Fix the Work, Not Just the Worker: How to Unlock Performance — with Lisa Calicchio

The 3 Words Leaders Fear: Lisa Calicchio on Clarity, Curiosity, and Fixing Broken Work

In this post: WCG Chief Human Resources Officer Lisa Calicchio argues that work gets better when leaders fix the work itself and ask better questions, including the ones that reveal what they don't know. She explains the 24-hour rule and why she reserves the right to get smarter.

Several companies ago, Lisa Calicchio sat in an executive team meeting when the CEO asked her a question she could not answer. She said so.

"I don't know. I have to really think about this. I need to look into this. I want to understand it better, so I can give you my best thinking. I'll come back to you," she recalled telling him.

Afterward, a director who had joined the meeting as an invited guest approached her. "You just made it safe for everybody else who didn't know what the CEO was talking about," he told her. He had watched the rest of the room breathe a sigh of relief.

Calicchio, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at WCG, said she doesn't remember the awards she has won. She remembers that conversation. "I've come to appreciate that's called psychological safety," she said on Activating Greatness, the leadership podcast from Velocity Advisory Group.

Her larger argument: Work gets better when leaders ask better questions, including the ones that reveal what they don't know.

Work Is Broken, Not Just the People in It

Calicchio has spent nearly three decades in hospitality, pharmaceuticals, drug development, and life sciences, including running a $200 million business as a general manager. Her question about decades of coaching, engagement surveys, and training is blunt: If all of it worked, why do so many people still say they hate work?

She sees two causes. People expect a perfection at work they would never demand of their messy personal lives. And the work itself is broken. Employees don't mind hard work, she said. What drains them is work disconnected from outcomes: unclear or missing goals, priorities that constantly change, and decisions made several levels up that feel arbitrary or even political.

Too often, she said, HR teams and consultants help people cope with the symptoms instead of fixing the work. The questions that would fix it rarely get asked, starting with "What are we trying to achieve?" Few ask how each role contributes or which work matters most. And her favorite: "What work needs to stop?"

"People have never met a great idea that they didn't like," she said. Work has become, in her words, "too complex, too reactive, too disconnected from the impact." She has read three-page job descriptions that never answer a basic question: What do you actually produce?

Busy Is Not an Excuse

Host Alec McChesney raised the obvious objection: Leaders answering to boards and investors say they have no time to redesign work.

Calicchio rejected the premise. Fixing work is not an extra project, she said. It is a change in how you handle what already crosses your desk. Her company goals are taped to the wall behind her monitor, and she tests every request against them. If a request doesn't contribute, she raises the question with leadership. "We can't have 25 priorities," she said. "And first of all, expect to do them all, and certainly expect to do them well."

She also hands routine analysis to AI. Copilot can do a nice job "getting the 80% there," she said. "That 20% is the magic": deciding whether you agree and what the output means in your context.

Clarity also prevents conflict. Ask a senior leadership team about a goal, she said, and "you ask 5 people and you get 12 answers." Ambiguity leads people to assume things, and assumptions breed friction. Jeremy Maskel took on the same problem in leadership communication that sticks.

Your Brain Is Not on Your Side

Assumptions lead to snap judgments, and Calicchio said biology makes judgment the easy path. "Your brain is not wired to help you," she said. "Your brain is wired to protect you." Heuristics, the mental shortcuts the brain builds from patterns, often help. Sometimes they lead straight to the wrong conclusion.

Assuming noble intent therefore takes deliberate practice. First, recognize the pattern. Second, want to change it, which she called one of the hardest parts. Then pause and suspend judgment, reaction, and cynicism.

That last one is personal. In Velocity's Birds framework, Calicchio is an Owl Dove. "Us owls can be cynical," she said. With a Parrot, she said, "I'm not going to get past the second slide of my presentation." With another Owl, "I got 30 slides ready to go."

Her tool for pausing is the 24-hour rule. When something upsets her, she gives herself 24 hours "to roll around in it" while the cortisol fades. "Usually how I feel after 24 hours is how I feel," she said.

She has little patience for leaders who say, "I am who I am, deal with it." That stance signals you won't expand your perspective, she said. By her estimate, 80% to 90% of the conflicts she has handled in HR came from poor communication, a lack of clarity, or a lack of self-awareness and the willingness to act on it.

"One of my favorite sayings is, I reserve the right to get smarter."

Lisa Calicchio, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, WCG

I Reserve the Right to Get Smarter

Calicchio's favorite saying grew out of an old fear. Owls prize accuracy, and early in her career she was terrified of being called on in a meeting and having to say three dreaded words: I don't know.

About 10 years ago, she let that fear go. Now she asks colleagues to explain things to her "like I'm 5." "It has been freeing," she said. "It has changed my life."

The pressure to have every answer is oppressive, she said, and no one is expected to know everything: "The more I know about things, the more I come to realize I don't know." The moment she dreaded, someone asking how a vice president could not know something, never came. Instead, people light up when asked to explain their work. Michelle Dauphinais made a similar case for leading with curiosity.

Faking certainty is dangerous, she added, "when you're making decisions about pay or organization structures or people's livelihoods."

Her rapid-fire answers followed the same thread. The most underrated leadership skill is humility. Her daily habit is asking what business problem a request is trying to solve. And great leaders should stop believing they can save every employee. "Sometimes you just can't," she said.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "I reserve the right to get smarter" mean?

For Lisa Calicchio, Chief Human Resources Officer at WCG, the phrase gives leaders permission to change their minds and admit what they don't know. Early in her career she feared saying "I don't know" in meetings. Letting go of that fear, she said, changed her life. Leaders who insist "I am who I am" close themselves off from new perspectives.

What is the 24-hour rule for handling conflict at work?

The 24-hour rule is Lisa Calicchio's method for managing strong reactions. When something upsets her, she gives herself 24 hours before acting on it, long enough for the stress response to settle. "Usually how I feel after 24 hours is how I feel," she said. She encourages leaders to find a habit that works for them.

How can leaders create psychological safety in meetings?

Lisa Calicchio said one of the simplest ways is to admit when you don't have an answer. When she told a CEO in front of the executive team that she needed to look into a question, a director later thanked her for making it safe for everyone else to admit confusion. Asking people to explain their work signals that learning matters more than appearing certain.

Why do employees feel disconnected from their work?

According to Lisa Calicchio, the problem often lies in the work itself. Employees don't mind hard work, she said, but they are drained by unclear goals, shifting priorities, and decisions made far above them that feel arbitrary. Leaders can help by clarifying goals, showing how each role contributes, and asking which work should stop.

The Takeaway: Simple Is Not Easy

Calicchio's closing advice was a warning. "Don't confuse simple with easy," she said. Recognizing your tendencies is simple. Changing them takes discipline. "It takes work and practice, but you've all got it in you to do it."

Ask what the goal is. Stop the work that doesn't serve it. Wait a day before you react. And when you don't know, say so. Leaders who get smarter in public give everyone around them permission to do the same.

Listen to the Full Episode

Hear Lisa Calicchio's full conversation with host Alec McChesney on Activating Greatness. Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.