September 4, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode, Christina Luconi, dubbed "the original people innovator," takes host Bill Banham on a fascinating journey through her pioneering career in transforming how fast-growing companies approach their most valuable asset - their people. With refreshing candor and hard-earned wisdom, she reveals how she's helped multiple tech startups scale from dozens to thousands of employees without sacrificing their cultural foundations.
The conversation explores Christina's unconventional entry into HR after studying psychology, where her willingness to question established norms ("why do we call humans 'resources'?") set her on a path of people-centered innovation. Her formative experience at Sapient during the 90s tech boom—where she helped scale from 150 to 3,500 employees in just four years—established her philosophy that culture isn't just important for growth; it's the essential foundation that makes rapid growth possible.
Christina shares practical strategies from her 14-year tenure at Rapid7, where she developed the concept of "scaling with soul." Rather than imposing values from the top down, she engaged employees directly in defining the company's identity and integrated these values throughout the employee lifecycle. The approach was so successful that even terminated employees would recommend the company to others—perhaps the ultimate test of cultural strength. She eloquently articulates how diversity of thought and cultural alignment can coexist when organizations focus on shared values while encouraging authentic self-expression.
Now launching her consulting practice, People Innovations, Christina aims to help early-stage companies recognize the critical importance of human-centered approaches from day one. Having faced personal health challenges that shifted her perspective, she's passionate about maximizing her impact across multiple organizations. Despite acknowledging the current difficulties in people leadership, she remains optimistic: "This could be one of the most pivotal and important roles in a company because ultimately, it doesn't matter what you're building or selling...AI might replace a lot of stuff, but it can't replace human relationships and trust and collaboration."
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's
most downloaded and sharedpodcasts designed for HR pros,
talent execs, tech enthusiastsand business leaders.
For hundreds more episodes andwhat's new in the world of work,
subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom and visithrgazettecom.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show.
Hello listeners, this is yourhost today, bill Bannam, and in
today's HR Chat episode we'regoing to consider the concept of
scaling with soul and howcompanies can grow rapidly
without losing their company'sculture and their values.
And here to enlighten us todayis the amazing, awesome,
(00:48):
wonderful christina laconi.
Hey, christina, how are you?
hi bill, thanks for having metoday thank you very much for
being my guest.
This is your first time on theshow.
We got here because we have themutual friend that's jeff wold.
So, jeff, if you're listening,thank you very much for another
amazing introduction.
Christina, you've been calledthe original people innovator.
(01:12):
What does that title mean toyou, and how has it shaped your
approach to scaling startups andhigh growth companies?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
To hear that out loud makes it sound like I'm really
old, right, the original but Ithink that's probably pretty
accurate.
I think what it means is when.
Just a little bit of contextwhen I started my career I got
tied to startups very early, myfirst job like an internship.
I was a psych major.
I thought I was going to gointo clinical work and ended up
(01:43):
realizing horrible thing toadmit about oneself but realized
, oh my gosh, I'm probably notas empathetic as I need to be to
listen to people talk abouttheir problems all day long.
The irony is I do a lot of thatanyway, but my dad had been a
serial entrepreneur in the techspace and said hey, there's this
thing called human resourcesand it's sort of the
intersection of psychology andbusiness.
(02:04):
What he was really saying iskid, you need a job out of
college.
But what it did for me was getme working in a startup
environment during my collegeyears as an internship.
The company went public aboutthree weeks into my internship,
bizarrely, and I thought, asonly a naive 20-year old could
think, oh my gosh, if you getreally smart people working
(02:25):
together towards a mission, kindof rowing the boat in the same
direction, you can really scalesomething together and, by the
way, maybe people make money.
That sounds like a really coolthing to do.
That's what I want to do for acareer path, right, because it's
that easy?
Obviously it's not, but when Igraduated, that's what I looked
for no-transcript, what normalcompanies look like.
(03:13):
So I got a little bit spoiled,but what that environment did
was I was the kid who said oh mygosh, look around, this is a
great environment.
I might be the most juniorperson on the team, but they're
creating this environment whereI can ask questions and push
things, and I think one of myfirst questions probably very
(03:33):
obnoxiously was why the heck dowe call this team or this field
human resources?
Right, like my printer is aresource, but a human being
isn't.
That just feels wrong to me andinstead of saying, christina,
that's cute, shut up and go fileor do whatever it was I was
supposed to be doing, they saidwhy don't you go think about
that differently?
What a gift to give to somebodywho's 22 years old, who knows
(03:57):
nothing.
So I did think about itdifferently and because of that,
I think it put me in asituation to say what are the
right things to do versus how isit supposed to be done, right?
So I think the field of HR,especially back then, was so
focused on compliance and rulesand all of the tactical stuff
(04:17):
that make people hate the fieldCandidly.
It's important, but not as thedriving force, right.
