Annmarie Neal
Zendesk
Annmarie Neal has advised on over 20 CEO transitions with an 85% success rate—first as head of the people function at Cisco for 70,000 employees, then a decade in private equity at Hellman & Friedman, and most recently running the people side of an AI-first transformation at a $2 billion company that was taken private. The pattern is clear: most CEO transitions fail not because boards pick the wrong person, but because they fail to think strategically about what the business will need three to seven years out, and they underestimate the ecosystem and team composition required to make the successor succeed.
Most boards think backward when planning succession. They look at where the business is today and find someone to manage that reality. The real playbook flips that entirely. You start by asking where the business needs to be in three to seven years, then work backward to define what executive capabilities are actually required.
This forward-thinking approach matters because the business rarely stays still. An acquisition can double complexity overnight. A market shift can obsolete the skills that made the current leader successful. The executive who crushed it in phase one might be stretched in phase two, not because they’re weak, but because the demands changed and no one planned for it.
Once you’ve defined future strategy, the second move is brutal honesty about talent. Every executive arrives with superpowers and kryptonite. If you’re a visionary strategist but weak on day-to-day execution, you need a strong chief operating officer who loves operationalizing. If you’re operationally flawless but uncomfortable with customers, you need someone who lives in the market. The transition succeeds when the team around the new CEO is built to cover those gaps, not when you pretend they don’t exist.
Everybody comes with a major set of skills and capabilities and superpowers and every executive comes with some kryptonite.
Annmarie Neal, Center for Leadership Innovation
The logical next person—the person who’s been in the company longest, who knows the business inside out—is often the riskiest choice. Not because they lack knowledge, but because you’re extrapolating from past success into a future that may look nothing like the past.
The two biggest watch-outs: First, a major acquisition or market shift changes the game. The CEO who built the company to $100 million might lack the experience managing a $500 million operation with distributed teams and complex matrix reporting. You can sense this coming if you’re thinking three to five years ahead. Second, some strong operators and strategists have never had to be front-facing with customers or represent the company on stage. It’s not a flaw—it’s just not for everybody. But if your next phase requires a CEO who’s comfortable being the public face of the company, an internal operations genius might struggle no matter how brilliant they are internally.
Just because somebody has been in the company for a really long time and is the logical next person doesn’t necessarily mean they’re fit for the challenge and demand of what the company will need in that next phase.
Annmarie Neal, Center for Leadership Innovation
Candidates will always give you three references. Those three people will be their closest allies, handpicked to say positive things. The reference check becomes theater instead of due diligence.
In the private equity world, the standard is 10 to 12 references. Not because you’re digging for dirt, but because you’re trying to understand who you’re actually hiring so you can support them properly in the role. You call three people, you ask for two more, then two more. You do some back channeling. You get texture. You learn where someone thrives and where they struggle. That intelligence is gold when you’re designing the team around them or preparing the board and investors for how to help them succeed.
What I learned in the land of PE is 10, 12 references are sometimes just about the right number to really understand who you’re hiring.
Annmarie Neal, Center for Leadership Innovation
Taking a $2 billion company private and simultaneously transforming it to be AI-first is chaos if people don’t understand why it’s happening. The transformation has to be their transformation, not something being done to them.
The playbook: two programs running in parallel. First, an intensive strategy program for top 100 or so high-potential leaders. Bring in an MIT professor to break down strategy into components—how do you create, capture, and deliver value. Have them work on real business problems tied to the transformation. Run it multiple times with different cohorts. Make it immersive, make it feel like an MBA program.
Second, once that works, replicate it for managers. This is where scale happens. Managers touch the rhythm of the business every single day. If they understand the transformation and feel nurtured in it, they bring everyone else along. One thousand managers across multiple continents, all gathering the same week but in different cities—Melbourne, Singapore, Krakow, Lisbon, San Francisco, Madison, Austin. Same training, same energy, but local. Get your executive team to show up and teach. Get your head of marketing to teach people how to tell the company story like it’s a Disney film. Make it an all-play. Make it fun.
It’s a lot easier to transform a company when the people in the company are part of the transformation.
