In this episode of the Unicorn Leaders podcast, host Fahd Alhattab sits down with three-time Chief People Officer Ali Farrell, currently CPO at Apprentice, to unpack what it really takes to build high-performing teams in fast-growth startups. Ali brings a rare blend of corporate, VC-backed, PE-backed, and bootstrapped startup experience—and she’s not afraid to challenge outdated HR norms.
From navigating chaos to ditching performance improvement plans, Ali shares hard-won insights on what works (and what absolutely doesn’t) when leading through scale. You'll learn why clarity is more powerful than complexity, how to bring “just enough” structure to support growth, and why ownership and curiosity matter more than credentials.
Whether you're a founder, people leader, or scaling operator, this episode is packed with tactical advice, real talk, and fresh perspectives on how to grow teams that actually thrive in the messy middle.
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Episode Transcript
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Ali Farell (00:00):
To me, the most talented and most impactful
leaders are those who are themost self-aware.
I don't care where you went toschool.
I don't care your pedigree.
I care about your level ofself-awareness.
So those two things, superimportant.
Really huge red flag whensomeone says, well, when I was
at, and it's a huge kind oforganization.
Well, we did it this way.
And I'm like, yeah, but supercool.
Very impressive.
(00:20):
I love that experience for you,but it needs to be applicable
to our reality.
And there's art really inknowing that.
how to apply that and where toget curious.
So to me, I think curiosity isthe most important thing.
Fahd Alhattab (00:39):
Hello and welcome to our Unicorn Leadership
Podcast.
We're officially kicking offseason two.
Ali, I'm excited to have youhere.
I am equally excited.
It's going to be awesome.
Ali, this is the podcast wherewe interview startup leaders,
whether they're CPOs or CEOs orfounders, about how to build
high-performing teams andhigh-performing cultures.
(01:01):
So we're going to ask Ali allabout her stories, her journey,
some tools, like specifics, somemistakes.
I love when we get into like,you know, where did we mess up?
up and so that our audience andour leaders that are listening
to this and our founders canlearn from it.
The podcast is brought to youby Unicorn Labs.
I'm Fahad Al-Hattab, thefounder of Unicorn Labs, also
the host of this fun podcast.
And you can learn more about usat unicornlabs.ca where we will
(01:25):
host the podcast, but it isavailable everywhere.
So today's guest is Ali.
Ali Farrell.
All right.
So Ali, you've led a lot.
You've led teams.
Ali Farell (01:35):
Done some things.
Fahd Alhattab (01:37):
You've done some things.
So you did some You didn't workin corporate.
You didn't work in startups.
Now you're a CPO of a much moremature and growing company.
So this is all really exciting.
You're three times chief peopleofficer.
And you're currently the CPO atApprentice.
Tell me a little bit aboutApprentice.
Ali Farell (01:55):
Yeah.
So Apprentice is a cloud-basedmanufacturing execution software
and really digitaltransformation platform.
And so most of our clients arein the pharmaceutical and cell
and gene therapies area.
and really our mission is toproduce a large portion of the
world's therapeutics.
(02:15):
And so we're really supermission-driven as an
organization and we're doingsome pretty cool stuff.
So a lot of exciting thingscoming to our roadmap.
Fahd Alhattab (02:24):
I feel like your CMO would be really happy with
that pitch right there.
Like you just nailed it.
Like that was crisp.
So you've come, you know, TheApprentice with a lot of
different experiences, leadingteams, building strategies for
people from fast-growingstartups to larger companies,
major restructuring, That is oneof
Ali Farell (02:51):
my special talents.
I do tend to run a little bittowards the fire, so I think I
can bring order to it.
It is kind of a cycle I findmyself in for one reason or
another.
Yeah.
Fahd Alhattab (03:03):
So this episode, we're going to really unpack
what it really takes to buildand scale a team to the top.
And we're going to talk aboutthe difference between the
Davids and the Goliaths, thedifference between the corporate
HR, that is, and the Davids andhow these small but mighty
teams really grow.
So without further ado, Ali, Iwant you to introduce yourself
to our audience.
Tell me a little bit aboutyourself.
(03:24):
Where are you calling in from?
Where'd you go to school?
Where'd you grow up?
I'd like to know a little bitmore.
Ali Farell (03:30):
Yeah, so I grew up in upstate New York in a really,
really tiny town calledFrankfurt, which nobody knows
about by any means, but it was areally good place to grow up
for that reason.
But I ended up going to collegeat Marist, which is in
Poughkeepsie, New York.
I thought I would be ajournalist.
I thought I would be a lawyer.
I thought I would be so manythings.
And I have kind of ended up inHR for a lot of different
(03:51):
reasons, but it's actually apath that makes a lot of sense
given all of the things Ithought I would be doing in my
life.
So today I live in...
at Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
My career trajectory has been alittle unusual, think for a two
people officer, because I havelarge publicly traded company
experience.
I've got PE backed experience.
(04:11):
I have bootstrapped SaaSstartup experience, which was
really amazing.
And I also have high growth VCbacked experience.
So I've kind of done a lot ofdifferent things.
And it's not often I think youfind a CPO who finds success in
each of those differentoperating models.
Fahd Alhattab (04:27):
So Ali, you told me you've had a winding career
career, a little few differentthings.
You wanted to be a journalist.
This is your moment as ajournalist, Allie.
Ali Farell (04:34):
Honestly, I thought I would be a journalist.
I love interviewing people.
I like talking to people.
I like digging into things.
I'm super curious.
And so really in this job, notonly do I get to do this and
hang out with you all, but I getto talk to different people
every day and learn differentthings.
And so it makes a lot of sense.
Like the things I learned inschool and things I learned in
my internships and all of that,really I use today, honest to
(04:56):
God.
It's crazy how it all worksout, really.
Fahd Alhattab (04:58):
That's awesome.
You still get Gathering all thestories.
So where...
Yes.
What was the first job out ofuniversity?
And then what was the firstpivot into HR?
Do you remember those?
Ali Farell (05:08):
Yes, I do.
So my first job, I always hadmultiple jobs.
But my first job out ofuniversity, I was a TV news
producer at my local TV stationin upstate New York.
So that was my first job out ofcollege.
I was a news producer.
Yeah.
And I did a little copywriting.
Fahd Alhattab (05:26):
Okay.
Ali Farell (05:26):
As well.
I did a little copywriting.
Fahd Alhattab (05:28):
And what was the pivot into HR?
What was the pivot into thatworld?
Ali Farell (05:32):
Yeah.
So I was a copywriter at areally super small agency in the
Philadelphia suburbs.
And I ended up leaving thereand going to a company at the
time that was called Avenue ARazorfish.
So it was an advertising agencybased in Philadelphia.
I was really doing outboundselling SEO and I hated it.
(05:53):
I was like, this is soulsucking.
for so many reasons.
And there just so happened tobe a recruiting coordinator job
open at Avenue A.
And I moved into that.
And that was kind of where Istarted.
And that was really where mylove for this function took off.
And it was a company I loved.
And I ended up being there foralmost 10 years.
So I grew really quickly.
(06:13):
So that was my first entranceinto HR.
Fahd Alhattab (06:16):
So your first entrance, how would you describe
that company?
Were they larger?
Were they startup?
Were they like, what would youclassify them under?
Sort of you got your chopsunderway What category of...
Ali Farell (06:28):
I would call it corporate.
So Avenue A was part of a largecorporate organization called
AQuantive.
And AQuantive was actuallyacquired some point in my tenure
by Microsoft.
Microsoft kind of acquired us,separated us for parts, kept the
ad tech platform, sold off theadvertising agencies to
publicists.
So that I would consider largecorporate company experience,
(06:52):
but advertising.
Fahd Alhattab (06:54):
Yeah.
So...
let's talk about the lessonsfrom corporate.
So those are some of the firstlessons.
What works in HR and corporate?
So if I'm in a bigger company,I'm doing some HR.
What are some of the stuff thatyou're like, hey, this stuff
works here.
We did well.
We had some successes.
And I'm sort of maybeforeshadowing to, you know, did
(07:14):
you try and apply some of thoseto when you started
transitioning and where were thechallenges?
So what worked at the corporateHR level?
Ali Farell (07:21):
Yeah.
There are so many challengesgoing from a big corporate.
One of the greatest challengescomes down to unlearning.
So when you move from a bigcorporate environment, As a
leader, you have to unlearn alot of things.
There's so much.
There's plenty.
You have resources.
You have processes.
You have programs.
SMEs.
You have corporate functionswho just focus on one thing in a
(07:43):
really powerful way.
And they move a lot slower, forsure.
There's less ambiguity in rolesand in levels.
And it's so rare in that kindof organization where you find
somebody wearingmultidisciplinary hats.
It's like, there are jobs.
There are people.
There are resources.
Almost all of that getsstripped away.
When you go to a startup,that's it, right?
(08:03):
And you can take some of whatyou learn from like a best
practice conceptual perspective,but you have to build from
scratch when you're at astartup.
And you have to work at so manydifferent altitudes.
I've been a builder, anideator, an operator.
I've had to, in the morning, bea really strategic business
partner and talk about strategy.
(08:24):
But in the afternoon, I'mrolling up my sleeves and
sourcing candidates.
You're just at these differentaltitudes.
And I think that is reallyenergizing.
And I really, really love that.
But it is very different.
When you come from corporateand you go to a startup, you
really need to be mindful aboutshowing a little bit of
restraint.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Fahd Alhattab (09:06):
Yeah, yeah.
So actually, I wanted to dig inthat, Ali.
So what are some of themistakes here that happen often
where an HR person coming fromcorporate might be trying to
copy paste something over or afounder who isn't sure what to
expect either is sort of, youknow, that often founders are
making mistakes because they'refirst time building their
(09:29):
company and they don't know whatto expect of the role.
So they let the new HR personlead, which is great.
But if that HR person is sortof copy paste from corporate,
then we're leading them down amore rigid path.
Ali Farell (09:40):
Yes, yes.
If you are a new founder, a newCEO, a first-time CEO, or
really any CEO, I do think it'shugely beneficial to find
yourself two different types ofcoaches.
