Unlock Employee Growth & Build Your Dream Team
Sue Quackenbush discusses her rise from a family farm to Chief People Officer at Dynatrace. She highlights innovative HR practices aimed at aligning employee experience with company growth. Sue also emphasizes the importance of robust support systems that enhance workplace efficiency and facilitate decision-making. Listen for unique insights into managing a global workforce in the tech sector.
In today's episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we are joined by Sue Quackenbush, the Chief People Officer at Dynatrace.
Sue shares her journey from growing up on a small family farm to becoming a pivotal leader in the high-tech industry, shaping the future of workplace culture and employee experience. Dynatrace is navigating rapid growth and transformation, offering unique insights into the challenges and strategies of managing a global workforce in the tech sector.
🎓 In this episode, Sue discusses:
1. Ongoing efforts at Dynatrace to innovate within HR practices
2. The importance of aligning employee experience with company growth
3. The critical role of robust employee support systems in enhancing workplace efficiency and decision-making
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Sue Quackenbush 0:00
We hadn't had a definition of what good looks like from a leader. These are there's fundamental building blocks that have to be in and they have to be clean enough to date and you know, we talked about the data, again the non sexy stuff, but this is what you can if you have your house in order then you can continue to build and iterate and then when AI a prospective really capitalise on that and make the tailored experiences but it has to be on sound
Chris Rainey 0:32
so welcome to the show. How are you? I am well thank you for having me like glasses, by the way. Thank you. Nice. Like, are you like one of those glassware is like my wife. She's got like a whole set of basic glasses based on occasions. She's got like, a going out glasses to work glasses. Like there's a lot of glasses basically. Is it? Yeah, is that? Yes, I do have a computer glasses so I can see your computer. So yes, my
loves me. So yeah, when I grew up, I used to wear glasses, you just had a pair of glasses. And then now like my wife's got a pair of glasses, but every occasion but it's fair enough. So Penny How you feeling of predict a bit of energy into the situation. But
before we jump into tap on a little bit more about you personally, and your journey to where we are now and also a little bit about the company if people are not aware of the business?
Sue Quackenbush 1:26
Sure, absolutely. So a little bit about me personally, I am married with two young adults, I have a 27 year old and a 25 year old and my oldest is getting married next year. So it's been an interesting, quick journey. I live in the United States in New Jersey. And I've been here for a long time. I started off actually growing up on a very small family farm and was able to transition into professional life through a co op programme in college. And back then I had no idea what the corporate world look like or felt like or what it required. And through that Co Op programme. It really started me on that journey, started my career in finance, and then really transitioned over into human capital over a number of years. But it wasn't planned. It was one of those things when life happens. My first daughter was born and she was needed for me to stay home for many months until I could leave her and you know, it allowed me I worked with a tremendous organisation that allowed me to consult and then come back full time when I was able to and the story began. So this journeys been an unusual one. And today I am at Dynatrace. I am their chief people officer, their first one. So this is a midsize organisation in the tech space, we really focus on observability. And really making sure that networks are running correctly and that they're safe. And so we work with lots of lots of enterprises across the globe. We have about close to 5000 resources, individuals working in the organisation globally, many, many different countries. Most of our employees sit either in the US or in Austria. Those are our two largest bases. And we are high tech and a fast growing organisation. And we'll be public five years in August.
Chris Rainey 3:33
Oh, amazing. Wow. I don't want to take that all in now. That's a lot to take in. So what I'm what size so many employees will accompany yet and when to when they got a CPO because I suppose that's a interest in when do you hire a CBO? Yeah.
Sue Quackenbush 3:53
So is about 4000 And we continue? Yep. Continue to grow so little under 4000. When when I joined.
Chris Rainey 4:02
Amazing. Wow. And what was the what attracted you to the role?
Sue Quackenbush 4:07
Well, the opportunity and to be fair, this was this is my third Chief People Officer role in a midsize organisation. I love the global aspect of it. I love the space of technology, the high growth and the ability to really bring together a international organisation into a global team, that one company mindset and so the cultural transformation the opportunity to really reshape the employee experience. And so it's been a it's a wonderful lot ride and be there two years in July.
Chris Rainey 4:42
Amazing. I mean, also the space you're operating in right now is just booming right now more than ever so what how many more? Are you hiring right now? How aggressive are you hiring? What What's the target?
Sue Quackenbush 4:59
Me are hiring. We are a public company. So we are definitely we are we are hiring we have, we're doubling down in our r&d area as well as our sales and sales engineering. So lots of momentum there to continue hiring. But we grew our headcount, we've been growing our headcount every year, our net headcount. And so we anticipate 10 plus percent growth again this year.
