How Amazon Builds High-Performing Teams
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Ian Wilson, VP of HR at Amazon, to discuss how great leaders cultivate resilience, drive innovation, and embrace continuous learning.
Ian shares insights on Amazon’s leadership principles, why curiosity and adaptability are essential for success, and how HR leaders can create a culture that fosters growth, agility, and execution.
He also dives into how leaders can make smarter decisions faster, develop strong problem-solving skills, and maintain a customer-centric mindset, lessons HR professionals can apply to future-proof their organizations.
🎓 In this episode, Ian discusses:
How continuous learning and curiosity fuel leadership success
Why fast decision-making separates great leaders from the rest
The role of psychological safety in building high-performing teams
How Amazon's leadership principles drive execution and innovation
Why HR must stop ‘random acts of HR’ and focus on business impact
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Ian Wilson 0:00
Learn and be curious. Just really a big part of our culture. We're just a curious bunch of people that are just trying to figure stuff out. We are much more excited by questions than we are about answers. You know, Jeff has even said this in the past, that the smartest people he knows are people who are wrong from time to time, and they admit when they're wrong, and they kind of move on, you know, with the learning. So that learn and be curious, that trying to figure it out. It's also very much, you know, this day one idea like, it's still early. We're still very scrappy. We're just trying to learn as much as we can so we can do the best possible job for customers. We talk a lot about buys for action, and you can see how, like, these come together, right? You're learning, you're trying to figure things out, but then you're taking decisions, and you're doing something, you know, with speed, you're trying to to move and have some impact and get some things done. So that's very much a key part of the culture. It creates some of the some of the intensity of what we're trying to do for our customers, is that idea of bias or action. If you come and observe an Amazon team that's working through something from the moment a decision is made. It's unbelievable how quickly, you know, teams move out and go make things happen.
Chris Rainey 1:16
Hey and welcome to the show. How are you?
Ian Wilson 1:19
I'm doing great. Chris, thanks for having me. And
Chris Rainey 1:21
finally, if we finally connect as well, my daughter, I'm gonna tell her later that we've got Amazon on the show, and she's gonna be over the moon. I feel like Alexa is her best friend in the house as well.
Ian Wilson 1:35
That's great to hear, I think, for me and for a lot of people that I had a chance to work with. You know, we like that? You know, the amount of ways that we can connect with people and touch their lives and hopefully help them be more effective in what they're trying to do. You know, that's what drives us. So that's great to hear that your dog is a little fan. That's wonderful.
Chris Rainey 1:51
Funny story, like she, she like setting up like these little pop up tents in our living room, like she has, and she creates like these shops, right? Or little things. And last night, she's like, I've opened up shops, daddy. And I was like, All right, what's this shop? She's like, I'm like, What's the name of it? She was like, Amazon. I was like, No, I think that one's taken. And her answer was no, but Daddy, I have everything. And she pulled it back, and she had, like, trainers and, like, hair dryer and everything. She's like, I'm like, Amazon, daddy. And I just, she's six, by the way, and it just cracked me up that she connected that dot those dots together. It's funny. I thought I'd share that with you.
Ian Wilson 2:28
That's fantastic. And to be clear, we are hiring early. You know, we like to get low talent over time. So yeah, your daughter, there's an opportunity when she's ready.
Chris Rainey 2:38
Yeah, no worries. I just love at that age that she she had the relationship she has with your organization. It's quite fun before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit more about your background and journey to where we are today. Did you choose HR, or did it choose you along the way?
Ian Wilson 2:55
It definitely chose me along the way, I'm very fortunate that it chose me, you know, relatively early. So just to give you a snapshot for it, I initially went to school studying chemical engineering, and I studied that for several years, had some real nice internships in the space. Turned out it wasn't the thing that I was actually getting most passionate about. And so while I was still in school, I ended up switching my major. The initial idea was, instead of becoming a chemical engineer, that I was going to ultimately go to law school and pursue becoming an attorney. That was at least the plan that I discussed with my parents along the way. But after undergrad, I was just ready for a little bit of a break from school. Wanted to get some real world experience, wanted to make a little bit of money, and I started in a HR development program. Honestly, I didn't know a ton about it, you know, I had my mind around, you know, what I think I could learn from some of those experiences? Yeah, but for me, still very much, the plan was ultimately go back to law school and to pursue, you know, that as a as a long term career. And then what happened when I started in this HR program, it just lit up for me. You know, the ability to work with business leaders and to think about the teams and the talent you need to achieve what you're trying to do. You know how you build talent pipelines over time, how you really help you know people be engaged and committed to and convicted in what they're doing and feeling enabled to be able to be successful. I was like, wow. Like, this is a thing. And I was just surprised by how much energy I got out of it, how excited I was to be a part of something bigger than myself and bigger than a team. And there you go. You know, one thing leads to another. So No, when I was a young five year old, I did not dream of growing up to be an HR person. I, by the way, haven't met anyone who's had that dream as a young person. It's very this with you, though that's where my career started, and very much along the way, I had different opportunities to look at roles outside of the function. Yeah, but just so as it as it was at each at each turn, I decided, you know, to stay on the path. And I have increasingly become convicted in the importance of what we do, the value of what you get from a great HR team when you do the work. Well, the impact you can have, yeah, for your customers, for your business. So I remain a committed HR professional. Love
Chris Rainey 5:20
it. I said, I suppose the important question is, how did your parents react? And you said you're going over to HR.
