Michelle Kligman didn't set out to run the “people strategy” for a nearly 16,000-person health system. She set out to be a clinical psychologist. Somewhere between a postdoc at Columbia and a stint profiling executives during mergers, HR found her instead.
Michelle is the Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resource Officer at Jackson Health System, the nonprofit academic medical system that treats anyone who walks through its doors, regardless of ability to pay. In this episode, she explains why she thinks about careers as a web instead of a hierarchy, how she gets CFOs to say yes to people strategy, and why the one skill she wants more of on her team has nothing to do with a resume.
You'll also hear:
Connect with Michelle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellekligmanpsyd/
Learn more about Jackson Health System: https://www.jacksonhealth.org
Connect with us:
💻 All Episodes: TalentAllStars.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ziprecruiter/
💼 Dave’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davetravers/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ziprecruiter
🎵TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ziprecruiter
Enjoyed this episode? We’d be grateful for a rating or review on your favorite podcast app.
[00:00:00] Michelle Kligman: I think creating an organization where people feel comfortable disagreeing and having dissent is a really, really critical part of creating health in an organization.
[00:00:11] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter, and on Talent All-Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses.
Today's talent all-star is Michelle Kligman, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resource Officer at Jackson Health System, a nonprofit academic health organization. Her career began in clinical psychology before transitioning to organizational consulting and assessing executives. She views careers as a web rather than a hierarchy, with multiple paths for people to pursue their ambitions and grow within an organization. Michelle Kligman, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:00:55] Michelle Kligman: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:57] Dave Travers: Delighted to have you. So many different places to go, but I wanna go back a little bit closer to the beginning, which is you did not take the normal path to leadership in, in a people and HR function.
So there's consulting, there's government, there's a little academia and university world stuff all happening. Tell me a little bit about how you found yourself here and how you decided, you've now been at Jackson for a while, how you decided that people leadership is really what your calling is.
[00:01:28] Michelle Kligman: It's always been my thing. I started off as a clinical psychologist, really thinking that I was just gonna really, you know, treat patients one-on-one. I ended up in New York City 'cause I did a postdoc at Columbia University, and in doing so, I kind of just ran into jobs, opportunities that allowed me to go into the corporate setting.
It started off doing assessments, psychological assessments on executives, if you can believe that. Kinda how to set them up in the workplace, how to make sure that they reach their fullest potential. Then before you knew it, I was on a mergers and acquisitions team, and I was trying to blend two organizations that were coming together and try to really blend how those teams were going.
Who's gonna be on the team, who's gonna be off the team, blend those cultures together, and that's kind of how I kind of ran into it. It wasn't deliberate. I don't even think that there was, like, an HR track when I was in college. I'm probably dating myself, but I don't even think that that was, like, a career or even something that was even on my radar.
But I fell in love with it, and it kind of started my trajectory there.
[00:02:37] Dave Travers: Awesome. And so given all that, you know, doing psychological assessments on executives and your psychological neuroscience background, what, you know, now r- being in a position of being a chief people officer of a major health system, what are the, the benefits and skills and, and experiences that you can draw upon from that?
And what were the challenges where it's like, "Hey, I didn't have exactly the same background as everybody else"? Obviously, you came up and did people for a long time, but how has that, how has that been both a challenge and an opportunity?
[00:03:09] Michelle Kligman: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it helped me because I had a systems thinking background, right?
If you learn about family systems, you know, you can really adopt the theories and the philosophies from one system to another. So a lot of the behaviors and a lot of the things that show up in a workplace actually mirror a lot of the things that would show up in a family system, in a different way, right?
And so I think that helped me tremendously in terms of how to really organize the workforce ecosystem so that it's a healthy environment for people to thrive and for people to reach their fullest potential. What was a drawback for me, which I ended up going back to school in my career and getting an MBA, executive MBA, was I didn't really come with that business background.
I didn't really come with, you know, I couldn't look at a P&L worksheet. I couldn't really decipher that. So that kind of came with experience along the way, and then I went back to school. I got an executive MBA in healthcare administration and policy, and it was the best decision that I made 'cause it really melded those two worlds together and really helped me, I think, be more effective in the roles that I play.
