Neil Katz is an experienced HR strategist who transforms HR departments into pivotal components of business success. Neil challenges the traditional view of HR as a compliance-only sector, advocating for it to be seen as a strategic partner. Throughout the discussion, Neil emphasizes the importance of offering choices and fostering flexibility within HR practices to align with business objectives and enhance company culture.

Neil Katz shares his innovative approach to HR, focusing on empowerment rather than restriction, and provides actionable insights on how HR can pivot from being a "necessary evil" to a strategic advantage. He stresses the significance of understanding and integrating HR into the business's core to drive growth and adapt to changing work environments like the hybrid model post-COVID.

Want to learn more about Neil Katz's work? Check out their website at https://www.exceptionalhrsolutions.com/.

Connect with Neil Katz on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilkatzhr/.

Key Points with Timestamps:

• [00:01:17] Neil Katz introduces his role in transforming HR functions.
• [00:02:03] Discussion on viewing HR as a strategic partner.
• [00:03:12] Katz addresses common misconceptions about HR.
• [00:04:15] Strategies to make HR a proactive element of business strategy.
• [00:09:27] Neil highlights the importance of setting clear expectations and results in a remote work setting.
• [00:11:27] Exploring the hybrid work model and its impact on company culture.
• [00:15:32] Katz discusses the dual aspects of HR: compliance and value addition.
• [00:18:33] Advice on handling HR challenges during company acquisitions.
• [00:25:12] Neil shares an unusual HR incident, illustrating the unexpected in HR management.
• [00:29:10] Katz details the services provided by his team for small to medium businesses.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;17;10
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Neil Katz. You know, I've gotten to know Neil over the last, a few months. And I'll tell you, it's hard to find a more delightful conversationalist. Insightful person. I've just so thoroughly enjoyed my conversations with them. And so I invited them on leaders in leg seats. And he has a powerful message for anybody that's running a business.

00;01;17;13 - 00;01;46;11
Craig Andrews
Neil does fractional air. He's been advising, seats, you know, the C-suite for over 25 years. And he's promised me a salacious ace H.R. story, which is easy to believe, that there's probably an abundant number of those. But anybody that's running a business, I'm confident. I'm confident that there's areas to improve in your H.R.. And I know a lot of businesses.

00;01;46;11 - 00;02;02;28
Craig Andrews
CR is a necessary a necessary evil, unnecessary expense. My hope is by the end of this conversation, you'll see H.R. has a strategic advantage. And so with that, Neil, welcome.

00;02;03;01 - 00;02;17;22
Neil Katz
Well, Craig, thank you so much for having me and super excited about our conversation. Look forward to chat more about this. And I love the objectives of let's let's get people to see our as a strategic partner strategic advantage and not the, people you have to have on your team.

00;02;17;24 - 00;02;40;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, I, I work for, back when I work for other people, my personality, I found that I work best with smaller companies that were you know, up and growing rather than larger companies that were very established. And one of the companies, you know, they actually use the term, necessary evil. You know, H.R. has become a necessary evil.

00;02;40;24 - 00;03;02;12
Craig Andrews
And but somewhere in there, they hired a guy who was a coach to managers, and he would come in and coach me and management, it was insanely valuable. I just I can't express, you know, the value of that. And, and I think there's a lot of opportunities. But let me I guess let me start with this.

00;03;02;12 - 00;03;12;21
Craig Andrews
What what do you think leads people to CR is a necessary evil or just, you know, geez, we gotta do HR. What's what's the mindset that, what drives that mindset?

00;03;12;23 - 00;03;28;28
Neil Katz
You know, I think what's driving the mindset is HR has been conditioned for so many years to say, no. I, I like to say they're the no police. The answer is no, no, we can't do that. The law says this. We become and we allow HR to be that barrier, to say no. And you can't achieve this.

00;03;28;28 - 00;03;42;08
Neil Katz
You can't have this, you can't do this, and you can't do that. And after a while, it's a necessary evil. You know, you got to have it. You got to be compliant, you gotta be legal. And we want to ensure that. But at the same point, we don't have to say no. My philosophy is let's give them options.

00;03;42;13 - 00;04;05;15
Neil Katz
Let's give them choices. There's ways to achieve compliance and legal compliance and those components and still be okay. You don't have to be the necessary evil. I think the other challenge we're seeing is HR is still evolving to become that true strategic business partner. You got to understand what drives the business, what's important to the business, and then integrate the people component to it.

