In this episode of The COO Solution Podcast, host Derek Fredrickson sits down with Melissa Ortiz, founder of Activate Human Capital Group, to explore the often-overlooked root cause of team frustration, burnout, and misalignment: unclear roles.
If your team is working hard but not necessarily on the right things, this episode is for you.
Melissa breaks down what role clarity really means—and why it matters more than ever for growing companies. From using the Predictive Index to hiring smarter, to transforming underperforming teams into aligned, high-performing units, this episode is packed with practical advice for founders, integrators, and team leaders.
In This Episode:
[00:56] The Power of Alignment – Why engagement and clarity go hand in hand.
[02:33] Why Role Clarity Is the Missing Link – And what “right seat” really looks like.
[05:04] Job Description ≠ Clarity – What founders often get wrong when hiring.
[08:17] Getting Practical – How to create a one-pager that defines success for each role.
[12:44] From Chaos to Confidence – How teams transform when responsibilities are defined.
[14:40] Living Documents – How to revisit and update role clarity as your business evolves.
[17:00] Due Dates and Delegation – Tips to manage expectations and keep priorities clear.
[18:32] All About Predictive Index – Why this five-minute assessment is game-changing.
[21:12] Think-to-Talk vs. Talk-to-Think – How this distinction improves communication.
[27:00] Hiring Smarter – How to define your ideal candidate profile using PI.
[31:07] Sifting Through the Noise – Using assessments to save time (and bad hires).
[34:39] The Waste Factor – How role clarity and alignment eliminate wasted time, energy, and talent.
📌 Why This Matters
Confused roles create confusion everywhere else—in decision-making, accountability, and even culture. This episode will help you step back, audit your team, and reset the foundation for scale. Whether you’re hiring or optimizing an existing team, clarity is your first and most powerful move.
✅ Action Steps for Listeners:
- Identify one role on your team that needs a clarity reset. Ask: “What exactly do I expect from this person?”
- Create or update a one-pager that outlines time allocation, core responsibilities, and success metrics.
- Consider using the Predictive Index to improve your hiring and communication strategy.
Resources & Links:
Subscribe & Stay Connected
New episodes drop soon—subscribe to The COO Solution Podcast so you don’t miss an episode! Let’s connect:
➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekfredrickson/
➡️ https://www.instagram.com/thecoosolution/
➡️ https://www.facebook.com/thecoosolution
👉 If you found this episode valuable, share it with a fellow business owner ready to scale smarter!
Transcript:
Ever feel like your team is working hard, but not always on the right things? The problem might not be your people. It might be a lack of clarity and Today’s guest, Melissa Ortiz is the founder of Activate Human Capital Group and a leading expert in employee engagement and team performance. She works with leaders to define roles, align expectations, and make more informed hiring and leadership decisions using the Predictive Index. If you’ve ever struggled with accountability, ownership, or finding the right people for your team, this episode is for you. And here’s why this topic matters for today. When roles are unclear, people flounder, even the best ones. It creates confusion, stalls momentum, and leads to disengagement and turnover.
Derek Fredrickson:
00:56
Melissa helps founders and teams move from assumption to alignment using tools like the Predictive Index. She brings clarity to roles, structure to expectations, and insight into what drives behavior so you can put the right people in the right roles and help them succeed once they’re there.
In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss why clarity is the foundation of confidence and performance. How to spot and fix assumed clarity in your team and how Predictive Index helps leaders build better teams faster. So let’s dive in.
00:20
Derek Fredrickson
All right, we’ll dive in.
Hey there, everybody. It’s Derek Fredrickson here and welcome back to The COO Solution podcast. Very excited to introduce our guest to you today. Melissa Ortiz is with us.
Welcome, Melissa. It’s great to have you on the show.
00:36
Melissa Ortiz
Howdy. Thank you for having me.
00:38
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, it’s great to be here with you. We’re going to talk a lot today about team, about team dynamics, team roles, team clarity, and then some tools and best practices that Melissa is going to share with us today, including one particular assessment called the predictive index that we’re going to dive into a bit that’s going to help with all things team related.
So I always like to ask this question first to our guests, Melissa. So we’re going to talk about, like I said, team dynamics and role clarity and everything else. But why this topic? Meaning why this area of team dynamics, role clarity, why this topic? Why is it something that we’re talking about today? Like, why is it pertinent now? And also why you? Why is this something that you’re passionate about? So a few questions all kind of bundled in there into one.
01:22
Derek Fredrickson
So I’m going to let you just kind of kick things off and talk a little bit about that.
01:26
Melissa Ortiz
Sure. I have always been fascinated with what makes people tick. And people are so infinitely unique and they bring all these different dynamics to the table. And when we get it right, I think hopefully all your listeners have worked on a high performing team and that energy is something we all would like to get back to. And so this idea of building a dream team, it doesn’t just happen by magic. It happens. We all know exactly what role we’re playing. It happens when we are in the right seat and become a valued member and we get to this point where we’re a winning team on an inspiring mission. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a paid employee or an unpaid volunteer, everybody wants those three criteria. A valued member of a winning team on an inspiring mission.
