The Modern People Leader: Forward-Thinking HR 3 Frameworks to Build a Winning People Strategy (In Your First 90 Days): Melissa Theiss (Head of People Ops, Kit)
Melissa Theiss, Head of People Ops at Kit, joined us on The Modern People Leader to break down how HR leaders can build real business acumen using practical frameworks like Track-Racehorse-Jockey, her PeopleOps maturity diagnostic, and a 90-in-90 listening tour.
We also walked through how to turn employee feedback into an actionable backlog and use it to shape a people strategy that supports the business first while staying people-centric.
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Downloadable PDF with top takeaways: https://modernpeopleleader.kit.com/episode285
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Timestamps:
(06:51) Melissa’s career path
(10:16)Melissa’s work outside Kit and her newsletter, The Business of People
(11:45) what Kit does and how MPL uses it
(14:50) “How does the business make money?”
(15:20) Track-Racehorse-Jockey and how VCs evaluate a business
(15:34) Track: market context and competitive landscape
(17:56) Racehorse: business model and revenue engine (product-led growth, pricing, AI credits)
(19:17) Jockey: leadership team signals and what to assess
(20:18) Coaching HR leaders through business jargon and discomfort
(22:59) Learning business acumen: newsletters, courses, and choosing an industry you care about
(25:21) PeopleOps maturity diagnostic and how it works
(25:44) The PeopleOps maturity score, priorities, and avoiding “too much process too early”
(29:14) Example areas: compensation philosophy, interview structure, compliance, global workforce basics
(31:13) How Melissa built the diagnostic over time
(34:05) How often to re-run the diagnostic and keep improving over quarters
(37:49) Managing feedback like a product backlog
(44:38) Listening tours and what leaders uncover that surveys miss
(48:44) The “90 and 90” listening tour structure, questions, and how to scale it past 100+ employees
(53:33) Honesty in 1:1s and the value of quieter, thoughtful feedback
(54:24) Building a cohesive people strategy from the three inputs
(55:27) Weighting trade-offs and why “people-first” can fail if the business is not healthy
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Past guests on MPL include Brené Brown, Annie Dean (VP of Team Anywhere, Atlassian), Josh Bersin, Katie Burke (Chief People Officer, Harvey), Liz Fosslien, Helen Russell (Chief People Officer, HubSpot), Dave Scott (Chief People Officer, ADT), Melanie Rossenwasser (Chief People Officer, Dropbox), Crystal Boysen (Chief People Officer, Sprout Social), and many more.