00;04;05;17 - 00;04;15;24
Neil Katz
And HR, a lot of times says, no, we can't do this and we can't do this. Monophosphate is I can do anything. Tell me what you want to do. We can do anything you want. We just need a little bit of time to figure out how to get there.

00;04;15;27 - 00;04;36;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I like that. I mean, I really like that because, you know, one thing about from marketing and people are like, well, you know, are you saying I can't do this? I'm like, no, you you absolutely can. You just have to understand, you know, there like anything else, there's trade offs and you're making it. You're making some decisions.

00;04;36;29 - 00;04;40;11
Craig Andrews
I just want you to understand the decisions you're making.

00;04;40;13 - 00;04;57;22
Neil Katz
Yeah. Greg, I have a strong philosophy is I love to empower my leaders with three choices every chance I can. I want to give you three choices to pick from and choose from. And I had a leader once say to me, he goes, Neil, I don't like any one of these. I said, okay, now I gave you three and said, they're all great, but I am going to tell you I gave you three choices.

00;04;57;22 - 00;05;15;25
Neil Katz
These are the best three choices we have for this scenario. Sometimes you can't make three good choices, but I can give you three choices and walk you through them. But the reality is you can do anything. You just kind of understand what the impact is, what the cost is, and is it what is aligned with the company's culture and your vision.

00;05;15;28 - 00;05;22;20
Neil Katz
If you want to achieve those, we can do anything. There's nothing we can achieve from a people perspective.

00;05;22;22 - 00;05;49;21
Craig Andrews
You know, another trend I've seen is I've seen a lot of renaming, and I always get a little dubious when I see renaming. And I've seen titles like Chief People Officer, chief empowerment, you know, all these titles. And when I look at them figure out what they're doing, I'm like, oh, they're the VP of HR and what's behind these, these titles?

00;05;49;21 - 00;05;53;09
Craig Andrews
And is it good? Is it bad? What's what's the skinny on that?

00;05;53;12 - 00;06;12;16
Neil Katz
I think it's good because people are trying these organizations are trying to find a way to shift people's mentality of what they believed of the past. Let's be real. HR has a belief people know or believe what HR can or can't do. So the only way to change that, if it's rooted in years and years of history, change the name.

00;06;12;18 - 00;06;36;04
Neil Katz
When you change the name, you shift people's viewpoint, perspective. I do it in my business. Words mean things to people. If I tell you x, y, z and it means something to you specifically, then people are going to be stuck with that. And they they add connotations to what they think that means they're not open to, well, it's really a chief people officer, something different than HR.

00;06;36;07 - 00;07;00;07
Neil Katz
Maybe. Maybe not. But it gets you to start thinking potentially different now. Just because you change your name doesn't mean you change anything else. So if you're going to change your name, change the outcomes, change the motivation, change the results, change the behaviors of that person or position, then it'll hold. I have seen too many companies change names just to try to shift it.

00;07;00;10 - 00;07;18;06
Neil Katz
You can change anything if it doesn't. If you don't shift the outcomes and behaviors I can call you Chief of Chiefs. Doesn't matter. Doesn't change anything. So you got to change. Change. If you're going to change titles, change the components related to those titles, including the functions of the role, then that's when it will stick.

00;07;18;08 - 00;07;34;11
Craig Andrews
You know, it's it's kind of like the companies that spend, you know, thousands of dollars where if they're a big company, hundreds of thousands of dollars to come up with new values and a new mission statement, they put them on the wall, but all the behavior is still the same.

00;07;34;14 - 00;08;01;14
Neil Katz
Correct spot change behaviors, change beliefs, change practices or don't change. And that's okay not to change. But you're right. I've seen so many companies go through a rebranding re initiative, a mission, vision values, and two years later, like what was the impact? Well, nobody changed anything. Okay, well we got all new slides and pretty wall hangings and all these great things with mission vision value, but it didn't change.

00;08;01;14 - 00;08;08;27
Neil Katz
It does no good. I rather tell you, be willing to accept change, pick the things you're going to change and then change it.