02:09
Melissa Ortiz
And God, if we can get those three elements for everybody in the organization, we have done something not just for our profitability, not just for our teams and our customers, but also for our communities. Because when I go home and I’m an engaged employee who’s in the right seat, I have more energy for my family, my physical well being, my faith, my community, anything that matters to me. Turns out I still have gas left in the tank.
02:32
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah.
02:33
Melissa Ortiz
Even if we did more work, I worked longer hours. But because it’s the right seat, I’m contributing the best of who I am. And so to me, it’s like this mutual benefit that really matters beyond just the work.
02:44
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love that. And so. And why is this important for you? What? Why? Why? Why? Tell us a little about you and your journey to get to this area. I always like to ask our guests that bring important topics to the conversation and the work that we’re doing at the COO Solution, where we’re looking for experts in the areas of a team. Or it might be in the finance or AI or anything like that. But why is this something that’s really important and passionate for you? How did this come about for you individually?
03:13
Melissa Ortiz
So I have this core value called I hate waste. And my team says we have to phrase it something nicer like waste not, want not. But really, I hate wasted time. I hate wasted money, wasted talent, wasted enthusiasm, wasted energy. I hate waste. And I think that’s what I look around our economy and I see so many people who are in the wrong job who are miserable. Our organizations are underperforming because we know we should work on our team health. But it seems like something we can do next quarter. There’s never a good time to get better at a team. We have to work on our financial or we have to work on… Our team health affects all of these ripple effects of everything else we do. I was doing a role clarity session actually yesterday with a new general manager who was just.
03:54
Melissa Ortiz
It was his first day on the job and it was the CEO and the general manager, and were defining exactly where people spend his time and also the importance of those time expenditures. And while the working on team and performance and individual development was only like 10% of his time allocation, when we looked at the importance, the CEO said this is 60 or 70% of the total importance of your job. Because if we don’t do this right, all your other work and all of our other metrics will lag. Yeah, that’s really astute.
04:24
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, exactly.
04:26
Melissa Ortiz
So clear about that piece.
04:28
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah.
04:28
Melissa Ortiz
So.
04:30
Derek Fredrickson
I love that. I love that. I like the word. It’s fine. It’s got a good tang to it. It’s very compelling.
So let’s talk about this role clarity. We’re going to get into a lot of different things around team dynamics. Role clarity, obviously. Right people, right seats. Our audience has heard that expression before. But in the work that you do with companies, especially those companies that are growing and scaling, why is, like, what does role clarity really mean? And why is it sometimes, often, like you said, maybe overlooked or kind of like punted down the field? We’ll get to that later. But why, like, what does that really mean in the work that you do with companies when you talk about role clarity?
05:04
Melissa Ortiz
So I’ve been doing employee engagement work for almost 20 years, Derek, and one of the things we consistently see is if an employee doesn’t have clear expectations, understand the expectations of their job, they are significantly less likely to be engaged and contribute at high levels. Because engagement is all about discretionary extra effort. Right. It’s above and beyond the basics that I pay you for to not fire you.
05:27
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, that’s true.
05:31
Melissa Ortiz
And so if I. If I know what’s expected with total clarity. So on our survey, it’s a five. A five is a hell, yes. Unquestionably, I know what you expect. I know how to prioritize when things get busy. I know what the purpose is. And so a lot of times, like, I have a lot of clients that operate in the US and we have, like, we have the accountability chart and we have our scorecard, and that should create a lot of clarity. But also a lot of times our leaders don’t clarify, where do I want you to spend your time? What does the holistic development of your role look like? And even if we created a job description which you may have glanced at when you started.
06:08
Derek Fredrickson
If it’s there, yeah. If it’s there, yeah.
06:11
Melissa Ortiz
Maybe just put a job out. And we thought that would be sufficient. Because it’s a controller role. Right. You know what to do as a controller.
06:16
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah.
06:17
Melissa Ortiz
But if we get to the level of specifying, why does this job exist? Why am I paying someone to sit in the seat virtually or physically? Then what are the key buckets and roles and responsibilities and metrics? But then a level deeper around, what do each of those buckets mean? For an engineering role? I scoped with a visionary and integrator CEO and a COO the other day, the CEO was saying, yes, this is a senior engineer role, and part of his role will be business development. And for an engineer, they look sideways and go, excuse me, business development. And the CEO said, we need to mine your network, because if we don’t, we won’t have engineering work to do. And the guy goes, oh, that sounds realistic.
06:59
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah, yeah.
07:01
Melissa Ortiz
And so it’s like, what does that even mean? Well, it really means taking your friends to lunch and sometimes doing free consulting work. Oh, well, I can do that. That doesn’t sound quite so intimidating. So this key bucket of business development, if we break it down and say, okay, what is it? How much time do I expect you to attribute? That’s the type of clarity we’re trying to get to. So, people, nobody wants to suck at work is one of my core beliefs. Nobody comes to work every day and says, I want to do a poor job. People want to thrive. People want to contribute.
07:30
Melissa Ortiz
So if we tell them, here’s what a contribution looks like, they’re more likely to be able to rise to that occasion and deliver on our expectations that sometimes we haven’t done a good job of clarifying for ourselves or for them.
