Hello, and welcome to the Champions of RISK podcast where we examine the many aspects of risks so we can all face uncertainty with more strength, confidence, and humor together, then we're going to talk about humanity in the workplace. It seems common sense, right? And yet, so many leaders seem to shy away from it like dealing with the whole person that shows up to work every day. It feels maybe a little too risky, right? Well, today's guest feels quite the opposite. Please welcome Leslie Holman. And she is the CEO of Pinnacle Performance Group. It's a woman-owned management consulting firm. Earlier in her career, she was the Itasca Project Director which had a huge influence on her leadership style and career. When she had the opportunity to build her business the way that she wanted to she instilled the motto, take care of yourself, take care of your family, do good work. In that order. Leslie, welcome to the Champions of Risk podcast.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here today.

I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you. Let's kick it off with that moment in time that was instrumental in shaping for you. And that's the work that you did with the Itasca project. So remind the audience please what the project was designed to do, and how did you get involved with it.

The Itasca Project is an amazing effort in our community, it's often not known or not heard about as much, but it's the coming together of major employers, the public, and private nonprofit sectors in the Twin Cities region to help advance the the goals of the region. And I had the opportunity for about nine months to be heavily involved in supporting the task of the project while I was at McKinsey when their director when I'm trying to do it. And so it was a amazing opportunity to see some amazingly influential leaders in our community, and not necessarily see them in their their business day-to-day work, but seeing how they use their platforms of being leaders of business, to initiate and drive positive change in our region.

That's fantastic. And so when you think about like, why they were all coming together, and why they do come together, is it really about bringing business to the Twin Cities? Is it about creating more jobs?

Overall, I will just say that it's been several years since I've been actively involved in the task of projects. So, if the time I was involved, it was very much about these employers having an incentive to make this region a great place for their employees via public schools, transportation job opportunities, be eliminating disparities. And so those employers recognize that to have great employees, we had to have a great thriving region, and that they were part of solving those problems. And so the time I was involved, the effort was very much on job creation. And that was both through attracting and retaining large employers and asking them, you know, looking for them to expand here. So the work there rolled out into what's now greater MSP, and then the other half of the work at that time was job creation for entrepreneurship. How do we create an entrepreneurial ecosystem that is supportive and rejuvenate our region from the bottom up so that we can continue to thrive going forward?

And while you were there it was, through your work at McKinsey, how did that experience start to shape your career trajectory, and how did you know what you wanted to be doing in this community?

I think I often use the phrase of, you know, we're all constantly on this journey to figure out what we want to do when we grow up, just you know, the definition of when we grow up continues to advance, you know, a decade at a time, but I was at one of those inflection points in my career where I knew that it was time for me to move on from, you know, the work of McKinsey and the travel mill there. And I was a bit figuring out what I wanted to do in the next phase of life. And a couple of things impacted me at the time. I got to work with the Itasca Project. I think the first one is, was helping me find purpose in the work I did. You know, I think oftentimes, when people are struggling with that, you know, what am I doing? And what am I doing it for they initially, they automatically think I should go work at a nonprofit because that's where I will find purpose. And it was a different experience to see these leaders of the, you know, the biggest corporations in our region, spending every Friday morning in a conference room, in person talking about the challenges of our region and how we were going to fix them. And it made me realize that you could do good in the world using your platform in business. There was another path versus thinking if I want to have a purpose. I need to work in a nonprofit where these leaders were doing amazing good in the world, but they had done that because of their business success. So that was it. One of the first major impacts that experience had on my life, I think the second one was then seeing the options outside of big corporate America, just from a career trajectory, that would be probably the more normal place that someone in my position would have gone, you know, into a strategy group or something, and getting to see an experience these different entrepreneurial groups and what they were doing. And also just the importance of entrepreneurship and overall success in a region that we have these thriving Fortune 500 companies today, because we had amazing entrepreneurs, you know, several decades ago, and that circle needs to regenerate itself continuously. And if we don't invest in that, we're not going to continue to sustain as a region. So that drove my passion for entrepreneurship and the importance of small business.

Does that surprise you that you will start to gravitate more toward the entrepreneurship side of the business?