Dave Travers: If I'm a up-and-coming people leader, talent leader, coming to you for advice, I want to be a chief people officer someday, how do I decide whether you had this transformative, amazing experience getting an MBA. How do I decide whether that, what might feel like a sidetrack or a, you know, working a second job, depending on how you do it, like how really expensive, like how do I think about whether that's a good fit for me the way it was for you?
[00:04:51] Michelle Kligman: I think start with the basics. Like start with the fundamentals. I think you gotta ask yourself, "Do I like people?" Some people, I remember, I remember working with this organizational development leader that was kind of having a really hard time kind of adjusting to the job, and she said to me, "This job would be great if it wasn't for those people."
And I thought to myself, wow, you're probably in the wrong job. Probably not the place to be. But you gotta, you know, you gotta love people. You gotta really understand how to work with people. You gotta really be comfortable in that space. You don't necessarily have to be an extrovert. I'm kind of an introvert, believe it or not.
After years of training and being in front of people, it's kind of a trained behavior that I have. But I think start there, and then there's so many different places that you can work in HR. You can be on the compensation side. You can be on the talent acquisition side. You can be in the learning side.
You can be so many different areas, and depending on just get your foot in the door, try it out, do, you know, take a class, try to get a certification. There's a lot of certifications that you can take. Baby steps, right? Don't boil the ocean, and see if you like it. And if you love it, then you've probably found the right career for you.
[00:06:12] Dave Travers: If you now think back to your ability to profile an executive now that you're an executive yourself, how does that help, what's a rubric if I don't have that background? But what's a, what's a, like, key takeaway I can use to, if I don't, if I don't have that expertise, but I'm dealing with very different personalities all the time?
You know, like, how do you use that skill set, and what's a, what's a quick learning I could have that, to think about how do I categorize people and treat them differently or work with them differently based on their type?
[00:06:44] Michelle Kligman: My response is probably gonna surprise you a little bit because I think in order for you to do that or have a rubric, you gotta have some self-awareness of yourself, right?
And so you've gotta really be self-aware, understand yourself, see how things show up in other people, be a good observer, a good listener, and I think that's your starting point. You know, if I say, "Go take a psychology class," I mean, yeah, I mean, it's textbook, but, I mean, just the more you are self-aware, the more you experience people, the more experience you have.
It's not gonna happen overnight, but like I said, baby steps. The more you'll be able to really understand and start putting... connecting the dots and putting the pieces of the puzzle together, I would say.
[00:07:31] Dave Travers: Okay. So now you're a leader of this massive organization, the chief people officer at Jackson, and when you're leading a big organization, you don't always get to take just baby steps.
Like, you have to really communicate big, uh, you know, like, uh, philosophical tent pole kind of principles to lead a big organization like that, to give people a north star to guide against almost. How do you go about that, stepping into a role that big? How do you think about that for your team and for all the people they connect to?
Do you, do you tap into what the organization's sort of overall mission is first, or do you think about the bottoms up, what your people need? How do you lay out a framework like that?
[00:08:14] Michelle Kligman: No, that's a great question. So, you know, I think it's really important. Different organizations have different north stars, right?
For us, it's our mission. We have a great mission at Jackson. It's our ability to take care of anybody that walks in through that door, whether they have the ability to pay or not, and that is kind of our guiding principle. And so when we select talent, we look at, yeah, they could look great on paper, have great pedigree, but do they have the heart for this kind of work?
You know, are they able to see and really have compassion for, uh, helping people and for healing people? And so I think you start there. Then you look at the business strategy. What are you really trying to accomplish? Where are you going to go from three to five years? What does technology look like in this space?
How can you organize the organization's ecosystem to really align with the business objectives and where you want to go? I mean, yes, we are, HR is very much a service-oriented angle, but you also want to enable the business, and the biggest asset that any organization has are its people. So how do you create an environment where people are thriving and people, kind of those behaviors that are important to the organization, the values that, um, are important to the organization are hardwired?
There's a lot of different strategies and levers that you can put in place to be able to enable that.
[00:09:44] Dave Travers: I love that, and so when I have that really strong mission in an organization, how do I get the most out of that so that you, you come and you have this organization you're part of, you're a big leader in, but how do I utilize that to its fullest extent and use that as an asset?
Because you talked about, a little bit about, you know, there may be somebody with a pedigree who's not necessarily right for this work, um, but how do I, how do I, how do I utilize the positive side of that to get the most out of it?