00;08;09;00 - 00;08;31;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, one of the stories I've heard, I mean, obviously, you know, Google was notorious for their, you know, their employee benefits. you don't hear much talk about it anymore. But, you know, ten years ago, you heard about many things. One of the things that you heard about was the sleeping pods. And I remember when I first heard about that, I was like, oh, my goodness, I would kill for that.

00;08;31;14 - 00;08;48;23
Craig Andrews
Wow. I, I mean, there have been times when it's very own business on my own. I was working out of my home office where 2:00 in the afternoon rolls around and I lay down on the floor and I take 15 minute nap, and I wake up reinvigorated and ready to go. And I thought, you know, these sleeping pods are really smart.

00;08;48;26 - 00;09;07;02
Craig Andrews
And then the more I heard, I was like, they started calling them the fire pods because the people, it was like they were getting their list of who to lay off by whoever was in the sleeping pods. I'm like, wow, that's I think in in legal speak, they call that entrapment.

00;09;07;04 - 00;09;27;27
Neil Katz
I could see that. Yeah. I mean, I look, you should have bet with people on performance, like if you took a 15 minute nap and your performance exponentially increased, I'm going to encourage you to take a 15 minute nap every day. I'm going to celebrate you for taking that. I'm not going to punish you for it. It should be based on output, results, performance.

00;09;27;29 - 00;09;52;09
Neil Katz
But here's the other thing I think is missing. What do I expect of you? What is my expectation of you as a leader? What are the measurable results? And am I clear and succinct? And where are we aligned? Whether you take a nap, look at where it is. I think it was Best buy your target. I don't remember which one had a period of time where they actually let their corporate teams build their own schedules to align to their personal and professional needs.

00;09;52;16 - 00;10;13;00
Neil Katz
There were people taken off to go watch movies in the afternoon, but you know what? Or if somebody would leave at 3:00 to go pick up the kids from school, get them home, get them, settle for dinner, and then go back to their home office and work for a couple more hours to finish up their day. Yeah, we aren't what we used to be this 8 to 5, Monday through Friday in the office.

00;10;13;02 - 00;10;25;04
Neil Katz
I don't think it's going to survive. I think we have to be adaptable as a business and flexible, but be very succinct in our results and our expectations of our our teams.

00;10;25;06 - 00;10;47;21
Craig Andrews
You know, when you talked about that, there was there were a few things that just flashed through my head very quickly and it was all, you know, around how Covid changed everything. Covid changed the perception of the work environment. And, you know, I had like half a dozen questions, flashed through my, my head of, okay, are we returning to the office and all that?

00;10;47;21 - 00;11;06;01
Craig Andrews
But here's what I think. It's more of a core question. And this has been my concern about the work from home is how do you build a cohesive culture when people aren't rubbing elbows day to day?

00;11;06;03 - 00;11;27;15
Neil Katz
So here's my answer to you. How did you build a cohesive culture when you had 30, 50, 200 offices throughout the globe or throughout the US? You made it happen. You can make anything happen if you put an effort, energy, passion to it. How do you engage your team? How do you build cohesiveness? You teach it. You educate it.

00;11;27;19 - 00;11;52;00
Neil Katz
You don't make every zoom call all about the meeting. You introduce people. You educate people. You create camaraderie and partnerships. You build cohesive teams outside of these zoom meetings, whether they're face to face or in the office. It doesn't have to be one or the other. I, where I struggle here is we are seeing this as a one or the other choice in office or work from home.

00;11;52;02 - 00;12;12;00
Neil Katz
And the reality is, I do believe hybrid will win this one. I see us in a hybrid environment where 2 to 3 days a week you're in the office and 2 to 3 days a week based on your company. You work from home. And I think that's really where we'll see the synergies. But just because you call it work from home or working office, part of that is setting expectations and guidelines.

00;12;12;00 - 00;12;24;15
Neil Katz
What do you want that engagement to be? How do you engage each other when you're sitting next to each other? You know, part of it is if we just put you in office and don't say anything, doesn't change anything, doesn't change behaviors.

00;12;24;17 - 00;13;00;04
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now AI and hybrid addresses the question that I have about, you know, and it's, you know, it's about culture. it, you know, it doesn't you know, you don't have to have 40 hours or 60 hours, you know, elbow to elbow, to build culture, but hybrid I at least there see the bridge of, you know, there are values in their culture, cultural elements that are more easy to communicate when you're together some of the time, rather than none of the time.

