It's a business problem that I had to go solve with a ton of people, and build a strategy, and go execute. I then was in a brand role, comms role for quite some time. I then was part of Becton, Dickinson and Company’s [BD] $12 billion buy of CareFusion. So, I spent time one year integrating the $4 billion CareFusion business into BD.
At that time, a mentor of mine called me up, and said, "Hey, come over to this crazy company called NuVasive." Now [for] context, I was spending the year with BD, integrating this $2 billion segment, and had a pretty large team. And this individual, Greg Lucere has paved the way for me and many others; he has maybe multiplied more leaders than anyone I know. He promised me the world, said I would have this huge role, this big team. And I show up day one, and I had two people and an intern, and I was like, "Greg, what did you get me into?"
So, okay, I'm at NuVasive, and I didn't know what to expect. Fast-forward a couple years in NuVasive, [I] joined the C-suite in running the marketing brand communication function, so essentially, operating as a CMO, operating as a CCO [chief commercial officer]. And at the time, this goes back about two years ago, we had our CHRO leave the organization, went through a large search, took quite some time to find the right person, brought that individual in. About 60 days in, it wasn't a fit for various reasons. That individual left the org. My CEO at that time, Chris Barry, ex-Qvidian, ex-Medtronic, now at Solventum with Bryan Hanson, called me up and said, "Mike, I got to tell the board what we're going to do here with HR. I essentially had two CHROs in the last nine months and I'm going to add a third. What do I do?"
And I said, "Well, you're talking to the guy you should hire." And he said, "You? You're a marketing guy, you've been in the business, you've never done HR." And I said, "I want the job." And he said, "You've never told me that." And I said, "Well, I mean, have I talked to you about vision casting? Yes. Have I built our culture? Yes. Have I helped you build your team? Yes. Do I understand KPIs and how to run a business? Yes." So, I was like, "I can do this." And I said, "Chris, why I loved marketing for so long, marketing is this science of changing human behavior." How if someone is choosing product A and you represent product B, how do you change their behavior from A to B?
That science, to me, is analogous to everything in human capital. How do you attract talent, retain talent, coach talent, exit talent? How do you move people from A to B? It's different than product services brands [were in my] background, but that same methodology can be applied to human capital. And so, I thought I gave him a pretty good sales pitch. And he said, "Sounds good."
Fast forward 100 days and [I] was named the chief people and culture officer at NuVasive. And that was a unique experience the last two years, [since about] 100 days into that role [we] started diligence for a merger with Globus Medical. And I helped do the $3 billion sale of NuVasive to Globus, which was another fantastic experience, a lot of ready, aim, fire on how to run a multibillion-dollar sale.
Steve:
So, you move into this role that you think you want, what did you find when you sat in the chair, that was maybe different than what you thought was going to be, and what did you find that was going to energize you?
Mike:
Yeah, so I think what didn't surprise me was that ability to take the science of marketing, and map that to, again, human capital. So, there's a tool used by marketers, and actually Dr. Bernie Jaworski out of the Drucker School of Management at Claremont McKenna has a fantastic book out called The Organic Growth Playbook where you look at the buying decisions in brands to drive organic growth. And there's ways to focus on creating, essentially, the science of a buying process. Taking a methodology like that and mapping the talent acquisition process, from the first time someone engages with your brand, all the way until you convert, or make a sale. You get someone in seat and the first 100 days of them in seat, that entire mapping human experience is the same as a buying process for a brand.
Different why, but the same science behind it. So, what didn't surprise me was I was, and still am able to take those tools that I've been exposed to for 20 years and apply that into this new function. So that was great to essentially be validated, that yeah, I have transferable skills that can be taken to make a difference day one, in a new function. I think what surprised me was how much crap HR professionals deal with. And you can have the best strategy in the world, and out of the gate I had these 10 tenants that we were focused on, executive vice president development, reestablishing culture, learning development, focus on succession planning, all these things that on paper, are the right things to focus on and build. And yet when you get in the office on Monday morning, and you hear about a fight on the shop floor, of two guys throwing punches and you've got to jump into an investigation, and then you know, the crap that HR leaders have to deal with, was greater than I truly realized sitting in the seat.
Steve:
Was there ever a day where you were like, "Oh man, perhaps I made a mistake?"
Mike:
Honestly, no. I love people. And for the HR professionals out there, I guess I'm not jaded yet. And I love people not because it's the soft-feel, warm-and-fuzzy unicorn thing. I truly believe that we were all made for a purpose, and to much is given, much is required. I have been given a lot, and it is on me to steward the future lives and the careers of people, and I love getting the best out of people.
