100 days onboarding plan for a CHRO

Thomas Kohler:
Today’s guest, Andreas Schmitz.

Andreas Schmitz:
If you look at the scope of the project, you can see they’re going in all certain directions. You can look at who the customers of these projects. And if you look at that, you find already a little bit of the. Indication, is your strategy clear or not? And what also helps is asking clients. So I’m not even asking at the first place the HR colleagues, but I’m asking managers or employees or the works council. Is it clear to you which path HR follows? And usually it comes up, yeah, I think I know. And if you dive a bit deeper, it comes up, nah, actually we don’t know. Right. They do what we want, or they don’t do what we want, but we don’t know why. And that is another indication, asking people around it, who are the customers? In this case, the HR practice.

Thomas Kohler:
Andres and I talked about the first hundred days of an CHRO chief people officer or HR people executive when onboarding, and also how to set the right expectations, how to make sure to connect with the right stakeholders, to also understand what dynamics are there in a company, how to communicate your start and the outcomes and what you will do to have everybody on board and understand what’s really going on.

Thomas Kohler:
Today we have Andreas Schmitz again here. We already had him on the show on episode number 16, where he was still at Nanotempa and now pursuing a new, exciting journey. And we had a people executive dinner in Munich where, Andreas, you told me about something very interesting. The first hundred days of onboarding a Chro or a people executive. And today I would like to design the episode around that. If somebody wants to get more context on Andreas, please check out the intro on episode 16. And maybe, Andreas, you can just give a quick update on what happened since then.

Andreas Schmitz:
Thank you, Thomas, and thanks for reinviting me. I take this as a gesture of appreciation in this case, definitely. Yeah, we had a wonderful time at the dinner, and we talked a little bit about my new venture. And as you said, I left Nanotempa Technologies after almost, well, not close to two years. And I founded my well am founding right now my own company, Prisma Insights. And one of the ideas was, what are we doing? What are we offering as a service? Was to help new Chros or new HR executives in their first hundred days. And having made that experience myself in two different companies, at Roche, in a huge large corporation, but also then at Nanotempa, I figured there is a need, at least I figured there’s a need of help and we can talk about that a little bit more. By now the business idea has changed a little bit. So Prisma Insights is offering more than that, but it’s all based on the same idea and happy to go through that in a bit.

Thomas Kohler:
Yeah. So maybe you can structure your thinking a bit for us on why 100 days?

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah, I think the first hundred days in any new job is decisive for your future endeavor at the company. It is the time where most people get to know you, where you have the first contacts. And as you know well, the first impression is being made in the first 7 seconds. But overall it’s also made by how do you deliver off what you promise? And that doesn’t mean that in the first hundred days you need to do everything, right. That’s exactly the danger that you get mixed up with too many topics and try to do everything and get nothing done. And exactly, that’s the idea. 100 days for us is a time where you can make your mark and where people can learn who you are and how you work. And of course, ideally you get support all the time, but that’s not feasible and it’s not also monetary wise to do that all the time. And the first hundred days is also a time where your learning curve is super steep, needs to be super steep. And that’s where we jump in and help you to structure your learning curve.

Thomas Kohler:
And how would you do that? Because I think there’s so many aspects what you could consider, right. One important aspect is of course the relationships you build and the bridges you build. And also understanding maybe how is it working at that organization. Right. That’s also, I think super interesting always to understand, but how could you help someone there? Let’s maybe take always the example of a people executive, CHRO chief people officer, going into a new organization and then what to do?

Andreas Schmitz:
What to do? Yeah, that’s always the question, how does it concretely look like? Well, put yourself in the shoes of a co. I like the idea you have. Take a company between 303,000 employees, could also be a little bit larger.

If the company is too big and too complex, that might be a little bit more, might look a little bit different. But let’s take this 300 to 3000 employees, big company, you come in and there is already lots of expectations usually, right. You come in as the head of HR, head of people and expectations, of course, is there of your supervisor, of your manager, that might be the CFO or the CEO, depending on the structure, who have brought you on board to make an impact on the business. Right. To take care of certain aspects in the people, staff area, maybe streamline the operations, but also deliver value. Then you have, of course, the staff, all employees, they see there’s a new people, chief people officer. They have expectations usually not necessarily in reducing cost, but more in, hey, this guy or this girl will deliver value to us in terms of more benefits or different pay structure, not less, of course, more. Maybe a different bonus approach which is perceived more fair.

