Episode 144 – The New HR Standard with Keri Laine on The Crude Truth
In this episode, host Rey Treviño III welcomes back Keri Laine, founder of KLES and a trusted advocate for executives navigating the evolving HR landscape. Rey opens the show by sharing updates on his own family business growth plan and why “human resources is more than HR.” https://kerilaine.com/team
Let’s talk about HR and the C-Suite: Leading People, Driving Profit
Keri dives into why she left corporate America to launch KLES, building a firm focused on helping leaders drive profit by leading people. Rey and Keri also explore how HR issues have recently hit the headlines—including the Coldplay scandal—and how these stories reveal deeper challenges around trust and leadership.
Keri expands on her recent LinkedIn article reflecting on the hard work professionals invest to reach the C-Suite and why strategic relationships matter more than ever. Follow Keri Laine on Linked In (Keri Laine) https://www.linkedin.com/company/kerilaineexecutivesolutions
She breaks down the two types of HR professionals—the “bottom line” driven versus the “employee-friendly”—and offers a strategic framework for balancing both perspectives to support employees and leadership alike.
Looking back decade by decade, Keri shares how global and economic factors have shaped employee behavior and workplace dynamics, highlighting a major HR transition over the past 20 years. Today, HR has evolved into thought leadership, shaping not only culture but also business performance at the highest level.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Rey introduces human resources as the theme
01:31 – Rey explains growth planning and reintroduces guest Keri Laine
03:17 – Keri shares her background and the mission of KLES
04:39 – HR scandals in the news and their impact on credibility
06:05 – Three types of HR leaders: employee-focused, leadership-focused, and strategic neutral
07:34 – Historical evolution of HR across decades
10:06 – HR Pillars of Success framework explained
15:46 – KSAs (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities) explained with cake analogy
17:10 – Scaling challenges: financial plans, org charts, recruiting
20:18 – Reactions when KLES enters organizations
22:02 – Biggest surprise in entrepreneurship—people often overlooked
23:10 – Case study: Warehouse startup failure due to poor HR consideration
25:41 – Compensation planning challenges during scaling
27:04 – Return on relationships as a business ROI framework
30:21 – Keri introduces her book 100 Year ROI
32:55 – Book insights and quick-read design for executives
33:55 – Closing: How to connect with Keri via LinkedIn and KLES
35:37 – Sponsors and episode wrap-up
Please reach out to Keri Laine on LinkedIn
Check out StatusJet HERE
We want to thank our sponsors of THE CRUDE TRUTH.
Episode 144 – The New HR Standard with Keri Laine on The Crude Truth
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
Rey Treviño III [00:00:00] Human resources. Let those two words sink in, and I’ll say it again. Human resources, we dive into those two words on this episode of The Crude Truth.
Narrator [00:00:13] In 1901, at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, the future of Texas changed dramatically, as, like a fountain of fortune, thousands of barrels of oil burst from the earth towards the sky. Soon, Detroit would be cranking out model T’s by the millions, and America was on the move, thanks to the black gold being produced in Texas. Now, more than a century later, the vehicles are different, but nothing else has truly changed. Sure, there may be many other alternative energy sources, like wind, and solar, and electric. But let’s be honest. America depends on oil and entrepreneurs. And if the USA is truly going to be independent, it has to know the crude truth.
Narrator [00:00:56] This episode is brought to you by LFS Chemistry. We are committed to being good stewards of the environment. We are providing the tools so you can be too. NAPE Expo, where deals happen. Air Compressor Solutions, when everything is on the line, Air Compressed Solutions is the dependable choice to keep commercial business powered up. Sandstone Group, Exec Crue, elevate your network, elevate your knowledge. Texas Star Alliance, Pecos Country Operating, fueling our future.