And I was just gifted anopportunity to be thinking about
it differently and because Ididn't know what I didn't know,
it opened up a world ofpossibilities, and after several
years of doing that I won'tbore you with the details of
(04:37):
those first four years, but Ihad been able to both do it on
the team side, but also wentback to school at night became a
consultant in that business,did organizational development
consulting for a couple of years, just so I could understand it
from a customer perspective.
And then, you know, as only anarrogant whatever 26 year old
(04:58):
could do, I thought, oh my God,I have four years of experience,
I'm ready to go run the showsomewhere, and I've been humbled
much since then.
But at that time I ended up thenjoining a very hyper growth
company called Sapient.
It's a very large, totallydifferent organization now, but
(05:19):
at that stage it was a veryhyper growth young tech company
and I think the reason that mywhopping four years of
experience landed there wasbecause the entire leadership of
that company was in our 20s.
That's very common in today'sworld.
It sure wasn't in the mid 90sand we didn't know the word no.
(05:41):
If something didn't work, wedusted ourselves off.
We tried something different.
But the beauty in that was therewere two CEOs.
They were already sort ofpurpose built to think
differently and we reallyfocused on.
Culture is going to be a reallybig part of how we scale this
really quickly.
So for context, I went from, Ithink I joined around 150 people
(06:03):
and it was 3,500 global andpublic four years later.
So it was just insane growth.
But I think the culture reallyhelped us, sort of set the
foundation for how we were goingto grow that quickly.
And then I've been sort ofrinse and repeat.
I'd like to think I've gottenbetter over the years, but
that's that's sort of the modelthat I've been following for the
(06:27):
rest of my career.
So very long-winded answer, butI think that's I've been doing
this since, I think beforeculture was even a big word that
people were using, so I guessthat makes me sort of a unique
original voice in this.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat
Podcast.
If you enjoy the audio contentwe produce, you'll love our
articles on the HR Gazette.
Learn more at hrgazettecom.
And now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
In terms of the benefits to a fast scaling
company of having diversity oftheir employees and the
different perspectives that theycome with, and how that shapes
the company culture in thelonger term.
How did that shape your career?
How did that shape yourleadership style to have that
experience back in the early 90sof your first role having such
(07:21):
a diverse workforce?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Sure, I think that first role really helped me
understand to be a little bitfearless, right, to think a
little bit differently is onething, but to have the courage
to be able to then share yourideas and share things that are
different, I think some of thatis the beauty of being young.
(07:43):
Right, I didn't.
I wasn't afraid.
I was too naive to realize, ohmy gosh, in some environments if
you push totally radical ideasyou could be fired, like I
didn't.
I didn't operate that way.
Instead, I really operated froma place of what do I think is
the right thing to do, andbecause I was surrounded by very
innovative thinkers, that gaveme a playground to try a lot of
(08:08):
different ideas and becomepretty fearless.
So I think that created a modelfor me to think, to really sort
of build and try things out.
And I don't think there's onesolid roadmap.
You always talk about cultureand you see people point to
Netflix or HubSpot or whateverthe culture stuff came out, and
(08:29):
I think those are greatlearnings and great things for
people to adapt, but there's noone size fits all to all of this
.
I think you can have some basicfoundational steps, but it's
going to be different for everycompany and being able to sort
of navigate that and reallyunderstand.
You know, I always start withwho does the company identify
(08:52):
themselves as and who do theyaspire to be.
And if you can build thatfoundation as early as possible
in a company, you can buildeverything else on top of that,
but you need to have the solidfoundation.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And, on that note, we've had lots of folks on this
show leaders on this show whohave spoken about the challenges
of scaling rapidly and how theymay be.
A co-founder or two had onevision, co-founder or two had
one vision, but then they werefinding, when they hit 50
(09:23):
employees and approaching 100employees plus, they can no
longer control the recruitmentprocess and they had to look to
to other folks within the teamwho maybe didn't didn't start
the journey with.
Right at rapid seven, you ledthe concept of scaling with soul
, as I mentioned in the intro.
Can you now share what thatlooks like in practice and how
(09:44):
companies can grow rapidlywithout losing their cultural
business?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Sure, I mean, I think , at the high level.
When I joined Rapid7, we were75 people and, like every
company I've ever walked into,whether I've been consulting or
joined them, you know they'llgive you the prioritization list
of these are the things that weneed you to focus on as the
people person, and I've alwayssaid those are fantastic.
However, before we jump intoany of this work, let's focus on
(10:12):
that very basic, foundationalpiece of who are we and who do
we aspire to be.
I think what I've found with alot of founders, especially in
the tech space, is they mighthave a brilliant product idea
and maybe they went to businessschool, or maybe they didn't at
all, but nobody thinks about thescaling piece of this, right?
