Leadership Live - What CEOs Need From HR Today

And we are live. Welcome to Leadership Live. I've got a new guest, but before I get there, a couple of things that I need to mention. Today we were supposed to have two guests. Luckily, one showed up. The other one, unfortunately, Chris Treblecock is not feeling well today. So we're going to tag team a little bit here. Jason and I'll get to that in just a second. If you have not watched Leadership Live before, the whole point of this is to talk about things that matter in a way that matters specifically leadership and people, because we can't separate those two things. Definitely not one more piece of housekeeping. If you have questions, if you're watching this on social media, we're streaming live on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Zoom, on Twitter, and I think a number of other places. We can't track all of them. If you have comments, if you have questions as we go through Today's session, text me 734-837-8500. We'll use your questions. We'll use your comments as appropriate. So today's show is going to be an interesting one. We haven't covered this topic before. Jason, you and I have talked about in a second. I'm going to introduce you in a sec. But what we really wanted to get to the heart of is what do leaders? What do CEOs need from CHROs and their teams? What do CEOs need from human resources? So I thought what, what a better place to go is to get us a chief people officer. A chief HR officer. And I've got that in Jason. Jason, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks, Steve.

So I'm going to, I'm going to give everybody a little bit of sense of your bio and then we'll kind of get into some of this stuff. So chief people office service for Dawn Foods, the company you may never have heard of. However, it's in all of the candies and confection and stuff. Ingredients.

Baked goods. Baked goods.

Baked goods. I'm sorry. Baked goods. So when did you join there?

I joined there in 2014.

And you've got the global HR team and you're supporting teams across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, North America. I didn't even realize until you sent me this that you guys had as many employees as you did in as many places as you actually did.

Yep.

So you work with the board as well?

Correct.

Tell us about that piece of it.

Yeah. So Dawn Foods is family owned. It's been owned by the same family for a better part of 80 years. And it's a hundred year old company and it's owned by the Jones family, which they're based in Jackson. Right now we're in third generation leadership. I work for Kerry Barber, who's the daughter of the father of the founder. Right. So the board is comprised of primarily family members and we've got external board members as well that have served in the other chief financial officer capacities, CEO capacities, various backgrounds. So we've, we've mixed up the board in a way that both honors the family, the tradition and the legacy, as well as bringing external perspectives in as well.

Best of both worlds.

Yep.

But beyond that, you also have experience at Phillips, ge, Armstrong, World, World Industries.

Correct.

Flooring company.

Correct. Flooring and ceilings.

Yeah, yeah. East coast, originally. Jersey.

Correct.

Was that, Did I get that? Did I remember that right? You got your BA from Monmouth and masters in HR from Rutgers.

Correct. All right.

Why are you here today?

You asked me.

I did.

No, actually it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart, honestly. Because, you know, one of the things that I strive for, especially at this stage of my career, is making sure that my HR team and HR teams that I have the opportunity to influence, connect with the business in the right way. And that's, that's my main passion. Right. So.

And that's why I thought, as we were talking, I thought Jason would be a really good fit for this. Because when we think about what a CEO, what are CEOs, and I'm just going to say CEOs, but it's really all leaders. What do they need from their HR team? You can look at all kinds of surveys, you can look at all kinds of studies, and there's at least a half a dozen reports that I know came out in January. This is what HR needs to do. So let's toss all that off to the side for a second.

Yep.

From your perspective as the chief HR officer, the chief people officer sitting right now, what does your CEO need from you and your department?

Yeah. So actually I'm going to go back the way. What she needs and what the company needs actually is the same thing that my first boss needed. Came out of graduate school, as you said, Rutgers saddled with debt. You know, it's important to know because his, my first boss's words of wisdom just resonated with me. He sat me down, I really hadn't even started yet. And he said, listen, Jason, you could take all that HR stuff that you learned in college, in graduate school and just throw it out the window until.

After you just Went into debt.

In the back of my head, I'm just like, man, I could have used that knowledge three years ago. But anyway, so he said, no, you can just do you have to do three things for me, and then you can do all your HR stuff. And it's in this priority order. Know the business, know the people, and never let me get surprised.

Know the business, know the people, and never let me get surprised.

Correct.

Okay. Expound.

Yeah. So from, from a know the business perspective, understand how we make money. How does this plant, well, you're in hr.

Why the hell do you need to know how to make money?

Because whatever you do, whatever you do as an HR person, or whether you're an accountant or whether you're safety or whatever, if you don't do something that's going to help the business make money, then you're not going to have a job tomorrow. So know how we make money and then know the people within that business and not from an administrative perspective. Know them, what drives them, what's their role? What are their roles, how they fit into this puzzle. And the never let me get surprised piece might seem, you know, intuitive, but at the end of the day, you know, I view, and I would say a lot of the research would say HR's chief response. The chief HR officer's responsibility is to be the chief strategist, people strategist for the CEO to be able to look ahead and see where there's pitfalls from a people perspective that they may not see, and then also be able to impart, you know, advice to the leadership team from a people perspective, but, well, more notably from a business perspective. So don't let your leader get surprised. And those three things are exactly those things that my CEO wants from me today and wants from our function. She wants the leadership team wants the function to understand what we do and how we make money. Because if we start throwing out programs, whether they're total rewards programs, D and I programs, or anything like that, that they don't have a connection to how we make money, they're worthless.

You actually referred to this earlier. It's kind of like on one side of the coin, you have, here's my business strategy. On the other side, you have, here's the results I want to achieve. Now, you've got equipment and all the. Especially in your business and all that, but what's the thing that's getting you from this to this?

Right. It's actually even more broad than that. So, yes, you have the business strategy. I wish I had a whiteboard but you have the business strategy and then you've got, you know, your results. But before the business strategy, you've got the customer, the market. What are those dynamics that go into that business strategy? And then as you're formulating the business strategy, then have this workforce strategy. Right. So what kind of capabilities do you want, what kind of teams do you want, what kind of people do you want in your business to service the business strategy to then meet your customer demands. And then you keep going and you say, okay, then what's my HR strategy to serve as the workforce strategy? Because very commonly people will say, oh, workforce strategy is HR strategy. No, they're not. They're two separate things. Because workforce, the workforce strategy can actually be affected by and have inputs from all different functions within the business. Manufacturing, supply chain, anything. And then you've got your analytics and then you've got your results on the other end of it. So I hope I built out that frame out the frame that out a little bit more.

It's interesting the way that your original boss put that is then you can start the tactics of hr.

Right.

Because one of the, one of the questions was, you know, around hr has all of this expertise very aligned to hr. But you just answered kind of the second piece is the leaders want the business acumen before the individualized. Here's what we do within hr.

