One of the most important relationships in a workplace is the dynamic between the Chief People Officer and the Founder-CEO of the company. And few know this better than Lynee Luque, Chief People Officer at NerdWallet. 

In this episode of Redefining HR, Lynee and I discuss her shift from finance and consulting to HR, how the dynamic shifts for a CPO when working with a founder-CEO versus an established CEO, and how she’s fueled growth by working with her CEO.

Lynee made the switch to HR in 2008 and never looked back. “What I love is partnering with executives, managers, all the way down to individual contributors, to just make the business more productive and make sure we have trust and an inclusive environment in the workplace,” Lynee says.

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Distinguishing Between Founders and Established CEOs

Reporting to a founder-CEO differs from reporting to an established CEO. When you report to a founder-CEO, Lynee says, they are often more connected and passionate about the company because they’ve built it from the ground up.

Established CEOs have a valuable set of skills and experience, Lynee says, but they can be somewhat dispassionate towards the product or business if they didn’t create it. She’s worked with three co-founders in her career and has seen the value of both backgrounds. 

“What I found is good for me is to be connected to someone who is really deeply connected to the mission and the vision of the company, and who better than the founder?” Lynee says. “They started this. They were pitching this when nobody believed in it. And there’s a different type of just attachment and passion that you can get from a leader. And it’s inspiring to me.”

There are challenges to running HR when working with a founder, of course. Sometimes a founder-CEO who’s busy disrupting the industry will want to go against HR best practices. 

“You have to be ready to think about the answer beyond, ‘oh, this is best practice, and this is how everyone does it.’ It really has to come back to, what are you trying to achieve? What’s going on here? And why is this the best path forward?” she shares.

Preparing for the Founder-CEO Dynamic

Asking those questions in HR conversations with the founder-CEO can fuel a positive discussion and provide “an education for yourself and an education for them,” Lynee says.

Startups move and adapt quickly, and so HR must also be flexible, agile and willing to experiment rather than talk about taking action for months on end. 

“It really is like, get it out there, ship it. Let's get real time feedback. We'll iterate later,” Lynee says.  “So also being brave. All right, I have half your buy-in. I have half the employees’ buy-in. Let's get it out there. Let's see what the feedback loop is. And then we'll just redo it again.”

The most important thing for HR leaders to decide is what kind of company they want to work in. “Understand what you want, I would say to people. And if that’s exciting to you, then I think founder-CEOs could be really great partners,” Lynee shares.

Nurturing Growth at NerdWallet

When Lynee joined NerdWallet, the CEO wanted her to focus on incorporating diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) throughout the organization. Lynee had to do this while also operating within a growing, transforming company. 

To accomplish this, Lynee worked with her CEO to launch a formal DEIB program, including an audit of existing practices with hiring and existing programs. NerdWallet’s rapid growth helped create momentum for the changes that resulted from making DEIB a strategic focus.

”We have a really great opportunity because we are in growth mode. Some larger companies, if they're not hiring, they're not significantly changing the makeup of their workforce, then it's really hard for them to make significant strides in their representation,” Lynee says.

Through these programs, Lynee showed her people team that DEIB was an integral part of their work. 

“One of my goals within my people team is, I wanted everybody to be thinking about this as part of their work,” Lynee says. “And now I have people, when they’re presenting analytics, when they’re presenting their benefits, recommendations to me, they’re starting to just intuitively layer on that [DEIB] lens. And that’s exactly what I wanted, and that’s what I want for the whole organization.”

People in This Episode

• Lynee Luque: LinkedIn, Twitter, NerdWallet website