Thriving in Times of Change: 3 Power Questions to Build Stronger Teams

Mo Fathelbab: Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization, People and Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network of executives in the field of human resources. Is each week we bring you in-depth conversations with the country's top HR executives and thought leaders.

For today's conversation, I'm excited to be joined by Kat Cole, CEO of AG1, a global health company focused on functional nutrition. Welcome, Kat.

Kat Cole: Thanks for having me.

Mo Fathelbab: Great to have you with us. So Kat, I wanna start with what is functional nutrition?

Kat Cole: Well, functional nutrition, or as we like to call it, foundational nutrition is the idea. That on top of a whole food diet, most of us still benefit from supplementation of some kind. The reasons why our food is not as nutrient dense as it once was. So even if we're eating healthy and orange today, and Apple today, 

spinach today have less nutrients typically because of soil erosion or lack of soil quality, or just the supply chain, right? They, move a long distance to get to us often, and so there's still a lot of good in eating whole foods, and it should be whole foods first, but the busy lifestyle.

Increased stressors in a modern life, which means increased nutrient needs. That's a pretty big, if you're increasing nutrient needs, but decreasing your nutrient density of your whole, and that's.

Many people don't. And so there's a gap that's there, nutrient gaps. And so supplementation, a level of supplementation that's not over supplementing, but that understands what a common diet often leads to.

Gaps in, this idea of covering nutrient gaps with foundational nutrition. So supplementation simple, synergistic whole food sourced supplementation is important for our energy, our immunity, our digestion, and all of the body's functions. Then outside of nutrient gut health, modern lifestyle leads to challenges in gut health.

Either because we don't eat, as many phytonutrients or as many fermented foods, or we have antibiotics or other stressors or other modern diseases that can, or conditions, that are. A compromised gut, gut microbiome. And so this idea is we, have nutrient gaps. We need to cover, we have gut health, we need to support, and foundational nutrition is a simple supplementation layer on top of a healthy diet that helps solve for that.

So that's things like AG1, which includes a multivitamin pro and prebiotics and phytonutrients, omega threes. And particular vitamins that need to be plussed up in addition, like vitamin D three alongside K two, those would be considered foundational nutrition supplementation, micronutrients and gut health support.

And, and so that is foundational nutrition. We need it every day. Our cells need nourishment every day. You can't work out once a month and get strong. You can't eat healthy once a month, and, be healthy. So. Foundational nutrition and supplementation with foundational nutrients and gut health support are a daily ritual that AG1, steps into and helps people with in a convenient, fast, synergistic, and incredibly high quality research backed third party certified way. 

Mo Fathelbab: Wonderful. Thank you. 

Kat, let's turn to your career, and talk about how you've led organizational change.

Kat Cole: I, just as I got older and started having kids and started navigating life, and life also includes illness amongst family members, I. Kind of developed a personal passion for health and wellness, so fitness, nutrition, movement, mindfulness, sleep. And that developed over a number of years, especially in my thirties.

And I became one of these customers who were little mini biohackers. I was looking for the right pill and powder and supplement and new technology and new way to access these areas of health And. Became quite overwhelmed like most customers, and then started within that overwhelm, seeking, simplifying solutions, habits that I could stick with, things that were vast, trusted, and simple instead of trying to do all the hard and complicated things.

And that's how I discovered a few elements of my daily health routine, such as foundational nutrition supplementation, a G one. Omegas and D three K two, infrared sauna or sauna in any way. Trying to get that 10 to 12,000 steps in and really prioritizing my sleep and my time with my friends, as well as lifting weights.

These became. Cornerstone of my life and not just mine, many of ours, and I noticed that markets were moving that way. Business opportunity was moving that way. And so both the intersection of where commerce was going, consumer products being more healthful. And my personal passions moving in that direction.

There was an intersection of those two things. And so I was a customer of the category first, became an investor second, investing in many better for you businesses for over a decade. And then I met the founder of what was then called Athletic Greens, now called AG1. I was advising growth stage founders at the time, so I started advising him.