Correct.

How often does some of the more specific disciplines within HR come into play when you're having a conversation with your CEO?

They actually come into play quite a bit because even though we're having broad conversations around business and just yesterday I was talking to my CFO on the ride home from work on the phone and we were talking about all these different levers from a financial perspective to then look at our total rewards. Yeah, you know, our total rewards plans and how we, you know, you know, position them in a different way, possibly in the future to affect more, more results. So I'm talking to her during that time, I'm talking to her about total rewards programs, LTIP programs, short term incentive programs, merit programs, performance measures, how do we tie performance to other financial results? So within that conversation we're talking about three or four different functionalities within HR.

In support of it.

Right. And so but it's got to be a, it's got to be a very fluid conversation because it can't be a one, it can't be a one size fits all conversation or a one trick pony conversation for sure. Because that's the death knell of HR or any function for that matter, whether it's accounting, whether it's hr, purchasing, what have you, marketing, if it's not tied to some financial lever from the business, then it doesn't enact change within the company.

Since you bring that up and it's kind of out of order. I know we had some of these questions that the audience submitted to us beforehand. But again, if you have a comment, if you have a question you want to ask Jason in particular, text me. My phone's here, 734-837-8500. But from a kind of what's next from an HR perspective, in what you're describing in terms of understanding the business, do you believe most HR leaders have that purview? And I know this is subjective. I completely get. I'm just curious as a sitting cpo, what, what, what do you, what do you think?

I think that it's a, it's a mixed bag, you know, because I think it depends on several things. One, it depends on where were you educated. And that could be either school or were you educated in a business? For example, I worked. I was educated in a university that was well known from an HR practices perspective. But within that I had a professor. I had three or four professors that I will take knowledge from them until I'm done with my career. I had a guy who was the former president of Electrical Workers Union in New Jersey. I had someone who was a chief HR officer that retired, and I had somebody who used to work for Jack Welch who designed the workout process as professors. Right. So the knowledge they imparted in me was all practical based. It wasn't based in theory, it was practical based. There's nothing wrong with theory as long as it's based in some practical application.

And you know how to apply it.

You know how to apply it and you see how it's applied. But then I was educated also by my first boss. And then what the expectations were there out. All the companies I worked for had powerful HR houses. They were known as, and they were respected as powerful HR partners. Or partner, I don't like that word because it's like you're a business colleague, right? You're part of the business. I'm not your partner, I'm your associate. I'm your colleague. I work with you. Right?

That's interesting because just going off subject for a second, the HR business partner title is kind of new in the last five, six, seven, eight years, right?

I think it's because they're, I think. And again, this is one thing that a lot of Finance is the same thing. Finance has the moniker financial partner as opposed to just I am your colleague. How many times do you have the president of a business unit being called the partner to the CEO?

Yeah. Never. Yeah.

You don't. Right. Chief marketing officer. How many times you hear chief marketing officer or the marketing person call it as the marketing partner? Never, because they're looked at as direct levers of the business. And sometimes other functions, if they don't demonstrate that acumen or don't demonstrate that ability to pull levers for the business, sometimes they try to have a title to get them in the door, which is fine.

Yeah.

But then once you get there, you got to deliver. Right. So I know we're off topic there.

Yeah. So going back, so the first one was the education, the practical education, and in particular the three professors that you had.

Yeah. So. And again, I think, I think HR folks, globally, it's a mixed bag in terms of who's ready for that, where HR should be or where they can be. But I would say that Covid and the pandemic and all the stuff that's happened in the last couple years provided an opportunity for HR professionals and HR leaders to show their moxie at the table because they were pulled on for very specific things that HR is really, really good at. Right. Or they should be good at in terms of taking care of the organization. Right. And safety and health and well being and so on and so forth. And all the different things that you. That we should have been delivering in terms of reward programs, benefit programs, et cetera, et cetera that are taking care of our employees. And I'm not saying taking care of from a motherly or fatherly perspective, but it's like this is the opportunity that you have to then get into it. Right. So I think now we're in a very good position as a function to deliver as long as we don't lose sight of the fact that we have to understand how the business now operates. Because now been through the pandemic, been through a lot of other upheaval. Right. But now we've got inflation, you've got the future looking forward from a business perspective and all the kind of headwinds that are there now, you've got to understand really the business. So now it's putting all the stuff from the last couple years and all the stuff in the future and then slamming it together to deliver for the business.

And business continues to change. I mean, even think about simple things like the new chat AI stuff.

Yep.

I mean, how is that we don't know it's brand new. We don't know the GPT stuff. So that's, that's absolutely brand new.

But I think that's exciting though because that provides an opportunity for HR to now and also, I mean, finance hr. If you look at different things that some of the service functions within the business are asked to do, some of them are repetitive, some of them are administrative. You can use technology to unburden the function from doing that and then they can now show value in other areas.

Create efficiencies, give them the time back. As long as you use that time in the right way for the right.

Reasons, you don't create other administrative duty or administrative tasks to supplant the stuff that just got replaced. But now you have to deliver for the business and what the business wants looking forward.

So let me keep going along the lines in terms of the importance of hr, where HR should be focusing. You gave us your answer around, hey, understand the business. We've got to figure out a way to help drive profitability because let's face it, without profit, whether you're a for profit or nonprofit is a misnomer.

You don't make money, you're screwed either.

Way, it doesn't really matter. But every year Gartner does their, their, you know, top priorities for CHROs, for CEOs and so on. And this was their top priorities list for 2023 for CPO CHRO's. And at the top of the list was manager and leader effectiveness. They said that was the number one priority for hr.

I'd say it's a priority. I wouldn't say it's the top priority because again, I understand that perspective. I would also look at the Korn Ferry research that's been done where chros as the CEO's chief strategist or partner, again, I don't like using that word, but there's so many different things that go into what HR's priority is. But using that example specifically, I think it's a very, it's a top priority for us as a company as well. Because if you look at what goes into manager, leader effectiveness and then what the outflows of that are. So if I get in, I go back to my spectrum, we talk about the market, talk about the business strategy. This is where you get into the workforce strategy. What type of people do you want in your organization?

What type of, because of what you're.

Trying to achieve, what type of capabilities do you want to, well, who's going to lead those capabilities? Managers, leaders, and so on and so forth. And they have to do it in a very effective way. Why? Because if they're not effective, then the people that they're leading then can't deliver for the customer or their ability to deliver for the customer is hampered because their leaders aren't effective enough. Right. So then you have to start putting those tools again. If you think about workforce strategy, HR strategy, now you have to say, okay, what are the learn. Because there are a couple questions about learning. Learning and development.

