Who You Hire Is Your Strategy: Maura McGinn on Building Teams

This is no operating manual, a podcast about building healthcare companies when there's no one clue path and no operations manual. Today we're going to chat with more again founder and CEO of Impetus Talent. She works with healthcare founders and leaders on one of the hardest parts of building a company, getting the right people and the right roles at the right time. Before that, she was in an early higher at Bright Health where she helped scale the company from a small team to more than 1500 employees. Today we'll talk about what that experience taught her and what she sees now as founders try to grow. More beginning. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. So we'll get into it. You started your career in executive recruiting and then you moved inside a startup to build it and then eventually found your way back to recruiting. When you look back, what did you learn by sitting on both sides of that table? It's a great question. I think the context maybe on each side was a bit different. I think I think it's important to remember I actually started my career in search. So that was really like my first real job. And I think having been in search only, I didn't really have the broader internal view of who else was there. What other skills people brought to the table. And so in kind of a pure play recruiting role, myself and a lot of my peers, I think often struggle to understand why somebody who seemed perfect on paper to us maybe seemingly was not getting hired hitting the mark or translating to a client. Whereas on the other side of the table, I think the context piece that was sort of shifted for me in working with people who were the hiring managers on the inside. Oftentimes I think they thought these perfect people existed and there was like an infinite universe of humans who could do this job. And so they didn't have the context of the broader market and the market awareness of who really was available and you know what skill sets really existed that complemented the business needs. So I think just kind of mutually understanding where the other side of the table was coming from in some of the recruiting conversations is one thing. The second thing that I actually was thinking about this morning, actually, when I was recruiting, my job felt like get a really interesting, exciting person motivated to take a job at this company. Like it was like be the cheerleader, be the fan girl in the market. We actually used to joke about like whale hunting is what we called it. When I was at bright, I remember I completely shifted my job oftentimes in the interview context. Instead of being the person to who raw and get them excited about coming, my role was actually convince them not to come. And that's largely because I think people were very excited about what we were doing in building and were sometimes blinded by the reality of what the job was. They just wanted to be a part of this well-funded startup. And so I spent more time saying, here's why you don't want to come here. You'll have no staff. No one will help you with your budget. You will do your own power points. So it was just sort of grounding them in the reality of what the business was versus what the kind of facade in the marketplace was. And that was back when you were receiving, you know, so many different resumes for every job. So you really were trying to find the right person. Like it was a needle on a haystack. I think that's right. I know we were a little lucky. I would say when I was at bright, I remember I used to track the amount of applicants in our applicant tracking system. And there was a period of time where we had like tens of thousands of resumes coming in. I had to make the business case that I could no longer track and excel. But the reality was we were turning down way more people than we were saying yes to you. And so we did have to be hyper clear around what we were looking for. And that that obviously changed, you know, the first year looked very different from the third year in terms of skillsets. But yeah, I think that remains true that we had, yeah, we had to turn people down and find the needle on a haystack. So bright launched in 2016 and you were there at the beginning. What do people misunderstand about those early days? So many things are in. You know, I think one thing that maybe on behalf of everyone who was there early, that's probably important to say now in hindsight was it actually was fun at one period. I think people see a lot of the pain and the challenges. And I think some of the the later layoffs. But there was something very exciting and new and novel and what we were doing. And it's it seems ironic since it was a health insurance plan. But we really did think we were changing the way healthcare was paid for and delivered. So I think there was a lot of momentum and excitement around just the business. Bright was a bit of a different animal early on. I think people are often really curious. How do I get into a startup? Early, a lot of the hiring is friends of friends and it's people, you know, and common. And that was something I had to come up to speed on when I came in because I was charged with the recruiting and the hiring and there were people in process and people were already been hired before I got there who were neighbors or former co-workers that maybe I would not have selected, but there were sort of relationship values to them joining early on. The other thing is it wasn't all brand new hires. I think a lot of times people who've not been in a startup are not always aware that it's full-time people, it's consultants. A lot of times you've got fractional. So there's a lot of different there's a lot of different profiles of people who are early members of the team and so for a long time I think there were like 30 people who worked at Bright who were not employees. There were three, it was the founders and then there was a lot of consultants and we grew not through a direct acquisition at the beginning, but we absorbed what had been the Colorado, a health op, the co-op in Colorado. So we took in a bunch of people who were part of that health plan that had wound down and they joined our team. So we had a lot of cultural new people, absorption of people, friends of friends, former