Rey Treviño III [00:01:31] Well, thank you again for tuning in for another episode of The Crude Truth. For my friends and family out there that know, there’s no secret that at Pecos, we are continuing to scale and grow. And we have a growth plan that’s gonna take several years. And it’s not one of those plans that you just wake up and write down in an hour, and you go to town. As in my teaser, I use the word human resources. And that, when you really look at those two words put together, it means a lot more than a department in HR of a company. And back by popular demand, due to so much going on in the world, and we really got a lot of positive feedback because a lot companies out there are also scaling that nobody talks about. And it’s the people that are there, the humans, and how each one of their resources and what they provide and their characteristics. That really grow a company, and most importantly grow their profits. So back again, had so much great feedback from our last episode. We brought back Ms. Keri Laine of KLES. How are you?
Keri Laine [00:02:43] Thank you for having me. I’m doing awesome. Oh my gosh.
Rey Treviño III [00:02:45] Oh my gosh. Well, thank you. And thank you for coming to our Austin location. I know you were here in town with some of your clients that you have. And it was like, oh, let’s do this again. And I use the word human resources, but there’s been so much of that in the news lately, as you roll your eyes, since we got a chance to meet in Dallas and just talk about what it is that KLES does. Before we dive into stuff, for those that haven’t watched that last episode, what is KLES and who is Keri Laine real quick.
Keri Laine [00:03:17] So I am a former CHRO. And so that human resources word, there it is again. So I’ll tell you a little bit more about what that means later. But I left corporate America to open my own firm, which is KLES. And we work with organizations on structuring to scale, largely around their leadership alignment, communication, figuring out how they can structure their business from a human capital perspective in order to grow, whether it’s gaining capital, whether it is going public, whether it acquiring other organizations. So help them get the frame from a business construct set up as well as the leadership mindset.
Rey Treviño III [00:03:48] Right, and there’s so much more into that that we’ve been able to learn and unpack as we’ve able to visit. But human resources, for bad reasons, since we had a chance to visit, has been in the news. And the one meme that’s just been going around is the Coldplay incident that happened. They called that person a chief retent something officer, but it was basically the head of human resources. And you wrote a great piece of, if anybody’s out there not following her on LinkedIn and all the professional things that Keri does there, it’s K-E-R-I, we’ve got her name, I’m sure at the bottom, somewhere here, please connect with her. You wrote a piece about that whole scenario on LinkedIn. It got a lot of great feedback on that.
Keri Laine [00:04:39] Yeah, I think one of the hardest parts for me to watch was, I mean, I’m thinking you’re in HR, you are the leader of HR, and you have one job to do, and it’s not sleep with the CEO. I mean one job, but in reality, we can say all that facetiously, but in realty, they are the trusted source for people and relationships. And a lot of people in HR have worked very hard to get a seat at the table at a senior level. And I felt like that was going to knock the function back substantially in the minds of other people that don’t know yet how far HR has come over many decades working to be able to be a strategic thought partner to the business. And my hope was that, and posting what I posted and writing what I wrote, was that people don’t judge the rest of us that have done it the right way, that have not gone about taking advantage of certain relationships and certain leadership situations. And we’ve worked really hard to get to that table. And we belong there, so.
Rey Treviño III [00:05:33] Yeah, absolutely. And I want to get back to your strategic partnership in a sec, but yeah, absolutely, that is just something that just came out and spread like wildfire. And we talked about it, like you just said, the way HR is supposed to be the trusted confidant, they know stories about people that nobody else knows, they know things, and they do have to walk, we all should be walking a fine line. But you would think. That they wouldn’t be extra careful, right?
Keri Laine [00:06:05] Yeah, one of the things I learned early in my career coming up through HR is there’s two types of HR people and then there’s the strategic kind. So the two are, one, very employee-centric, very employee favored, and they often will favor outcomes for the employees and it makes it hard to develop the synergy with the leadership team because they’re not thinking about it like a business, they’re thinking about like an employee would. The second kind is they’re too leadership focused and then they lose sight of the employees. So they’re to cutthroat, they’re two focused on the bottom line, they’re considering all the elements that come with being. Human capital in an organization and there’s always this divide of perspective. So if somebody has some kind of disciplinary action or there’s a strategic training program, they’re usually thinking about it employee friendly or leadership friendly. The one that’s truly a strategic partner is neutral and they can see both sides, they bring both sides to the table, they include the financial aspect, the operations aspect, and they make sound decisions from a neutral standpoint and they don’t have alliances. They are their own, they can stand on their own but they give value to all the functions of the business leadership and employees alike.
