Episode 46 | Unlocking Innovation Via Smart Staffing with Sara Fortier

 Sara Fortier  00:01

If it’s a vendor, you know, that to really look for for folks that you one get along with, but also that are there to be your strategic partner, and can give you advice on how to build your team, or things that might be coming up and challenges that you might be facing and have some of that subject matter expertise can be really helpful.

Karan Rhodes  00:01

Blended workforces are one of the hottest talent strategies today, where employers are using a mix of traditional employees with external resources like independent contractors, coaches, consultants, vendors, and technology solutions, all in order to enhance competitiveness, ensure cost flexibility, and expedite business goals. But how are the successful companies infusing blended workforces into their business strategy? And what are the critical success factors and pitfalls to avoid during implementation? And on the flip side, what does it really take for suppliers to improve their chances of finding and landing contract opportunities? The devil is in the details, my friends! I’m your host, Karan Ferrell Rhodes, and it’s time to get smarter about Blended Workforces at Work! Hello, my superstars. This is Karan, and welcome to another episode of the blended workforces at work podcast I am just absolutely thrilled to have on today’s show Sara Fortier, and she is the CEO and founder of Outwitly Inc. Now, Outwitly Inc is an eight figure UX and service design staffing agency that finds coaches. I’m sorry…that finds and coaches change making design practitioners and empowers private and public organizations to innovate at scale through blended Workforce Solutions. Now that was a mouthful. I messed it up a little bit, but we’re going to have a great conversation with Sara, because I was truly fascinated with Outwitly and her leadership of the company, and how they actually help clients really enhance their talent. And I’m going to let her tell that story, because I know I will murder it, although I had a great time reading about it. But welcome to the podcast, Sara.

Sara Fortier  02:00

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Karan Rhodes  02:02

Oh, we’re just thrilled to have you. And you know, I can’t wait to delve into our conversation, but before we do so, we always love to learn just a tad more about our guests. So for just as much as you feel comfortable, can you give us a sneak peek into your life outside of work?

Sara Fortier  02:20

Sure. Yes. Well, we were just talking about it before, but I am a mom, so that’s a big piece of my life. And I had a five year old son and a I guess she’s about 16 month old daughter now, so they keep me really busy. And then, so I live in Winnipeg, Canada with my husband and and then we also just recently bought a or bought, I guess, from the humane society, so we did purchase her…a cat.

Karan Rhodes  02:51

Aww. A fur baby.

Sara Fortier  02:51

Yeah, for a baby. She’s Siamese, and she’s, like, racing around because she’s one, and so she’s got lots of energy, so it’s a lot of chaos, but lots of fun.

Karan Rhodes  03:01

Oh, I could imagine. Oh, and congratulations on the new addition to the family, the fur baby, and then also on your young family as well. I’m sure they keep you all running. Yes, exactly. Well, thanks so much for sharing that. And I’m going to kind of turn the tables a bit more on the professional level. And let’s start out, if you don’t mind by you know, if you can share just a few highlights, milestones of your professional career, and then can you share with us what led you to found Outwitly?

Sara Fortier  03:41

Yeah, yeah, yes. So I am originally from Ottawa, Canada, and I studied industrial design, which is the design of 3d products. Think about your Dyson at home that’s designed by industrial designers. And I did a master’s in design and learned about how the design process could be applied to businesses, to 3d digital or, sorry, digital products and services. And that’s kind of where I fell in love with UX design. And so from there, I actually moved out to Silicon Valley and worked with a lot of big tech companies out there doing actual UX design work. So nothing related to talent or HR staffing, anything like that. And then I moved back to Canada and founded out Whitley in 2016 originally, just as a consulting firm. So I was, you know, it was just me, and under the guise of we, and I would, you know, say, yes, sure, we can do that. Of course, it was just redoing all of our crime scenes, but yeah, so that was like helping our clients actually design products, so mobile apps, desktop applications, or sometimes it would be like a service, you know, like how to reinvent the process for getting your driver’s license. For example, and so did consulting, kind of up until, well, we still do it in a way, sort of for our favorite clients, but it’s not something we talk about as often. So that we made a pivot in the last few years to really be focused on staffing, because I started getting asked by clients, hey, could you come work for us full time for six months? And I was like, oh, no, like, I have so many other clients, but I’ve got a friend and and so I just used my network in the beginning. I just used people that I had been connected with, that I liked working with at other jobs and who were available to take on contract work. And kind of grew the staffing side almost by accident. Yeah, right now it’s actually the main part of our business, and really how we try to position ourselves as talent partners.