Maybe you're thinking about interms of revenue or product
(10:36):
enhancements and stuff, butyou're not thinking about the
people pieces.
Often has been my experienceand I think if you can think
about that and be as mindfulabout how you're planning your
people strategies as you areabout your financials, your
product evolution, et cetera,you set yourself up for far
(10:57):
better success, right?
I forget what the statistic is,but a very large percentage of
startup organizations fail for alot of reasons, and it's not
always about funding and productmarket fit.
It's about the human side of it, right?
Because you can, generally wesee people start companies and
they take a few people they'veworked with before or this was
(11:17):
my roommate in college.
They're really good at thistech or whatever, and they sort
of cobble something together,but that doesn't scale well,
right, you can't have everybodywho's like-minded.
You need diversity of thought.
You need to be able to havedifferent points of view,
different scale sets thatcomplement, and if your entire
culture is based on your visionof what everything should be,
(11:41):
that's really hard unless you'rereally working hard to bring
people along that journey andthey buy into it.
So my process when I came toRapid7 was to take a third of
the company.
At the time, you know, we were75 people when I started.
We took a third of those peoplethat we thought were really
good whatever we were going todefine as culture fits, but
(12:02):
people that were really sort ofgreat on a number of levels, and
we spent a couple of weeksreally talking about who are we
and who do we aspire to be, andeach time we would make work on
that and try to identify some ofour value sets and the language
and what we meant by it.
Then I would take it back tothe leadership team so they had
a voice in crafting it.
(12:22):
But it was really largely ledby our people, by our people,
for our people, with, ultimately, some executive sign off and
support.
And because we did it that way,we had a third of the company
already completely bought in bythe time we rolled it out.
(12:43):
But because we did itrelatively early in our journey,
it was really easy to then jumpto.
How do we get this traction?
It's not just hanging up abunch of core values on a wall
or on a coffee cup and sayingeverybody memorize these.
This is what we're about.
(13:05):
Instead, we were reallythoughtful about prioritizing
them into different areas of theemployee life cycle, how we
hire people, the questions weask.
It's not just Bill has aphenomenal CV, let's hire him,
but you could have a fantasticbackground.
But if collaboration is reallyimportant to us, I'm going to
ask you some questions to reallyfigure out is that important to
(13:25):
you?
I've never in my life made metanyone who says hey, I am not a
team player at all.
I really like to be in my silo,I want to work by myself.
So it's my job, then to reallydig at those things and make
sure, if collaboration isimportant to us, that I don't
just take it on face value andsay, oh yes, I'd love to work
with others, but really do you,how do you, how does that
(13:46):
manifest for you, etc.
So we, we would tie it into the,the hiring process, then you
tie it into your performancemanagement.
You tie it into how you'repromoting people and rewarding
people to working all your wayaround the employee life cycle
to the part where, when you partways with someone, whether they
quit or whether you terminatethem my goal was always these
(14:08):
values that we believe in arestill going to show up in how we
end with people.
Because my goal was I wantpeople, even if we fire them, to
say I had such an exceptionalexperience here.
I would still refer someone tothis company.
That sounds insane, but thathas happened.
Like I hold that bar incrediblyhigh to make sure that we're
(14:29):
constantly revisiting and tyingthese back into our everyday
work.
Not just this is what we say weare.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Okay, I can see why you are so well-respected If
you're able to fire someone butthey still say that was a great
company loved it.
You know you are doing your jobvery, very well.
Um, a couple of things that youmentioned in your previous
answer, that you spoke aboutdiversity of thought and how
important that was.
You also spoke about theconcept of culture fit.
(14:56):
I guess my follow-up for youthere then is can we have both?
How can we have both?
What?
What's the secret source of goto collaboration if you've got
diversity of thought but alsoyou're looking for people who
fit within?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
yeah, I mean I.
I look at the, the core valuesof a company and the in the
culture is.
That is the one thing.
No matter who you are, nomatter how senior or junior you
are, no matter what role youplay you're a go-to customer or
you're in technology or whateverit is that the one thing that
we all share in common, asidefrom being human beings, are
(15:35):
this belief in this set ofvalues.
Those values should scaleacross across.
So I could be a very seniorlevel tech guy or I could be a
really junior level salesperson,but we still believe in impact
together as one of our corevalues.
We really truly believe inmaking impact as we work
(15:56):
together.
One plus one equals three, forexample.
So that, for me, is if we allshare that common value set.
Of course, we're not looking for, like you know, it's not lost
on me that the word cult is inculture.
We're not trying to build acult where everyone thinks
exactly the same way, but we aresaying, if we start with a
(16:16):
foundation, that this issomething that we all believe in
.
These values are something weall believe in and will operate
by.
That gives a lot of latitude asto how you live your life or
how you experience this companyand contribute.
So, for example, one of ourcore values here at Rapid7 is
bring you.