He then said, come help me build this. And I did. And that was almost four years ago. Started as an advisor, became president and COO, and then became CEO of AG1, which is one of the fastest growing nutrition companies in the world. 

Mo Fathelbab: That is a lovely story. And often I hear something personal promoting this kind of a story.

And I think you just said there was a health issue, in, somebody, in your family that got you motivated to go down this path.

Kat Cole: It wasn't just a health issue, it was my own desire to live long and strong for my kids. And yes, I had, my mother had breast cancer, I had family members who had other diseases. All of us. No, no one lives in. A family with nothing wrong. And so it was my own desire to live long and strong and my own reminders from family members, who had their own issues in many ways that were, and, just modern education, right?

We're all learning more about healthfulness. You can't un hear that you should eat. Less sugar and eat more whole foods. You can't unhear that sitting is a modern disease and that we need to move more. And so I, like many people out in the world hear these things, learn these things, and want to use that to live a, healthier life over time. 

Mo Fathelbab: Yeah, love that. Well, let's turn to some, more, business issues related to being in the field of human resources.

So let's talk about, change and you've, been at several organizations, including Cinnabon and, you've been involved in some big changes there. Can you tell us about that?

Kat Cole: Sure. I have. What's great is I've been with companies, the companies I've been with, I've been with for many years at a time. So if you're any in any one place for many years at a time, you likely experience different eras. Of that industry, and I certainly did. I was in casual dining restaurants for the first 15 years of my life opening international franchises.

Then the next 10 years I was at Focus Brands, which is the parent company to Cinnabon. I was at Cinnabon for the first few years of that tenure at Focus Brands, and then I became a group president bringing brands to grocery, retail and other channels, and then I became. President and COO of the parent company that had a range of brands that had healthy oriented, future oriented brands.

Fun for you dessert, sweet treat brands, and some things in between. And through that tenure at Focus Brands, I navigated the Great Recession, at the beginning of my

tenure.

A complete shutdown of our business at the end of my tenure, and then all kinds of technological disruption, in between because I was there for a decade, right?

A lot happens in any industry in a decade. Periods of great growth, periods of great challenge and

pain.

and so I experienced change To the point of your question.

Pretty much every year in some brand. we had eight brands by the time that I left and we're in 80 countries. So you can imagine the different types of, things we would navigate in different geographies or at different economic times where people have low discretionary income and they're not spending a lot.

And so the business is challenged or times are really good and lots of people are out shopping and traveling and so now you're just trying to. Grow and evolve so you can compete in the opportunity. And then really outlier times like a global pandemic that shut down the business where you're temporarily focused on survival for your, team, for the health of your community, so that you can, live for the next good time that comes.

So I think it's important to appreciate that total context. But at Senon in particular, I joined during the recession there. the locations were mostly in malls and airports. When there is a recession, people travel and shop less, so there were fewer customers to serve. So revenue, had declined for many years in a row.

The business was challenged, and yet the brand was beloved. It's a franchise bakery known for, made from scratch, cinnamon rolls. That are the size of your face, they're enormous. And it's definitely not meant for every day or breakfast. It was, a treat. and yet because people weren't shopping or traveling, there weren't a lot of people to sell to.

Maybe some mall and airport employees and a couple of customers still shopping, but not many.

So we really had to focus on making the most of that tough time in the business and then setting the business up for the future. And so, as I will often share in keynotes and, as I did at the recent SHRM event, there are three questions I ask when I need to quickly find priorities to help me organize limited resources in order to address a problem or an opportunity.

So Just the same for if things are going well and you're looking to uncover opportunities so you don't get complacent. So I asked three questions. What's one thing we should stop doing? What's one thing we should start doing? What's one thing you would do differently if you were me?

and I get the answers to those questions.

There are patterns, there are themes. I use the patterns, what's most frequently mentioned to act on as a leader. And so. At Cinnabon, I heard when I asked what's one thing we should stop doing, or what's one thing we're making you do or giving the customers that they don't value? The point is, identify what people don't value and stop doing it so you're not wasting resources on it.