Annmarie Neal, Center for Leadership Innovation
Most HR teams still organize around roles. A recruiter recruits. A learning person trains. A compensation person prices jobs. But in an AI-first company, you have to flip to outcomes. The outcome isn’t “we have a recruiting function.” The outcome is “we have the right talent to solve the business problems at the complexity we need to solve them.”
Sometimes that’s a human recruiter. Sometimes it’s AI screening resumes at a 90% success rate in seconds. Sometimes it’s both. But if you’re still thinking in terms of protecting the role of recruiter instead of achieving the outcome of great talent, you’re building the wrong organization.
The hard part: employees are scared. They see big companies laying off thousands and assume AI is coming for their job. Some companies are using layoffs as AI cover. Some are actually replacing headcount with AI. Employees don’t know which is true, so they get defensive and block adoption.
The unlock is showing them AI isn’t replacing them; it’s amplifying them. A recruiter using AI is going to be more competitive than a recruiter not using AI. A report writer using AI to clean up first drafts will move faster than one not using it. Start with horizon-one wins: productivity, efficiency, time back. Then move to horizon-two: what could we do with AI that we never could have done with human talent alone? That’s when AI becomes strategic and people stop being afraid of it.
The biggest hiring mistake isn’t picking the wrong person. It’s picking someone too much like you. Same school, same background, same friends, same thinking. It feels safe. But it doesn’t create new capabilities. It replicates what you already have.
The second mistake is lazy referencing. Three references from three friends tells you almost nothing.
Together, these mistakes turn over hundreds of thousands in failed hires and stall company growth because you end up with a team that all thinks the same way. The alternative is harder: hire for complementary skills, do real due diligence, and be willing to support people who think differently than you do.
People hire in their like, they replicate themselves as opposed to creating new capabilities in a company.
Annmarie Neal, Center for Leadership Innovation
Founders are visionary. They execute on ideas. They get people excited and building. That’s strength. But many founders trip when they fail to appreciate the discipline required to scale growth.
Phase one is chaos: hire anyone excited, everyone does everything, move fast. Phase two is different: you’ve hired too many people and made some mistakes, and you’re not small enough to flex people into new roles. Now you need systems. Phase three is optimization: how do you grow in a way that keeps investors happy and doesn’t feel like you’re building bureaucracy.
Most founders resist phase two. Process feels dirty. Systems feel bureaucratic. But process is how you scale an idea into a real company. The founder who gets this early wins.
Hire a talent person early. If you can’t afford full-time, get an advisor. Your earliest hires set your culture. One bad hire in a ten-person company is catastrophic. That person shapes how everyone else thinks about work. Get it right at the start, and scaling gets easier. Get it wrong, and you’re rebuilding culture from a broken foundation. For companies hiring remote or distributed teams, consider leveraging LATAM talent pools to access skill sets and cultural diversity that can fuel growth.
When you’re small, one bad hire can be really disruptive. I would have my talent person early on.
Annmarie Neal, Center for Leadership Innovation
What's a hiring mistake you've made that you've never really talked about publicly? I think the biggest mistake I see is when people hire somebody like themselves. Mhm. You know, like you look like me, you feel like me, we went to the same school, we have the same friends you must be good. That may be true, like could be really good, but are you fit for the outcomes that we're trying to drive in the company? I have seen that happen too many times where people hire in their like, you know, they replicate themselves as opposed to a create new capabilities in a company. I think the other big watch out is when you don't do good referencing. So, people will always give you references, they'll give you three, they're probably their three favorite friends that are going to say something really positive about them. And what I learned in the land of PE is, you know, like 10, 12 references are sometimes just about the right number. So, if a founder's building their team right now and they get one thing from this conversation, what what do you want it to be? Uh Today's guest is Annmarie Neal, the founder of Center for Leadership Innovation. Annmarie, you've built the people function at Cisco for 70,000 employees, then you spent a decade at Hellman & Friedman advising on over 20 CEO transitions with an 85% success rate, then you went and took a a $10 billion company private and ran a full AI first transformation from the people side. Now you're running your own firm advising CEOs and and feedback teams. Most guests on this show have done one of those things, you've done them all. Annmarie, really really excited to have you on. Well, thank you. You're you're you're very kind. You've you've made me sound much more impressive than I that I am. Uh in many of these roles I was part of leadership teams that did uh huge bodies of transformational work. I was not the be uh person who did the transformational work so Very very humble. You're getting flown out to San Francisco out of retirement to go and then continue helping teams. So, I'm really excited to dig deeper into some lessons that you can share with the audience on um you know, you you had a 85% success rate across 20-plus CEO transitions, which first is an incredible rate, but the other 15%, right? So, what what are some of those lessons that we can give, you know, from your 20 years in in the people business to somebody trying to figure it out now. On executive transitions? Yeah, on executive transitions and you know, we'll we'll get deeper into some uh some other transformations, but yeah, executive transitions. Yeah. You know, I think I think the playbook will sound very simple and very obvious, but to