CHRO Live with Cindy Lu & Federico Demarin

CHROPartners

CHRO Live with Cindy Lu & Federico Demarin

36:53

 

CHRO Live with Cindy Lu & Federico Demarin

The 70/30 Blueprint: Lead as a Strategic CHRO Without Drowning in Operations.

The 30/70 Rule
How to focus on the 30% of operational issues that cause 70% of the challenges and free up time for strategic leadership.

Balancing Strategy and Operations
Practical steps to manage both operational and strategic priorities without losing control of either.

Transcript generated with the help of AI.  

[00:00:00] Cindy Lu: Hey, everyone. This is Cindy Liu with CHRO Partners, and I'm joined today with Federico de Meron. And Federico is down here in Miami. He's safe. No hurricanes yet in the Miami area. But we're going to talk today about the 70 30 Blueprint. How to lead as a strategic CHRO without drowning in your in the work. 

[00:00:26] Cindy Lu: And that's funny, drowning. Let's get started. Let's talk a little bit about your background first though Federico and tell the audience a little bit about yourself And we're gonna go into some details around how you discovered this and what are your techniques for not drowning in the tactical work? 

[00:00:43] Federico Demarin: Sure, sure. Hi Everyone. Thank you Cindy for the introduction as you can see the Sun is in my face. So this is actually Florida we're we have a hurricane alert, but the Sun is coming through my window I So my journey, I started in a chart by chance, like [00:01:00] I've heard many colleagues have done at least back in my time, it wasn't clear what human resources was responsible for. 

[00:01:06] Federico Demarin: Started by chance, but over, over time, you 25 plus years I've led people functions at companies like GroupM, which is media advertising. 360 Duty Free, which is duty free retail. Swarovski is a jewelry business with different business units. Thomson Reuters, which is a bit of a, it was actually a bit of an agency, financial market data, SAS, et cetera. 

[00:01:31] Federico Demarin: I worked across local, regional, and global roles in different parts of the world, leading teams through many different challenges, which is what makes it exciting. Things like, mergers, acquisitions, right sizing, which is not a pleasant one cultural shifts always in companies that are either private or public, family owned or startups I always. 

[00:01:55] Federico Demarin: wanted to work with strategy, although always with the hand [00:02:00] in operation, the famous Hands on HR leader because I like it. I like to be close to my people. I never liked to be hovering only at strategic level and let, just let things go. Lately the latest thing I've worked as an, one of the interesting things that everybody's is trying to get their hands on is AI. 

[00:02:21] Federico Demarin: So I worked in my last job. Project related to AI and managed to get inside the technology and its possibilities, mostly its future. Of course, today it has applications, but still, I think it's just a tiny little piece of what that technology can do for us. And the topic of the conversation, the balance between strategy and execution. 

[00:02:42] Federico Demarin: I think this is something I've always had in one hand and the other.  

[00:02:46] Cindy Lu: Yeah. So we're going to go deeper dive into defining strategy versus operations. Operational work self awareness, seeking guidance, change, building your 18 and how to coach [00:03:00] and develop them leading without dissonance and the, your famous 30, 70 rule. 

[00:03:06] Cindy Lu: If, before we jump into that better go how does a CHRO feel when they're not doing these things, right? When they're not balancing it, what does it feel like?  

[00:03:18] Federico Demarin: Obviously you're never sure. What your priorities are, you're always multitasking, which at one point in time it was seen as, oh, you're multitasking. 

[00:03:29] Federico Demarin: You're great. Actually, it's not a good thing if you really want to focus on the things you, first of all, that create value for the company you work for, but also. Value for yourself at the operation never stops. So it's always going to take time in your agenda. So when you're you don't have a clear prioritization between strategy and operations. 

[00:03:50] Federico Demarin: Operations always takes over because it's volume. It's more black and white. It's more, it's easier to solve. Complexity is usually [00:04:00] closer to strategy is also me too. Long term is not immediate. So the temptation and the pressure. To balance towards operation is huge. So it feels like you're trying to catch up on the nice things, the smart things, the value added things that your executives want you to focus on. 