One who has built and beenthere before, who can be a
sounding board for youexternally, unrelated, right?
And
Fahd Alhattab (10:00):
that's not a plug.
That's not a plug to UnicornLabs, guys.
That's just, you know, she saidit.
I didn't tell her to say it.
Ali Farell (10:05):
You really did it.
But I think it's, I think it'sso, so important to have a very
neutral sounding board.
Somebody who's been there, donethat to be kind of like a sharp
up for you.
I think that's reallyimportant.
And the other really importantresource to have early on is a
personal executive coach foryou.
One who can guide you on yourpath to self-awareness.
To me, the most talented andmost impactful leaders are those
(10:29):
who are the most self-aware.
I don't care where you went toschool.
I don't care your pedigree.
I care about your level ofself-awareness.
So those two things, superimportant.
Really where I've seen it, thisnotion of like copy and paste,
right?
Coming from where you weresomewhere large to coming from
going to somewhere very small.
Everyone's susceptible to it.
HR people, leaders, new hires,all of that.
(10:49):
Really huge red flag whensomeone says, well, when I was
at, and it's a huge kind oforganization, insert whatever
mega enterprise you want, Well,we did it this way.
And I'm like, yeah, that'ssuper cool.
Very impressive.
I love that experience for you,but it needs to be applicable
to our reality.
I think curiosity is the mostimportant thing.
When you are starting at astartup, regardless of what your
(11:11):
experience, you just have to bea sponge.
You have to ask more questions.
Then, you know, you have tolisten more and ask more than
than share.
I think that's reallyimportant.
And I think you have to bereally focused on building a
scalable and intentionalfoundation and what works
somewhere else isn't going towork there.
Fahd Alhattab (11:30):
One of the things that you're saying here, Ali,
that I'd love to just like, youknow, focus on for a moment is
that the HR person in a startupcannot be solely an HR person.
Oh, yeah.
I see and maybe you can commenton it is like so an HR person
(12:14):
comes in to startup and startupis chaos because like startups
are chaos right like there's noprocess for this there's no this
is done through a randomspreadsheet I can't find a file
for this and they go oh my godwe need to build some processes
into this team and they overindex the other way so you need
processes but they over indexwith this like extreme rigid
(12:34):
like we're gonna build a processfor everything but because of
the pace and growth of a startupthe processes become outdated,
which is often why startupsstruggle with this process.
This is the sort of tensionbetween the explore and the
exploit is that if you overprocess something too early
without knowing what the rightprocess is, you over process
into the wrong way.
(12:55):
I would say you can be moreefficient, but you could
efficiently do the wrong thing.
Ali Farell (12:58):
Right, right.
Well, that's the chaos piece,right?
I do think I have this innateability to identify what is
noise and what is music, right?
There are just two, there aredifferent ways of thinking about
that.
And chaos can actually be acompetitive advantage if it
doesn't turn into panic.
So that's really important.
When I think about being a chaoswhisperer, to me, it's not
(13:18):
about eliminating chaos.
Like that's part of the fun.
So it's my job how to know howto operate within it, but then
how to bring other people alongand to turn some of that in
momentum, into momentum.
And like you were saying, youknow, sometimes process is too
much.
For me, operating kind of at anearly stage, it's bringing just
enough, not about perfection.
(13:40):
It's not about robustness.
It's not about beinginflexible.
And it is about just enough.
It's knowing so much about thebusiness to bring just enough
process and just enough policyand just enough structure.
It's about creating just enoughso people aren't paralyzed.
And I think one of the ways Ido this is by imagining the
(14:05):
company that I'm at as a living,breathing thing.
It's a system.
And this is one of the thingsmy coach taught me is like this
place, it is a living breathingsystem and it could speak.
What would it tell you itneeded right now?
And I promise you there isalmost no high growth startup
that's like, I need a lot ofprocess.
I need a lot of like tools.
That is, I would be shocked ifthat was what the system said
(14:29):
very early on.
Fahd Alhattab (14:30):
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is, this is, so thisis part of the challenge, right?
So when, when, when we're,we're talking to startup CEO,
they're trying to figure out, Ithink, as you said, what is
enough?
What is the right balance?
How much do I need?
And it depends on their sizeand it depends on where they are
on their stage for sure.
Right.
What are some of the, you knowlessons you've taken away as
(14:54):
you've shifted from corporate tostartup
Ali Farell (14:55):
yeah for me it's clarity there's almost nothing
more important when you're at astartup when people are wearing
multiple hats than clarity likestartups require speed for sure
but speed without clarity is ischaos that's what creates chaos
right and so clarity is criticalit's foundational for me that
(15:16):
means over communicating themission the vision the values
and the priorities so put thethose up front every single day
in every single way, make thempublic, make them accessible at
any point in time early on.
My hope is that every personwithin a high growth startup can
list them, can say those words,list the critical KPIs, list
(15:38):
the critical OKRs, like listthem, put them up front always.
It is worthwhile work to builda vision, to build values really
early on and anchor to those.
And that helps with clarity,right?
That's really important.
I think it's also though aboutdefinitions in my experience
really focusing on what goodlooks like and defining that is
(16:00):
really important some HR peoplewill come in and I have done
this I have been like victim tothis and it's like no no we
gotta measure performance likeI'm gonna build these crazy
competency models and we'regonna do this like robust
process and everyone hates youbecause it doesn't make sense
right so like
Fahd Alhattab (16:16):
I love I love that you've brought this up Ali
because like so we do leadershipdevelopment unicorn labs right
and the amount of time we havecompanies that are like, we just
need to do a full competencystudy.
I'm like...
Honestly, we've studied yourstartups.
I can tell you what the topcompetencies you're looking for
are.
They probably shared acrossmost companies what high
(16:36):
performers are.
The studies have been done.
Here's a report.
Let's not spend six monthsidentifying competencies.
Please, please.
Ali Farell (16:45):
Like I've done that.
I have done that.
But I have refined it againfrom the corporate to startup.
Fahd Alhattab (16:52):
Yes, because there's different competencies
that's needed also fromcorporate to startup.
P.E., adventure.
And so, but again, it's funnybecause we can spend so much
time on it and like doing a bitof it.
And I always joke, I said,okay, we don't want you to do
it, but if you want to do it, Ihave a consultant for you.
But it's like hone in on whatyou're really looking for and
let's make it quick.
(17:12):
Let's make it dirty.
Let's find some key pieces.
Now, you know what?
Maybe that's an interestingdiscussion.
What are some of thecharacteristics of the high
performing teams, the small,nimble, the Davids that are
different than some of whatmakes high performing teams?
Yeah.
Ali Farell (17:29):
So I think it's about, I will always go back to
curiosity.
It's something I value and Ithink it's really important when
you're building.
So I think there's just aninnate curiosity that is
different in the Davids and theGoliaths.
I think it's listening.
I think it's default tovelocity.
I think there's a greater needto pivot confidently, to be
(17:49):
like, okay, I tried this, liketo know when to call it.
You know, there's like to bemindful of that kind of sunk
cost bias that exists in humans.
I think at a startup, you needto think 10 steps ahead.
You need to, you know, riskmitigate on the fly.
You can't really beegotistical.
It exists.
So everyone has an ego thathelps us survive.
(18:09):
And I do think startup leadersand CEOs, Not pretty big egos,
but like that's distracting.
We've got to just get that incheck.
Fahd Alhattab (18:19):
I think it's key because it's sort of, I've
talked about this before.
It's like you need to bedelusional enough to start.
Ali Farell (18:25):
Yes.
Yeah.
You need to believe your ownstuff.
Fahd Alhattab (18:30):
Because then you're not going to start.
So I need just enough delusionfor you to actually start, but
not too much delusion that yourego gets in the way for you to
be able to bring other peoplealong.
Ali Farell (18:40):
That's a hard balance.
And that is why you needpeople.
You need a team.
You need a villain.
External.
But that is one of the things.
Also, I think in a startup, youdon't have all the data always
at all.
So you need to be reallyconfident in decisioning without
having all the data and youneed to be really cool with
failing.
That's important.
(19:01):
Like you can't internalizefailure.
It's not a characteristic ofyou that you are a failure.
It's like, hey, I tried to sayit didn't work.
And I think one of, honest toGod, one of the characteristics
that I just crave in a startupis someone who takes an extreme
level of ownership.
In a startup, if I hear someonesay to me or to somebody else,
(19:22):
well, that's not my job.
I cringe.
I cringe.
It doesn't mean you should bein everyone else's business,
but...
It might not be your job to do,but if there is a need, if
there's an opportunity, ifthere's a gap, take it,
internalize it, think about it.
brainstorm about how to solveit.
Like it's your job.
Sorry.
It's your job.
I don't.
Fahd Alhattab (19:40):
Every big problem in the business and a startup
is your problem.
And I think that's a key shift.
And that's a big shift betweenthe corporate and the startups,
the Goliaths, the Davids.
So let me shift you here for amoment, Ali.
So in a startup and in theexplore side of the business, in
the Davids, they, you know,success is product market fit.
Success is we got customers.
Success is we're gettingtraction.
(20:02):
You know, MRR is growing.
Our ARR is growing.
Invest are giving us a bit moremoney.
Like it's humming, it's going.
As you start to grow out of theonly measure of success being
revenue, you start to look atadditional measures of success.
and some of our corporate hrthat get plugged into our
startups start to look at all ofthese different measures right
(20:26):
get employee engagement we lookat performance we look at you
know some like revenue peremployee is good for startups
and at some level you know youget diversity scores you get
just all of these differentthere's like 12 different
potential people metrics and Itbecomes, as you said, it becomes
noise and the music isn'tclear.
So in your opinion, how shouldleadership, how should the
(20:49):
C-suite look at measuring orunderstanding performance in
their teams as they're growing,as they're growing between this
startup to scale
Ali Farell (21:00):
up?
I think there are ways you cando that at a company-wide level.
And I think there are reallysimple ways to do that at a team
level that don't feel so heavy.
I think what you were justdescribing, I consider vanity
metrics.
Like, oh, employee net promoterscore.
Yes.
I want to know that.
I want to know that our teamlikes it so much here that they
(21:21):
want to bring their colleagues.
