Michael Hartmann: 0:24

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast, brought to you by MarkandyOps.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman. Today's episode is about a part of operations leadership that doesn't show up in org charts, roadmaps, or system diagrams, but also absolutely determines whether teams succeed or burn out. So joining me today is my guest, Kimmy Corrigan, Vice President of Marching Operations at Huntress. Kimmy has spent years leading ops teams through growth, transition, and uncertainty, and she brings a strong point of view on server leadership, psychological safety, and emotional intelligence required to operate well inside complex organizations. So our conversation is about leading with empathy without losing accountability. That's an important piece there. Navigating uncomfortable moments as a leader and why the human side of ops may be one of the most underappreciated skills in our field. So Kimmy, welcome to the show.

Kimi Corrigan: 1:13

Thank you for having me after a long time listener, first time guest. So this is very exciting.

Michael Hartmann: 1:19

Long time, first time. We like that.

Kimi Corrigan: 1:20

Yeah, that's right.

Michael Hartmann: 1:21

There's a there's a uh sports talk show talk radio station here in Dallas that used to say that all go because they'd have people call it long time first time. Yeah. Um which I'd never listen to because now when I drive, I listen to podcasts or music.

Kimi Corrigan: 1:34

Yeah, now, yeah. Now you're living in your own world.

Michael Hartmann: 1:37

Yeah. Um, well, why don't we let's maybe start? Because I know you're it's still relatively new that you're at Huntress, right?

Kimi Corrigan: 1:44

So Yeah, just just past six months or so. Yeah. So monkeys. Well, yeah, and what we say a lot here internally, you know, in Huntress time, it's been about six years. The multiplier is about 12 months per month you're here.

Michael Hartmann: 1:59

That sounds sounds about right. It's one of those words where it feels like it's going really fast and really slow at the same time.

Kimi Corrigan: 2:05

Yes. Minute to minute, day to day. I feel both of those things week to week. I'm just like, how many weeks did I just live through? Uh but yeah, it's it's been awesome. I'm I'm having so much fun here.

Michael Hartmann: 2:16

Oh, good. That's good. Well, I mean, so I'd love you to kind of talk about what your scope is. Manic, the reality is there's not many vice presidents of marketing operations, too.

Kimi Corrigan: 2:26

So not too many, but more and more over time. So that's that gives me hope.

Michael Hartmann: 2:32

Yeah. Would love to hear a little more about what you're doing there, kind of the scope of it. Is there anything that's outside of what would be a quote typical marketing outs role?

Kimi Corrigan: 2:42

I I don't think there's anything that's too atypical, but every organization I've been at, which are plenty, um, are just slightly different. There's always tweaks or ownership differences and you know, strength of partnerships, uh, teams that exist and don't exist. So it's always different, um, which I love. You know, I love kind of coming into a new org and figuring out what is my role as it stands here. What do I think my role could be here based on what I know today and how things change? So here at Huntress, it's pretty typical. Um, but what's been exciting is I've kind of helped mature the marketing operations function even over the past six months. When I came in, it was we are marketing operations, kind of a small and mighty team as most are. But recently we kind of formally delineated into platform and campaign operations teams, you know, within the marketing ops team, which I always think is a great sign of maturity when you get, you know, first of all, just to even have enough people on a marketing ops team to make that delineation is quite a gift. Um, but also to have the skill sets that you can really start honing in those two areas of expertise. And it was obvious to me right away of like who was likely to fit in which category, just based on how excited people got about different areas of the work and their strengths. So my team is just starting to really go down those two paths, which are always intersecting and crossing. But um, so so now we're formalized into marketing and platform operations. Um, we also have a really great setup here at Huntress. We have a team that sits at RevOps, but they're called demand integration, um, which is just been integration.

Michael Hartmann: 4:15

I haven't heard of it. Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 4:16

It's great. It's they they're an operational arm of the RevOps team, but really focused on the connection between like handoff from marketing to sales, and our our SDR team sits in revenue, um, which is you know typical, but you see it everywhere. But they've really support that team in a way that I think other organizations could learn a lot from. Um, SDRs get caught in the middle of that handoff a lot of times, yeah, no matter where they sit. So it's been a real force multiplier to have that team as a partner. Um, so they handle some of the stuff that maybe at other organizations I would have had under my purview, but don't hear, but still have a really strong partnership with. So that's been the biggest difference at my current company versus other companies is having that kind of additional revenue operations focus that's such a strong partner to us and the marketing team. Um, you know, I think some people would come in and be like, wait, what's this? Who owns that? Why don't I own it? I'm not much of a I'm not interested in land grabbing. I'm interested in just the more operational support and passion, the better. Um, so so far it's worked out really great. So I say that's the biggest difference. Um, another thing is we have a centralized data function here at Huntress. So having the data and analytics team sit under the CFO organization. But even within that, you have sections of those teams focused on different areas of the business. So even though our data analytics team is central, we have four or five people on that team now that are focused on marketing. So they're not under my org, which is what I'm used to, but really strong partnership. And I think actually a forced multiplier to have them centralized in the way that they are, because then they have their own set of priorities that are are not biased towards marketing or sales or any other area of business, but they do lean in heavily depending on who they are on the team. So those are the differences I've seen here versus some of the other teams. But yeah, every organization has a different recipe.

Michael Hartmann: 6:12

Yeah. So who do you report to?

Kimi Corrigan: 6:15

What I report directly to our CML. CMO, okay.

Michael Hartmann: 6:18

Because the CFO has the data people, I suppose if there was a little something a little different there, but no, right to the CMO. Okay. I it's curious the that demand you've got demand integrations.

Kimi Corrigan: 6:29

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 6:30

What are like can you give an example of the kind of thing that they're doing that you maybe either wasn't covered in other places or that you had before?