Rey Treviño III [00:07:06] And that was actually gonna be my next question or my build up was when you mentioned strategic partnership within human resources and that should really not be a department. That is probably a way of thinking as you just mentioned to where it’s like you have a strategic partnership within all these individuals and they each bring something to the table and that’s where that strategic partnership would come into play, right?
Keri Laine [00:07:34] Yeah, absolutely and if you look back at many, many decades of how people work and the way they work, there’s a reason that this function has gone through a very tough journey to get the seat at the table. If you do a decade by decade look back, every decade there has been some kind of economic or global factor that has changed the way people work. Think about 9-11, people after 9- 11, the gig economy was born and so people started thinking about work differently, how they earned money, having a security nest. With a second job was a big part of how people worked. All that to say the transitioning that HR had to do from think about it early compliance. When women went to work, they were balancing diversity and inclusion. Then when tech started to come in and we started with email and we start with the computer system, how did they get all of their HR data into computer systems? So they were very administrative decade by decade and it’s only been recently that the thought leadership and the ability to see the organization. In totality, so if you think about the HR function, they’re the only other one other than the CEO that gets to see and touch and be a part of the entire organization. And so now it’s starting to get leveraged more in that way where they really are the right hand to the business and the finance team and the tech team and the people and the CEO. And so I think having that shared perspective with the CEO or the founder or owner of a business. Puts them in a unique strategic position to converge with all the functions where that was never really the opportunity or the case before.
Rey Treviño III [00:09:03] And that leads me into one of the main reasons why I definitely wanted to ask you to come, why I asked you to comeback on is the framework. Is that as the CEOs now have these individuals that are in HR, and I know I’m doing it in a service when I say HR, okay? But these strategic positions within human resources that there’s so much more that they’re able to see now. And so that now leads to framework. And as in not necessarily my teaser, but in my opening, as companies scale, we do a lot of bar math or bar napkin math or bar and napkin ideas, especially when you’re a brand new entrepreneur. And God knows in the oil and gas industry, I don’t know how many companies started at a bar on a little square piece of paper. And then all of a sudden they just boom. And some of them just. Whether it’s a service company, they get that contract. They didn’t think they were gonna get, and now they’ve got a scale. But there’s framework and are really a plan in place that individuals can use. Is that correct?
Keri Laine [00:10:06] Yeah, absolutely. And I call it the HR pillars of success. And so if you think about the old way of HR being administrative, what people often think of is like the handbook. And the hand book police writing people up for wearing flip-flops on Fridays, right? Like not part of the dress code. And so that’s not even what I reference is when I think about HR. The next evolution is people think about it as payroll and benefits. That is a component to it. But what I’m gonna give you is what I call the HR Pillars of Success. So take everything administrative. Or payroll and benefits that you think of when you frame HR and put that aside for a second. The Pillars of Success include everything from talent acquisition, which is acquiring your human capital, where you’re getting your people from, what level, what position they fit, how you’re going to grow them in the company. Then you move over to the next pillar, which is training and development. How do you develop them into the role? That even includes, how do you bring them onto the organization so they learn your systems, they learn their role, they learn the culture, they learn environment in which they’re to operate. From there, you move down to strategic cultural alignment. That is, how are we engaging our employees and retaining them? Then you move over to your due diligence and that’s your legal arm. Then you have your strategic or development component, which is how are growing for the future and how are future-proofing ourselves through developing a culture that people wanna be a part of that’s market-leading and market-dominating. And so when you can break out these pillars, you really see that there is quite a lot that the HR function can and should be doing. And in most cases, companies are only leveraging about 30% of that framework. And so if you were to do an audit and you were go look through each pillar, there’s probably, I don’t know, eight to 10 things under like, you know, take talent acquisition, for example. It’s probably eight to ten things in talent acquisition that one person would be doing and contributing to. This model, and if you were to audit it among each of the pillars, you would be able to develop a strategy to have a fully functioning HR department.
