Anna Lenhardt, Founder & Principal at Lenhardt Partners joined host Christine Tao, CEO and Co-Founder at Sounding Board, for Leadership Live to discuss value-driven organizations and building people-readiness.
Anna specializes in helping startups build and scale to become high-impact companies, drawing from over two decades of experience as an HR professional at companies like McKinsey, Deloitte, and former Chief People Officer at Hippo Insurance.
Below are highlights of Anna’s conversation with Christine.
Building Foundational Values
To create a value-driven organization, Anna recommends that leaders not only identify their values, but determine what they mean in practice. HR leaders must ensure that organizational values and actions align in order to create positive, inclusive cultures. “Leaders can no longer have no statement or have values and actions or behaviors that don’t align,” says Anna.
Values in Action
To ensure that values are lived, leaders must consider meaningful, impactful ways to express those values. How are we building this into our organization? How are we leading with our values? What are we doing to really move the needle on this issue that isn’t just transactional?
Anna provides examples, such as donating to organizations that support LGBTQ+ or reproductive rights, supplementing childcare, and others. Putting values into action helps build culture and improve employee engagement and retention.
While these initiatives may not have initial stakeholder buy-in, Anna recommends that HR leaders try to find shared values with executives in order to find opportunities for support.
Another opportunity to imbed values is leadership development.
“If you think about developing your managers and developing your leaders as you go through the evolution of going from a Series A to a public company, values are the core of that process. But how you empower and enable your managers and leaders to live with those values, you need support,” says Anna. “So whether it’s a coaching organization, your internal business partners and your learning teams really all working together to drive toward those behaviors that you want your managers and leaders to have those key capabilities that you want them to have.”
Keep it Simple
Anna advises against overcomplicating initiatives and programs. She suggests focusing on core values and capabilities, meeting people where they are, and keeping programs streamlined and practical rather than attempting to implement too many complex initiatives simultaneously. “As you develop your managers and leaders, keep focused on those core values and capabilities, align your HR team around that, and keep it very simple. If you do that, you won’t need to build four or five complex programs.”
People-Readiness
While technical checklists are crucial, Anna stresses the importance of people-readiness for initiatives like IPOs. Communication strategies and alignment among leaders and employees are key factors driving organizational adaptability and resilience. Anna says having an intentional strategy and the ability to communicate the story of that strategy is critical in equipping leaders to adapt.
“What’s gonna get you that great stock price after the offer and beyond? That’s your people. And if they’re not brought with you on this journey and they’re not cheering for you and they’re not celebrating all these wins and working hard when things are tough, you’re not going to accomplish everything you want to for yourself.”
Supporting HR
Anna acknowledges the challenges and burnout HR professionals may face but encourages them to continue fighting for organizational values. She emphasizes the critical role HR plays in shaping exceptional companies and encourages HR professionals to find support networks and believe in the importance of their work.