Kimi Corrigan: 6:39

It's probably some of the stuff you would think RevOps would own, but they just had have a more robust area of support. So you think about um, you know, lead handoff and really making sure they have everything that they need, owning the um the SDR tooling in a much more robust way. You know, you think about RevOps. I've never been in RevOps and shout out to all of them. I don't think I could could do what they do. But, you know, they have so just like marketing apps, they have such a wide range of responsibilities, you know, forecasting and pacing and um deal analysis, like all of those things. And then on top of that, then there's like who's owning outreach for the SDRs? Like that can often be an afterthought. So those functions or those tools are supported in such a more robust way by having this team that's yes, they have to sit somewhere. So they do sit under RevOps, but they have they're just really right in the middle. They own a big part of Sixth Sense, which is something I'm used to having to kind of own on my own, which I'm happy to have someone co-own that with us or even own more of it than we do. So they're just really a more robust operational support from my point of view.

Michael Hartmann: 7:47

That's really interesting. And then I'm I'm really curious about how I mean I'm glad to hear that it seems like it's working well where you have the the shared data team. It's interesting to me that they report into the CFO function. Yeah. Um, which I could see. So my experience when I've had X data teams are outside of marketing or my organization, uh, what I ran into often is that they didn't understand the marketing domain, right? And especially from a financial like I always think about this comparison. Marketing data is really messy, unlike function, which has less esteamus, right? Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 8:23

And so but you're finding that they're yes, they are all marketing analysts by historical. Um, so they just happen, and I think even prior to me being here, they maybe even sat in the marketing function. So I think they have moved around. So um they are definitely marketing analytics experts that just happen to roll into the CFO organization, which has actually just been a force multiplier again, because they have a close relationship with finance and can really help us educate people outside of marketing on how complicated marketing measurement really can be and how messy it really is.

Michael Hartmann: 8:57

Yeah. I mean, I I actually think it could end up being a positive overall because of what you just described. Yeah. And I assume from the organization standpoint, if you have all these analysts in one place, right, you're also sharing tools and resources and knowledge. Like there's some benefits there across the exactly.

Kimi Corrigan: 9:13

Like we're just, you know, AOP season is endless, right? That's what it feels like. But we're, you know, now that we're in the new fiscal, um, you know, AOP is season is over. But um that was such a huge help during my first AOP season here is partnering really closely with the data analytics people that are marketing focused, but they do sit in the CFO organization. So when we're doing all of that bottoms up and tops down and gap analysis, they have just like an extra layer of um information and authority in those conversations.

Michael Hartmann: 9:45

Yeah. I like you know, I love it. Uh I'm a big I'm a big advocate that marketing apps teams and marketers in general probably need to have a better grasp of financial livecy. Yes. Um, because it's easy to get sidetracked into stuff that no one else cares about. And so I thought it's important. Like I I really try to avoid this whole vanity metric thing because I think those metrics are valuable with the right audience for the right purpose.

Kimi Corrigan: 10:11

That's right. Yeah. So yeah, so the the setup here is different, they're all different, but um, I'm loving it. It's very productive here, very fast moving, great partnership. So um so yeah, different but interesting. Okay.

Michael Hartmann: 10:25

No, it's great. I love to hear this. Like it's like I'm struck by how many different ways in which companies organize the function.

Kimi Corrigan: 10:33

So yeah, absolutely.

Michael Hartmann: 10:35

All right. Well, let's like kind of switch gears here. Um when we talked before, and I think you talked about it in other spaces as well, but you you talked about leading with heart in a systems world. And like maybe break that down. What does that mean to you from a like practical day-to-day standpoint? And why do you like why do you think it matters?

Kimi Corrigan: 10:57

Well, you know, I'm super biased. I've been ops marketing ops for a long time. So ops people are, I think, you know, very special in how we think and how we function. Um, a lot of times we we think in workflows and efficiencies, you know, my shower thoughts are like, oh, how could I build that workflow better to save API calls and do whatever? I don't think that way specifically anymore because I'm a little further away from building the workflows, but you have that mindset. But what I also think is like ops people um, you know, generally, and I mean this with love, we're a little neurotic, we're a little anxious. We like control. Otherwise, why are you an ops if you don't love that control feeling? So I think with that, like ops people have sort of this dark sense of humor about what we do. And we have this like chip on our shoulder that we like to have, like we've historically been kind of operating in the shadows and no one knows what we're doing unless something's wrong. I don't think that's as true anymore. I think ops people do get their shine if they have the right leadership and organization to recognize it. But I think as people, the general consensus of operational people, we're feelers at heart. Like we may think in systems and data and efficiencies, but like we're feelers at a lot of the time and we're anxious, and we we're trying to control things. So that's how I am, and that's how I show up for people if they need it. So I just think showing up with heart for people who have to be so operationally minded in their work is a really nice compliment. Um, and maybe I've just gotten really lucky that all the people that I've worked with so closely have been of a similar mindset and and all of that. But I I just like taking care of people personally. I'm a caretaker, you know, healing some trauma in there, obviously, just trying to like take care of people and make them feel seen and makes them feel heard and, you know, kind of fostering that chip on our shoulder in like a healthy way of like, yeah, no one else understands us, but I understand you. So um it just it just keeps working out for me. So I just kind of keep leaning into that, you know, way of showing up.

Michael Hartmann: 13:07

Yeah, I was having a conversation with somebody earlier this week, and I said, the challenge you've got is that you care so much, right? You getting frustrated challenge uh this other person or other team or whatever that you don't feel like they understand you. And I said um and I think that's one of the like the best ops people. I I agree with you. I love the chip on the shoulder thing, and you should have the Roddy Dangerfield. That may be too old for some people, but yeah. Uh and and it's uh I think it's true, right? This there's they they take a lot of this stuff personally because they want to see stuff go well, or they want to do right by the organization.