Ian Wilson 5:27
To this day, my dad asked if I'm going to law school. We are so, yeah, I think mostly moved
Chris Rainey 5:36
on, yeah, it's, uh, you are right though. I mean, like, I've interviewed over 1000 leaders, and maybe, like, 10 or 15, and it was only chose a career in HR, and it was because someone in their family was in HR, or something along those lines, right? It was never, you know, no one grows up being like, I'm so excited to work in HR when you you're younger. So it's super interesting, and I'm seeing it becoming more and more dynamic in terms of the different career paths than journeys into HR. You know, just speaking to Stephanie over at L'Oreal, their new CHRO never done a day in HR in her life. Just came to CHRO, but worked in every part of L'Oreal's business as well. It's just super interesting. Or, you know, Lauren Schuster, see Chief People Officer at Lego sales and operations background in Lego into HR. So it's just, it's really, it's fascinating to see, to see that happen. I think that is exciting, you
Ian Wilson 6:29
know, the different mentors I've had in my career, and different relationships I've had, and you could look at just the path of all these individuals, and you can see just an incredible, you know, variety. And I think that's actually a very good thing, that there's many avenues into the space, and there's many ways to develop the capabilities I think that make a great HR leader, you know, the ability to really understand business, to understand the mechanics of culture and team, to be able to, you know, execute effectively at scale. You know, to be an effective, you know, people leader. So those core capabilities, I think, can be developed through many avenues, and I think that proves out in the careers that we see for many HR leaders, too.
Chris Rainey 7:05
Yeah, what would you say some of the sort of pivotal moments or challenges you've had to overcome in your career that have influence your professional growth and the way you lead?
Ian Wilson 7:14
I've had a chance to work in a couple of different companies, variety of different roles along the way, one that really stands out for me was I just joined Microsoft for a few months, and an opportunity presented itself to do an assignment in China. And this was back in 2006 you know, you know, timeline, and I initially went to China to build an organization development practice for Microsoft in China, and that evolved quickly into becoming the overall HR leader for from Microsoft in that region. And I think for me, it was, it was so profound professionally, because you had to take the learnings that you had from very different context and really distill them down into first principles of what makes businesses successful, what allows for people to come together, to be able to accomplish something significant, but doing that in a very different market context, a very different culture context, really pushed me to have to think about things more deeply than I had before, and then just on the human level. Because, you know, growing up as an American, you know, in a very different context, how I related to people, how I introduced myself, how I shared to people, what was important to me, I just had to get more clear and more intentional, and how I expressed, you know, some of those things, yeah, and as a result of that, just in developing as a leader. It was a huge inflection point into me becoming a very authentic leader, to me actually taking who I was as a human being and making that a part of how I worked, how I connected with people professionally. Just was really, really pivotal. You know, from that perspective, yeah, and I continue to believe, you know, there's lots of ways and careers to get those very unique situations where you can get yourself just into a very different context. I'm a big fan of it because as what I experienced, I've seen others experience as well. It just pushes you to go a lot deeper on many dimensions of who you are, what you're trying to do, how you do it, and I think that just creates such a beautiful opportunity for some deep learning. Yeah, that was definitely a big, a big experience for
Chris Rainey 9:24
me. Yeah, I love that. It that that's that's been a very common theme of our show, that people, when I, when we asked that question, they talk about the international assignments and being thrown into those different cultural but not just also personally, but also for their family, you know, just so there's also, you know, the family dynamic and element, but being thrown into those different thinking that what you did in the US is going to translate into a different culture, with the with the global mindset, but local nuance, very different, you know, even the way you give feedback, or, you know, or have a, have a me. Being super different out there as well. And many leaders I speak to learn that the hard way, going in there. So I'm glad for you that that resulted in you didn't into being your more authentic self. And that's a great thing, right? But it's an important lesson for everyone listening to seek discomfort and take take those opportunities, because that's really where the growth happens. I think that's right.