Yeah, there is.

And training. What are the different things that you're going to put in place to enhance that effectiveness that then ultimately impact the customer and put people in the right place? Because also in the world that we live in right now, and probably, I mean, it's changed forever and for always. I mean, I don't think it's ever going to go back to any semblance of what it was in 2019 or earlier, but because I think honestly, it exposed some innate problems in our organizations where leaders could kind of get away with not being effective. Right. Because there was an ample amount of supply of people or a more ample amount of supply of people out there to then replace positions if people left. Now, people are gold, platinum.

The market's still tight.

And platinum, whatever you want to call it, I mean, very, very valuable. So the only way you get to keep those valuable assets, and I don't want to call people assets because they're not. Because they're delivering for the customer. Because the only way you get to keep those people, so the customer is now unhappy, is by having effective leaders, you know, managing or leading those folks. And therefore your business then remains stable if you have those levers in place.

Go back to one comment, though. You just said, you said assets, and you said you don't like that term, assets. Tell me why you don't like that term assets. I think it's relevant to the way we treat our people, to the way HR engages with people, to the way the businesses engage with people. Why do you say that?

Because assets implies, again, this is more my opinion than anything. It's an asset is not. It's more of like a hard. And people aren't that. I mean, people are valuable to the company. Yeah, but if we look at them as assets as opposed to people and valuable people. Right. That we treat them differently. Because assets can be replaced. People can't be replaced as easy as they used to be. No, especially when you talk about knowledge, especially in our business, you know, we've got several different functions within our business that are extremely valuable. We call them our frontline workers. I mean, you wouldn't think that an organization would put so much emphasis on that. But our front line, our drivers, our CDL drivers. Not because they're hard to replace. Right. Because we have actually pretty low turnover for CDL drivers. Our turnover is in the 20% range, whereas the industry is like 90% and higher. Yeah. So it's like. But our CDL drivers are the first people that our bakers see in the morning, 4 o' clock in the morning, 3 o' clock in the morning. And I've driven on these routes with these drivers. They look at those folks as the front line to them on getting us feedback on how our product is performing or not performing, you know, as well as the sales rep, as well as other levers. But that asks that that driver, yes, could be viewed as an asset, but they're a person, they provide value, and it's their value that they deliver the customer that we want to treasure and hold on to.

The reason I asked that is a CEO. You did. You did. And the reason I asked that is the CEO last week, it's related to this, but he was talking about having a conversation with his chro and talking about their team members are all assets. And I cautioned them down that. And I said, well, what happens with an asset that you don't invest in? I don't do anything with cleanness. Eventually it depreciates. It's a piece of garbage.

Right, Right.

So I agree with you. I think we've got to look at our people and. And one of the mistakes that we often make by mistake is that we do look at our people as an asset.

Right.

And it depreciates instead of looking at it as a constant investment. And it was related to what. What he was asking his chro to do for that particular business. And as I dug deeper and dug deeper, there was a bigger disconnect between what HR was supposed to be doing in terms of driving the business profitability, all the stuff that you're talking about, and it was really viewed in the moniker of it's just all the stuff you do for our people without tying it back to the business. So there was already a disconnect across the entire thing. So I was just curious to what your opinion is on that. So if the original question was, is this one of the primary functions of what HR needs to focus on in 2023 is leadership and development and so on, whatever you want to call it, and the importance of that in driving the business. You said that very, very eloquently. So what do we do about it, though? Because there is a gap. There's no question in every organization across the country, and I believe across the world there is a gap. What should HR be doing about that gap?

I think what HR should be doing, one, it's not just what HR should be doing, it's what the organization should be doing. Because I think if you focus on. And this is one of those. It's one of those paradoxes, right? So HR traditionally in traditional senses is looked at as the function to go do these things. Right? But if we view, if the CEO or the organization views HR as the one that does these things, they're going to fail because it's what the organization needs to do to make these things happen. Now, what HR can do to help that along is provide the right tools, advice, coaching, you know, the levers that the organization can use to increase effectiveness of leaders.

So I can't just call you as my chro and say, go do that, Jason. Figure out a way to train all of our people to be better leaders.

Well, you can call me. I'm going to then correspondingly talk to you about that and say, I hear you. What ultimately is our end goal? Because I can put together the best training program for leaders known to man. But if it's not tied or if it's not endorsed by or led by the organization leaders, then people aren't going to believe it. They're gonna look at it as an HR thing, not a business thing.

But you've got an L&D department that is supposed to be doing that, don't you?

Right. But when you with an L&D department, if they put on a training program that, for example, is not kicked off by the CEO or the chief or the chief of that department or the.

Business or whatever cfo, whatever it might be.

Whatever it might be, it doesn't have as much punch, it doesn't have as much value. People look at it as a check the box thing as opposed to this is an important thing. Right.

So if you have another thing HR just wants me to do, well, you.

Should do that because all leaders are HR people.

I would agree with that.

Every person that's a leader should have an HR mentality in the traditional sense.

Say that again. Right into the camera. Say that again.

All leaders, all leaders should have an HR capability within their brain. Right? Because you lead people and I'm not going to be there for every interaction. You're going to have with people. One, you don't want that, because if you do, then there's an issue. Because then why do I need you as a leader? I might as well lead your people. But that's the power. When you're leading your people. From a point of view of a traditional HR person where I'm taking care of their performance, I'm taking care of their well being, I'm taking care of all that stuff. That person is so committed to you, they're never gonna leave you because they believe in you. Yeah, right. Because that's the power of. I mean, people want to believe in their leaders, they want to believe in hr. I mean, where's the power in that.

Unless you're in hr, Right.

I mean, I want my people that I lead. I want my people that I lead to believe in me and to like to buy into what I'm. To buy into what? Buy into me. But then all of us have to buy into what the CEO wants or what the business, my department leader wants.

Or whatever the case may be.

Right? Because if we can't follow them and all I'm following is my functional leader, but my other leaders aren't really leading the company, then I'm following the function. I'm not following the business.

So get even more practical then. I mean, I get the, hey, if you're doing this for the Chief Marketing Officer's organization, they start it off. But okay, that's one thing. Get more. Continue with that practicality to make an L and D because of that gap that's there to make L and D much more effective. What happens after that? So the CMO goes up, she opens up the event L and D. You create this great program. But now what?

Well, now you've got. Again, I'll go back to something we just recently did. So we launched leadership behaviors within our company and you could very, very easily say, okay, HR launched leadership behaviors. Well, it's an HR program. Yeah, right.

What's the point?