00;13;00;06 - 00;13;18;29
Neil Katz
Correct. you're spot on. I mean, culture is going to build and enhance and develop when you're together. But here's what I always tell leaders. My favorite question to ask is small scaling businesses is what is your culture? And the first answer is, well, we haven't defined it yet. And my answer back is you already have it. Don't excuse me.

00;13;18;29 - 00;13;37;04
Neil Katz
And my culture is there. Whether you in the office, you're on zoom, you're on Google. It doesn't matter. Culture exist every single day. If you bring more than one person together in a company, it's culture. The question is what is it? How do you manage it? How do you influence it, and how do you change it if you don't like it?

00;13;37;09 - 00;13;48;28
Neil Katz
But if you don't think you have culture, you do. Culture is there every single day. So the question I have for any leader is embrace what you have and then change what you want.

00;13;49;00 - 00;14;13;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, it reminds me of a phrase I heard recently that says it said your current systems are perfectly designed to get the results. You're currently getting. And, and I think that that would apply to culture. You like you said, you do have a culture and your current systems are driving culture, are perfectly designed to get the culture that you presently have.

00;14;13;28 - 00;14;16;25
Craig Andrews
Is that the culture you want?

00;14;16;27 - 00;14;38;27
Neil Katz
That's the question. What culture do you want? You as a leader, as a CEO, founder, C-suite, whatever level you're at, it is your choice right now. If you don't like what you have, change it. Change the system, change. Change the process. And by the way, changing remote to in office or hybrid isn't going to necessarily just change the culture.

00;14;39;02 - 00;14;52;03
Neil Katz
It'll have an impact, but it doesn't force change. So that don't have some. But there are other. As you said, I can create all the great mission vision values all day long, but if I don't change my behaviors related to it, it doesn't change anything.

00;14;52;06 - 00;15;16;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So here's a question I have is and I may not be framing it correctly. So if I'm not please help me reframe it. But when I think about HR, I think about two sides of the ledger. You know, there's the compliance side of the ledger, which I think most people think about when they think of HR. But I also believe there's a value add part of the ledger.

00;15;16;09 - 00;15;18;03
Neil Katz
And

00;15;18;05 - 00;15;32;24
Craig Andrews
One is that the right construct. And two, if it is, how would you what does that look like. How would you communicate that to somebody looking at, you know, taking their HR in a new direction?

00;15;32;27 - 00;15;53;26
Neil Katz
I would say yes. Generally. That's how I see it as well. There's a compliance. There's a piece of compliance laws, good conduct and behavior rules, policies, procedures. That's always going to be a part of HR. And that's never going to go away. And that should be there. You want a solid foundation, but it doesn't need to be your entire business model or related to people.

00;15;53;29 - 00;16;16;07
Neil Katz
The other components, the strategic is what I like to call it. And my vision is this how do I build people's people, processes and goals and objectives aligned to the company? So if a company says, I want to expand into three new markets, I take that and build the people, goals and objectives. That's what we do. That's what HR should be doing.

00;16;16;14 - 00;16;37;03
Neil Katz
What is the business need? What are going to be the barriers that will slow the company down when they say they want to achieve a 50% growth rate next year, they want to acquire four companies. The company shouldn't have to worry about those people related challenges. That's a charged role. That's where we come in. We become that strategic partner, that ally to help them work through that and say, what does it look like?

00;16;37;03 - 00;16;54;24
Neil Katz
Well, the first thing is any growth. My first questions always is who's in the leadership pipeline to fill? Who are you going to promote? Who are you going to elevate? What skill gaps did have? What are the things? What are the leadership challenges they might have? How do we support them today? How do we start positioning them today?

00;16;54;24 - 00;17;21;00
Neil Katz
How do we start training them today to get ready for one, three, five years growth? And more importantly, is there a gap in the positions? Do we need to go hire two new leaders? Do we need to onboard them today so we can be ready for six months with that acquisition? That organic growth, whatever it may be, our job is to provide those people the systems, the technologies, those components to ensure you have an engaging workforce.

00;17;21;03 - 00;17;40;13
Neil Katz
Companies. My philosophy is you give me the metrics, you give me the goals. We'll build everything related to people to support you so we can get you there, because that's what a good HR practitioner does. They understand the people components. And there's I use leadership is one that's usually the one I start with. But there's so many other things you have to ask yourself related to that.