execute the playbook, it actually needs to be quite strategic and quite thoughtful um and quite forward-thinking. Uh so, you know, rule number one is start with strategy in mind. Where where does the business need to be over the next call it three to five, five to seven years, um as opposed to thinking about where the business is today only. You know, many successions fail when boards think in terms of here's what the business is today and we need to solve for this as opposed to projecting into the future and really thinking about where the executive team needs to take the organization going forward and then how does the senior executive play as as part of that team. So, that would be number one. Um number two is, you know, assessing talent and recognizing that everybody comes with a major set of skills and capabilities and and superpowers and every executive comes with some kryptonite. And knowing clearly, you know, where the strengths are going to play and clearly where, you know, the pit pitfalls could happen. Uh which leads me into number three, which is then how do you support executives with um teams of teams around them, right? So, if I'm an incredibly strategic executive and I'm not as good at operationalizing strategy, do I have a very strong chief operating officer capability at my side that enables, you know, me to drive the day-to-day rhythm of a of a business. And so, thinking about a team sport as opposed to the individual sport of of the transition. And then fourthly, I think um really appreciating the ecosystem around the executive and executive team is really important. So, what is the role that the various independent board members and or investors play in supporting the executive and executive team. You know, are there consultants that are in ecosystem that enable, you know, fast-forward thinking on on areas of in especially related to transformation. Um are there are there partners in the ecosystem that help executives be successful? We we all know how important our partners are in in in our um personal side of things in order to enable us to do the professional side. So, those would be the things I think about. I love it. And you're doing this like due diligence before you're even closing a deal and thinking about how that team is going to evolve in the next five years. Um when I was when I was working with um private equity, we we would look at that when we had a transition that we were underwriting. Uh more often than not, transitions happen in the rhythm, you know, in the rhythm of of the business. And so, you know, sometimes, you know, it's going to happen in the beginning. More often than not, there's an inflection either personal or professional and and the transition happens as part of, you know, normal course of succession. Make make sense. Um and like is there a signal that like when you're looking at a management team, like you know, this team might break under, you know, private equity pressure? Um Well, private equity can be very uh challenging, right? I mean, they're
Yeah, of course.
precise, demanding, um they take big risks with their investors' money and so they have high expectations that they return on on those commitments that they've made. Um the goal is typically my experience is the goal is typically to embrace a leadership team and enable them to be successful and put systems around them to be successful. Um but there are times when you know, a CEO may just age out. That's most common where they they say, "Okay, I've done this for two or three terms, it's, you know, my turn to go hang out on, you know, the beach and let, you know, somebody ready to take the next set of challenges um step into the seat." And that's mostly what you would see is is people who are aging out. Um and then you sometimes will see people who are fit for purpose for one stage of an investment and then recognize that in this, you know, there's an inflection and in the next stage of the investment, um they they may be better positioned to be a board member um as opposed to a operating executive and they may, you know, pull in pull in a successor and pull pull up a successor. Love it. Uh so, but still like, you know, 85% success, that's that's extremely high. What, you know, you you you mentioned some of the the attributes from having a strategy, really finding the the leaders, but what you know, like in the 15% was there anything that could have been controlled or there are just, you know, there are things that will be beyond your control and, you know, you you you despite everything that you you do. You know, I think I think there are are things that'll happen maybe maybe slightly predicted, maybe not at all predicted. Um for example, um let's say let's say, you know, you put in a successor in a company and then that company does a massive acquisition that doubles the size of the company, doubles the complexity of a company, then that, you know, the CEO that was very fit for purpose for you know, the the original company may be, you know, stretched uh you know, when you when you think in terms of of of the added complexity and scale. Um so, that that that's a watch out is, you know, if if that's why looking into the future and really kind of predicting where where you you might be taking the business over time, you know, if you're thinking in terms of growing the business at a massive size and scale and you you probably want to be thinking in terms of executive that's used to that size and scale of complexity. And then I think, you know, sometimes what I've seen, and this would go through over my entire career, is in an in in having all of this, you know, disciplined rigor, uh but what they hadn't learned or just don't have an acumen for is the commercial side of the company. And so, getting out with customers, understanding what it means to be, you know, front of stage as opposed to back of stage. You know, it's not for everybody. Um big strategy thinking is is not not always for everybody. And so, sometimes just because somebody has been in the company for a really long time and is the logical next person doesn't necessarily mean they're they're fit for the challenge and demand of what the company will need in in that next phase. So, those would be the two places where I always think a little bit harder and and watch out for some red flags. Makes complete sense. Have Has anybody ever surprised you where you know in that exact scenario uh you know private equity comes in wants to make changes in a company acquisitions happen but that CEO actually did extremely well and like grew into that bigger company and and role? Oh, of course. I mean, look people will surprise me every single day. It's what I love about working with people. Um I worked with this executive who in a succession um who is I just love to death. I love this executive to death and this executive did not want to be a CEO. Didn't have it on on the you know on the Pinterest you know vision board for for her for his career. He did he did he this was not