What's the ROI and where's it connected? But when you have the CEO, the cfo, the business unit president, all the business unit presidents talking about all the different leadership behaviors within their strategy of how they're going to drive their business to the next level, then it becomes more connected to what they're supposed to do. Then again, to facilitate that conversation, our. We call it People and Culture Department. Not Learning and Development, but our People and Culture department put on a fantastic program where they facilitated different work groups to talk about our leadership behaviors and what we're Looking to drive in the business. And it was facilitated by both people and culture folks, HR folks and the non HR folks. And they were all collaborating together. Cross functionally, actually cross functionally, cross country, cross geography. And they were talking about how they're going to then apply these leadership behaviors in their business situations. They have back in their function and they talked about it and they committed to it. Right. But the only reason why I was successful is because the CEO was talking about it. I was talking about it. The leadership team was talking about it as part of their broader strategy because.

They understood the impact of what it was going to mean for them if they did it and mean for them if they did.

Going back to the leadership effectiveness, if we have behaviors that are. We have leaders that are behaving in the right way. Not right way from a compliance perspective. I know our attorney's not here. He would talk more about compliance for sure. But if they're behaving in the right way to drive the business to lead people that are going to affect our customers, then we have much better. We'll have much better results.

We should have had Chris call in because I got texted on this and it was actually one of the things here as well. I'm just going to bring it up since you mentioned him not having attorney, but I'd like to get your perspective on it because it ties into some of this because there's this. There's somewhat of a pervasive view and I think a lot of it's because of the way that too many HR leaders don't look at their role and the business.

Right.

That it's HR becomes more of a cover your ass. Sorry, but a cover your ass kind of situation.

Jersey. Yeah, I figured you'd be okay with that.

I don't want to be too offensive, but. But it's, it's in many organization it has kind of that. Now there's something to be said about the importance of that piece and Chris would weigh into that. But I know we're kind of going up, we're veering off again. But it's one of the questions that kept coming up is what's the role in kind of keeping the company out of trouble and does that translate to profitability and other stuff? I think I know the answer.

Yeah. I mean, to say that it doesn't tie to profitability would be a misnomer because I mean if you look at all the class action lawsuits and all the payouts and other things like that, it affects the bottom line. But the way I view the compliance nature or the inherent nature of our roles from a compliance perspective. I view those as table stakes. Those are requirements.

Those are the basics.

Those are the basics. You got to be able to do that to be able to do anything else. Right. Because if you, if you can't pay people on time, if you don't have benefits that work, if you don't, if you're in non compliance with the law, if you're in trouble with the government, if you just layer it on out one, you're not going to be able to do business.

Yeah.

But. So you've got to be able to do those things. Right. And that's where, that's where HR leaders, I would say, don't use that as your main lever in the business. That is a lever that you have in the business. That. But it's something that is a, it's an entry point.

It's like my cost of entry to get into the.

It's like ethics.

Yeah.

Right. I mean, you got to be ethical. You got to, you got to tell the, you got to tell the truth. You got to be, I mean, you got. As a leader. Right. So you have to be someone that someone believes in and trusts as a leader. If you're not that, then you can't be a leader.

True. So let's go back to the original because again, somebody text about this and it's actually the next question that somebody had originally sent over to us. Your position, and I'm paraphrasing here, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, is HR is a catalyst for the business, can definitely affect profitability, needs to understand how the business makes money in order to support the business the right way. If that's the case, what's the scorecard that an HR department should have to know if there's an ROI from the money that Don is spending on you and your team, that GE is spending on their teams, what should HR be measured against?

Yeah, again, this is where I will, I will, I will thank everybody that I've, I've worked for and with in my past because I've been blessed to work for some great HR leaders and I've worked for some great HR houses that I learned this in these businesses and from these leaders. But how HR should be measured, I mean, every program you develop or every initiative that you have should have some semblance of return from an ROI perspective or affecting the business in some way. I'll give an example here in a second. I mean, just recently my team and I We developed our HR strategy. I said, every objective that we have has got to get tied to oi sales or some semblance of business. It's got to be tied back there and it can't take four or five different steps to get there. It's got to be like one or.

Two pretty clearly aligned to.

It's got to be very clearly aligned.

Revenue. This is how we do it. Sales. This is how we do it.

So I'll give you an example. So what are the. One of the questions was talking about HR outsourcing or outsourcing portions of hr. We did that three or four years ago. We outsourced our recruiting function at the time. It made business sense when it happened. The ROI was there in terms of cutting the headcount, outsourcing it, outsourcing it, stopping using third parties, et cetera, et cetera. So we partnered with somebody and then over the years it just became, it became too cumbersome. It was slow and the business was not happy with it. And then very recently, within the last year and a half, it was really affecting our ability to do business.

But I kept keeping it outsourced by.

Keeping it outsourced because we couldn't fill jobs fast enough and we couldn't find the right people. So it was one of the best conversations I ever had with a financial leader. You know, we were talking about, okay, we could frame up, we could bring it back inside. Here's what that's going to cost, you know, x hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then that's what we're going to need to bring it back inside. Because we're paying this for our, you know, this and this, this costs more than this.

Sure.

But the finance person and I were talking about it. He goes, yes. However, because we can't fill our lines because we can't fill jobs on our lines, our lines are not producing enough product, therefore we can't sell product. Therefore on our lines. Our lines are not producing enough product, therefore we can't sell product, therefore, we've walked away from millions of dollars. I'll spend $400,000 on your recruiting department to make 5, 10 million. And that's what we did. And it was also, it was beyond just that. It was also looking at third party freight for, for driver positions that were left unfilled. We've walked away from millions of dollars. I'll spend $400,000 on your recruiting part of a million for other positions that were left unfilled. They all have a cost because you. Then we start to Deliver our product. So then you have to go third party freight instead of having internal, internal.

Triple the cost for third party freight.

Sometimes triple, quadruple. I mean, especially in the last two years. Right. So that, that, that insourcing and that model paid for itself like that. And that's one to make 5, 10 million. And that's what we did. And it was also, it was beyond just that. It was also looking at third party freight for driver positions that were left unfilled. Example of how you gotta use a financial, a financial model to justify what you just invested.

Yeah, and that's. You showed you can show some level of roi. Now that sounds like your financial colleague was a bit more progressive than maybe some others who are always looking at just the cost, not the opportunity cost. If you're talking to one of your counterparts as a chro who's dealing with that now. Any advice on how they should approach that financial person?

I would actually, I mean, and I actually gave this very advice to somebody not too long ago, one of my peers at another company and they were struggling with how to do just that. I said, well, spend time with your finance person. Spend time for other positions that were left unfilled. They all have a cost because you. Then we still have to deliver our product. So then you have with your, with your business colleagues, you know, spend time with them, understand the business that way. You're talking their talk, you're not talking your talk. Right. Because if you're talking your talk, they don't want to hear that.