I would say yes. Partially, because that was my experience growing up, my father was an independent psychologist, and my mother worked for his practice. And so I had already seen all the bad sides of entrepreneurship or independent business of you never get paid on vacation, the phone always rings, just all the, you know, didn't have dental insurance growing up, because those types of things. And so it was like, why would I ever do that? I can go work in a big corporation and have insurance and benefits and this and that. I remember I was outside of my house doing the landscaping with my dad. And I was like, so would you do it again? He's like. The benefits and flexibility of being my boss and making my own decisions, hands down off the cuff. Because when I was a kid, I was like, it sucks. But good to know that that perspective resonated through. So it surprised me a little bit, but I also kind of had this, I guess it's an entrepreneurial attitude that like, hasn't failed yet. And that I feel confident if I do fail, I could get another job. So why not? Like why not take a bet on myself?

Well, a lot of entrepreneurs decide that they want to, they're gonna leave a corporate situation. I mean, a lot of times, that's the basis, right? And they don't want to do that any more than they want to launch on their own. They have an idea, they have a concept. Maybe it's on the service side, maybe it's on the product side, but you took another route, and that was buying an existing business. So tell us about how that came about. And how did you even have that idea? Because that sounds brilliant.

The answer to everything that sounds brilliant is because you talked to smart people, first of all, but I did, I did a two-step I when I left when I left McKinsey and was done with the Itasca Project, I went worked in private equity for about a year and a half for a fund that looked at smaller women owned, women-led firms. And so got that experience for about 18 months who knew about buying and selling companies. But then when I was I sort of had the self realization that my passion was working in those companies not necessarily doing the deals. And so was talking again, in my perspective, when you're in that inflection point, what do you want to do when you grow up, you start going out to coffee, so went out to a ton of different coffees with people I knew or people I was introduced to and like, Okay, what do I want to do next, like, talk to me, what's your experience? And I was sitting in a gyro shop in St. Paul with a great business leader, Scott Burns, and he said, Why don't you buy a company? And I thought, well, I do know how to do that. Now I've worked in private equity, because I said, Well, I don't have any ideas. Like I don't. I don't know what my business would be. And so I did some exploring. And sure enough, there's like Craigslist for businesses, called Business Brokers, and went through and it was like, tanning salon, tanning salon, laundromat, tanning salon, professional services firm! Oh, I know about professional services. And it was about the company I stumbled across helping frontline employees expand their capability, their capabilities. And so that was an area I had developed a passion for my time at McKinsey of how do you help that frontline workforce, and that went back to my days of working in the automotive industry. And so I called her sent an email and said, it's like dating. We talked to this, the current owners and you talk a little more and then you share a little more information. And it was like nine months later, I bought myself a company.

When you went into private equity. Did you go into that thinking that you were going to learn about how to get into business yourself? Or did you think you were going to do a career in private equity?

I didn't know I didn't go into it thinking I was going to get into business myself. I went into it more from the point of passion around the importance of that small growth- high growth firms in our region. I sometimes say I'm the only person that went into private equity to save the world. Because you know, you have to invest in the firms that are you know, going through the valley of death and make sure they get through. And that's how our region is going to keep flourishing. So it was much more around that passion and the importance of that work, definitely not looking at it for something that would benefit me personally in a future endeavor.

And so what are some of the risks that come about buying an existing business?

Oh, I would say the same as any other one, you know, be prepared to drain your savings, drain your 401k, do all the things, run your credit cards through your PayPal account, which Amex doesn't like very much. You know, it's, on the one hand, you're buying, depending on the organization you buy, and it may be very stable. I bought a professional services firm that was buying a lot of goodwill, I bought the right to say I had these large clients, I bought some previous knowledge, but also didn't have a very full business development pipeline. And so what risk? And so then it was the journey of how do you mitigate that risk? And how do you take what you did, did by and leverage that in a new way?

At the same time, though, you had this sense of how you wanted to create the business that you you've purchased, right, and especially around the culture, and environment. And so tell us a little bit about what you knew for sure, in that area.