Ian Wilson 10:23
And to be successful and learn as much in those roles, you have to really demonstrate a lot of humility, a lot of curiosity. And I think those are qualities that are very durable characteristics for successful leaders across many fronts. And so I do think those are nice experiences. And I also say that is one type of a very different experience that you can get. And for some people, they just can't make that happen as a part of their life plan. But I would still say, we'll still go try to do things that are very different from what you're most comfortable with. One of the things that I often think about is, at any juncture in a career when you're thinking about a role decision, what is the thing that you can go do that is most different from what you just recently did, and to really push yourself in those dimensions? I think again, an expat assignment is really neat, that you can pull it off, but if not still chase those different opportunities, because I think it leads to accelerated
Chris Rainey 11:16
learning. Is that something that you translate and encourage of your own team?
Ian Wilson 11:20
I do. I do, you know, and most recently, here at Amazon, we've been in a really interesting context where you're in a high growth situation. So even if you just come in and do the same role you were doing yesterday, tomorrow, there's going to be a push around how different it is, because it's scaling and changing in so many different ways. But absolutely, this core theme of trying to chase differences, to push your perspectives and push your horizons of what you understand, is something that I talk a lot about with the team,
Chris Rainey 11:48
yeah, and it's also what keeps people motivated and engaged right that constant development and change. Like, one of the reasons I left my last company after 10 years is I just felt like I hit a wall and I was asking for opportunities, like, Hey, I remember saying, like, Hey, I would love to go and work in marketing for a few years or finance. And they're like, they're like, No, you're just really good at sales, Chris, we're just gonna keep you right there doing the same thing. And I was like, I love the job, like I enjoy my team, but I kind of like, I need some I need something else to keep to be growing. Unfortunately, there wasn't. And sometimes that happens in companies and and I took the extreme version of going to start my own business as well, because I was like, Hey, let me create what I've been imagining for so so long as well. Would you say whether that was one of the reasons why you had such a long career at, for example, Microsoft, because I saw you have quite a long career as those constant development opportunities,
Ian Wilson 12:42
definitely, Microsoft is an excellent company and have a great chance to have a really good run there, pursuing different opportunities. For a while, I had a series of HR leadership roles and some of their go to market organizations, including the experience in China that we talked about. Then I had the opportunity to join some of their product teams, you know, specifically in the entertainment space and the gaming space. Then have a chance to really get involved in some of their devices efforts. Eventually have a chance to be the HR leader for the Windows business at Microsoft, which is just such a an important, you know, brand and piece of technology that so many people use around the world every day. But yes, really like that variety of experience. I also think it's important to have a progression of experience you know, to do continue to challenge yourself. How can you have even more impact over a longer period of time? Sometimes go after things that take a longer time to really pay off. And how do you make sure you kind of line a site to how you go after those big opportunities? So the variety of experience, but also the progression of experience, and in many respects, you know, that's what you know led me to where I am today at Amazon, and have been here now for, I think it's coming up on seven years or so. You know, time flies around, but it was just the opportunity to go after some very different experiences. You know, bigger opportunities where I can continue to challenge myself and learn and grow as much as I possibly can. One of the mindsets I have is that I am an early career talent, and I will think of myself as an early career talent right up to the moment in which I retire, because so long as I'm a great mindset, yeah, yeah, yeah, so long as I'm in my early career, I can acknowledge that the list of things I want to learn and explore is way bigger than the list of things that I actually feel like I understand, and I also just want to keep growing, and I can do that through different experiences. So very much as the is the mindset that I bring to bear
Chris Rainey 14:47
love that perspective. That's a super interesting perspective to have on life in general as well. I love to talk about Amundsen have as a very strong culture center around leadership principles, which sort of guy. The day to day decision making as well. Could you talk a little bit towards towards that and how that continues to evolve as the company scales and innovate so rapidly? Well,
Ian Wilson 15:11