Steve:
Why don't more marketing people want to go into HR?
Mike:
I think a couple things. One, I think gone are the days of HR being the function where you hire, fire people only. You've got the individual [who has] been in HR for 40 years, and is kind of crotchety, and that's not HR. HR, if you think about it at the end of the day, for any P&L for any business — I don't care if you're in a semiconductor business, you're in natural gas, you're in healthcare like I've been in for two-plus decades — our most important and expensive asset is people.
So, it's a reframe, again, a marketing term. It's a reframe of our mindset, to "I am a P&L owner, I am a business owner, I lead and oversee the most important and expensive asset of this organization." I view this role maybe as important as a CEO role, because I steward, again, the most important asset of my organization.
I think of the Richard Branson quote, and I'll butcher it, right, but his number one focus is not the customers, it's the employees. Because if we take care of our employees, they in turn, will change the experience of our customers. I would say with all due respect to CEOs, this is the most important job of any organization. How do we ensure, inspire, lead, coach, train, develop, exit, how do we maximize, again, that most important asset to make them better? Even if it's five percent better, ten percent better, the force multiplier of activating thousands of people in a common direction, that changes a market, that changes a customer base.
Steve:
As you made your pivot into HR, and inherited a team that didn't look anything like teams you've led before, how are you received? How did you make the people who dedicated their life to this craft, feel like there was something in it for them?
Mike:
So, a couple things. One, I'm a firm believer that the absence of trust is the breakdown of every organization. I don't care if it's a marketing role, a comms role, a business functional role, or an HR role, any leader, day one, your first objective is to build trust. One of the things, Steve, you and I have talked about, is in any new role, CEO or CPO, is assessing your team talent right away for skill and will. I went down into the org, a click down, and promoted someone in a total rewards role right away. Why? I wanted to make sure I keep great talent, elevate great talent, create stickiness and trust with that individual to make a huge impact for me. So quickly, I had the benefit of having some trust with some legacy relationships but [I] built new trust by putting the right people in the right seats.
The other page out of the playbook I took, was coming in and being, if you're going to fault me for anything, it's overly transparent, and sometimes, too vulnerable. I shot everyone straight. I am not an HR executive, that's my title. I solve problems, I build teams, I shape culture. I'm a great enterprise leader and partner at the home team level of a C-suite, to make my team's jobs easier. But I'm super open.
And I see that as an advantage with my team. I have not done a benefits harmonization project. I don't have experience launching in HRS [human resources system], but what I do have experience launching is being the executive sponsor for Salesforce CRM implementation, an ERP [enterprise resource planning] implementation, a content sales enablement implementation. So again, transferable skills. But again, I think that trust gets built when you say, "Yeah, I am not an expert in Italian benefit law, but I need you to play your role on my team in total rewards, to be that expert. Because I have an expertise that you don't have, and you have expertise I don't have." And that built incredible trust.
I have a sign in my office that says, "I win. You win. We win." I am very open with people that I love to win. I don't care what seats, or again, my title is, or what company I'm at, I love winning. I know in order for me to win, I need you, Steve, if you and I are on the same team, I need you to win. And when you win, guess what? We win together.
Steve:
If you think about your superpower, what is it that has helped you, whether it was in marketing roles, for then making a pretty big pivot?
Mike:
Yeah, that's a tough question. One, I would say I've been lucky. I really have. One, for great mentors, I’ve been lucky. So, I'm going to say luck is one. The second is hard work. I will never be the smartest person in any room, but what you can't take away from me is how hard I work. I will outwork anyone. I have a commitment every day, to respond to every email in my inbox. I go to bed every night with an empty inbox. I will outwork you. Now, some might say that's crazy, but it's a dedication to my team and my craft, to jump into the role that I'm in and give 100%.
So, luck, hard work, and the last one is my ability, and/or focus on establishing trust. I firmly believe, again, that we were put on this earth to steward people. And the only way to do that is to establish a foundation of trust. I don't care if that's your team, your marriage, as a father and a son, as a community member, we were put on this earth to steward people. And when trust is fractured, it's impossible to do that well. And so, I don't know if it's a superpower, but I have a firm commitment that through people, I, and we, will win and succeed. And to do that, it starts with trust. So, luck, hard work, and focus on trust.
Steve:
It'd be interesting to hear how you define the strategic impact that you can have as a CHRO for a company.