And then the next question, what's one thing we should start doing? You're looking for things that people are asking for that they might want from us that we can do that don't require a major change or investment. And then when I ask the question, tell me one thing you would do differently if you were me.

It helps.

To the first and the headline of those three questions and answers was it was very clear we had an opportunity to begin selling smaller portions. Lower calorie, lower price of course. And there were a lot of reasons that made sense at this time. And so we ended up going after a smaller portion initiative that helped unlock, the opportunity in the business.

And there were a lot of challenges doing that and a lot of resistance because people resist even the best of ideas because it's change. But in the end, we ended up rolling out the mini bond, something smaller. still made with the same high quality ingredients and it ended up unlocking opportunity, in the business.

Mo Fathelbab: that's wonderful. And what about the, the pandemic? How did you deal with that? Because, the great recession is one thing, but you're still open, the pandemic, gosh, like how did you survive? 

Kat Cole: So

there are, a few. Buckets to this answer, one answer of how we not only survived, but thrived truly our brands. As soon as the world opened back up and we could sell to customers, whether it was through, delivery or grab and go, or family meals or eventually back to dine in service, much of what allowed us to. Thrive quickly were the things that we did years prior.

So years prior, we had invested in third party delivery, things like Postmates, which would eventually be acquired by Uber Eats, and Uber Eats and DoorDash. Long before it was cool. This was 15. Maybe 2016, that era, we were early in experimenting with third party delivery.

The pandemic hit five years later, and so the, those investing in those technologies and experimenting, which many of our operators did not want to do at the time, it wasn't popular. Then of course, anything new is at the beginning, you had to A portion of your revenue, no business owner likes doing that.

You had to trust someone who didn't work for you with the food that you prepared. That is was an even bigger ask.

And so it was a fight. It was challenging. There were some people who were enterprising early adopters to this technology, but

the majority of the business owners at the time, understandably resisted something so different.

But had we not. Put those things in place, tested, learned iterated, built operating models for them. We would not have been so quickly able to return to revenue, profitable revenue because everybody else was trying to figure that out for the first time. We had already implemented it years prior, so part of the way we navigated such a difficult time.

Was being early to experimenting and adopting future leaning technologies. Now, I had no way of knowing that would help us with the pandemic. Like of course, that wasn't the reason we did it. We just believed convenience is where the consumer was going, that people would pay a premium to have their food delivered to them, and for choice and discovery on food delivery platforms.

That was the theory. The unexpected benefit or the off-label benefit was that when all of our revenue was shut down and it was illegal to operate a restaurant where people would walk in, we were able to sell food immediately. We already had the contracts, the operating methods, the packaging, we had it all done. The, so part one of how we navigated it was what we did 

before. It's you think about it back in terms of health, how do you navigate any moment of.

injury

or disease. Well, one part of the equation is how healthy and strong you are at your baseline before the thing happens. So I, can't talk about what we did without reminding everyone that was a big part.

the second is we were very clear and focused. We were only focused on things that could protect people, so our communities and our employees, and protect cash because we had no revenue. It just disappears.

People can't come in, but we still had millions and tens of millions of dollars of expenses.

and so.

Back to again. We had a very healthy balance sheet. We were fiscally responsible, responsible. So we weren't stressing out, needing to look externally for solutions, at least in the short term, from a cash perspective. We could support our business, we could keep our employees, we could maintain our business and really not have to lean on things that other people, understandably so had to lean on.

so we were clear protect people, protect cash.

Those things don't talk to me.

and then the third was getting very good at shifting gears. So one point.

Everyone's shutting down and providing information, right? What do you do? Do you still have to pay rent when you don't have revenue? Do you still have to pay your employees when you don't have revenue?

and then city by city, county, by county, things started to really change. And so no longer could we manage to accompany standard. We had to Do this. If you wear a mask in these areas, you're not allowed to wear a mask in these areas. You can only deliver. And so the next chapter, shifting gears to being an information hub, receiving information, disseminating information, trying to find what was generally true, and then understanding that could change very quickly and, being a source of information, and support for our operators and our franchisees.

