In this episode of The Inner Chief podcast, I speak to Zaklina Craig of Business NSW, on optimising role design for peak performance, managing differences in confidence between men and women, and navigating the decision to fire someone.

Zak is an experienced people, culture and change leader with over 20 years of experience working with businesses in every aspect of their employee lifecycle.

She has led large teams in enabling core business functions delivering systemic and sustainable change. Her niche expertise is integrating strategy, systems, culture and leadership.

Zak commenced her career as a lawyer in private practice and is also degree-qualified in human resources management and industrial relations. She also holds several leadership and coaching qualifications and is one of few practitioners in Australia accredited in Requisite Organisation and Stratified Systems Theory.

She has also held senior roles with Sydney Water and the Australian Retailers Association, and has been the Executive Director – People, Culture & Workplace of Business NSW since February 2022.

In this episode we talk about:

✅  How to optimise role design, complexity and clarity for higher performance

✅  Overcoming the natural tension between operations, support and commercial teams

✅  The mindset shifts that HR leaders need to have in order to get a seat at the executive table

✅  Moving past confidence barriers for both men and women, and

✅  Hiring and firing people and having difficult coaching conversations.

Connecting with Zaklina Craig

You can connect with Zaklina via LinkedIn.

Books and resources

• Dancing with the Divine – by Julie Vance

Similar Episodes on building culture

• 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
• Mike Schneider, Managing Director of Bunnings Group, on Career diversity, genuine empathy, and the 4Hs of authenticity
• Cliff Gale, former MD of Lite N’ Easy for22 years, on Leading with passion, respect for your people and keeping the soul alive in your business.

“You're a business leader first, and a HR professional second.”

On how she ended up in HR

• The reason why I made the shift was I kept dealing with a problem and looking at it thinking we don't have to be here. If things were set up differently from the beginning we wouldn't be in some type of a legal dispute or a breakdown of relationship.
• It's 10% law, 90% bad management. And so the reason why I wanted the shift was because I actually wanted to be part of working with leaders to set up conditions, processes, systems, culture, so that we wouldn't end up in a legal dispute or we wouldn't end up in a fight with the unions.

On good role design

• The problem is that we don't optimise roles at their level of complexity. Roughly around 70% of the role should be loaded with work at its level. That's when people are happy because they want to work at a level at which they can maximise their capacity to work at their intellectual horsepower.
• What we end up with is then a person in a role that's looking at it thinking, “Well, this is not what I thought it's going to be.” Or they'll end up working on a task that's too complex for them, or they'll be stuck miserable because they're doing work that's at too low a level. And so what I often see is very poor organisation design because we're not actually thinking about maximising and optimising the work at that level.
• Yesterday I was talking about the different energy and pace of growing a business and managing compliance. It's a different energy. It's a different pace. It's a different skill set. We need to be realistic about what we're asking people to do. Every day I get asked to find a purple unicorn. They don't exist.
• Organisations need focus. What we need to do is be really clear on the main priorities we want that person in that role to fulfil. Be really clear on that. So that's important from an organisational point of view, and from a personal point of view. It's managing our boundaries really well in what our role requires us to do.
• For the most part, roles are designed in a particular delivery way. Spreading people too thin amongst too many different things means that nobody gets to do anything well.

On the different levels of role complexity

• So there are both objective and subjective matters that determine how complex a role is. The easiest way to describe it is the single objective measure is how long it takes to finish a task or a project. So where we have, say, call it level one roles, no task is longer than three months. It's zero to three months. So at this level, what you're seeing are things like processing an invoice, or packing a box on a factory floor.
• The second level of complexity is where you see diagnosis work happening. The tasks go from anywhere between three months to one year. It's where you see problem solving happening.
• Then you see the level three manager is starting to look at work that spans between one year and two years.
• So at these varying levels of complexity, it's the time horizon that changes and where their thinking, planning and executing is for a longer period of time. As you plan out for longer periods of time, it's more ambiguous, it's more uncertain. So you've got to hold ambiguity.
• If you look at society, we need people doing jobs at all levels of complexity. And if you look at society at the moment, our problem is not attracting the higher levels. Our problem is getting people on the ground doing core services like being bus drivers, where we're having skill shortages.