HR talk.

Yeah, HR talk. But finance gets in the same predicament.

Yeah, they do.

They have finance talk. Or they've got.

We get marketing talk.

Yeah, I was gonna say marketing talk. Marketing talk's got their talk. But you gotta be able to break it down not because you wanna be simplistic, but because in your head you're talking about all these different things. You have all these different acronyms and the people that are around you. Even my CEO, she's like, stop talking HR talk sometimes. Cause I'll just. She'll say that to you sometimes, right? Not often, but sometimes I'll start to go third party freight. Instead of having internal, internal, triple the cost for third party using acronyms. And in her mind it means something else. But break it down simply. And that's the only way you can affect the business is by talking their talk and doing it in a way that's meaningful to them. And that's the same if you're negotiating a contract. If you're triple, quadruple I mean, especially in the last two years. So that insourcing and that model paid for itself like that. And that's one thing. You have to look at it from the other person's point of view and talk what they're thinking as opposed to.

What you're thinking to show that you understand the circumstances that they're actually in.

Right. And that's beyond business. That's just natural human connection.

But is that taught to HR professionals?

It's not taught enough. I mean, again, was it taught in my class, in my school, in my programs? No, I learned it literally from my first boss. I mean, he cracked me over the head so early and so quickly that I never forgot it. Right. So an example of how you gotta use a financial, a financial model to justify what you just, it's just a second nature to me to not talk that talk, you know, one, because I don't, I don't use a lot of words. I'm going to be done with my words at the end of this interview for the whole day. For the whole day. But I mean, from my perspective, it's about show me results and show me a dashboard, you know, and show me how we're going to get measured. And not in the traditional measures like, you know, you know, what is your, what's your turnover? What's your headcount? Because if HR folks are looked at as headcount jockeys, they're not being value added because the business is only turning to them when they have an issue with headcount or when they have an issue with something like that.

So aside from, I mean, your first example of being able to insource it even though it costs more because the immediate cost was vested. Yeah. And that's, you showed, you show some level of roi. Now that sounds like you're greater, but the longer term cost that was happening of not being able to serve, that's a good kind of financial colleague was a bit more progressive than maybe some others who are always looking at just the cost, not the opportunity cost. If you're talking to one program dashboard piece and if you can't share some of the other things that you measure kind of on your dashboard. I understand that, but are there, are there other couple of like larger things that you still look at to report to the CEO because it's really important that you can share.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think. And I'll use a couple basic examples and they might sound basic, but they're not. So like engagement surveys, you know, very typically in a lot of times engagement surveys, they provide a data point. Right. Making sure that that data point, that should be on every HR person's dashboard. That doesn't mean I'm accountable for the score. The business is accountable for the score.

I'm accountable to gather your counterparts as a chro who's dealing with that now. Any advice on how they're doing that?

I'm also accountable for my function score. Right. How are my people within hr? Right.

Yeah.

So. But I'm responsible for delivering the mechanism that we can measure engagement in our business. But making sure what goes into that score is value added. And what I mean by value added, is that engagement survey active or passive?

Meaning, tell me more.

Are the questions that we're asking, are they? Are they. How do you feel? I would classify them as more passive.

Okay.

Versus what. How do you. How do you feel about the business strategy moving forward? That's more of an active thought, very specific. Right. Because whatever you're measuring, they should approach that financial person. I would actually, I mean, and I actually gave this very advice to somebody not too long ago, one of my peers at another company, and they were struggling with. Through these surveys or through other mechanisms, you want to make sure that it's tied to where you want to go as a business. Another, another very. Another very simple how to do just that. I said, well, spend time with your finance person. Spend time active. Question is, would I refer a friend to XYZ company?

It's like the typical NPS question.

Exactly. And what's that rating? And there's quite a few of those, quite a few of those questions that are out there. And all the big engagement survey houses do that. But it's about how you structure those surveys to be more active or passive. And are they tied to what your main objectives are as a business? Because for us, we're going through somewhat of a digital transformation with how we deliver from an E commerce perspective in our North America business. We want to make sure people are tied into what that, what with your. With your business colleagues, you know, spend time with them. Understand the behaviors are that we're looking for, for our workforce moving forward tied to E Commerce.

Go back to something you said, though, which I think is fascinating, is you're responsible. HR was responsible for the mechanism to measure the engagement, but not the engagement score.

Correct.

In my perspective, it seems like HR does measure and then HR is the one responsible for saying, so we're going to do these four things in order to make it happen. Do you agree with that or do you think it's broader than that.

It's broader than that. Because if I'm coming up with the priorities just based on the score, that way you're talking their talk, you're not talking your talk. Right. Because if you're talking your talk, they don't want to hear that.

HR talk.

Yeah, HR talk. But finance gets in this. Again, it's me coming up with the priorities based on the score. The power of an engagement survey is for you as a leader is you get the score, then I provide the tools by which then we're going to dive deep into that score together through same predicament. Yeah, they do. They have finance talk or they've got.

We get marketing talk.

Yeah. As a various things. Whether it's skip levels or other data analysis or other cuts of data that we can provide and da, da, da, da. And then come up with an action plan that's not like 50 actions. That's the other thing. Like, you know, engagement surveys sometimes result in like 50 to 60 actions globally. Do three, do them well. Do one. Right. Because typically one thing will affect so much other stuff. Because we sometimes get caught up in. In the sexiness of all these lists that we can have. Right. And all these priorities that we have. I'd rather have four or five things that we do really, really well as opposed to marking. Talk's got their talk. But you gotta be able to break it down those to 50 things that we don't do at all.

Do you think some of that's justification?

Sometimes, yeah. And that's a confidence thing, right? It's a. And that's more psychological.

Right.

So that's a. I mean, we can go on. We can go on tangents about that. I don't think either of us are qualified to talk about. We might want to be a psychologist.

I'm not a PhD.

Yes, you might want to get a PhD next time. But it goes to confidence too. How do you get justification as a person or a leader? Do you get justification through lists and see everything that I'm doing? Or do you get justification or you get validation through not because you want to be simplistic, but because in your head you're talking about all these different things. You have all these different acronyms and the people that are around you. Even my CEO, she's like, stop talking HR talk. Here's how I've effected change. Right? Here's how I've affected change. And it's been through these three or.

Four things that we're really good at.