07:42
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, that’s so true. I mean, there’s so much just in that alone. I love this distinction in the difference between, say, a job description, like a job posting, and then what are the actual responsibilities? And sometimes, like you said, a team member gets brought in based on the job description, but then when they’re in the role, it’s like, well, that’s almost kind of put to the side. And it’s like, but then what are my actual responsibilities? I can look back and see what it said on the job description, but it’s not really detailed or it’s not really fleshed out in a way that fully explains, well, these are my responsibilities. This is what I own. This is what I’m accountable for.
08:17
Derek Fredrickson
And so when that is the case, I mean, we’ve worked with clients, and inevitably, team is always something that we have to dive into. It’s always one of those, like, okay, let’s make sure we’ve got the right people in the right seats. And sometimes we kind of open the hood and get underneath and talk to some of the team members and they’re like, I don’t really know what my role is. I’m not really clear what my responsibilities are. And then, so how do you define that in the point where, like, maybe an example you could share or some best practices about how do you get them to really understand, okay, now this is what I know. These are my responsibilities. This is what I know I can own.
08:49
Derek Fredrickson
And also making sure that the, you know, whether it’s the integrator or the founder, they’re clear on what to expect of the team member and the team member is clear of what’s expected of them. Like how do you do that? Exactly.
09:00
Melissa Ortiz
And, and do we know what, where the lines are between our responsibilities and we’re peers. Because then I know who to ask for what and what I’m supposed to be saying no to. Because I think one of the things I see, Derek, is that we have too many teams that mean well and they’re tripping over each other to do all the things because they don’t know where the lines of demarcation. Okay, this is your role. This is, this is mine. And so most companies have some kind of accountability chart org chart that starts that conversation. And I think that’s where we often stop. We have this job description. We check the box on that three or four years ago and we created this or chart and that should get everybody in the right direction.
09:40
Melissa Ortiz
But if we take the time to slow down a minute, it’s usually the founder or the owner or like the general manager that is the one who can provide the most clarity because they have this bird’s eye view and they know when they see people wasting time and they, their hackles go up and they know when people are really owning it, but they often struggle to describe it. And so this often becomes a facilitated process of pulling from their heads, what do you want this person to do? And oh, but isn’t there a people component to that? Oh yeah, there really is. Okay, well what does that mean? And just it’s a back and forth negotiation that I find. Like I have this process where I could send them a link to take this role review process and go through it.
10:25
Melissa Ortiz
They could write it out loud. But what they do at every level, I’m talking office manager, all the way up to CEO, sit with it, and they’ll look at it and they’ll think about it and they’ll overanalyze it and then they’ll revise it and then they’ll time out seven hours later. And then it’s like if we just get on a call and we go through the process in an hour, you will be done. You will have clarity. Usually the employee question, like I say, this is done for performance management perspective. We have someone who’s not quite meeting the bar and we know they’re the right person in the organization, but for whatever reason, they’re just not owning it right now. If we can get on with that person, talk it through and the person gets all these questions answered, gets clarity.
11:04
Melissa Ortiz
Like I had One yesterday, a gentleman who was just stepping into a general manager role, went through this process and he said, I’m going to print out this outline. It’s basically just an elegant outline of what you do here. And he said, I’m going to print 10 of these and for the next 10 weeks I’m going to check every box on this sheet and I’m going to bring it to my one one with the CEO and say, here’s where I’m knocking out of the park, here’s where I have questions and here’s where I’m really struggling.
11:28
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah, yeah.
11:29
Melissa Ortiz
I was like, okay, that’s beautiful. And very task oriented and I totally admire that because it’s so. It’s such a one pager that you can own.
11:37
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
11:38
Melissa Ortiz
You can bring it to performance reviews, we can use it for onboarding and say, you need to do this by 30, this by 60, this by 90. And it becomes this living document that we say, scratch this off, this doesn’t matter anymore. You gave that to Johnny. You’re now taking on this other responsibility.
11:52
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love that. So it sounds like in some respect the clarity of the role actually starts and is defined with in this case the general manager or the founder. Like they have to get really really clear before the team member is really really clear because they’re that are determining we have this right seat, we need to bring the right person on board, but they need to get really clear and kind of set that team member up for success before they actually go and put somebody that’s actually in the seat. So it’s that clarifying process. And I love what you shared about the idea of maybe doing it together, like doing it with somebody. Let me hold your hand. Let me walk you through the process.
12:28
Derek Fredrickson
Because in some cases left to their own devices, they’re not going to necessarily do that on their own because it’s like not easy work. They have to really think through what is this person going to be doing, what do I want them to own, what are the responsibilities. And so it starts with the founder, it starts with the owner or the COO in some respect and getting really really clear there and then cascading that down to the team member to make sure that they’re feeling set up for success.
12:51
Melissa Ortiz
And could we start from the bottom up and do a convenience store clerk?
12:55
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, absolutely.
12:56
Melissa Ortiz
There are a lot of roles that in themselves have pretty clear definition.
13:00
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
13:00
Melissa Ortiz
But usually where the murkiness gets is at the higher levels. Managers and above start to go. Especially one of the things I see so often in our engagement work is we do this thing called working managers where you’re supervising people, you’re responsible for the development, but also you have all this bucket of work to do. And guess what gets done over and over. And what doesn’t get done?
