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The speaker is an associate director responsible for operations in a startup. They discuss the need for job descriptions, promotions, staff evaluation, and onboarding processes. They also mention the importance of project startup, financial management, and good project management practices. They explain their role in the organization and the teams they work with. They mention that there was no onboarding process when they joined the company, so they created one themselves. They describe the onboarding process for full-time employees, which includes meetings, introductions, trainings, and providing information about the organization and its tools. They mention that there are different levels of onboarding depending on the employee's role and project. So, I'm an associate director and I'm responsible for operations, so I would say rather than talk about it as if it's fully baked, you know, we're really a startup and we're trying to, startups are very reactive to like, we're just trying to do work and figure out the underpinnings of the business at the same time, and we've gotten to a place where we have enough work that we can focus more on those underpinnings, but the things that I think about are, hey, we need a series of job descriptions that show levels that people can grow to. We need to tell people how can you, you know, get promoted into those levels, so defining job levels, defining promotions, something about staff, how we're going to evaluate people, and in this case, you know, processes for onboarding people, whether they're, you know, full-time, and then also contractors, then I'm just trying to think, so that's staffing, there's probably other things. In terms of project work, underpinnings like, how do you get a project started up in a legal sense and a financial sense, and then in the content sense of like, again, onboarding people to the project, getting them the background they need, all those kind of processes, and then how are you going to run the project from a financial point of view, how can you tell if you're underburning or overburning, getting people the tools they need for that, what does good project management look like, you know, so what are the expectations that we have about functionally, you know, doing this beginning, middle, end of a project, closing out the project, archiving it, a lot of, yeah, so I'm not really operationally in charge of space, other people just have taken that on, but, I mean, we have to operate in a space, so I mean, that gives you kind of, I think, a good taste that covers business development processes, how do we vet a prospect, how do we do our proposals, proposal development, how do we all price projects in the same way, things like that. Okay, and do you have any team on your work, or does anyone report to you, or you report to them, or? Yeah, so, as an associate director, I report to the director, I am, so, and then I have a business administrator person who's coming on, who's going to report to me. And can you tell me more about the person who reports to you? Yeah, they're going to be helping to set up all these processes, and more importantly, maintain them, right, because a lot of this is, like, you have to continually put data into the systems that you're, you know, that you've set up, making sure that people follow processes. Okay, and how many teams are there in the IECD that you are responsible for, or are you working on it? So, again, this is where, I think Robert has a dongle, so, I think it's helpful to understand how we're set up. Hey, Robert, can I steal the dongle back from the TV in the project room, or is that your own personal one? Well, my bag is aware. So, have either of you ever worked at a consult, like a professional services consultancy? Okay. Okay. Okay. So, I'm going to skip just the director level, because they're involved in a lot of things that are higher up. But we have two associate directors, Jen Shipman, she's the head of strategy, and I'm the head of operations. So, in many ways, a lot of just the business underpinnings here are kind of taken care of by these folks. When we say a practice area roster, so what we're, our main set of folks here all work as design researchers slash strategists, right? So, for the most part, that's who the full-time employees are. We're trying to build out another practice area in visual design, and then a third practice area in project management, and probably a fourth in data analytics. So, basically, a project, we have a client who wants a problem solved and has money to pay someone to solve that problem. And in a consultancy, clients come and say, hey, you know, the throughput in our inpatient state psychiatric hospitals, we have long waiting lists, we don't, you know, we need to figure out a way to get people through a treated output so that we can treat more people, that's the problem, right? So, to solve that problem, you need probably people who are thinking about system design, like design strategists, we needed data analytics people, and we needed some visual designers to help communicate our findings and our strategic plan. So, you put together teams, right? And those teams, we cobbled together from full-time employees and then also contractors, right? So, when you say how many teams there are, if we have a project where it's just a one person project, that's a team. And we could have, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten of those, right? But, again, we've had teams as big as 16 people, as small as one person, so it's all these parts and pieces that get pulled together with contractors to form teams. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, there's not a set number of teams, there's a set number of people with a skill set, and we pull them in temporarily on various different projects for which we're solving problems for clients, if that makes sense. Yeah. And, I don't know, does your role change with a different project or a different situation, or you are just in your position? Well, so, pretty much, this answer is pretty much the same, which is that pretty much we all have a role. So, a design strategist isn't going to be doing financial stuff, right? They're not going to be figuring out how to invoice the processing for invoice, right? They're going to be working on client problem solving, right? So, they're going to be working on service. So, most of what we do is service and system design, right? So, a design strategist is going to be leading or thinking about that. A visual designer might be helping to communicate that new service design, and a project manager is going to help the whole team land, make sure that what's in the contract, we deliver on it on time and on budget. So, I would say that, no, you're pretty much, we do internal things that might be different, but pretty much you're in a role, and that's your role. So, how long have you been with the IHDP? Five years. Five years, and can you tell me more about what your onboarding process was like? Like, for example, working through the first week, day, or is it online, was it online in person? For me? Yeah. There was no onboarding. I got here, and nobody was here in the office. Oh. So, my entire first day alone, to be honest with you, there was no onboarding process when I got here. So, I built an MVP onboarding process, which I can take you through, and we're improving on that. So, I didn't, you have to imagine, like, I was like the third employee of the company, and we had just started. So, you're building a business from scratch. So, there's none of these things like an onboarding process was created. So, do you want me to take you through what we have? About another? No, about, well, I didn't have an onboarding process, therefore, I created an onboarding process. Are you interested? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So. Again, so I'm going to focus on full-time employee onboarding, but know that we also have to onboard contractors. And I, so, at the very largest, like, if you're coming here, you're an employee of the university system. They have their own, you know, you have to pick your insurance, you have to pick your, you know, your retirement plan. They have benefits you can opt into. So, that's all done formally by HR, right? And then, we work in the Office of Population Health Sciences, so there's some light onboarding that's done for that. And then, you have to get, like, you work for IHDD, right? So, there's that. So, that's already three levels of onboarding. And then, when you go into a project, I don't think you're working on that, but you also have to get, like, onboarded to a project, right? So, there's sort of four levels. So, we created, this is our MVP where we created the deck, right? So, the first thing is you have to, you have to basically create a first week or first couple day plan for somebody, right? Typically, we start them off on Monday where they come to, we have a standing Monday meeting at 930. And then, after that, we go through this deck with them. And then, there's different trainings they have to do. And then, if they're rolling onto a project, we'll introduce them to a project. But there's a lot of different things. We introduce them to other projects we're working on, but we create, basically, an agenda for them, minimum for the first two days, right? We have things that they can, you know, we don't take up every Monday of their time, but there's things that they have to do, right? And we give them a tour of the space. We introduce them to our team, including long-term contractors, shared services, and student workers. We introduce them to our org chart. We go into the history. We talk about our pillars, our mission, vision, and values. And then, we introduce them to the meetings that we have. And then, we introduce them to our computers, meeting tools, file sharing. So, we go into computers and what you need to know, getting hospital network access if needed, software and printing, meeting tools, file sharing. We have a bunch of information on our Google Drive. Introduce them to all of the collaboration tools that we have here. And I'm happy to send you this deck. Then, we go into time reporting, vacation reporting. This is, I think, for contractors. These are not built out yet. City training, which is human subjects and information privacy security training that they have to do. And then, that's it. The boneyard is the boneyard. We also have, we're putting all this on a notion site. So, in a getting started, right? Actually, that's not where it is. New hire onboarding. So, this is really, this is our first take in the new hire onboarding. And it's going to encompass all those levels, right? Understanding your benefits. This is all something formal HR goes that you have to enroll in a benefits orientation. I don't know how much of this overlaps with HR. We have to see. Somebody who just got onboarded basically went through the whole process and started noting everything down as to what has to happen. So, this is a very, this is not ready for prime time, but it's our new employee onboarding. So, a lot of it is just how do you get somebody set up just with the tools and mechanics and access to the kinds of things through which we run our business. Email, Miro, Notion, Dovetail, all these kind of tools. So. No? Okay. And so, about how long did you take for you, how long did it take for you to fully settle into