Karan Rhodes  05:52

Oh, I love that, and I know I didn’t do outwardly justice. So if you could please just click down one level and share with our listeners, exactly what is the company and how you best service your clients.

Sara Fortier  06:08

Yeah, so we are. We sort of frame ourselves as talent partners for building high impact teams, high impact products and services. And what that means is, essentially, we, you know, go meet our clients, and we help them assess and understand what types of designers or researchers they might need on their team. And we go out and we find the best people that you know, with a lot of vetting and thought leadership, brings a lot of people to us, and again, then we place mostly contractors right now on long term contracts with our clients. And our clients tend to be anywhere from large public sector organizations to large enterprise level fortune 500 clients in insurance or finance e commerce, all different types of industries, but essentially placing UX designers and service designers in those companies.

Karan Rhodes  07:08

And I’m assuming you know, just because you’re very knowledgeable about blended workforces, UX designers through like an agency like yours, allow companies to scale quickly when they need to and scale back, I guess, yeah, as well, without having to absorb, you know, all the cost of, you know, full time talent,

Sara Fortier  07:33

yeah, yeah, right, yeah. And, I mean, if, if you followed along with the tech industry, I’m sure you’re very familiar with all the layoffs and occurred over the last few years, right? So, like the big tech companies have just laid off like swaths and lots of people, and that really impacts the UX community, because essentially, we’re designing digital products. And so it is interesting to see how with a staffing or talent based business that actually you can do quite well in those times, because clients are feeling a little afraid and they’re not maybe getting the budget to add to the permanent head count, but the work still comes. They still need to, you know, produce the products that their customers are waiting to use, and so they kind of turned to these contracts, or contractor agreements and and staffing, or staff augmentation, and so that’s, yeah, that’s where I found, like for our clients, especially with the uncertainty, with AI and all the geopolitical stuff happening, and where they’re a bit afraid or they don’t have the budget to grow permanently. They can still grow their teams, and sometimes half their teams are made up of contractors, yeah, which is great. Yeah,

Karan Rhodes  08:49

it is. And especially in the digital and tech spaces, those industry or job functions were some of the first to kind of embrace external talent, yeah, on the team, and a lot of the other job functions are catching up now, or have caught up. But it, the reason I’m mentioning that is that it, it’s not a foreign concept to the you’re probably talking to, that you don’t have to sell them on it. You just have to make sure that they Yes, understand your terms and find the right talent, right?

Sara Fortier  09:25

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we’re always sort of, I mean, oftentimes they’ll come to us more because they, they, if they’re a bigger company, they don’t want the headache of dealing with individual contracts, you know, for individual contractors, and they might have a need of, you know, I need five UX designers to join our team, and they would prefer to work with sort of this in between vendor, which, so, yeah, usually not selling them on the fact that, hey, this can be really helpful. They they’re already there and and which is a good place to be. And then you have, sometimes on the flip side of that, though, there can. Be a bit of a headache with the contractors viewing you as a if and middle in between, middleman and and maybe not having the respect for actually, there’s a lot of work to be that that in between of the vendor, to the client and to the contractor, and so they have to prove our value on that side of it actually, to the to the contractors, to say, no, actually, we’re here as like a support to you and to help you through your journey here. And yes, of course, we take a margin because we’re a business, but, you know, we can help them with a lot of the ups and downs that they might face, or help them not feel so isolated in their roles. Even help them, you know, grow in their careers.