(16:36):
That sounds a littletouchy-feely, but what that
means is we have created anenvironment where we want
everyone to truly be theirauthentic self at work.
The nuance to that is that youalso have to be empathetic
enough to realize everyone elseis letting their freak flag fly.
If we are all sort of beingunique and bringing authenticity
(16:56):
to our roles, you still have tobe open-minded that everyone
else is doing that too, andyou're not going to.
Everyone's creative, uniquepersonalities are not going to
resonate with a hundred percentof people, but we still have to
respect each other.
We still have to work with eachother and respect the fact that
everyone's kind of bringingtheir own uniqueness to the
party and that actually benefitsour clients and customers
(17:20):
benefits each other becausewe're learning.
I think we all realize we learnwith different diversity of
thought we are learning, we areevolving, we are changing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
What's your take, then, on the evolving role of
the chief people officer?
How should today's cpos bethinking about their impact
beyond traditional hr boundaries?
You gave a wonderful example interms of firing someone, but
they still say nice things.
That's a great legacy.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Honestly, I think, um , like, look, I'll give this
field a little bit of credit.
When I started my career, itwas literally making the
transition I'm so old at thispoint, bill, but like it was
making the transition frompersonnel to human resources.
So HR when I came out of schoolwas like the newfangled thing.
And yet I think there's a lot.
(18:08):
You know, culture became reallypopular over the last 10 years,
but I think we're still in thatplace where, for a lot of
companies, culture still meanshey, we have this really
friendly girl who sits at thefront desk and she plans our
party.
She's our culture person.
Like that is not culture,that's like some nice stuff that
you do, but that's notnecessarily going to provide the
(18:29):
foundation for your company toscale.
And so I think we're on thetrack, but it's not there yet.
I think the biggest challenge westill face is getting people in
those senior people roles to.
They're still saying I want aseat at the table God, I hate
(18:49):
that expression because you canget the seat, because you have
the title.
It's what you do with the seatwhen you have it and really
being able to sort of say I lookat the job as here's the
business strategy that we'resetting out as a company and our
job as people leaders is thento work backwards and say do we
have the right people strategiesto support those business
(19:12):
strategies?
That is not rocket science orreally creative thinking, but
I'm surprised most people don'tdo it that way.
It's rather, we still aredigging out of the hole of.
These are the people that yougo to if you need to fire
someone or they're holding downthe policies like handbooks and
all of that stuff.
I get it, I know it's important, but, my God, if that's what we
(19:35):
think the value addcontribution is to our role, we
are really missing the mark.
I think.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I agree, okay.
So, christina, you're about toembark on a new journey, an
exciting new journey, launchingyour new consulting practice
called People InnovationsCongratulations.
Can you tell me more about that?
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I can and I'll give you a little context.
I would stay at Rapid7 for areally long time.
So for somebody who has spent,I've done six startups, I'm
really passionate about buildingfrom scratch and I've been here
for 14 years, which is insaneto me how long I've been, and
yet we have a pretty remarkableCEO and this journey has been an
exceptional one.
I'll be really honest and sayI've been on a cancer battle.
(20:20):
I'm in remission now.
I'm doing great, but I know itdoesn't have a cure, so I know
it's going to come back.
And I was super motivated, Ithink as anyone, when they're
sort of facing life and deathstuff, like what do I want to do
with the time that I have, andI think I realized, okay, I've
given pretty much everything Icould possibly give to Rapid7.
And as much as I love thisplace, I think I have one more
(20:45):
big thing left in me and for me,that is I've been doing this
work for individual companies.
I've consulted in between jobs,but really been working with
companies and helping them scalewell over the years, and I
think at this point I'm muchmore interested in trying to
help a multitude of companiesall at once.
So People Innovations is reallygoing to be working on.
(21:07):
How do you actually helpcompanies in those early stages
sort of you know, past seedfunding, so picture series, data
you know just post IPO trulyfigure out how important or
realize how important the humanside of the business is to think
about and plan for and begin toto operate with as early as
(21:31):
possible in their evolution?
And then we'll teach you how todo it, whether you need help
doing it or whether we can guideyou through that process.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, okay, so I really liked you.
I've now got so much morerespect for you for sharing that
with me and with our listeners.
Thank you and, and, and and I.
I wish you, I wish you everyhealth.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Oh, thank you.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate that I'm doinggreat right now, so I'm going to
max it out for as long as I'vegot.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Just finally for today, Christina.
What's exciting you right nowin the world of work, and what
should HR pros be paying closeattention to in the next 12 to
18 months?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
What is exciting me, aside from my own personal
journey of trying to figure outhow to do this on a large scale
is I think it's a very difficulttime to be a people leader.
There's a lot going on in theworld on so many levels,
especially post-pandemic, but Ialso think that it is an
extraordinary time to be apeople person.