Kimi Corrigan: 13:49

Like I'm personally offended by a broken workflow or a data update gone awry. It's like, oh, how dare you do that to me? I put so much heart into building you. Uh so we do take it personally, which I think produces excellent work that's built with care, that has follow-up and thoughtfulness, but it makes it hard to be to feel that way sometimes.

Michael Hartmann: 14:13

Yeah. So would you call that approach like servant leadership? Yes. Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 14:19

Yeah. I think my leadership style definitely aligns with servant leadership more than any other leadership style I've learned about or, you know, read about. Um for me, I I came across this recently more from like a parenting aspect. Uh yeah, I have a teenager. Yeah. As you know, raising teenagers can be a bit maddening because you're just like, you know, how do I show up as like a friend, but stay a parent, hold them accountable while also giving them grace. So, anyways, I came across this video kind of talking about one of the ways of showing up for your teenagers. And it talked about it's okay to have high expectations. And that's something I struggle with. Like, are my expectations too high or are they too low? And I said, it's okay to have high expectations, but pair that with high support. And like that video that I saw kind of unlocked a sense of relief in me because it certainly relates to my parenting style, but applying that to work and thinking back to, I do have really high expectations of people on my team. Like I expect them to do great work, I expect them to show up well, to support each other, to communicate clearly, to grow in their career. Like I do have really high expectations of people, but I pair that as best as I can with a really high level of support. That could be support from like a teaching them something, um, giving them space to get something done, pushing back on deadlines external to them so that they can have the space to do that. Um, all of the things checking in, hey, today was freaking crazy. Are you okay? Like just showing up as a human and a peer, not just as like a manager of like, where's that thing? Why didn't they get it done or why did that go wrong? Like just being a human. Um, so high expectations with high support. And then the third thing I think about with that is hopefully bringing a high sense of reward if those two things are happening. And high reward could be a myriad of things. It could be public recognition, private recognition, fighting for promotions and pay increases, helping them find a new role when I don't have something for them. So, like whatever high reward is for them. Um, so I've just been thinking about that concept of those three things a lot over the last, you know, six or 12 months as I've kind of been exploring that mindset of like, if I have high expectations of someone, whether that's my kids or people on my team, am I pairing it with high support? Because if I'm not, then I need to maybe reset my expectations of what's going to come out of whatever I'm asking of them. And then if they're meeting my high expectations, am I also following up with a high level of reward in whatever way they are seeking or whatever way I can provide?

Michael Hartmann: 17:03

Yeah, I I've thought for a long time there is a lot of parallels to leadership and parenting.

Kimi Corrigan: 17:07

Um, so especially I'm just every day now, especially again, as my kids get older and it it becomes a different relationship. I just every day I'm learning a lesson at work, I'm applying at home, or learning a lesson at home, I'm applying at work. It's it's all connected to me these days more than ever.

Michael Hartmann: 17:23

Yeah. I mean, I I know one of the biggest rewards I've had um i in times of leadership is seeing someone who um is in my charge. I like the Simon Sinek thing. You're not in they're not you're not in charge of them, you're in their charge, right?

Kimi Corrigan: 17:39

In their charge. Um You love Simon in this house.

Michael Hartmann: 17:42

Yeah, right. Uh and I and I like seeing them achieve something that you saw that they could do. The same thing with kids, right? Like, yeah, what when you see that, like that that's where the high expectations come is because we see something that maybe they don't see in themselves, and that's so powerful to see that. Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 17:59

Um and I Yeah, I I was talking to someone about developing as a leader, and like, you know, I think some people, you know, learning how to delegate is a skill, right? Um, I learned that skill a long time ago because I was lucky enough to have some people as my first direct report or a few direct reports who were just superstars. And I just realized very quickly if I can teach them everything I know, then they're gonna do that and then do it better. And I'm still employed and I'm gonna get promoted because I can do that across two, three, four, five people, that's that's what I can bring to the table. I can build high performing, functioning teams. And so far it has not put me out of a job. So just keep doing that. So seeing them do what you taught them and then exponential from there is so rewarding. Um, that's the best part. That's the best part of leadership.

Michael Hartmann: 18:54

I mean, delegation is uh so I do coaching and I love coaching people who are either aspiring to be a new people leader or in an early stage of that because I stumbled through it and I didn't have great uh examples. And I think there's these unwritten expectations from the day before when you were in IC to when you're now a people leader that no one ever tells you about, unless you're lucky.

Kimi Corrigan: 19:21

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 19:22

And it's unfortunate because there's so many people and um that that delegation is one of those hard ones because you were probably promoted because you were really good at doing the thing that you're now asking somebody else to do and letting go of like, well, maybe there was a better way.

Kimi Corrigan: 19:40

Yeah. And there was definitely struggles for me, like, you know, when I went into people management, I was top of my game, Marketo champion expert. I read every post on the community every day. Even if I didn't understand it, I was still like, I don't know what Sanford's talking about, but maybe someday I'll I'll go back and reference this post or whatever.

Michael Hartmann: 19:59

Um and everyone knows who Sanford is.

Kimi Corrigan: 20:01

So yeah, I don't we don't even need to explain, right? Um But then just yeah, the joy of watching someone take that, you know, what I used to do and do it so much better. Uh you can't beat it.

Michael Hartmann: 20:15

Yeah. I mean, I I I remember going, in fact, I just talked to a former uh boss of mine just last week about we I was telling her that I I tell stories about how we worked together in an in a story where someone who worked for me, who I saw potential in, uh basically fought back against something a direction I thought we should go coming into a meeting, and she convinced me that was the better way to go. And I I went immediately to my boss and said, This is a day to celebrate, right? Like, yeah, that's how I go about it, right?