That we're really, really good at. Right. And that's what we. I mean, my mantra when I took this role within the company was that I'm not going to do 50 things, I'm not going to do 10, I'm going to do five. And we're going to do them really sometimes, like, because I'll just. She'll say that to you sometimes, right? Not, not often, but sometimes, like I'll start really well. And once we're done with those five, we're going to start playing the next five because these five now layer on top of that five, because those five are done. Now we're going to do more and more and more and more. And you know what? We come to where we are now, where we're being recognized by our industry as a leader in some of these things. That to somebody who's part of a Google or more progressive type company, you might say that's basic. But you know what, it's what affects change in our industry.

In your business, Your industry.

Right. I'm not going to do all these other fancy things. I'm going to do what works here. Do that. Awesome. And then do the next five things. Awesome. And it might take more time, but using acronyms and in her mind it means something else. And. But you know, break it down. That's what means something to our business. That's what means something to our industry. It's not something that just is the next thing that I'm reading in HR.

Executive magazine and there's some good stuff in HR Executive Magazine.

Oh, there's great stuff. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like. But that's not my goal.

No, I get that.

My goal is to deliver like our customers are bakers. Our bakers provide sweet baked goods to their customers. We're not making, you know, we're not making like innovative AI technology devices. We are making sweet baked goods simply. Right. And that's the only way you can affect the business is by talking their talk and doing it in a way so that people can eat donuts and be happy all over the world. All over the world. So it's not rocket science, but I mean, but again, if you start to go through all the technology again, I wish I had my chief product officer with me. I mean, he talked about the technology all day long and have my head spinning. But ultimately it's making and actually that's meaningful to them. And that's the same if you're negotiating a contract. If you're negotiating. When we're talking about how HR Affects it. Our products are very similar to how HR should function, but we're making it simpler for our bakers to operate. Right. So when we provide mixes to our baker, if it's complicated for them to mix that product for their customer, especially in today's world where they can't get labor.

Yeah, it takes too much.

It takes too much and they don't want to do it. So we got to make it simpler, easier for them as we do as well. From an HR perspective, I got to make it simpler for you as a CEO to operate. I gotta make sure everything's moving around you in a way. You have to look at it from the other person's point of view and talk with their thinking way that it's simpler for you to deal with the broader things. Right. So I'm here to clear the way.

So let's get a little more tactical because again, some of these things that keep coming up from an HR perspective and it's a business two issue. I mean, let's think about what's going on right now with inflation, that HR's got to deal with salaries as opposed.

To what you're thinking to show that.

You understand the circumstances that they're actually in.

Right. The business has to deal with the business.

And I appreciate the fact that that's the way you're looking at it. Right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back and say HR has to deal.

With it and that's beyond business. That's just natural human connection.

But is that taught? But I agree with you. So HR's got to deal with, with the compensation increases. Inflation's going up now. There's this balance of, okay, our costs are going up now on average to HR professionals.

It's not taught enough.

Okay.

I mean, again, was it anything?

We still got to maintain and retain our people, so we're gonna have to pay more salaries and it's up to HR to figure out the problem here. I know that's not the case. I'm just saying that that's often the way it's presented both from a, from some HR leaders perspective that provided this to me and you read a couple of the CEO comments that kind of beat it around that bush a little bit too. How do you look at that current situation right now from a CPO's perspective and say, here's how we're going to deal with it at company A.

Right. So what we're going to do from our perspective is provide the data and tools taught in my Class and in my school, in my programs. No. I learned that we can collaborate with the business on to make sure our workforce that literally from my first boss, I mean he cracked me over the head so early and so quickly that I never forgot it. Right. So is adequately staffed, adequately rewarded and is feeling like they belong with Dawn? Because at any company, whether it's dawn or somewhere else, they want to feel like they belong and they contribute and they're sharing. It's just a second nature to me to not talk that talk. One bringing in the success. So you have to develop these tools that will reward people in that fashion. But again, keeping about long term viability of the company. You also don't want to overinflate wages and other things. No.

How do you operate?

Yeah, you can't operate that way. So it's providing this balance of things that don't add to the long term cost to the business. Because like when you do like a merit increase, for example, if you do a merit increase of 4, because I don't use a lot of words, I'm going to be done with my words at the end of this interview for the whole day. For the whole day. 4% versus your traditional 3, you're adding 1% more to the base cost that you're gonna pay forever for that employee.

Yeah, for sure.

So look at different levers. What are the things that people are more interested in? Right. Is it actually money or is there other things that we can provide from a total rewards perspective that can affect that person's ability to feel comfortable where they're at and working relationships and home, you know, working from home. But I mean from my perspective, it's about show me results and show me a dashboard board, you know, and show me how we're going to get measured. Not in the traditional measures like, you know, you know, what's your turnover, what's your head count? Because if HR folks are looked at as headcount jockeys, they're not being value added, you know, because the business is only turning to them when they have an issue with headcount or when they have an issue with something like that.

So aside from, I mean your first example of being able to insource it even though it costs more because the.

Immediate cost was home, remote work, blending that together, you know, this is where like if you start forcing people to come back to the office, I know that's, that's a whole other topic for a whole nother session.

That's not today.

We've talked.

We're going to do that again, but not today.

I mean that adds to that person's consumption of inflationary cost. Right. So then you have to compensate that person for that. And is that through base salary? Is it through other things that you can do or do you just say, you know what, you can work remote and just come in periodically. That way you're not consuming the, you're not consuming inflationary costs because we're requiring it to do that. Yeah. Now from a frontline perspective, it's what are you doing for me right now? Right. Because they have to consume that inflation. They do cost.

They do.

So we focus our wage programs and how we do things. You know, we try to increase our base wages of our frontline workers, you know, competitively within the market, especially in those areas that are, you know, differentiable for us, like I said drivers is greater.

But the longer term cost that was happening of not being able to serve, that's a good kind of.

And all the other folks, and all the other folks, we try to again look at, you know, competitive wage increases and competitive wages and make some other adjustments, you know, like one off bonuses, spot bonuses, things like that, or other rewards programs that might help offset the, the cost of fitness, childcare, stuff like that. So we're looking at other mechanisms too. It's the total. You gotta look at it as a total rewards package as opposed to a very linear thing. Pay people more money and they'll stay.

And they'll stay program dashboard piece. And if you can't share some of the other things that you measure.

No, it's got provide people more support from a total rewards perspective, then go from there.

Do you see that even at some of those low. I'm not, I don't mean this in a negative kind of on your dashboard, I understand that. But are there other couple of like larger things that you still look at to report to the CEO because it's really important or that you can share. But those lower level frontline workers that under a certain dollar amount. Do you still.

Yeah, I think. And I'll use a couple basic examples like. And they might sound basic, see them.

As looking, being open to total rewards.

Versus just salary as long as those base. As long as those baseline wages are kind of equal.

Okay.