00;17;40;13 - 00;17;52;05
Neil Katz
But you work through each one of those opportunities, develop a plan presented to your leadership and move on to the next thing. Our job is to ensure business success so we can have people success.

00;17;52;07 - 00;18;24;15
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and you know, the acquisition question, that's that's an interesting one because, I was a part of an acquisition, got a very, very handsome, you know, retention bonus, lasted 2 or 3 months, walked into my boss's office and slid the check back across the table and, and left. And acquisitions seem enormously tough to have work out successfully.

00;18;24;17 - 00;18;33;12
Craig Andrews
what have you seen and what advice would you give to somebody who's looking about to do an acquisition?

00;18;33;14 - 00;18;54;28
Neil Katz
I think the key to acquisitions are this be real with yourself. Be real with the metrics. Generally speaking, when you do an acquisition, you're going to see between a 30 and 50% turnover rate. Wow. It's just the numbers. It's my answer is if you doubt me and that's fine. If you do go run a hundred acquisitions, go look at the companies that were acquired and look at the turnover rate.

00;18;55;01 - 00;19;18;25
Neil Katz
It's generally there. I'm not saying it's always there across the board. The numbers will fluctuate, but that's why it's averaged. But the reality is we know that's going to happen. And why does that happen? Companies change come processes, policies, procedures, benefits, offering time off rules, strategic directions, things happen. The reality is if we know that's going to happen, mitigate it.

00;19;18;25 - 00;19;31;18
Neil Katz
If we want it, mitigate it. So an example, one of the things I had an opportunity early in my career to help a company. I was doing an M&A and the chairman of the board said, I don't really care what the benefits are and I don't care the policies, procedures. I'm not going to change them the first year.

00;19;31;25 - 00;19;54;27
Neil Katz
So what do you need to do is I want to know the culture. I want to know what we're getting into, what's important to these individuals, and most importantly, what's the plan that we can do to be the least disruptive we can in this merger and acquisition? And I was like, great, let's go. So we we did a deep dive into a culture assessment, understood who this company was, what they were about, what was important to them.

00;19;54;29 - 00;20;18;19
Neil Katz
We presented it back to the acquiring company, and that company did everything they could to ensure success, so that it was less disruptive to that organization because they understood culturally what was important to those employees and benefits, policies, procedures, compensation, all that will come in time. But it wasn't year one. And the chairman even said year one. I don't want to change any of that.

00;20;18;21 - 00;20;37;03
Neil Katz
We're keeping everything. Walk in for you for the first year, unless there's a legal issue, like we're not complaining to a lot other than that we're not changing anything. That was a great message because then they came in to learn the company, learn the culture, learn the teams, learn the people, and continue to help support them achieve success.

00;20;37;05 - 00;20;52;21
Neil Katz
That was probably one of the better acquisitions I've ever been a part with, and I'm going to tell you, it was a great success for me. And I think that's really the opportunity companies have. Is now you can go and be disruptive if you want to be, but you got to know what you're getting with disruption.

00;20;52;24 - 00;21;24;26
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. And I love the fact that he, you know, he wanted to understand the culture because. I think however you argue it, the, you know, the people that are in an organization you're acquiring, they're they're in large part by the culture, you know, and if you go in and you disrupt that, you're disrupting the foundation that that's that that's held them in place.

00;21;24;29 - 00;21;44;17
Neil Katz
Exactly. And as you said earlier, you know, retention bonuses and all those things are good strategies. But at the end of the day, if I'm disrupting your cultural experience and your work tremendously, it doesn't matter. There's a certain amount of money that I'm sure it'll make sense. But generally a couple thousand dollars people are not going to stay at a company that they're not happy with.

00;21;44;17 - 00;21;53;09
Neil Katz
When six months ago, they loved who they were working with and foreign. Now all of a sudden there's a new face, a new chair, a new name. They don't like it.

00;21;53;12 - 00;21;53;22
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;21;53;22 - 00;21;55;23
Neil Katz
Money will not retain people long term.

00;21;55;23 - 00;22;23;12
Craig Andrews
Ever now. And you know that when they actually the retention bonus came in three tranches. As you know that's no surprise. First tranche was big and they paid it upfront. And I think they were hoping everybody went out and bought a car. I know somebody who did with their retention bonus. And so when I sat down with my boss, I had to write a big check on my personal bank account.

