Madison Butler sat down on the show for a conversation on leadership, performance management, workplace culture, and what happens when organizations optimize for systems while losing sight of the people inside them.

I’ve long been a fan and internet friend of Madison, so this was a fun one. She’s the author of Let Them See You, a longtime people leader, creator, and one of the more candid voices in HR. We get into burnout in startups, why traditional performance reviews fail employees, what managers misunderstand about vulnerability, and how people leaders can build environments where humans actually perform at their best.

We also talk about startup hiring patterns, bias in talent mapping (a recent trope I’ve been on lately) fractional work (did stuff there, too), creator life (sup sup), online authenticity (one does not simply act authentic online), and why companies often wait too long to invest in people strategy (oops?).

Madison shares lessons from building an audience of more than 150K followers, writing publicly for over a decade, and navigating the realities of being a visible woman online. The conversation is ultimately about one thing: leadership starts with being human first. Something I’m all in on right now with AI dominating conversations and the constant hype cycle.

Connect with Madison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bluehairedunicorn/

A few thoughts from the conversation:

Performance management should never be a surprise. Feedback works best as an ongoing conversation, not a twice-yearly event. You should know your top performers and they should know how you feel about their performance. Like all the time. No, the paycheck is not the thank you. Split off your merit increases while you’re at it. Okay here’s where I’m challenging my own thinking. I’ve long been a big believer in the Pareto Principle. (80% of value comes from 20% of your people). With Revenue Per Employee being the new cool top line metric, and arguably the only one that matters for HR teams before they’re eliminated, and diminishing headcount in tech companies, I’m actually curious if Pareto holds up in the future of work where everyone will be responsible for delivering value and there will be nowhere for under performers to hide. Most of HR projects around L&D and training are about getting under performers to acceptable anyways. Only time will tell on Pareto, but for now it’s a good reminder for HR teams to double down on engaging the 20% and letting go of the pipe dream of the remaining 80% getting anywhere close to their level of output.

Here’s an interesting part of the convo, startups often build people systems reactively. Waiting until things break creates trust gaps that are difficult to repair. But that’s the old model of startups. Where we’re headed is uncharted territory. There’s two camps here. Build early, or scale quickly and do HR right later. Let’s be real for a beat. HR has allowed PEOs to outsource the most business critical functions of traditional HR in favor of learning and development, engagement, and culture projects. These are often initiatives that cost the company time and money, that bring satisfaction and fulfillment to the HR but aren’t often very tangible, scalable, long lasting, with ROI that is very, very hard to prove, let alone repeat. We’re dealing with human beings, remember? Humans are unique, their output and performance is unique. HR can’t take credit for that. But they do. And love to tell you about it at conferences (Le sigh.) L&D and culture projects are often long term visions. But the average CHRO’s tenure is about 4 years. So that disconnect speaks for itself. In startups you probably don’t need HR early. In fact the future household tech companies will likely be 100 people. This is where Pareto Principle crumbles, because everyone will be incredible value creators operating in pi-shaped skillsets. There simply won’t be a need for L&D, because hiring will solve that problem (as it always has).

This is the part of the post where I tell you I’m not a monster. And I’m totally fine being wrong. In the conversation with Madison, we spoke about how the best leaders model vulnerability, create psychological safety, and recognize that people do not leave their lives at the door when they come to work. I can be totally wrong about my anti-L&D trope. I’m a sourcer. I’m fundamentally biased to want to go out and solve the problem of performance with the skillset I have developed for a decade. If there’s an HR rep who has receipts for their projects that led to higher RPE and got an under performer to cracked I’m all ears. No disrespect to my HR startup folks. You allow in house recruiting to be possible since they’re the one’s willing to pick up the phone and deliver the next great hire. What better accountability than loving to do that in these uncertain times?

All love,

Brando

Timestamps

3:00 Human capital, startup burnout, and why treating people transactionally fails over time
8:00 Leadership, vulnerability, and why managers need to humanize themselves first 12:00 Playfulness, performance metrics, and understanding the realities behind human performance
16:00 Rethinking performance management and why feedback should never be a surprise
20:00 Advocating for people while balancing business priorities
22:00 Startup scaling problems, reactive HR, and accidental bad management
26:00 Human motivation, identity outside of work, and what actually makes people successful
30:00 Founder mistakes, talent density, bias in hiring, and building better teams 34:00 AI, intuition, creator life, and building an audience through authenticity
39:00 Representation, empathy, online visibility, and Madison’s advice for creators

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Building The Talent Machine

Episode 038 w/ Madison Butler