Kimi Corrigan: 20:44

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 20:44

Because I see then see them grow. Like I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.

Kimi Corrigan: 20:48

I know, I'm getting goosebumps hearing about it. And I I try to, I try to encourage that. Like when I'm conveying a message to my team of like, oh, saw this. What do you think? Let's do this, or here's what I propose. I try to always end it with like questions, concerns, or dissent. I want the dissent. I want your point of view. You're the one in the system all day. I'm up here now and I don't really have all the nuance, I don't have all the organizational trauma of what's happening in these workflows or in these systems. You have that. So I need your dissent. Or so save me from looking stupid by suggesting this, really. Um you have to get comfortable with that. And I'm I'm very comfortable with my team having dissent because they're the experts. I'm here to just remove roadblocks, cheer along the way, give them context, set expectations, as you said. And I think expectation setting is so important. And I think sometimes there's a gap on expectation setting because people don't realize they need to set it with someone, or sometimes setting expectations can feel awkward, especially for a new manager, or sometimes asking for expectations can feel awkward, especially as a new manager, because you're like, Am I supposed to know this already? Um so I love I love giving expectations and clarity. I also love receiving it. And I've gotten more and more comfortable over my career asking for expectations. I'm like, hey, you didn't set an expectation for this. Can I get a little more information?

Michael Hartmann: 22:15

Yeah. So so this kind of leads into I think what we just described a little bit is a little bit of a setting psychological safety or whatever you want to call it. Like that, so that you know, pushback and feedback, but sometimes you also have to have uncomfortable. I always tell uncomfortable conversations, difficult conversations, whether it's with one of reports to you, a peer, boss, whatever, right? How do you how do you think about approaching that and um still like building that psychological safety in the process?

Kimi Corrigan: 22:51

Psychological safety is a huge um is it's one of the most important things for me in the workplace, not only for myself. I'm a deep feeler, I have anxiety, I I want to feel psychologically safe. And if I don't, I I am not performing my best, I don't bring my best every day. So I sort of take that own feeling of myself and try to get ahead of it for anyone else who may really want psychological safety. And I think everyone benefits from it. So for me, building trusting relationships from the start is the most important. You can't come into a situation where you need to give, say, critical feedback and be like, oh shoot, let me set up some psychological safety real quick so that they don't they have a bad time with this feedback. Like, too late. Like if you haven't built psychological safety and then expect someone to take potentially difficult and constructive criticism well, like you haven't set them up for success there. Like you should have established that psychological safety from the beginning. So if you still have to give critical feedback or something harsh because of some the way something went, and you don't have psychological safety as a foundation, like that situation may come up, but like don't expect them to take that feedback and be like, thank you so much. Like you may have a negative reaction to that because you do not have the foundation of psychological safety. And I think that's really, you know, I I just wish we could all prioritize that a lot more everywhere.

Michael Hartmann: 24:21

Yeah, I I totally agree. I mean, um a little, maybe a little bit of an adjunct to that or adjacent to that is one of the things I've I think it was always there, but really I think time when the shutdowns and all that happened, yeah, right, exposed this the the false narrative that there are people who have like personal and professional lives and there's this wall between and one of the things I started doing is just trying to pay more attention, particularly in one-on-ones, but in group meetings, to the body language and and just being direct, right? Hey, looks like something's going on. Do you want to ship if you want to? Like, I'm not gonna force somebody to.

Kimi Corrigan: 25:01

Sure. At the end of the day, you're I respect everyone's boundaries and they get to set them, but I'm here to like what what are your boundaries? Like that creates the first step of psychological safety. How much do you want to have a personal conversation about what's going on in your life or not? Like I have some people in my past teams, like, you know, sometimes our one-on-ones are just like, you know, venting about, you know, parenting or someone's health issues or, you know, what's going on, because I know that's impacting how they're not able to show up in the way that they want. And they want to give me that context because that makes them feel safer to say, hey, I know I'm not hitting the mark I typically hit. And I want you to understand why. And that's great. And some people may just say, Hey, I've got some stuff going on. I don't really want to talk about it. They need some grace. That's okay too.

Michael Hartmann: 25:47

Yeah. No, I I totally agree. And I I mean the additional piece I would take because I've had people crying in my office. I've had, you know, things that I've dealt with that I like I didn't I had to go to HR, right? How do I deal with this? This is how I think I should deal with it. Um without, you know, and not about this was more about like personal stuff as opposed to right. And like I've had a couple of people who've worked for me who had health stuff going on. And um I always said, Yeah, tell me you know, as much or as little as you want. I need to know what the impact is to the work, right? I've got to be able to handle that, figure out what to do there. And um if I felt like I didn't have to share it with other people explicitly, I would say it's between us until until something changes and I have to do it. And I start my word, even if that meant somebody asked me who was maybe higher in the level in the organization, HR, like I can't tell you, right? I won't tell you unless you're gonna make me. And I just I I tried to honor that as much as I could. Yeah. It's hard.

Kimi Corrigan: 28:16

It's hard. Yeah, I'm I'm a transparent person by nature. I, you know, I can make friends with a stranger at the grocery store in about two seconds, whether they like it or not. Um, so yeah, I I like to let people lead there as far as like what kind of transparency relationships you want to have when it comes to personal stuff. I always default to them, you know, I'm I'm the manager on the org chart from that perspective, but in the one-on-one, in the conversation, we're just two adults talking. Yeah. We're two adults establishing rapport and trust with each other. Because I sit above you on the org chart, I have responsibilities to do certain things on your behalf, you know, fight for your promotions, lead you um to the right priorities, develop your skill set, whatever. But like beyond that stuff, like we're just two adults trying to get work done together. I'm not more important than you, you are not less important to me. Like, if you want to talk about personal things and build rapport, guess what? You're gonna learn a whole lot about me as well. If if that brings you a comfort and tr builds trust and you know, all of that. So I just think it's really important to, you know, one, let your directs lead uh what their guardrails are overall, but um, and obviously have them respect yours back, but of course, but I think establishing that psychological safety as the foundation is what sets you up for being able to give consistent feedback in a repeatable manner. Like you have to have that trust. I mean, I think we've all either read or read a blog post about radical candor, like radical candor doesn't work if there isn't trust there already.

