In this episode of The Inner Chief podcast, I speak to Carolyn Creswell, Founder and MD of Carman’s Kitchen, on how to fire people, doing what you love, understanding menopause and having genuine work-life balance.

In 1992, as an 18-year-old university student, Carolyn founded Carman’s when she bought the small muesli business she was working at, for $1,000.

More than 30 years later, Carman’s Kitchen is now Australia’s favourite muesli brand, alongside being a market leader in deliciously good for you snacks.

Carolyn’s determination and focus on producing quality products using whole foods, has seen Carman’s grow internationally, exporting to more than 30 countries.

Carolyn won the 2007 Ernst & Young’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was named the 2012 Telstra Australian Businesswoman of the Year. She is also a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

In this episode we talk about:

✅  Her philosophy on continuous improvement and evolution as a business leader.

✅  The mindset and process required for better hiring and firing; and

✅  Why menopause in the workplace is a critical issue, and how she is navigating this for her own wellbeing and those in her organisation.

Connecting with Carolyn Creswell

You can find out more about Carolyn via Carman’s website.

Books and resources

• Jim Collins interview – Tim Ferriss show

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“It feels like we're only now starting to talk about menopause. And the issue is that it is absolutely debilitating for a lot of women.”

On evolving as a business

• I sort of struggle with this word failure. You should be giving things a go. I entered the Telstra Businesswoman of the Year 16 times before I won it. If you're not giving stuff a go and getting some no’s, you’re not trying hard enough. Just because you've started a business and it didn't take off, it's not a failure. That's just a life lesson and a learning experience.
• The big secret is evolution. What have you learned from yesterday? How do you evolve tomorrow? It's not the massive decisions; it's the daily decisions. It's the little changes and that's what evolves.
• I look at Carman's and I think every five years it should look completely different. We should have just got so much better at what we do and we should almost not recognise ourselves from five years ago.
• My superpower is in working on products that will be commercially successful.

On knowing your data inside-out

• What I've learned is to become very analytical, to know the data and see what's working and what's not. You might be spending a lot of time in a certain area, say it's with marketing, and you'll say that you’re going to go and do that in this State. Did it work? And if you can be really hard and fast with the numbers, that's super important.
• When you look at your customer list, what customers are the ones that are actually successful? And just because they're someone you want to be successful, or it might be a prestigious customer, that doesn't mean that that's the right thing.

On Carman’s operating rhythm

• The first thing that we do every day is we have a daily virtual meeting called Huddle. If there's anything important that anyone needs to tell the whole company, such as have we got a new listing, has a product been deleted, have we picked up a new client, has there been a fire in one of the factories? Whatever everyone needs to know, you've got everyone's attention.
• We do something then called Pulse, which is the pulse of the business, the heartbeat. That was every month, we've just now moved it to bi-monthly. And that is where every department gets up in front of the whole company and presents their figures. No-one in the business can say they don't know everything that's going on because they know exactly where we're up to in how their businesses are progressing and what's been going on within.
• Every fortnight I have what I call Free Time, which is they can come in and they can have any conversation with me. Tell me what's going on, pick my brain on ideas and things they might want to talk about with their people.
• Once a month, I bring in someone external who is the equivalent of our Board and we go through their pack for the month. We ask lots of questions about their numbers, what they said they were going to achieve and whether they have done it.
• Then we have our celebrations. Every quarter we have what we call the Love Awards and we allocate those to people here living the values and you win $1,000 cash.
• There's also another $1,000 prize that's just come out this year for solving any Carman’s business problem with AI.
• At the end of the year we have a very big day which is called Love What You Do Day. And it's a full celebration day of all of the success we've had in the previous 12 months. And at the end of that, we have, which is voted by everyone, the Employee of the Year and that person wins a $5,000 holiday voucher.

On building a rock-solid culture

• I'm very proud that there are no dickheads here and that you walk around and people are very passionate about what they do and they're very driven.
• I feel this is my family. I've worked lots of part-time jobs when I was growing up and I know what it feels like when it doesn't really matter what you do. But here you feel you're working with people who are a joy to work with and that's how I feel. It makes going to work every day such a pleasure.

On letting people go

• Do not beat yourself up. You can interview someone to death. You can check the references. You can have done everything in your power. And you can hire someone and they aren't the right fit for you culturally.
• In Australian law, you have six months' probation, manage that very carefully. Make sure that you're having conversations regularly. If you think they will take a month, two, three months to get up to speed, that’s fine, but you need to really know by six months, would you enthusiastically rehire that person?
• If you let it go after six months, you are then in a situation where you are performance managing them and you're taking up so much energy from managers and your leadership team on something that should have been dealt with at the start.
• You might have someone that was amazing for a long period of time that might have worked with you for five, six, seven years, and they've been great. However, the size of the business has meant that you actually now need someone who has a different skill set. Generally speaking in many roles, I can teach the skills required. But I can't change who they are innately.
• The biggest thing a leader can bring to the business is the responsibility to put the right people on the bus. To have the right people sitting in the right seats. And when it's time for someone to hop off the bus, to have the bravery, to really say, “Hey, there's a reason that you need to hop off the bus.” I think you should always come from the place of telling the truth.