you are very correct to observe that the culture at Amazon is very strong and something we take very seriously. We don't take it for granted. We're always working on it. You know, we don't believe that culture is something that you can like, preserve or protect or like keep static. You have to keep working on it because it's organic, right? It's part of the people system. So we are very intentional about what we do. There are many facets to it, you know, it very much starts with our customer obsession, something I had heard about before I joined, but once I started to experience which is blown away, I had no idea that really obsessing on the customer could be so powerful, so motivating and so unifying for a broad set of endeavors across a lot of different industries and a lot of different types of experiences. You were also very right to call out the leadership principles, which I would just describe the leadership principles as active participants in everything we do. The leadership principle headline themselves with the definitions underneath them. They're just threaded in and out of everything we do. They are part of the vocabulary. They are how we relate and communicate with each other, as you would expect. They are incredibly intentionally embedded into all of our people practices. If someone is pursuing an opportunity at Amazon as a candidate, right away, they just are deeply exposed to all of our leadership principles. That is what is the anchor and the thread you know, through the hiring process, but our performance evaluations, how we think about promotions and careers, it's all about practicing the leadership principles so they are as active and present in everything we do as I could possibly imagine. But again, we're always, you know, trying to tune that up to make that even more true. Yeah, the other thing I would say about the leadership principles is not everyone knows that we're already on our third version, which is very much a part of our culture too, which is we embrace the idea that it's day one, right? There's nothing that's static. Every day is day one. Today is day one. Tomorrow is day one. The day after that's going to be day one. And then day one mindset says we're going to continue to be scrappy. We're going to continue to innovate and do everything we can to be successful for customers, and we're going to embrace the idea of continuous, you know, evolution and change. And so as as powerful as our leadership principles are, and as seriously as we work on them, we also modify them, you know, from time to time, to embrace the changing context around us. It's so interesting
Chris Rainey 17:43
to hear you say it, because I feel like externally, obviously, as a long time customer as well. We all have heard around Amazon's customer experience, and I personally, personally experienced it whenever I call someone whereas an Amazon order, and how responsive and receptive, and how, like, okay, no worries, Chris. We're gonna replace that. That's fine. I'm like, really? I mean, it's always been a good experience for me. But what does that mean from a practical point of view? What is it what needs to happen internally in order for you to ensure that that's always as you in such a large global business with so many different divisions. How do you still maintain that? That what's made you successful from the very beginning in such a large scale? If that makes sense,
Ian Wilson 18:28
yeah, I think there's many things again, we don't we don't take this at all for granted. Certainly, we talk a lot about customers and custom and being customer obsessed. And so our leaders talk about it a lot. We do all the things that you would to be, you know, strengthening your culture. We do the storytelling. We make sure that we talk about all the lessons learned of when we think we've done it well, also where we could have done better. And so it's very, very active conversation that we always have. We also, at Amazon, think about what we call as mechanisms. And a mechanism, essentially, is a business process that just really makes sure that there's good closed loops, you know, for everything that we do and that we have good defined practices for how we work with each other. So for example, anytime we are pursuing a new business idea, a new product idea, or maybe even a new feature, there's a mechanism that we have that we call working backward, which we write a document. We call it a PR, FAQ, so a press release with a FAQ, and the press release actually describes, what is the customer problem? What do we think is the opportunity? How do we think we can help the customer like, and how would we announce this to customers, like, what would the press release be? And then we work through a whole series of questions to really dive into the idea. So to propose an idea, to get resources, to get the green light to pursue something, it's all embraced through that mechanism of working backward, which is all about the customer and the customer problem, or the customer. Customer opportunity. So we do things, you know, very specific, like that, yeah. But also, I'll tell you what I have been most impressed by. And I remember in my early days in Amazon, there were moments where I was just in almost shock and disbelief of in the midst of making a business decision, what mattered most to the customer was the thing that actually drove our business decisions in ways that I'd never seen other businesses do. So what you just share that you experience as a customer is exactly what you see happening behind the scenes. Decision makers thinking about things that are going on and at the end of the day, always doing what they believe is fundamentally the best thing for the customer, and all of those things how they work together to continue to strengthen this aspect of our culture we find to be very important. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 20:50
I love that. And so it's really embedded in in every day, right? So, like, so it's you have to make it part of every process, just storytelling, which is super powerful aligned with those leadership principles as well. So it's really embedded the entire employee life cycle and customer all the way through as well. Super interesting. I have to ask about some of those leadership principles. What are some of the leadership principles that really stand out to you? I'm sure that they're all great, but what are some of the ones that really resonate with you, that you think really, really move the needle and make a big impact?