Michael Hartmann: 29:51

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 29:53

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 29:53

And I think in some of those, like the uh the feedback one, I think a lot of especially new managers skirt around it. And I've gotten to the point where I think of it like it's my responsibility to give that honest and trick view back. And to the point where when I've when I talk to other peers of mine about how they evaluated their teams, I feel a little bit guilty because I tend to not overinflate performance. Um you know, to me, like meets expectations is a totally fine thing, right? I don't like it's not like I'm going out there doing that, but I just I think people deserve to get that honest feedback. And I don't care, but I I also don't want to be an asshole about it, right?

Kimi Corrigan: 30:40

Sure. But I'd rather get them that feedback from me who I know for a fact I care about them as humans. Yeah, I know for a fact I've built psychologically safe spaces with them. So isn't this the best place to give them that feedback through me, who I know I deeply care about their development, versus like if I don't give them that feedback, they may leave and go somewhere else and they may have a whole different experience with a manager and that feedback's gonna come through much harsher with less, you know, ability to move forward and develop on that feedback. So that's just like it almost feels like an honor that I get to give that feedback to them.

Michael Hartmann: 31:17

Yeah. Totally agree. I mean, I think this is one of those things. Another sort of lesson I've learned and I try to share with my coaching with new managers is um just how much conversation there is that happens within an organization about people and their performance across the board that you you have to figure out how do you decipher it, how much is it just, you know, and then how much do you provide feedback to if it's somebody who's in your charge, right? Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 31:46

Yeah. And that's what one of the things I've loved about my current organization is um, you know, we use lattice amongst all the tools that you can use for one-on-ones. And we have a very prescriptive um diamonds, you know, what are the things we need to celebrate in law, what are the spades we need to um share feedback on and develop, etc. Um, and this is where um AI has really helped me, you know, taking a Zoom transcript of a one-on-one, assuming, you know, we've agreed to record or transcript that, building a gem that says, here's the full transcript, pull out all of the diamonds and all of the spades from this. Then I'll go through it. Some of them I'm like, that's weird feedback, Gemini. What are you doing with that? But it it reminds me that there's a lot of things to celebrate and there's a lot of things to coach through just the natural conversation, talking about projects, how the week's going, that you can really log as actual feedback for them to action on, both positive and constructive. Um, so I think that that's an area where um AI has actually helped me become a more thoughtful manager of like we just had this great 45-minute one-on-one. We talked about all kinds of things, and then we leave it and say, okay, talk to you the next one. But I but there's so many pieces of feedback that we can really action on through that conversation that I think we miss out on.

Michael Hartmann: 33:06

Uh so I'm not familiar with Lattice, but I've been I've been using in my coaching platform called OPRE. So Kate Hale uh was had a different name before. She's in uh O P-R-E, not uh, but she they're based in uh Nashville. But um I it's the same thing. It's kind of got and yeah, it's built for managers for one-on-ones, and I'm using with coat for coaching with my coaching clients, and um, it helps with my blind spots too. Yeah. I missed an opportunity to like uh to call it clean out, and it's uh it's actually been really, really helpful to do that. So yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. So for those who are listening who are marketing ops are going, yeah, this all sounds great, but we're always like putting out fires, right? How do you how do you balance the firefighting mode? Yeah, you know, stuff and in and building kind of the I don't want you psychological safety, but the the the ways in which we operate that are gonna help sort of minimize the spikes on the yes, firefighting mode, classic um challenge in ops, and I mean, I'm sure many teams, but one, uh the first thing that I try to do to build the right balance of proactive and reactive, that's how I think about it.

Kimi Corrigan: 34:26

How much time do you have to be proactive versus reactive? It will never be perfect. The balance will always be ebbing and flowing. But the first thing I can do to support my team is fight for the right level of resourcing on my team. Like that's the instant unlock. It's not available all the time. Getting headcount approved, especially in this, you know, efficiency focus time is challenging, but I can't make my team more proactive if I don't have enough people on my team. So like that's the ongoing challenge that is my responsibility alone. Um, I mean, I need my team to raise surface, you know, surface concerns and have the right ability to share how much time they're being reactive versus proactive through, you know, how much our roadmap did we get through versus how many tickets did we knock out this week, month, quarter. Um, so the first thing I do is just always fighting um for the right amount of resources for what my team needs. Um, and then beyond that, it's, you know, we have a ticket-based set of work, you know, all the emails we have to build, all the segments, all the lists we have to, you know, import, all the operational stuff. Like that's never going to stop by having a very, you know, this is nothing groundbreaking, but having a really high functioning and clear intake process to track that work, really important. I don't, I don't think anyone is not doing that at this point in ops, but having a very um robust ticketing process that you can track how many tickets we completed last week and how is that different than six weeks ago? What are we seeing ramp up? What kind of tickets, et cetera? Um, and then also having proactive roadmaps. I have a proactive roadmap for platform ops and campaign ops. And we sort of keep them separate because my expectation of those teams is platform ops, you know, if the if all was ideal, they would be 70% proactive, 30% reactive. Whereas campaign ops, by nature, I expect them to probably be 70% reactive and maybe 30% proactive if we're lucky, right? Um, so those are very different um balances that those teams are trying to strike because of the nature of the work that they do. But by having a roadmap for both of those teams, we can see all of the amazing work we want to accomplish that's going to make our reactive work better, that's going to make our other teams better. And if we can't execute on that roadmap, you know, roadmaps are always flexible. But if we're not executing against that roadmap, then we do not have enough proactive time and we have a problem.