[00:04:17] Federico Demarin: But the day goes by and you said, what did I do? And I couldn't, I didn't have the time. That's what I'd never had the time. That's how it feels.  

[00:04:25] Cindy Lu: And then once you have made these shifts or these switches, what does it feel like when you're doing it right?  

[00:04:35] Federico Demarin: At the beginning is it's a strange feeling because suddenly your agenda has holes and you said, Oh, I have time. 

[00:04:42] Federico Demarin: So what do I do with this? So you go back to your priorities as, Oh, these are the things that I'm supposed to progress on. But it's, as I said, it doesn't have a very 123 clear agenda. You have to build it. You have to understand how do you plan ahead? How do you start [00:05:00] booking time? Yeah. To develop those strategic priorities that you're defining on, how do you turn them into actionable plan? 

[00:05:07] Federico Demarin: So eventually everything becomes operation, right? Every strategic plan hopefully should become something in your operation. So it's you start switching your mind in terms of firefighting is okay. Let me think ahead of time. If this is a five year, five year plan, how do what should I do? What are the milestones that I need to achieve? 

[00:05:25] Federico Demarin: Thank you. So you start forward and then you go back and said, okay, what should I be doing now? Short term, my objective, my goal. So at the beginning is, it feels a bit like you're in shaky ground, but once you understand how to work strategically and start planning, it feels comfortable because you're doing the things you like, especially when you reach this point in your career. 

[00:05:48] Cindy Lu: I think that sometimes the things that got you, to this point are not the same kind of behaviors that. 

[00:05:58] Cindy Lu: It's hard to get rid of those habits, [00:06:00] right? And you feel more comfortable. And sometimes we keep ourselves safe, right? By, by going back to the things that we know how to do. And so I know sometimes if I'm stressed out, I go back to activity. Cause then I feel like I'm doing something right. 

[00:06:14] Cindy Lu: Versus pulling back and saying, look, I need to take the time to slow down, to speed up.  

[00:06:20] Federico Demarin: Of course. And of course, I, I remember. Okay. When you start going through this path at the beginning and you also feel like I was feeling like I was being less productive,  

[00:06:32] Speaker 3: right?  

[00:06:32] Federico Demarin: Because the immediate you love to be the guy that has all the answers. 

[00:06:36] Federico Demarin: People come to you and then you give answers to to, to, everybody's happy because you're giving fast answers to questions. So when you get you get rid of that, the results are ambiguous, they take time. It's not immediate that you feel, Oh, I'm being result oriented. I am productive. I'm getting the things that I'm working for. 

[00:06:56] Federico Demarin: It's interesting how do you go through that shift? That [00:07:00] is it's time bound, right? So short term versus me to long term.  

[00:07:04] Cindy Lu: No, that's a great call out. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Recognize that kind of emotion that you might go through as you're making these shifts. I'm curious. What's been some of your, um, of course, everybody's I want to be incentive, but are strategic, but sometimes it's harder to do than saying you have to have some kind of goal in mind, right? 

[00:07:24] Cindy Lu: We were talking about vacation earlier. What's been some of your incentive to get to this strategic level? I think.  

[00:07:31] Federico Demarin: Every time I go, I went into a job and especially lately that you get more wisdom out of all your mistakes, you try to figure out what is your purpose. So what is it that you're trying to achieve other than a pay a job that you more or less like? 

[00:07:47] Federico Demarin: So what are you trying to achieve? What is your purpose? What are you, what makes you tick? What makes you wake up every morning? When you can answer that, it's much easier to understand how [00:08:00] to divide your time. We were discussing earlier than, research. shows that CHRO should be 50 percent strategic, 50 percent operational, which is, of course it's a rule of thumb, depends on many variables, including the size of the company. 