Ian Wilson 21:26
Yeah, they are great. They're all very important. You know, one thing that's interesting with them is some of them are in tension with each other, like, it's hard to think about doing them all at the same level all the time. And that's that's by design, right? Because the world's a complex place, right? And there's no clear set of things you can do. So attention is somewhat intentional. It's kind of like my children. I love them all equally, so it's hard to pick favorite. I'll tell you this though there's a couple that do I think really resonate a lot with me personally. One is learn and be curious, which I think is just really a big part of our culture. You know, we're just a curious bunch of people that are just trying to figure stuff out. We're much more excited by questions than we are about answers. You know, Jeff has even said this in the past, that the smartest people he knows are people who are wrong from time to time, and they admit when they're wrong, and they kind of move on, you know, with the learning. So they have to learn and be curious. They're trying to figure it out. It's also very much, you know, this day one idea like, it's still early. We're still very scrappy. We're just trying to learn as much as we can so we can do the best possible job for customers. So I think that's that one is a very big deal. There's another one we talk a lot about, which is, which is buys for action. And you can see how like these come together, right? You're learning, you're trying to figure things out, but then you're taking decisions, and you're doing something, you know, with speed, you're trying to to move and have some impact and get some things done. So that's very much a key part of the culture. It creates some of the some of the intensity. What we're trying to do for our customers is that idea of bias for action. If you come and observe an Amazon team that's working through something from the moment a decision is made, it's unbelievable how quickly, teams move out and go make things happen. It's something that really impresses me. So no question for me. Those are two that I think are really, really important. But again, it is the whole set. They all stitch together with some tension in very intentional ways. But those are two that I would comment on.
Chris Rainey 23:40
It's so interesting. You say that those two because I feel like, fundamentally, those two combined is the most powerful, one of the most powerful things. I always describe myself and Shane as co founders. I'm very much the first one, sort of always kind of curious, disrupting, breaking, and Shane is the execution to your second part, and we've come together, and just so happen to have those set of skills where I'm always on the forefront, trying to break what we're doing, and, you know, and pushing the needle, and sometimes I go too far with it, and Shane, then together, immediately, without creating a business plan, Just goes into execution mode, and we kind of just test it, and just and then we just that Vish, that circle of innovation and create, and we've created now that this sort of culture of curiosity in the business, as well as the psychological safety for people to be able to fail forward, and a culture of execution. We go out and we do it. You don't think about it for ages, and we don't ponder. We let we go and learn and we and we fail fast, and we learn and we move forward, and I think that's been the key to our success. So the fact that you mentioned those two is really cool, and I agree. Personally, I relate to those as well, because there's so many people have great ideas or great. Thoughts and perspectives, but you just have to be like, my superpower is just executing on those things. And most people, I had the idea, that's great. That's part of the part of the equation. But are you executing on that every single day as well? So it makes sense in the type of organization you're in where you're constantly innovating, and you have to move quickly as well. How do you foster that culture of curiosity and sort of create that psychological safety so people do feel comfortable that to fail forward and innovate?
Ian Wilson 25:38
What is one of those things where you're constantly cultivating that sense of how important is to learn and be curious and try things and innovate for customers, and it all comes together and very much reinforcing feedback wheels. I can tell you this, when I study organizations, I'm always very interested to know what happens when things don't go right, because inevitably, something's not going to go right, yeah. And so let's take this one. We have an idea to build a new feature. We think it's really good. We work through our working backward mechanism. We build it, we deliver it to customers, and misses the mark. What happens? Does everybody sort of yell at each other and say, Oh, we messed this up. How do we mess this up? This is so terrible, we can never mess it up again. Is it what happened? Let's really understand this. Let's get into the detail and figure it out so that we can blame the person you know who made the mistake. Or is it? Hey, let's figure this out. What did we miss? What happened? What can we learn about what do we can do differently? And, oh, by the way, what's the next idea we're going to go try and for the person that maybe was accountable for the for the error? Do they get the next opportunity to go do the next thing and take that learning and go deliver some customer impact? And so you study organizations through phenomenon like that. It is unbelievable at Amazon. I sometimes say that the failure at Amazon is so different than what I've seen any other place that we need a different word to describe, yeah, because when things don't go well for customers, it's like, oh my gosh, we missed this. Let's go figure this out. There's something to learn here. And then when we figured out, wow, we missed this. Isn't it great that we just forget this album? Know this like, it's a weird sort of sense of we don't try to fail, but when, when, when things don't work out, you put positive energy into it, and you try to pull forward into the next great thing you're going to go do for customers. So you talked about psychological safety, and I think that's a part of it, but all these things have to work together for your culture to be coherent. Yeah, if you want people to contribute new ideas, you have to create the space where that happened, and then you have to give them the agency to take some of them forward, so that they can really maximize their own learning. And, you know, early in my career, I remember, you know, coming across the concept of the difference between production and production capability. And sometimes you just have to jam on production, because you've got to get things done, you've got to get things out the door. But there's other times when you really need to focus on but am I building over time, the ability to produce the production capability? How do I invest in that? And sometimes you have to throttle back. And so I do think when it comes to culture, building organization and capability, broadly building, you know, different disciplines or technical capability, just really having an eye to those two things and how they work together, is is very important.