(22:32):
A lot of companies don't knowhow to do this stuff well, and
if you have an innovative mindand you're willing to put
yourself out there and becomfortable.
There's no playbook and noperfect answer to any of this
world.
A lot of it we're making it upas we go along.
What an extraordinary time tobe in this role.
I think this could be one ofthe most pivotal and important
(22:55):
roles in a company becauseultimately, it doesn't matter
what you're building or selling.
It matters you know like thepeople are the ones that are
doing it, and AI might replace alot of stuff, but it can't
replace human relationships andtrust and collaboration.
We have a really amazingopportunity as people leaders
(23:15):
over the next decade or so.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Wonderful.
Well, that just leaves me tosay for today Christina Laconi,
you awesome human being, Thankyou very much for your time
today.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Thank you, I appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And listeners as always.
Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Until next time, happy working.
Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's
most downloaded and sharedpodcasts designed for HR pros,
talent execs, tech enthusiastsand business leaders.
For hundreds more episodes andwhat's new in the world of work,
subscribe to the show, followus on social media and visit
hrgazettecom and visithrgazettecom.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show.
Hello listeners, this is yourhost today, bill Bannam, and in
today's HR Chat episode we'regoing to consider the concept of
scaling with soul and howcompanies can grow rapidly
without losing their company'sculture and their values.
And here to enlighten us todayis the amazing, awesome,
(00:48):
wonderful christina laconi.
Hey, christina, how are you?
hi bill, thanks for having metoday thank you very much for
being my guest.
This is your first time on theshow.
We got here because we have themutual friend that's jeff wold.
So, jeff, if you're listening,thank you very much for another
amazing introduction.
Christina, you've been calledthe original people innovator.
(01:12):
What does that title mean toyou, and how has it shaped your
approach to scaling startups andhigh growth companies?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
To hear that out loud makes it sound like I'm really
old, right, the original but Ithink that's probably pretty
accurate.
I think what it means is when.
Just a little bit of contextwhen I started my career I got
tied to startups very early, myfirst job like an internship.
I was a psych major.
I thought I was going to gointo clinical work and ended up
(01:43):
realizing horrible thing toadmit about oneself but realized
, oh my gosh, I'm probably notas empathetic as I need to be to
listen to people talk abouttheir problems all day long.
The irony is I do a lot of thatanyway, but my dad had been a
serial entrepreneur in the techspace and said hey, there's this
thing called human resourcesand it's sort of the
intersection of psychology andbusiness.
(02:04):
What he was really saying iskid, you need a job out of
college.
But what it did for me was getme working in a startup
environment during my collegeyears as an internship.
The company went public aboutthree weeks into my internship,
bizarrely, and I thought, asonly a naive 20-year old could
think, oh my gosh, if you getreally smart people working
(02:25):
together towards a mission, kindof rowing the boat in the same
direction, you can really scalesomething together and, by the
way, maybe people make money.
That sounds like a really coolthing to do.
That's what I want to do for acareer path, right, because it's
that easy?
Obviously it's not, but when Igraduated, that's what I looked
for no-transcript, what normalcompanies look like.
(03:13):
So I got a little bit spoiled,but what that environment did
was I was the kid who said oh mygosh, look around, this is a
great environment.
I might be the most juniorperson on the team, but they're
creating this environment whereI can ask questions and push
things, and I think one of myfirst questions probably very
(03:33):
obnoxiously was why the heck dowe call this team or this field
human resources?
Right, like my printer is aresource, but a human being
isn't.
That just feels wrong to me andinstead of saying, christina,
that's cute, shut up and go fileor do whatever it was I was
supposed to be doing, they saidwhy don't you go think about
that differently?
What a gift to give to somebodywho's 22 years old, who knows
(03:57):
nothing.
So I did think about itdifferently and because of that,
I think it put me in asituation to say what are the
right things to do versus how isit supposed to be done, right?
So I think the field of HR,especially back then, was so
focused on compliance and rulesand all of the tactical stuff
(04:17):
that make people hate the fieldCandidly.
It's important, but not as thedriving force, right.
And I was just gifted anopportunity to be thinking about
it differently and because Ididn't know what I didn't know,
it opened up a world ofpossibilities, and after several
years of doing that I won'tbore you with the details of
(04:37):
those first four years, but Ihad been able to both do it on
the team side, but also wentback to school at night became a
consultant in that business,did organizational development
consulting for a couple of years, just so I could understand it
from a customer perspective.
And then, you know, as only anarrogant whatever 26 year old
(04:58):
could do, I thought, oh my God,I have four years of experience,
I'm ready to go run the showsomewhere, and I've been humbled
much since then.
But at that time I ended up thenjoining a very hyper growth
company called Sapient.
It's a very large, totallydifferent organization now, but
(05:19):
at that stage it was a veryhyper growth young tech company
and I think the reason that mywhopping four years of
experience landed there wasbecause the entire leadership of
that company was in our 20s.