Didn't have it on the wall. He loved what he did. He fully embodied and embraced the role he had. Uh and we did this succession project and we said, "Hey, we think it's you." And he said, "Oh, not me." Um and he and I went for a long walk with vanilla ice cream and we talked about you know what what could he bring to the business and and what what could he do? And he steps into the role um and he crushed it. He just crushed it. And why did he crush it you're going to ask? He crushed it because um he just loved this business so much. He'd grew up in the business and had like all these various roles along the way. And he had this he has he's he's still in the role. He has this incredible empathy for every single position that's played
done them. He's worked alongside of them. Um he's a very hard charging high expectation executive. Um but he'll go home and take out the trash. You know, so he just has this you know this nature about him and I think people gravitate to him and want to follow him and want to make the company successful and Yeah, he's like I think he's my success story in my career. Yeah. And you sold them over vanilla ice cream and a good walk. So jumping in your you know your your your next adventure after private equity well still involved in in private equity I think forever. But you took a a $10 billion company private and then you had to transform it into an AI-first business at the same time. Uh you launched programs to activate the top thousand leaders. Like how do you move a thousand leaders in the same direction Yeah. While the company being restructured. Yeah, uh to be clear uh $2 billion company to $10 billion valuation company. So just for revenue Yes. it's a smaller in revenue than than the valuation of company. You're the opposite of a marketer. You're not inflating the stay true We're going to stay honest in the numbers. Thank you. So uh look, you know there are a lot of a lot of ways in which you can transform a company. Um it's a lot easier to transform a company when the people in the company are part of the transformation. Yeah, it's really critical for people to understand why transformation is happening. It's really important for people to understand their role in a transformation. Uh it's important for people to understand the company cares about them and wants them to be successful and so giving perspective and skills and capabilities um to enable people to do their part um in in moving the business forward um all important, right? And then having some measurements about how to do that. So you know bringing bringing people along on the vision on the mission on the journey uh was was really part of the task. So the CEO of that company uh who I also love working with came to me and said, "Look you know we just have to activate this organization. We just have to get it you know get it get it going." And uh several of the executives talked and talked and talked about what we needed to do but people just couldn't sort of feel why and and what needed to be done. So we ran we designed and ran two programs that had a lot of people in the ecosystem that helped do this. Um Head of marketing was really big part of this. You she ran a communications team and so having somebody who could really help market the program and you know engage people um in activation on on the communication side in addition to the skills and capabilities side. So the two programs were one we did it for top of house. And this program was um designed to take the senior most high potential leaders bring them together. Uh we brought in uh an MIT professor Oh wow. who would come and teach strategy uh and and and really help the organization understand break down strategy into its important components you know how do create capture and deliver value. And then the people worked on real business problems associated with the company's transformation. So we would give a big problem to solve. Teams would break out. They would have this um very immersive training and development around strategy
Incredible. It was like an MBA program. It was, yeah. And we did it three or four times. Uh we took the executive team to to Krakow, Poland and we did it with the executive team in the beginning and then we ran it I think three if not four times with the high potential leaders. And then because that was so successful we ran this manager program we called it MAP. So that was ZAP. And we had MAP. Um and MAP uh was designed for the manager layer. So the theory of the case uh was if the managers really were loved and nurtured and appreciated their role in transformation you know they touch and feel most of the rhythm of the business they would bring others along. And so we made this massive investment. That's where you're getting to the thousand. Um in our manager population. And so we um did you know manager development is boring. It's just manager development. But what we did is we we um did it immersively over two weeks in the year. So in April we took everybody away for a week. Did about 350 people in the first tranche. And then in the fall in October um we did the second tranche of folks. We went out into region. So we did groups
the regions. So we did you know small groups but then the same week we had a team in Melbourne, Australia in Singapore in um Krakow, Lisbon, you know San Francisco of course um Madison, Wisconsin, Austin, Texas. So where big populations of of managers sat. And so part of it was you know immersively developing them into the work that needed to be done in the transformation. But then it was also having this big community doing it all at the same time.