Chris Rainey 28:32
I can't have a conversation with that with you about talking about AI, so I love to get your perspectives both on the AI adoption of as an organization leading the way, which is super interesting, what I'm sure, working in a company in that sense, but also where you see AI having the biggest impact on on HR itself. Because, you know, opportunities are endless. But I love to see where you see these are the areas, Chris, that I feel can really help us. Love to hear that perspective. You
Ian Wilson 29:03
know, it is incredibly exciting times. I think it is still also unquestionably, you know, very, very early. I think the way that we think about whether it's a generative AI or artificial generalized intelligence, the way we think about these things, 10 years from now, we're going to look back at this time and say, Wow, that was primitive. Like, wow. That was so early, yeah, so basic, kind of, if you think of the world of of, you know, mobile phones, like many of us, you know, are used to, you know, different, you know, mobile phone devices like this. But you look back in time, you're like, Wow, you had a phone in a bag and you had to plug into the wall. It wasn't really a mobile phone, like, so I think it has the potential to be that type of thing, as this plays out over time, so incredibly, incredibly early, a lot of innovation, you know, happening in the space. I am an optimist that probably will surprise you. I believe that as a species like we build tools, one of the things is. Helped us be successful is our ability to build tools make productive use out of the tools, and to go on and on and on. I think this is yet the next set of tools that we have, and I'm very optimistic that we're going to develop them. We're going to think about them thoughtfully. We're going to stay on top of things like security and privacy and responsible artificial intelligence. It's rare when you're having a technology disruption that as many people are thinking about those types of issues this early. So that makes me think that we're really going to stay on top of these things. I actually believe that these technologies have the potential to be the most human of all the technologies that we've ever had the chance to work with because of the way that they make use of unstructured data, which is fundamentally what we're talking about. Humans are fantastic at making sense out of unstructured data, right? That is what the human experience is all about. And so the idea that we're going to have tools that can work with us on that level, I think, bring tremendous potential. One of the things that I talk internally about with my teams and the people that I get to work with, the full destiny of Gen AI is not a chat bot. We know why there's a chat bot. We're happy that there's chat bots out there. There are certainly chat bots. And those scenarios are going to be pervasive, and they're going to persist, but I really think going forward, it's going to be so much more significant than that. Very excited about it. And I think the other thing that I think more and more people will experience over time. The early days of these Gen AI models were really mostly about text, you know about language, written language, new spoken language. But there's so many more things in the world, so many multi modal data. Is how we talk about it, sounds, colors, images, all these other ways that we experience the world. As these technologies become more capable in those areas, it's going to be a very powerful So just think about, you know, in the HR space as an example, when you and I are connecting. You know, the research varies on this, but just go with the idea that when you and I are connecting, 60% of how we're communicating is non verbal. And so if you think about Gen AI, just text, and essentially you're using these tools around 40% of the interaction, not the majority of the interaction, which is non verbal, I think as the technology evolves into that space, it's really going to line up, you know, a whole bunch of different things that I think would be very exciting in the in the HR space, oh, you just
Chris Rainey 32:33
opened up a whole new portal in my brain. From that one, it's very, very super unique perspective that you have on that. And I'm really excited about the fact that as this technology evolves, it makes the focus on power skills, as it were, I don't, I don't like the word soft skills even more important now more more than ever, as well. It's kind of freeing up time to focus on on that. And I feel like that's an area where many companies aren't investing enough in at the moment, I don't know if you're sure if you're seeing that at all, but even in my meetings, for example, this is a very small example, I'm no longer writing notes because I have note takers, so I'm way more present in that meeting. Now, I'm having more eye contact, I'm more engaged, I'm more focused. I'm not sitting there doing this writing notes. And as a small example of the way now that the technology has just helped me be more present as a leader in the room and the person feeling really valued important that they have my time as well. Very small example of that. But even with we launched our own Atlas copilot. We so we launched the world's first AI copilot for HR executives. We're now seeing them use Atlas in a very different way, in terms of how they upskill and re skill themselves and use it. Use our platform, from a productivity point of view, to just spend more time with their team as well the fact that they don't have to read through 100 page white paper and they can ask a question that goes to the exact sentence, or the fact that even this podcast, so most of our listeners now are listening to the podcast inside of Atlas, and they're asking questions to the podcast and it's taken into the exact seconds, right? So people will be asking, Hey, what's Ian going to share? What is the key takeaways from Ian and now and then now, because that's connected to the HR tech stack, because Atlas integrates all the platforms, how does Ian's insights help us with x, y, z, and it knows the context of the company, the culture, the values, etc, who you are, your role. So it just opens up this whole opportunity, which is just anyway, and like you just said, we're at the beginning of this as well, or the fact that I can see that people listening to me and you, or they will be in different languages. And so opens up a whole nother accessibility piece. We did it. We did our AI HR summit a few weeks back. We had 13,000 CHROs join us for that. And. Can see in the chat, because we had Atlas live, that we had like 100 100 plus different languages present that people asking questions in and having conversations in that one of them impossible if we've been able to do that. So it's super exciting. What about you personally? How are you staying up to date? I know growth and learning development is a huge part of what you mentioned throughout this conversation to growth mindset, what are some of the practical things that you do with this constant pace of change to keep yourself up to date with everything that's going on. Well,