Mike:
Number one is culture, culture, culture. I think culture eats strategy for breakfast every day of the week. I don't think you can build and implement great strategy if you don't have a great culture. And I think culture is contagious. Culture unlocks vision. Culture brings talent. Culture keeps talent. If I had to place any bet, it's on culture. However, culture in the absence of business outcomes and results, falls flat. And so, for me, HR can, and should be the most important strategic lever, again, most important and expensive asset that we steward. If you marry a relentless focus and commitment on culture, paired with business outcomes, and that, to me, is the holy grail of this role. Can I shape a culture that attracts, retains, inspires, develops great talent and unlocks the business value through a relentless focus on business outcomes?
Steve:
You've worked for a number of companies; you've seen a number of business leaders. How many P&L leaders, CEOs would you say share a vision with you, in terms of importance of culture?
Mike:
Very few, sadly.
Steve:
Why do you think that is?
Mike:
Well, I think people view it as this soft, touchy, feely, emotional. And listen, it's not this soft, touchy, feely thing. Think of any great military leader, think about any great politician or president, think about a pastor or a theologian. You can look at any industry, time in history, and when culture changes everything. To me, it is so obvious.
Steve:
Tell me where someone has made it the pinnacle of their sport or craft in a team game that didn't have a winning culture.
Mike:
So, if you humor me for a minute, for 15 years I was a high school varsity basketball coach. One of my closest friends, shout out to Chad Bickley. We sat down in a small little private Christian school in San Diego. At the time when he got the head coaching job, we had just come off, it was like a nine and 18 season. It was his first season, and we had 10 kids in the program. We were trying to run a JV program and a varsity program with kids kind of playing both ways. We sat down in this little breakfast nook with a blank piece of paper, and we started with our vision. Our vision would be the hardest working basketball team that gave glory to God on and off the court, competing at a championship level at all times. Okay, so I mean, when you really reflect on that, we had no chance to compete at a championship level.
Fast forward 15 years, and we won a state title in Division 1, the highest division in all of California. And over 15 years, we got better and better and better and better and better. We instilled this culture where we trained the kids in every offseason on our culture. And now, you fast forward 15 years later, these kids are, I say kids, young men that are getting married, and we're going to their weddings, and they're still reciting the culture we built in that locker room 20 years ago. And it's not magic. There's science to a simple, repeatable process, where you cast a vision, align people to that vision, create a culture for people to win.
Steve:
We'll go into a little bit of a lightning round here. Who do you go to for advice?
Mike:
My wife, number one. Mentors have been huge for me. I'm a firm believer in mentors. I try to keep a running list of about every 12 to 24 months, rotate different mentors into my life for a new dimension I'm looking to add. And so, I tap into my mentors.
Steve:
Top three challenges facing CEOs today?
Mike:
Talent, the balance of organic versus inorganic growth. If you're not growing, you're dying. And I think navigating the world still, of return to work, and that is not a CPO challenge, that's a culture challenge, which becomes then the CEO's challenge. How do I attract, retain the best talent aligned to a philosophy of how, not what we'll do at work, but how we'll work together.
Steve:
If you think about the question and change the axis a little bit, top three challenges facing CHROs?
Mike:
Yeah, I'd say they're almost the same, right? Talent. How do you grow with the challenge of bottom line, managing the top and bottom line. So, if you've got to trim up certain functions and some reductions in force to get to a better bottom line, but you still have these expectation to grow, that's just a tough dynamic when you're stewarding people, or just managing head count. And then, yeah, I think that philosophy of how we work. I'm a firm believer that I don't care where people work, I truly don't. I want the best talent. And yet I firmly believe that you can't get your best outcome if you're not face-to-face with people either. This podcast would be different, Steve, if we were sitting on a Zoom call from Chicago and San Diego. Yet I love that you're in Chicago, and I love that I'm in San Diego, and so how do we do both?
Steve:
How do you assess HR talent, given your lens? How might that be a little different than somebody who grew up in the function?
Mike:
I look for a handful of things. I will be honest. I rarely, if ever, assess technical skills. I'm going to assume that the resumé is the resumé. I look for self-awareness. I look for curiosity, and then I look for someone who has assessed the situation accurately of what they're going to be coming into. Number two is that curiosity. I ask a lot of questions about learning how they learn, what they consume, what are they working on themselves, what's a major gap area of development?
Steve:
Give me one of your best interview questions, let's see how I do.
Mike:
One thing I do for every interview, which is based on every conversation you've had with every individual in our organization, reading through the job description, all the information that you have at your fingertips, Steve, what are the three things that I'm looking for in this role, to make this person wildly successful? And I want the individual to be able to articulate, based on the hours of interviews, assessing the organization, digesting all data, three simple core tenets of the role. And then what I ask them to do, is to rate themselves from one to 10 in each of those areas. It does a couple of things. Number one, is it helps me assess immediately, have they been paying attention to what we're telling them, the expectations of the role. Number two, is do they have self-awareness of how they line up to those three? Number three is recall. I want you to be like, "These are the three core tenants. Here's how I assess myself," and that shows recall, that shows self-awareness, and that shows knowledge of the business problems that we've already articulated to them of what we need in this role.
