Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where
we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five
Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders
and experts who will share not just their expertise,
but the milestone moments that have reshaped
their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in
the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success. Welcome
to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business
and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick, your host.
And today, my special guest is Tom Healy. Tom
is co -founder of PeopleOps360, where he helps
CEOs and business owners turn people challenges
into performance breakthroughs by giving them
the playbook of world -class HR and leadership
systems. His people performance frameworks have
been used by the U .S. Navy, Harvard Medical
School, and multiple Fortune 500 companies, reaching
more than 1 million learners. A serial entrepreneur
and author of five books, Tom has delivered over
1 ,000 presentations that blend strategy, candor,
and humor to make leadership practical, measurable,
and human. Welcome to the show, Tom. Thanks for
having me. Appreciate it. That's quite an impressive
introduction. So as a serial entrepreneur, I'd
love to learn a little bit about your journey.
What led you to start? this particular company.
All right. So it all started when I was in the
first grade. No, I'm just kidding. We won't go
that far back, but I'll start with college. I
was. the heavily involved student leader. So
I got to college, didn't really know what I wanted
to do, wasn't that involved in high school, but
for whatever reason, I got super involved as
a student leader, did a million different things,
ran boards, got involved in associations, and
that really... sparked my interest in the idea
of human potential and what people are capable
of if they align their passions and their strengths.
And that experience led me to graduate from college
and write a book for college students. And so
if this were happening now, I may have started
a podcast or a YouTube channel or done something
else. 20 years ago, you wrote a book. So I sat
there and I wrote a book called The Course They
Forgot to Offer. And the idea was all the things
that they didn't teach us in college that I wish
they would have. And I didn't approach it as
a no at all. I just said, look, this is what
I wish I would have known. And then I interviewed
probably a thousand different people and said,
what would you have done differently in your
20s? What do you wish you would have known? The
answers were just incredibly. vulnerable and
powerful. And so I used those to shape the book.
I profiled what successful people did. And then
that book gave me the credibility to do what
I really wanted to do, which was speak on college
campuses. So I started speaking on college campuses.
I was the leadership speaker. They'd bring me
in for an orientation or for a leadership conference
and pack the auditorium. And I would talk about
how to reach your potential. And based on that
work, companies started asking me, hey, Tom,
we're having trouble with our younger talent.
We're not getting the most out of them. And it
might be a recruitment problem. It might be a
training problem. It might be a retention problem,
but something's broken here. And so I started
working with companies on their, I'd call it
human capital strategies, right? How do we put
the right people in the right seats and get them
to succeed and set them up for success and keep
them here for many, many years? And so in my
20s, that was the work I was doing, college campuses
and with companies, and literally crisscrossing
the United States on flights, over 125 nights
of business travel. And as you can probably imagine,
and maybe I know some people love that, I didn't.
I got burnt out. I hit a wall. It was lonely.
It was isolating. It was kind of depressing.
And I just thought, I can't keep doing this.
Over the course of about 12 months, I transitioned
the work I was doing, the relationships I had
from in -person brick and mortar speaking, consulting
workshops to be online learning. And so for.
12 years or so now, I've been in the online learning
space of without physically being in an office
or on a college campus, how do I transfer knowledge?
And it's led to building a lot of coursework.
It's led to going into companies and nonprofits
and trade associations and building out internal
knowledge centers. And then more recently, that
evolved into providing what we now call People
Ops 360, which is essentially giving a company
typically between about 15 to 100 employees with
access to a Fortune 1000 HR department. So how
do you get the recruiting resources and the onboarding
resources and the payroll resources of a Fortune
1000 company when you may not even be able to
hire one full -time person to do that? So that's
kind of the journey. And obviously there's a
lot of little... wins and losses over those 20
years. But that's how I got to where I am now.
Well, that's very impressive. And so young, you
seemed right on ball. And that's very impressive
to think how you even published the book on what
I wish they would have taught in college or what
I didn't learn in college. And so. And, you know,
I'm proud of that book because if you open it
up now. Almost 20 years later, I still think
it holds up. I mean, the advice still holds true.