Ian Wilson 35:31
you mentioned earlier that you are right. I'm in somewhat of a unique position to be at Amazon, and kind of like really much in the thrust of it. And you know, my ability to walk down the hall and talk to somebody about this, and that person being like one of the world leaders in this space, I acknowledge that I am in any space there. But here's what I do with our teams, me personally, and quite honestly, I also do with my family, is you just have to play. You just have to go do stuff. In the earlier days of this, we launched something internally, first and then eventually externally, that was called Party Rock. And Party Rock was essentially just a very scrappy app, very approachable way just to start to get exposure to some of these technologies and to play around and start to create things. It was unbelievable that within a matter of months, within the HR team, people had literally created hundreds of Gen AI applications through this thing called party run, which was literally just a playground, and all of a sudden they're building things. We're like, holy smokes. But for anyone that was getting into it, they were getting sort of, you know, demystifying some of the things about the technology, getting more of a working experience of, you know, where is in terms of what it can do, what it can't do, what are the limitations, maybe, what they might like to have it, you know, do moving forward. And I think that's, that's what we need to do. Honestly, I see this with my children, like, the things that they're doing. Jen, AI, like, blow me away. I'm like, How did you do that? Like, how did you figure that out? We just turned it on, we pushed this thing, we did this thing, and then this thing's like, and so I think it's really important that all of us are just actively using it. Set aside the fear. Don't worry. You know, the robots aren't coming, you know, to take over, like, just set those things aside. Make sure you're double checking. You know, are the platforms you're using? Secure? Is the data behind it? You know, buttoned up the way that needs to be. Be thoughtful about those things, and then go try some things, build some things. And especially with this technology, everyone, whether you are a deep technologist, you're a big developer, you're a systems architect, or you're a recruiter, you're an organization development professional, whenever go get some hands on experience with this technology, play with it a bit, and I think that is fundamentally the best way to
Chris Rainey 38:02
learn right now. Yeah, why am I not surprised that you shared that, especially given the culture and values that you have a playground to be able to do that? I love that kind of, even the name of a playground kind of emphasizes the safety and the ability the play element, and removes the stigma of failure of that. And obviously, you know, not everyone, every company has an opportunity, like Amazon, to have something like that, but it's incredible that your team gets the opportunity to play around with those tools, so that when perhaps they even start to review different AI solutions, they have way more, you know, knowledge and experience of what this actually means. And as you just said, it kind of sparked innovation and ideas and the art of possible came from playing around with those tools. Which is, which is such an important part of it, I have to ask, because obviously it's a big challenge right now for our community. Like, what's been your biggest challenge of sort of integrating AI into HR? What are some of the challenges that you and the team faced or facing?
Ian Wilson 39:03
Well, I think definitely what I've talked to a lot of my peers in the industry about are definitely the questions about, you know, data, security, privacy, you know, different regulations around the world about just data in general, especially, you know, personally identifiable, you know, data, people, data, if you will, also who has access to it. How do things like permissions work? So there's a lot of those things that have been top of mind for a lot of people, and should be. You know, I would say, if you are an HR leader in any organization and you haven't had a good, high quality conversation with your technology teams, with your CIOs, with your security officers. If you haven't had a good, thorough conversation about all of this, you absolutely should. There's a lot of companies, including ours, that are investing in making sure that these things are as dialed in as they need to be, so that people can feel good about how they're using these technologies going. Forward. That's a that's a very big one. I think there's another piece to it, which I find people thinking through is around, how does the introduction of these technologies potentially degrade the experience that employees have with other humans in the organization? You know, for some companies that maybe that aren't used to using things like, you know, chat experiences or other sort of non human information, you know, retrieval and repository type things, they feel like this shift of becoming less human. And I think it's very important that you just think through that. I personally don't believe that is the destiny. I actually like what you said earlier, that by using these new set of tools to help us be more productive on the things work to really help us and creates more room for us to be like really human in the things where we will uniquely be the best humans. And so I actually think this can create a more human experience, but I find some people really working through their thinking on that particular piece. And then the third one, which I think is becoming more significant for a lot of organizations, is people are starting to realize that these technologies don't come for free, especially the big Gen AI models that are built on big, large language models. I think a lot of people hear the conversation in our communities about power and building data centers and other sort of, you know, infrastructure investments that are being made. Those are costs, yeah, and so just making sure you're keeping an eye on exactly what does this mean for my organization? Okay, does it come for free? Where am I going to get the best return on investment? How do I think very intentionally about that as time goes on? Is something that I hear is very top of mind for people right now too. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 41:42
love that last question, because I know I got like, you got some point as well when you look back at your career, I'm saying as if you're retiring when you when you look back at your career and some of the lessons learned, the highs and the lows, you know, what what advice would you give to those HR leaders of tomorrow that perhaps watching this, they're going to be sitting in your seat one day. What advice did you wish you had on the journey?