[00:08:14] Federico Demarin: But in my case, I always wanted to, balance is a huge thing in my life. It has always been, since I'm a kid, I wanted to travel. I wanted to, spend time with my friends, with my family. So to me, it was always. Looking for opportunities to work in companies that would allow you to work with people from different countries that would allow you to travel that you will be able to enjoy your time off. 

[00:08:38] Federico Demarin: And with that in mind, you start prioritizing as the earlier you can figure that out, and it doesn't have to be what I just said. Of course, it can be completely different. It will help you understand when priorities are unbalanced when they're going in a different direction compared to where they should go if you follow your purpose. 

[00:08:57] Federico Demarin: And it's a tough exercise. I've been coaching some [00:09:00] people lately and meet middle manager and senior managers who have gone through 15, 20 years of career. They don't really know why is it that they're chasing, right? Once you had enough of pay increases and other titles. So why am I doing this for other than a paycheck, right? 

[00:09:20] Federico Demarin: Discovering yourself again, finding your own purpose is super important. And that's the way you start having this North. That will help you prioritize.  

[00:09:29] Cindy Lu: Anchoring to that thing that drives you. I think that makes sense. Now back to the 50 percent that you mentioned, I think that was a, something in Deloitte that they published. 

[00:09:37] Cindy Lu: Correct. Actually last month at our big HR event in Dallas, one of our panelists, Elizabeth Galloway, actually talked about how she works 90 percent in the business, versus so they're a giant global organization and I'm like, that's amazing. I think everybody was like, Oh, sounds amazing. 

[00:09:54] Cindy Lu: But it's also hard because then you're just completely reinventing yourself, right? When you're in HR, you're like spending [00:10:00] most of your time in HR. And suddenly you're flipping the switch and your energy and your time, something you're not as comfortable with, right? You're having to spend more of your time there. 

[00:10:09] Cindy Lu: I'm curious from the audience, if you guys Would like to say hello. First of all, let me know that you're in the audience. Also, if you're willing to share like what percentage of your time you spend on strategic work versus operational work, feel free to drop that in the chat and say hello to Federico. 

[00:10:26] Cindy Lu: Okay,  

[00:10:27] Federico Demarin: so go ahead. Sorry, Cindy. One clarification important when you think about that. So there are some things that may seem operational, but they're actually quite strategic. And the other way around. So you need to understand what is the criteria of your company and for yourself that defines what is strategic versus operational because Especially the smaller the company the easier it is to mix it up. 

[00:10:53] Cindy Lu: So how would you define that? How do you  

[00:10:55] Federico Demarin: distinguish? I think strategic has to come from the business. So when you listen [00:11:00] to your executives to your ceo What are the key priorities for the company? you can always start with the mission division and the values but you know if you they have the OKR is what mattered the most, whatever your company calls it. 

[00:11:14] Speaker 3: Those  

[00:11:14] Federico Demarin: are the strategic priorities. And you always have to go beyond one year. It doesn't mean that they're not urgent things. Every strategic priority may have urgent things. But it's important to understand the difference because sometimes you may get say that, Oh, I don't like this. 

[00:11:30] Federico Demarin: This is not strategic. No, it actually is a strategic. You just don't like it. It's not the same thing. And it has happened to me, of course.  

[00:11:41] Cindy Lu: The second shift you talk about is talk about like our operations holding you hostage. Do you feel like it's self kidnapping? I think is what you told me. 

[00:11:51] Cindy Lu: Yeah.  

[00:11:52] Federico Demarin: Yeah. Yeah. I remember. It's a comfort zone, comfort zone is always trying to hold you back, right? It, you, it feels [00:12:00] great, especially in my case, when my purpose was to always help people shine, right? So it's a comfort zone when people in your team come asking for advice, asking for guidance, and then you provide it you give answers, but eventually your day goes by and you haven't achieved anything. 

[00:12:16] Federico Demarin: in those mid to long term strategic goals. So it's, you can easily say, Oh, I'm busy too busy with the operation. The operation doesn't let me go, but it's actually you that doesn't want to let go. You mentioned that, right? We love what you do when you love what you do. It's hard to let go 90 percent of the time strategic. 