The work gets done. The people stuff gets missed. Because no one was explicit to say, oh no, you can say, hopefully on my actual work, because I have to invest in my one on ones because if I don’t, I will never be able to achieve the next level. And neither will these people.
13:38
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. Yeah.
13:38
Melissa Ortiz
And so the team piece really weaves in when we get clarity between each other and we can glance at each other’s overview. And now I know like one of the pieces in engagement is I’m surrounded by people who are holding their own.
13:52
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
13:53
Melissa Ortiz
I can ask if you’re a hard worker and everybody will say yes, but the work ethic on my team is impressive to me. Wow, that’s a high bar.
14:01
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
14:01
Derek Fredrickson
How. And in your experience, when you do this with a client, with an organization, how often do you find it’s best to revisit this? Meaning, let’s say we’ve done this exercise and the founders align and the team members align and they’re like this. So they’re both clear on the same page in terms of responsibilities and accountability and what they own and everything else. At what point does that need to be revisited? Or maybe how do they know that may need to be revisited? Is it a combination of when things start to feel like they’re going off the rails? Or is it something like every six months? Let’s kind of bring back into the current state of what was there six months ago to where we are now. And things are looking and feeling a bit different.
14:40
Derek Fredrickson
Like, how do you gauge when that needs to be brought to the table again?
14:43
Melissa Ortiz
I like for this to be a living process here. So if we have this as part of our weekly same page meeting and we’re just, every time we’re meeting in our one-on-one, we’re just taking a quick look through. Hey, any questions? Any areas I, you know, barriers I can remove for you as a manager once, you know, once a month, we can say, is any of this irrelevant?
15:05
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
15:06
Melissa Ortiz
Because it happens, especially in growing organizations. Things move so fast.
15:11
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
15:12
Melissa Ortiz
So even sometimes six months is too long. And so if it’s something we’re touching all the time, we’re literally just drawing arrows off to the right side of the page. Like this went to south.
15:23
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
15:23
Melissa Ortiz
You don’t have to make these really complicated systems and processes for clarity to exist. And should we refresh the outline every six months or a year? Yeah, probably. I’m way more concerned about that than getting the foundation right and then getting really messy with these papers. And the tangible piece, too, of having something printed in your hand that is your guiding document can be really valuable.
15:50
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
15:51
Derek Fredrickson
And team members like that. They like clarity, they like certainty, they like the lane to be well defined so they know what they need to be doing, how they need to be doing it, what’s expected of them, and that kind of benchmark to feel like, how am I doing? Am I doing well? Am I meeting your expectations? Is there other things that I could be doing that make it more efficient or more effective? Or can I expand and improve what my responsibilities are? I appreciate that it’s something that needs to be revisited time and time again, especially. And I’m sure you’ve witnessed and experienced this… great. We’ve done this role clarity. And then we’re kind of in the business, and like, the next day, other stuff comes in, like, can you help us with this? Can you help us with that?
16:29
Derek Fredrickson
And, like, we’ve got this other project, and they dive in. And like, three months later, it’s like things have shifted because businesses that are scaling that, you know, multiple seven figures, we’re moving quickly and we’re adapting and we’re pivoting. We have to. And so team members that are willing to kind of throw their hat in the ring and jump in and do whatever it takes is great. But then sometimes they’re, like, looking at a step back, and I’m involved with this, and now I’m involved with that, and I’m over here and I’m over there, and then they’re thinking, like, I’m not really clear on exactly what my role is again?
16:56
Melissa Ortiz
Stretched so thin that I don’t know how to win anymore.
16:57
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
16:58
Melissa Ortiz
And so if we can help them go back to the basics, like, what are your core responsibilities? Like, one of the things my admin is constantly reminding me of. She struggles if I don’t give her a due date on everything I ask her for, because she’s looking at all the things I’ve dumped on her plate and saying, okay, well, I can reprioritize based on due dates. And I’m notoriously terrible. Everything to me, should be done right now.
17:21
Derek Fredrickson
`
17:25
Melissa Ortiz
And so that’s a constant back and forth. And so her task tracker that I’m always adding to and she’s always updating, has a date, a due date for everything. And that really helps us stay aligned even if we’re not.
17:37
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
17:37
Derek Fredrickson
Okay, cool. Awesome. Shift gears a little bit.
So I want to talk about predictive index. So in the work that we do, there are many assessments that are out there. And that’s actually one of the things that we use with our clients because we find assessments incredibly effective and just so impactful. And I know there’s different types and different shapes and forms that are. Some that are more personality based. There are some based on what your strengths are, different components, and there are always. I always say you’re never too cool for school. Right. So if there’s an assessment out there that’s going to help you. Sounds very cliche,
Melissa Ortiz
but something new.
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. When you know better, you do better. Right. And so talk to us about predictive index.
18:17
Derek Fredrickson
Because you use predictive index, it’s it’s it’s you’re skilled at it, you’re an expert at it, you know it. Why predictive index? Just give us a little bit of background and context as to what it is, and then we can dive into how you use it more specifically with teams.