That is literally one sprinklein metrics that matter, in my
humble opinion.
I always ask it, but I'm notthat interested in it, if I'm
being really honest with you.
So my preference is to getreally curious about
organizational health.
So I read somewhere at somepoint years ago that
organizational health is acompetitive advantage.
(21:43):
And it really is.
And there are a milliondifferent inputs into
organizational health.
But for me, it's...
and really kind of creating abaseline and measuring things
like structure, right?
And its influence on someone'sability to work.
So it's, you know, does thestructure support collaboration?
Does it support communication?
Is it actually ineffective inthat way?
(22:05):
I want to know whether peoplehave autonomy and
decision-making.
I want to know, When someonewants to do a good job, what
challenges exist that limitstheir ability to do that?
They have the will and theskill, but they can't.
I want to know what that is.
Clarity, curiosity, andrestraint are so important when
you're structuring a startup.
To me, that's the data I want.
(22:27):
I want it at an organizationallevel.
I want it at a team level.
I want heat maps.
I want that data.
because there's such insight tobe gained and to build from.
So I'm looking atorganizational health.
ENPS, like, cool, that's one ofthem, but that's not meaningful
to me.
Fahd Alhattab (22:44):
When you mention organizational health, it
reminds me of, I mean, the teamdynamics assessment that we've
developed over the years, whichis sort of looking at, you know,
do you have psychologicalsafety in the team?
Do you have empowerment?
Are people actually beingempowered to make decisions?
How is conflict handled?
Is leadership fluid or is itthe same people always leading,
right?
Is there a sense of meaning andpurpose?
We're sort of looking at thesedifferent pieces.
(23:05):
But Ali, we still end up atsurveys.
We still end up at thechallenge.
Ali Farell (23:10):
You don't even need to.
Fahd Alhattab (23:12):
Okay.
Okay.
So tell me, cause here's thechallenge.
Okay.
So I'm a CEO.
My team's under 20.
That's fine.
I can get a pulse.
My team is under 50.
I start losing a little bit ofthe pulse.
My team is 50 to a hundred andyou develop what we call CEO
disease, which means bullshitfilters upwards.
I think it's Daniel Goldman,
Ali Farell (23:31):
right?
Everything's amazing.
Right?
Fahd Alhattab (23:34):
Because the individual contributor tells
their manager, oh my God, wemessed this up.
This isn't working.
The manager tells theirmanager, oh, we messed something
up, but like, it's okay.
We're fixing it.
Like telephone.
It's like the
Ali Farell (23:44):
game of telephone.
It's like BS telephone.
Fahd Alhattab (23:46):
Correct.
And it just gets more positive.
And then at the top, they'relike, everything's working.
We're on it.
Like some, you know, we'refixing everything.
And then six months in, youknow, you're not hitting
metrics.
The only thing you're lookingat is is revenue, customer
churn, and you're like, what isgoing on?
Why aren't we hitting thesemetrics that I'm looking at from
a business perspective?
(24:06):
So as the company grows, and Ican't always just get the pulse
from walking around and being insome meetings.
Ali Farell (24:13):
Yeah, well, especially in a remote world,
right?
Fahd Alhattab (24:15):
Especially in a remote world.
What are leadership teams doingto, or what do you think they
can do to really get a sense ofunderstanding success?
Ali Farell (24:24):
So I have to say, I have a lot of empathy for CEOs
in growth mode because of that.
people are afraid of thempeople are you know the bigger
you are the more kind of like onthis philosophical pedestal
CEOs like they don't get thereal real and they still
desperately want it and they'relike why isn't anyone talking to
me it's like they're notprobably not going to like so I
(24:44):
do have a lot of empathy forthat but I do think there are
ways that leaders even at afunctional level can kind of
measure the health and thestrength of their teams like
you're saying without reallyarduous surveys and I think it's
kind of three things right soLeaders have more at their
disposal to check in frequently.
Sure, you can do surveys, youcan do reviews, you can do skip
levels.
I think having conversationsand when you are together,
(25:07):
really using that timemeaningfully makes a big
difference.
But I also think you have thegreat skill of observation as a
human being.
And so surveys are reallyheavy, but it's about getting
that awareness.
And if I am a leader in a teamthat is scaling and my team's
getting a little bit bigger, Ireally want to understand a So
(25:29):
does your team feel comfortabletelling you the truth even When
they know you are not going tolike it, you'll know.
You'll know if they are becauseyou will find out something
that you wish you knew earlier.
You will find it out very late.
You will find it out when youdon't have time to impact it
positively.
And so that is your cue tobuild a safe place, to really
(25:49):
work on trust.
So measuring trust and truthdoesn't have to come through a
survey.
It comes through communicationchannels naturally.
I think decisioning is anothersignal.
You can get this data throughreally human signals, not
software.
surveys right so like are youleader an obstacle like are you
the problem do you micromanageso hard that your team is
(26:11):
paralyzed to move in yourabsence like You need to work on
that.
If you are telling me thatevery decision requires three
meetings and there's a follow-upmeeting, then there's like a,
you know, too long, don't readSlack channel.
And then it's like, throwanother 30 on.
Like, are you not, do yourealize how many resources
(26:32):
you've wasted getting todecisioning?
Like if your team is afraid tomake the wrong call or to make
any call, they're not gonna,they're not even gonna make any
calls.
They're just gonna wait.
They're gonna freeze andthey're gonna wait.
And so you as a leader have anopportunity to, That's hard.
That's
Fahd Alhattab (26:48):
hard.
Let me see.
Because like, so I say foundersare delusional in their ego at
first.
They also have anothersuperpower that becomes a bit of
a weakness.
And the other superpower isthat...
As a founder, you actuallydon't make a lot of data-based
decision-making.
You make gut-baseddecision-making because there's
(27:09):
no data in the beginning.
You don't have enoughcustomers.
You're just making gut-basedinstinct decisions.
You are an artist and you go, Ihave a vision and I'm going to
paint this picture and I'm goingto make people love it.
And then you iterate thepicture and so on and so forth.
Because they've got such avisceral, instinctual
decision-making process, whenpeople don't make a similar
(27:32):
quality of decision.
They jump down.
They jump in.
It's
Ali Farell (27:37):
a judgment.
It's a judgment in howsomeone's doing something.
But it's like, did you get thedesire to result?
Like, did it happen?
Fahd Alhattab (27:44):
That's important.
Yeah.
And that's it.
That's it.
And that's, I mean, it's funny.
You know, we're talking aboutlevers earlier.
I thought the number one leverin startups is managers.
Managers are so important in astartup.
Even more so.
Even more so than in acorporate.
I say in a corporation, they'veprofessionalized so many parts
of a manager's role that if youput someone that's mediocre,
(28:06):
they're sort of caught.
They're not going to.
impact too much, right?
But in a startup, so much isdependent.
Everything HR is the manager,right?
Yeah.
So how good the quality of yourmanagers is a direct volatile
impact, whether positive orextremely
Ali Farell (28:25):
negative.
Huge, like huge.
Early on, I was talking aboutlike, you know, the challenges
from going from corporate tostartup.
And I talked a little bit aboutcopy and paste.
But the other thing isleadership accountability.
Like in a large organization,like you're saying, ineffective
leaders can hide, like they canhide behind systems and
processes.
And typically there'ssuccession plans and workforce
plans and internal mobility.
(28:46):
And so talent management inhiring feels less consequential.
Like, you've got to back stuff.
Like, you're cool, lessconsequential.
And it is like there is suchthis tolerance for mediocrity
that it doesn't make sense tome, right?
Because you can be.
You don't have to, like, trythat hard, honestly.
Fahd Alhattab (29:00):
You can get away with it.
If you just do your part, themachine still runs.
Nothing's broken.
There's nothing wrong.
They tell me nothing's broken.
It's like, That's how theGoliath gets bloated.
That's how the Goliath becomesless nimble, right?
Like an inability to changebecause you've got all of these
cogs in the machine that arejust like...
Ali Farell (29:22):
I'm status quo.
I'm okay being mediocre.
Like I'm cool being a C plus.
But...
At a startup or at a muchsmaller, more nimble
organization, every singlemanager matters.
Every single hire matters.
Every person is consequential.
I find that I have taken talentselection way more seriously in
the startups and approached itthrough such a cutthroat lens,
(29:44):
which I didn't and likelywouldn't think about doing at a
large organization.
It doesn't mean you always getit right.
People are dynamic.
Things change so fast.
But the process is verydeliberate in hiring and in
talent and manager training andthings.
It's about being thoughtful andvery deliberate.
That is a process or aconversation that I do think is
(30:06):
actually really important.
In the world where it's justenough, I do think you need to
be very deliberate about hiring,being thoughtful about the
personas you're going after,managing that so tightly.
I don't think you have a greatmargin of error when you're
hiring leaders in a startup.
You kind of got to...
And when you accept mediocrityat a startup that you might see
(30:29):
in a large organization, that'sa precedent.
You, my friend, have now set aprecedent for what you're
willing to tolerate.
So don't be shocked when six to12 months down the line, you
and I are having a conversationabout like, I don't know,
everyone's just like mailing itin.
Well, like, did you expectsomething different?
Fahd Alhattab (30:48):
Yeah,
Ali Farell (30:48):
yeah.
It's a precedent.
It's so important.
Fahd Alhattab (30:51):
Let's talk about that and then managing
performance in a startup becausethis...
is always fun.
Performance reviews in astartup, career conversations in
a startup.
I feel like everyone gets themwrong.
So, because I think they're abit of a copy paste.
I think we get a lot of copypaste in performance management
when people are trying to dopips or they're trying to, you
(31:13):
know, just like, what are yourthoughts?
I'm very opinionated.
I'm going to try to keep myopinion.
I think people know my opinionby now.
What is your thoughts on how wedo performance management in
startups and maybe where we getit wrong?
Ali Farell (31:24):
So, I have like so many, hot takes and I hope
they're connected.
I can't wait to hear what yoursare.
So I don't believe inperformance improvement plans.
I haven't done one in years.
I do not believe in them.
I do not find them effective atall.
They don't measure performance.