Like if I'm, if I'm in, if I'm in Jackson, Michigan or if I'm in Louisville, Kentucky or if I'm in wherever I might be, if I'm making like 19 bucks an hour and down the road I can make 20 bucks an hour, that doesn't work.

You're not competitive.

So we have to make sure our market intelligence is accurate in terms of how we adjust wages. And then after that, once that baseline is hit, then all this other stuff tick. But they're not. So like engagement surveys very typically comes into play.

You started your answer again with kind of the same thing of we're going to provide the data and we're going to provide the tools. I mean that seems to be a big part of your mantra of we're going to tell you where we're at.

We'Re going to make recommendations, you're going to make recommendations.

But it's ultimately up to the business. So let's just say the business says, I'm sorry Jason and team, it's great, but we can't afford anymore. Now what do you do?

Yeah, I'm going to go back to that other example. So where. And not only did we make this example, not only did we use this financial model for that recruiting example, we also used it for wages. Right. So we had finance in a lot of times, engagement surveys, they provide a data point, right. Making sure that that data point that should be on your data on every HR person's dashboard. There are folks over the years that have said, you know, I can't increase wages by X percent because it cost me $500,000. Whatever.

I mean, across all those people, across.

All doesn't mean I'm accountable for the score. The business is accountable for the score. I'm accountable to gather the annual cost is annual cost. Okay, here you, here's where we are in the market. You know, I mean I'm just using this as an example. We're at the 50th percentile. The market, the market for us to get, to get this more competitive or the higher level worker is more in the 70th percentile. Right. So we need to do something to increase our wages. I can't afford it. Okay, now we use the financial model. Okay. How much business are you walking away from? Because we can't staff those lines because that'll offset that cost. Again like that.

But isn't that hypothetical?

It's not hypothetical, it's real.

Okay.

I'm also accountable for my function score. Right. How are my people within hr? Right.

Yeah.

Because when you have, when you, when production says, when supply chain says I can't fulfill that order because I can't, I don't have my line staffed and oh, but I'm responsible for delivering the mechanism that we can measure engagement in our, in our business and that that order is $2 million. And all you have to do is increase those wages just a little bit to get those lines staffed. Then I can get that. But making sure what goes into that score is value added. And what I mean by value added, I can get that business, I can get that business, I can get that business. All that stuff then paid for itself.

You're going back to assuming that they actually know how the business operates and how the business makes money.

That's why.

That's why you started with that. That's why I started with that, yeah. I think that's incredibly important to understand because I think.

Is that engagement survey active or passive?

Meaning you can tie most things, not all, but you can tie most HR related things because they're business related things, back to that model of thinking this is what it's going to allow us to do and if we don't, you, you lose. Not just you think you save money, but in fact you're losing a bunch of revenue coming in the door.

Yeah, you might have saved money in the very short term.

Companies do that.

And you got reward for it because you got your bonus and you got rewarded for it because that's only 12 months long.

People are wondering if the Metas and the Googles and everybody else are doing that right now, laying off all those people in order to maximize their bonus and then turn around to hire them again, which they've done how many times before?

That's why I'm making donuts anyway. But again, think about it this way. So again, if you look about all the different aspects of hr, like how does HR add value? Are the questions that we're asking, are they? How do you feel? I would classify again, at its basest form. Again, if you look at the traditional modes of hr, even if your company's not at that progressive level, is your workforce stable? Right. Is your workforce stable? You can look at some very basic metrics and say, is your workforce stable? Do you have them as more passive?

Okay.

Versus how do you feel about the business strategy moving forward? Lawsuits? Do you have this, that, do you have high turnover? Are you walking away from business? That's very easy to quantify right today. That's not complex. And again, for you folks that don't have the relationship from an HR perspective, if you don't have the relationship with the CFOs or your financial colleagues, that's more of an active thought, very specific. Right? Because whatever you're measuring, go get that relationship and start making this analysis because that's how you're going to add value right away as an HR person.

Completely different conversation.

And even just having the conversation.

Yeah.

I guarantee you, even if you had, even if you've never had those conversations with people, and then you start having those conversations with people, people are gonna be like, man, why is. Why are they having this conversation with me? And it's gonna increase your credibility because it makes you. To use. Was it. You're curious now. Like you're curious about Ted Lasso. Be curious. And once you're curious and all these other things fall into place for you as an HR person or whatever or any other service function through these surveys or through other mechanisms, you want to make sure that it's tied to within the business that's not driving the P and L or selling product. If you're not selling product, you have to add value in some way and just asking questions or getting out there and seeing what's going on, you're going to add value almost instantaneously.

So this wasn't on here, but it kind of aligns with some of this. For some of the folks that are watching, you are going to say where.

You want to go as a business. Another very simple.

I'm just not there. Let's be honest.

I don't see the business, CEOs or HR people, both. Okay. Active question is, would I refer a friend to XYZ company?

I'm going to say the Chr. The cpo Chro. They're going to say, hey, we're just not there. We still are caught in kind of the programs of hr, which so many. They're not bad people. They're wonderfully intentioned folks. And I believe that. And I think you would probably believe that too.

Absolutely.

I get you. If I just say, where would you start? Understand the business first. But I've got an HR team of 50 or 100 people that I've also got to take along with me. Let's just make that assumption. How do you get. Typical NPS question.

Exactly. And what's that rating?

50 or 100 people? To understand the business, what do you do?

You talk to your CFO or whoever your colleague is, from a financial perspective, talk to them about what you want, what you want, your business, what you want your function to be. Right. And you tell them, I guarantee you, I would be shocked if financial folks won't do this. And if they won't do this, then they need to be educated. But if you tell them, I want my function to learn more about the business, can you Explain or help educate my team at a basic level how the P and L works, who the stakeholders are. There's quite a few of those questions that are out there and all the. Because I mean, in our business and my company specifically, we have a family, you know, from a, from a shareholder perspective, we have those folks to be, you know, responsible to. From a financial perspective, you know, if you're a public company, you got shareholders that you're accountable to. All the big engagement survey houses do that. But it's about how you structure those surveys to be more. But help me educate my team and educate me active or passive and are they tied to what your main objectives are as a business? You know, because. Be vulnerable a little bit. Right. Be vulnerable about your function just a little bit. Because what comes out of that is that that financial person will talk about, I guarantee they'll talk about the P and L and then they'll talk about what they need from you. From an HR person.

Yeah.

This is how you affect change as an HR person. Right.

We need to see this from the financial perspective. So now we're start. Now we're brokering a different conversation and.