On role fit and timing

• It's right person, right role, for the right time. The reason why I add timing is because sometimes you might need transformation and other times you might need BAU and stability.
• If the business is going through a tough time or it's going through a messy time, good character is essential because talent isn't enough to navigate through a messy time. 
• The timing and the context of the organisation is actually really critical in determining what it is that you need. If things are stable, perhaps you just need the top talent to get on with it. Or perhaps you need something more than that. Maybe you need a steely character to help trailblaze through a bit of a messy situation.
• Be really clear about what you need from a capability and personality point of view for that time, knowing that that might not be what you need in three years, but it might be what you need right now to move the business forward.
• What's the most critical thing you need right now? Because that's what we'll look for. It could be character, it could be talent, it could be a technical skill. Perfectionism doesn't exist and actually expecting people to be perfect only makes people feel insecure and not valued.
• Having a sharp edge here or there, I think, is fine. I call these inhibitors. What we don't want is that the inhibitors are so bad or the edge is so sharp that it's actually reducing the person's effectiveness in the role. However, the message is that you’re almost giving people permission to just be themselves.

On getting operational and support teams to connect

• The construct of those relationships is always going to be a natural tension. And the moment that you accept that there's always going to be a couple of rub points on natural tension, it diffuses it.
• With every enabling function that I lead, there's always going to be a natural tension. Just accept it, but don't make it bigger than what it needs to be.
• Where I've seen it work really well is where the planning process caters for the business unit priorities. For example, HR functions typically will go off and do their own plan. And then Operations goes and does its own plan. And then the CEO ends up being very happy with HR because the CEO is getting what he or she wants, but the local Ops leaders feel like HR is just pushing stuff at them.
• Where I think it can work really well is where the HR function or the Finance function does its planning last. Most business planning cycles don't cater for that. They cater for everybody doing their plan at the same time. So my view would be that core business does its planning cycle first. And enabling functions go second so that they can look at what core business needs and tailor the plan.
• That's why I think the natural tension that exists is because of competing priorities that haven't been planned to align. It's a common challenge for all the enabling functions.

On how HR leaders can become executives

• You're a business leader first, and a HR professional second.
• Something I say to my team about their HR skills is that if the exec team that you're working with is not learning from you or not getting insight from you, then you don't belong at that table.
• From a HR skill point of view is that you've always got to be at the cutting edge of what's going on in your field. Your technical skills have also always got to be sharp because you've got to know more than what the leaders know in that space. Good leaders know a lot about HR. They know a lot about leading people. If there isn't a carpet burn to your desk, you've got a problem because a good HR person is always busy because people are seeking out their counsel.
• You've got to know that business just as well as anybody else on the exec team and be interested in governance, in the financials, in profit margin, in its constructs. So often to give really good HR advice you're actually starting with business advice and then adding a layer of HR expertise to it.
• I actually think the best HR professionals are ones that came to it from something else like an Operational role. It gives you a different perspective on how hard it is to actually lead a function or to lead an operational area. So my advice is also that if you’re looking to grow in the profession, go and do something else and then come back to HR.

On building trust as an executive team

• One of the things that really erodes trust is when accountability isn't clear. If there isn't a single point of accountability, people dance around each other and it erodes trust.
• People have gotten to the exec level because they're best in their field usually, but that doesn't actually make you a good executive. What makes you a good executive is knowing when to follow your peers, when to shut your mouth and actually listen to your peers and follow their direction and when to lead.
• What happens in exec teams is everybody wants to lead, but actually when you're in a peer group like that, sometimes you have to follow and know when to trust your executive colleague and follow their direction, even when you disagree. That builds trust.

On waning male confidence

• I think what's happening to men is they're losing their way. That said, I think men will find their way again. There's a lot going on at the moment about female empowerment; there's a lot in the media around domestic violence. The government has mandated gender pay gap reporting and all kinds of things. So the pendulum is swinging so as to equal the playing field for women. And women would say it's about time, but we're doing that in a way where I think men aren't quite sure of their place. What I'm actually seeing is that men are being less authentic. They’re trying to put on a veneer of what they think is socially acceptable, which means they're not really being themselves.
• My prediction is the pendulum is going to swing back in the middle, but at the moment it's not. And so it probably is wise for men at the moment to be conscious of the changing societal expectations.
• So how do you navigate through that? I think communicating intent. I pre-frame it to say that I'm going to give you my viewpoint, but just because I'm your leader, don't think you have to do it. I'm just giving you an opinion. If you want to do something different, if you don't agree, that's fine. And then it almost gives me permission to be a bit forceful with what I'm going to say.
• So if you want to temper how people will take your opinion, do a bit of pre-framing or communicating your intent. It almost gives you permission to be yourself rather than change your delivery.