It's more of like a CYA andthere, and there is a need for
(31:45):
that for both the employee andthe business, but there are ways
that you can kind of amicablypart ways with a pip.
So I don't, That's not aprocess I will take with me.
That is an odd take.
I'm
Fahd Alhattab (31:59):
in agreement.
I think performance managementshould be done regularly in your
one-on-one.
Ali Farell (32:05):
Yes.
I build a really robustperformance review.
It's like, we're going to do itannually.
Here are these beautifulcompetency models and here's
this 360 feedback and here'sthis thing.
And it took so long.
And because I think our peopleare so great, they're kind of
just really flexible.
Like they're going to do it.
but not enough people gotbenefit from it.
And so I said, okay, I hearyou.
(32:26):
Let's not do that again.
That was super distracting.
Fahd Alhattab (32:29):
They use a lot of time and a lot of resources
also away from the problems thatthey, our managers and our
teams need to be doing.
Ali Farell (32:36):
And they're delayed.
Like, so I'm asking you to giveme feedback about stuff that
happened six months ago.
Like I moved on.
I've lived 18 lives, a recencybias activity, and it just gets
messy.
So I've done that.
Fahd Alhattab (32:46):
One of my thoughts is like, there's
probably like 5% of the companythat actually needs this
performance conversation.
And most of us are justavoiding a conversation with
those people.
So then we build out this wholeentire robust system to get to
talk to like five people thatshould have been talked to.
So like my recommendation, isusually when people come to me
(33:08):
like we want to do performancemanagement I go who's the
problem who's the problem justlike make a list and let's just
talk to those people about whatthe problem is and then you know
but the only the only argumentI've gotten on that I've sort of
agreed with that that resonatesis it is a backstop it's a
backstop for the managers andthe people who are not giving
(33:29):
feedback but you should know whoyour managers are that are not
giving adequate
Ali Farell (33:34):
feedback it shows up in the results Like, I'm sorry.
You don't need a performancereview system.
You don't need to wasteresources and time.
Make sure you're giving yourteam feedback at any point in
time.
I should be able to talk to anyemployee.
Yeah.
And say, do you know how you'redoing right now?
Do you know how you'reperforming?
I should be able to say that atany time to any employee and
they should answer me.
But this time around, we'retrying something where we said,
(33:56):
employee, if you want feedback,ask for it.
Here's the tool.
Here's the framework.
You schedule it.
You want
Fahd Alhattab (34:03):
it.
Because high performersactually want it.
want it at times and they'renot getting it and so you've
sort of given
Ali Farell (34:10):
you employee like ask for it you want feedback ask
for it so we kind of put it onthe team put it on the team
we're trying it i don't knowwe're right probably love it so
i don't know how it's gonna work
Fahd Alhattab (34:21):
i think there's a There's always real power when
we democratize something, whenwe shift the balance of power
and the balance of power here,you're redistributing it to the
employee saying it's in yourhands.
This is your power.
If you want to learn about howyou can get better, ask for it
and your manager will thenengage.
And then that way it's not thisonce a year thing where it
(34:41):
feels like the whole companystops just to like try and do
this one thing.
And then
Ali Farell (34:46):
do you think whether you have a performance review
or not, you need to be havingtalent conversations like here.
we look at talent really onthis performance continuum where
it's like, it's aboutachievement.
So results in behavior.
So you can have somebody who'sa high achiever, but an absolute
nightmare to work with.
That's one kind of, you know,you can have somebody who is
(35:07):
like the soul of theorganization, but they just
aren't contributing.
Like those conversations stillneed to happen.
So it's not an excuse to nottalk about talent.
Fahd Alhattab (35:17):
Those are the two hardest.
Those are the two hardest,
Ali Farell (35:19):
right?
I know.
Fahd Alhattab (35:20):
The asshole that performs or the, kind one that
is lovable but doesn't performyou're like I don't want either
no because they actually bothare not meeting the expectations
and I think that's when peoplesay it And it's a precedent.
And they attract more peoplelike them.
Or people go, okay, so I canget away with this?
Ali Farell (35:37):
Right.
Like, okay, I can be a hugejerk.
And as long as I'm, like, youknow, checking the box, all is
forgiven.
So, you know, I don't think youjust throw people away.
You need to coach.
You need to give feedback.
You need to be, like, radicallyclear and really supportive.
Like, I don't think it's justlike, whoop, you're out.
Fahd Alhattab (35:52):
All right, Allie, let's end it with one big
question here for you, which is,what's your biggest mistake?
What did you copy-paste?
What did you try?
I mean, you told me a littlebit about your performance
management, how you've shiftedfrom it.
But where have you learned alesson on this one?
Ali Farell (36:10):
There's so many things.
I do think the copy and pasteof process is pretty
catastrophic.
And I've done it now a coupletimes.
Like I do think that is reallydetrimental.
I think it impacts your brandas an HR leader.
I think it impacts, you know, ateam's ability to believe you
understand what's going on inthe business.
I think that's probably mygreatest learning is really the
(36:31):
copy and paste of process.
pace of process, which is why Ihave such a visceral reaction
to it today.
And I think, too, the onething, it's classic.
It's promoting too fast, firingtoo slow.
I've done that.
I've seen that.
I've kind of watched it happen.
Fahd Alhattab (36:45):
We give away C-suite titles like candy and
stuff.
Ali Farell (36:48):
It's so interesting.
And even VP titles, which Iactually think is worse,
possibly, because that's withinreach.
Fahd Alhattab (36:55):
Six VPs.
There's like six VPs in astartup of 50 people.
Ali Farell (37:01):
And employees, like I'm saying, like VPs seem within
reach to employees.
And then that kind of goes backto the precedent, right?
It's like, oh, this person wasdirector, senior director, VP in
like six months.
You're like, I can do that too,but you can't.
Counter offers, don't do it.
I don't believe in them.
Like I am a hard no to acounter offer.
I have done it and it hasbitten me every single time.
Fahd Alhattab (37:23):
So what do you mean by counter?
Let's just get clear on that.
Ali Farell (37:26):
So when someone says, hey, I'm leaving for X, Y,
and Z job, you're like, oh myGod, no, please don't.
We need you.
Here's this whatever it mightbe.
Again, it's precedent, right?
It's all these things I'mreally saying are precedent.
Process, in precedent.
Fahd Alhattab (37:41):
Because then they just start.
That's interesting.
I think that's when people tryand copy-paste because Netflix
overpays significantly.
But you're not Netflix.
Ali Farell (37:49):
Right.
We don't have the coststructure for that.
And I don't think there's aneed.
What does the business need todo
Fahd Alhattab (37:55):
that?
What's interesting is Harvardis known for the opposite.
So Harvard overpays theirprofessors, saying that if you
want to work here, you know, ifyou're like, yeah, so they're
sort of saying, we only want thepeople that really want to work
with us and want the Harvardbrand.
So there's an interesting, whenyou have a, yeah, you know, are
you, yeah.
So that, I mean, that's, it's,it's interesting.
(38:16):
I'm going to summarize some ofthe points that you said here.
And as I summarize them, I wantyou to give us the last hot
take.
So I'm going to kind ofsummarize and then you give us
the last hot take.
So one, I got nine really goodpoints.
I wrote out that, that I reallyliked throughout conversation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the first ones youtalked about was altitude.
So knowing as a startup leaderthat you've got to be able to
work big picture in the morningpotentially and then detailed
(38:39):
and so the successful ones areable to shift altitudes really
well curiosity you brought thatup over and over again you gotta
get really curious what are weactually building here what do
we need to create don't try andcopy paste figure out solutions
for the specific problems thatare happening at your startups I
really like what you said learnto listen to the music through
the noise what is the actualmusic through all that noise
(39:02):
what are we you know what are welooking for what is the right
metrics for Not just the metricsI can copy-paste.
Clarity, clarity, clarity,over-communicate, clarity.
That was the other one.
You talked about velocity and,and being 10 steps ahead and
really being able to pivot yourability to change.
(39:23):
It's funny.
You know, I work with somecorporates.
We do leadership development.
We will leadership development,obviously across industries and
startups and scale upsprimarily, but here and then we
do some larger corporates.
Corporates always talk aboutchange management, but startups
never talk about changemanagement because the reality
is your every day is changemanagement.
Your every day is a pivot andyour ability to actually deal
with that change.
So I really, really like that.
(39:45):
You talk about, Extremeownership.
That if someone doesn't haveextreme ownership, they can
extremely get out.
Ali Farell (39:50):
That's true.
Yes, yes, yes.
Move really fast out the door,please.
Fahd Alhattab (39:56):
Understand organizational health and the
pulse of where things areinstead of measuring like NPS
employee engagement.
Really try and get a pulse ofyour organizational health.
Always have talentconversations.
Do not wait and save them forperformance reviews.
Always have talentconversations regularly and just
deal with the problem.
Yes, yes.
(40:16):
So these are some really goodtakeaways.
But Ali, give me the last hottake.
Ali Farell (40:43):
I feel like this might be career limiting to say,
but I'm going to say it becauseI do believe it.
I think in startups, it is soeasy to think that you have a
talent problem.
I truly believe that it's not atalent problem.
It's a leadership problem.
Founders, CPOs, you know, newhires in a startup environment
(41:05):
are like, oh, we just need tohire the right people.
Yeah, maybe.
And you need to build the rightenvironment.
Like, That's on you.
You need to be clear.
You need to be accountable.
You need to build the rightenvironment.
Hiring strategy is not going tosave you if the leadership
strategy is broken.
That is so important.
(41:25):
So it's like, it's me.
Hi, I'm the problem.
It's that.
That is so true.
But I know that and I try towork on that and I welcome all
the feedback that comes withthat.
But that I think is going to bemy...
Fahd Alhattab (41:38):
That's your hot take.
I love it, Ali.
That was amazing.
That was awesome.
Ali, thank you so much.
Thank you for sharing with ourUnicorn Leader audience and
everyone that's going to benefitfrom this.
This was lovely, funconversation.
You've got such great energy.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for being a part ofthis.
Thank you for
Ali Farell (41:55):
having me.
Fahd Alhattab (41:56):
For the folks listening, you can find our
episodes on unicornlabs.ca, butyou can find it on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube.