00;22;23;12 - 00;22;52;29
Craig Andrews
It was not for going money. I was actually had to write a big check right? And, it was painful, but it just, you know, again, I my personality, I don't work well in large companies. And we had been acquired by an NXP semiconductors, which is a multi-billion multinational, you know, Dutch company. And you know, the it just wasn't.

00;22;52;29 - 00;23;07;20
Craig Andrews
And, you know, I, I reached the point where I was like, okay, for me to survive in this environment, I need to become comfortable with seeing things break daily and be okay with that.

00;23;07;22 - 00;23;09;02
Neil Katz
And that's not you.

00;23;09;05 - 00;23;36;01
Craig Andrews
That's not me. And things were breaking on the customer front. We had a our team in Korea. For some reason. There was some war going on between the applications team and the applications engineers and the sales team. And literally they were on the same floor in the same room in, in Seoul. But we couldn't get these people on the phone at the same time.

00;23;36;03 - 00;23;45;24
Craig Andrews
So we would have to have two different phone calls to communicate the same message to these two groups because they hated each other.

00;23;45;27 - 00;24;15;23
Neil Katz
Wow. That's the challenges with mergers is companies are so focused. And look, you don't want to merge and acquire a company if it's not financially a good long term strategy, if short term long term strategy. But there's more to it than just the numbers. You got to know the culture. You got another business, you got to know what's going to happen if you bring in 50% change to this organization, are you ready to lose a third to half your staff?

00;24;15;25 - 00;24;34;03
Neil Katz
And by the way, if you aren't, that's okay. And if you're okay with that, then build a plan to support it. I'm not here to say you can't do that or you should. I'm here to understand, as we said earlier, make sure you're aware of what happens with your decisions. And let me give you some choices to come to good opportunities going forward.

00;24;34;05 - 00;24;44;07
Neil Katz
But don't go into this blind to think you're going to be disruptive and change everything, and no one's going to leave. It's just not going to happen. Yeah, people leave.

00;24;44;09 - 00;25;12;20
Craig Andrews
Well, speaking of people, you know, people are the spice of life. I mean, they I would say people provide whatever, you know, separate from the discussion about diversity. People are uniquely diverse in how they bring weird things to to the workplace. And somebody has been HR as long as you have, has one of these just bizarre stories of something you saw happen?

00;25;12;23 - 00;25;20;08
Craig Andrews
I'd hate to wrap up this interview without hearing something salacious, something juicy. It just makes your jaw drop.

00;25;20;10 - 00;25;38;27
Neil Katz
Okay, I could sit here for two hours and tell you. Look, tons of stories, but I'll keep you. I'll give you one. And yes, there's always something amazing with people. I love to say people amaze me every day. The question is, what type of amazement is it? Sometimes it's good, many times it's not. But you know what? Most of it doesn't surprise me anymore.

00;25;38;27 - 00;26;04;16
Neil Katz
But here's the story I'll share with you. We were doing a tour of a city myself. some some of the executive leadership of this organization, small retail company. They had multiple units in multiple locations throughout the city, and we would go around as a team and go visit them all and go in and do this kind of pep rally thing, and it was all exciting and it was going well.

00;26;04;16 - 00;26;36;29
Neil Katz
First it was good. Second day it was the early morning meeting. It was just about when this unit, the store unit, was going to open. It was in the mall and the entire team, there's like eight of us. We walk up to the store and the stores open and we see nobody, no employees, no nothing. We're looking around and we're thinking, well, that's weird, because normally you have somebody forward facing looking and the executives are looking and the district manager's like just frantically trying to figure out what's going on.

00;26;37;01 - 00;26;55;12
Neil Katz
And all of a sudden we hear a noise and the noises in the back of the store, and kind of, we'll call it the stockroom ish area. Not a big area, but big enough. And you just hear this noise and everyone's looking around. Then you hear a little bit of more of a noise and a bit more of a noise.

00;26;55;15 - 00;27;15;14
Neil Katz
Short version of the story is, the leadership turned to the district manager said, you need to go resolve this problem and we're going out to the next store. So without using too much imagination, we'll just say there were two people in the back room conducting some personal business, in the back room.