Normalized generally. Then we had to get back to growing. Now it was time to market. Now it was time to tell people come in our restaurants, or we have delivery and maybe you didn't know. And so we had to shift gears to offense, right? Went from defense to offense. And sometimes people stay in defense protectionism to long and they miss the really early opportunities to get back,

people.

And so.

What chapter of this are we in and therefore, how should we behave? And trying to make a call of when it was a new chapter and when we needed to shift gears and to tell everyone, okay, I know all we were talking about was protecting cash and protecting people. Now, we're in a different place. Now we're gonna invest in growth and here's how we're going do that.

So shifting gears would've been the third part.

Mo Fathelbab: and how could you tell when it was time to switch from defense to offense, so to speak?

Kat Cole: a lot of it was very straightforward. It had to do with laws and regulations. And so when you can't legally sell, you are on defense. You are trying to protect once you can, now you need to say, great, what can we do with what they're saying is allowed so we can be open? Great, we can make food. We have access to supplies required to do it properly and safely.

We can sell it, to go, or we can sell it through delivery or we can sell it to pickup or we can sell it for eventually back to dine in. And so it was about being really close to what was permitted. So we could instantly turn it back on very quickly, which means you still have to have the labor and employees and food product, ready to go recipes for different types of foods you might need to make.

So that was it. It was just staying close to information and communicating it, and then having operating procedures for each next chapter.

Mo Fathelbab: I love it. So, Kad, it's, clear to me that you are a great leader and you've had an incredible impact on the companies, in which you've worked. What is it that makes you a great leader?

Kat Cole: the thing that has made me a successful leader at least, is, our teams, right? The quality of the teams, and there are roles in that I play. Certainly the selection of talent. Setting direction and vision, building a culture which still has to do more with the teams than me alone. and then having very clear goals, objectives, and then proper resourcing for those objectives.

but then within culture, it's just this theme of starting at the top, starting with me, but then with the incredible talent that I'm surrounded by, the teams that I lead. It's, we do the right things for the right reasons. For the employees, for the business, for our customers, and we say we only do things that are yes to all three, right?

Is it good

for the customer? Is it good for the employee? Is it good for the business and the brand? And it, has to be. Good for all three. And when it is, then that's a very clear filter on the, range of things we could do. And then we build very focused teams with clear sequenced priorities. So we know within that range of things to do what to be doing now and next and in the future, or to say no to, in order to stay focused.

Mo Fathelbab: And how did you develop those leadership skills and, maybe how might one go about developing their leadership skills if they haven't attained a level that, that you have?

Kat Cole: One is to put yourself in a position to have responsibility with people and for people that could be volunteering at a church. It could be, being the elected leader of a track team or a debate team. It could be volunteering to lead a project in your workplace. So these things can happen when you're young, midlife, or later they can happen professionally or personally.

But you have to, hold responsibility, and that doesn't happen if you just sit in your house and sit in a corner, right? You

Need to be with people and step up for them. And there are things you can learn to do offensively, proactively by volunteering and taking leadership, opportunities that give you experience.

And then you learn about yourself and you learn about leading teams and then you'll get better over time. Like everything in life, it's reps repetition. but then there are other things that shape leadership, which still have to do with. Being there with people doing things, which is how you show up during tough times and over time when you experience enough tough times, you learn your own patterns and your reputation develops around how you show up when times are tough, whether that's when you're under stress or when your team is under stress, or when the world or the company is under stress.

we've talked about a couple of pretty major moments of global distress. Global recession, a pandemic, but there's little ones, right? and maybe not so little at the given time, just not as global as the two big ones we've talked about. And you only build the ability to show up beautifully as a leader when you have gone through the trenches, which means you need to be participating actively in life and in work and in community, and.

Then pay attention to feedback. Ask for feedback, get feedback. Look at what seems to happen when you're involved with situations. And there might be a pattern, a positive one, or a negative one. And I started leading at a very young age. So it's just repetition. I was leading teams. I. When I was a teenager, I was leading, teams around the world when I was 19 and 20 opening franchises.

I became a vice president of a large company at a very young age, but I started early. And so a lot of this is reps getting yourself in position to be a part of people supporting them, raising your hand to take responsibility, following that through and then showing up with incredible integrity and character in the toughest of times.

