Friends,

One of the hardest lessons I ever learned about credibility came off the back of losing a promotion to a peer.

The feedback I got was that I was less visible to the business, and therefore the business didn’t think I had the understanding of their needs, like my peer did.

They got the role, and that moment stung like hell.

Here I was so focused on delivering, when I should have been more focused on how to ensure that what I was delivering was having an impact for the business it served.

That’s just one of the many lessons I was reminded of from my conversation with Melanie Naranjo, and which today’s piece is based on. The full conversation is well worth a listen.

Enjoy this week’s edition ✌️

Matt

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This edition is based on the latest episode of the FNDN Series podcast, with Melanie Naranjo.

Melanie Naranjo is the Chief People Officer at Ethena, an AI compliance platform. A Harvard grad and self-proclaimed cat lady, she has 10+ years of experience featured in the WSJ and FastCompany. Melanie hosts monthly workshops and speaks globally on practical, business-first people strategies that actually work.

A sales leader once told Melanie Naranjo her engagement survey was a waste of time.

Twenty questions too long, rolled out at the end of the quarter while his team was trying to close deals.

She calls that answer gold. In fact, Melanie asked for it.

When I sat down with Melanie for the latest episode of the FNDN Series, she walked me through the quarterly ritual behind that moment: three questions she puts to every member of her leadership team, built to surface the criticism they'd otherwise sit on.

It might be the cheapest credibility insurance available to a people leader right now.

This is how it works.

Most people initiatives don't fail loudly. 

You propose something, the CEO doesn't comment, and it never comes up again. 

No pushback, no questions, just polite nothing while you keep building.

Melanie's engagement survey shows how much can hide in that silence. The leader who called it a waste of time had been sitting on a harsher verdict: the timing told him the people function didn't understand the business.

He wasn't going to volunteer that (and almost no one does). So imagine what would have happened otherwise.

The initiative would have run for another two, three, or four quarters. The whole time you're losing credibility you don't know you're losing, because an initiative the business doesn't care about can't have impact.

As Melanie put it: “if nobody cares, it's very hard to have impact. It just is.”

At the start of every quarter, Melanie goes to each member of the leadership team and asks:

That's the whole framework: a direct conversation with no survey tool or anonymised form in between, repeated every 90 days.

It’s designed that way for a reason. 

Unsolicited feedback is painful in both directions ("hey, can I give you some feedback?" makes everyone flinch). 

When you ask first, she says, you take on the burden of raising the tough thing, and the answer arrives while you can still act on it.

The answers will sting, and Melanie is upfront about that. It may hurt your feelings for a second. But when you do the maths on the alternative, you’ll quickly realise which one you prefer.

The questions only build credibility if the business sees you act on them.

Melanie's playbook for that is blunt: cut the unloved work in the open, and trade it for something your CEO actually wants.

Her test line: "If I told you I was going to skip our engagement survey altogether this year, in favour of more time on AI adoption, how would you feel?"

Nine times out of ten, she says, the CEO embraces your recommendation.

She arrives with a decision that needs a yes ("I believe we need to deprioritise these things. Any concerns?"), rather than handing the CEO a problem (“should we cut this?”). Melanie reckons that being a great partner involves making CEO do as little work as possible.

There's a compounding effect here too.

The stereotype that HR moves too slowly exists, in Melanie's words, for good reasons and bad. What a stressed CEO mostly needs is evidence you're taking action today. A quarterly cycle of asking for the criticism and acting on it produces that evidence on repeat.

Sometimes the fix is embarrassingly small.

Melanie's example: a CEO convinced the people team is doing nothing, and the whole perception traces back to two underperformers no one has acted on.

You only find that out by asking the specific question.

There's a bigger reason to bank that credibility.

Melanie's spicier take from our conversation is that the most impactful thing HR professionals could be doing right now is mentoring their CEOs through what she calls a period of vast imposter syndrome and AI panic.

Boards want proof the company is moving fast on AI. Investors want talent density. So CEOs cut first and think later, the same overcorrection she watched in the 2021 hiring sprees and the 2022 mass layoffs that followed.

Melanie's intervention: "If I can do this for you without firing 20 people, can we try that first?"

You can't have that conversation without standing.

That's what the three questions are really buying you. Every quarter of solicited criticism and visible follow-through earns a little more of the credibility you'll need on the day you ask your CEO, "What are you actually scared of?"

Melanie's version is three questions to every leader, every quarter. Yours doesn't have to match hers: the power dynamics are real, and starting with a trusted peer or a newer hire still counts.

But if reading that sales leader's verdict made you wince because you're not sure what your own leadership team would say, that's the tell.

So here's my challenge: before this quarter closes, ask one of these questions. Sit in the discomfort. Then act on the answer in a way the business can see.

The gold is only valuable if you go asking for it.

What’s holding you back?

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