Rey Treviño III [00:11:57] Right, and when you mentioned fully functioning, I am glad how you brought up health benefits, HR part, and the admin part, but there is a human aspect to this. And we always hear about companies, oh, we wanna invest in our people, we wanna do, but who does that? And it should be human resources because they’re the ones that are there to be there for the employees, right? And what a. Help guide, they’re almost like a counselor in a way.
Keri Laine [00:12:29] They can be, but it’s not, you know, we’re as HR professionals, we’re not there to make people happy and we’re there to throw great Christmas parties, right? That’s not engagement. We are there to be able to figure out what is it that people are doing every day? How are they showing up to work? What are their tasks and responsibilities? Does their knowledge and skillset apply and fit to that? And then how do you converge the two so that way you’re getting the most performance out of your people? That is when they show up happy, but ultimately, if you are a person that’s designing. HR programs to make people feel really good, you’re sort of missing the mark because you can’t tie ROI to feel good stuff. We wanna tie it back to the business and to be able to understand what are the financials? If an HR person knows how the money makes or how the business makes money and then how the workflow goes across that to make that impact, that’s where they can really figure out are we putting the right people in the right places at the right level for the right amount and are we getting the most out of them?
Rey Treviño III [00:13:23] Wow, that’s a mouthful. That is a whole lot. But at the end of it, it was, are we getting the most out of our employees? Which is what you want. I know some oil and gas companies, some family offices that have had the same people for 20, 30 years. And they’re reinvesting whether it’s through a nice pension plan or just bringing lunch in for them. That’s a little things, but. It’s because they’re at least showing that, hey, what are we doing that those employees didn’t give them even that much more out of them. And also the fact that you guys are looking at in a way of like, how can we help these individuals? And I think it goes back to one of the old sayings that my father used to or still tells me is, we wanna share and educate our employees with everything they need to do the job. And if they do it better and better to where they’re too good that they want it. But if we don’t do that and invest in them, they’re gonna go somewhere else automatically. So it’s like, if we invest in then, they learn more, our company gets stronger and the bottom line gets better.
Keri Laine [00:14:34] I think what’s also interesting is what I would challenge and I would ask people to ask of themselves, yes, you wanna get the most out of people and you want them in the right role, but do you even know how to define what that role is? It starts there. A lot of times people can’t explain what people are supposed to be doing because they haven’t taken stock of what are all the functions, roles, and responsibilities. Then you put the person and figure out does that work? A lot people will say, well, how do I develop my employees? Well, what is the role you need them to do? Then take stock of their skillset and their contributions and figure out what the gap is. And that’s how you figure out what to train them. Wow. But you have to be able to identify that. And a lot of organizations or leaders have a hard time articulating that and taking that assessment. What is each role supposed to do? They’ll write a job description, but ultimately that’s just a responsibility checklist. It’s not inclusive of competencies, which is what are the skills that people need to know, systems that people to know. KSAs, which is a stack of knowledge, skill, and abilities. So you might be able to know how to do something, but do you know how do it at a certain level that your company or your project or program requires? So there’s gaps among what we contribute as employees and what the organization needs for everybody.
Rey Treviño III [00:15:44] Can you say that one more time? KSAs are.
Keri Laine [00:15:46] KSAs, knowledge, skills, and abilities. And the way I describe that is an analogy. If I have a recipe, I am following a checklist. I know enough about how to follow a checklist to bake a cake, right? That’s knowledge. I know how to get the recipe and I know to go to the grocery store and okay, I can put the cake together. I want to take that to the skill level. Now I’m in my house, I still might need the recipe, but I’m missing an ingredient or two. I can kind of figure out how to finagle it. Like I have enough to be able to say, okay, my skill in baking a cake is advanced. So I can sort of bake something that still tastes good without all the perfect ingredients. Ability is I don’t need the recipe and I’m going to bake the best cake with whatever’s in my kitchen because I know how it all works together. It becomes more intuitive, it becomes more wisdom that comes from experience. And so the ability for me to bake a cake without like needing that recipe or needing that checklist is because I’ve inherently grown and evolved through my use of the skills.