18:32
Melissa Ortiz
So I will go up a level, actually, from your question and say, I think assessments are like wine. The wine you like is the wine you should drink. The assessment you like is the one you should use. Because if you can integrate it, take it from something fun we did on Tuesday for a team health activity to something we’ve integrated through hiring, onboarding, coaching, career pathing, feedback sessions, terminations, eventually, potentially, that is when we get some traction with assessments. It’s not that we did this one this year, and then the next quarter we did another one, and two years later we did another one that is fun and actually does boost morale, but it doesn’t get sticky where we learn a language. So my first one that I went really deep with was the Gallup Strengths binder.
19:15
Melissa Ortiz
I worked for Gallup in San Francisco and in Houston, and I love the strengths finder. However, what I’m finding in our current marketplace is it takes 45 minutes of uninterrupted time to take. And that is a challenge for a lot of our brains.
19:28
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
19:29
Melissa Ortiz
And schedules. And it is not EEOC compliant for hiring. So all these executives say, oh, WOO is one of the strengths winning others over. And people are like, I just want to hire a bunch of WOOs to be my sales people. Turns out, A, that’s not legal, and B, it’s actually not that effective, because what they end up doing is just having a lot of fun and they’re not necessarily aiming at performance.
And so when I found Predictive Index, they actually reached out to me and said, we think you’d be a really good implementer for our tools and consultants. Would you consider taking this on? And that was, I don’t know, eight years ago. And it’s been such a great partnership. I love that it’s five minutes to take. I had a CEO say, I did it on the plane. I think mine’s wrong.
20:11
Melissa Ortiz
I want to retake it. Great. Retake it. And he says it was exactly the same.
20:16
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, yeah, that’s a sign. The sign of a good assessment is that if you try to take it again and as long as you don’t fake it. Right. You don’t want to, like, not be truthful. But if you do it again and you’re doing it honestly, it’s not really going to change.
20:29
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, sorry, continue.
20:30
Melissa Ortiz
And by the time our talents are set, by the time we’re about 15 years old and what happens is we become more sophisticated, more mature versions of ourselves and get better at leveraging the talents we already have. The superhighways in our brain, we start using them more efficiently. And so if we can understand among our team what are the superhighways in their brains? So, like, one of the.. In PI, my favorite team health activities is to figure out who’s a think-to-talk person and who’s a talk-to-think person. Some people who think outside their mouth, some people think inside their head. And the people who think inside their heads, if you call them out of the blue, if you have them at a meeting that needs decisions without an agenda or decision points ahead of time, you will fluster them.
21:12
Melissa Ortiz
And what will end up happening is they’ll come back to you with a different decision the next day because they kept thinking about it, which is not efficient because somebody else has already taken the three steps based on those decisions we made.
21:21
Derek Fredrickson
So true.
21:22
Melissa Ortiz
And so like with the think-to-talk to people, I say, for the love of God, please give them a text before you call, an agenda before a meeting, a meeting invite so they know what’s coming. And then if you can give them five minutes, five hours or five days to make the decision, please do that. You will get better quality of thinking, they will have more confidence and you will be a better person to them.
21:42
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, yeah, I.
21:43
Melissa Ortiz
People who are being talk-to-think, they’re like, just jump in my office any day, call me anytime.
21:48
Derek Fredrickson
Exactly. It’s. It’s so true. I mean, I know exactly who I am. I’m a think-to-talk person. Because just in that example, and I love that think-to-talk and talk-to-think. Just in that example, this is going to come across. I have to caveat this by saying, because it might seem like I don’t like spending time with people. That’s not true. But however, if somebody’s reaching out or, you know, sometimes even a team member and they say, like, can I love to, you know, I’ve got something I want to talk to you about. Can I grab like 15, 20 minutes. Sure, of course. Happy to. What do you want to talk about specifically? Just so I can mentally prepare.
22:23
Derek Fredrickson
Because if I’ve been in those situations where I don’t know what we’re talking about, I don’t know the context, I don’t know the topic, I don’t know the agenda, I don’t know if you’re going to be asking questions that I’m unprepared for. And I need to think, to gather my thoughts strategically before I express. It catches me off guard and I don’t feel aligned because then I feel like I’m not operating in a way that honors my talents and my abilities. So I just, I love that analogy of talk-to-think and think-to-talk.
22:48
Melissa Ortiz
I have this great example from this week, actually. I run a swim team for 100 kids every summer, ages 4 to 18. And we have three paid coaches and a board. And my husband had asked for a board meeting. He’s on the board as well. And the coaches had asked for a coaches meeting. But then it didn’t happen right away and everybody kind of forgot. And then I was able to get our coaches and our board together and there was all this flutter about, oh, what’s the meeting about? Everybody got really nervous and so I sent a text to everyone. I said, just to be clear, we want to talk about how’s the season going so far? What do you need from us as a board? How are we doing on our board responsibilities and make sure nothing’s slipping through the cracks.
23:23
Melissa Ortiz
And everybody okay.. But it was like.. Is it.. what’s going on?
23:28
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love that. I love it. So I want to ask you a question. We’re going to talk more about predictive index. But just in this example alone, this is very profound because I believe that a majority of the people that we work with, founders, entrepreneurs, are more of the talk-to-think. Right? You give them an idea or you put something on the table and they’re just gonna, they’re going to jump right into it. They’re going to start coming up with the idea or the next steps and just kind of brainstorming. They’re going to. I, I didn’t make up this expression, but I love it, which is they’re going to take spaghetti and throw it at the wall and kind of see what sticks.