Mo Fathelbab: So you mentioned that in these difficult times, how you show up really matters, but not all of us are aware of how we show up.

And of course you talked about feedback and some people love feedback and some people are very afraid to give it and afraid to receive it. how do you all handle that at AG1 to make sure that the feedback in fact, is an effective loop that's working?

Kat Cole: There are a few ways. One is just, it's our culture, right? Giving feedback and being, a high performer with a growth mindset, meaning I believe, I don't know everything. I always believe there's more indifferent I could learn or do. That is required. So if that is required, we interview for it, we filter for it, we coach on it.

It's a stated value. We hire for it. We give feedback on that state of being.

So you. You start with that being expected and not a surprise, and then offer training for people who might not have the skills. And then for people who are in leadership roles, make it very clear what the expectation is and receiving feedback, giving feedback, and setting a culture where feedback is common and feedback is not Some.

Big formal. I made a list and I've scheduled a meeting thing. It's real time or it's right after a meeting or it's when you see something and it's positive and it's. it's critiques and it's all the flavors of feedback. It's response, right? It's like I see I'm responding more coaching style, participation.

and so that's the big way we do it. And then of course we have formal processes and documentation and moments and meetings scheduled,

but those are

just tent poles. It's what happens in between that really determines if people get comfortable with giving and receiving feedback and. And really ideally being on a journey to continue to grow themselves as a person.

Mo Fathelbab: It's essential, an essential ingredient, right? If you want to improve and grow, that's, Without it, what happens? We stagnate. You're either going up or going down or is there a status quo? 

Kat Cole: Yeah,

that's right.

Mo Fathelbab: so as CEO of AG1, what new challenges have you encountered around organizational 

Kat Cole: Well, we are a global and fully remote company. We have never

had a headquarters. Never had a headquarters ever in 15 years. So, on one hand we have access to the best talent in the world. On the other hand, we pay a remote tax. It is harder to develop talent. You're not around each other all the time.

You have to be very intentional about meetings and feedback and perception of messaging and be an excellent communicator. so that is just. Part of what we experience at AG1. the other piece is we have had a single product sold in a single channel for 15 years and have grown beautifully with that structure, which is very rare.

And now we're stepping into a new chapter with a few additional products and a few additional channels. And so that's a lot of change for the team, and it means we've got a. Bring people on the journey of how to prioritize and setting up processes to manage multiple work streams beyond what we typically do.

But it also means I've needed to bring in different leaders who have more experience managing companies like this in order to pair it with the homegrown talent so that we build an incredible future together.

Mo Fathelbab: Thank you, Kat. One last question for you. What is one piece of advice that has shaped your work or personal life the 

Kat Cole: It's probably my pinned post on X, which is a quote, a version of a quote My mom used to write on my birthday cards, which is, don't forget where you came from, but don't you dare ever let it solely define you. And that statement is, can be applied to each of us as a person. Don't forget where you came from, but don't you dare ever let it solely define you, is about.

Our truth is in our roots, we should use our story and our pain, or our lessons or our experience as our fuel. But don't let it be an anchor. And just because you did or did do something last week doesn't mean you can't. Shouldn't start today. Just because you didn't exercise a lot last week doesn't mean you can't start today.

Just because you ate terribly last week doesn't mean you can't start anew today. Just because you let an employee get away with something you probably shouldn't have last week doesn't mean you can't address it today, right? In fact, it. Every, today is the best, next, best opportunity to do something you know you should be doing.

so this idea of constant growth, don't forget where you came from. Like our truth is in our roots, honoring what makes us special and unique and different and real as a brand, as a company, as a team, or as a person, but not letting that be the anchor that holds us back from growth and development.

Mo Fathelbab: Ah, that is beautiful. Thank you, Kat, for this wonderful conversation. You can follow people in strategy, podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Also podcast reviews have a real impact on podcast visibility. So if you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review to help others find the show. Finally, you could find all our episodes on our website at SHRM dot org slash podcasts.

Thank you for listening and have a great day.