So there’s expectations from the people side. You might have a works council as well in Germany or in some of the european countries which also have expectations to you. They might have demands in the past which were not given, so they will ask for this. Might be different also here. Maybe benefits or could be something else, how employees are being treated. And then there’s an external environment as well. Usually, depending on the company where you are, there is an outside community that also expects you to do something here. Maybe there’s a kindergarten nearby which the company has relationship to, or schools or whatever that might be. So there is all of these influences, internal and external, coming in and you are there first day and, well, you need to sort out these expectations first and then you probably work also with your team.

If you have a team between 303,000 employees, you might have an HR team that have expectations too, giving you direction, helping them to grow. But the downside is usually these teams are overloaded with work already. Right? And that’s something where. That’s where we come in because we found out, and I found out myself. Turning to my team at that point in time to get support is quite difficult because, well, they have a day job and now you come in and expect them to do something different and to help you to onboard. Well, guess what? They’re struggling themselves because they were maybe without leadership for some time and figured out a way how they work.

Now we come in, but maybe I’ll let you ask some questions in between if that is kind of reasonable. What I’m explaining what the situation is.

Thomas Kohler:
At this point, definitely, I like the specificness of, is that specificness of it, because this is something what we now can really talk specifically on that role. And I think what I often saw when onboarding that new executives get hired, they get announced, and then everybody, as you said, expects something immediately. Okay, now this person is here, and now everybody changes. And how do you make sure that you not over promise and under deliver? Because I think usually it’s always smarter and better to under promise and then over deliver. But that’s also not so easy all the time. Right. Because you maybe got hired with certain expectations and then just setting the expectations very clearly in terms of, okay, this is definitely what we want to achieve, but it maybe is not achieved in three months. Maybe it takes a year or two.

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah. And it depends culturally as well if you are better under promising, over delivering or not, at least in the european way, I would assume that’s the case. In a more american way, you probably want to make up a little bit more of what you’re trying to do and hopefully deliver as well. But that’s the starting point as well. So I’ve mentioned all of these dimensions and now it’s up to. Hold on. I have a feedback here right now. Okay. Now it’s also clarifying those expectations and documenting them.

We talk about performance management, which is also then trying to clarify expectations. But how often are they really written down? What do you as a CEO expect from the CHRO and how do you measure that at 100 days and let that flow into your 100 day plan? Same with all of the other stakeholders I mentioned. You cannot talk to all of the staff, but you can of course take people out and multiply that feedback. If you have your team, you talk to them. What is your expectations? What I found is don’t take this as granted. If you have those expectations listed, then sort them through. And we would help with that as well in prioritizing them and making sure what is really doable and what is not. And what can we help with? Because there are some expectations. Well, nobody can help you with because they’re not realistic at all. Then point that out. Right.

I think that’s important. If you haven’t done that during your interview process, some people do that right there. Do that after the first couple of days. Expectation clarification as a starting point is super important and we have some experience of what is doable, in which kind of context, of course, we have to talk to and interview also some people to find out what the real environment is you can operate in. But that’s a highly important topic. To clarify that expectation at the beginning and put up a plan.

Thomas Kohler:
What do you think based on your experience are the top three problems that always needs to be maybe anticipated or solved in the first hundred days?

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah, that depends on the perspective, but overall, if you take it more on a global level, it is usually, well, you look at the HR or people related processes, meaning our recruiting process. Look at that. When we are a growing company, that’s usually pain of how do you work on your recruiting side or talent acquisition side, right? Do you use internal, only internal or also external help like your business is? And how do you do that? Is that on a level where we can proceed?

It’s usually also a cost aspect of looking at how is your HR team set up? Is it set up in a way that is most effective and most efficient at the end of the day? And it is now related to people practices that relate to all of the employees. Are we effective on that one? Are we having processes that really support the business or are we having processes for the sake of having processes? And that’s my learning at least as look at that as well in a structured way, one by one. Don’t focus on all of them, but focus on the one that have really the key impact. And that is usually talent acquisition. That is everything that has to do with pay and that is also how teams are being set up.

Thomas Kohler:
And in talent acquisition, I think what I see most when people call me up because of maybe something, what you just mentioned, like, okay, how do we do recruitment there? And do we have a structure in place? And no, maybe not everything is possible internally. Then I find that most of the times there is either no headcomplanning or unrealistic headcomplaning or an inaccuracy in head complaining can also be the case. But something has to do with headcomplanning and then the application is internally on how the alignment, on how we resource the teams for each units should happen way faster than initially expected. Or second, there is some kind of an opportunity that came up where you just need to double down to get it on the street. So how do you see the planning piece when you come into the first 100 days? What do you look at? Do you look at ad complaints? Do you look at a company strategy? Do you already have an overview of that? Or how do you do that?