Rey Treviño III [00:16:34] Wow, that’s huge. KSAs, I like that, knowledge, skills and abilities. And I’m sure a lot of y’all have probably heard that before when it comes to framework. Okay, I kind of asked you this last time, but I want to kind of go into more detail. We’ve got a service company or an oil and gas company that just all of a sudden got more production and they have to grow. How are you coming into there? Like they watch this and like, okay, Keri and her team, Dean. Shout out to Dean. I got a chance to meet a great guy. What are you coming in and what’s like, what are you gonna do? Like what’s gonna happen?
Keri Laine [00:17:10] So we would originally go in and look for the three to five-year financial plan. And most people wouldn’t think that if you’re talking about talent and human capital that you’re starting with the financials, but you have to. You have to understand what the goals are for each year, what the milestones are, how they make their money, how their employees are incentivized. And that’s really where you start and you back into your talent from there. So the financial goals ties directly to a need for headcount. So you have a current org chart that looks a certain way and then you have future-based org chart. So that is your leadership team structure, the departments underneath them. So a functional chart, but then how many people do you need to be able to execute to meet that financial plan? What are their roles? There’s a gap between current state and future state. We wanna know what that gap is, what those roles are. And then that’s where you start to figure out, now what is my recruiting plan? How do I back into recruiting? When do I need to start recruiting in our industry? When do I need to start developing those relationships to bring people in on time? So that way we can hit the targets for that financial year. There’s nothing worse than a company that has a great plan, doesn’t think about recruiting, and then all of a sudden they’re behind because they can’t get people in for six months or train for six month. They’re already a year behind like that. So when you understand the difference in the org chart, you can really drill down. So now we know who we’re bringing in. We understand what talent’s in the market. Then you move to how do we develop them to be able to be productive in the company, which is the training and development part. And then you just take those pillars that I mentioned earlier, and you have to weave these plans, these staged conversions of what your organization looks like from a people, human capital standpoint in order to be able to meet those targets, which even things like compensation structure changes, succession planning is a part of that as well. So if you have a team of mid-level leaders, say you’re in year two and a half of your plan, everybody’s gonna get promoted. The problem there is that most people get promoted all at the same time, because suddenly you realize you’re about to hit the next level. So everybody gets promoted and everybody gets new teams. They were never trained to lead people. They were subject matter experts, and then the whole thing falls apart. So now people are leaving, production is down, and you’re not able to go back and recapture what if you had a plan, you would be able to have a smooth uptick in contributions from your team, your leaders, and your new employees coming in. And that’s one of the biggest issues that we see in organizations as they’re structuring is they don’t think about that succession path. They promote people too quick or without enough preparation. And when they bring in new employees, that leadership team is not ready. And so it falls apart. And so if you can think about these things in a path that coincides with the financial targets, you’re then able to be able to contribute from your human capital in a way that’s more of a return on investment than a cost center.
Rey Treviño III [00:19:51] And that was just the first question on ready. What’s the first thing you’re gonna do if somebody, that’s detail. Holy cow. Sometimes when you do get people that come in and are not, when you go in, what are some of the reactions that you get like just in general from some of guys that, or the companies that have already signed you dotted line the whole nine and like, are you getting the woes or like?
Keri Laine [00:20:16] It depends on who brings us in.
Rey Treviño III [00:20:18] Okay.