That's very common in today'sworld.
It sure wasn't in the mid 90sand we didn't know the word no.
(05:41):
If something didn't work, wedusted ourselves off.
We tried something different.
But the beauty in that was therewere two CEOs.
They were already sort ofpurpose built to think
differently and we reallyfocused on.
Culture is going to be a reallybig part of how we scale this
really quickly.
So for context, I went from, Ithink I joined around 150 people
(06:03):
and it was 3,500 global andpublic four years later.
So it was just insane growth.
But I think the culture reallyhelped us, sort of set the
foundation for how we were goingto grow that quickly.
And then I've been sort ofrinse and repeat.
I'd like to think I've gottenbetter over the years, but
that's that's sort of the modelthat I've been following for the
(06:27):
rest of my career.
So very long-winded answer, butI think that's I've been doing
this since, I think beforeculture was even a big word that
people were using, so I guessthat makes me sort of a unique
original voice in this.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat
Podcast.
If you enjoy the audio contentwe produce, you'll love our
articles on the HR Gazette.
Learn more at hrgazettecom.
And now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
In terms of the benefits to a fast scaling
company of having diversity oftheir employees and the
different perspectives that theycome with, and how that shapes
the company culture in thelonger term.
How did that shape your career?
How did that shape yourleadership style to have that
experience back in the early 90sof your first role having such
(07:21):
a diverse workforce?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Sure, I think that first role really helped me
understand to be a little bitfearless, right, to think a
little bit differently is onething, but to have the courage
to be able to then share yourideas and share things that are
different, I think some of thatis the beauty of being young.
(07:43):
Right, I didn't.
I wasn't afraid.
I was too naive to realize, ohmy gosh, in some environments if
you push totally radical ideasyou could be fired, like I
didn't.
I didn't operate that way.
Instead, I really operated froma place of what do I think is
the right thing to do, andbecause I was surrounded by very
innovative thinkers, that gaveme a playground to try a lot of
(08:08):
different ideas and becomepretty fearless.
So I think that created a modelfor me to think, to really sort
of build and try things out.
And I don't think there's onesolid roadmap.
You always talk about cultureand you see people point to
Netflix or HubSpot or whateverthe culture stuff came out, and
(08:29):
I think those are greatlearnings and great things for
people to adapt, but there's noone size fits all to all of this
.
I think you can have some basicfoundational steps, but it's
going to be different for everycompany and being able to sort
of navigate that and reallyunderstand.
You know, I always start withwho does the company identify
(08:52):
themselves as and who do theyaspire to be.
And if you can build thatfoundation as early as possible
in a company, you can buildeverything else on top of that,
but you need to have the solidfoundation.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And, on that note, we've had lots of folks on this
show leaders on this show whohave spoken about the challenges
of scaling rapidly and how theymay be.
A co-founder or two had onevision, co-founder or two had
one vision, but then they werefinding, when they hit 50
(09:23):
employees and approaching 100employees plus, they can no
longer control the recruitmentprocess and they had to look to
to other folks within the teamwho maybe didn't didn't start
the journey with.
Right at rapid seven, you ledthe concept of scaling with soul
, as I mentioned in the intro.
Can you now share what thatlooks like in practice and how
(09:44):
companies can grow rapidlywithout losing their cultural
business?
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Sure, I mean, I think , at the high level.
When I joined Rapid7, we were75 people and, like every
company I've ever walked into,whether I've been consulting or
joined them, you know they'llgive you the prioritization list
of these are the things that weneed you to focus on as the
people person, and I've alwayssaid those are fantastic.
However, before we jump intoany of this work, let's focus on
(10:12):
that very basic, foundationalpiece of who are we and who do
we aspire to be.
I think what I've found with alot of founders, especially in
the tech space, is they mighthave a brilliant product idea
and maybe they went to businessschool, or maybe they didn't at
all, but nobody thinks about thescaling piece of this, right?
Maybe you're thinking about interms of revenue or product
(10:36):
enhancements and stuff, butyou're not thinking about the
people pieces.
Often has been my experienceand I think if you can think
about that and be as mindfulabout how you're planning your
people strategies as you areabout your financials, your
product evolution, et cetera,you set yourself up for far
(10:57):
better success, right?
I forget what the statistic is,but a very large percentage of
startup organizations fail for alot of reasons, and it's not
always about funding and productmarket fit.
It's about the human side of it, right?
Because you can, generally wesee people start companies and
they take a few people they'veworked with before or this was
(11:17):
my roommate in college.
They're really good at thistech or whatever, and they sort
of cobble something together,but that doesn't scale well,
right, you can't have everybodywho's like-minded.
You need diversity of thought.
