[upbeat music] Hey friend, it's David Nebinski, the senior community manager here at the Chief of Staff Network.
We help chiefs of staff through the three Cs: cohorts, curriculum, and community via Slack with over 900 people in it. Learn more about our upcoming events and programs at chiefofstaff.network.
You can also subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you do not miss out on anything. This episode of the Chief of Staff Network Podcast is with Michael Finkbeiner, also known as Finky.
It was recorded live at our New York City BrainTrust event, a six-hour mini conference. Finky is the chief of staff at Vertosa, a science first cannabis company.
In this episode, you'll learn about how Finky got his chief of staff role and some of the work he's doing now. Excited for you to level up as a chief of staff. Here we go with Finky. And here we go.
We're live here at the f- kickoff of the Chief of Staff Network podcast. Woo.
[cheering] [clapping] And super excited to kick things off with Michael, also known as Finky, uh, who's been a longtime m-member, um, y- usually found on a walking treadmill, but, uh, not at the moment.
But, um, so Finky, how did you get your chief of staff role? Uh, before we dig in, David, I have to tell you a secret.
Uh, yesterday I had my quarterly performance review, and my CEO and I both agreed that an area for improvement I should focus on was concise communications.
[laughs] So with that in mind, I apologize in advance 'cause I'm gonna ramble. [laughs] Okay. Oh. So how did you get your role? Yeah. [laughs] Oh, fine. Uh, I was thinking- In a concise way... of a, a tagline- Yeah...
uh, that was concise, and it is small town farm boy drops out of college and tweets his way to being chief of staff. Oh. [cheering] [clapping] So, uh, [laughs] there's a lot of history behind that.
Uh, but if you focus on the latter part, I'll take you back to a long, long time ago when Twitter was called Twitter, and live tweeting events was an opportunity to build relationships, not just share snarky sentiments.
I was in San Francisco and looking to transition my experience at the early stages of wearable technology to venture capital, and I could not get a interview to save my life. Oh. I didn't go to Harvard.
I would've dropped out if I had. I didn't have an MBA, I hadn't worked at a cool startup, and that's what VCs were looking for, the on-paper validation that said to them I was good enough.
So I considered industries that might not care so much. Mm. And at the early stages of a legal market of cannabis in California, I thought people who sell weed won't care- [laughs]... that I didn't go to Harvard.
[laughs] [cheering] And I was right about that.
And so I started attending events and live tweeting them, not so much about myself, but adding the, the handle of the person speaking on a panel or the brand producing a product.
So what's your handle so if anyone wants to follow you [laughs]? My handle? Oh, no, I'm not on X anymore.
[laughs] Um, but, uh, I would tweet about them, and that was, like, a little initial, um, opportunity to kickstart a relationship. Wow.
In this small emerging market, no one was live tweeting their events, and so I quickly found people that thought I kinda knew what I was talking about, and I zeroed in on a VC fund that had an incubator for early stage cannabis companies that I was like, "Th- they, they got it."
I weaseled my way into their first demo day and ran into the managing partner at the urinal. [laughs] Now, I know what you're thinking. I did not get a job in the bathroom that day.
I washed my hands first and then- [laughs]... listened to his keynote speech when he was honest.
People thought he was fancy and important and smart because he was a VC, and in reality, 6:00 AM that morning, he had been lugging furniture in the rain to set up this event.
And he used, uh, a wonderful line of, like, "If you wanna be a founder in this space or any space, if you wanna build something, you gotta be willing to carry the couch." Mm.
So the next morning, he got an email in his inbox from me with the subject line, "I will carry the couch." Ooh. Oh. So good.
A month later, I was director of operations for a VC fund, having never worked in venture capital.
Eight and a half years later, I am owning our people operations alongside executive support, alongside investor relations. Um, and tomorrow I will carry the couch either figuratively or literally for our team. Wow.
[clapping] Lots of directions to go. [laughs] I'll, I'll keep this outside the bathroom. Um, but, um, so, uh, what's a project that you've been working on these days that you're really excited about?
You skipped your second question, but I'll allow that. Uh, I was going to try to sound smart and talk about how I built out a framework for reporting and accountability for our strategic plan, but that sounds boring. Oh.
So, um, I'll talk about the work that I've been doing with our hiring process. We could not hire effectively. It was taking way too long, 120 days from opening a role to actually signing someone.
That is a long time. On top of that, there was very little confidence through the hiring process that we were zeroing in on a candidate that would work.
There was little, if any, training other than show up on this one day, and can you download Slack on your phone? Mm.
And so over the last year and a half, as HR and people operations has been shifted into the chief of staff role, um, if we zero in on hiring, we started from justifying every role, not just having someone say- Wow...
"We need to hire a sales account executive," but then having them fill out a very detailedDocument that helps them understand and work through why that role is being hired and the potential ROI, in addition to anticipated 30-60-90 plans, et cetera.
Um, and then standardizing the interview process with, ah, customized questions that are asked again and again and again to, to candidates, really teasing out the experience that we need for a given role and fleshing out a much more valid 30-60-90 plan that builds the confidence for any given team member and the systems that they're gonna use, arms this with company education, along with department-specific education, and then integrates them from day one into our performance review system with 30-60-90 check-ins, them and their manager.
Weekly touch points with me, which I think is their favorite part, to be frank.
[laughs] Um, and we're now sh- have shortened that one hundred and twenty day from opening a role to signing someone, most recently to thirty days, which feels so much more normal.
[applause] But speed doesn't matter, quality does.