Keri Laine [00:20:18] So sometimes we’ll get brought in by a board. Sometimes we’ll be brought in by the owner or the C-suite. Sometimes we get brought by HR. And every one of them has a different perspective. If we’re brought in HR, our role and goal is to be able to try to demonstrate value to the C suite that HR should be the strategic as we’re helping their HR function. And that’s usually an uphill battle because they already have preconceived notions that we’re not strategic, we’re just payroll and benefits. So we’ve got a big boulder to roll uphill to prove that this is. A plan that is strategically gonna benefit everybody. If we’re brought in by the board more, we’re sometimes rejected because it feels forced, right? And so a lot of our early entry engagement is really building relationships with all of the constituents and stakeholders. So we have to be able to understand what’s going on in the world of HR, where it stands today and how to support that HR function and leader. We have to understand where the CEO and COO is at to be to build that relationship, gain trust and credibility. And. We have to be able to work with the board to be about to say, we’re gonna deliver you the results that you need as investors. So. Wow.
Rey Treviño III [00:21:25] There is so much more to this than what meets the eye, Cary. When everything’s said and done, in the UK, as we’ve highlighted before, you’ve taken companies from 100 people to 4,000 people. You’ve dealt with the PR issues. You’ve you’ve dealt with CEOs that were adults and you’ve done with CEOs that were children. You’re an entrepreneur yourself. After just listening, listing off all those things, what is one thing. That has surprised you and your entrepreneurial journey while doing this and trying to focus on HR as your own business.
Keri Laine [00:22:02] I think the biggest surprise and honestly the purpose and reason I started KLES was people are what make up an organization, but people in general in an organization are the last to be thought of. There’s so much work and diligence around the financials or the operational plan or the technology or the product design. And there’s not enough conversation about the people doing the work to execute. And so I think that is a miss that organizations often overlook or just assume or take for granted. And what happens in those situations is investment deals go wrong, companies implode. Some of them have gone bankrupt, which stories for another time and maybe the cocktail or two. But if you overlook that people element, what happens is it creeps up and it comes up behind you and it’s too late. And it’s usually in a negative way. And so what I would love to be able to help organizations do but what I think would help make them more successful sooner is to think of that people aspect of their business first. And I have a story if I can go on for a minute. So there is an example that I have of a company that was a company that was in the warehouse space. They were launching new warehouses all over the country. And so blue collar workers, right? There was some tech involved and some other specialty positions. But point being, they needed to build, start and staff about 130 people per location at various levels, management all the way down. Their real estate arm, which is out of their financial arm would select the buildings where the location where these facilities would be. There was one in Atlanta and the problem was that there was also an Amazon distribution center right across the street. That was a known name compared to the company that was just starting up that nobody knew. They also had deeper pockets. They had a great established work culture. And so you can imagine the recruiting error for us to be able to staff that many people when Amazon was across the street. This whole company didn’t fail because they were competing with Amazon. The one thing that they missed was how do people in Atlanta get to work? It’s a city where people use a lot of public transit. The location where they pick the warehouse was too far for public transit, Amazon was able to have busses that could take people because of their deeper pockets. But we did not have that as a startup company. And so when you don’t look at the real estate paired with the recruitment, there’s a huge miss. We couldn’t staff the building. We couldn t then meet production demands. We then therefore didn’t meet the yearly plan. And so that’s one example of you have to balance the real estate decision with who’s going in the building, where do they come from, how do they get there? Not only are they the right talent to do the job, but if nobody can drive to work. I mean, they even thought about things like carpooling, but if one driver was sick, you’ve got team of five that are out. So there’s a lot of different things to think through. And if HR was more of a strategic consideration. In the beginning, when they said they were building 10 different locations across the country, HR would have been able to bring these things to light to be thought of and considered before it was too late.
Rey Treviño III [00:25:20] Wow, that’s a story. Then there’s a lot to unpack there. What a way not to look at the future that goes back to the framework and going through all the pillars that you talk about. Because if you did that, you would have been able to touch on that and assist.