[00:12:34] Federico Demarin: If you really love it, you're more like an advisor. You're hovering over the organization and then you have people that can manage the entire operation. That is fine. As long as that's what you want.  

[00:12:45] Speaker 3: Yeah.  

[00:12:45] Federico Demarin: No, at the beginning, what I said is I like to be hands on. It doesn't mean I'm in the operation, but I like to have a pulse. 

[00:12:51] Federico Demarin: I like to be there. To understand what's going on, to see what my people are working on. It's not like I like to, I don't think I'll be 100 [00:13:00] percent comfortable as a CHRO, not as an advisor, but as a CHRO having only one finger in the operation, right? Because I feel I'm disconnected more like a consultant, which is great if you're a consultant, not necessarily as the CHRO of the company. 

[00:13:16] Cindy Lu: That makes sense. Wanted to say hello to some folks. Hey, Eric, thanks for joining. Lisa, Armando, good to see you. It's been a while. Janelle, some LinkedIn user, no name. Terry Cooley, good to see you. Amanda, so good to see you. And thanks. Jamie, Amanda, you guys for putting your comments in there. It is. 

[00:13:36] Cindy Lu: It's a challenge, I think, especially when you're first standing up a HR function, right? There's so many really sizable organizations that they don't have an HR system yet, right? Or there's not one system of record to even know how many employees you have. It sounds so elementary, but there are just many large organizations that lack some of those foundational things. 

[00:13:57] Cindy Lu: And I think thinking about how to carve out that time [00:14:00] is it's really important for the long term, right? Because if you don't set that vision early on, I think many of the senior leaders will just view you as tactical.  

[00:14:08] Federico Demarin: Yeah. And I can give you an example. I remember, and I'm going to say the name of the stage, but basically one of the things I was developing was a very data driven scorecard for everything HR was doing. 

[00:14:25] Federico Demarin: So all the KPIs, no system, no HRIS. And I was bringing in data like revenue per headcount, things that would connect with the financials of the company, employee turnover, all the exit interviews. It was beautiful, but honestly, the, all their executives, they just didn't care. So is that strategic or is that operational? 

[00:14:48] Federico Demarin: So I asked myself this question when I could see that, people were not looking at it. So maybe the strategic task is to show the value, is to understand why that is [00:15:00] important. That's what I should be doing. I shouldn't be doing the scorecard because that is the transactional side. And I cannot do that until I've done my work, which is, it's going to take time to convince executives. 

[00:15:14] Federico Demarin: Oh, this is why we need to look into this data and not just. The PNL. So that was a good example of how I realized I'm dedicating my time in building all this PowerPoint Excel, power bi and no, it was not creating value for the executives and the company. The other side, because I believed in the importance of that, it was okay, I need to sell this first. 

[00:15:37] Federico Demarin: I need to convince them. And that was my task versus the task I could delegate to people in my team.  

[00:15:43] Cindy Lu: How did you go about doing that? I think that's a big topic for a lot of HR leaders, right? Yeah, of course. Language of the business.  

[00:15:51] Federico Demarin: Yeah, I think it's important to start with the KPIs, they value over everything else, [00:16:00] and that changes company to company. 

[00:16:02] Federico Demarin: Obviously a P& L, revenue, profit, but sometimes in some companies, it's actually not that, it might be compliance. It might be client retention. So the companies and their cultures have their own keen KPIs that are not necessarily ones that you see published, but the ones everyone speaks of and worries about. 

[00:16:24] Federico Demarin: So you start with those KPIs and say, okay, how might do my KPIs connect with this one? Where is the direct impact second degree impact so you can understand how can you present that to show, okay, this is how I can bring value, how, what we are doing, our famous employee life cycle and all their KPIs, how they impact this KPI that is crucial for you. 

