IAM1344 – CEO Develops Strategic Human Capital Management

Angela Finlay is Chief Human Capital Strategist at Windward Human Capital Management LLC. Angela Finlay was a former CHRO/Head of HR at organizations ranging from Global Fortune 150 to small, start-up companies. She is currently a lecturer/adjunct professor in Leadership, Strategy & Human Capital Management, including Columbia University’s Master in Human Capital Management program.

• CEO Story: Before Angela achieved her goal of having her own consulting firm, she took a journey as an HR in an accounting firm for ten years and a couple of years in a conglomerate company and in a bank. It finally came to hang up her sign and build her own company.
• Business Service: Fractional HR Leadership services. Internal HR services. HR function transformation.
• Secret Sauce: Talent programs in business results. Key drivers in the financial indicators
• CEO Hack: Book mentions: Think Again by Adam Grant – constantly rethink what we know. Be comfortable in being uncomfortable.
• CEO Nugget: Owning your own wing. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Be clear about where your skillset and the value lie.
• CEO Defined: Be an authentic leader. Long-term focused, vision-driven, and lead with heart and self-awareness. Creating strong impactful relationships.

Website: www.windwardhcm.com

LinkedIn: @windwardhcm, ablumfinlay

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Transcription

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00:22 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:49 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Angela Finlay of Windward Human Capital Management. Angela, it's great to have you on the show.

00:59 – Angela Finlay

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me, Krusham.

01:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm super excited to have you on and all the awesomeness that you've been doing. So before we jumped into the interview, of course, I wanted to read a little bit more about Angela so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Angela is a chief human capital strategist at Windward Human Capital Management, LLC. Angela was a former CHRO and head of HR at organizations ranging from global Fortune 150 to small startup companies. She is currently a lecturer and adjunct professor in leadership, strategy, and human capital management, including Columbia University's master's in human capital management program. Angela, excited again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:43 – Angela Finlay

I am excited to be here.

01:46 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:54 – Angela Finlay

Wonderful, happy to share it. So my story would start with, I was never going to have my own business and be a CEO. So interestingly enough, I actually got out of college thinking I was going to head into accounting after being put in front of large pieces of paper and running GE and GL type of calculations decided that just wasn't going to be me. And had an opportunity where there was a partner in the firm who said, hey, I think you'd be great in HR.

And pivoted my career at that point. Spent the next 10 years leading HR functions and accounting firms. While I was there, I also had a chance, which is really what got me into thinking about consulting, where when you do great things in accounting firms, they try to figure out how to farm you out to clients to make you billable, right? So that perspective, they started giving me to their clients saying, hey, she can help you with that, or, oh, you're having an issue with trying to figure out how to get your technology to work, she can talk to you about HR technology or she can talk to you about what type of policies you should have.

And so had the chance to do that with some small and mid-sized businesses, Loved the problem-solving aspect of it all. Thinking group is this challenge, kind of how all the pieces came together. And I always kind of said my interesting piece or the part that I always brought to the table as I started my career in accounting. So I always start kind of with the numbers and the business focus, which seem to have resigned with clients. I do often joke though that I'm not sure what partners in the world would have agreed to give some 20 some year old clients and let them talk about HR, but somehow was successful when I did it and certainly loved doing it and had the opportunity to sell my own clients and bring in businesses that the firm hadn't had before.

So it was just a wonderful experience. With that being said, I decided that after 10 years of working with accountants, I needed to make a change if I really wanted to get out of accounting and shifted into a role at a large Japanese conglomerate where I had the responsibility for the Americas region and then as the years went on had the opportunity to again consult with companies that we were acquiring and loved it right.

It was one of those things where we would bring in a company and they were having challenges bringing in engineers and being able to talk to them about what different strategies you can take, including getting into colleges, right? And starting to build programs so that it fed into the talent that they needed going forward. And just had a great time working with such a varied group of businesses, from power plants in Mexico to retail, high-end men's fashion in New York. It was just all across the board and just a great time.

Loved the role, but when the traveling became a lot for a growing family when you're on the road every week, made the decision to jump into a CHRO, Chief Human Resource Officer role, at a community bank where we had essentially a mission to turn around a sleepy 1970s thrift savings bank and then sell it in a few years. Again, loved the idea of coming in, triaging kind of a workforce and a function that needed to change and update, and being able to just have an end game and know what you were working towards was just a great time.

When the bank sold, I actually bowed out of the opportunity for any potential positions and decided this was the time to kind of hang up the sign and create my own consulting business, which became more human capital management to get back to really the things that I loved in my career and really start to embark on that. And, you know, given the experiences I've had over the 20s, 2020, many 20 years of doing this, right? Give me a chance to really share that with small to mid-sized businesses that don't typically have the finances to get that support.

06:30 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely, And that's the best way you can see so much further by standing on the shoulders of giants. So, you are able to accumulate all that knowledge and information. I love that you're helping out so many organizations and businesses. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more on how you're serving the clients that you work with. Could you take us through a little bit more about what that looks like?

06:49 – Angela Finlay

Sure. So I sat back when I started to create the business and really said, what are the ways that I can bring the most impact and value to small and mid-sized businesses from my experience? And based on that, I kind of decided that the business would focus on 4 key areas and those would be the lanes that we hang out in. The first service we offer is fractional HR leader services. This provides business owners with strategic and tactical HR support without the need to hire additional staff or incur the cost of a more senior-level person.

