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Rebecca Price
Partner at Primary Venture Partners, Seasoned CHRO/Chief People Officer
Rebecca Price is a seasoned professional with a wealth of experience in People Operations, Talent Management, and Networks. With a background in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, Rebecca has dedicated her career to maximizing human potential, fostering strong teams and workplaces, and establishing robust People processes crucial for business scalability.
Having honed her skills in HR at Johnson & Johnson's renowned Leadership Development program, Rebecca transitioned to executive roles such as Chief People Officer and Head of People at startups including Sailthru, Enigma Technologies, and Capsule. Her strategic guidance has been instrumental in helping founders transition to effective CEOs and scale their businesses successfully. Beyond her professional endeavors, Rebecca is a devoted mother, always seeking to strike a harmonious work-life balance, and a fitness enthusiast, often found on a spin bike in her spare time.
Highlights
Today I was asked: What are the top 3 ways founders fail to become exceptional CEOs? At Primary Venture Partners, here is what we’ve seen:
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Failure to Know Thyself: Your team wants to know how to succeed. If you don’t know your values, how you respond under stress, how you make decisions, how you like to give and receive feedback, and how someone can earn a gold star with you, then you will stumble along the way to building a talent-dense, high-performing organization.
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Inability or Indifference to Recruiting: Every problem is a people problem. If you think recruiting is an administrative task that can be outsourced or deprioritized, then you’re lucky to have never worked with an underperformer or misfit. Hiring the wrong people is a fast path to wasting time, money, and effort. Putting in the upfront effort and commitment to selling, assessing, and onboarding employees hedges the likelihood that you will hire people who are likely to succeed on your team.
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Lack of Alignment: A CEO's job is to create alignment and reinforce clarity. If a CEO isn’t repeating the team's vision, purpose, and goals, as well as ending every conversation with closure, alignment, and accountability, team members will accidentally prioritize the wrong projects. Your job is to consistently ensure everyone is clear on what excellence looks like, how they will be measured, and how they are performing against those expectations.
What else have you seen?
#leadership #talent #CEO #alignment #clarity
“You are just not as committed as I am.” It’s something every founder will feel about an employee at some point.
It’s called “idiosyncratic bias” — when you rate someone's skill level against your own very high standards for yourself. It’s not good for your team.
You don’t need every employee to bring the same intensity you do, you don't want to miss an opportunity to recognize and reward great work, and you certainly want to be sure your team doesn’t get burnt out.
In the worst-case scenario, this bias results in churning out talent and negatively impacting your team's morale.
Here’s how to make sure this isn’t you: ☝ Ask yourself: “What does success look like for you, objectively?” Not everyone you employ will be at your level, but that doesn’t mean they’re not the right people for your team. This is a great question to reflect on the business's actual needs, how that translates to the team's skillset, and what’s needed to drive that business to the desired objective.
✌ Diversity in teams is powerful. Bringing in people who may have a ton of expertise in a function or are domain experts in the industry can bring value to your business. You will miss that opportunity if you assess them only on qualities that make you a great founder. As VCs, we like seeing diverse teams. Diversity brings an entire skill set to tackle various obstacles that will appear on your journey. We count on you having people different than you onboard.
Is there any other tactical advice you would add to this list to overcome “idiosyncratic bias”?