[00:16:50] Speaker 3: But on the  

[00:16:50] Federico Demarin: other side, you need to teach that to your team because I remember people, in their heads what am I? Investing all this time into this KBI, [00:17:00] who cares about this? They don't understand it because they don't see that connection either.  

[00:17:05] Cindy Lu: So it's your job as the sales leader or most of it, for HR to make that connection for them. 

[00:17:11] Cindy Lu: Absolutely. Absolutely. Got to give them what they want first before you can give them what they need.  

[00:17:16] Federico Demarin: Exactly. Exactly. You need to prove that you can add value in, the business.  

[00:17:22] Cindy Lu: Yeah, it's amazing. They don't always see that connection directly. And we sometimes wouldn't talk talent too quick and then we just lose them. 

[00:17:30] Cindy Lu: Totally mistake I've made as well. You talked about your teams a lot and your third shift was to build an a team and now you're talking my love language, building a great team. And I'll tell you that early in my career, I stumbled through leadership. But what got me through and why I always made my numbers is because I knew how to hire an A team because I came out of executive search. 

[00:17:54] Cindy Lu: So what I knew nothing about leadership or growing, general [00:18:00] management. I knew how to hire amazing people. And that, that got me through, tell me a little bit about your point of view on building an A team.  

[00:18:07] Federico Demarin: Sure. And I've always been lucky to go into companies with teams I can work with. 

[00:18:13] Federico Demarin: So to me, that is very important, first of all, understand if you're joining a company. Um, who's there and don't just judge based on gossip or comments, really understand what they do, their frustrations, their success, and I've always been lucky to say, okay, maybe this first I remember cases were said on the first day. 

[00:18:34] Federico Demarin: Okay. First day. You need to fire this one in the team. And I said, Okay, let me go through this. And it wasn't the case at all. It's just it was lack of structure, lack of leadership, lack Of processes that would make this person fail, but the person was excellent. So building an a team starts by knowing really knowing who's there. 

[00:18:56] Federico Demarin: It's not about reading A resume. It's not about [00:19:00] listening just to the opinions. You really need to do a 360 understand discuss with these people Have your own gut feeling at the end once you have all the facts And then see okay, who do I need in this company based on? This balance between strategy and execution, how it is today and how I wanted it to be, who do I need in my team? 

[00:19:21] Federico Demarin: Do I need someone that is really good at learning and development because there's a lot of transactional work coming out of that and I don't want to be drawn into it. I can go into performance management if it's easy, simple and a transactional task if I don't have the team for it. If I have the team, I just need to make sure these are people I can delegate. 

[00:19:41] Federico Demarin: So they're. result oriented, task driven. I don't have to be breathing behind their neck. Did you do this? Did you do this? Habits of effective and efficiency. Like how do you answer emails? How do you plan your week on your calendars? Those things will help you assess the kind of [00:20:00] people that you have that would allow you to delegate. 

[00:20:02] Federico Demarin: I've always used the situational leadership model to understand the people in my team and said, okay, who can I Who should I go, hand to hand for a little while, prove case of what I'm doing. Just give them support or just let them fly because they're fantastic.  

[00:20:18] Cindy Lu: First of all, I love that leadership style of coming in and saying, let me look at the systems and not blame the people right away. 

[00:20:25] Cindy Lu: So it would be so easy for you to be new at the company and somebody saying, you gotta get rid of this person and just take their word for it and maybe on the certain. Initially it looks that way, but so often you're right. It's about the past leadership or the lack of systems and structure. 

[00:20:41] Cindy Lu: So I love that, that you looked at the systems in the process and not just the people initially. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about this leading lead with dissonance. What does that  

[00:20:51] Federico Demarin: mean? So obviously I connected to the topic of debt strategy versus, operations and [00:21:00] execution. It's important that people, those people that we were talking about in your team understand what is it that you're doing that is strategic. 

[00:21:09] Federico Demarin: Because you don't want them to feel like there's a black box called strategic work that nobody knows what it means, what it is, and what are you actually dedicating your time to. That's number one. Number two, if you show that, then they know, okay, this is what I would have to do if I ever get into this job. 