your role here? Question. Nine months. Nine months. And is your role what you expected it would be? I knew I was joining a startup and I know having been through two startups before, you never know what you're going to get. I mean, you're always, I mean, yes, in that I knew I could not expect to know what my role was going to be because I knew a lot of things were going to get thrown and you just get into positions where you're like, I know business doing this, but I'm doing it because nobody else is doing it. So, I mean, yes, in that I knew the role wasn't really well defined and no, I didn't know what was going to get thrown at me. So, again, because you have to understand the maturation, right? So, really defined roles and defined pathways, that happens in companies that are further, that are more mature, right? We are trying to mature, we're trying to get there. When you're a startup, lots of things are undefined, processes are not defined, roles are not defined, it's a little wild west and it's not, it's kind of chaotic. And so, did you feel prepared and well equipped by IHDD to handle the expectations of the role change? Again, so, I think that assumes that IHDD had onboarded me and set expectations. So, again, when you're in a startup where that hasn't, how we onboard people hasn't been defined, how we set expectations hasn't been defined. I had to find out that that hadn't been defined and then define it. So, if that makes sense. Like, it doesn't really apply to me because I basically came in because I had been through a couple professional service startups and said, hey, we need to define onboarding, we need to define expectations. So, I guess the answer, what was it? What? Yes. I mean, I would say it's not applicable to me because I was the person doing exactly what that question is set out to do for others. Yeah. Okay. So, now I'm going to culture. Okay. And what does the workplace culture mean to you? Well, I think it means the values that we try to embody in both our dealings with one another in working together as well as how the kind of values we have vis-a-vis our clients. So, I think, yeah. Yeah. And then I think culture, to me, culture is set through expectations of how to treat one another and then the processes you set up to how you're going to work together. And what do you look forward to when coming to work? What do I look? Can you say again? Yeah, look forward to when coming to work. Oh. Yeah. Collaboration and camaraderie. Mm-hmm. And at what age did you have any unique workplace traditions? Good question. Yes. We have Friday strategy breakfast. Friday breakfast and strategy meetings. We have a yearly off-site to do a year-end review and to plan for the next year. I think those are our two main ones. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And how would you describe work-life balance as IHDD? For me personally or across? Mm-hmm. Boy, I would at least have more balance, but I'm working in a start-up, so I put in more hours and... Yeah, I don't know how to answer that. It's fine for me. I knew what I was going to get into, so building a business takes a lot of time. So it's hard for you to balance between work and life? Are you putting in more work? I'm putting in more work, but I also know I'm helping to build something that's helping the people of Illinois. So, I mean, it's fine. It's not a 40-hour-a-week job is what I'm trying to say, and that's okay. And do you know where you can go when you have a problem at work? Yes. And where do you... I go to that guy right in the director. I go to me. Yeah, it just depends. I mean, problems can be like, there's a ringing in the room over there. Can we put in a... Who do I know, go to, to put in a ticket to facilities? So I would say for the most part, yes. And it just... I know where to go for IT problems, facility problems, HR problems, things like that. So yeah, I do. It just depends on when you see a problem. It can be, again, a ringing in the room to, you know, someone exceedingly dissatisfied with their job position. Yeah, and what does IHDD do to support diversity and inclusion? That's a great question. Right now, the biggest thing that we are trying to do, and this is a bit of a long walk, we've been very reactive to our business development. And what that means is that we work within our own networks to grab contractors to bring on board. Often those contractors then become people who work here. But because we are just utilizing our own networks, you know, those networks have been, you know, again, legacies. You know, I'm in my 50s, right? So there wasn't much diversity when I got into this business. And I grew up in a less diverse business than I think people coming out of, like, a design school today would. So by defining more of our practices, becoming less proactive, we can then work to, when we need people, when we need contractors, we can go outside of our networks to broadcast to a wider audience, broadcast to, again, and hopefully collect more diversity within our ranks in order to hire. And that's diversity from, like, we got a lot of people from the Institute of Design here, right? It means more diversity in terms of race and age and background. So, I mean, it's a matter of getting, broadcasting our message to a wider audience to get more people that are not just within our small little network. And also, do people feel comfortable speaking their mind at IHDD? And do you feel, do you find that people talk our heart out? I think, in general, we've done a pretty good job of being an open, having open and honest conversations. In addition, we are really trying hard to, we've prototyped a couple mentorship programs that we're doing another version of that prototype so that people can