Ali, where can people find you?
Are you on LinkedIn?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ali Farell (42:08):
Find me on LinkedIn I'd love to chat about any of
these things.
Fahd Alhattab (42:11):
Fantastic.
We'll find Allie on LinkedIn.
Thank you, folks.
Thank you.
Ali Farell (42:14):
Thank you so much.
Fahd Alhattab (42:16):
And that's all for now.
To me, the most talented and most impactful
leaders are those who are themost self-aware.
I don't care where you went toschool.
I don't care your pedigree.
I care about your level ofself-awareness.
So those two things, superimportant.
Really huge red flag whensomeone says, well, when I was
at, and it's a huge kind oforganization.
Well, we did it this way.
And I'm like, yeah, but supercool.
Very impressive.
(00:20):
I love that experience for you,but it needs to be applicable
to our reality.
And there's art really inknowing that.
how to apply that and where toget curious.
So to me, I think curiosity isthe most important thing.
Fahd Alhattab (00:39):
Hello and welcome to our Unicorn Leadership
Podcast.
We're officially kicking offseason two.
Ali, I'm excited to have youhere.
I am equally excited.
It's going to be awesome.
Ali, this is the podcast wherewe interview startup leaders,
whether they're CPOs or CEOs orfounders, about how to build
high-performing teams andhigh-performing cultures.
(01:01):
So we're going to ask Ali allabout her stories, her journey,
some tools, like specifics, somemistakes.
I love when we get into like,you know, where did we mess up?
up and so that our audience andour leaders that are listening
to this and our founders canlearn from it.
The podcast is brought to youby Unicorn Labs.
I'm Fahad Al-Hattab, thefounder of Unicorn Labs, also
the host of this fun podcast.
And you can learn more about usat unicornlabs.ca where we will
(01:25):
host the podcast, but it isavailable everywhere.
So today's guest is Ali.
Ali Farrell.
All right.
So Ali, you've led a lot.
You've led teams.
Ali Farell (01:35):
Done some things.
Fahd Alhattab (01:37):
You've done some things.
So you did some You didn't workin corporate.
You didn't work in startups.
Now you're a CPO of a much moremature and growing company.
So this is all really exciting.
You're three times chief peopleofficer.
And you're currently the CPO atApprentice.
Tell me a little bit aboutApprentice.
Ali Farell (01:55):
Yeah.
So Apprentice is a cloud-basedmanufacturing execution software
and really digitaltransformation platform.
And so most of our clients arein the pharmaceutical and cell
and gene therapies area.
and really our mission is toproduce a large portion of the
world's therapeutics.
(02:15):
And so we're really supermission-driven as an
organization and we're doingsome pretty cool stuff.
So a lot of exciting thingscoming to our roadmap.
Fahd Alhattab (02:24):
I feel like your CMO would be really happy with
that pitch right there.
Like you just nailed it.
Like that was crisp.
So you've come, you know, TheApprentice with a lot of
different experiences, leadingteams, building strategies for
people from fast-growingstartups to larger companies,
major restructuring, That is oneof
Ali Farell (02:51):
my special talents.
I do tend to run a little bittowards the fire, so I think I
can bring order to it.
It is kind of a cycle I findmyself in for one reason or
another.
Yeah.
Fahd Alhattab (03:03):
So this episode, we're going to really unpack
what it really takes to buildand scale a team to the top.
And we're going to talk aboutthe difference between the
Davids and the Goliaths, thedifference between the corporate
HR, that is, and the Davids andhow these small but mighty
teams really grow.
So without further ado, Ali, Iwant you to introduce yourself
to our audience.
Tell me a little bit aboutyourself.
(03:24):
Where are you calling in from?
Where'd you go to school?
Where'd you grow up?
I'd like to know a little bitmore.
Ali Farell (03:30):
Yeah, so I grew up in upstate New York in a really,
really tiny town calledFrankfurt, which nobody knows
about by any means, but it was areally good place to grow up
for that reason.
But I ended up going to collegeat Marist, which is in
Poughkeepsie, New York.
I thought I would be ajournalist.
I thought I would be a lawyer.
I thought I would be so manythings.
And I have kind of ended up inHR for a lot of different
(03:51):
reasons, but it's actually apath that makes a lot of sense
given all of the things Ithought I would be doing in my
life.
So today I live in...
at Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
My career trajectory has been alittle unusual, think for a two
people officer, because I havelarge publicly traded company
experience.
I've got PE backed experience.
(04:11):
I have bootstrapped SaaSstartup experience, which was
really amazing.
And I also have high growth VCbacked experience.
So I've kind of done a lot ofdifferent things.
And it's not often I think youfind a CPO who finds success in
each of those differentoperating models.
Fahd Alhattab (04:27):
So Ali, you told me you've had a winding career
career, a little few differentthings.
You wanted to be a journalist.
This is your moment as ajournalist, Allie.
Ali Farell (04:34):
Honestly, I thought I would be a journalist.
I love interviewing people.
I like talking to people.
I like digging into things.
I'm super curious.
And so really in this job, notonly do I get to do this and
hang out with you all, but I getto talk to different people
every day and learn differentthings.
And so it makes a lot of sense.
Like the things I learned inschool and things I learned in
my internships and all of that,really I use today, honest to
(04:56):
God.
It's crazy how it all worksout, really.
Fahd Alhattab (04:58):
That's awesome.
You still get Gathering all thestories.
So where...
Yes.
What was the first job out ofuniversity?
And then what was the firstpivot into HR?
Do you remember those?
Ali Farell (05:08):
Yes, I do.
So my first job, I always hadmultiple jobs.
But my first job out ofuniversity, I was a TV news
producer at my local TV stationin upstate New York.
So that was my first job out ofcollege.
I was a news producer.
Yeah.
And I did a little copywriting.
Fahd Alhattab (05:26):
Okay.
Ali Farell (05:26):
As well.
I did a little copywriting.
Fahd Alhattab (05:28):
And what was the pivot into HR?
What was the pivot into thatworld?
Ali Farell (05:32):
Yeah.
So I was a copywriter at areally super small agency in the
Philadelphia suburbs.
And I ended up leaving thereand going to a company at the
time that was called Avenue ARazorfish.
So it was an advertising agencybased in Philadelphia.
I was really doing outboundselling SEO and I hated it.
(05:53):
I was like, this is soulsucking.
for so many reasons.
And there just so happened tobe a recruiting coordinator job
open at Avenue A.
And I moved into that.
And that was kind of where Istarted.
And that was really where mylove for this function took off.
And it was a company I loved.
And I ended up being there foralmost 10 years.
So I grew really quickly.
(06:13):
So that was my first entranceinto HR.
Fahd Alhattab (06:16):
So your first entrance, how would you describe
that company?
Were they larger?
Were they startup?
Were they like, what would youclassify them under?
Sort of you got your chopsunderway What category of...
Ali Farell (06:28):
I would call it corporate.
So Avenue A was part of a largecorporate organization called
AQuantive.
And AQuantive was actuallyacquired some point in my tenure
by Microsoft.
Microsoft kind of acquired us,separated us for parts, kept the
ad tech platform, sold off theadvertising agencies to
publicists.
So that I would consider largecorporate company experience,
(06:52):
but advertising.
Fahd Alhattab (06:54):
Yeah.
So...
let's talk about the lessonsfrom corporate.
So those are some of the firstlessons.
What works in HR and corporate?
So if I'm in a bigger company,I'm doing some HR.
What are some of the stuff thatyou're like, hey, this stuff
works here.
We did well.
We had some successes.
And I'm sort of maybeforeshadowing to, you know, did
(07:14):
you try and apply some of thoseto when you started
transitioning and where were thechallenges?
So what worked at the corporateHR level?
Ali Farell (07:21):
Yeah.
There are so many challengesgoing from a big corporate.
One of the greatest challengescomes down to unlearning.
So when you move from a bigcorporate environment, As a
leader, you have to unlearn alot of things.
There's so much.
There's plenty.
You have resources.
You have processes.
You have programs.
SMEs.
You have corporate functionswho just focus on one thing in a
(07:43):
really powerful way.
And they move a lot slower, forsure.
There's less ambiguity in rolesand in levels.
And it's so rare in that kindof organization where you find
somebody wearingmultidisciplinary hats.
It's like, there are jobs.
There are people.
There are resources.
Almost all of that getsstripped away.
When you go to a startup,that's it, right?
(08:03):
And you can take some of whatyou learn from like a best
practice conceptual perspective,but you have to build from
scratch when you're at astartup.
And you have to work at so manydifferent altitudes.
I've been a builder, anideator, an operator.
I've had to, in the morning, bea really strategic business
partner and talk about strategy.
(08:24):
But in the afternoon, I'mrolling up my sleeves and
sourcing candidates.
You're just at these differentaltitudes.
And I think that is reallyenergizing.
And I really, really love that.
But it is very different.
When you come from corporateand you go to a startup, you
really need to be mindful aboutshowing a little bit of
restraint.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Fahd Alhattab (09:06):
Yeah, yeah.
So actually, I wanted to dig inthat, Ali.
So what are some of themistakes here that happen often
where an HR person coming fromcorporate might be trying to
copy paste something over or afounder who isn't sure what to
expect either is sort of, youknow, that often founders are
making mistakes because they'refirst time building their
(09:29):
company and they don't know whatto expect of the role.
So they let the new HR personlead, which is great.
But if that HR person is sortof copy paste from corporate,
then we're leading them down amore rigid path.
Ali Farell (09:40):
Yes, yes.
If you are a new founder, a newCEO, a first-time CEO, or
really any CEO, I do think it'shugely beneficial to find
yourself two different types ofcoaches.
One who has built and beenthere before, who can be a
sounding board for youexternally, unrelated, right?
And
Fahd Alhattab (10:00):
that's not a plug.
That's not a plug to UnicornLabs, guys.
That's just, you know, she saidit.
I didn't tell her to say it.
Ali Farell (10:05):
You really did it.
But I think it's, I think it'sso, so important to have a very
neutral sounding board.
Somebody who's been there, donethat to be kind of like a sharp
up for you.