Even, even more basic than that. If you want to like, if you want to make it, make it more of an educational thing beyond for us, we're going through somewhat of a digital transformation with how we deliver from an E Commerce partnering with the CFO to educate, educate your function on how the piano works and how the business makes money. Ramcharan what the CEO wants you to know. It's not what the CEO wants HR to know, it's what the CEO wants you to know. Yeah, this thick. It's a quick read and it's powerful. It tells a story about how businesses operate and how he learned everything he needs to learn that he learned in business from his family vegetable stand and then you can apply it and that you learn the business very easily just by doing this perspective. In our North America business, we want to make sure people are tied into what that. What. A couple different things. I'm not saying you have to be an expert in finance. I'm not saying you have to go get your executive MBA or any of that kind of stuff. I mean, it's very easy to be curious and to get educated.

Well, we got about three minutes left because we could go on and on and on. I got to about questions.

I can go on and on.

I know you can, but I think.

We need to say the behaviors are that we're looking for, for our workforce moving forward. Tied To E Commerce.

Go back to save some of this. We'd love to have you back.

Yeah.

Not only to have some additional conversation on some of these topics, but even let's relook at this whole idea of work from home and remote because it's becoming a bigger issue in a different way now than it was a couple of months ago. Something you said though, which I think is fascinating, is you're responsible hr.

It's more of a challenge.

It is. But. But I don't think we're done here. I think we're gonna have to extend this on another session if you're willing to come back to continue some of this dialogue. More than happy that we can. That we continue to have. I mean, I think, I think you've. You've brought up some really good points. And if folks are watching this and are gonna be honest with themselves, I hope they take this and really ask themselves some questions.

Yeah.

Like am I doing the things that I need to do when honestly from an HR and understanding the business first before I start ushering in all these great programs that may have a difference, may make our was responsible for the mechanism to measure the engagement. But difference or may not, or there's a perceived lack of making a difference because they don't understand how to tie it to the, to the business. I think that's kind of the golden nugget here.

Yeah. And the thing of it is too, is that for everybody, I mean, watching, it's not that difficult. I mean, it doesn't start with getting out with your customers, you know, and go with the sales rep. You know, I jump on trucks, I go out to our plants, I work a line, I, you know, jump, you know, do ride alongs with sales reps. Get out there, be curious, understand how things work. And I guarantee just doing those couple things will make all the difference. You'll change. You'll change something about what you do today, tomorrow, just by doing that.

I might get my hands dirty if I'm not on the line.

Go get them dirty. Go get em dirty.

Being a smart aleck, I agree with.

You, but get some calluses work.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Well, Jason, thank you. But not the engagement score, correct in my perspective. It was what I thought it would be in terms of our previous conversations. But it's a topic that keeps coming up. And every time I see one of these surveys that are out there, it's all about the tactical things that need to be done, most of them, as opposed to tying it back to the it Seems like HR does measure and then HR is the one responsible for actual business and you were able to tie every one of them in one form or another back to the business. I don't think most people could do that.

I've been trained.

Well, you definitely have been mentored the right way. So I appreciate that. Well, to all of you that are watching, thank you for joining us at another Leadership Live. Our next event is May 10th. May 10th. We do have an attorney joining us on that particular one. We have two guests joining us saying, so we're gonna do these four things in order to make it happen. Do you agree with that or do you think it's broader than that? It's broader than that on that particular one again. So maybe we get you the one after that to come back and finish this conversation.

Jason, Happy, do it in that. Because if I'm coming up with the priorities just based on the score, if.

Everybody would have it, you'll see an email coming out. It'll be on social media. Please continue to watch. If you have topics that are specific to you leadership people, that includes all of hr. That includes really the way you've framed it up today. It includes all of business, because you're not going to be able to do it without people, period. Please make sure you submit it to us. Send it to me via text or on one of our social media pages. If you're watching this, you're seeing that right now. Put the comment. If you want to be on this show at some point, please reach out. We'll have a conversation and see if it makes sense for you to share your ideas on this particular show as well. But Jason, thanks again. It was a pleasure. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you in May.

Thank you again. It's me coming up with the priorities based on the score. The power of an engagement survey is for you as a leader is you get the score, then I provide the tools by which then we're going to dive deep into that score together through various things, whether it's skip levels or other data analysis or other cuts of data that we can provide and da, da, da, da, and then come up with an action plan that's not like 50 actions. That's the other thing. Like, you know, engagement surveys sometimes result in like 50 to 60 actions globally. Do three, do them well, do one right, because typically one thing will affect so much other stuff because we sometimes get caught up in the sexiness of all these lists that we can have and all these priorities that we have. I'd rather have four or five things that we do really, really well as opposed to 50 things that we don't do at all.

Do you think some of that's justification?

Sometimes, yeah. And that's a confidence thing. Right. And that's more psychological.

Right.

So that's a. I mean, we can go on tangents about that. And I don't think either of us are qualified to talk about psych. We might want to do a psychologist.

I'm not a PhD.

Yeah, so you might want to get a PhD next time. But it goes to confidence too. How do you get justification as a person or a leader? Do you get justification through lists and see everything that I'm doing? Or do you get justification or you get validation through. Here's how I've effected change. Right. Here's how I've affected change. And it's been through these three or.

Four things that we're really good at.

That we're really, really good at. Right. And that's what we. I mean, my mantra when I took this role within the company was that I'm not gonna do 50 things, I'm not gonna do 10, I'm gonna do five. And we're gonna do them really, really well. And once we're done with those five, we're gonna start planning the next five. Because these five now layer on top of that five. Cause those five are done. Now we're gonna do more and we're more and more and more. And you know what? We come to where we are now, where we're being recognized by our industry as a leader in some of these things. That to somebody who's part of a Google or more progressive type company, you might say that's basic. But you know what? It's what affects change in our industry.

In your business, your industry.

Right. I'm not going to do all these other fancy things. I'm going to do what works here. Here. Do that. Awesome. And then do the next five things. Awesome. And it might take more time, but that's what means something to our business. That's what means something to our industry. It's not something that just is the next thing that I'm reading in HR Executive magazine.

And there's some good stuff in HR Executive Magazine.

Oh, there's good stuff, yeah. Yeah. But that's not my goal.

No, I get that.

My goal is to deliver like our customers are bakers. Our bakers provide sweet baked goods to their customers. We're not making innovative AI technology devices. We are making sweet baked goods so that people can eat donuts and be happy and have.

All over the world.

All over the world. So it's not rocket science, but again, if you start to go through all the technology again, I wish I had my chief product officer with me. I mean, he'd talk about technology all day long and have my head spinning. But ultimately, it's making. And actually, when we're talking about how HR affects it, our products are very similar to how HR should function, where we're making it simpler for our bakers to operate, right?