united, so there were some interesting dynamics, but it wasn't all everyone who was like gung-ho full-time employee here. It was kind of a hodgepodge. So how did that work in absorbing like how do you mesh those cultures, especially a co-op to a startup? I don't know if everyone who was there would say we did a great job or I did a great job in supporting that and we actually joked that it not joked. We actually talked about the fact that it felt like for some people a bit of a loss because they had been working on another startup that ultimately took a different course and they ended up at Bright. Our personality challenge was was broad in that we had business operations folks who were doing HR, legal compliance, finance, product. We had technical people because we were trying to redefine how technology plays into the health plan experience. So we had an engineers and product designers and in Texas. And then we had the co-op people who were largely insurance-oriented. They were focused on providers getting paid, right? Relations claims compliance was really important. I think what we did do well was we very early on had conversations around the mission, the vision, the values. So we defined that early and I think clearly. I think we were really intentional in a way that felt awkward at the time about getting a regular communication cadence in place. And I say awkward because truly Kyle Rolfing who was one of our co-founders, president, super entrepreneurial. This was his I think third or fourth startup. He said to me one day, "Mora, this is going to feel awkward, but once a week we're going to get together as a business and we're going to do an employee meeting and we're going to repeat the same thing over and over and over again." And that created rituals and culture and he let every meeting with, here's the mission, here's the vision, here's the values. And we did a member story so people understood who ultimately was impacted by the work that we were doing to really ground us. So I think creating that and then over time that took off and took new agendas and had new people speaking and we highlighted employees. But I think getting everyone introduced and realigned around, you know, why we existed and who we existed for and how we worked together was probably how we created that commonality. You've talked before about how different and in-house startup role is from outside perception for yourself. Again, you started when you were really young as an executive recruiting and now you're going in-house. I mean, you were still fairly young to lead the team. What were you most unprepared for when you made that transition? I think startups are so interesting in that they are a very different type of meritocracy and you do see people at various seniority levels leading different functional areas, supporting different functional areas. And so I think I was surprised by the fact that people actually trusted me to do my job. I think I expected a little more resistance in some areas. So the fact that they were like, you are responsible for this and then they let me be responsible for it was was a little shocking, jarring, surprising. I'm not sure. I think ultimately for me, I'd been at a role when I started in search where I intentionally made a lot of the people I recruited, whether or not they wanted to or not be my mentor. So I would talk to them about, here's my career, here's I'm thinking, I'm going to business school and so I would ask them what books they were reading. So I was pretty intentional about sucking as much knowledge and information as I could from the people around me. And so I actually approached Bright very much in the same way. Thought maybe that might actually undermine me in some instances where people might think she doesn't really know what she's doing. But I actually found the opposite. I found really collaborative partners. I think about Brian, who ultimately I worked for, who was our general counsel, and Dawn, who was our first CFO as being really core and foundational for that partnership for me as we thought about staffing plan and the comp structure and the employee equity program. And so we worked really well together. And obviously, through their teams as well, I had good relationships. And then other senior executives I found, if I pulled them aside when we were doing budgeting and said, hey, I really need this. I found that they were really supportive, which I think surprised me because I think you often think when there's limited resources, people will be pulling for them. But it was way more collaborative than I ever could have anticipated. That's good. That's, I mean, that's a good culture. So speaking of culture, though, like what did, what was the deliberate things you talked a little bit about mission vision values and repeating that over and over again? What other things did you do to build our culture at, right? And what have you carried on in other roles? So I think the most important thing at, right, that we did to build culture, not that it was like one most important thing, but one thing that really sticks out to me was constantly trying to remind everybody that we were all just people. There was a slide that I hated so much in our fundraising decks and in some of our board meetings, which highlighted that we had eight former CEOs on our executive team. I, you know, part of why I didn't like it is it creates this idea that there's enough this group versus. And I think we worked really hard internally, actually against that despite that being kind of an external document. I sent probably the email that was the most popular one of all time on the reply all thread, at least in my tenure, which was initiating an internal Minneapolis, all company shuffle board competition. And I remember Bob, our CEO, replied all like I'm in. And then he suggested someone on the finance team was going to be his partner. And so we just had very broad participation. People peered and partnered across seniority levels across departments. We did, we did a lot of charity work in the local offices and in Minneapolis and we made a service day. And I think everyone coming together and serving communities and wearing aprons and handing out food and just being, you know, people serving people was a very humanizing thing that we did that, you