[00:21:32] Federico Demarin: So whether they like it or not, you can show them, look, this is the way I do it. And if you want to be in my job eventually. And you want to have a career development, I can help you in this way because strategic thinking means this and that. So you need to start planning ahead. You need to go to certain things. 

[00:21:47] Federico Demarin: How do you manage communication? How much time you invest into politics, discussing priorities with your executives, influencing decisions. So if to [00:22:00] me, leading without dissonance mean be very transparent. And not everybody would like it. And that's one thing to me that is also true about being transparent and honest is to say, look, this is the way I do it. 

[00:22:14] Federico Demarin: It doesn't mean it's the perfect formula of success. And this is why I'm asking you to do this way, or to organize your job in that other way, because that's the way it fits. into the model, the operating model we're running. If you show this operating model, this is what HR business partners do. This is what specialists do. 

[00:22:34] Federico Demarin: This is what operations do. This is payroll, and this is me. This is what happens every day in my job. What would be a one day in the life of a CEO? Federico when he sits on his desk or in a house working. And if you don't have nothing to show, maybe you're unbalanced the other way around. Everything is strategic, but then actually what I, what is it that you're doing? 

[00:22:56] Federico Demarin: I think it's about being honest and transparent.  

[00:22:59] Cindy Lu: I [00:23:00] love that. I think it reminds me of like parents that are like, just do it. Cause I say so. Don't worry about it. Do it in your little vacuum. And I'm having leaders like you, I think it would be so cool to work for somebody who was like, let me explain why I'm doing this so that you can see the bigger picture. 

[00:23:18] Cindy Lu: And I trust that you are smart enough to then make your own judgment calls and decisions based on the bigger picture that you can see. So I'm sure that made it easier for you to lead as well. Once they understood those things.  

[00:23:31] Federico Demarin: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it takes patience, of course, just like you mentioned, the kids, it's exactly the same thing. 

[00:23:37] Federico Demarin: Explaining the whys to smart people is hard because they are smart and they ask why. And if you provide bad answers, they will ask, but why? And why this? And why that? So you become smarter and you can also challenge yourself like, okay, that was actually a good question. I don't have an answer. What is it that I'm doing this way or that way? 

[00:23:59] Federico Demarin: Absolutely. [00:24:00] So being honest and open about what you do in your agenda, it's a challenge, but it's also very rewarding, especially if you like to develop professionals.  

[00:24:09] Cindy Lu: I think that's so challenging though. Sometimes like to have the bandwidth. We talked about this in one of our mastermind meetings today is just as the CHRO, having the bandwidth to develop and train and have those conversations with your team. 

[00:24:19] Cindy Lu: How many of you in the audience would be would love to have more time with your team to have these conversations? Just put a yes in the comments. Federica, how do you. How do you make sure that you carve out that time  

[00:24:33] Federico Demarin: for your team? I think for example, there are some habits that I picked up probably because I work for a lot of Swiss and German people. 

[00:24:42] Federico Demarin: So they helped me a lot about picking some organization and planning habits, for example, scheduling a touch base with people individually. Scheduling monthly or biweekly meetings with the team. So we can discuss other things or maybe even share time if you're working [00:25:00] remotely. How do you take notes of what's going on with an individual so you don't have to just do a recount at the end of the year and performance management becomes one conversation where you have to recap 12 months of work. 

[00:25:12] Federico Demarin: So I have emails, drafts. One per individual every year, when I start taking notes, every time I have an exchange Whoa, this was awesome. You did this and that. And so I go back and take the time, like this day, using the STAR model, Situation, Task, Action, Result, she did this. I don't, I usually don't put the conclusion. 

[00:25:36] Federico Demarin: I just put what happened. You can even do it faster now that you can dictate or using AI. Back in my days, it was typing, but I took the time. And yes, it's time consuming, but at the end of the year, you have everything there and you can recall conversations, you can even have interventions in three months, two months, reward people, congratulate people, say, hey, do you want to work on this?[00:26:00]  

[00:26:00] Federico Demarin: Maybe it's something you're interested in. And let's just set up a time to discuss it.  