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah, and that is where our business idea evolved, because when we talked to some of the executives and also their head leaders, they told us, well, not sure if we need the 100 days support because we expect people to figure that out on their own. Some people said that, but we might need help on the strategic planning because that doesn’t exist or it doesn’t align. So, as you rightfully said, it’s an issue not only with recruiting, but overall people practices or HR, is that the long term strategy of the company is not in line with the workforce strategy, or there is not even a workforce strategy in place. And headcount planning or planning of future workforce is just one piece of it. But that is often missing. And of course, if you have a missing element here, how can you do an annual planning or even a shorter term planning if you’re missing the overall picture, if you’re not knowing if your company will grow or what kind of skills you are having in demand in the future, it becomes really, really difficult or opportunistic on what to recruit when. And I think that’s what you just explained, it is then depending on the size of the company, you talk to the founder and you got a release of a headcount. Now you can go and hire all of a sudden, or if you’re lucky, you have five positions all of a sudden right now, or you have a plan to hire 20 and you have a hiring freeze a week later. Right.

And that’s usually the case when there’s not necessarily a concrete planning and a design of a workforce plan. And that is something we help as well with not only in the first hundred days, but really looking at the company’s strategy. Is there one? Is there a people strategy in place? Is there one? And if not, check if we can pull up one. And what is important here is one that people can understand. I’ve seen many, many strategies and also people strategies that look super cool. But if I ask the people, what does that mean for you? How do you act on it? Now there’s a question mark. It’s not that people can grasp it and then see, I know what to do now or I know what not to do.

That’s especially important, right. Not ruling out pieces that you’re not doing everything. Same here with recruiting. If I’m trying to get somebody attracted who has all of the skills I need, you might end up finding nobody. Right. And that’s the same as strategy.

Thomas Kohler:
And also a question, maybe based on your past experience, I think at Roche you had an HR people team of more than 300 people or so. Yeah. In total with vocational training and everybody. Yes, that’s correct. And then, for instance, now at nanotempor, you maybe had a team of 20? 25?

Andreas Schmitz:
Eleven

Thomas Kohler:
So let’s say we compare these two scopes. There is a strategy in place. How do you check if the people understand? What does that mean for them in an environment that is that big versus smaller scope.

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah. So at Roche it was interesting to see, when I took over the head of HR role for Germany, I had a look at the number of projects that were being run out of HR in Germany as an indicator, not even which direction they went, but just a number. And we found out there were 250 projects running in parallel. 250! Certain size, some small, some big, some overlapping. Most of them didn’t know from each other. And of course that can’t be right.

And that was an indication for me that the strategy that we don’t have a strategy that rules out certain projects, or maybe not a strategy even, but some principles, sometimes it’s difficult to come up with a holistic strategy, but then you can at least have principles that make decisions easier. And the number of projects. And if you look at the scope of the project, you can see they’re going in all certain directions. You can look at who are the customers of these projects. And if you look at that, you find already a little bit of the indication is your strategy clear or not? And what also helps is asking clients.

So I’m not even asking at the first place the HR colleagues, but I’m asking managers or employees or the works council. Is it clear to you which path HR follows? And usually it comes: Yeah, I think I know.

And if you dive a bit deeper, it comes up: Nah, actually we don’t know. Right. They do what we want or they don’t do what we want, but we don’t know why. And that is another indication, asking people around it, who are the customers, in this case, the HR practice, that’s super.

Thomas Kohler:
Smart, because I think a lot of people just ask their team members and that’s it. And then you always operate in the bubble, right?

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah, I mean, I found myself into it when I was being asked that question once. Do you know the strategy? And you can see I can talk a lot about everything. So I made up something which sounded smart, but did I take the right decisions? Probably not right, because it wasn’t super clear. And that’s where I found asking the people themselves is not the best indicator. You rather observe or ask other people who are related to that.

Thomas Kohler:
And I think another important piece is the relationships you build in the first 100 days. How do you make sure that you understand what are the key people for the current situation you’re in? And of course you are then hired for a certain job to do, usually at that level especially. And there is a certain, I would say, expectation or hypothesis around if we hire that person into that role. We will get that in a certain period of time. And usually there are always a lot of people, also in executives, teams, strong opinion, people with a lot of influence in place. And there are usually some dynamics. It doesn’t have to be politics, but there are dynamics. How do you figure that out on how to play it or how to understand and leverage, maybe neutralize or whatever it is.