You know, do something that you're passionate
about. Focus on your strengths. Pick the right
place to live. Leverage your network. Be a nice
person. Organize your personal finances appropriately.
I mean, all these things still need to be taught.
And certainly there's still issues with all of
them, with today's younger people and younger
workforce. So you can always update it if it
wasn't. It just sounds evergreen after hearing
your description. Well, it's funny. I would have
never thought it was evergreen. But then every
once in a while, I'll see it sitting around and
I'll just open up a page and start reading. It
really is. I mean, even the parts about LinkedIn
and leveraging your network. Well, no one else
has come along to knock LinkedIn off. So it's
still relevant, which is which is fun. Oh, I
love that. So why do you believe that most CEOs
don't have a real people strategy? And how does
that hold their business back? So over the last
few years, I've come to the realization, first
of all, and maybe I'm slow and it took me too
long to figure this out, but the plumbing company's
core competency is not. HR and human capital
strategies, and it's not training and it's not
recruiting. The software company, the bakery,
the pizza shop, they're really good at what they're
really good at, but they probably didn't start
a multiple location pizza chain. Because they
had a strong HR background and loved building
training and onboarding and recruiting the right
people, right? They probably did it because they
were really good at baking pizzas and people
said, you should open up your own shop, right?
So it's the realization that it's just not a
core competency. What maybe I think is common
sense around developing people and training people
and setting people up for success and evaluating
if someone is the right fit for your organization.
Those things I may think, well, it's simple,
but I've been doing this for 20 years. So that's
the first thing is the realization that it's
not most organizations core competency. The other
thing is, and I want to try to be polite in how
I say this, but. In my experience, and working
with hundreds and hundreds of companies and CEOs,
I believe most companies do not properly value
their workforce and understand the importance
that people play in their business. So you can
go to the log cabin in December. build out the
strategy for the organization, fill the walls
with all the X's and O's and lofty goals and
strategy and pricing and all that fun stuff.
But if you don't have really, really good people
that are motivated and well -trained and have
the resources to do their job and are financially
motivated to do that job and have the skill set
to do that job, your strategy will not get executed.
And I don't... believe CEOs and leaders in organizations
understand how important people are. And so what
happens is you can do a lot of things right.
You can have a great product. You can do incredible
marketing. You can position it really well. But
if you don't have the people to sell it. to service
it, to be customer facing. They're not getting
along. They're not working well. You don't have
managers holding people accountable. It all falls
apart. And then what happens is the CEO goes,
well, it must just be a downtime in our industry.
It must be our competitor. Our pricing must be
wrong. And not that those things can't be factors,
but so often it's, you understand that what you're
trying to build is an excellent company. And
you have very, very mediocre people executing
that. It's not going to happen. Or there are
really good people that are high potential, but
you have not set them up for success. So that's
typically what I see. So how do you feel in today's
day and age where AI is taking on some of these
human positions? Because I think it's more important
than ever, the message that you just shared.
Because even if you have the best software out
there, That lack of that human connection leads
to frustration and perhaps even boycott the company
because of the lack of the person and that customer
service, right? Being able to get hold of a human
rather than filling out a form where it's going
to revise by perhaps even a different agent,
AI agent. Yeah. And I'll preface this by saying
I'm all in on AI. I'm one of those people that
thinks it's going to disrupt every industry,
every sector. It's going to change the makeup
of the workforce. It's going to change the work
that people do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That being said, it's not, I think. A lot of
people oversimplify this and frankly are wrong
when they say AI will do what people do now and
people will not be needed. I disagree with that
premise. What I do think is your organization
is going to need people that can leverage AI,
that can use AI tools, that are willing to...
work themselves out of their current job by leveraging
AI so that they can create a new and more impactful
job for themselves. So if I were running a company
right now that had 50 employees, I'd be thinking,
how do I get each of them using AI, leveraging
AI, solving problems through AI? Because if they
do that, then our company functions better. What
I do see is I see companies that say, we're not
using AI. Do not use it. We're putting a ban
on it. If we catch you using it, you're fired.