I think that's reallyimportant.
And the other really importantresource to have early on is a
personal executive coach foryou.
One who can guide you on yourpath to self-awareness.
To me, the most talented andmost impactful leaders are those
(10:29):
who are the most self-aware.
I don't care where you went toschool.
I don't care your pedigree.
I care about your level ofself-awareness.
So those two things, superimportant.
Really where I've seen it, thisnotion of like copy and paste,
right?
Coming from where you weresomewhere large to coming from
going to somewhere very small.
Everyone's susceptible to it.
HR people, leaders, new hires,all of that.
(10:49):
Really huge red flag whensomeone says, well, when I was
at, and it's a huge kind oforganization, insert whatever
mega enterprise you want, Well,we did it this way.
And I'm like, yeah, that'ssuper cool.
Very impressive.
I love that experience for you,but it needs to be applicable
to our reality.
I think curiosity is the mostimportant thing.
When you are starting at astartup, regardless of what your
(11:11):
experience, you just have to bea sponge.
You have to ask more questions.
Then, you know, you have tolisten more and ask more than
than share.
I think that's reallyimportant.
And I think you have to bereally focused on building a
scalable and intentionalfoundation and what works
somewhere else isn't going towork there.
Fahd Alhattab (11:30):
One of the things that you're saying here, Ali,
that I'd love to just like, youknow, focus on for a moment is
that the HR person in a startupcannot be solely an HR person.
Oh, yeah.
I see and maybe you can commenton it is like so an HR person
(12:14):
comes in to startup and startupis chaos because like startups
are chaos right like there's noprocess for this there's no this
is done through a randomspreadsheet I can't find a file
for this and they go oh my godwe need to build some processes
into this team and they overindex the other way so you need
processes but they over indexwith this like extreme rigid
(12:34):
like we're gonna build a processfor everything but because of
the pace and growth of a startupthe processes become outdated,
which is often why startupsstruggle with this process.
This is the sort of tensionbetween the explore and the
exploit is that if you overprocess something too early
without knowing what the rightprocess is, you over process
into the wrong way.
(12:55):
I would say you can be moreefficient, but you could
efficiently do the wrong thing.
Ali Farell (12:58):
Right, right.
Well, that's the chaos piece,right?
I do think I have this innateability to identify what is
noise and what is music, right?
There are just two, there aredifferent ways of thinking about
that.
And chaos can actually be acompetitive advantage if it
doesn't turn into panic.
So that's really important.
When I think about being a chaoswhisperer, to me, it's not
(13:18):
about eliminating chaos.
Like that's part of the fun.
So it's my job how to know howto operate within it, but then
how to bring other people alongand to turn some of that in
momentum, into momentum.
And like you were saying, youknow, sometimes process is too
much.
For me, operating kind of at anearly stage, it's bringing just
enough, not about perfection.
(13:40):
It's not about robustness.
It's not about beinginflexible.
And it is about just enough.
It's knowing so much about thebusiness to bring just enough
process and just enough policyand just enough structure.
It's about creating just enoughso people aren't paralyzed.
And I think one of the ways Ido this is by imagining the
(14:05):
company that I'm at as a living,breathing thing.
It's a system.
And this is one of the thingsmy coach taught me is like this
place, it is a living breathingsystem and it could speak.
What would it tell you itneeded right now?
And I promise you there isalmost no high growth startup
that's like, I need a lot ofprocess.
I need a lot of like tools.
That is, I would be shocked ifthat was what the system said
(14:29):
very early on.
Fahd Alhattab (14:30):
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is, this is, so thisis part of the challenge, right?
So when, when, when we're,we're talking to startup CEO,
they're trying to figure out, Ithink, as you said, what is
enough?
What is the right balance?
How much do I need?
And it depends on their sizeand it depends on where they are
on their stage for sure.
Right.
What are some of the, you knowlessons you've taken away as
(14:54):
you've shifted from corporate tostartup
Ali Farell (14:55):
yeah for me it's clarity there's almost nothing
more important when you're at astartup when people are wearing
multiple hats than clarity likestartups require speed for sure
but speed without clarity is ischaos that's what creates chaos
right and so clarity is criticalit's foundational for me that
(15:16):
means over communicating themission the vision the values
and the priorities so put thethose up front every single day
in every single way, make thempublic, make them accessible at
any point in time early on.
My hope is that every personwithin a high growth startup can
list them, can say those words,list the critical KPIs, list
(15:38):
the critical OKRs, like listthem, put them up front always.
It is worthwhile work to builda vision, to build values really
early on and anchor to those.
And that helps with clarity,right?
That's really important.
I think it's also though aboutdefinitions in my experience
really focusing on what goodlooks like and defining that is
(16:00):
really important some HR peoplewill come in and I have done
this I have been like victim tothis and it's like no no we
gotta measure performance likeI'm gonna build these crazy
competency models and we'regonna do this like robust
process and everyone hates youbecause it doesn't make sense
right so like
Fahd Alhattab (16:16):
I love I love that you've brought this up Ali
because like so we do leadershipdevelopment unicorn labs right
and the amount of time we havecompanies that are like, we just
need to do a full competencystudy.
I'm like...
Honestly, we've studied yourstartups.
I can tell you what the topcompetencies you're looking for
are.
They probably shared acrossmost companies what high
(16:36):
performers are.
The studies have been done.
Here's a report.
Let's not spend six monthsidentifying competencies.
Please, please.
Ali Farell (16:45):
Like I've done that.
I have done that.
But I have refined it againfrom the corporate to startup.
Fahd Alhattab (16:52):
Yes, because there's different competencies
that's needed also fromcorporate to startup.
P.E., adventure.
And so, but again, it's funnybecause we can spend so much
time on it and like doing a bitof it.
And I always joke, I said,okay, we don't want you to do
it, but if you want to do it, Ihave a consultant for you.
But it's like hone in on whatyou're really looking for and
let's make it quick.
(17:12):
Let's make it dirty.
Let's find some key pieces.
Now, you know what?
Maybe that's an interestingdiscussion.
What are some of thecharacteristics of the high
performing teams, the small,nimble, the Davids that are
different than some of whatmakes high performing teams?
Yeah.
Ali Farell (17:29):
So I think it's about, I will always go back to
curiosity.
It's something I value and Ithink it's really important when
you're building.
So I think there's just aninnate curiosity that is
different in the Davids and theGoliaths.
I think it's listening.
I think it's default tovelocity.
I think there's a greater needto pivot confidently, to be
(17:49):
like, okay, I tried this, liketo know when to call it.
You know, there's like to bemindful of that kind of sunk
cost bias that exists in humans.
I think at a startup, you needto think 10 steps ahead.
You need to, you know, riskmitigate on the fly.
You can't really beegotistical.
It exists.
So everyone has an ego thathelps us survive.
(18:09):
And I do think startup leadersand CEOs, Not pretty big egos,
but like that's distracting.
We've got to just get that incheck.
Fahd Alhattab (18:19):
I think it's key because it's sort of, I've
talked about this before.
It's like you need to bedelusional enough to start.
Ali Farell (18:25):
Yes.
Yeah.
You need to believe your ownstuff.
Fahd Alhattab (18:30):
Because then you're not going to start.
So I need just enough delusionfor you to actually start, but
not too much delusion that yourego gets in the way for you to
be able to bring other peoplealong.
Ali Farell (18:40):
That's a hard balance.
And that is why you needpeople.
You need a team.
You need a villain.
External.
But that is one of the things.
Also, I think in a startup, youdon't have all the data always
at all.
So you need to be reallyconfident in decisioning without
having all the data and youneed to be really cool with
failing.
That's important.
(19:01):
Like you can't internalizefailure.
It's not a characteristic ofyou that you are a failure.
It's like, hey, I tried to sayit didn't work.
And I think one of, honest toGod, one of the characteristics
that I just crave in a startupis someone who takes an extreme
level of ownership.
In a startup, if I hear someonesay to me or to somebody else,
(19:22):
well, that's not my job.
I cringe.
I cringe.
It doesn't mean you should bein everyone else's business,
but...
It might not be your job to do,but if there is a need, if
there's an opportunity, ifthere's a gap, take it,
internalize it, think about it.
brainstorm about how to solveit.
Like it's your job.
Sorry.
It's your job.
I don't.
Fahd Alhattab (19:40):
Every big problem in the business and a startup
is your problem.
And I think that's a key shift.
And that's a big shift betweenthe corporate and the startups,
the Goliaths, the Davids.
So let me shift you here for amoment, Ali.
So in a startup and in theexplore side of the business, in
the Davids, they, you know,success is product market fit.
Success is we got customers.
Success is we're gettingtraction.
(20:02):
You know, MRR is growing.
Our ARR is growing.
Invest are giving us a bit moremoney.
Like it's humming, it's going.
As you start to grow out of theonly measure of success being
revenue, you start to look atadditional measures of success.
and some of our corporate hrthat get plugged into our
startups start to look at all ofthese different measures right
(20:26):
get employee engagement we lookat performance we look at you
know some like revenue peremployee is good for startups
and at some level you know youget diversity scores you get
just all of these differentthere's like 12 different
potential people metrics and Itbecomes, as you said, it becomes
noise and the music isn'tclear.
So in your opinion, how shouldleadership, how should the
(20:49):
C-suite look at measuring orunderstanding performance in
their teams as they're growing,as they're growing between this
startup to scale
Ali Farell (21:00):
up?
I think there are ways you cando that at a company-wide level.
And I think there are reallysimple ways to do that at a team
level that don't feel so heavy.
I think what you were justdescribing, I consider vanity
metrics.
Like, oh, employee net promoterscore.
Yes.
I want to know that.
I want to know that our teamlikes it so much here that they
(21:21):
want to bring their colleagues.
That is literally one sprinklein metrics that matter, in my
humble opinion.
I always ask it, but I'm notthat interested in it, if I'm
being really honest with you.
So my preference is to getreally curious about
organizational health.
So I read somewhere at somepoint years ago that
organizational health is acompetitive advantage.
(21:43):
And it really is.
And there are a milliondifferent inputs into
organizational health.
But for me, it's...
and really kind of creating abaseline and measuring things
like structure, right?