Michael Hartmann: 36:59

Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 36:59

So, you know, you can work through that problem in several ways. Getting more headcount, sure. But like using AI to become more efficient or reconfiguring our process to make it easier for us to execute on tickets. Like there's a myriad of things you can do to try to claw back some proactive time. Um, but you have to keep a pulse on it.

Michael Hartmann: 37:19

Do you do you um I I know one of the things I try to do in a new new team is figure out what what are all the things we should be doing, like almost like typical tasks that we have to do, and then going like there's somebody like one or two people are the primary ones who are gonna be doing this, but I always want to have redundancy in that because the other thing I see is people this is the downside of caring so much, right? Is they take time out for themselves. Yeah. And so I feel like I have to build that in. But yeah, you do something like that.

Kimi Corrigan: 37:52

We definitely um keeping resiliency on the team is very important to me. Even we have a platform ops team function now. They are still helping with tickets, they still, at some regular cadence, still need to be building a few emails here and there and there, still need to be importing some lists here and there. Like we always need to have resiliency because if my two people in campaign ops both have the flu, both win the lottery, whatever it is, like I need to be able to keep the team functioning at some level until we can rebuild whatever we're missing there or get people back and see after um vacation or or whatever. So building resiliency across the team is always there, always needs to be at least two people that know how to do something at least pretty well, if not very well. Right. Um, which I know requires a lot of resources, but it's it's not worth not having multiple people that can do everything.

Michael Hartmann: 38:46

Agreed. Agreed.

Kimi Corrigan: 38:48

Which I know sounds rich. Not every yes, there are marketing ops teams of one still out there. And and my heart is with them. Um, but having resiliency is is table stakes for me.

Michael Hartmann: 40:21

Yeah, I I love that. And I love the idea that um you talk about the balance is ebbs and flows, because that's it's one of those things like if I take about think about people that want work-life balance, and um I think about it maybe differently. Like I don't expect it to be the same on any given day, right? Or each week, right? It's gonna have ebbs and flows, and sometimes it's gonna be lean more towards family, more towards or personal, more towards work. And I think that's to be expected. And I think helping people who navigate through that is part of the job too.

Kimi Corrigan: 40:53

So yeah, yeah, it's the best part of the job. If I can claw back any more work-life balance in the favor of what someone is looking for, that's a win for me. If I can do it for myself, that's also a win for me. And I think about that in like the proactive reactive balance too. Like beginning of the year, campaign ops, they are getting slaughtered. Every field marketer is getting in their full schedule of tickets, every um, all the campaigns are kicking off. So we are just buried in tickets right now. So if I asked my campaign ops team today, hey, how has the first month and six days of the year been from a proactive reactive? They would be like a hundred percent reactive.

Michael Hartmann: 41:32

Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 41:35

And and that's to be expected. And as a team, we're trying to figure out what are our ebbs and flows in this organization. When can we expect spikes here? And when can we expect to catch up on our roadmap priorities? Um, but it's ongoing, ongoing balance.

Michael Hartmann: 41:52

All right. So you've, I mean, you're still, although you're in the whatever you what was the math you said? Six, six year old like a year per month. I don't know. But I mean, still relatively new. Um and you've had some other changes maybe a few over the last few years. How have you like how do you think about going into those transitions um and trying to build quickly to what you're describing, right? The kind of culture and environment that you that you try to build.

Kimi Corrigan: 42:23

Yeah, I've seen I've seen a few orgs over the years. When you're when you work at startups, uh you can quickly kind of come in and be like, is this a place I can thrive for several years or six months? And you're like, is this a place I need to get to that year and maybe, maybe get out? So I've had a few bounce around, but it's it's been very um I've learned so much, which I I see as a gift here. Um so when I think about coming in as a new person, like there's definitely this like adage I've heard from other leaders of like, when you come in, you're just in listening mode. Don't move the cups or you know, whatever terminology people are using. And um, you know, people are just like, don't make too many changes too quickly. It's imperative to build trust first and really understand the big picture. Uh I I get the sentiment, I guess, but I that's not how I roll. I am trying to come in and listen. I am trying to quickly understand what is our lead life cycle? You know, how do we measure success here? What's most important? Are we how long is our deal cycle? What's our ASP? Like I'm trying to gather all of that information as quickly as possible.

Michael Hartmann: 43:30

Anything's done.

Kimi Corrigan: 43:31

Exactly. I'm trying to learn everything. Yeah. But I'm also trying to immediately take action. And that could be action of like reorganizing my team and areas of focus. It could be, hey, our intake process, like, why are we asking all these questions? Because they're also in the brief that has to be attached. So let's like make some very quick changes. So I'm always trying to balance like coming in as a new person, not breaking too much or breaking trust right away by, you know, changing a bunch of things. But I am trying to like, I don't know, they hired me for a reason. I don't think they want me to just sit here and listen for 60 to 90 days before I make any recommendations, like, especially in the startup world, you know, we're we're moving quick and breaking things. So I try to balance. Um, I might, I might ask some questions that people are internally rolling their eyes about, but like I'd rather ask the questions and make a change. And, you know, most of the time the net net of that is gonna be positive versus negative. So so when I come in, I'm trying to choose where to intervene early and where to do more listening, but I'm definitely not like I'm gonna do a listening tour for 60 days. Like I would be fired if I was just listening for 60 days.

