The Assist: Empowering People to Drive Change | Goals & Game Changers feat. Sinead Condon

Great to be here. Yes, this is going to be a fun conversation. You and I have navigated lots of different things together. So, I'm looking forward to chatting with you.

Sure. I'm sure the Irish brogue gives it away. I'm originally from Ireland, born and bred. Came to the States back in 1998. I was hired by an Irish guy into an SAP consulting firm. I had been doing really well in Ireland. I was managing some SAP projects over there and really got the bug to come to the US and continue my SAP career over here. So came over, had a number of projects under my belt, integrated into Siebel projects, and then stepped into the agile world which may come up in our chat today. Then kind of fast forward to my career now. Who would have thought that I would wind up as the chief people officer, historically known as the head of HR, but I think one of the reasons that I leaned into it is because it too has gone through transformation and evolution. I'm very much part of the senior executive team that runs the company and my lens on people and great talent is something I'm very privileged to do every day. I live in Silicon Valley. I have a dog. I have two kids that are gone off to college. So, I'm an empty nester. Life's good.

I do. When you've got this many scars. No, I'm just kidding. It's been an interesting ride. I've learned a lot. I continue to learn a lot. I believe very much in sharing the love. We've got to support each other and build communities where we can. If we can give back in that way, I think that's great.

I think it's an interesting question and it's definitely worth reflection. I don't know if I would necessarily say one was the biggest challenge. I think they all have their challenges in different ways. I used to go in and sometimes still do say you've seen everything until you haven't. Whether it's, I used to think that the greatest challenges for me as a tech leader or as a people leader was the technology piece. You're doing these complex integrations, you're pulling stuff out, you're re-engineering both the technology and process, and that's complicated and complex, and there can be chaos involved. But in the reality of it, I think what I've learned along the way is that the most complexity happens when you really dial into what's happening on the people side. That really and truly is where the most complexity comes from. When we think back, any of us, including your listeners, think about the challenges that you have in work. Sure, we can check off a whole bunch of boxes on the things that come up on the tech side, but really when you do reflect, many of those challenges are blockers on decision-making. Why? Because you have lots of different characters, right? The team's not quite gelled, or any number of people related things. Often times we don't put it down to the people, we put it down to everything else. Sometimes because we're so embedded in everything that's going on, we can't see the leaves from the trees. For me, it has always been really on the people's side. I recognized that with a thud, probably about 15 years ago when I was on a project. It's probably more than that, maybe 20 years ago. I'm showing my age. I was managing an SAP project and we were coming towards the end and I was walking past a lady who was sitting in her cube that was crying. I was walking with the CEO. I'll never forget it. I did a double take. I could hear her crying. I walked in and she looked at me and I with compassion said, 'Are you okay?' and she looked me in the eye and she said, 'You're taking my job away today. I just got let go.' I swear to God, Stacy, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Sure, did I have it as a line item for change management? Yeah. But did I really consider the impact? Not to say in reality, hand on heart, that it might have changed the outcome of her maybe being displaced, which is awful. But the way in which it was done could have been so much better had I had the wherewithal to really put the people's side with the weightiness that it needed in that moment.

Yeah. There will be different times to put different weight on things but you do have to look at these things holistically because it's not one thing that's going to get you over the finish line. There's not one silver bullet. As much as we can all look in the mirror and say what's the silver bullet, that's where intuition comes into play and you have to look at your environment and do a lot of sense making.

When I say it, it's going to sound really obvious, but it just shows you how clueless I probably was back then. When we go into technology projects, I think we're all so busy thinking about the outcomes that the technology will bring. Even today when we talk about AI and automation, we're all in hustle mode to just optimize all the right things to be doing. Back then we were so focused on the endgame of getting SAP in and getting it up and running and really shifting the entire backdrop of how that company operated. I didn't think to ask some obvious questions. Sure, do we talk about process and re-engineering? Yeah. But I didn't lean in hard enough to asking the people related questions. As we optimize in one area, what do we compromise on the other side? If we get success with this particular outcome, what's the human impact of us doing that? What are the gives and takes on that? What will hinder us and what will help us? Sometimes we're so busy in optimization mode and becoming strong operators that we forget the most fundamental thing is what is the foundational environment with the people around us in order for us to drive and execute on what we're doing. Maybe it's because I'm so attuned to that and I have to be careful because you don't want to overindex on it. That's the balance when I think back. What would I do differently? It was balance that I missed. I overindexed on the tech, but I also have to be careful as the chief people officer that I don't overindex on the people's side. It has to be this tension that I'm intuitive enough to recognize where the pressure points are for both.