00;27;15;17 - 00;27;17;05
Craig Andrews
Doing an inventory check.

00;27;17;08 - 00;27;36;07
Neil Katz
Yes, we'll call it an inventory check, one of the radio stations and listen to calls it doing laundry. we'll just say that we'll just leave it as an inventory check or laundry. to say the least. of course, that individual was exited out of the, building within a few minutes, and, we moved on to the next door.

00;27;36;07 - 00;27;42;08
Neil Katz
But to say the least, that's not how you expected a storm, is it? To go with your executive leadership team?

00;27;42;10 - 00;27;43;05
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;27;43;07 - 00;27;44;16
Neil Katz
Wow.

00;27;44;19 - 00;28;15;16
Craig Andrews
Wow. You know, it's it's funny. I one of the things that I've learned about the TV show Seinfeld is most of the things that happened in Seinfeld were actually based on things that happened in real life. you know, including George Costanza throwing an absolute tantrum, calling off, you know, calling his boss a jerk and quitting and then coming back in Monday morning and showing up at work as if nothing had happened.

00;28;15;19 - 00;28;20;14
Craig Andrews
Larry David did that in real life.

00;28;20;16 - 00;28;35;00
Neil Katz
I will tell you. Seinfeld. The other one was The Office. I mean, if you watch The Office and you see some of the stuff in there and the joke with my family was like, oh, we're not in office, I'm like, I can't watch it. Like I'm like, that's my job. Like, okay. Ha ha ha. I'm like, no, really.

00;28;35;00 - 00;28;51;04
Neil Katz
That happened a month ago. That happened two years ago. That they're like, seriously? I'm like, yeah, this stuff happens every day that you guys just don't know it. So I couldn't watch The Office just because that was my job every single day. And it's like the I can't watch this repeat every single day on a show when it's happening in real life.

00;28;51;07 - 00;28;53;12
Neil Katz
No thank you.

00;28;53;14 - 00;29;10;23
Craig Andrews
Yeah, well, Neal, this is this has been fascinating. real quick. So obviously you're you're a, you fractional air. You help people with air. In a nutshell, what do you do for people? and what type of businesses.

00;29;10;26 - 00;29;30;25
Neil Katz
Yeah. So I'll just do the quick pitch because I'm not here to sell anybody. I'm just here to educate. We provide fractional services to small to medium sized growing companies. and myself and my team, we have about 20 people on the team. We can support you throughout the United States. We support any business, 25 to 500 employees and anything related to air and people needs.

00;29;30;25 - 00;29;49;01
Neil Katz
We've got you covered. We'll take care of you. My goal for all of our leaders today is to get back to why you started doing what you're doing. And as I love to tell my leaders, is this you didn't start this business to be good at payroll. You did not start this business to know everything about benefits. And you should never be an exceptional recruiter.

00;29;49;03 - 00;30;06;13
Neil Katz
So let us do that for you. Go back to what you started for just customers business growth strategy, customer engagement. But it wasn't any of those other things. So we'll take care of the HR side. You go back to doing what you enjoy. Then we'll get we'll get you where you need to get you.

00;30;06;15 - 00;30;09;20
Craig Andrews
Well that's awesome. Well how can people reach you?

00;30;09;23 - 00;30;26;02
Neil Katz
Best way is my website exceptional HR solutions.com or on LinkedIn, either one of them. They can direct message me on either one to get in touch with me anytime. And what I always say Craig, is this if you got a simple question, you just need an answer. Drop me a note on my website. We'll connect with you. Don't worry, we'll take care of you.

00;30;26;04 - 00;30;30;20
Neil Katz
Because, you know, it's that one question I really needs help with. And we're here to support and help you.

00;30;30;23 - 00;30;46;21
Craig Andrews
So exceptional HR solutions.com and Neil Katz you're on LinkedIn of course all over. Yes yes. All right. Well I hope people reach out to you. And Neil, thanks for sharing that. your stories and your perspective on leaders and legacies.

00;30;46;23 - 00;30;55;19
Neil Katz
Craig, thanks for having me. It's been a great, great podcast and I, look forward to hearing from some of your folks to see if we can be support and help.

00;30;55;19 - 00;31;24;17
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;31;24;19 - 00;31;47;29
Craig Andrews
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00;31;48;01 - 00;33;58;15
Craig Andrews
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