Keri Laine [00:25:41] Even compensation. So I think about as companies grow, say you’re at 100 and you’re going to 500. Between that time period, you are promoting managers. Say you’ve got that plan right. Well, then all of a sudden, what about your incentive plan? You’ve budgeted for a certain amount of payroll and compensation as a part of your P&L. But as the company grows and you manage more managers, the management incentive line item should increase. Are you thinking of that? And is it the right incentive structure Bye. Gets the right behavior out of your production team, out of new line level managers. And so if you’re not thinking about compensation increases, incentive program changes from a strategic standpoint, you get to this point where you’re 500 people and you can’t hold them because you haven’t planned financially for the increase in salary. And so, if that is not a conversation that happens a year or two ahead with your strategic HR partner, you’re now stuck with either forcing the hand of having raises come or they drip very small 2% raises or cost of living raises and expect that people are gonna be okay with that. But reality is they didn’t budget for it. What are they supposed to do? And so I think that if you’re able to think these things through in that step cycle of we’re going to be 500 at this time with this amount of revenue, what are all the things that we need to consider? And how much is it gonna cost us to keep this human capital aspect of our business healthy and running strong for us? That’s the kind of conversation that needs to be had earlier.
Rey Treviño III [00:27:04] When you talk about the capital and the compensation, that’s what you would call, and you use this term, return on relationships. Is that correct? As we’ve been able to dive into this more over the last several months, when I hear you say return on relationship, it’s not necessarily a word or a term that’s used for networking or getting out and meeting people. It’s within your company and building up through compensations or through. Education. And that you actually see a true return on that relationship. So the way you use the words is really in a way, human capital or human resources and your understanding of their needs, their characteristics and what their good flaws are, what their bad flaws are and how to get that return on that. Is that.
Keri Laine [00:28:03] Yeah, and I think it goes beyond people. So you and I can have a relationship. I can really like working with you, but our functions may never overlap or intersect, but I could love having lunch with you and that makes a great culture, right? That’s one aspect of it. But the part that I’m talking about is really what directly correlates back to the ROI. Think about it from a functional standpoint at the highest level. If your IT function, your finance function and your operations function, along with your HR function, don’t know how the other operates. They don’t what they wake up thinking about in the middle of the night. They don’t know what problems they’re facing. They don’t know what challenges they have, what systems they use. There’s no way for those functions to build credibility, trust, reciprocity and collaboration. And so if you break down the walls of these silos, and again, this is not even just individuals. These are full functions I’m talking about. If you break the silos of the function, I’m HR, say you’re tech. If I haven’t spent any time getting to know you and your world and what you face every day and how that contributes to the bottom line of the organization, I have failed my relationship with you as an HR function, right? And replace that with operations or finance. Point is, is if they’re not getting to know one another, they can’t serve and support one another. And when you drop those silos and these relationships are built, time to decision-making happens faster. There’s less conflict and thrash. There’s ability to execute at a much faster, higher pace. Productivity rises, innovation skyrockets. And so these relationships that we create at work cross-functionally, but as well as within and among people. Are the relationships that really can bring a true ROI. And actually I’ve written a book that is called 100 Year ROI. And I say this to say, there is a calculated framework on how at a board level or at a C-suite level, you can evaluate your return on relationships as a company metric, as a KPI, much like you would your financial health. And it should be considered alongside the financial health because it’s not only a financial driver, but it is a driver of your people, which is your number one asset and resource.
Rey Treviño III [00:30:01] The 100 Year ROI. Yes, as we record today, you have done a soft launch of this amazing book that you’ve written. What motivated you to write it? And what are the expertise that are in the book? Just to share a little bit, gotta get people to buy the book.