[00:10:12] Michelle Kligman: That's a great question. So what we have done, I can share with you what we have done.
So I'll start with our values. Our values are CARE. Stands for compassion, accountability, respect, and expertise. First, we made sure that it came from the front line. You know, anything that comes from the ivory tower, that employees don't have a sense that it belongs to them, that they feel it kind of in their bones and in their DNA.
We really wanted to make sure that the values that they've identified came from the people that experience the work every single day. So we did a lot of focus groups, spent a lot of time, over a year, in asking our employees, "What are the values that most resonate with you?" And then from that, we embedded it in every single place that aligned with what we're trying to do.
We aligned our values and our performance management system. We put it in our evaluations. We put it in our recognition program. So I would say make sure that it's not the flavor of the month, because employees catch onto that really fast. "Oh, it's another initiative that they're gonna roll out, and it doesn't really mean anything to me, and we're g- just gonna check the box," right?
So you've got to make sure that it's authentic, it's genuine, it comes from them, and then you embed it everywhere that you can to continue to have these reinforcement areas throughout the organization.
[00:11:35] Dave Travers: So now I develop, uh, some, a mission and some values, like you've talked about, and those are as w- uh, north stars that you can navigate against, so to speak.
[00:11:45] Michelle Kligman: Yep.
[00:11:45] Dave Travers: But we're in this ever-changing world, Michelle.
[00:11:48] Michelle Kligman: Yeah.
[00:11:49] Dave Travers: And so we've got nonstop technology, you know changing regulatory environment. It's gonna run the world. How do I then decide? I have these, these north stars to navigate against; how do I decide what to change next? Like, I'm being inundated as a leader.
You're being inundated every day with, "We should do this. The other cool kids over there are doing that. We feel like maybe we're behind. You know, our board is saying we should do more." How do you decide?
[00:12:17] Michelle Kligman: And I got to tell you, Dave, that is the biggest question that every organization probably asks itself.
How are we going to prioritize what's important to the organization? And sometimes the mistake that organizations make is that they have a hard time prioritizing, and so they focus on too many things. So less is more. Otherwise, you go into, like, firefighting. You have to make sure that you're looking at what is the biggest ROI for your organization.
That could be, you know, a strategy from a growth perspective that you're going to be aligning with the business to make sure that you have a people strategy to align with that. That could mean an initiative that is going to improve product development. From our perspective, our product is care, so that could mean all sorts of things in terms of learning, innovation, a new care model, a new way that we do surgery from a robotics perspective; it can mean a whole plethora of things.
But narrow your focus, make sure that it's aligned with the ROI and your business strategy, and that's really how you prioritize and make sure that less is more and that you're able to really deliver. And of course, hiring the right people, and leadership is a critical component of that, making sure you have the right people in the right seat to deliver and execute on what your priorities are.
[00:13:44] Dave Travers: So one of the things you said, there's so much wisdom to unpack there. There's a whole episode right there. But one of the things you said there was the word ROI. So as people leaders, you know, going out and advocating that this is the highest ROI next thing we could do isn't necessarily something that we're trained on as we're coming up through the ranks, but here we are.
Once you get to be in your position, there's a hundred different ideas that everyone thinks we should do, and you're advocating for what the next one is. It's gonna cost time and resources and money and all those things, and you've got to lay out an ROI. Like, as a first-timer, coach me through: how do I get in front of whatever committee it is or go around the company and convince the different stakeholders? How do I show them ROI for a people project?
[00:14:25] Michelle Kligman: Okay. As a first-timer, first and foremost, you gotta make friends with the finance people. I mean, those, you gotta, you gotta build alliances, right? Yeah. 'Cause I get it. Not everybody has the business background. Not everybody is able to have that business background to really understand, from a finance perspective, how to put that together.
I would say very early on in your career, align with those people that can help you put that case together. And the case doesn't always look at it from a revenue side. A lot of times in HR, it could be from a cost avoidance side, right? We know that turnover is maybe $80,000 a head. How are we gonna ensure that this is gonna reduce turnover by X amount of percentage points, and therefore will be a cost avoidance factor for the organization?