know, made it easier to engage with a senior leader, you know, in the hallway. Also potentially unpopular. We did not have assigned desks. We had no like desk in policy. We didn't have offices early on. And so you just engaged with people. I sat next to one of the pharmacy managers. And, you know, we always checked in on his kids. I saw, you know, daily updates. So just the fact that you were interacting with people that you had zero work overlap with, I think was also something that was frustrating to some people like telling their monitors, you like telling their predictability, but created some community that otherwise maybe we wouldn't have had. It sounds like it also created a bit of transparency into what others were doing or just an overall communication as well as people replying all. I mean, that's like forbidden in most company cultures. Don't want to stack up that email inbox. I'm sure some point I see with the gaba sh on it, but not more than two big and you can't reply all. So now, you know, after bright, you worked at the long health. And now you advise VCs in execs on building leadership teams. You know, having worked on both sides now. How do you look at how teams work together and how those VCs in exec should be looking at building their leadership teams? It's a good question. I'm going to use the classic consultant. It depends. And I think the biggest thing that I really push for is clarity and the what are you solving for? I have seen more often than not over rotation on bloating leadership early, this idea of hiring and advance. There are some businesses where there's a very good proposition behind like, let's get out ahead of it. We know we've got this market commitment. We know that, you know, we've got this key product we need to build or whatever it is. And there are some where frankly, it just feels like a mismatch in terms of business size complexity and the skills that of the person that you are anticipating that you need in that seat. And so I more than anything, try to get a clear understanding of what are you trying to accomplish? What is the business trying to accomplish? Is there maybe an alternative solution that doesn't necessarily mean kind of big budget hiring? In some instances, maybe I'm not a good business person and I talk people out of spending money working with me. But I think ultimately, you know, you want people to be successful in the roles and find the meeting full enough and media enough. And so I try to make sure that that actually is the right decision for all parties. I also encourage people to look around team dynamics. I really find the phrase talent collecting, which I often see it often and you see a lot of the logos on, you know, or decks. I find that to be a very ineffective way of building teams. I do think there are pattern recognition, you know, indicators that are important when you're thinking about experience that having someone been in this type of environment translates well to this type of environment, some of its business models, some of its company size and stage. Maybe it's a blend. But I think assuming because someone was successful in one context does not necessarily mean they will be successful in another context. And the idea of just putting people together without any sort of forethought into how they would complement each other does a team a major disservice. And then the other thing that I would say is to varying degrees of success, I have worked with third party groups who do team alignment, culture alignment. And this is everywhere that I've worked. And you do have to work at it. You can't just say I've put great executives together at this table, they should be able to solve this problem. So team dynamics, I was an athlete, I played soccer. You can't just assemble an all-star team and expect them to play well together. You have to practice. You've got to go through stressful situations. You've got a scenario test. So I think knowing that you're committed to building a team really matters and not expecting, you know, a subset of individuals to solve a problem is an important thing that I at least try to advise when people want my opinion on the topic. So on that topic, you know, in a short amount of time, especially healthcare startups have changed and how they're being built and how they're being funded, what are the key changes that you see from even five, six years ago that now you're seeing as you're helping these execs and these VCs either find their next role or trying to hire into those roles? It's always changing. And my point of view is changing on this constantly. I was actually just on a Zoom 20 minutes ago with two women who are looking to start a business who are looking for access to capital. And it's my first time meeting them. I was excited. I'm like, I love an entrepreneur. I love an idea. I love you have a business plan. I love women entrepreneurs. The path to entrepreneurs securing capital is tough. I think the way that capital allocation has happened over the last few years is obviously evolved. When I started my career, it was like series a days of like two to five million sales cycles were really long with health plans and health systems. Companies might run out of money on just the sales cycle alone. Proof point didn't really play out new round of funding. Likely didn't come business upended, right? Like that was what we saw. And then you started seeing private equity firms and venture firms getting a little bit more involved in the development of the concepts, you know, the commercial launch. And then you had series a is not too dissimilar from what we had at Bright, which is 80 million dollars. That's a very different ballpark. Now they probably moved back to like 25 to 40. And I'm not quoting actual numbers. And it totally I think it's harder for an entrepreneur to get access to that type of capital. And so you are seeing people who've been there done that you know, be seen as the right fit in a lot of these business. So it just changes the profile of like who is motivated to do this work, how motivated are they to do this again. So I am seeing a little bit of, you know, you want to try it in true, which obviously be season always wanted to invest in people who've had success. But I don't know how motivated, you know, some of those folks are kind of