24:01
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah.
24:02
Derek Fredrickson
Integrators, chief operating officers, we’re more wired, we’re more aligned in the talent of think-to-talk. And so my question for you is knowing that in scaling the business, you’ve got this partnership between the CEO and the COO, and knowing that there’s a bit of a spread there between talk-to-think, CEO, think-to-talk, coo. How do you get those to work together so it doesn’t feel like oil and water, but you’re not making them feel like they’re both kind of operating outside of their comfort zone or maybe do they have to a little bit in order to feel like they’re together?
24:37
Melissa Ortiz
I think the most valuable thing, because at the end of the day, the founder is the CEO, is running the ship. And as COO, you are second in command, and your job is to make their.. bring their ideas to life.
So I tend to find they become really good listeners. They become really good note takers, like, okay, make sure I get this right. And as they’re asking all their questions, they’re forcing the CEO to talk it out, which is what they’re wired to do.
So they’re taking all these notes, and as they’re taking notes, they’re doing this parallel processing because they usually have pretty strong mental horsepower, cognitive ability.
And so it’s this back and forth. But when they see themselves as the translator of ideas from the spaghetti on the wall to what are we going to do next?
25:22
Melissa Ortiz
That is when our COOs really thrive because they’re asking questions, they’re thinking often about their team members and saying, Jennifer’s going to need to know this. What’s your first blush of thought on that? Kevin’s always going to want to know these questions. And so they start to know their audience of who they’re translating for, and they preemptively ask those ideas. And as the CEO talks out these ideas, once in a while, they’ll go, you’re right, this is a terrible idea. I didn’t even say this is a terrible idea. You told me.
25:50
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love it. I love it.
25:52
Melissa Ortiz
Like, if when you position yourself as that middleman, that translator, I think it becomes easier because you don’t have to do the talking, you have to do the thinking and the asking. And then you can come back and say, okay, I’ve evaluated your four ideas. I think this one has the team.. thinks this one has the most merit.
26:07
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I got it. Okay, great. So great.
26:09
Melissa Ortiz
Not putting the pressure on them, but they’ve got to be able to see the horizon with the CEO and then translate it onto the table. What’s next?
26:17
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, it’s often. Yeah. And it’s just. Often just the awareness. Knowing that. Knowing that there’s a difference between think-to-talk to think-to-talk and using that in a way as you have conversations, as you have conversation, you know, as you’re collaborating with team or you’re communicating with your, you know, your leadership team or whatever it is, just having that awareness and when everybody’s aware with that in an organization. Because I love your, you know, whatever the best wine is, that is for you, like stick to that wine. So. Exactly.
So break it down for us. And of course there’ll be a link for individuals to go and take the assessment. But like, how does predictive index work and how to use it more either for role clarity or in the hiring process?
26:56
Derek Fredrickson
So tell us a little bit more kind of practical speaking and how that works.
27:00
Melissa Ortiz
So I think there’s two components that I love to PI. There’s if and how. So how you approach the role, that’s your natural rubber band at rest and that in PI is what they call the self. So what is my natural approach to the world? So mine is I have a high A factor is what they call it. I have a high dominance. I like to be in the driver’s seat. I love it. It’s so fun. I love to figure out where we’re going and look ahead to the horizon. So that’s the how.
The if part I love with PI is so dang simple. We get together as a leadership team or whoever the right stakeholders are for a given role, and we say, what are the ideal qualities? What are the demands of a role? Say for quality control?
27:39
Melissa Ortiz
I had a couple of those come up with my manufacturing clients in the last couple weeks. Well, it’s. We have everybody give separate input and then we define an ideal campaign. This perfect candidate that they came through the door and they had the right resume and they were perfect cultural fit. We’re like, oh my gosh, nailed it. We’re winning here.
But they’re also of that ideal candidate. There will be non negotiables. So if you take the quality control, if they don’t have anal retentive baked into their hardwired into their personality. They’re probably going to cost us money. They’re not a detailed nats ass, like, really really observant person that cares about the rules and the specs. I don’t care if they have 30 years of quality control experience. They’re going to cost us money. And so that’s the thing I love about PI.
28:27
Melissa Ortiz
When I was working at Gallup, it was $250,000 per role to define an ideal campaign. We do all the research with all their top performers. Amazing work. But if we with PI, we can do it in 45 minutes.
28:40
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
28:42
Melissa Ortiz
And it’s amazingly efficient, effective. And we just crowdsource from the people who know the role, say a high performer, someone who’s managing that role. What is it? Then, as we compare candidates and my recommendation, I was sharing this with somebody yesterday who said, we’re using PI for somebody else. We’re not getting our value worth. I’m like, oh, these are my favorite topics because they were using PI way too late in the process. And I said, put it up front. You don’t want to talk to anyone that doesn’t have some aptitude for success. You’re wasting their time and everybody’s time internally.
So if you put it up front and you’re like, behaviorally and cognitively, this person’s a dead ringer. Then you do the phone screen. You’re like, wow, I really like them. I like their resume.
29:25
Melissa Ortiz
Okay, let’s talk to them and let’s see if we think there’s a culture fit here.