I disagree with that approach. The other thing
I see is I see companies that have created so
much fear in their people that they're afraid
to use AI or they're afraid to speak up about
using AI because they fear that they're going
to lose their job. So as a leader in an organization,
my message would be use AI, solve problems through
AI. Once you do, tell us what you've done and
we'll find more work for you to do. We'll find
bigger problems for you to solve. The other thing,
and I just posted about this, I think today on
LinkedIn was if I were interviewing people. I
would be asking, how are you currently using
AI in your personal and professional life? And
then I'd stop. I wouldn't lead the witness. I
wouldn't ask any follow -up questions. I wouldn't
give examples because I want to hire people that
are already using these tools and already thinking
about how AI can help do their job better, how
they can leverage AI to add more value to an
organization. And I'm not saying any of what
I just said is right, but that's my perspective
on it. And I think a lot of companies are ignoring
it, thinking it's a fad, telling their people
not to do it, creating fear inside the organization
that people are going to lose their jobs. And
I don't think any of that's healthy or productive.
Well, you've got me here nodding, so I'm all
on board with your perspective. That was perfectly
said. I stand by that. So what is one simple
change that a CEO could do this week to see immediate
improvement in their or their team's performance?
I am shocked continually every single week at
how many companies out there do not have a mechanism
for measuring the performance of their people.
I just can't believe it. Every person inside
an organization that's collecting a paycheck
should have their performance measured. There
should be a scorecard. When that doesn't happen,
what do you think happens to people? They don't
try as hard. They aren't as engaged. They do
the bare minimum. People are smart. They know
what they can get away with. They know. which
organizations, I call it stealing a paycheck,
but they can steal a paycheck in for many, many
years and they can hide out because nobody holds
them accountable. Nobody measures their performance.
They convince other people in the organization
that it's impossible to measure what they do.
Obviously, we know how to measure salespeople.
And so most companies are able to do that. It's
the other positions. You should be able to measure
in a very objective way how well the receptionist
is doing, how well the customer service people
are doing, how well your managers are performing,
how well marketing is performing. Every role
inside the organization, every department inside
the organization should have specific metrics.
So what I see so often is that does not exist.
So what happens? Well, performance is mediocre
instead of excellent. People hide out for years
inside a company. Another big one that I talk
to companies a lot about because I know it's
happening is conflict. And think about this.
So you're managing me and my role does not have
any performance metrics. But you as my manager
know that I'm doing the bare minimum. I'm not.
performing at a high level. Without metrics,
how do you tell me that? Well, you say, Tom,
you're not doing a great job, or Tom, you should
be doing better, or Tom, you're slipping. You
came in hot a year ago, but you've faded away.
What am I going to say back to you? I'm going
to say, no, that's not true. I'm working hard.
I work harder than anyone else around here. And
now we're having what I'll call a subjective
conversation. And you as the manager are absolutely
set up to fail because you have to tell me without
any metrics or KPIs or any data that I'm not
doing a good job. And of course, I'm going to
get defensive and tell you that you're wrong.
Now you and I don't get along. So what happens?
Maybe you quit. Maybe I quit. Maybe we both start
performing at a low level. Maybe I go tell someone
else in the company about how lousy of a manager
you are. And then guess what happens? Our culture
erodes and people don't want to come to work
and they leave the company or they're short with
a customer because they're in a bad mood. And
the whole thing falls apart. All because we haven't
said every single role in our company has specific
things that we measure them with. And furthermore,
I'm a firm believer that if you want to have
a great company, you need people performing at
a high level. I also believe that you should
incentivize people based on performance. But
if you don't have performance metrics, then all
you can do is hand out a salary and hope they
work hard. And I'm a proponent of pay more for
high quality people. I once asked someone that
I trust that's... worked in HR for decades. And
I said to her, I said, a high performing person,
what are they worth to a company? And as an example,
tell me that they're worth twice as much as a
low performer. And her response without hesitation
is, look, Tom, I know the exact answer because
I've run this at multiple companies. A high performing
person is worth six times what a low performing
person is. So why wouldn't you just pay? someone
double and have less people. But you can't do
that experiment unless you know what a high performer
is and you know how to measure it. Otherwise,
you're managing with your eyes. And this is where
people got in so much trouble during COVID is,
and you've probably heard some version of this
before, but I don't know what my people are doing.