I, I knew that I wanted to create a place I wanted to work. And I had this passion fire around the fact that I could live my values and be successful, I just, wanted to prove that and not have to compromise between those two and just be my whole self. And so I did an exercise early on in a women's group that has had a very big effect on me, which was, you know, similar to what a lot of people do is, you know, what do you want your obituary to be like that type of thing. But we did draw a picture. And mine was drawing a picture of a scale, a two-sided scale, and one side was a heart and one side was a $1 sign. And I decided that if in my life, my heart got more credit than the dollar sign. And I was okay with that. And that would be the legacy I would want to leave. And so that that would start as my Northstar of, if you lead with your values and your, your beliefs, and don't get don't lead with how do I make the incremental dollar the world opens up to you in a whole different way. And so that's translated into our business extremely significantly of everyone who works here is comfortable and can take care of their families. But the incremental dollar doesn't matter. It's looking at all the things we can do and how that brings us together. It's just a very different way of running an organization.

It is so much to the decree that when you think about it, because then when you're hiring people, right, they've come from other environments that more than likely didn't have that same approach. So how do you go about deprogramming people as they're coming into your company?

Deprogramming is a word we use often and is a real thing for us. So as people are coming into the organization, there's there are a couple of different areas we have to think about and deprogram. One is, trust is truly getting people to believe that the words we say we mean. So when we say the motto is to take care of yourself, take care of your family do good work in that order. We really, truly mean it. And I can, you know, there are so many examples. If you're like, Oh, I didn't, I didn't think you meant it. Or I was talking to one of our colleagues. Remember, he sent a text or an email like Friday night at like, eight o'clock or so over the weekend. And like his first feedback was like, you do not send emails over the weekend. No one needs to know this over the weekend. You wait till Monday. And he was the former CEO. And he was just like, Whoa, never gotten in trouble before because I sent an email on the weekend. And we still kind of laugh about that. He's like, I get it. Now. I get it now or another colleague who went on vacation for a week and we have a metric on Zero Hour Workweek, you know, when you go on vacation, you go on vacation, like I don't take my laptop when I go on vacation. Why would I, nobody else should and another colleague thought that they had gotten moved off of projects, they didn't get emails on vacation, like, no, you're on vacation. And it's just like watching this light bulb go off in people's heads like, Oh, you would mean that, don't you? So I think the first thing is building trust. And then it's that we say what we mean. But then it's continuous you know, having leading by example, and reinforcing that. And we don't do it perfectly. And we're learning every step. And I think it's also that being open to like, where did we mess up? What did we learn from it and how can we do better, but having everyone know that Northstar is very clear for us?

Yes, and sometimes people have to experience and a couple of times before they truly believe it right? For you, then what? What would you say is your definition of humanity? What does that represent for you?

For me, it's in the context of this discussion and workplace it is that we are just we are whole real people that are complicated and have challenges. And I think often in the workplace, people are expected to be this perfectly segmented professional that says, I show up, and I only think about work and work is all that's going on. And I'm completely focused. And I can, you know, home is in another box, and that's just not real. People have sick kids, your sewers backup, you know, your dog has to have knee surgery. And when you don't let people show up as their whole person and, and be human, you're not, you're not allowing them to act naturally. And you're, it's just, I feel like, it's so much harder for people to try and block those other things out. Versus if we can acknowledge that we're all human, and we all have bumps in the road. And, you know, people go to funerals, and they walk into a meeting. And sometimes they just need to burst into tears and take five minutes to process that humanity with them right there. And you can move on to work, it will be fine. But ignoring those types of things, I think makes people hollow is ask them to not be human. So for us, it's, acknowledge who you are, what you're dealing with, what you're going through in real time, and it's okay, that that comes into work, because we're just human, and we're all professionals, and we're all going to deliver on our best. But sometimes our belief is you can do that better when you're allowed to acknowledge every part of yourself in the workplace.