Wow. with with you know people coming in on video sharing across the different uh locations etc. And it it was a what we called an all play for the organization means we had executives teaching people in the HR organization facilitating our offices people creating these cool splashes of exciting energy in the offices for for the people that were participating etc. Yeah. They made it fun. They made it made a It was very fun. It was very exciting. CEO showed up. CFO showed up. Um Head of ops showed up. Legal showed up. Product showed up. Like the all the executives were very engaged in in communicating the importance of the managers in the transformation. And then you you mentioned your head of marketing that usually does external marketing was now doing internal marketing for this transformation. Well, she was she and her team were very much um engaged. Um we did a we did a whole component in the training on how to how do you communicate the story. And so um she was terrific at teaching managers how to communicate the story like you would tell a Disney story. You know we're telling the company story and you know in the beginning and then there was a crisis and here's the heroes and you know you are the hero in your little story and how are you going to you know engage the organization on on the on the future of of what we're what we're trying to take the business. So it was great it's great. I mean you have to have really good partners in this in this kind of work and she and her team were a good partner in in delivering with us. You you were also inside this organization like during AI-first transformation like from the people side. A lot of you know folks I talk to were theorizing about it. You were actually doing doing it. Um like what did that require from the talent function that you know most companies may not be prepared for? This is perfect question right now because I just spent the morning sitting in a room with a bunch of very smart people talking about how to transform uh functions with you know AI-first thinking. Um So you know I I think the most important thing is to have a goal of what you're trying to accomplish. And you know, the thing with AI right now is it's so new and it's so different that you know, it's not like you can actually say, "Okay, here's what we're trying to create." And it's very clean and crisp and it has corners to a puzzle and you just have to fill in the pieces of the puzzle. You know, you have to have like principles about what you're trying to accomplish and you have to think in terms of how you're bringing people into and have expectations of how fast you can go and aligning people to that speed and and prioritization. So, um yeah. So, how do how do you do that? Uh you get really smart people around you that that know know um your business processes and understand how you can automate those business processes and who are very smart about how to take AI and you know, use AI to to do that. And and um in this company that we're talking about, I had very very good head of operations who um was just a super thought partner on all things operations and AI. And so, you know, you've got to find the smart people who know what what what what could be possible. And you need to enable them with some resources so that they can figure out what what how to take that vision you know, to fruition. Um I think you have to be really comfortable with letting go what has been. Right? So, you know, in a pre-AI world, everything was about roles. Roles did something. So, you had a recruiter and the recruiter did this role. And in the you know, in a in a more evolved, more mature AI friendly function, you know, you're really thinking in terms of outcomes. So, it's not about the role of recruiting, it's the the outcome is that we have great talent in the building to solve the business problems at the complexity that the business needs these problems to solve. And so, you have to shift from people do things in a role to these outcomes need to be achieved and how do you then set up for those outcomes to be achieved. Sometimes it'll be human driven, sometimes it'll be AI enabled, sometimes it will be probably both, right? Um yeah. And then I think the third thing is, you know, really appreciating speed. Um and and the speed of the market, uh the competitors. Some industries are going to go very fast, crazy fast. And if you're not going at