If you were newly appointed to lead your organization’s people strategy, what would be on your “day one” list of priorities?

Interview people to understand what's in the way of getting work done. Leadership often focused on the org chart and alignment, but helping people focus on the work -- instead of the complicated ways work gets done -- can help drive engagement and trust in management. Sat surveys are useful, but they only show that issues exist, and don't typically show what issues are problematic.

GTM works best when the entire team stays aligned, so using the right tools makes a huge difference. Platforms like Notion, Airtable, and Asana help us organize launches, track ownership, and keep everyone accountable. We’re also starting to use AI for faster positioning drafts, competitive insights, and workflow automation. It’s been great for speeding up early GTM stages while keeping the team focused on higher-value strategy.

If I were stepping in to lead the people strategy, my day-one priorities would be simple: listen, learn, and build trust. I’d start by understanding the team’s current challenges, clarifying what success looks like for everyone, and creating an environment where people feel supported and empowered. A strong culture starts with understanding the people behind it.

1) Assessment 2) Values and Norms establishment / confirmation with C-Suite

1) Start needs assessment for the teams the people strategy will support within the hiring organization (talent profiles, cadence, stakeholders, current processes, and any detail that would help making hiring more effective for each team)
2) Develop a resource to leverage to understand State of the Art/Best of Breed people strategies

My current organization moved the responsibility from the individual teams to an organizational people strategy, it broke. My team had a KPI for rejecting/offering a candidate from two weeks of the initial interview, two years later we still have a role that has been left unfilled on my team. They took a top down approach not recognizing that the team leaders were stakeholders and they set KPIs which were irrelevant to successfully hiring talented people. We had thousands of response to public recruitment which only created noise and made it impossible to even identify candidates that met the requirements of a given job. I don't want to go on with the challenges we faced when it came to supporting the team we already had when we made the change, I'll just say that broke as well. We are on a new collaborate path now and the results are promising.