Yeah, I know, just even from my personal experience, I'm thinking about all the times that I resisted saying something, you know, something that I needed something that would have made my life easier, you know, because of things that were going on, at home. And I just thought that I absolutely couldn't bring those into the workplace, I just needed to keep going. And you don't realize like the damage that does, you know, over time until you can get some space around that. And your part about that, like the human shows up for work. I have colleagues around hiring retention is like people are always surprised. They think they're hiring employees, and then humans show up to work, you know (laughing)? So how do you continue, like, when you're talking to other leaders, you know, and help them bridge that gap of like, yep, you're hiring talent, right? But you also want to embrace who the person is, as a whole in the workplace. How do you help reinforce that? Or how do you encourage other leaders to do that more?

I think the biggest thing we do is lead by example. So as a consulting organization, we're going into other companies, and I think this is one we're still improving on but I think it's not being apologetic for our values, but owning them and leaning into them. And we also extend them to, our clients. So one of our key values is caring professional, I sort of hinted at, it's the idea that we are complete professionals, but we're also human. And so you know, when the plumbing breaks or whatever, or something like that happens, we flex and balance. And we do that through working as a team and taking care of each other. So in a client's situation, it might happened to me last week, I was going into a new opportunity meeting with a VP that I'd loved working with, and hadn't gotten to talk to in a while. And three minutes before the meeting started, my nanny came down because I'm still working in the basement and said, You know, my son had just below 104-degree fever. And I just wrote a one-line email to this client that said, not able to join the meeting, I have a family situation and need to sign off I feel fully confident you're in good hands with my two colleagues who are going to join. And so still professional still had the right people showing up but not making excuses of why I wasn't going to be there. And ironically, most people are just fine with that and find it refreshing that you're just honest. So for our clients, we are open and honest about that. And then also, you know, do the same thing for them. We had a client who had I think it was two or three sick kids, two of them waiting for COVID tests a couple of months ago, and just, just Yeah, right. And they had a bunch of work to do that evening. And normally our team does not, we are not evening workers. We are very much family time and family time, but she wasn't going to be able to be the mom she wanted to be and we said, we've got it. Like what's on your list. We've got it, four of us, like jumped online for an hour and a half and knocked it all out because that's what we do. That's the right thing to do. And that's how you help each other be human. And so that's I would say, that's how we show up in the market, to try to share our perspectives is really through modeling our behaviors.

The example that you shared with the one-line email that you sent is really powerful because as a woman too, there was no I'm sorry, in that, and that is so incredibly powerful. And it's not that men don't say I'm sorry too. But women more often than not, are the ones that feel like they have to apologize for things. And so just, you know, as a female CEO, modeling that behavior. I mean, goes so far in that, what are some of the advantages you see as being a female CEO?

Okay, the podcast, no one else can tell this, but I'm about, I'm pregnant with my second child, due in about two weeks. And so the one that's top of mind right now, that is that I think is advantageous is planning, succession planning, backup planning. I, when I had my first child, I remember going in and talking to my attorney, and he

Mmhm, yes. Well, and if we think about was like, Would the business go on, if something happens to you? And I'm like. And he looked at me, kind of like I was crazy. And I said, if you're a woman, and you're going out to have a baby, like, hope, I mean, I'm not a superstar, I cannot show back up in a week or two, I took eight weeks off, but you also don't know what's going to happen. You know, this is a very serious medical procedure and things go wrong. And so, you know, I've walked into that situation now, again, of like, who knows what could happen to me, I might not be back for several months. And so you have to plan accordingly. And that forces you as a woman to be very clear, as a leader: What do you do? Who's making, who's, or who are you empowering to make decisions? How does that work, always have a backup for everything. And I actually can super advantageous that men don't necessarily have that same pressure put on them if they're in, you know, that phase of their life if they were leading a company. So I think that is a huge, a huge benefit. I also think that it is advantageous to be a woman and be a little bit more radical and do different things like leading with humanity. I think that sometimes the world allows you those opportunities more. And I think it's one of the things we try to do is call out that we have some pretty amazing men that work for us, who have the same values and passion and commitment to their families. And I think it's, it's harder for them, I would say than to say, a woman who's like, I'm going to go work for a company that's got these great values, and, you know, flexible work schedule, and this and that. And the thing I rise is the men that work for us, and many of them are working with us in a flexible environment, because they have extremely successful wives, and are supporting them. And to me that society makes that a much harder thing to do. But I think as a w man creating that space, and t en supporting not just women, but men too, who said, say no, I p prioritize different things, is s something that we have the probably a little bit better opening to do. where are some of the advantages now that we're coming out of COVID, so to speak, right, like this next era, where we've just spent the last, you know, over close to a year and a half, having witnessed, experienced and dealt with all of those scenarios that you've just talked about, people have had family members that have been sick, everybody's had to, you know, figure out how to work from home, like, there's just been all these adjustments. So the opportunity now is to come back and function and operate differently. So where do you see like, the biggest opportunities that businesses in general can take, given this new era we're coming into?