Karan Rhodes  10:44

It’s amazing. Now I’m curious how you coach, or how you handle either personally or coach your team to balance between client needs and the utilization of your contractors, because I know that’s a big issue, a lot of times, making sure that you can balance them both. And usually there’s one need that you have that’s overpowering another, and it may, you know, switch off at different times. But how do you think through that and manage that?

Sara Fortier  11:21

Yeah, it’s a really good question, and something that’s obviously probably one of the biggest challenges, right? Because you know, you are a business to start, and so the business has to be profitable. And so you have to think, Well, how do you be profitable? And utilization is one of those KPIs that you look at and but at the same time, you don’t want to appear or or you don’t want to even be heartless and say, we’ll just get your hours in, right? So, I mean, I always think that the client needs do come first, because they are the driver for the business. And I think that contractors, and, you know, I think everyone understands that, even they feel that if the client asked them to do something, that that client’s needs comes first as well. So I feel like there’s just a general understanding of, you know, that is just the truth and then, but on the piece where sometimes you can, you could have, you know, just even a toxic work environment on the client side, or, or they’re even just struggling with, well, you know, I’m, I don’t have that much work to do, so, you know, I kind of just thought maybe I would, you know, take days off here. I might not put in a full eight hour day, because it’s not really demanded of them, even though it is in the contract, right? Yes, yeah, and so, or Yeah, so. So there’s sort of two different scenarios. One is they’re not happy for some reason, and that could be a toxic work environment. It could be the work doesn’t inspire them, or could be just burnout Central, and so they they maybe don’t want to continue working, or they want to reduce their hours or something, and then the other scenario is they’re actually not that busy, and so so on the not busy side, we always try to encourage our our contractors, to be really proactive. And we actually try to vet for proactive people. Because I think if you come from a Yeah, because if you come from an employee background, you could be very used to sort of sitting on your laurels if no manager assigns you work, so maybe like a really rude thing to say, but I think there’s less of a drive to really prove yourself, and if you’re getting your work done, then that’s sort of enough. And that’s not true of everyone, because obviously there’s very ambitious employees who want to climb the ladder and everything. But if you’re a contractor, you actually do have to be proactive. You have to go out and look for, you know, opportunities to improve something. You need to go out and try to have coffee chats to get to know other stakeholders. And so we we look for, and we also really encourage that type of behavior in our contractors, so that they are fully utilized, and they are finding work and finding a place to be valuable, and they’re not just sitting there because no one has handed them something to do so that that piece, and then on the piece where it’s like they’re not happy, then I think it really starts with empathy and, you know, understanding what’s going on. You know, tell me a little bit more about that so that you can get to the crux of it. And sometimes, from that place, then you we’re just really honest with our contractors, and we’re saying, you know, from our perspective, like we do, need to try to get the hours out, but completely understand where you’re coming from. Let’s try to give you, like actionable, tangible tips that you can maybe help you in what you’re doing to make the environment better. And that could be things about understanding the different layers of the organization, and you know how to navigate tricky stakeholders and things like that. Or it could be a. Um, let’s go to the client and say, Hey, we’re hearing these patterns and these trends. You know, what have you heard? Is this something that we could help you, you know, through some sort of coaching or more of a strategic role that we could play to help soften these things, even through fractional leadership, which we also offer. So, so there’s different strategies, I guess, based on why they might not be utilizing their time,

Karan Rhodes  15:28

No, and I totally understand that, and it’s, it’s tough, I mean, because we’re in a similar situation, but we’re on the human capital side. You know that HR related type of experts. And you’re right, it’s you have to balance, you know, the needs of the client with the needs of your personnel as well. But you’re right. You default to the client because you have to maintain the business, but you do all that you can to make sure that your external staff is as skilled, as knowledgeable and as happy as possible. Yeah, you know, within the bounds that you can so I definitely…