Ian Wilson 42:12
Well, there's one that I'll offer, which is going to sound so incredibly basic and simple. Um, yet in reality, it still continues to be a mystery to me why more people don't do this, which is make the decision to be focused on having business impact. And again, that seems so obvious, of course, as an HR person working in an organization, you're going to be trying to have as much business impact as you can, of course, right? But I can tell you what I spend so much time, you know, with, you know, looking through different organizations and different companies and things, and I come across these things that I affectionately call random acts of HR. And a random act of HR is potentially a very good piece of HR work. It's well thought out. It has good science, and it's being implemented in a place where it has no use whatsoever. That is a random act of HR, and that happens when the HR practitioner actually isn't trying to have business impact, or they don't understand what that is. They haven't worked backward from the names of their customers or their business, and they're not going after the right things. And so I just encourage everyone who hangs out with me, anyone out there like I go back in my career, the times when I feel like I was just laser focused on helping my businesses be more capable and more effective and having business impact, I feel the most accomplished. I feel the most satisfied when I look back at all the times when I'm putting energy around random acts of HR, I'm just like, Good grief, man. Like, why? Why was I doing that? Like, that was not my purpose. That's not what I should be doing. So that's why that I would just encourage everyone stay on top of this thing. Be a business person. Aspire to have business impact. Do your best work, see yourself having that impact, evaluate yourself that way, and I think you'll feel really, really good about how your career plays out. I
Chris Rainey 44:09
absolutely love that. I've never heard someone say to random acts of HR, but it completely as soon as you said it, I completely, I completely got it, and I'm sure everyone listening can completely relate to that as well. And it is quite hard to not get distracted with the new trends, new buzz words, new technologies. And sometimes HR kind of gets pulled off, of course, and kind of goes down a rabbit hole of the latest trend or new technology. Ai, is now one of them, right? Okay, is this tool solving that business problem? Right? To your point, or is it just another tool that you what you solving for? Why are you adding business value as well? So if you keep that as the North Star, it's easier to kind of like remove all of the distractions along along along the way, and have a solid foundation of decision making. Is this helping us getting closer to solving. X, and if not, then don't, don't talk to me about it. And I talked about that team all the time, when they come to me, of all these new ideas, and I'm like this, we need to stay focused. I mean, it's amazing advice, and I love the random acts of HR. It's super interesting. But listen, I appreciate you taking the time out to come on show. It's been a fun conversation. I'm not saying that because it's the podcast. This is not sponsored. Everyone. I'm a big fan of the organization and what you've do and how you innovate. HR leaders podcast was one of the first podcasts on on Amazon, Alexa and everyone thought I was crazy back then. Like, what do you mean? Why have you uploaded the podcast? Why have you created the app for the Alexa to have on? I was like, Listen. Voice is going to be the future, and this is a long, long, long time ago, and people thought crazy, and we've got 1000s of people to listen to the show every week, on on their Amazon, Alexa around their house every day. This is one small example of that. And my whole house is controlled by Alexa and automated, which my friends always laugh at me about as well, and the way my daughter interacts with the products. So it must be really exciting to be part of part of that from your perspective in the organization every day. So congratulations to you and the team on the amazing work, and I know the best is yet to come, and look forward to chatting again soon. Well,
Ian Wilson 46:20
thank you for those comments, and you are inspiring us to continue to build and innovate on your behalf, for you and your family, all of your listeners, to help them have the best possible experience with the things that we are working on for you. So keep that feedback coming, because you do fuel everything we do here. And Chris, sincerely appreciate this opportunity to come and connect with you today. It's been super fun.
More from the HR Leaders Podcast
Ian Wilson, VP of HR at Amazon.