Steve:
And as you think about leadership broadly, what, in your mind, differentiates good versus great? Let's assume most are pretty good when they make it to the C-suite, but few are great.
Mike:
So, I think number one is he's demonstrating curiosity. Number two is the assembly of a great team, specifically in areas where they are weak, or deficient themselves. So, to me, a great leader, as I mentioned before, is self-aware. And so are they building teams to shore up the gaps in the areas where they fall flat; that, to me, speaks volumes in a great leader. And I mentioned this earlier too, number three is, I would say, someone that is committed to building trust. Any team, any leader, they will fail. And when you have a leader that's curious in tough times, that has a diverse team of experience and thought, but has that trust as a foundation any team, again with great culture can combat that and get through that time.
Steve:
What can HR leaders do, for leaders in general, to make their jobs easier, better, and to be truly great leaders?
Mike:
Out of the gate I would say learn the business; be as knowledgeable of the business as the business leaders you're supporting. I hate to say this, think back on some legacy HR partners I've had, and I've had some great ones, but most didn't know the business as well as I did when I was in the business. My focus is as equal to the focus of my function, as it is into the business. What are the business needs? What is our strategy? Where are our gaps, so that I can be a great partner to fuse my functional responsibility to solve the business problems, right? But it is on us to know the business, to unlock the human capital value that we're stewarding.
Steve:
As you think about AI broadly, and its impact on people, talent, culture, what is one thing that really excites you about it, and one thing that maybe scares you?
Mike:
Yeah. So, listen, one, AI is not a foreign concept. The use of advanced data has been around for decades. I had the chance to listen to James Cameron, famous movie producer, director, ideator himself, speak on this topic recently. And he brought up a story that I think is worth sharing. An analogous time for accountants, when Excel came out, there was this fear that every finance or accounting person's job would go away. That the spreadsheet, the automated spreadsheet, would remove the need of any accountant in any organization.
Well, to his point, accountants went from having to learn and spend hours each day, counting themselves, to having a tool that counted for them, so that they could bring more strategic value to the functions that they served. And so yes, it's scary in the unknown. And yes, we're going to have to ensure that we put some guardrails on it. And yes, I don't disagree with any of that. But if we aren't looking at AI as a business enabler, not to replace us, but to make us faster, smarter, more efficient, shame on us.
Steve:
How do you stay positive? How do you stay energized? Any personal wellness hacks?
Mike:
Yeah, I wish I would say I was great at this. I'm a person of faith myself. I believe that we, again, were put on this Earth with a purpose. And my center and core, and my value does not come from my title. I believe it comes from something much bigger than myself, and that grounds me in and of itself. My title does not define me. Number two is my family is more important than my job. But my family's a priority, and that fills my cup up. And I would say too, I'm pretty active in things outside of work that fill my cup up as well. Serving in the community, my church, at a university, on the board of Biocom that advances all the med tech and med device companies in California, those things give me greater perspective and grounding away from work.
Steve:
There's a number of people in the HR function that are considering or aspiring to be head of people. What advice would you give the next generation thinking about this?
Mike:
Yeah. I mean, one is there's no linear way to get to this role, or the air quotes, “the top,” and I think I'm an example of that. I don't have my MBA. I've had some unique experiences that I think are actually more valuable than getting an MBA. I was in marketing for 18 years and switched to people. I've had comms roles, I've had brand roles, non-linear. And so, I think that's the first advice I'd give anyone, is your experience is your experience. Don't try to map it out on paper of how you're going to get there. As much as people say every CEO comes from primarily a functional business unit, a commercial role, maybe a finance role, an operator, that definition already in itself, shows that it's non-linear.
So, number one, is take a deep breath, it's non-linear. Number two, is acquire experiences. I say put your name on projects, because no one can take that away from you. And so, whether you're in a marketing role, wanting to transfer to people, if you're in people and you're in TA, and you want to become a business partner, if you're in business, you want to get to total rewards, put your name on projects. And then lastly, at the end of the day, we need people to solve problems. Building the acumen to level up and down, is a unique skill that if you bring, independent of where you've come from, you will be wildly successful. Can you solve problems and strategically execute, and tactically execute at the same time?
Steve:
Thank you for your time. Such a unique perspective, really, really thoughtful. And so, congratulations on the pivot, and best of luck to you.
Mike:
Thanks Steve, appreciate it.