Sara Fortier  16:13

Yeah, and I think Yeah. And I was just gonna say, like, I think expectation setting at the outset with those contractors before they go into the environment is really helpful. So like, letting them know this type of client is like this, you know, that you might run into these culture challenges or, you know, and so that they’re really set up for success, and they actively say, Yes, I want to go and be in that environment. I understand what some of the challenges will be. I think can be really helpful and and, yeah, I think just being a kind person, you know, I think we really value that as as one of our, even one of our company values, is to be kind and sincere and have empathy for for everyone. Because when you start from that place, then people feel respected. They feel heard. They want to work with you to make it better. And then we give them the tools, you know, like so we’ll coach them on, how can you navigate challenger, challenging stakeholders, or how can you deal with it in our kids, difficult product owners? So, yeah, try to help them.

Karan Rhodes  17:17

It’s amazing. And I’m curious as well, do you, do you all happen to do anything, or do you try to do anything, or level set with your clients as well? Because I know there’s some clients that they’re onboarding, and culture is amazing for freelancers coming in, and there’s some that I’ll just say politely, they lack that infrastructure in doing so yes, and it’s challenging as as your team is trying to be successful when a lot of things aren’t in place, like access to things or true collaboration, I’m curious, do you try to coach or, how do you try to ensure that clients are ready to really onboard your talent?

Sara Fortier  18:10

Yeah, so that that is very interesting, and something I didn’t realize at the beginning how important that is, yeah, over time, I realized, okay, if they have great onboarding, then we’re gonna be good. And if they don’t have great onboarding, I have to literally tell them, you might struggle for three months while you try to learn the organization and what you’re supposed to do there. Yeah. And so in terms of our ability to have input on that, it really depends on the client. Some clients are really open, and they have the ability to create their own onboarding. You know, they’re not. There might not be a ton of bureaucracy saying you have to do it this way or and also, it depends on our sort of relationship with the clients, where, for example, in public sector, there’s very little you can do to help them, or input you can give them, because there is sort of this hard line drawn between the vendor and and the government people, whereas in private sector, there’s a lot more flexibility of, you know, how you might help. And so in in the scenario where you can have some input, you know, we sort of do ask our clients as part of an onboarding meeting we have with them, what are your onboarding processes and and then we learn a little bit more about what they plan to do. And so then we can get set some expectations with the contractor. And we can also have input in that meeting, like, oh, have you thought about, you know, a 3060, 90 day plan for them? Or, you know, it will all their tech be set up, or whatever the things are, but I find that that meeting can be really valuable, just to levels. I don’t want some good tips, or we’ve even, you know, we’ve sent resources over and and they’ll use them or create their own or whatever. So that can be good. And then on the side, where you don’t have input, we try to create as much wrapper for. Our current contractors as we can. So we have our own onboarding and, you know, we’ll based on our knowledge of the client and its inner workings. And if we’ve worked with them for years, we’ve sort of developed an understanding of what they need to know. We’ve gathered documents to show who the the Organize, the sort of the departments are and the people that they’ll need to get to know. So we try our best to sort of soften that onboarding for them as much as we can on our side to help them

Karan Rhodes  20:30

Absolutely. You know, we do the same, and we have a consulting excellence program that we do for our talent as well, and one piece of that is that those who are assigned to the same client, we try to do um 15 minute check ins, um maybe once every week or every two weeks, just so that they can share with each other things that They’ve learned about the company, the culture, the dues, give advice to each other. So we’ve tried to empower, empower our people who have been assigned and contracted to Yes, client, to also share back, because the more we they share back, that helps everybody be successful and hopefully extend engagements and things like that as well.

Sara Fortier  21:21

Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, that’s a great tip. And idea we do something similar with coaching, where we have for certain clients, or we have, you know, many individuals placed there, we’ll have a coach assigned, and they might meet them, bi weekly, weekly, sometimes monthly, kind of depends and and they have a bit of an onboarding with that coach to go through some of the, you know, what they’ve learned, and then in the group coaching calls, they can share this, this knowledge that you’re talking about, yeah, and, and I feel like that is very helpful.