The second thing that we focus on is internal HR leader services where we help organizations that are transitioning from one leader to another by kind of just looking at what do they have to do? What were the skills they had? What was the structure they had? And what should it look like going forward? We also focus on HR function transformations. We work with leaders who feel that their HR programs are not supporting them or are frustrated with what they're getting from their HR function.

We help them identify and implement changes needed to create a more business-focused function. Lastly, we've been getting involved with M&A transactions from the talent and HR side, whether it be working through HR issues in due diligence or post-merger integration, which I often joke about, I've seen time and time again in my experience between Mitsui and even with the bank was, talent issues quickly become your biggest issues, but are the ones we never actually pay attention to.

08:51 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate you breaking down, you know, each of those different aspects. So I wanted to hear a little bit more on what you think is your secret sauce. It could be for yourself individually, the business, or a combination of both, but I don't know if you already touched on this, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique? Well, good thought to have to run through when you're running a business. And when I step back, I think there are kind of 2 pieces that are really just the differentiators for us. No.1 is I don't buy the whole concept of best practices, right? I have seen organizations do amazing things by creating their own little way of approaching it. And so I've always looked at kind of what it is we're trying to get to from a business perspective and back into how we should be thinking about talent programs and things along those lines.

09:43 – Angela Finlay

I've never felt that you should start with talent programs and then try and push them into business results. And with that being said, everything really needs to make sense for the organization. I think the second thing that's kind of the secret sauce is coming at things quite often from more of the business financial perspective instead of just the intuition that you typically get in HR or here's what everybody does in HR, but really just what are those key drivers and the financial indicators that tell us we're doing well as a business and let me figure out how to back into what you should be doing to be able to hit that.

10:25 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:37 – Angela Finlay

So I am currently in the middle of reading the book, Think Again by Adam Grant. Not sure if you're familiar with that, but the whole premise of the book is that we need to constantly choose courage over comfort. And what that means is we should constantly rethink what we know. And what I love about it, right, is that what has made us experts in our career and brought us to our CEO positions or having our consulting practices will not actually sustain us in the future.

And so I've, you know, I love the whole concept and premise of it and think it's kind of foundational to how I've approached everything in life because I had a mentor in the years who used to tell me the secret to success is being comfortable being uncomfortable. And if you are ever sitting there and fully comfortable, you are not growing and learning and going to be successful.

And so with that, I've really kind of driven a lot of my success in my career and certainly things that I've done with clients from the perspective of let's be comfortable being uncomfortable to allow for us to constantly evolve and learn and grow. And I think it also brings a sense of humility that we're not that great, right? And that you're not an expert in everything and that it pushes us to continue to be better tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

12:04 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. So, I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So there's a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self?

12:19 – Angela Finlay

So my nugget would be owning your own lane, right? So when I started the business, you know, I always say we're always trying to be everything to everyone. And so if someone came and said, hey, could you do this? I'd be like, yes, I'd love to do that, right? And at some point, you need to step back and really say, where does my business thrive? And what are those lanes where I know that I can bring the most value, I can have the most impact in organizations, and I can really be successful in creating a long-term strategy?

And so that's really been the learning along the way and the learning that I would share with anybody is just when you get into your business being really abundantly clear on where your skill sets lie, where the value lies, and being comfortable going back to my comfortable right Being comfortable saying no to business when it just doesn't fit with the model that you can really sustain and add value in.

13:28 – Gresham Harkless

And so I wanted to ask you Now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Angela, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:38 – Angela Finlay

So one of the things when I decided to embark on my own was, you know, I thought back on leadership, right? I'd led teams that were 60 people to 2 people, right? And they were often in pretty rigid businesses where I always felt like I had to conform to the expectations of what leaders needed to be there, which was not human-centered, right, in some of those industries, and was much more kind of money and time focused, and that was no.1 priority. So from my perspective, CEO redefined, at least from a leadership perspective, is really my opportunity to lean into being an authentic leader.

And so for me, it's really thinking through how can I be more long-term focused, right? When you're in a publicly traded company, we tend to be very short-term focused, right? But how can I do more long-term focused, vision-driven, right, understanding what's a priority and what really will make things tick? And first and most importantly, lead with heart and self-awareness about, you know, really creating strong, impactful relationships that I think will really make it a better opportunity and really help for a longer-term success from a CEO and leadership perspective.

15:06 – Gresham Harkless

So Angela, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people could get a hold of you. Find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:21 – Angela Finlay

Everybody can reach me whether it's through LinkedIn which I think you'll have in the show notes I would love to connect and talk about some of my favorite topics around talent and business impact. And my business is at Windward, W-I-N-D-W-A-R-D-H-C-M, Human Capital Management. So windwardhcm.com. It would be my pleasure to connect and explore these topics further with any of your audience going forward.

15:54 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, I truly appreciate that, Angela. And just like you mentioned, we will have the links and information in the show notes as well. But thank you so much for sharing some of your expertise, your knowledge, your perspective, and even philosophy. I think that we can use it from an HR perspective, but in so many different aspects, I think of business and life at that. So thank you so much for, of course, all the expertise and knowledge you've been able to accrue and share today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:19 – Angela Finlay

You too, thank you again.

16:21 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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