On difficult performance conversations

• I like people to have a sense that in 24 hours or so there's going to be a conversation we need to have. I’d say something like, “Would you be able to come and see me tomorrow? I think we need to talk about your career or your role here.”
• It's awful if someone is caught completely off guard. Give them a sense to go home and say to their partner, “Oh my gosh, I think maybe tomorrow I might be losing my job.” That way they can actually start because it can mean that they can't hear anything when it just comes with straight shock. So I give them some notice so that they can actually be aware that this conversation might be coming their way.
• And then when they come in, I will often just start by saying, “Look, this is not a great conversation today and I would love if I was running this business to employ every person I enjoy working with and everyone that I've had a great time with, but unfortunately my role is to make sure that we have the right people in the right roles at the right time for the business. And unfortunately, In this situation, we've decided that we're going to be restructuring the role you are currently in. We're going to be making you redundant (or whatever the situation might be). However, please separate that from the fact that I really respect you. I'm more than happy to be a reference for you. We are more than happy to give you careers counselling. We offer our placement service. Let us be here to help you and to try and get your next role.”
• If people are mature, they're able to work through that and then be able to say, “Okay, I've heard you, can you give me three months? I will give you my all.” And my only request to them is that they must finish strong. So if you start having lots of sick days and arriving late and leaving early and taking the piss, then this won't happen. Go to the end, because often there might be a payment made at the end if you finish strong.
• You really want to have put that effort into the development during the probation period. The next bit is to be really open. So we would say, “This is what we want you to achieve. We're worried about you in this role, or we're going to adjust the role. This is what we want to achieve in the next 12 weeks.” We document that they need to have done this, this and this.
• For some people, they're just in the wrong role for their skillset. And that's an awful place to be arriving at work and thinking, “Oh my gosh, it's very hard for me to do a really good job.”

On how to manage company restructures

• People are expensive and you really cannot carry more people than you need to just because you don't have the bravery to let people go. That's a false economy.
• If you are having a restructure, and let's just say that you might have three or four people that need to go, my advice is to announce to everyone that you are going to be doing a restructure. “We're working on it this week. We will be announcing it next week.” And you tell everyone on the one day, so everyone can come in. 
• Everyone will be nervous. They know that that announcement has been made and those people have been told as opposed to it being one a month as people crave security. And so you want to be able to give them as much notice as you can and to treat them like human beings.
• We spend a lot of time talking to people about what they would like out of their careers. And if we can't give it to them here, we fully support their journey.

On Rockstars and Superstars

• You want people to be able to love their job and there's parts of you that you cannot change innately. And then the other part to this is Rockstars and Superstars.
• We have people here who are extremely good at their job, but have been doing the same job for a long time. And they have no career aspiration to work up the rank at all. And they're brilliant and they're Rockstars and we love them. And they might win one of the Love Awards.
• And then we have Superstars that come in and very quickly have career progression, and we can see that they are going to absolutely be a Superstar and have a much more senior role in a short amount of time.
• Neither one of those is a better outcome. You have to respect both of them. Don't just focus on your Superstars. Do respect your Rockstars. But just give each person what they need.

On menopause in the workplace

• To me, it feels like we're only now starting to talk about menopause. And the issue with menopause, it is absolutely debilitating for a lot of women.
• A couple of months ago I was at home, I was having a hot flush and I ran outside and I vomited. When I was telling my mum the story, she asked, “Why did you have to let your colleagues know?” I fired back, “What is it about your generation that this was so taboo?”
• If you want to get into a menopause specialist, it's absolutely impossible to get an appointment. So you have people who are absolutely struggling. A lot of people are often giving up their jobs. And this is so massive. And as you said, so many women going through it and it's like just another thing that we're having to deal with. So, I feel like it's got to enter the level of conversation. We need way more information. We need GPs to know what's going on. I know that my journey has been tough and it's bloody awful.
• We have so many policies around having children and so you take personal leave when you need to, you have time off for carers leave. However, when it comes to menopause, there is not much.
• I do know there's a lot of big companies who are now investing a lot of resources in being able to support women in this phase of their life. We certainly have lots of information sessions and lots of ways that we can support you.

On her favourite interview question

• I don't want people to come here because they’ve just always wanted to work for Carman's and they've heard it's super fun to work there, and they've watched my career etc.
• You've actually got to go, “I really think I could make a difference in this role. I really actually think this role sounds super interesting, it would be challenging for me and I would love to do this job.”

Final message of wisdom and hope for future leaders 

• What it really comes back to is your personal happiness and your personal sense of purpose and enjoyment of your life. And money does not solve that. I've met lots of wealthy people who are quite unhappy.
• What happens within your four walls at home and the laughter that you have with your family and the connection that you have with your children, with your friends, with the people around you, is far more important.
• It’s looking at all the facets of your life and saying, “I feel I've lived a rich and full life.” To me, it’s making sure that you are making that happen and that it’s not something that happens by accident.

Stay epic,

Greg