Of course. I think every company is going through transition and if they're not, they become irrelevant very quickly. Somebody asked me the other day, how do I see leadership shaping up in the next 5 to 10 years? It's less about what does leadership look like? It's more about what will our environment look like? What are we literally shaping our work to be that we back into leadership on? When we think about AI, it's a good one. If we think about AI and what AI is helping us to optimize on, what it's shaping our future to be, I think we have to get really good very tactically on storytelling as leaders. It is so deprioritized in terms of a skill, but that storytelling part of being able to stand up there and articulate with the gravitas and education that's needed to say what is the future of our company? What does that growth look like? How do we see us jumping onto AI? How do we see it optimizing what it is that we do today? What is the impact that's going to have on us? That is a thread that has to be pulled in such a way that it helps people to ground themselves, to get purposeful and intentional about what the future looks like because there is an individual and collective piece to that. The individual might be the employee, it might be the leader, it might be the entity that is the company. Then there is the collective piece which is the community. How do we band together and what does that all look like? That storytelling piece, which is really about the framing and the way in which we talk about it, is so important right now. It is so important because people are looking for clarity. Am I going to lose my job? People hear AI, it's becoming a bit of a trigger. You don't want to stifle the innovation of that, but you want to ground people so that they can go on the journey with you.

100%. It's core. In fact, we're getting ready to do a summit here at the end of March. We were talking amongst the management team what would be one of the core skills that we want to make sure that everybody has and storytelling was one of the top core skills that we want people to understand. Not because, in Ireland, we talk about the Seanchaí, the storytellers of Ireland, and everybody has the gift of the gab. We're not talking about that. We're talking about clarity around purpose and outcome, making sure people understand how to articulate the why. If you can't do that as a leader, your days are numbered. It's fundamental to being able to be a leader in the 21st century.

It is. It's so funny when you talk about ownership because ultimately, any one of us coming into work every day, which we hope has purpose, you feel a sense of ownership. A couple of weeks ago, we were doing a talk on the use of language in leadership and how ownership and owning something can have just a different meaning to different people. It's highly subjective. We were talking about the difference between what it means to own something in work versus if you own something outside of work like your house or your car or your bike. The feeling of that ownership and how it manifests in what you do and how you own it at home can often feel very different. How do you get that true sense of ownership in a work environment? Of course you need to have the autonomy and you need to have the skills and you need to have all of these things that create that for you. It was a very interesting exercise to talk about the difference of what that looks and feels like when you are outside of work versus inside of work and how that relationship feels.

That's right.

That's right. You'll do anything for those raisins.

It does. There's a great book, I hope your listeners can write this down or Google it on Amazon. It's a book by a guy called Kimball Fisher. I want to say it's Self-Directed Work Teams, Stacy. I don't know if you know that book, but there's a chapter in the book where Kimball Fisher talks about empowerment. He uses this acronym ARIA. In that he breaks down that for someone to feel a sense of ownership, they need to have accountability, resources, information, and authority. So much if we think about every single person that's listening to this podcast about what they feel they're empowered. Bit of a dirty word, right? Empowered. What does it even mean? Often we're anointed with 'you are accountable for this project' but yet you feel you have no authority to make the decisions or you're the last to hear about some very key information in the decision-making because you didn't have a seat at the table over there that was talking about a certain thing. There's a recipe to that to get that sense of ownership. Kimball Fisher, highly recommend it.

I think that's a great question and quite honestly maybe it's a little bit of both. I heard somebody in work say the other day we were talking about leadership and they said, 'Do you wait for influence or do you lead with influence?' I freaking loved that. So much of what we do is waiting to have the influence to make the decision versus kind of leaning into it and saying, 'Here's my intent is to do this. Here is what I believe we should do.' That's leading with influence. You come out the other end of that, people are going, 'Yeah, you go girl.' I do think so much of it is on our own desire and curiosity to know how to create that for ourselves. But in reality, you have to be surrounded by people in your orbit that create the space for you to do that. I do think both need to be at the table in order for that to happen.

Absolutely. Some of the questions that we have to ask, if I am a manager and I'm talking to somebody that I have this assumption or expectation that they own something, some of the questions without leading the witness has to be, 'Hey Stacy, what do you feel you have control over? Stacy, what's it going to look like for you when this has reached the outcome and we're successful? What does that look like?' Those types of open-ended questions I think very much put some color around how much authority and empowerment that person actually has.

I think one of the things that I've learned, Stacy, is that, and maybe this is controversial, oftentimes when you are leading transformation, when I've been leading transformation and you feel like you come out of a meeting and you're banging your head against a brick wall and you're like, 'Why do they not know that this is a good idea? Why are they not interested in the outcomes that I'm talking about?' I've realized a lot of the time what's showing up is a fear of the unknown and a lack of education because I have not done a good job clarifying what it is that we're actually trying to drive and the impact and value realization of what's to come. I have a lot more empathy and compassion now for people not necessarily jumping on the boat right off the bat. Gaining some empathy around where people are coming from, we say it's almost cliche 'meet people where they are' but really do. The other thing is build relationships. My whole career has been based on having true relationships with people because it is at the end of the day all about trust.

That's right. I love assuming that people are making their decisions based off of the best intent possible. It really creates a very wholesome relationship.

I think many of us can be around a table and know who the people are that are both listening to win and listening to learn and understand. Be a listener who's looking to learn and understand first and foremost.

It's a person from my past who was a mentor for me. Can I use that?

His ears would be burning. I had a leader in a company that I worked for very early on in my career. His name was Sean Corkery. He's still a leader today, Sean. He taught me what leadership is and what leadership is not. He's one of the most profound characters that I've met who treats everybody with respect regardless of hierarchy. He's a guy that knows how to listen to learn.

Thank you.