I think business in general, in the last year and a half, was forced to smash into the reality that their employees are human. That suddenly it is about, you know, kids are being run behind in meetings, and people have to set up Zoom calls for school and piano lessons Zoom calls have to start and it was, it was very, it was more normal for us. But it was interesting watching corporate clients do that like and we were instilling some things like, you can never apologize for your child interrupting, you know, meaning, like never say you're sorry, that's part of life. And I think it'll be very interesting to see how large organizations either embrace that humanity that they've been thrown into, or regress from it. Because I think that when I would propose that in reflecting that you have people who are, you know, going to school parades or getting to, you know, stop by and see elderly parents at a different time of day, that there's some real value in how your employees show up and you know, the energy they have, that can be taken forth and not trying to put them back in the box of just being the sole professional individual who shows up at work always buttoned up. I think that's going to be one of the biggest things to watch coming out of COVID besides the work from home, do you work in person, you know, those things are all important too. But I think it's the, I'm going to be interested in the human perspective and how that may change now that employees have been having had that opportunity and been exposed to it.

It's almost like every business owner, CEO or business leader has the opportunity to take that Itasca project perspective of, you know, creating a healthy ecosystem in their business, and not just addressing the business itself. But you know, the medical, the, the human pieces, they the entertainment pieces, that can make the work environment better, what type of like competitive edge could that have for the business.

I can say for us, and I say this without doing a formal survey. But I feel confident in speaking for our employees that we're very honest when you come to work for us like you're you could make more money somewhere else you're not going to get the highest level pay and all the perks coming here. But are you going to come to an environment where people truly care about you, where they support you in all your strengths, and celebrate your weaknesses, too, and are excited to just do good work and solve great problems and do it with other smart people? For me, I think the talent quality that you can get from creating an environment like that is amazing. And the thirst people have for that is also fairly phenomenal. And so I think big companies have to challenge will be for them to quantify that benefit. So, you know, is it through employee retention or employee engagement, they will need a metric to value that it's easier to be a single owner to lead with your heart and, you know, thinking of our CFO, and we have all the metrics too. But, I think that's going to be a challenge for big organizations.

What would you say your responsibility as a leader is; to have, that- to create that culture?

We say, so, as a leader, and as our organization, I continue to talk for us, it's about thoughtful, continuous growth. And that goes back to my time with the task of a project and realizing that business can create the platform for you to do good. As we think about what does do good means, for us in our organization. The number one thing about doing good is taking care of our employees, and the way we truly think it means to happen. I sort of think about the spirit of a 1950s family-run company, you know why we do that we also have some other aspects of growth that are important. One is continuing to grow gives us a larger platform for broad issues that we want to engage on. We've recently in the wake of everything that's happened with the murder of George Floyd and social unrest in Minneapolis, we realized it was time for us to start doing our part and launching internal social justice work, which right now is focused on, how we as individuals, better ourselves and become better allies. So that's a piece of growing that can help with the responsibility to grow because we can have a bigger platform to help the world around us. But we also have a responsibility to grow because through growth, we allow more people to work in the way that we do. And believe that, one by one family, my family, we can make a difference in their lives and how their happiness but also a little bit back to that prove to the world we can do it to where we kind of all are a group of passionate individuals that are committed to saying this can work and we're going to make we're going to show you how And would it be easier to mandate everyone is in the office 40, 50, 60 hours a week and run a company like that? Absolutely. But easier doesn't necessarily mean better. So we want to prove that we can lead with the heart and still be successful.