And its influence on someone'sability to work.
So it's, you know, does thestructure support collaboration?
Does it support communication?
Is it actually ineffective inthat way?
(22:05):
I want to know whether peoplehave autonomy and
decision-making.
I want to know, When someonewants to do a good job, what
challenges exist that limitstheir ability to do that?
They have the will and theskill, but they can't.
I want to know what that is.
Clarity, curiosity, andrestraint are so important when
you're structuring a startup.
To me, that's the data I want.
(22:27):
I want it at an organizationallevel.
I want it at a team level.
I want heat maps.
I want that data.
because there's such insight tobe gained and to build from.
So I'm looking atorganizational health.
ENPS, like, cool, that's one ofthem, but that's not meaningful
to me.
Fahd Alhattab (22:44):
When you mention organizational health, it
reminds me of, I mean, the teamdynamics assessment that we've
developed over the years, whichis sort of looking at, you know,
do you have psychologicalsafety in the team?
Do you have empowerment?
Are people actually beingempowered to make decisions?
How is conflict handled?
Is leadership fluid or is itthe same people always leading,
right?
Is there a sense of meaning andpurpose?
We're sort of looking at thesedifferent pieces.
(23:05):
But Ali, we still end up atsurveys.
We still end up at thechallenge.
Ali Farell (23:10):
You don't even need to.
Fahd Alhattab (23:12):
Okay.
Okay.
So tell me, cause here's thechallenge.
Okay.
So I'm a CEO.
My team's under 20.
That's fine.
I can get a pulse.
My team is under 50.
I start losing a little bit ofthe pulse.
My team is 50 to a hundred andyou develop what we call CEO
disease, which means bullshitfilters upwards.
I think it's Daniel Goldman,
Ali Farell (23:31):
right?
Everything's amazing.
Right?
Fahd Alhattab (23:34):
Because the individual contributor tells
their manager, oh my God, wemessed this up.
This isn't working.
The manager tells theirmanager, oh, we messed something
up, but like, it's okay.
We're fixing it.
Like telephone.
It's like the
Ali Farell (23:44):
game of telephone.
It's like BS telephone.
Fahd Alhattab (23:46):
Correct.
And it just gets more positive.
And then at the top, they'relike, everything's working.
We're on it.
Like some, you know, we'refixing everything.
And then six months in, youknow, you're not hitting
metrics.
The only thing you're lookingat is is revenue, customer
churn, and you're like, what isgoing on?
Why aren't we hitting thesemetrics that I'm looking at from
a business perspective?
(24:06):
So as the company grows, and Ican't always just get the pulse
from walking around and being insome meetings.
Ali Farell (24:13):
Yeah, well, especially in a remote world,
right?
Fahd Alhattab (24:15):
Especially in a remote world.
What are leadership teams doingto, or what do you think they
can do to really get a sense ofunderstanding success?
Ali Farell (24:24):
So I have to say, I have a lot of empathy for CEOs
in growth mode because of that.
people are afraid of thempeople are you know the bigger
you are the more kind of like onthis philosophical pedestal
CEOs like they don't get thereal real and they still
desperately want it and they'relike why isn't anyone talking to
me it's like they're notprobably not going to like so I
(24:44):
do have a lot of empathy forthat but I do think there are
ways that leaders even at afunctional level can kind of
measure the health and thestrength of their teams like
you're saying without reallyarduous surveys and I think it's
kind of three things right soLeaders have more at their
disposal to check in frequently.
Sure, you can do surveys, youcan do reviews, you can do skip
levels.
I think having conversationsand when you are together,
(25:07):
really using that timemeaningfully makes a big
difference.
But I also think you have thegreat skill of observation as a
human being.
And so surveys are reallyheavy, but it's about getting
that awareness.
And if I am a leader in a teamthat is scaling and my team's
getting a little bit bigger, Ireally want to understand a So
(25:29):
does your team feel comfortabletelling you the truth even When
they know you are not going tolike it, you'll know.
You'll know if they are becauseyou will find out something
that you wish you knew earlier.
You will find it out very late.
You will find it out when youdon't have time to impact it
positively.
And so that is your cue tobuild a safe place, to really
(25:49):
work on trust.
So measuring trust and truthdoesn't have to come through a
survey.
It comes through communicationchannels naturally.
I think decisioning is anothersignal.
You can get this data throughreally human signals, not
software.
surveys right so like are youleader an obstacle like are you
the problem do you micromanageso hard that your team is
(26:11):
paralyzed to move in yourabsence like You need to work on
that.
If you are telling me thatevery decision requires three
meetings and there's a follow-upmeeting, then there's like a,
you know, too long, don't readSlack channel.
And then it's like, throwanother 30 on.
Like, are you not, do yourealize how many resources
(26:32):
you've wasted getting todecisioning?
Like if your team is afraid tomake the wrong call or to make
any call, they're not gonna,they're not even gonna make any
calls.
They're just gonna wait.
They're gonna freeze andthey're gonna wait.
And so you as a leader have anopportunity to, That's hard.
That's
Fahd Alhattab (26:48):
hard.
Let me see.
Because like, so I say foundersare delusional in their ego at
first.
They also have anothersuperpower that becomes a bit of
a weakness.
And the other superpower isthat...
As a founder, you actuallydon't make a lot of data-based
decision-making.
You make gut-baseddecision-making because there's
(27:09):
no data in the beginning.
You don't have enoughcustomers.
You're just making gut-basedinstinct decisions.
You are an artist and you go, Ihave a vision and I'm going to
paint this picture and I'm goingto make people love it.
And then you iterate thepicture and so on and so forth.
Because they've got such avisceral, instinctual
decision-making process, whenpeople don't make a similar
(27:32):
quality of decision.
They jump down.
They jump in.
It's
Ali Farell (27:37):
a judgment.
It's a judgment in howsomeone's doing something.
But it's like, did you get thedesire to result?
Like, did it happen?
Fahd Alhattab (27:44):
That's important.
Yeah.
And that's it.
That's it.
And that's, I mean, it's funny.
You know, we're talking aboutlevers earlier.
I thought the number one leverin startups is managers.
Managers are so important in astartup.
Even more so.
Even more so than in acorporate.
I say in a corporation, they'veprofessionalized so many parts
of a manager's role that if youput someone that's mediocre,
(28:06):
they're sort of caught.
They're not going to.
impact too much, right?
But in a startup, so much isdependent.
Everything HR is the manager,right?
Yeah.
So how good the quality of yourmanagers is a direct volatile
impact, whether positive orextremely
Ali Farell (28:25):
negative.
Huge, like huge.
Early on, I was talking aboutlike, you know, the challenges
from going from corporate tostartup.
And I talked a little bit aboutcopy and paste.
But the other thing isleadership accountability.
Like in a large organization,like you're saying, ineffective
leaders can hide, like they canhide behind systems and
processes.
And typically there'ssuccession plans and workforce
plans and internal mobility.
(28:46):
And so talent management inhiring feels less consequential.
Like, you've got to back stuff.
Like, you're cool, lessconsequential.
And it is like there is suchthis tolerance for mediocrity
that it doesn't make sense tome, right?
Because you can be.
You don't have to, like, trythat hard, honestly.
Fahd Alhattab (29:00):
You can get away with it.
If you just do your part, themachine still runs.
Nothing's broken.
There's nothing wrong.
They tell me nothing's broken.
It's like, That's how theGoliath gets bloated.
That's how the Goliath becomesless nimble, right?
Like an inability to changebecause you've got all of these
cogs in the machine that arejust like...
Ali Farell (29:22):
I'm status quo.
I'm okay being mediocre.
Like I'm cool being a C plus.
But...
At a startup or at a muchsmaller, more nimble
organization, every singlemanager matters.
Every single hire matters.
Every person is consequential.
I find that I have taken talentselection way more seriously in
the startups and approached itthrough such a cutthroat lens,
(29:44):
which I didn't and likelywouldn't think about doing at a
large organization.
It doesn't mean you always getit right.
People are dynamic.
Things change so fast.
But the process is verydeliberate in hiring and in
talent and manager training andthings.
It's about being thoughtful andvery deliberate.
That is a process or aconversation that I do think is
(30:06):
actually really important.
In the world where it's justenough, I do think you need to
be very deliberate about hiring,being thoughtful about the
personas you're going after,managing that so tightly.
I don't think you have a greatmargin of error when you're
hiring leaders in a startup.
You kind of got to...
And when you accept mediocrityat a startup that you might see
(30:29):
in a large organization, that'sa precedent.
You, my friend, have now set aprecedent for what you're
willing to tolerate.
So don't be shocked when six to12 months down the line, you
and I are having a conversationabout like, I don't know,
everyone's just like mailing itin.
Well, like, did you expectsomething different?
Fahd Alhattab (30:48):
Yeah,
Ali Farell (30:48):
yeah.
It's a precedent.
It's so important.
Fahd Alhattab (30:51):
Let's talk about that and then managing
performance in a startup becausethis...
is always fun.
Performance reviews in astartup, career conversations in
a startup.
I feel like everyone gets themwrong.
So, because I think they're abit of a copy paste.
I think we get a lot of copypaste in performance management
when people are trying to dopips or they're trying to, you
(31:13):
know, just like, what are yourthoughts?
I'm very opinionated.
I'm going to try to keep myopinion.
I think people know my opinionby now.
What is your thoughts on how wedo performance management in
startups and maybe where we getit wrong?
Ali Farell (31:24):
So, I have like so many, hot takes and I hope
they're connected.
I can't wait to hear what yoursare.
So I don't believe inperformance improvement plans.
I haven't done one in years.
I do not believe in them.
I do not find them effective atall.
They don't measure performance.
It's more of like a CYA andthere, and there is a need for
(31:45):
that for both the employee andthe business, but there are ways
that you can kind of amicablypart ways with a pip.
So I don't, That's not aprocess I will take with me.
That is an odd take.
I'm
Fahd Alhattab (31:59):
in agreement.
I think performance managementshould be done regularly in your
one-on-one.
Ali Farell (32:05):
Yes.
I build a really robustperformance review.
It's like, we're going to do itannually.