long term. I am seeing with the creation of these venture studios or these, you know, built for purpose models. And the investor groups tend to think well, we have the commercial relationships. We have this, we have this. We just need a really operational CEO. And I've seen some of those people really struggle to either really own the concepts because it wasn't maybe theirs. They didn't kick it around it and started they inherited it. And they sort of expected that someone else did the diligence and it was going to work. And then didn't have the, you know, the commercial relationships to pivot it, extend it and really make the business ultimately successful. And then obviously, you know, today, this is a week we're filling not everyone knows us. a week after the advanced out. And so you're just continuously seeing a lot of the pressure coming from payers, coming out of CMS reimbursements are tough. So, you know, I think this the sale is harder, the endurance is harder and you're seeing a lot of businesses, unfortunately, having to get kicked around, sort of down, down stream. And I guess my point on that is you do need a more strategic person who can kind of navigate some of the regulatory challenges, but also optionality game doesn't work. So it's a very unfocused time. It's interesting that you're talking about that. I was speaking with a founder earlier who went out for series A last year and got exactly what they wanted within six weeks. And then is planning on a series B and is planning on it being six weeks again. And I was like, have you have you run that up the flagpole from a timing perspective? Like I'm it's interesting. It's great that you have that kind of interest if that's really what it is, but I haven't necessarily seen that kind of turnaround with with no, I would agree at timing timing is everything. There are several CEOs that I've spoken to who feel like they have timed it absolutely perfectly and they are so lucky they don't have to raise a gap and they're able to do more with last and manage, you know, cash very, very, very, like, win a very disciplined way. And then there are others who have just been on the tail end of AI coming in. It wasn't necessarily part of the initial, you know, business plan for them to have this like market leading AI solution. And so clinical results are there, but they're lagging in terms of what investors are looking at. And so they're constantly in this fun recycle. So I actually, I guess in response to your question, I think like endurance matters way more now. And it's been tough from a talent standpoint in the market as I've talked to people, there there are people who are way jumpier right now than they ever have been. And I would say that is largely due to the fact that if you look at 10 years ago, not to use bright AMIA like Oscar, you had bright, you had Clover, you had Evelyn, you had Privia, you had businesses that were exploding landmark, right, exploding Oak Street. And people loved the variety, the change, the fact that you could have eight different jobs in three years. And now, you know, businesses are not just exploding. Payers are putting way more scrutiny. There's like AI review boards now. There's so much. And so these are becoming one product, one market companies that are requiring a slog, prove it out. And people are like, I don't want to do that. That's boring. And so they're, they're jumping to what they think is the next hot thing when reality is on some days, you got to really dig in. And so I think that's really impacted the, the talent market. You need a, you know, fix stomach these days. Yeah. I also think that there's not a lot to jump to. So you kind of have to either stick it out or you might end up being on the losing end of that gamble. Because there's not a lot of work out there to be had. I would also say that I have found that it is exactly what you're saying. It's either you're very jumpy. If you have a lot of opportunities that seem to be coming your way and there are some roles that are a little bit more in demand. And then you have people who are like, I'm paid fine. I have work life balance, you know, like they are very much hiding out and enjoying having a steady paycheck, which NetNet is like pretty unmotivating. I think if you took a collective pulse of some operators out there. Okay. So circling back to what you're doing now, you spend your time advising executives as they build their companies. What do you wish that founders came to you and what conversations you're having earlier than later? I think we'd like to talk a little bit more about what they're solving for, you know, what I was referencing early, which is, you know, what's your where do you want to be in three years? You know, where are you today? What do you think you need to do to actually achieve those metrics? How much of it is fixed cost? How much of it is variable? You know, what, what are the, what are the talent needs that you have to get there and what are perceived and what are real and what is board pressure and what is actual based on lived experience? So I think those are ones that I would probably like to talk to them about earlier. You know, I actually, frankly, have been spending time trying to connect a lot of entrepreneurs that I work with to each other, because I think a lot of them have very similar problems or similar concerns or looking at the market similarly, but don't have that check, right? As a CEO, you've got your employees who are working for you, who are looking up to you to tell them what's up and then you've got the board who, you know, checking on you once a quarter. And so as it relates to what is actually going on and having that support system, I think it's spending time, I would advise them to spend time with more entrepreneurs to have a sustainable peer group. That is a great place to end it. More again, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your wisdom. Thanks for having me and loved it. I love to share my wisdom. Thanks for listening to No Operating Manual. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please leave a rating and a review and don't forget to subscribe on YouTube. No Operating Manual is hosted and produced by Aaron O'Brien of Chemistry, Healthcare Marketing and Communication Advisory. Visit our website at ChooseCemistry.com