that speed or close to that speed, you'll be left behind. Other industries are going to go much slower because competitive landscape is such that they won't have to go as fast. And then, you know, can this be a differentiation for you as a company if you can go faster than you know, the competitive landscape. So, this is the the exciting stuff that's bringing you uh out of the mountains of Colorado and into the city. Yeah. Well, today for sure, the conversation was really good. I do I do have this um this friend of that says all the time, "Hard is good. Hard is good." And uh and in this situation, I think hard is good. Because if you can crack the code that others can't crack, you you know, it'll be good. It'll be good for your company. Um I think the hard part, honestly, is how do you do this in a way that um brings real benefit to the company and still employees feel engaged in you know, what's possible. Right? It's very scary for employees. You know, you've got a lot of big companies that are laying off, you know, thousands of people. Um I mean, I think some of them are using AI as an excuse. Some of them maybe are using AI because it's real. Hard to know, right? I mean, there was a lot of over-hiring during the pandemic and now we're all kind of settling into what companies should look like. Um but but employees will be will be the unlock here. And if they're afraid of it, they will block it, you know? So, how do you how do you keep them engaged in the in that process. I've seen that you know, some companies start doing AI day where once a week, you know, everybody's working with AI together and you know, really enabling them and paying for you know, a cloud pro subscription uh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there are a lot of places where there's low cost and or no cost opportunities. Like I just saw 10 courses offered at MIT for AI enablement. And it's all online, you know? But it's I mean, if you're going to learn AI and you're learning it at MIT, you're probably at the sort of epicenter of where there's a lot of good learning and development. Um you know, LinkedIn Learning has a ton of AI oriented programs in order to to fast up your skills and capabilities. And so, it does require you know, people to be learners and curious about about what this technology can do and what it can't do frankly. Yeah, it you know, it's hard to build a relationship where so that's what I always you know, I'm telling our recruiters look, you're not getting replaced by you know, any AI, but if you're not using AI, then likely a recruiter using AI, you know, is going to be more competitive than you. So, uh and it's been fun to see you know, the the theme evolve and you know, like being able to bring in ideas, okay, like this is how AI can give me more powers to do my job better. Well, I love that you're saying that because I think there's an element of AI that that is going to just be make your life easier, right? So, I don't know. I'm going to write a report on something. I throw it into AI. It'll clean it up for me. It'll edit it for me. It's not going to think for me, but it's going to enable me to be a little sloppier in my first draft because it'll clean it up and I'll get some efficiencies um from that. I think that's sort of you know, horizon one, if you will, of AI is it just makes you a little bit more productive. Gets you outside um quicker if you like to be out outdoors. Um I think the real unlock will be when teams and organizations think about what could they do with AI that they never could have done with just pure human talent. And when a company can think about AI in that way, it actually makes for a much more strategic use of the technology. The unlocks will be much more customer focused, maybe product focused, um market focused. And your people will have more fun with it because they will become uh enabled by think you know, by a thinking engine that's helping them think about things in ways that they couldn't you know, think about it before. I mean, large language analysis and you know, data data analytics is powerful if if you can unleash it on on big problems. Yeah, I was thinking I mean, even as you know, AI is so so much beyond the chatbot function right now, but you know, what at what point in time could you answer chats with you know, a 90 plus percent success rate within seconds. Um and now now you have that ability.