29:28
Derek Fredrickson
I love that. There’s this filter, which often, like you said, we put at the end because we’re looking first at kind of skill set and expertise. Yes. We need that. Experience. Have they done the work and have done it well before? Yes. And then there’s like, well, let’s have a conversation. But then there’s also like this kind of, you know, litmus test that actually, like, let’s make sure we’re not getting a square peg in a round hole, because what’s on a resume is hiring copy. Right. It’s going to work well for the candidate, and especially when they know the job description, they’re going to be able to speak to that. And, you know, obviously people aren’t about, you know, fudging up on what they’ve done for experience.
30:04
Derek Fredrickson
But anything else but this assessment kind of cuts through the clutter and gets to the core to make sure that they’re aligned and they’re going to be able to do the job and do it well.
And again it kind of goes back to what we talked about the beginning. Like when you do that clarity from the get go as opposed to halfway through or finishing up the recruitment process, it’s going to save you so much more time and effort.
So I love, I love that part.
30:26
Melissa Ortiz
I have a couple complaints actually. So as we’re thinking about the candidate space, one complaint is I think it’s way too easy right now to apply for a role on LinkedIn. And indeed. it’s this easy apply button. It’s already loaded with your resume and poof. I’ve applied for 116 jobs today.
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah,
Melissa Ortiz
but I didn’t even read the specs on any of them. So if we put a little barrier in the process, we, you know, two years ago we might have had four candidates for a role. Today we might have 40, 140 or 100 candidates if it’s a fully remote role. And how are you supposed to sort through that clutter? Your eyes go cross eyed when you’re looking at too many resumes.
31:07
Melissa Ortiz
So if we can get one more step in the process, A, who’s actually interested in the job and committed enough to do the next step. And B, it protects our time because we only have so much to go around.
31:17
Derek Fredrickson
So yeah, it’s, it’s just using this assessment, I mean it’s like you said, I love this. It’s true. I mean there, you know, so easy. The one click here’s a, you know, 40 job applicants and they’re like, oh my gosh, I gotta sift through all this information and everything else.
But the assessment kind of qualifies them in a way and kind of puts them, you know, I would say it kind of puts them to the top because they’ve already kind of fit the profile.
So I love that. So I love that.
As an example, I wanted to ask one more question about predictive index. Have you seen this happen in the past where somebody does the assessment and maybe also in the work that you do with teams like once they get that clarity and they kind of are identified like yes, that actually is who I am.
32:02
Derek Fredrickson
I didn’t really see it in that way. I never really kind of identified. I just kind of took it for granted because that’s naturally how I am and how I do things or my. What’s that?
32:12
Melissa Ortiz
Isn’t that how everybody works?
32:13
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, exactly. And so the way we do, yeah, it’s like this assessment is like, okay, I feel, like, almost understood. I feel like I’m really identifying who I really am. Have you seen that where people, like, have, like, almost like an aha moment where it’s really profound for them? I mean, I know it’s an assessment, but. But still, it kind of opens up all these doors because they feel more understood, they feel more clear, they feel more welcome in what they’re doing. Has that happened in your experience?
32:38
Melissa Ortiz
I feel like it’s this permission slip to forgive each other our trespasses. So we had this one guy named Kevin, and Kevin, they called Chicken Little, because this guy was always falling and he was always worried about everything, and he always was telling everybody on the team why everything was wrong about their approach. And so with a good assessment, what we ended up doing was flipping the script and we put Kevin in the front of the process, and we would bring Kevin the draft. Everything was a draft. And we’d say, what do you think about this? And he’d say, well, here’s the 40 problems with this. Oh, he’s not wrong about that. And go back and we fix. And then we’d bring in draft number two, and he’d say, I have a concern about these three things. Like, good point. good point.
33:18
Melissa Ortiz
We don’t want to launch without fixing those. So go ahead, you bring him draft number three, and he goes, I don’t like these two things. And you say, I can live with that. But when you took his. The thing that frustrated the team, you flipped the script and you went, you’re not wrong. And you’re just trying to protect our team. Even though you might be a little, like, hard to hear, it’s kind of mean you’re not wrong. So how do we pull that out of people? Put them on a pedestal for what they do right. And use that for our own team better. And that’s the language a good assessment can give.
33:48
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love that.
33:50
Melissa Ortiz
Like, I have a manager, Jennifer, who every single meeting I have with her, I end with, what did I miss? Because she always needs more data than I do. More information, more detail. I don’t need that. So I don’t provide it. And she always finished. She knows I’m going to ask, and she’s always ready to answer the question. I can give you that answer now, that answer by Tuesday, and I just don’t know. On the third one.
34:09
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah.
34:10
Derek Fredrickson
Oh, that’s great. That’s great. I love that. So any other kind of. As we wrap up, any other kind of final insight strategy, you can share question to have our audience think about in some way as we’ve talked about lots of things with team and clarity and roles and predictive index.
Anything else you want to share with our listeners having to do with this topic that can really kind of take it to another level or just kind of, you know, carry it home so that it really lands for them.
34:39
Melissa Ortiz
So I want to make one more point on PI that I think we didn’t cover. And I think it’s super valuable for our growing organizations who are usually pretty cash strapped. And it’s this. If we scope the ideal candidate in PI and we find someone who doesn’t have all the experience but they’re, we can identify the diamonds in the rock and they’re cheaper because they don’t have all the credentials to, you know, sing their praises. But if we find that person who just gets it, we can give someone an opportunity to grow with us at a lower base cost. And that’s one of my favorite things is it takes some of the bias out of the hiring process that we put so much bonus on on the resume.