You need to be able to havedifferent points of view,
different scale sets thatcomplement, and if your entire
culture is based on your visionof what everything should be,
(11:41):
that's really hard unless you'rereally working hard to bring
people along that journey andthey buy into it.
So my process when I came toRapid7 was to take a third of
the company.
At the time, you know, we were75 people when I started.
We took a third of those peoplethat we thought were really
good whatever we were going todefine as culture fits, but
(12:02):
people that were really sort ofgreat on a number of levels, and
we spent a couple of weeksreally talking about who are we
and who do we aspire to be, andeach time we would make work on
that and try to identify some ofour value sets and the language
and what we meant by it.
Then I would take it back tothe leadership team so they had
a voice in crafting it.
(12:22):
But it was really largely ledby our people, by our people,
for our people, with, ultimately, some executive sign off and
support.
And because we did it that way,we had a third of the company
already completely bought in bythe time we rolled it out.
(12:43):
But because we did itrelatively early in our journey,
it was really easy to then jumpto.
How do we get this traction?
It's not just hanging up abunch of core values on a wall
or on a coffee cup and sayingeverybody memorize these.
This is what we're about.
(13:05):
Instead, we were reallythoughtful about prioritizing
them into different areas of theemployee life cycle, how we
hire people, the questions weask.
It's not just Bill has aphenomenal CV, let's hire him,
but you could have a fantasticbackground.
But if collaboration is reallyimportant to us, I'm going to
ask you some questions to reallyfigure out is that important to
(13:25):
you?
I've never in my life made metanyone who says hey, I am not a
team player at all.
I really like to be in my silo,I want to work by myself.
So it's my job, then to reallydig at those things and make
sure, if collaboration isimportant to us, that I don't
just take it on face value andsay, oh yes, I'd love to work
with others, but really do you,how do you, how does that
(13:46):
manifest for you, etc.
So we, we would tie it into the,the hiring process, then you
tie it into your performancemanagement.
You tie it into how you'repromoting people and rewarding
people to working all your wayaround the employee life cycle
to the part where, when you partways with someone, whether they
quit or whether you terminatethem my goal was always these
(14:08):
values that we believe in arestill going to show up in how we
end with people.
Because my goal was I wantpeople, even if we fire them, to
say I had such an exceptionalexperience here.
I would still refer someone tothis company.
That sounds insane, but thathas happened.
Like I hold that bar incrediblyhigh to make sure that we're
(14:29):
constantly revisiting and tyingthese back into our everyday
work.
Not just this is what we say weare.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Okay, I can see why you are so well-respected If
you're able to fire someone butthey still say that was a great
company loved it.
You know you are doing your jobvery, very well.
Um, a couple of things that youmentioned in your previous
answer, that you spoke aboutdiversity of thought and how
important that was.
You also spoke about theconcept of culture fit.
(14:56):
I guess my follow-up for youthere then is can we have both?
How can we have both?
What?
What's the secret source of goto collaboration if you've got
diversity of thought but alsoyou're looking for people who
fit within?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
yeah, I mean I.
I look at the, the core valuesof a company and the in the
culture is.
That is the one thing.
No matter who you are, nomatter how senior or junior you
are, no matter what role youplay you're a go-to customer or
you're in technology or whateverit is that the one thing that
we all share in common, asidefrom being human beings, are
(15:35):
this belief in this set ofvalues.
Those values should scaleacross across.
So I could be a very seniorlevel tech guy or I could be a
really junior level salesperson,but we still believe in impact
together as one of our corevalues.
We really truly believe inmaking impact as we work
(15:56):
together.
One plus one equals three, forexample.
So that, for me, is if we allshare that common value set.
Of course, we're not looking for, like you know, it's not lost
on me that the word cult is inculture.
We're not trying to build acult where everyone thinks
exactly the same way, but we aresaying, if we start with a
(16:16):
foundation, that this issomething that we all believe in
.
These values are something weall believe in and will operate
by.
That gives a lot of latitude asto how you live your life or
how you experience this companyand contribute.
So, for example, one of ourcore values here at Rapid7 is
bring you.
(16:36):
That sounds a littletouchy-feely, but what that
means is we have created anenvironment where we want
everyone to truly be theirauthentic self at work.
The nuance to that is that youalso have to be empathetic
enough to realize everyone elseis letting their freak flag fly.
If we are all sort of beingunique and bringing authenticity
(16:56):
to our roles, you still have tobe open-minded that everyone
else is doing that too, andyou're not going to.
Everyone's creative, uniquepersonalities are not going to
resonate with a hundred percentof people, but we still have to
respect each other.
We still have to work with eachother and respect the fact that
everyone's kind of bringingtheir own uniqueness to the
party and that actually benefitsour clients and customers
(17:20):
benefits each other becausewe're learning.
I think we all realize we learnwith different diversity of
thought we are learning, we areevolving, we are changing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
What's your take, then, on the evolving role of
the chief people officer?
