is one of the most critical aspects for every successful executive. Something like 60% (or more!) of jobs come through professional networks while the remaining 40% of executive opportunities come through executive search firms. And, even from the 40% that come through executive search firms over 50% of successful applicants are referred to the executive search firm through professional networks.

80% of executive placements are through your professional networks

Through my professional network, I was introduced to a BARK board member. My excitement for the company and the Chief People Officer opportunity quickly grew as I met BARK leaders and did my homework on the industry.

Amy Gallo shared best practices on preparing for a remote job interview in her Harvard Business Review article . I put additional thought into my appearance and having my dogs' photos on clear display. After all, I was interviewing with the premier dog company! Technology is critical and backup technology solutions should also be considered. Of course, practice makes perfect - or at least helped me prepare and settle into the examples I knew I would want to share.

The most helpful advice I can share is all about attitude. During a remote interview, we typically are not receiving the same level of feedback - verbal and non-verbal - that we may have experienced in the past. There's lots of research that shows when we don't have feedback, we tend toward a negativity bias. Find your approach to getting and keeping the positive attitude you'll need throughout the interview.

experiment ahead of time with staying positive and assuming the best is happening

GETTING INTO THE DETAILS

"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts."

~Albert Einstein

Throughout the interview process, I was gathering as much information as I could on the company, the history, the current situation, and the priorities for the Chief People Officer. But there was much more detail I wanted (needed!) to get into.

Here is a list of key areas to cover during your first weeks on the job. Start with a detailed walk-through of the structure and process. This covers the team you will be leading, executive team, systems, and practices. Below is a link to the 33 areas that I used.

You will also need to have detailed metrics to review. Some of the metrics may be easily accessed and there may be dashboards in place. Others will require a bit more effort to produce. For each metric, walk through the calculations and definitions that are used. I have found that we often use the same word to describe (slightly) different inputs and outputs. I also discovered the narrative behind the metrics added to my company and culture knowledge - e.g., we had a large hiring event, we added a new team, etc.

I used a series of 1-2 hour working sessions with People Team members to review each line item described above. We used Google Docs to capture details, meeting notes, and actions. This detailed information provided great inputs into strategic planning.

EARLY IMPROVEMENTS

Although I had several key hypothesis on areas that would need to be adddressed early in my tenure, I also wanted to have time to hear from my customer group and People Team, and to create a baseline from which to assess progress. The slide deck that follows provides an overview of the approach I used with my team. To gather customer feedback, I used a a Google Form. To assess process maturity, I asked several People Team Leaders and Managers to own assessments for specific process areas.

Several of the areas that I focused the People Team (and myself) on in the early weeks included:

• Staff the People Team - this was a TOP priority for me; I needed to get my leadership team in place quickly and early.
• Start with the Business's Top Priority - BARK is a fast growing company. Fast growing companies have a priority on attracting and hiring top talent - fast. We created a couple of simple improvements and more strategic changes to help us "raise the BARK bar on talent."
• Set a clear People Team Strategy - within the first six weeks I was ready to begin socializing our priorities and roadmap of change. I am certain there will be adjustments over the coming months and we will manage these changes.
• Accelerating Work - there were a handful of projects that we accelerated. These included a strategic change to benefits package and enrollment, a new promotion process, leveling guidelines, and compensation design.
• Launch Employee-Wide Changes - we were able to launch a People Calendar describing "a year at BARK", we started experimenting with a new onboading experience, and we launched a new digital learning solution.
• And of course, the CEO's Priorities - there were several people, leadership, and organizational priorities I worked directly with the CEO and Board to put in place. A key focus here was stakeholder engagement (and alignment).

GOING PUBLIC

I was lucky. Really lucky. To join a company that made it all the way throug the start-up funding. The vast, vast majority of start-ups never make it to the initial public offering (IPO) stage. The graphic below from CB Insights illustrates the point.

I am keeping a log of all the lessons on going public. Many more than can fit into this article. Given we are less than a month of going public, there are without a doubt more lessons for me to learn!

Stay tuned!