Here are these beautifulcompetency models and here's
this 360 feedback and here'sthis thing.
And it took so long.
And because I think our peopleare so great, they're kind of
just really flexible.
Like they're going to do it.
but not enough people gotbenefit from it.
And so I said, okay, I hearyou.
(32:26):
Let's not do that again.
That was super distracting.
Fahd Alhattab (32:29):
They use a lot of time and a lot of resources
also away from the problems thatthey, our managers and our
teams need to be doing.
Ali Farell (32:36):
And they're delayed.
Like, so I'm asking you to giveme feedback about stuff that
happened six months ago.
Like I moved on.
I've lived 18 lives, a recencybias activity, and it just gets
messy.
So I've done that.
Fahd Alhattab (32:46):
One of my thoughts is like, there's
probably like 5% of the companythat actually needs this
performance conversation.
And most of us are justavoiding a conversation with
those people.
So then we build out this wholeentire robust system to get to
talk to like five people thatshould have been talked to.
So like my recommendation, isusually when people come to me
(33:08):
like we want to do performancemanagement I go who's the
problem who's the problem justlike make a list and let's just
talk to those people about whatthe problem is and then you know
but the only the only argumentI've gotten on that I've sort of
agreed with that that resonatesis it is a backstop it's a
backstop for the managers andthe people who are not giving
(33:29):
feedback but you should know whoyour managers are that are not
giving adequate
Ali Farell (33:34):
feedback it shows up in the results Like, I'm sorry.
You don't need a performancereview system.
You don't need to wasteresources and time.
Make sure you're giving yourteam feedback at any point in
time.
I should be able to talk to anyemployee.
Yeah.
And say, do you know how you'redoing right now?
Do you know how you'reperforming?
I should be able to say that atany time to any employee and
they should answer me.
But this time around, we'retrying something where we said,
(33:56):
employee, if you want feedback,ask for it.
Here's the tool.
Here's the framework.
You schedule it.
You want
Fahd Alhattab (34:03):
it.
Because high performersactually want it.
want it at times and they'renot getting it and so you've
sort of given
Ali Farell (34:10):
you employee like ask for it you want feedback ask
for it so we kind of put it onthe team put it on the team
we're trying it i don't knowwe're right probably love it so
i don't know how it's gonna work
Fahd Alhattab (34:21):
i think there's a There's always real power when
we democratize something, whenwe shift the balance of power
and the balance of power here,you're redistributing it to the
employee saying it's in yourhands.
This is your power.
If you want to learn about howyou can get better, ask for it
and your manager will thenengage.
And then that way it's not thisonce a year thing where it
(34:41):
feels like the whole companystops just to like try and do
this one thing.
And then
Ali Farell (34:46):
do you think whether you have a performance review
or not, you need to be havingtalent conversations like here.
we look at talent really onthis performance continuum where
it's like, it's aboutachievement.
So results in behavior.
So you can have somebody who'sa high achiever, but an absolute
nightmare to work with.
That's one kind of, you know,you can have somebody who is
(35:07):
like the soul of theorganization, but they just
aren't contributing.
Like those conversations stillneed to happen.
So it's not an excuse to nottalk about talent.
Fahd Alhattab (35:17):
Those are the two hardest.
Those are the two hardest,
Ali Farell (35:19):
right?
I know.
Fahd Alhattab (35:20):
The asshole that performs or the, kind one that
is lovable but doesn't performyou're like I don't want either
no because they actually bothare not meeting the expectations
and I think that's when peoplesay it And it's a precedent.
And they attract more peoplelike them.
Or people go, okay, so I canget away with this?
Ali Farell (35:37):
Right.
Like, okay, I can be a hugejerk.
And as long as I'm, like, youknow, checking the box, all is
forgiven.
So, you know, I don't think youjust throw people away.
You need to coach.
You need to give feedback.
You need to be, like, radicallyclear and really supportive.
Like, I don't think it's justlike, whoop, you're out.
Fahd Alhattab (35:52):
All right, Allie, let's end it with one big
question here for you, which is,what's your biggest mistake?
What did you copy-paste?
What did you try?
I mean, you told me a littlebit about your performance
management, how you've shiftedfrom it.
But where have you learned alesson on this one?
Ali Farell (36:10):
There's so many things.
I do think the copy and pasteof process is pretty
catastrophic.
And I've done it now a coupletimes.
Like I do think that is reallydetrimental.
I think it impacts your brandas an HR leader.
I think it impacts, you know, ateam's ability to believe you
understand what's going on inthe business.
I think that's probably mygreatest learning is really the
(36:31):
copy and paste of process.
pace of process, which is why Ihave such a visceral reaction
to it today.
And I think, too, the onething, it's classic.
It's promoting too fast, firingtoo slow.
I've done that.
I've seen that.
I've kind of watched it happen.
Fahd Alhattab (36:45):
We give away C-suite titles like candy and
stuff.
Ali Farell (36:48):
It's so interesting.
And even VP titles, which Iactually think is worse,
possibly, because that's withinreach.
Fahd Alhattab (36:55):
Six VPs.
There's like six VPs in astartup of 50 people.
Ali Farell (37:01):
And employees, like I'm saying, like VPs seem within
reach to employees.
And then that kind of goes backto the precedent, right?
It's like, oh, this person wasdirector, senior director, VP in
like six months.
You're like, I can do that too,but you can't.
Counter offers, don't do it.
I don't believe in them.
Like I am a hard no to acounter offer.
I have done it and it hasbitten me every single time.
Fahd Alhattab (37:23):
So what do you mean by counter?
Let's just get clear on that.
Ali Farell (37:26):
So when someone says, hey, I'm leaving for X, Y,
and Z job, you're like, oh myGod, no, please don't.
We need you.
Here's this whatever it mightbe.
Again, it's precedent, right?
It's all these things I'mreally saying are precedent.
Process, in precedent.
Fahd Alhattab (37:41):
Because then they just start.
That's interesting.
I think that's when people tryand copy-paste because Netflix
overpays significantly.
But you're not Netflix.
Ali Farell (37:49):
Right.
We don't have the coststructure for that.
And I don't think there's aneed.
What does the business need todo
Fahd Alhattab (37:55):
that?
What's interesting is Harvardis known for the opposite.
So Harvard overpays theirprofessors, saying that if you
want to work here, you know, ifyou're like, yeah, so they're
sort of saying, we only want thepeople that really want to work
with us and want the Harvardbrand.
So there's an interesting, whenyou have a, yeah, you know, are
you, yeah.
So that, I mean, that's, it's,it's interesting.
(38:16):
I'm going to summarize some ofthe points that you said here.
And as I summarize them, I wantyou to give us the last hot
take.
So I'm going to kind ofsummarize and then you give us
the last hot take.
So one, I got nine really goodpoints.
I wrote out that, that I reallyliked throughout conversation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the first ones youtalked about was altitude.
So knowing as a startup leaderthat you've got to be able to
work big picture in the morningpotentially and then detailed
(38:39):
and so the successful ones areable to shift altitudes really
well curiosity you brought thatup over and over again you gotta
get really curious what are weactually building here what do
we need to create don't try andcopy paste figure out solutions
for the specific problems thatare happening at your startups I
really like what you said learnto listen to the music through
the noise what is the actualmusic through all that noise
(39:02):
what are we you know what are welooking for what is the right
metrics for Not just the metricsI can copy-paste.
Clarity, clarity, clarity,over-communicate, clarity.
That was the other one.
You talked about velocity and,and being 10 steps ahead and
really being able to pivot yourability to change.
(39:23):
It's funny.
You know, I work with somecorporates.
We do leadership development.
We will leadership development,obviously across industries and
startups and scale upsprimarily, but here and then we
do some larger corporates.
Corporates always talk aboutchange management, but startups
never talk about changemanagement because the reality
is your every day is changemanagement.
Your every day is a pivot andyour ability to actually deal
with that change.
So I really, really like that.
(39:45):
You talk about, Extremeownership.
That if someone doesn't haveextreme ownership, they can
extremely get out.
Ali Farell (39:50):
That's true.
Yes, yes, yes.
Move really fast out the door,please.
Fahd Alhattab (39:56):
Understand organizational health and the
pulse of where things areinstead of measuring like NPS
employee engagement.
Really try and get a pulse ofyour organizational health.
Always have talentconversations.
Do not wait and save them forperformance reviews.
Always have talentconversations regularly and just
deal with the problem.
Yes, yes.
(40:16):
So these are some really goodtakeaways.
But Ali, give me the last hottake.
Ali Farell (40:43):
I feel like this might be career limiting to say,
but I'm going to say it becauseI do believe it.
I think in startups, it is soeasy to think that you have a
talent problem.
I truly believe that it's not atalent problem.
It's a leadership problem.
Founders, CPOs, you know, newhires in a startup environment
(41:05):
are like, oh, we just need tohire the right people.
Yeah, maybe.
And you need to build the rightenvironment.
Like, That's on you.
You need to be clear.
You need to be accountable.
You need to build the rightenvironment.
Hiring strategy is not going tosave you if the leadership
strategy is broken.
That is so important.
(41:25):
So it's like, it's me.
Hi, I'm the problem.
It's that.
That is so true.
But I know that and I try towork on that and I welcome all
the feedback that comes withthat.
But that I think is going to bemy...
Fahd Alhattab (41:38):
That's your hot take.
I love it, Ali.
That was amazing.
That was awesome.
Ali, thank you so much.
Thank you for sharing with ourUnicorn Leader audience and
everyone that's going to benefitfrom this.
This was lovely, funconversation.
You've got such great energy.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for being a part ofthis.
Thank you for
Ali Farell (41:55):
having me.
Fahd Alhattab (41:56):
For the folks listening, you can find our
episodes on unicornlabs.ca, butyou can find it on Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube.
Ali, where can people find you?
Are you on LinkedIn?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ali Farell (42:08):
Find me on LinkedIn I'd love to chat about any of
these things.
Fahd Alhattab (42:11):
Fantastic.
We'll find Allie on LinkedIn.
Thank you, folks.
Thank you.
Ali Farell (42:14):
Thank you so much.
Fahd Alhattab (42:16):
And that's all for now.
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