So there are all sorts of ways that you can talk about ROI in a way that makes sense. But align with your finance people. They can help you put that together, and then your job is to tell the story. Tell the story in a compelling way that'll really help you get your message across, and try to influence what that outcome. You may not get it right the first time, and that's okay. But stay at it.
[00:15:43] Dave Travers: How do you tell the, 'cause ROI sounds like a numbers thing, and telling the story sounds like a, you know, a catchy a- anecdote. Like, how do I do those two things at once?
[00:15:53] Michelle Kligman: You make it real. You use real-life scenarios. You can tell the story.
I mean, again, we're in the people business, and so your people strategy and what you're trying to come across is gonna have an impact on people that has a financial or sustainable gain. Everybody has to remember that the biggest expense that an organization has are people, your labor expense. So it's so easy for us to be able to tell that story in a compelling way.
We're just not used to doing it with numbers, right? We're used to doing it kind of in a different way, but marry those two together, and then you have a very compelling argument in front of any CFO, and you need those CFOs to get your people strategy across the line. So yeah, make it about people.
It's genuine. You can find a story anywhere in your organization that will bring that to life. You know, I've done it in front of boardrooms with board members. I've done it in front of my CFOs, in front of my CEO, and it makes a difference when you make it real and about the people that you're serving.
[00:16:58] Dave Travers: Yeah. I think that's so smart, that as a recovering CFO myself, first of all, making friends with CFOs, definitely the right strategy. But I think you're so right, is that, is that if you come in with only the heartstring-pulling- Yeah ... story with no numbers, you're gonna get eye rolls. They'll be like, "Next."
[00:17:17] Michelle Kligman: However- "Get the fluffy stuff out of here."
[00:17:18] Dave Travers: If you establish your credibility, that I know my numbers, and then tell the story, the story is the thing they will remember and tell to each other a week later.
[00:17:29] Michelle Kligman: That's right And it's a win-win, right? It's a, it's a win-win. And how you connect the dots for people, I think, is, is where it could be really, really compelling.
[00:17:38] Dave Travers: That's exactly right. I have to tell you, as the finance person, we're dying to tell each other what we feel like we have to, you know, do the numbers stuff, but we're dying to tell those stories. We just want the, the numbers to give us permission to. So give us that permission. I love that. Okay. One of the initiatives I know you've been really committed to at Jackson is internal mobility and moving people around among different, which is, you know, in, in terms of talent, we often think about, we need a bigger pipeline, we gotta get more people through, which of course is always true in almost every organization.
But in an organization of your size, there are so many different kinds of opportunities at different locations and different skill sets, et cetera, et cetera. How do you think about that? If I w- if I were, you know, just getting started on an internal, you know, mobility sort of project, how would you coach me to get started?
[00:18:27] Michelle Kligman: Well, the first thing I would say is you have to understand the inventory of your talent. You gotta understand what you have. Not every organization, you know... It's, it's funny, a lot of organizations, they know how many widgets they have, they know what their inventory is, but they don't have a really good, solid inventory of their talent.
So understand what you own, I think is the first step. And then I think I look at careers more like a web rather than a hierarchy. I would like to think of careers like if you're working in the kitchen and you wanna become a nurse, we wanna create a pathway and help people show you how you're gonna get there, right?
And so with the career web, I mean, the world is your oyster. All of these possibilities are available to you. And that's important because we wanna make sure, at least at Jackson, we wanna make sure that you don't have to go anywhere else. You don't have to leave Jackson. We're 16,000 employees. We're like a small city, right?
And so we wanna provide the perspective that from an economic development standpoint, from a place where if you want, if you're in the kitchen, you wanna be a nurse, you wanna be even in finance, like, we're gonna help you get there. We have tuition reimbursement; we have benefits. So I would coach the person to be able to say, first, understand your inventory.
Make clear pathways so that people understand what the possibilities are and what the resources are so that we can help you get there.
[00:20:00] Dave Travers: I love that. I think if you're in a big organization, knowing that the organization cares enough to, to use the word care, uh, which is important to Jackson, to cares enough to say, "I may have hopes and dreams, and that doesn't have to be outside of the organization.
There's room for that inside." Like, it just makes me feel different as I show up, whether it's at the kitchen or wherever each day.
[00:20:24] Michelle Kligman: Yeah. And we wanna provide, you know, avenues for employees to be able to seek career counseling, seek mentors, seek opportunities. 'Cause everybody needs help getting there.
