1. If you don’t know how the business makes money, start there

Melissa’s first question for any People leader is simple:

“How does your business make money?”

It sounds obvious. But it’s amazing how many HR leaders can’t describe the revenue engine, cost structure, or growth model of their company.

She uses a simple framework borrowed from VC: Track, Racehorse, Jockey.

• Track = The market. Is it growing? Fragmented? Competitive?
• Racehorse = The business model. How does the company actually generate revenue?
• Jockey = The leadership team. Are they capable of executing?

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s fluency. Because if you can’t connect People decisions to the revenue engine, you’ll always feel one step behind.

2. Business acumen isn’t about being comfortable — it’s about building reps

A lot of HR leaders carry what Stephen called “head trash” around business topics.

“I didn’t go to business school.”
“I’m not a finance person.”
“That’s not my lane.”

Melissa’s advice? Start small and build the muscle.

Read finance newsletters. Take a bite-sized course. Learn how to read a P&L. Put yourself in industries you actually care about so curiosity does some of the heavy lifting.

“Pick your battles and pick where you can make it a little bit easier.”

You don’t need to become a CFO. But you do need to understand gross margin, revenue drivers, and risk — because every People decision ultimately ties back to them.

3. Run a People Ops maturity diagnostic — and score it like a product

After understanding the business, Melissa runs what she calls a People Ops organizational maturity diagnostic.

It evaluates 13 domains — everything from compensation philosophy to compliance to talent acquisition — and produces a maturity score.

Her benchmark?

“If you’re 80% or above for your size and stage, you’re probably not slowing the business down.”

The beauty of this approach:

• It forces clarity on what “good” looks like at your stage.
• It prevents overbuilding (no 5,000-person bureaucracy for a 50-person startup).
• It gives you a data-backed way to say “no” or “yes, but.”

And she doesn’t treat it as a one-time audit. She re-runs it quarterly and ties improvement to OKRs.

Low scores go up quickly. High scores take real work. That’s the point.

4. Do a real listening tour — not a symbolic one

When Melissa joined Kit, she did “90 in 90” — meeting with 90+ team members in her first 90 days.

Not skip-level theater.
Not a survey.
Real conversations.

She asks questions like:

• Why did you join?
• What makes you stay?
• If you had a magic wand, what three things would you change?
• On a scale of 1–10, how painful is that?

And then she logs everything like product feedback.

“People are surprised at how honest team members are.”

But they’re also surprised at how thoughtful and realistic employees can be — especially the quieter ones who never speak up in large forums.

The real unlock? Closing the loop.

When something ships months later, she goes back to the original employees who raised it and tells them:

“We made this change because of your feedback.”

That’s how you build trust.

5. Stop saying “people first.” Start thinking “people-centric”

This might be her most controversial take.

Melissa argues that “people first” can actually be bad business.

“If you don’t put the business first, at the end of the day, you won’t have the people.”

She prefers the term people-centric — meaning:

• The business comes first.
• But every business decision is made with deep consideration of its impact on people.

It’s a subtle but powerful shift.

We’ve all seen overly generous benefits or unsustainable programs get rolled back during downturns. That whiplash hurts trust more than thoughtful restraint ever would.

Sometimes the most people-centered thing you can do is protect the long-term health of the business.

6. Tie it all together: weight the inputs, then choose intentionally

After:

• Understanding the business (Track, Racehorse, Jockey)
• Scoring People Ops maturity
• Running a listening tour

You’ll have more ideas than capacity.

That’s when strategy actually begins.

Melissa weighs three inputs:

1. What does the business need most right now?
2. Where is People Ops maturity lagging?
3. What are employees asking for?

In an ideal world, they’re balanced.

In reality?

“When you have to make forced trade-offs, start with what the business needs first.”

Then fit maturity improvements and employee requests into the remaining space.

It’s not always clean. It’s not always equal. But it’s intentional.

And that’s what separates reactive HR from strategic People leadership.