35:20
Melissa Ortiz
And I think one of the things I read recently in a psychology book was that we generally have the emotional maturity of an eight year old. The average adult has the emotional maturity of an eight year old. And so this is a way to help us grow and understand getting comfortable in our own skin, owning the things we do well and being able to say, I’m not the final check on this because that’s not a good role for me. And it makes it easier to ask for help, to be vulnerable and say, this is not my wheelhouse, but God, you know who it is Bobby.
35:54
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah, I love that.
35:56
Melissa Ortiz
Just that I see it in blue collar more than I see in white collar where we own our expertise and we know what we don’t know. Whereas in white collar jobs, I think we’ve gotten to this point where we think we need to be all things to all people. And if we aren’t, we can chat GPT and figure it out in five minutes.
But expertise actually has value. And if you keep honing your expertise, that allows other people to stay in their lanes, which is where role clarity comes in. What should I be doing? The if and then how, what’s my natural approach? And then what am I actually doing is that role. And I think those can just make for so much more efficiency on our teams and less frustration and less wasted resources, which it all comes back to waste.
36:35
Derek Fredrickson
Right, there you go. That comes back to the waste. It’s just, it’s Like I know I said before, it cuts to the clutter, but it’s like this core. It gets to the core to making sure that we’re spending the right time in the right way in the beginning to find the right person in the right seat. And we all know that when we don’t spend the time to do that in a thoughtful, strategic assessment-led way, chances are down the road it could work. And sometimes it does, but in some cases, often, we know that it doesn’t. And as you’ve heard, and I’m sure you’re an expert at this, it costs a lot more time, energy and effort, which usually is an expense to, okay, well, we invested six months in this.
37:12
Derek Fredrickson
Take that person out, and then we’re going to do the whole process again six months later. It’s just if you do it from the beginning, you could have a unicorn on your team that feels so empowered, so aligned, so clear. So just rah-rah about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. And that’s what you want because then you’ve got more aligned, right people at right seats and that’s how you scale.
37:31
Derek Fredrickson
So, yeah, wonderful.
37:33
Melissa Ortiz
This is awesome. I’m so curious about how this resonates with you and what you see, but I feel like we’re probably at a time.
37:39
Derek Fredrickson
Well, I think, yeah, I’ll just share. For me, I think I love, especially in the area of team, because it’s such an important topic for our audience, because especially for entrepreneurs that are scaling, they don’t know what they don’t know about bringing on a right team. And I love the example, whether it’s, you know, strengths. With the WOO example, sometimes like light attracts light, and they’re like, oh, I’m gonna. I need to bring on a, you know, somebody to do operations. I like that person. They’re like me. I’ll bring them on board, right? And it’s like, okay, it’s great, but that’s not aligned with what you really need for the role. You’re going more on instinct, which is important, but we also need to get to the facts. We also need to get really crystal clear.
38:20
Derek Fredrickson
And I think this is where we step in with our clients to help really clarify and ask the question, what’s really required in this role? What are the core responsibilities? And I often say, what are they going to be responsible for? I own it. But also, what are they going to be or who are they going to be responsible to? That they might be a contributor, but they may not be ultimately owning it, but they have a level of accountability.
38:39
Derek Fredrickson
So just this idea of another perspective when it comes to working with teams, hiring teams, and just understanding that if you’re sensing or feeling that perhaps there’s a team member that’s not aligned, not clear, and it doesn’t feel like it’s or it’s feeling more like a square peg in a round hole, it’s probably because we didn’t do the work up front to get clear and we’re not using an assessment like predictive index to just make that even more transparent from the beginning. So I love this topic.
39:05
Melissa Ortiz
The expectation I like I to set, Derek, is there is no silver plate. None of this is foolproof. But it’s an insurance policy. It’s one level above. Like typical process of using our intuition and looking at resumes and interviews is about a 50% success rate. So flip a coin and just hire a person because 50-50 shotgun. If we can continually increase that probability of success, that’s what we’re trying to do here. Because we will never get to 100% perfection on hiring. But yeah, we can keep improving our odds and that’s all we’re looking to do.
39:37
Derek Fredrickson
I often say there’s no such thing as team Utopia, but with things like this, we can get as close to it as possible. So that’s amazing. Thank you so much. Melissa. Yeah. How can people find out more about your company? Activate Human Capital Group Predictive Index. Just tell us where they can find out more about your company and what you do.
39:56
Melissa Ortiz
Yeah. So Activate HCG. Like activatehcg.com is our website. You can find me on LinkedIn. Melissa Yerxa Ortiz and we’re pretty easy to find. I love this work and love to share this enthusiasm.
40:10
Derek Fredrickson
Cool. Thank you for that. And we’ll include all the links in the show notes. They can go and check out. Melissa. And again, thank you for being here today and thank you for joining us today for the COO Solution podcast and we’ll see you on a future episode. Thanks so much.
40:23
Melissa Ortiz
Take care.
40:24
Derek Fredrickson
Bye.
