Belle Walker has spent her career helping companies build and optimize their teams. Belle leverages her background as an engineer into a problem-solving approach that helps leaders assemble the right team for their organizations’ needs. She calls her approach “from friction to function.”   

Key Takeaways: 

• Staffing a company is like building a bus: You need the right vehicle with the right mix of passengers sitting in the right places.   
• Look at companies like an engineer would: Define the problem, assess the materials at hand, and figure out what obstacles and limits are part of the big picture. Then, make a plan around those facts.   
• Building a team requires honesty: You have to be truthful about what you want, what resources you have, and what you’re unwilling to change.
• Taking companies from friction to function means removing obstacles that prevent workers from doing their best work.
• A leader is a person who motivates and inspires those around them. A manager who can’t achieve that can’t succeed.
• It’s not enough to promote from within. Leaders should create opportunities for newly appointed managers to grow and learn their new roles.
• Fast-growing companies should think strategically about how to structure teams: They need to make sure middle managers have a clear sense of their role, and leaders should have a clear sense of their managers’ strengths and goals.
• The best time to bring in Belle is when the company has crossed an “invisible threshold” before it starts to sprawl and get disorganized.
• When she’s not fixing businesses, Belle enjoys running Disney half marathons. She’s excited for her 6-month-old baby to cheer her on at the next one.  

Quote of the Show (6:00):   “In a perfect world, if you could have any talents at any talent mix, what is the bus that you would design that you would build? How would you lay out those seats in a way that works best for your industry right now, for your company, right now for your product? And then you look at the individuals that you have that you really want to empower and enable.”   

 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bellekwalker/ 

Company Website: https://belleviewconsulting.com/   

 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption  

Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755  

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD  

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