Nobody gets there on their own, right? And if you understand that premise, then you can set up that infrastructure so that there's that support system. We have a tuition reimbursement that's $5,000 a year, and we do that deliberately because that is a signal to the organization and our employees that we wanna continue to invest and develop in you.
[00:21:03] Dave Travers: In the spirit of investing and developing, we referenced earlier that AI is, AI is a big thing. It's going everywhere. So how do you invest in people and invest in the change of AI? How, what's your approach to that? Where do the AI investments belong? How do you get people to jump on board, and how do you think about that whole strategy?
[00:21:22] Michelle Kligman: Okay. So, so let me just put in the room, Dave, that everybody is... You know what? The water cooler conversation is that AI is gonna take away jobs, right? That's the fear, and what I have seen AI, and where it works really, really well is to remove the friction points in an organization. And so even from a resource perspective, you know, people are like, "Oh," even the unions.
We work in a very unionized environment, and the union is already having conversations with me saying, "Well, we wanna be able to manage AI. We wanna put things in the collective bargaining agreement that are gonna limit what AI can do 'cause we wanna make sure that they're not gonna take away jobs."
That's, in my opinion, the wrong way to think about it. AI, if it serves as a co-pilot, if it serves as a way to reduce the menial tasks that get in the way of efficiency and productivity, let's go for it. The employee's gonna be happier because they can spend their time on more meaningful work rather than the tasks at hand that get in the way that have high error rates anyways.
And so it could be a win-win for the organization and for the employee. The AI is never gonna take away what makes the humanistic side of the job. There will always be a need for that.
[00:22:50] Dave Travers: Michelle, we always end these episodes with a lightning round. So I want you to imagine you're getting in the elevator at HQ.
It's just all of a sudden the CEO walks into the elevator too. You've got just the 30 seconds or 60 seconds up to the top floor, and the CEO turns to you and says, "Michelle, I've been thinking about it. You know, one thing I've been meaning to ask you, how should we measure the people team over the coming year?" What would you say?
[00:23:14] Michelle Kligman: The best measurement for me is turnover, making sure that our people are staying. You measure two things: turnover and internal mobility. If those two measurements are going in the right direction, you're in a really good spot. We want people to stay. We don't want people to leave, and we want people to continue to grow and develop in your organization.
So if you're providing those two things and those numbers are good, that means your organization's probably thriving.
[00:23:45] Dave Travers: Love that. Love that. Okay, and then same scenario. You have your 60 seconds and, and the CEO turns to you and says, "Michelle, I've been thinking, what's the, what's the number one talent or skill that we don't have enough of that we need more of as an organization?"
How do you think about that? You talked about your talent inventory and what you own. You know, what, what do we need more of as an organization?
[00:24:04] Michelle Kligman: Oh, wow. I think we need psychological safety. I think that when people are scared of raising their hand and voicing their opinion, or saying that they've made a mistake, or disagreeing with your leader because they think you're going in the wrong direction, or maybe they have a better idea.
That is not good for innovation; it's not good for new ideas, and it really holds the organization back. So I think creating an organization where people feel comfortable disagreeing and having dissent is a really, really critical part of creating health in an organization.
[00:24:46] Dave Travers: So smart. I think the psychological safety is this extremely hard to measure, but easy to feel.
And, uh, and so much goodness comes out of that as you're describing it, that, you know- Yeah ... if it, if it's safe to say, "Wow, we really screwed that up-" Yeah. ... uh, you know, like, uh, you just get to the heart of the matter so much faster- Yeah, you get to the heart of the matter and you fix it. Yeah, and mistake... Listen, to be human is to error, so you're not gonna create a team where mistakes never happen. I mean, that's just impossible. Anybody that's been part of a team knows that that's gonna happen. And so it's how you recover from it that really is the true litmus test of a high-performing team.
[00:25:29] Dave Travers: Michelle Kligman, it is very clear why you're a talent all-star. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
[00:25:35] Michelle Kligman: Thanks so much, Dave. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
[00:25:41] Dave Travers: That's Michelle Kligman. She's the executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Jackson Health System. We'll put her LinkedIn profile in the notes below. And as a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube, also on the official ZipRecruiter channel. If you have feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email to talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com.
I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars. See you next time.