kind of talk one-on-one more informally about their career, what's bothering them, where it's not like, you know, me and my supervisor. I'm down here and my supervisor's up here, but more of a mentorship program. So, I think the secret there is trying to set a kind and collaborative environment, but also giving various different ways that people can speak their mind. Some people are more introverted and need to be invited into that conversation. Some people are more extroverted and feel comfortable saying their piece and just giving a wide variety of entryways into having conversations that people want to speak their mind. And how does IHDD celebrate its wins? Oh, that's a good one. We have shout-outs on our Monday morning meetings. That's about it. I mean, we don't, we should probably do more to celebrate our wins, but we generally do shout-outs. And how do you think IHDD's culture comes from? Oh, I think it's that, you know, cultures are typically set from, you know, the people who originated the company. So, Hugh is a collaborative, sort of easygoing person. So, I think, you know, he tends to hire more collaborative, easygoing people. It really is kind of set by the top and sort of accrues from there. And what activity do you engage in to support workplace culture? Good question. Again, for me, the way that a culture is operationalized is through setting standards about this is how we work. This is the way you get somebody onboarded to a project in a way that they feel comfortable. Collect feedback from them to see if we could have done it better, right? Again, you mentioned some of those rituals, having rituals, ways to celebrate, and ways to come together and work on internal things together. Again, an established set of values that we can, you know, we've already been using these in our hiring when people ask so that they can kind of get a taste for what we are and see if it matches what they bring to the table. So, I think both it's setting standards about the way we work, how we treat each other, and, you know, making sure that our values, you know, that we embody our values in all the different audiences that we interact with and making sure that we have the tools that, you know, again, if you think about, you know, perspective is a good one, right? You want to give people perspective. Well, you can't just throw somebody onto a project and expect them to have a perspective about the client and your relationship with them, right? We want to be able to give people the context, as much context about the project and the client that we're working for so that they can have more perspective to embrace the problem. So, that's one way where we say we value perspective, we value embracing complexity. You know, how are we... how do we embody that value with our contractors? Well, are we strong or weak? Oh, we're weak because we haven't done a great job at onboarding them into projects. Okay, how can we do that better? And then doing the processes better. And are people appropriately creative, acknowledged for their contributions? I think that's a one-on-one kind of thing. I feel appropriately acknowledged, but I just get a lot of job satisfaction in what I do. I don't really need to be acknowledged by others, but I know I feel like other people, that's really important to them, and you have to... I think that's kind of a personal... you know, how do you like to be acknowledged for your work? I just like getting stuff done. Yeah. A happy answer. Yeah. And so... And also, can you answer how do people communicate with each other within this organization? Do you mean like functionally or like through Slack and email and through voice or the quality? Like how do we communicate calmly, with respect? It can be soft skills and hard skills. Okay. Yeah. Well, again, I think we value connection, right? And connection means that we have to come to one another with kindness, openness. Again, we value humility, so I think we're not trying to one-up one another, be the smartest person in the room. So that's another way the quality of our communication. I think we'd like to think that we're coming at it with a lot of humility. Understanding that we're... Again, I think trying to, and at least I try to, I like teaching people, but I also need to come at it like I can learn from everybody that's around me in some way, shape, or form. All right. Yeah, and thank you for your time. You're welcome. That was amazing. And if you have anything to add... Yeah, when you were given the problem area of onboarding, what was the definition for you all of what onboarding is? Our project is about the process of onboarding, and we are working on this, so we have a lot of questions about onboarding process, about their experience, but now we are conversing with you, and it should be different from the others. Got it. Yeah. Because again, I think there's onboarding onto projects. Well, onboarding to the university, you're not dealing with that. That's HR. Onboarding to OPHS, you're not dealing. So it's either like onboarding to IHDD or getting people onboarded to a specific project, right? And of course, if you're a full-time employee, you would go through both of those, right? I guess if you're a contractor, too. But if you're a contractor who's worked for us before, it's just onboarding to that project, right? Yeah. So, and then I think Robert has, like we have a lot of information on Notion and in our drive, so he can probably get that all through as well. Okay? Yeah, yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thank you. Let me give this email back to Robert. Yeah, email me if you have follow-up questions. Sound good? Thank you. You're welcome.
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