Yeah, and I think I think that's great. I mean, I think experimentation is a great way you know, great way to start. I think that people will just have to be super patient with you know, as as the models become more progressive and they get more sophisticated. Like if you experimented last year, you probably had one kind of expe- you know, experiment, you know, did it in the fall, you probably had a different ex- you know, experience. And then now, you know, you've got a whole new one as the models get more um you know, precise and and more effective, right? So, you have to keep experimenting and you know, seeing what what what it can do for you. All right. So, you know, I I every wrap up, I got another two questions. What what's the hiring mistake that you've made that you've never really talked about publicly? Mm. Wow, that's a great question. Um I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I've made several. I've probably talked about a lot of them because they're good lessons um learned. You know, I think the biggest mistake I see is when people hire somebody like themselves. Mm. You know, like you look like me, you feel like me, you went to the same school, we have the same friends, you must be good. And um that may be true. Like could be really good. But but are you fit for the fit for the role that that or the you know, outcomes that we're trying to drive in the company? Um I have seen that happen too many too many times where people hire in their like you know, they replicate themselves as opposed to uh accrete new capabilities in the company. So, I would I would say that's the a big watch out. Um I think the other big watch out is when you don't do good referencing. So, people will always give you references. They'll give you three. They're probably their three favorite friends that are going to say something really positive about them. And what I learned in in the land of PE is, you know, like 10, 12 references are sometimes just about the right number. You know, where you click into a few more and a few more and a few more and you do some back channeling to really get a sense. And that's not because you're trying to find out dirty stuff about people. You really just want to know to I really understand how I who I'm who I'm hiring so I know how to support them in in the role. Yeah. Yeah. I I love that and I think that's my favorite part of reference checks is learning, you know, the strengths and weaknesses that Yeah. this person is saying and so you know, you can develop them um as as well. So
Right. My favorite is, you know, I'll call out and I'll say uh you know, I'm hiring Bob Smith. If he's one of the best people that you've ever worked with, would you call me back so I can ask you a few questions? Wow. And then, you know, if you don't get a call back you've got, you know, you're very efficient in your reference.
I'm going to have to borrow that one. That that one is great. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. So final question here. So if a founder is building their team right now and they get one thing from this conversation, what what do you want it to be? Uh all-round talent. Um You know, it's interesting that you asked that question. I think founders are incredibly talented. Very visionary, often super innovative, entrepreneurial people. Um and they are typically solving for executing on an idea, right? It's you know, maybe they're further along in their their seed energy and and the idea is bigger than just an idea. Um really thinking about uh organizational strategy to support you moving from phase one to phase two, phase two to phase three. Because the the thing that I've seen with founders that that the the opportunities is like, wow, this is super exciting and visionary and people want to come be part of something exciting. The thing I sometimes see if they trip is when they fail to appreciate how you scale growth. And scaling growth, right? And so, you know, in the beginning with this is a tick talent, it's hire anybody you can find, get them to be excited, everybody does everything, we're going to make this idea fly. The phase two is, wait a minute, we actually need a little bit of discipline and system and rigor because we hired a lot of you know, people that we might have made some mistakes along the way and we're not big enough to move those people into roles where they can be effective and so now I've got a lot of head count that I don't get a lot of but I don't right. And then the third is how do I actually optimize growth in a way that my investors, because they're going to have investors, my investors are are willing to give me more investment or happy with return. Not everybody is like scaling cuz it feels dirty. Like, oh, it's process, I'm allergic to it. It's too much work, you're making everything harder, bureaucratic. Um but but smart process will help, you know, ultimately help optimize taking that idea out of the founders' thinking and turning it into something, you know, really exciting. Yeah, so they need to be thinking about it early.
From the beginning. Yeah.
From the beginning. I think a founder if I were a founder of a really interesting company, I my my first hire or my first few hires, I would have my talent person early on. And if I wanted them to be in, you know, in a full-time role, get an advisor to come in and just help think about you know, how because it's a very important early on that your your earliest hires are aligned to culture, the culture you're trying to build and and the ethos you're trying to build in in in a company. I love that. Yeah, it's I mean they're, you know, going to be developing the culture together so if you don't have the right people to begin with then it you know, it's going to go pollute that culture.
Right. Right. That's right. And when you're small, one bad hire can be really costly. You know, when you're big you know, at Cisco, you could have a bad hire, you know, person will figure that out and they'll opt out or the company is big enough, you say, okay, we this is probably not the right role for you but we could put you in a different role and look at you could be effective there. When you're super small, a bad hire can be very disruptive. Yeah, make make sense. One in 70,000 is a is a little different than one in one in 10 that, you know, is leading your engineering team.
That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Where can people find you if they want to follow you on LinkedIn, send you an email, hire you?
Yes, I am on LinkedIn, Annmarie Neal, and my contact information is in my LinkedIn so feel free to reach out. Annmarie, thank you so much for being on Who We Hire. This is a fantastic conversation.
Awesome.