[00:26:06] Cindy Lu: It feels like you're spending the time that you don't have. But in reality, on the back end, it pays off in, dramatically because, you're teaching them something that will help you do your job better and they can do their job better, which makes life so much easier for you. 

[00:26:22] Cindy Lu: So I I think it's an investment that's worthwhile. And it just feels so good on the back end when you've got somebody who you've developed from really hardly any skills. So it looks like in the audience Terry does it he does weekly calls and ad hoc One on ones, bi weekly. Yeah, it's hard to do, but you gotta find the time. 

[00:26:44] Cindy Lu: Sometimes it looks like he doesn't need names. The other thing you were saying about, how you wrote it down manually. I'm even older than you, so then I used to print out things that I try to remember and put it in their drop file. I don't know if anybody even knows what a drop file is. If you know what a drop file is, put that in the [00:27:00] chat. 

[00:27:00] Cindy Lu: Then I'll know you're as old as I am. But today imagine just on chat GPT, you could just start a chat every time you finish with somebody, you can just, dictate into that chat and keep a running chat for that employee for all year round.  

[00:27:16] Federico Demarin: It's fantastic. The tools that we have today, they let no space for excuses about, Oh, it's time consuming. 

[00:27:24] Federico Demarin: I need to brief things.  

[00:27:26] Cindy Lu: Or even if you have, let's say you have team meetings each week with your HR leadership team. There's moments that you're teaching the entire group that could be recorded now, right? That can be put on an LMS so easily you couldn't put it in YouTube for you know Absolutely. 

[00:27:42] Cindy Lu: Absolutely. And then you can share that with the future HR leaders. There's so many ways to do this There's almost no excuse now All right. The one we've been waiting for the 3070 rule. So we debated 20, 80, 20, 30, 70. Tell us about this and how this is [00:28:00] really, this rule has benefited you as a CHRO.  

[00:28:03] Federico Demarin: Of course. 

[00:28:03] Federico Demarin: And it's not something that I've invented. Of course, it's been around in business and many other things. for over centuries, but basically is okay. If I have to split I would like to have my 50, 50 strategic versus operations, what is it that I have to let go? What is the 70 percent of operational tasks I should delegate, automate or outsource so I can focus on the 30 percent that are still operational, but are so close to my strategic goals. 

[00:28:39] Federico Demarin: or are so critical for my stakeholders that I need to keep in my hands, which doesn't mean you have to do everything, but it means they will occupy a constant space in your agenda and your calendar, right? And depending on the side of the company, the size of your team, this can vary a lot. If you have a [00:29:00] very large team you transactional things, So what is it the actual 70 percent maybe a few, but if you, for example, you're in a startup, you're in a small company, you're actually starting up HR. 

[00:29:12] Federico Demarin: You probably have the a hundred percent. So start prioritizing, which ones are not really adding value to your strategic goals. They may take too much of your time. And you may, sometimes you think, I think I'm overpaid to be doing this task because it's a task that I can easily teach someone to do. 

[00:29:31] Federico Demarin: This should be in the 70 percent bucket transactional things. Eventually if you develop a team and you have good professionals, you can also start doing the same thing with your strategic work. So over a hundred percent of all the strategic tasks that I have, which ones are the ones I cannot delegate and which ones I can start delegating to develop my team. 

[00:29:56] Federico Demarin: So I remember a very, a case in my [00:30:00] last work, there was an organizational design request where it was super strategic. But it has a lot of steps and some of the steps were more transactional but still strategic because you need it really needed to know a lot of things that was a perfect example of say, okay, this is the whole thing is strategic. 

[00:30:17] Federico Demarin: I can hold it myself, do the presentations, take all the credit, or I can share it with some of the people in my team and they don't know what to do. So I'm going to have to invest a lot of time into explaining, this is how I would do it. This is how I would approach it. So my task shifts into mentoring and coaching. 