And the quotes that we're getting from not only the managers of new team members, but the team members themselves, highlighting the professionalism, the engagement, the humanity, um, that they experience in those first thirty, sixty, ninety days, that's cool.
Who's got a question? [coughs] Come on up, Helen. Congratulations on decreasing your amount of days spent to hire someone. How much of AI practices are you using as part of the reason that number has come down?
My boss would be so excited that you're, you're talking about that. So in terms of JD development, it's really simplified that.
ChatGPT doesn't know us, but it knows a lot about, like, the general responsibilities of a role, like a sales account executive.
So I actually start there, um, and have a process for how I ask that question, pull up the bullet points there, restructure, ah, them into our format, add our tone of voice, and of course, get alignment from the team that that is actually an accurate, ah, version, um, for, for JDs.
Aside from that, I haven't yet done, um, any experiments with, say, an AE platform or an AI platform that would scrub all the incoming applicants.
Um, it could be helpful, but, like, based on my experience reading resumes, I just feel like if I give it the keywords, every one of those resumes is gonna have that, that keyword.
And so it's still been a very manual process, um, supported with our external recruiter, which again, they might use AI, but they haven't admitted that quite yet. Who's got another question?
What's your favorite part of the chief of staff role? That's the second question that David wouldn't let me answer. [laughs] So I appreciate you offering me this opportunity, Jenna.
Ah, learning new skills and helping people, and the latter is probably the, the coolest part.
Um, my experience, even when I wasn't called chief of staff, even when I wasn't in cannabis or even traditional, uh, culture, has always been about s- working with people, usually high-performing people, that are desperate to do more than they're currently doing, and helping them figure out a way to, to do that without burning out and while hopefully having fun is still what I do today.
I love it. Cool. Come on up. Say your name. Hi, my name is Maria. My question is around, like, um, how did you get the company to, um, support your new process of hiring? Because that's what I struggle the most.
Like, I can write an entire plan, and then ev- when I say, "This is what you gotta ask, and this is where you're looking for the candidate," then they're like, "But what about this, and what about that?"
And everybody's on a different page, even though I gave a very simple, uh, format.
How do, did you rally everybody to be like, "This is what we're gonna do, and this is the results that we're trying to, to create," and demonstrate that to them, basically, that so they can get behind you and be like, "Sure, let's get this person signed in thirty days."
Because that has been my struggle, that I get a format, I get everybody on board, and then when we start, people
are not committed to the [chuckles] mission of, like, getting a person signed in thirty days, of not getting the person signed, but finding the best person for this role in thirty days.
So I would love to see how you handle the culture and rallying everyone in the company to get things done. Yeah.
It's messy and it never stops, 'cause what you're describing, in my opinion, is accountability or alignment, um, or both, uh, actually.
And so, um, I didn't do it perfectly in standardizing our interview process, as an example, but when reviewing it, I made sure I was really well aware of the pain points that the company or individual team members were experiencing.
And that kind of led the decision-making that I went through in my suggested approach, and that might look like a meeting where you reiterate, everyone, here's the problems that we're facing. Here's our objectives.
This is what we wanna do, reduce hiring time, or, like, reduce bias in the hiring process by standardizing the questions we ask every candidate.
And once you confirm those, uh, both the pain points, then the, the goals-You tee yourself up to go into your suggested approach.
And you might have to validate that to-- in the beginning with like, "Hey, it's not just me who thinks I'm so special and knows how to do this, but like here's some of the resources I turn to to educate myself."
The people or the articles you found on online that they can hopefully use to validate their trust in this thing, and you go through the process and ask them questions. Like, "How does this sound?
What would you change? What, if any, part of this do you think is gonna be really hard to execute?"
And get all those things that, um, would eventually hinder accountability to your plan on the surface, and that might help you then be like, "Okay, well, you gotta simplify this 'cause I'm hearing that people are just not gonna use it 'cause they think this is too much or it's gonna be too hard."
And so you use that to refine your, your process and, and get people to finally agree, like, "Yeah, like this is probably gonna work." And then you iterate, iterate, iterate.
So like we, we s- uh, as an example, had an AE sprint that started in very early March, a hiring sprint for an account executive on our sales team, and we had already adjusted that process, the initial thing that was laid out last year, um, when we entered that, um, sprint.
And then throughout it, I was like, "Okay, this is still like sticky." People still are not documenting questions the way we all agreed to do it.
So it's consistent reminders to them of why that matters, that they're supposed to be doing this, and that they actually said, "Yes, I will do this," okay? And then adjusting the process for the next one.
So like we learn things at the AI one, we added them literally three weeks later to the start of a sprint for an accounting, uh, manager role on our finance team.
And I already have made adjustments to like the initial templates that we'll use for any of the next roles or specifically the finance roles. And you keep checking in. You keep checking in.
This morning I sent a far too long, not concise Slack to our COO, who was not eager or was experiencing some challenges in documenting interviews in a way that seemed like really effective to drive decision-making for our team.
So like I already offered some potential solutions to kind of like solve that acute issue, and we'll have to long-term adjust, not just because of him, but because the reasons are value, are, are, are meaningful.
Um, and to your point, a process doesn't matter if people don't follow it. So you just gotta keep talking to them, kinda like keep working with them. But at some point,
someone has to be the boss, and if you're in charge of HR and people operations or hiring as a specific thing,
eventually you may have to say, "This is in the best interest of the company, and this is the expectation for people being involved in the hiring process." And if someone is not following those,
not to sound dramatic, but like that needs to be evaluated, and that feedback needs to be provided because they are now not performing their role. Thank you so much, Frankie.
[audience cheering] [upbeat music]