Yes. And then you can become the poster child

this is possible, come with us, come along. I love it. You're creating a whole movement, Leslie. Like, that's what's gonna happen.

We're trying. We're at the early stages.

Well, tell me what you are excited about for the next 12 months looking ahead. Aside from bringing another child into the world, what gives you hope?

Good people, you know, good people and good values. But I think what if I think about what am I excited about? And particularly, what am I excited about? For Pinnacle, I think every stage we go through as an organization is just so interesting and thought-provoking, and so much, so many opportunities to learn as we continue on our thoughtful growth journey, you know, we have these different inflection points from being various, you know, sort of, in my basement company to, you know, getting a little bit larger, and having a professional functioning team to having, you know, a full leadership team and a broader set of consultants. And as we continue to scale, I think the one thing that we're exploring right now is how do we continue to grow and maintain our culture. And how do we have to lean in even more to that, taking care of our people? So really thoughtfully, intentionally recognizing that that is, we think our, our secret sauce is the amazing people that we bring. And we know most of those people choose us because of our culture and the way we choose to work. And so what does that mean, in terms of how we support employees? How, how do we have metrics? And then we're discussing how do we measure joy. And what does that mean? And so I think there are some really interesting challenges in the year ahead, as we try to crack that not. And we need to have that foundation in place before we can grow too much or too quickly. Because without it, we're going to, we will, we will lose our mission. And what we've set forth to do from a broader perspective. So that to me, just is a cool, exciting, meaty problem to crack into. And it'll be interesting to see where we get in 12 months.

And then as you're measuring this along the way, and you're finding that formula that works for you, when will the book come out? Or the white paper that explains how to do it?

That's something we are we are thinking about and getting more questions on is, how, how have you done this? And is it real? And, and I think it's, it's very flattering, and it's something we're chewing on of, Okay, if we want to prove to the world we can do this, and how do we help other people do that? So no plans yet. But I think this start is just continuing to have the conversation with people. And you know, helping people just even for an hour thinking about humanity in the workplace, and how, you know, how can that make an impact on your business in a positive way. And then, as you said, to me, maybe it's starting the movement of how you start to link these things together. To me, I think the key of it goes back to as a leader, you have to sort of decouple yourself from being driven by pure financials, you have to go back to the what is, what is my definition of success? And is it you know, setting, being able to send my kids to college, my employees having that same benefit, and then being open to the flexibility of what the other possibilities are? So, to me, it also comes back to a lot of about business owners, thinking about redefining what success is and what matters, because as long as it's the ultimate dollar signs that drive you. A lot of these options are open. But really, what's another dollar? What's another $10? If you've met the needs of you and your family what can you do in a broader sense with that money?

Exactly. Figuring out how to win your way, not by somebody else's definition. Absolutely. Now, well, I'm already going to call, it I hope you will come back on the podcast when your book is launched. I'm already predicting it's going to happen. But Leslie In the meantime, how can people follow you, follow Pinnacle and get more information?

Our website is PinnacleConnection.com. So feel free to connect with us there or you can find me individually on LinkedIn. Leslie Holman, there. So those are the best ways to connect with us.

Okay, great. Well, thank you for leading the way that you do. It's very inspiring. It's possible because you're already doing it. And I look forward to hearing about other leaders who have decided to take on the Leslie Holman ay, the Pinnacle Connection ay. Thanks for being a guest.

Thank you, appreciate it.

If you're like most achievers, you have big goals and you're used to reaching them. But lately, maybe you've been feeling more overwhelmed. Fatigue maybe send in a little while ago, and it feels like maybe you're just kind of going through the motions. If you'd like to find ways to get out of that autopilot and get back to accelerating your goals, check out Champion You Group Coaching. Each month other high performers just like you meet virtually to learn new ways to break down current barriers and put action and momentum behind their goals. If you're looking to get different results in business and life, then discover how Champion You Group Coaching can support you in achieving your version of an unstoppable 2021 click on the link in the show notes or go to michaelwkithcart.com for more information and sign up.