How should today's cpos bethinking about their impact
beyond traditional hr boundaries?
You gave a wonderful example interms of firing someone, but
they still say nice things.
That's a great legacy.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Honestly, I think, um , like, look, I'll give this
field a little bit of credit.
When I started my career, itwas literally making the
transition I'm so old at thispoint, bill, but like it was
making the transition frompersonnel to human resources.
So HR when I came out of schoolwas like the newfangled thing.
And yet I think there's a lot.
(18:08):
You know, culture became reallypopular over the last 10 years,
but I think we're still in thatplace where, for a lot of
companies, culture still meanshey, we have this really
friendly girl who sits at thefront desk and she plans our
party.
She's our culture person.
Like that is not culture,that's like some nice stuff that
you do, but that's notnecessarily going to provide the
(18:29):
foundation for your company toscale.
And so I think we're on thetrack, but it's not there yet.
I think the biggest challenge westill face is getting people in
those senior people roles to.
They're still saying I want aseat at the table God, I hate
(18:49):
that expression because you canget the seat, because you have
the title.
It's what you do with the seatwhen you have it and really
being able to sort of say I lookat the job as here's the
business strategy that we'resetting out as a company and our
job as people leaders is thento work backwards and say do we
have the right people strategiesto support those business
(19:12):
strategies?
That is not rocket science orreally creative thinking, but
I'm surprised most people don'tdo it that way.
It's rather, we still aredigging out of the hole of.
These are the people that yougo to if you need to fire
someone or they're holding downthe policies like handbooks and
all of that stuff.
I get it, I know it's important, but, my God, if that's what we
(19:35):
think the value addcontribution is to our role, we
are really missing the mark.
I think.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I agree, okay.
So, christina, you're about toembark on a new journey, an
exciting new journey, launchingyour new consulting practice
called People InnovationsCongratulations.
Can you tell me more about that?
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I can and I'll give you a little context.
I would stay at Rapid7 for areally long time.
So for somebody who has spent,I've done six startups, I'm
really passionate about buildingfrom scratch and I've been here
for 14 years, which is insaneto me how long I've been, and
yet we have a pretty remarkableCEO and this journey has been an
exceptional one.
I'll be really honest and sayI've been on a cancer battle.
(20:20):
I'm in remission now.
I'm doing great, but I know itdoesn't have a cure, so I know
it's going to come back.
And I was super motivated, Ithink as anyone, when they're
sort of facing life and deathstuff, like what do I want to do
with the time that I have, andI think I realized, okay, I've
given pretty much everything Icould possibly give to Rapid7.
And as much as I love thisplace, I think I have one more
(20:45):
big thing left in me and for me,that is I've been doing this
work for individual companies.
I've consulted in between jobs,but really been working with
companies and helping them scalewell over the years, and I
think at this point I'm muchmore interested in trying to
help a multitude of companiesall at once.
So People Innovations is reallygoing to be working on.
(21:07):
How do you actually helpcompanies in those early stages
sort of you know, past seedfunding, so picture series, data
you know just post IPO trulyfigure out how important or
realize how important the humanside of the business is to think
about and plan for and begin toto operate with as early as
(21:31):
possible in their evolution?
And then we'll teach you how todo it, whether you need help
doing it or whether we can guideyou through that process.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, okay, so I really liked you.
I've now got so much morerespect for you for sharing that
with me and with our listeners.
Thank you and, and, and and I.
I wish you, I wish you everyhealth.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Oh, thank you.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate that I'm doinggreat right now, so I'm going to
max it out for as long as I'vegot.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Just finally for today, Christina.
What's exciting you right nowin the world of work, and what
should HR pros be paying closeattention to in the next 12 to
18 months?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
What is exciting me, aside from my own personal
journey of trying to figure outhow to do this on a large scale
is I think it's a very difficulttime to be a people leader.
There's a lot going on in theworld on so many levels,
especially post-pandemic, but Ialso think that it is an
extraordinary time to be apeople person.
(22:32):
A lot of companies don't knowhow to do this stuff well, and
if you have an innovative mindand you're willing to put
yourself out there and becomfortable.
There's no playbook and noperfect answer to any of this
world.
A lot of it we're making it upas we go along.
What an extraordinary time tobe in this role.
I think this could be one ofthe most pivotal and important
(22:55):
roles in a company becauseultimately, it doesn't matter
what you're building or selling.
It matters you know like thepeople are the ones that are
doing it, and AI might replace alot of stuff, but it can't
replace human relationships andtrust and collaboration.
We have a really amazingopportunity as people leaders
(23:15):
over the next decade or so.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Wonderful.
Well, that just leaves me tosay for today Christina Laconi,
you awesome human being, Thankyou very much for your time
today.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Thank you, I appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And listeners as always.
Until next time, happy working.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Until next time, happy working.
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