Michael Hartmann: 44:41

Yeah. No, I think about like things I look for are things I would call them like I was gonna say obvious, but I was gonna say non-controversial, right? Yeah, like say this, and everybody goes, like, yeah, we should like we should or we shouldn't do that, right? So um I have you ever used, sorry, the like uh a book I read years ago, the first 90 days. Have you ever used that kind of framework?

Kimi Corrigan: 45:05

I don't know if I I think I just kind of use my own framework because I have so many, so many sets of experience of just like it's a lot of like picking up like what's the vibe, what's my cross-functional partnership? I've been haired in and where do I need to get it to? Like that's a big piece of like my first 90 days is like the cross-functional partnership. Like, yes, my team is the most important to build trust, understand. But beyond that, like what's RevOps up to? What's data up to? Who are the sales folks that I need to establish some channels of communication with very quickly to even get the information I need to make decisions? So my framework is really about the relationships to start more than anything.

Michael Hartmann: 45:45

Yeah. I uh the reason I asked is I think some of what you described echoes what I have loosely used from first time. I mean, to me, it's a it's a toolkit. You can take this.

Kimi Corrigan: 45:56

Like I'm not a programmer, but I know a lot of places have people like you commit code on day one. I like that mindset of like, no matter how small, like day one, maybe it's week one, month one, whatever, I want to put my work into practice in some way, shape, or form. Like if it's taking something off someone's plate and saying, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna update this and do it a slightly different way, but I'll own it now, like whatever it is, like I want to make an impact quickly. Yeah. Um, because I think that's important.

Michael Hartmann: 46:27

Yeah, quick wins that build momentum.

Kimi Corrigan: 46:30

Yes, absolutely.

Michael Hartmann: 46:31

Yeah, that's yeah, that's consistent. You you touched on AI a minute ago. Uh what are what are some of the things where you're seeing the benefits of AI from, I guess, more from an internal process standpoint as opposed to like how we're doing with customers.

Kimi Corrigan: 46:46

My whole world is internal process, right? Like, you know, ops teams, our customers, our our peers and our friends inside the organization. So um, my team is trying to really own the agentic strategy, at least from a marketing lens. How can we make how can we build small simple agents that make the marketing team in ourselves more efficient, work smarter? So they're nothing like wild and groundbreaking, but like I love that we have a Slack channel. Anyone can come in there and tag the agent and say, hey, unsubscribe Michael from all marketing emails. Agent does it, logs into our systems. Yeah. Like what ops person hasn't had to have a million DMs over the year of like, hey, can you unsubscribe so and so from whatever? You know, it's just like, okay, let me log in and look them up. You know, don't have to do that anymore. We have an agent that we worked on that our account managers can come to the channel, tag the agent and say, what emails have people at my accounts gotten in the past week? That agent will look through all the accounts owned by them, go through HubSpot, look at every email and pull up a quick summary of like Hartman advisory group, advisory group mark Michael Hartman got these emails on these days and then it's like the next account, this account, these emails on these days, so that they can understand like what's been communicated on my behalf over the past week as I go to check in on customers, things like that. So um we're just building a lot of you know informational stuff like that. So so to be to have my team you know taking that upon themselves and owning that strategy on behalf of marketing. I posted about it on LinkedIn a few weeks ago I'm just like I used to just be my mind would be blown by like running a Salesforce report or building a a Marketo workflow that did a lookup to something else. And like now Marketing Ops is like building and defining agentic strategy for teams like couldn't in my wildest dreams have dream met up you know 20 years ago.

Michael Hartmann: 48:47

Well maybe even five years ago.

Kimi Corrigan: 48:49

Five years yeah two years ago so yeah I find myself every time I talk about it it doesn't do that yet right yeah and yet it's probably sooner than I think it will be for a lot of people before it pass surpasses me. So great those are great practical everyday things that are just like I just need some fragment you know a little glean agent that like does all of our validation on a list import. You know it's not fixing everything for us yet but it's at least like hey you have 18 lines here where this is not going to process through correctly because there's you know something wrong here or something's missing and just doing like that quick work for us. And then you know that agent isn't like groundbreaking at this point, but like then we can build on that agent of like okay now can you correct all the issues for us? Oh now can you import it for us. So like and there are people doing way more advanced things um than us that I think are amazing. But I just think practicality is something people it's underrated like it's underrated and people think they have to build some crazy agent to do something, you know, take to put themselves out of a job or whatever. It's like no just make your life easier.

Michael Hartmann: 50:10

Yeah. Well you get to work on more interesting stuff then.

Kimi Corrigan: 50:12

Yeah totally and get through more tickets to hopefully get back to proactive mode.

Michael Hartmann: 50:17

Yeah. Well maybe why don't we wrap up with with this so we've talked a lot about leadership and you know the things that you and I are aligned on in terms of that but like for people who are maybe just getting into leadership or are interested in being a people leader, what are some of the key skills that you would recommend that they try to get experience with and learn yeah by the way if you say soft skills I might have to just cut you off because I think they're just skills right well I don't know if you're gonna like my answer then because I think the most important skill that you can hone through practice and education is emotional intelligence. Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 50:57

Yeah like I just I think it's still lacking uh in the general ecosystem of leadership or getting deprioritized for sake of like we got to hit this, we got to do this, we got to do that. It's just like, but you'll do all of those things better with more success if you have a higher level of emotional intelligence so that you can connect with people and be self-aware about what expectations should be set, be self-aware about what they're you know, you know, like you said, building rapport and what's going on with someone so that you can understand how it's going to impact the work. So like emotional intelligence for me, I think is the most important skill. But beyond that, I think um just staying sharp, uh being competent about what your team is working on. I've had this leadership mantra for a number of years. You can see how beat up the sticky note is, but it says um be warm and competent. So for me, competence as it relates to the people at my team is I can't be an expert at what everyone does and every system that they use. There's so many of them now and I'm caught up in some other stuff. But I do need to be competent about the systems they're using, what they're trying to accomplish with these systems because if I can't stay competent at those things, how can I possibly help them problem solve or advocate for resources or celebrate their successes if someone's like, look at this workflow and and I don't understand the importance of what they've done like how can I properly celebrate that with them? So I think it's you know staying in the systems as much as you can and staying sharp as a leader. Um and then uh probably just you know curiosity which again soft skill I know that's not what you want to hear but like stay curious as they say.