Keri Laine [00:30:21] Yeah, sure. So it started from what I said when you asked what my biggest, what I thought most people were missing. And it’s that these functions are not considered holistic. They’re considered very individual siloed functions. And I found it really hard to continue to get HR to be at that strategic table when I was talking to investors or board level or C-suite level. And I always wondered why. And so I did a seven decade look back every year trying to understand how did technology evolve over the last 70 years? How did the finance function evolve? How did HR evolve as a function, but also as a workforce, right? Tech and finance largely male dominated, HR female, that’s starting to change up now. But why is that? And so when I looked at the convergence curve, what I realized is they’re not fully integrated yet. And if there is a way to share the message that there is a lot of money moving around with private equity, investments are being made. Corporations are acquiring a lot of other corporations. There’s a lot happening in the global economy now with business. If we can get these functions to converge, that convergence becomes a superpower. Then the question is, how do you get them to converge? Not only why is that important, but how do do you do that? And that’s where the return on relationship framework comes in. And then if you have highly functioning profitable organizations, think about how that’s a return on humanity, right? You are impacting businesses that are healthy and thriving, and then you’re impacting families at home that night. Where they have happy employees that are coming home to have happy dinners with their kids. They’re inspiring the next generation of people that are come into the workforce. They’re bridging generations. There’s five different generations in the workforce today. So you’re bridged generations across at this point in time. And then ultimately, what does that leave? That leaves a better legacy for future generations. And it has a significant global impact. There’s a $3 trillion figure that’s out there right now in the private equity world that is. Seven out of 10 deals fail, largely because of human capital issues or missteps. If we can change that and have, I don’t know, eight out of them be successful, imagine the financial impact that that has on our global economy.
Rey Treviño III [00:32:28] Oh, wow.
Keri Laine [00:32:28] So the idea of this return on relationships, leveraging these functions to converge and how people do that at a board in a C-suite level is what the book is about.
Rey Treviño III [00:32:39] Well, I’m excited for that. Whenever you do have your big launch, you gotta let us know. Yes, I will. And we could even do more of a deep dive into the book because this little soft launch, congratulations on that. And I don’t mean to call it little. I apologize. That’s okay. It’s not long.
Keri Laine [00:32:55] It’s not long though. That’s the beauty of it. I wanted an executive to be able to read it on a quick flight. So it’s short, but it’s very impactful. I interviewed executives from tech, finance, and HR, getting their perspective. So there’s real life stories in there. There’s my experience from the boardroom stories that are really fun. But the interweaving of the point of here’s the current state, here’s a future state, here’s why it matters, what we need to do about it and what your role is in it, it goes real quick. So it an easy read. So you can call it little. I won’t be offended.
Rey Treviño III [00:33:25] No, I know. Kerry, as we kind of wrap up here, your company and your team with y’all’s experience is really leaving a positive mark on corporations, manufacturing, venture capital, financial groups across the country. How can people get, how do you want to end this in the way of kind of just giving a little elevator speech and just let people know who you are again and how they can get ahold of you.
Keri Laine [00:33:55] Yeah, I think one of the best ways to stay in touch with us is through my LinkedIn page. There is a way to access me there from a direct message standpoint. Our website is out there, but back to relationships. I prefer more of that connection point than just go visit my website. It is kles.pro if anybody wants to go look at it. But find me on LinkedIn under Keri Lane, K-E-R-I-L-A-I-N-E. And let’s connect there and then we can get a conversation going.
Rey Treviño III [00:34:21] Right, because you’ve got a team that can help out from every aspect of the pillars and the framework. Yep, absolutely. And for all the companies out there that are on that scale right now, these steps are so important to only continue to grow and see the success that you want to see as you scale. Because as I’ve said before, there’s a difference between growing a company and scaling a company. And one of them is a little bit more chaotic. But when you have the right framework in place, there’s nothing but just smooth sailing from there. Yep, that’s the idea. Oh my gosh, well Kerry, I cannot thank you enough for coming back on the show. I cannot wait to read your book. I can’t wait to actually have you come back on and we’ll have a copy and be able to talk about the book in detail after you have your official launch. And thank you for coming to the great state of Texas.
Keri Laine [00:35:17] Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you. It’s been fun.
Rey Treviño III [00:35:20] And to everybody out there, again, that’s Keri Laine, k-l-e-s.pro. If y’all have any questions, reach out to her, reach out us. We’d be more than happy to get you guys in contact. And as always, we want to thank you for tuning in for another episode of The Crude Truth. We’ll see you next time.
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