[00:30:36] Federico Demarin: That's that task instead of doing it myself, which would have been faster. So that this is what this 3070 rule means prioritize based on what you want to delegate, what you want to keep both in the operational side as well as the strategic side.  

[00:30:54] Cindy Lu: I know it's hard. Sometimes you think, Oh, it's faster if I just do it myself. 

[00:30:58] Cindy Lu: Yeah. Always.  

[00:30:59] Federico Demarin: [00:31:00] Always. If you're a good expert, you always feel that way.  

[00:31:02] Cindy Lu: I tell you, the junior folks, or the hypos, and the people who haven't had that exposure, that's what they look for. I was talking to one of our mastermind members, and they had, one of their HR managers get involved with just planning of one of their HR meetings and she was thrilled, right? 

[00:31:17] Cindy Lu: So happy to be involved in something like that. And I don't know what that was. Oh, it was my phone. Okay. I moved it in the table and it's quick. My dog was almost going to go crazy. It sounded like a mountain. Okay. In any case. So that's awesome. Now you. I know we're going a little bit over, but if I can just keep you for a couple more minutes, you gave some examples of small waves and surf waves and tide waves. 

[00:31:40] Cindy Lu: And we weren't even, when we prepped for this, there was no hurricane even going on, but tell me what that means.  

[00:31:47] Federico Demarin: Yeah, of course. I remember it's based on very specific situation that I have. I had a, the leader of the business was very spontaneous. He was an ideas person, right? So that [00:32:00] person has five ideas per second. 

[00:32:02] Speaker 3: I've never met a CEO  

[00:32:04] Federico Demarin: like that. Of course not, right? Of course not. And he needed to download those ideas with the right experts, right? So if it had a person in it, I was the person he would download it to. So he will come into my office and we had a fantastic relationship. We worked together really well, but I had to learn. 

[00:32:25] Federico Demarin: How to work with him. I remember one of my colleagues in finance. He was super stressed out one day and said, I cannot work like this. He comes to my office. He fires things left and right. I tried to catch those things. The next day I come up with a plan. And he says no, we're not going to do that. 

[00:32:41] Federico Demarin: And I don't know what to do. And I said, look, use using a surfing analogy. You go into the ocean. You need to learn how to distinguish a small way that you just want to let it pass. A good wave that you want to surf or a title change that this is the [00:33:00] thing it's going to take you whether you like it or not, right? 

[00:33:03] Federico Demarin: So when you listen to those. Things, those ideas, those requests, you need to understand, okay, is this something I can actually delegate? Because it's a one time thing. It's not strategic. It's not important. I think he's just upset. Or maybe it's the idea of the day. Let it simmer, don't react to it. If it is a good idea that connects with what you believe it's value for the organization, that is the surfing wave, get on it. 

[00:33:29] Federico Demarin: And the tidal wave is the best example is technology shifts, things that you pick up in the organization that are telling you. We need to change, right? There's a change coming. If I don't sit on this as a strategic leader and drive it with my CEO and with my executives, I'm going to be left behind. So that's the time you need to get on it, whether you like it or not. 

[00:33:50] Federico Demarin: And it's definitely needless to say, super strategic.  

[00:33:55] Cindy Lu: That's awesome. I feel like we could spend an hour just talking about that, but we have all [00:34:00] experienced CEOs. That's why CEOs are so good at what they do because they, Come up with lots of ideas and we have to filter through what makes sense. All right. 

[00:34:08] Cindy Lu: Federico, thank you so much for spending time with us here. Hey guys, and thank you all for joining us live. We will have this posted on our website in case anybody missed it, but really appreciate your time and stay safe in Miami. Hopefully there won't be any major tides that come your way. 

[00:34:27] Federico Demarin: Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thanks everyone. 

Building Your A-Team
How to delegate effectively by developing a team that can operate independently, allowing you to focus on strategic decisions.