Michael Hartmann: 52:41

No my my what I don't like is it called soft putting soft in front of the skills because they're just skills.

Kimi Corrigan: 52:49

They're just skills. Yeah very important skills. Yeah um so yeah not that once they got you to be a very competent and accomplished individual contributor typically no like my technical skills put me in this seat my technical skills help me become a VP of marketing operations. I I don't think I would be a VP of marketing operations if I didn't have the technical skills required to somehow level up there. But my my emotional intelligence skills I think are what has helped elevate me and elevate the teams I've worked on and will continue to take me places that I haven't imagined yet.

Michael Hartmann: 53:24

Yeah. So I I recommend a a book to I've recommended to my own kids. I've recommended to just everybody who will listen because it's one of the few books that I've read that I and I had the opportunity to go through training related to it earlier in my career. And it I would tell people it was like one of these rare ones that helped both personal and professional life is called Crucial Confrontations. Oh confrontations okay yeah so and there's the same people have a book called Crucial Conversations which I've I was gonna say I'm familiar with crucial conversations and not to confrontations. Yeah so I the best I can tell the difference there is that in crucial confrontations the goal is to elicit behavior change. Right. Yeah okay um love that and what I love about it is it really gave me a framework that now I've sort of it's sort of inherent now and I it's a skill I've had to practice on. I wasn't very good at it that I think is really really valuable because as you're getting into leadership you call it I think you call it emotional intelligence which I think is different than this but this is like practically when I have to have a difficult conversation with someone like I have a like a way of like panning out and yeah being ready to have that conversation a way that hopefully will produce the outcome we want I want and not undermine the relationship. Exactly love that I'm gonna have to pick that one up I love it like it's it's I I probably have a couple of copies somewhere around but uh yeah it's it's it was a game changer and uh and I think it's one of those ones that I was not very good at that when I was a first first time manager.

Kimi Corrigan: 55:06

It's something I still you know a lot of times I'm like well I just have great people that work on my teams that are always crushing it. So I don't have to have a lot of that confrontation but even people like you know I still need confrontation but like I think I'm good at my job overall of course but like I don't expect to never get critical feedback or have a confrontational conversation. So um it is a really important skill and something like doesn't come native to me. Positive feedback all day I got you like I'm I am your manager for that. Yep uh difficult feedback is a skill that I've had to learn and have a lot of room for improvement still to this day. But I also have a lot of self-awareness about that. So even if I lead with that of like hey I have some feedback for you it's really hard for me to share this because you are doing so great in these other areas but I think it's important for you to know you could have um I could see you have an area of opportunity here and here's why and digging into it. So even just like bringing my self-awareness to it, I can still get it out there. You can still share that confrontational feedback.

Michael Hartmann: 56:11

Yeah. Um if for me like the biggest highlight for me was don't assume intent or don't assume what someone's thinking, right? Which is a very natural thing that we all do as human beings. Yeah. And you go like you go like it's not that you did this or you thought this or you said this but it well you could say you said this because that's actually it was like this is what happened. This is how I perceived it. Right? Which is it's the same message but it carries a very different tone and the way it's received is different. And that's the kind of stuff that I I think make can make sense. Yeah.

Kimi Corrigan: 56:47

I agree.

Michael Hartmann: 56:48

Love that so well good hey Kimi it's a pleasure I think you're right. I think we talked about this before that we could both talk for hours. So yeah I know what we said have to clear my calendar um but hey this has been a ton of fun I'm so glad we were with my kids thank you for having me. Yeah so if if somebody wants to continue a conversation wants to to you know learn more about what you're doing but your your new podcast with your husband.

Kimi Corrigan: 57:12

Yeah I do yeah so um if anyone is interested in picking my brain please connect with me on LinkedIn um big LinkedIn uh nerd so I'm on there all the time and yeah my husband I just started our own podcast recently because um we're both people leaders and we care deeply about a lot of stuff we talked about psychological safety and building um trusting teams and just leadership in general something we kind of nerd out about together as people leaders so we finally took like all of our uh long sessions of yapping on the deck and on the couch and said, should we do what no one needs and start another podcast? Um so yeah we have a podcast uh called Lead Laugh Love which is intentionally cringe uh we're both millennials so live laugh love is ingrained in us um but yeah we just kind of have some fun casual conversations about different areas of leadership and our experiences and um yeah I would love for people to listen and give me some feedback.

Michael Hartmann: 58:08

Love it I I think it's I don't think it's cringe. Maybe the name is cringe but I don't think you can put this cringe so I love it.

Kimi Corrigan: 58:15

Yeah we love it. So um and even if we do 10 episodes it's like what a cool digital diary that we'll have to look back at someday or maybe we do a hundred episodes and um see where it goes.

Michael Hartmann: 58:28

I'd be right there with you uh so yeah I think it's great. Well appreciate again thank you Kimmy and thanks to our our audience out there we appreciate your support if you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be guests like Kimmy was feel free to reach out to Mike, Naomi or me and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling. Until next time. Bye everybody.

Kimi Corrigan: 58:46

Bye