Karan Rhodes  21:56

It is. It definitely is, um, since you’ve kind of been on, I guess the blended workforce is, I call it the three legged stool. You know, full time employee, external talent and technology. You’ve dipped your toe in a couple of those on the areas on the three legged stool. And I’m curious if you have any, you know, personal advice or recommendations or things to think about for companies who are for the first time, considering bringing external talent into their organizations to help with their agility to be able to get work done, you know, what are maybe one or two things that come to mind that you would love to give them advice on as They you know, really consider blended workforces and adding great companies like yours to the team?

Sara Fortier  22:45

Yeah, well, I think in terms of, like, when you’re talking about the resources and the talent that they will end up bringing in, if it’s through a vendor, you know, like us or even individuals, would be to think about, you know, does this person have a consultants mindset and, and what does that mean, right? So I, you know, I was talking about that earlier, where there’s folks that come from really being an employee background, and that’s fine, and oftentimes they do end up being successful because they have aspects of that mindset. But what I found is people who are proactive, people who are, you know, the self starters, people who are great communicators, you know, and they’re also very deeply skilled and masterful at their craft of the thing that they’re doing right. But they have this ability to sort of influence people, and they have presence when they’re on a call like, those are the skills that I feel are always just very successful when you bring in a third because they have to ramp up super quick into an environment that they don’t know or understand. They have to get to know all new people, and they may only be there for six months or a year. And so their ability to actually start executing with the full context of the organization in a way that’s efficient and good for the company, and I feel is very tied to those sort of soft skills. So I would say that’s the type of talent, ideally, that you would be bringing in, you know. And then other tips, I would say, if it’s a vendor, you know, that to really look for for folks that you one get along with, but also that are there to be your strategic partner, and can give you advice on how to build your team, or things that might be coming up and challenges that you might be facing and have some of that subject matter expertise can be really helpful.

Karan Rhodes  24:37

Yeah, definitely. And I know you all do a lot to help your talent from not feeling so isolated and lonely. And I’d love for you to speak to that just a little bit about what you can do, or what you all try to do to keep them you know. Really motivated and feeling connected,

Sara Fortier  25:02

Yeah, yeah, well, and that stemmed from because I used to be an independent contractor, and I was like, I’m all by myself here. You know, you don’t have professional development opportunities and training, and, you know they don’t invite you to a lot of the stuff, because you’re sort of like apart, and I, like, honestly, I liked being that way. But there are some aspects of it where you kind of wish you had a bit of a community, or someone to talk to about that particular client, or the challenges. So knowing that. And then, as I started hiring folks, and they just asked for a call with me. You know, Hey, can I I’m having a challenge? Could I chat with you? And I realized what they were coming to me for was really, like, I was almost their therapist related to this very specific client. I was like, okay, so you kind of need a coach here, or someone to help you along. And so, so, because, and because we have that subject, we’re like, we’re designers finding designers. We can really relate to their actual problems that they have, and talk to them about it and give them real tips on like, you know, things they could do to make it better. And so we do two main things, I guess. One is that we do have a Slack community for each of our client teams. I guess anyone who’s placed at that client. And we also provide a coach to have those calls with them that I mentioned. And I think that helps just let them know that they’re not alone, that they have someone they can go to. Yeah, half of the people don’t utilize it like even, it might even be more than half of the people, because they’ve gotten to a point where they feel really comfortable, you know, they’re senior, and they don’t need that, but they often will use it in the beginning, the first, like three to six months, if it’s like a multi year placement, just to know who else is there, and here, you know, share some of that knowledge and things like that. So, so even though it’s, I would say underutilized, it’s there. And for the people that need it, who are more intermediate in their career or at the early stages of the contract, it’s really, really helpful. And then they they might poke in occasionally and say, now you know what, I want to come back to this coaching session because I’ve got a big presentation coming up, and I’d love your thoughts on it, so they always know that it’s there. Yeah,

