How HR & IT Can Team Up to Tackle Problems | Stanley Black & Decker | Simply Put

I started off my career in theater, and I loved how that brought people together. So what I get to do at Stanley, Black and Decker is create experiences not just for IT or my direct stakeholders, but everybody in the company. Simply Put, my job is to bring people together.

From the theater to the IT department. I'd see that musical. Welcome to Simply Put. I'm your host, Emmanuel Acho. We're here to give tricky business problems clear solutions. No jargon, no fluff, just answers straight from the experts to you. Why say declaratively composed, agile experiences with programmatic extensibility when you're really mean? Click. Create Shit. Now, business and technology, they need each other. But a lot of companies have trouble bridging the gap between IT and, well, everything else. For the next four episodes, we'll meet the team at Stanley, Black and Decker. You know them, their names are all over your garage. We'll see how they unite teams powering the success of employees and customers. First up, Steve Driggs and IT Director at Stanley, Black and Decker. He's no stranger to connecting departments and people across a large company. Then a little later, you're going to meet Ali Yadke, a senior product marketing manager at Salesforce.

Hey, that's me. I'm ready with the takeaways and hot takes on the Stanley, Black and Decker story. I've got the manual to turn all this inspiration into execution.

But first, Steve's got a great story to tell. Kick us off, Steve.

I'm Steve Driggs. I'm a director at Stanley, Black and Decker in it. I've been doing this position at Stanley for about a year, and they came to me with not a unique challenge, but something I'm very passionate about. We have hr, which is a separate function. We have it that is a separate function, and all of these divisions in between. And they said, steve, you know, we really want to see these teams come together. So I was put in a unique position to bridge the gap between HR and it, between technology and people, to create that unified experience that everybody can get behind. You need people in HR that know exactly what they're doing. It would do no good to have somebody like myself, who is technology focused, come in and talk about payroll rules. It doesn't make any sense. You also have to have the deep technical expertise in order to produce tools that allow you to achieve your goals. That inherently creates barriers and silos, and that's common across large businesses. So we decided to go back to the drawing board and say, let's bring that together and co Create. So they put me in this position and my wonderful teammates on the HR side to actually break those down. Because a lot of companies don't ask that question. What if what Salesforce allows us to do is go people first. We can show like within the Lightning app builder what it's going to look like. We can actually be innovative on the spot using common language that HR understands, that I understand and Even, even my 12 year old daughter can understand. And that's where you can really come together and innovate. Because it's not about my vision or Salesforce's vision, it's about our vision and the platform allows us to do that in common ways that we can all understand. Salesforce lets us bring everyone together so that we can build together, create together and ship apps that work.

I like what Steve's saying it hr, sales service, they're all on the same team. And take it from me, you need your linemen looking out for your quarterbacks. You gotta put everyone in a position to succeed now. On that note, Ally has my back. She's here to recap Steve's story with takeaways you can put into action. Here's our top three tips for bringing the whole team together with tech Tip number one, Put people first.

Great advice, Emmanuel. It's like Steve said, you get more innovation and better results when you make development operations understandable for people in any role. Give your team the tools to compose apps and processes declaratively and you've got a people first process. Tech like the Salesforce platform is designed to bring business and it together to ship ideas fast. Any other tips?

Tip number two, don't wait to collaborate.

Ooh, I love a good rhyme. Esteem, you know. A recent study from HBR shows that companies are three times more successful when employees collaborate across functions, business units and reporting lines. I always say that everyone can be a digital creator. They just need the right tools in every organization. Need apps, workflows and automations to be more productive and everyone has a role to play it. And your business units need to work together to design these apps to test and ensure that the solutions you're building are going to suit your business needs. Which brings us to tip number three.

Trust in your experts.

Tools like the Salesforce platform let each team member excel in their role. Whatever the skill, whichever the task, your experts can jump in and do their thing.

Thanks, Allie. Let's not give everything away just yet. We got three more episodes to show how Stanley, Black and Decker is leading the charge and how you can apply their knowledge to your organization.

Let's meet this season's players at Stanley, Black and Decker. I have the privilege of working with some fantastic people both in HR and it. Steve Mascola, director of it, is my partner in crime. He is an architecture mastermind and he has a whole team of architects that bring that technical expertise to the table. My solution, architect Lakshmi Chawla, started the same time I did. She's one of the most dedicated people I've ever met and the most technically savvy. And beyond that, her daughter and my daughter are best friends, I think pretty tight. Minh Hua is our chief talent officer. Min has a rich background in a lot of different areas. He brings innovation to the table and puts it first. Over the years, I've implemented a lot of different platforms. I've lived without Salesforce, I've lived with Salesforce and time after. Salesforce has proven itself as the platform of choice for a lot of these processes. My name is Steve Drakes and you're watching. Simply put.

Take a bow, Steve. That's our first act. Time for a quick intermission. So go ahead, click over to episode two and we'll see you there with a lot more tips and strategies.