Why The Best People Teams Think Like Product Teams - Part 2 with Shirley Baumer Co-founder at Dream Team

Welcome back to the FNDN Series, where we continue our deep dive into startup compensation with industry leaders from across the startup world. In our conversation with Shirley Baumer, Co-Founder at Dream Team, we explore how to transform people's team by applying product-led principles in practice.

We discuss practical strategies for starting small with MVPs, implementing agile ceremonies for HR teams, and leveraging AI to free up time for strategic impact. Shirley shares actionable frameworks for running kickoff meetings, sync meetings, and retrospectives that help people teams ship faster, build credibility, and create measurable business impact. Keep watching to discover how to move from theory to practice and become a more commercial, effective people leader.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to the FNDN Series

01:56 Starting with Product Thinking: Defining Outcomes Over Solutions

02:40 Running Your First MVP: The Kickoff Meeting Framework

05:58 Formalizing What You're Already Doing: User Interviews in HR

07:32 Fine-Tuning vs. Radical Shifts in People Operations

08:44 Scaling Product Practices: Agile Ceremonies for People Teams

09:26 Three Key Rituals: Kickoff, Sync, and Closing Ceremonies

11:34 Building Credibility Through Sprint Reviews and Visibility

13:49 Normalizing Mistakes: Building Psychological Safety into Your Process

14:58 Taking Pressure Off: Iterative Approaches to Compensation and Performance

17:12 The Power of Owning Your Mistakes as a Leader

18:26 Measuring Success: Qualitative Signals Over Cookie-Cutter KPIs

22:23 Defining Impact-Driven Metrics for Each Initiative

23:10 The Night and Day Difference: Personal Experience with Product-Led HR

25:07 AI's Role in Product-Led People Teams: Automation and Data Insights

28:11 Creating Space for Strategic Work Through Operations and Product Split

29:58 The Future of AI in HR: From Hype to Practical Application

32:29 Conclusion and Wrap-Up

Connect with Shirley:https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirleyjb/ 

Visit: dreamteam.io Newsletter: https://agilehr.substack.com/ 

Company Mentioned:

Dream Team - AI-powered HR platform that automates administrative work and surfaces data-driven insights for people teams

Concepts Discussed:

• MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach for HR initiatives
• Agile ceremonies (kickoff meetings, sync meetings, retrospectives)
• Sprint reviews for people team deliverables
• Product thinking framework: outcomes over solutions
• Synthetic audiences for user research

More FNDN Episodes:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4GeBIeZOKrFxG1oiiPxmiM 

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fndn-series/id1794263484 

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