I can't see them. Now, the irony of it is when
you did see them, you thought just because they
had their butt sitting in a desk in a cubicle
that they were working. And they could have been
online shopping. They could have been texting
with their friends. They could have been clicking
the mouse and pretending to be working. But because
you could see them, you thought they were a high
performer. They came in early. They stayed late.
They have to be a high performer. And then when
COVID happened and people were working remotely,
CEOs, especially older ones, just. we're in a
tizzy because now I don't know if they're working.
And what do you think my response was to them?
And I'm tying this all together with saying,
you need performance metrics because you should
know in real time, whether your people are in
the office or 2000 miles away, who's performing,
who's crushing it, who's stealing a paycheck.
And if you don't have that data readily available
to you and you don't have those performance metrics,
then you really don't know what's going on in
your organization. So now we're going to talk
about the how, right? We understand the importance
of it, which I think you made a great point.
So how does PeopleOps360 support that? Is it
software? Is it a custom solution that you offer?
Yeah, so we're white glove HR services. And what
I mean by that is we give people that. potentially
are interested in our services, what we call
the sushi menu. And here's everything that we
can do from a people operations standpoint. And
it's everything from payroll and recruiting all
the way through building a custom learning management
system for your organization. Here's everything
we can do. And then we just ask, what do you
want us to do? And it may be a couple things.
It may be everything. And then we just develop
a... month -to -month retainer to do all those
services. And knock on wood, those relationships
last for years because we're good at what we
do. We're cheaper than full -time people. We're
better than them. And we are able to provide
expertise in a number of different areas versus
hiring someone that inevitably is good at some
things and has never done other things. So that's
our approach. And then getting in the weeds as
much as we need to. What can we do to add value
to what we call the employee lifecycle? Everything
from posting that job to off -boarding someone
and hoping that they still love your company,
even though it's no longer a good fit. So we're
here to help with whatever area of that we can.
And as you know, every organization needs different
things. And the idea of a one -size -fits -all,
it wouldn't do right by the companies we work
with. Right, because they all have different
types of roles that you would have different
metrics that you would share. So does this include
software? Is that one of your sushi service?
Yeah, there's two things that happen. One is
an organization says, we already have our tech
stack and we love it. We have a great training
platform, a great applicant tracking system.
Our HRIS is phenomenal. We're good. Great. Then
our team will jump on there. We'll operate in
those systems. We're already familiar with them.
It's not a big deal. The other scenario is Mary's
been doing this with a pencil and a legal pad
for 50 years now. And we have no technology.
We don't leverage AI. We do everything by hand.
Please build us a tech stack. Modernize our organization.
We love those because... we can put the right
systems and right software in place. I've been
around the software. I mean, I started building
online learning about 12 years ago, and it's
just phenomenal where software has gone in terms
of it being cheap, it being really, really good,
it being easy to use. So with the right software
solutions, you can gain back so much time. eliminate
so many headaches, but you have to know the right
tools. You have to make sure they talk to each
other. So yeah, we definitely add a lot of value
in that area. So where can they find more information
or connect with you? Tom at peopleoffs360 .com.
I don't sell. I don't. convince. I don't manipulate.
I just have conversations. So I am happy to have
a conversation with anyone that thinks we may
be able to help. It's a very casual discovery
conversation. Whether we work together or not,
my goal in those 30 minutes is to give you some
ideas that will be useful. So I am always happy
to talk to anyone, Tom, at peopleops360 .com.
And then I'm on LinkedIn. I'd say every day,
but it's more like every hour. I kind of live
on there and would love to connect with people
on there as well. Well, thank you so much for
joining me today, Tom. Thanks for having me.
I appreciate you inviting me on and I appreciate
the thoughtful questions. It's a lot of fun.
And thank you all for tuning in to another episode
of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership.
Until next time.