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah, you cannot neutralize it. I don’t think so. You can work with it. Right. The dynamics are not a bad thing necessarily. I mean, it depends a little bit on company culture. Sometimes they are bad, but usually they are what they are. So don’t take them as something negative or positive, but you’re right, you have to identify them first to know how to play with them. And that’s where you have to be also on site a little bit or talk to many other people to get a feeling of this kind of dynamic. And you probably won’t get it right. I wouldn’t say that we, as a consulting team or the new CHRO can identify that in the first case. So you have to experiment a little bit and that you can find out when you have your first discussions, when you show your first concepts, or when you engage with the first people in the get to know rounds. You do. Right?

I mean, that’s part of the 100 days plans, usually is you have a list of people you ought to talk to. And this is something we usually do in the expectation setting round as well. When we talk to the CEO, we ask who does the CHRO need to meet and why? And we do the same with the team. Right. When we meet the HR team or the leadership team, depending on the size, who do we meet now, why? And this why is always important as you get a little feeling about what do other people think about them. Usually there’s an indication of, yeah, talk to a works council member here and there. And sometimes then it’s not the head of the works council, it is somebody who’s maybe in the middle rank, so to say. Or you get certain employees being named multiple times by people. So you probably see that there’s an indication these are multipliers in the organization, doesn’t need to be true always. But again, if people are mentioned multiple times, there’s a reason for that. And talking to these multipliers, that gets you exactly what you said, that gets you dynamics. These people are usually the ones who speak openly, who are telling you what you want to hear and what you don’t want to hear, and that is important. And now you need to figure out what the dynamics is, who makes the decisions, who is being influencing decisions, right. Who speaks a lot but doesn’t say anything, who is not speaking a lot but has a huge influence on other people, what kind of actions have been tried already, right. All of these kind of questions, we have a list of questions we usually ask to get that feeling of what the dynamics are and then use them.

Thomas Kohler:
Can you give some examples of questions?

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah, I mean, some of them are related to decision power, as I said already. Right. Who is the ones who are usually in committees? Who do these people ask for input?

Give you an example of, if you get usually a list of names, who are decision committees, leaders, experts whatsoever. But the more important question is who do these people turn to to get guidance? And then if you get these people who give guidance. These are the people you need to work with and you need to include in the design of new programs. So when you have now and put up a new, let’s say a performance management process you would like to implement, well, you should rather include the people who are giving advice to the decision makers. Include them right away in the design process so you can make sure that you reflect what’s being followed later on. That being one example. Other questions are around length and impact of process of design processes. What is the accepted time you can take to stay with the example to come up with a new performance management process? How urgent is it? What is the impact if we don’t change it now versus in three months or in six month or in a year, to then identify again priorities of when to make what kind of initiative independent almost of the expectations of others. If there’s no realistic chance that you can do it, but there is an urgency. Well, you need to manage expectations rather than managing the project.

Thomas Kohler:
Do you also think that sometimes in a job, because I think it, and I saw it, that especially also, maybe in the hiring process, but also then in the start of a new job, if you don’t be able to get the backup of certain key influencers, maybe also in the executive team, you don’t even have a chance.

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah, it becomes really difficult. And here’s again the stakeholder management you might need to do, right. You don’t need to like everybody and not everybody will like you, but there’s a certain level of professionalism. You need to engage with the people. I and at least my personal opinion and that’s what we advise as well.

See what you have in common. Usually there’s something you have in common. It doesn’t need to be job specific, can be job specific, but can also be hobies, can be something else and engage just on a more personal level. Get to know each other, spend some time with each other in person if possible, but virtually if not, to get that kind of stickiness with the people.

Thomas Kohler:
And also with the team members. Let’s say you are now hired into a new role and you have a scope of maybe 100 people, 50 people, 300 people. What, as an employee within this people team, should you do when a new co is joining, for instance?

Andreas Schmitz:
Not sure I understand the question, but when you are from an employee perspective, you mean.

Thomas Kohler:
Exactly. So if you would be, let’s say, in the employee perspective, is there any tip or anything what you should do in terms of to make it easier for yourself but also for the new person joining?