On female confidence and expression

• I have not come across a female executive that doesn't doubt her ability, me included, and we all express it in different ways.
• The emotion might come out as tears, or it might come out as anger. And I've actually said to my CEO recently that what he needs to learn about women is that the emotion is bigger than what's actually happening. What's actually happening is smaller, but the feminine way is to express it. That's how we move through it.
• I describe it like the ocean. It can be calm and still and make you feel really inspired, but you don't want to be caught in a rip.
• So if our confidence level is low, we don't hide it. We tend to express it more. And sometimes we express it with our boss. Sometimes we express it with our peer group. It doesn't mean that we're not in flow. It doesn't mean that we're not competent for the job, it just means we tend to doubt ourselves a little bit more.

On advice for women and men to build confidence

• Stay connected with other women. It's actually the same advice for men. I think it's really important for men to stay connected with men and actually have time away and on their own.
• For me, it's just spending some time with other women where I can have a whinge in a safe place, or I can have a little bit of a cry and get it out of my system, or I can get a little bit angry. I find then it's gone. And then the next day or the day after I'm fine, because I've had an avenue of expressing it in a safe place by someone who's not going to judge me and I can move on.
• There is nothing more powerful than the support of another woman.

On coaching people on role clarity

• The first question I would ask them is, “What is the most complex task that that role has to manage?”
• The second question would be, “What is the longest time frame of executing that particular task?” What I'm trying to get a sense of right there is the hardest, the most complex work and the urgency.
• Then the next thing I'm going to ask is, “How much of the person's time is going to be associated with that particular task?” With this question I’m trying to ascertain volume because what then starts to form is how much else you can load into the role.
• One of the main issues that we've got with senior roles is capacity to lead because we're loading a lot into roles.
• I would then go into, “What is the simplest, easiest task that he or she would have to manage in this role and what's the execution time frame for that?”
• Overall, I'm trying to get a sense of whether there's more than one level in that particular role. And what might come out of that conversation is whether that task is best in that role. Are you better off carving it out into another role?
• And so I think what good role design looks like is just a series of questions about the work framed in complexity and time and then some of the subjective factors like how much ambiguity is there, are the boundaries clear?

On hiring for mission-critical work

• My view on urgency is if something really is urgent to deliver, then you almost need to over-recruit someone that can do the job now. Sometimes what we do is put people into roles based on potential rather than actual, but you actually need to ask yourself if you need someone who can do the job right now fully, or is this a role that someone can grow into that can grow into it over the next 6 to 12 months?
• Whilst it would be lovely to always let your high potential grow into a role, if there's a role that's mission-critical and it's urgent, you should be looking for someone who's done it before, who can just come in and own it and actually lift other people along the way.
• You might work with the HR function and say, actually, from a REM policy point of view, because A, B and C are so critical, we're actually going to pay above market. If, say, your REM policy is a market median of 50%, you might turn around and say, for those roles, actually, we're going to pay 90% of the market. We're going to pay at the top of the market, because we want people in those roles that are going to lift us. And that's a conscious decision.

On moving people internally or out

• Often if a CEO is really stressed about it, it means that they're a hard person to move because of the pain that it's going to cause in the short-term. And often what it usually needs is a contingency plan or a second person before moving out the first.
• The ones that I've seen that are the trickiest are where the person has to go, but removing them is going to cause you a problem in the short-term, like huge loss of revenue.
• Often in those really tricky ones, it's actually a combination of spending a bit of money to have a contingency plan in place or lining up the next person already so that you've got someone that can cover the work. In some cases it’s going to mean you have to manage your Board to say that there's going to be a short-term dip before you recover again. It’s planning what it will look like on day one, to what it's going to look like 12 months down the track.
• It's easy for people like us to say that CEOs have to have the courage to do it, but they’re the ones who have to live and breathe moving those really tough ones on. It’s really hard.
• However, I’ve never met a CEO that regretted the move.

On her most impactful learning experience

• One that helped me both personally and professionally was a course called Dancing the Divine up near Bellingen. And it was all about understanding and embodying the divine feminine energy.
• The key takeout was that the divine feminine energy attracts things towards it. The Queen sits on her throne, she doesn’t move, everybody comes to the Queen. What was really powerful was understanding when do I have to take action (that's the masculine energy) and when do I actually sit in my divine feminine energy?
• It was so transformational. I’m constantly learning how and when to harness both the masculine and the feminine energy.

On her number one interview question

• What I'm looking for when I'm interviewing people at all levels is insight. If people are responding to questions with insight, I know that they're going to be a good recruit because they're going to bring something to the organisation that we don't already know.

Final message of wisdom and hope for future leaders 

• It’s not about you.

Stay epic,

Greg