Karan Rhodes  27:22

That’s that, you know, I love. What I love about that is that kind of on demand access for piercing Yeah, is invaluable, because you’re right. There’s some times where they may not need it or have too much or doing and yeah, don’t want to interfere with their productivity, but you want to be there for support when they need it. I love, yes, yeah, definitely. Well, Sarah, gosh, I can’t believe we’re almost out of time. I looked up and we were having such a great conversation. But we can’t let you sneak out of here without asking you our signature question that we ask all of our guests and for my new listeners out there, our firm did research on high performing leaders and companies, and out of that research came seven buckets of success factors. We call them tactics, but they’re seven main buckets of success factors that are executed anytime someone’s leading at the top of their games. And so we always ask our guests which of the seven which are all equally as important, and use them at different times. Which is the seven really resonated with them. And Sarah, so it was a kind to share that having stakeholder savvy really popped for her. And stakeholder savvy is all about. It’s kind of a sister to emotional intelligence, but it’s really all about having a high degree of interpersonal dynamics and knowing how to operate effectively in different situations that you come across, getting to know people you know, for instance, you might perform differently when you’re interviewing versus when you’re at a happy hour, kind of thing. So curious ones would love to know Miss Sarah. Why did stakeholder savvy really pop for you?

Sara Fortier  29:17

Yeah, and actually, there were several that that really stood out. But I chose that one because I think it’s probably been a through line for my through my career, as even you know, when I was working for other companies and and true to today, which is that if you can understand people, and you can navigate the politics, and you can empathize with them. And you know, you really understand where that stakeholder might be coming from, why they might be acting that way. It can, it can help you. Sorry. I guess the idea is when sometimes there are people who are challenging, believe it or not, and it has. Nothing to do with you, actually. And if you can understand, you know why they might be feeling that way, might why they might be reacting that way. And then you can hear them out, and you can let them air all their hope, their fears, things that are coming up for them. And you say, I hear you, okay. So what I’m hearing is X, Y and Z, and what I want you to know is not to worry about that piece, because, you know, we’ll take care of this. This part just sort of quell a lot of their fears, because most of that comes from fear. And so I’ve just been very good at that, that part, that emotional intelligence part, and being able to connect with people and understand them. And it also makes sense as a designer, because design is meant to be human centered and really bad in the needs of people. So yeah, that one made a lot of sense to me.

Karan Rhodes  30:50

Oh, that’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing and sharing your perspectives there. And as you know, we’ll have your detailed bio and links and everything in the show notes. But I always love to give our guests time to air, time to also share where folks can find more about you and your company. So if they were interested in understanding more about Sarah and Outwitly, where can they find you?

Sara Fortier  31:21

Yeah, so outwitly.com, calm will be the best place to find out about the company. So that’s O, U, T, W, i, t, l, y.com, and then we’re pretty active on Instagram and LinkedIn as well. And then for me personally, I’m most active on LinkedIn, so just linkedin.com, I think slash, Sarah, Fort CA, and you’ll find me there.

Karan Rhodes  31:40

Awesome and for you all for tale, F, O, R, T, I, E, R, that’s correct, right? Sarah, with no, H, no, H, there you go. That’s the second catch,

Sara Fortier  31:53

Yeah, all right. Well,

Karan Rhodes  31:55

thank you so much, Sarah for the gift of your time today. This was a fantastic conversation and episode.

Sara Fortier  32:01

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me

Karan Rhodes  32:04

Yes, and thank you to listeners for the gift of your time as well, because, as I always say, we know there are literally other millions of podcasts out there for you to listen to, and we do not take your patronage lightly at all. All that we ask is that you like and subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform of choice and share the podcast with just one friend, because by doing so, we’ll all get smarter about blended workforces at work. Thanks a ton, and see you next week. Well, that’s our show for today. Thank you again for listening to the Blended Workforces at Work podcast. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at blendedworkforces@work.com. You can also follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, contract, fractional, or project basis. Huge thanks to the SDL production and editing team for a job well done. Bye for now.