— Alicia Henriquez, Head of People @ Liveblocks

<aside> 💡 Purpose: To share how I communicated my experience with Open Org Cohort #3 to the Liveblocks team in order to help other leaders learn more about Open Org and whether they could benefit from the program.

Context: After sharing my Open Org certification on LinkedIn, I received a number of questions about my experience.

Below, is what I shared internally with my team after I completed the 3rd OOC (and first in the USA!) in December 2023. Edited for clarity.

I’ve also added some additional feedback for those looking into Open Org at the end.

</aside>

(Sent in Slack December 2023)

Hey Team! I wanted to share how I used some of my annual Learning Stipend and what I got out of it!

Today I completed my Open People Leader certification via OpenOrg as a member of their first North America cohort.

TL;DR: I’m excited to think about how to bring more open and transparent practices in what we do internally and how we communicate with candidates externally. 🧵

What is OpenOrg

OpenOrg believes that a culture of openness and transparency enables better organizational outcomes by fostering trust internally and externally with candidates. The OpenOrg community shares resources, wins, and failures to help other organizations be more transparent.

Why I did it

Analogous to how we take the developer experience to heart in our product, the people and operations function at Liveblocks is focused on delivering a world-class teammate and candidate experience. To continue to do this I wanted to join this movement because:

  1. Alignment: An effective people strategy needs to be in lock-step and aligned with our business strategy. Similar to how we approach establishing a trusting foundation with customers and users, it’s critical we continue to do the same internally with our team and with candidates. Additionally, I felt that OpenOrg reflects our values of #empower-community, #revel-in-your-craft, #stay-pragmatic, and #take-ownership.
  2. Access: Given our globally-distributed team with most of us located outside the US, I wanted to continue to learn with and from like-minded, experienced global people leaders who are already doing this effectively (and get access to loads of resources and ideas!). I recognized a need to broaden outside my US-based networks. Open Org is UK-based with most of the community outside of the US (right now!).
  3. Metrics: As a business function, metrics and data to demonstrate impact are inherent in how we plan and execute people initiatives. OpenOrg has assessments and achievement guides in areas like hiring, flexibility, compensation, diversity to effectively backwards plan.
  4. Passion: I believe strongly in what OpenOrg is doing and that more transparency will be expected from companies in the future. I like being an early adopter 🙂

How it went

****It’s reassuring to know we’re on the right track in what we do already! I loved brainstorming, chatting with and learning from like-minded people leaders, connecting with people leaders I’ve admired from afar through intimate workshops and sessions, and being super energized for what’s to come for Liveblocks.

What’s next

Here are some things I’m planning on doing and have started working on which I’ll share in our demo days at the end of our iteration cycles:

Things I’m wondering about