Andreas Schmitz:
Yeah. So one step maybe back is when you are again from the co perspective. Ideally you create a mechanism for people to get to know you as well, especially your teams or organization that you lead. And here again comes our strategy in a box concept, which we give out to these organizations where we guide you through a relatively easy process that comes up with an analysis, but also with a design of, let’s say, the workforce plan or the workforce strategy would like to do. And that is a co creative process. Co creative, meaning we invite people from the organization, not only HR, but also a lot of HR people, to help you doing that, depending on their capacity they have. And now if you are on the employee side, well, take these opportunities. It’s not about being in front and center. But hey, being on these design teams usually helps you to get some idea of where the boat is going to where you’re shipping. That’s one take opportunities that are being offered. Yes, I know workload is always then the barrier, right? You think about what’s my day job and what do I do with that? And here again, address these questions and give that feedback. Usually every new leader is happy to get feedback and honest and direct feedback. Of course, again, depends on the leader. But we hopefully get to a level where also Chros are able to accept feedback in a way that it is appreciative to the one who gives it other as an employee, that’s again the offering the help, offering a perspective, usually at least what I did in the past, is the people who are actively offered their support. Yes, I turn to them because it’s easier at the beginning because you don’t know who are the former informal leaders. So turn to the one who offer active support. And as an employee well, what can you lose? Actually, there’s not much you can lose if you go up and at least present yourself and what you think and what you do and why you do it to the new leader. Understood.

Thomas Kohler:
And after 100 days, what should be the outcome? Ideally?

Andreas Schmitz:
Well, it depends on the expectations that were being set at the beginning, but the idea is at least that we think after 100 days, you had ideally a plan which you tried to follow. Of course, as we know, it’s volatile. You need to adjust, right. But you have already first visible actions that had an impact. Meaning, just pulling up a new workforce strategy or people strategy is nice and good, but if that is the only result of the 100 days, usually you don’t meet all of the expectations because at least employee wise, they don’t care about your workforce plan. Right. They would like to see something for them. And that’s where we help to.

Hey, in the first 100 days, besides, this planning all stuff, you need to see what is it that people want and that also helps the organization going forward and having, you will call it low hanging fruit. Right. Let’s see, what are these low hanging fruits?

And there might be elimination of a process. Sometimes it’s not even coming up with something new, but it’s something that you might take away because then it’s easier. It’s this barrier for people. I’ve seen that as well. When you have a cumbersome travel management process, well, you might think about getting rid of it at all. Of course, you need to have principles in place, how to do it, and you need to talk to finance into it and whatsoever.

But it’s sometimes more powerful if you release people from a burden than to come up with something new. But again, that depends a little bit on where you are as an organization. If you don’t have any practices in place, it might be one practice you put in that is really, really visible to all of the people that they see: Hey, okay, now we see it. There’s a change. There’s a new CHRO in town, and we see that the cultural change is happening.

Thomas Kohler:
And also, how would you communicate overall the progress you make? Because sometimes maybe you don’t wait for 100 days and not give any insights or updates to the employee, to the teams, and also maybe to the stakeholders.

Andreas Schmitz:
That’s a really good point. The communication piece is critical. And here again, it’s not about only the number of emails you send out. You can also over communicate. And underinform was something a colleague once said to me. I’m actually not the best one in drafting the communication because I’m using too many words all the time, and I’m coming up with fancy words because they sound nice, but nobody knows what that means. So actually, that’s something my learning fear is using words that people understand what that actually means, including myself sometimes. That’s one. But again, coming back to communication, I think you need to have an idea, and we can help with that. Not necessarily me, but the team. How to structure it, what is really important to the people. So who are the target, who is the target group of that communication? And you need to differentiate between your HR team, your internal one. If you have 200 people in the HR, you need to have certain channels that put you up a lot in the first hundred days, so people get familiar with, you know, what your style is, kind of see how you’re vulnerable as well. Right.

I think it’s not only about successes but also about experiments that might not run the way you would like it, to that fail, but fail forward. But then for the employees, don’t try to communicate what you do necessarily, of course, you cannot pull up plans, but rather communicate what has been done. And what is happening now for them. Show them. Communicate what are results and that have an impact to them. Because just telling, well, this is our new culture, or these are new values doesn’t mean anything. So I’m a rather a fan of making something stick because they experience it and then pull up some people who talk about it.

It doesn’t need to be the CHRO necessarily who talks all the time, but pull people up in the communication that are making this experience and who make it happen. So you will be visible anyway as CHRO. So don’t try to make yourself even more visible, but try to make the impact you’re creating visible in a communication, and ideally in a frequent one or in a frequency that is on a regular basis, not necessarily every week, but here again, it depends on the communication style of the company, how you do it. In a more manufacturing company, it’s probably not every week. In a more digital company, you do that on a more frequent basis because everybody has access right away, I would.

Thomas Kohler:
Thank you so much, Andreas.

Andreas Schmitz:
Thank you, Thomas.

Andreas Schmitz:
It was great having been on your show again.