Chris Rainey 5:27
Wow. Incredible. So what was top of mind for you right now? What's, what are you most passionate about when we last spoke? I think I remember we you the employee experience was something that's really top of mind for you. And I always find that when I speak about employee experience, it means different things to different leaders. So what is this? Why why do you think this is so important? And what does employee experience mean to you?
Sue Quackenbush 5:50
So super important, I love this topic. And with regards to Dynatrace, and even my other CPO roles, you know, coming into an organisation where some when you attract key talent, and having that individual grow their career within the organisation is golden. Right? And how do you create an ecosystem, in an organisation where you attract talent, you retain and engage your talent, and you're in high growth scenario, right? So it's being able to create that, that company where someone can come in and thrive, because we know that especially early career, individuals are going to come into an organisation, and then especially tech, they're looking to move on, right. So they want to be engaged and challenged by exciting technology and challenges. And you need to as an organisation, be able to provide the mechanism where someone can have that opportunity and experience, I would say that the Dynatrace experience is so unique, because it is, you know, a 19 year old company, it's had a number of different ownership models, the latest being a public company, and you have pockets of employees that really have different types of employee experiences. And so coming into the organisation to really create that one company mindset to really bring that umbrella of why you should come to Dynatrace, why you should stay at Dynatrace. And then being able to provide that experience where individuals can grow individuals know a career path and see a career path. And believe me, we are on that journey, it's a major radical transformation. Because walking into the organisation, we are consistently inconsistent than our employee experience, than it is for all the right reasons, you know, high growth, you know, acquisitions, things like that. But now you're at a point where to scale to the next step and the next higher layer layer of growth, you have to have an infrastructure that provides a framework where individuals can really not have to think about be distracted by finding out how to do their job, but to do it and to continue to grow.
Chris Rainey 8:07
Yeah. That's so interesting. Once you and the team have set this strategy, you're focusing on it. Can you walk us through like that? How you approached it? From what from a practical perspective, we will, we will talk about employee experience, we'll talk about the importance, but what are some of the practical actionable things that you've done that you've seen that have had impact?
Sue Quackenbush 8:27
So absolutely multiple facet? It's many facets, right? So there's different areas that you're looking at this? The first and foremost is, and this is the non sexy stuff, but it's essentially, do we have the systems? Do we have the information and the tools to be able to provide information to help influence decisions, right? So Can Can we make it easy for people leaders to really be able to lead their teams? Can we make it easy for our employees to get the information that they need at the time that they need it? And when you are walking into a consistently inconsistent employee experience, you're spending so much time recreating data or trying to find the answer? And if you're running a global team, you have to figure out all the different ways to how do I hire? How do I do? You know, how do I onboard? And so the practicality is, how do we look at those tools and systems? How do we look at the approaches to the employee lifecycle to say, Okay, how do we recruit I inherited two recruitment teams using different processes. How do we harmonise that for a global approach? So really looking at how do we do performance enablement? How do we do compensation and streamlining that? So it's really looking at, okay, what are those key moments that matter? Onboarding, the attraction, the hiring, onboarding, a life event, all of the things a compensation conversation. Be Being able to enable our people leaders to understand why it's important, how it gets done. And then being able to put the put the tools and systems in place to enable that. And there's a whole host of communications and change management that has to happen. But it's really a lot of blocking and tackling with the basics to build. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 10:21
Well, thank you for being very comprehensive on that. And as you said, it's a combination of different systems and tools to achieve that. At the moment, do you have a way like, how do you capture? What tools and technology do you have to help you capture those moments that matter? What are some of the tools that you're using to be able to do that? Because there's been some big innovations in this space about one how we capture those moments, but to how we communicate at scale, based on local nuances, based on cultural nuances based on the information that person needs when they need it. At the time. Yeah, how are you approaching that?
Sue Quackenbush 11:01
So we're in the midst of a multi year radical transformation. And so what we've just deployed is performance enablement, I'll take that as an example. And this is something where some parts of the organisation had bits of it, but others it was a huge gap. And so what we've been doing is working with an external partner to really look at, okay, a clear moment that matters is enabling the people leader to have a conversation about performance, about career development, because that's a key driver, especially in professional talent arenas, where it's all about career growth, and it's about development. And so what we've done is we're working with this partner to architect okay, we decided that this is a key moment that mattered? How then do we focus on the conversations? What tools do we provide? And then how do we ensure that the approach we've put in really resonates with the business? And so there's been a lot of partnering with our leaders across the business on how can it work for say, engineering? How can it work for, say, our post sales, right, and I would say the time invested in making sure we understand how this needs to work for the business, before you architect a tool and put out a solution. We, you know, works, it really makes you have to spend the upfront time of discussing and making sure you really understand how and how a business leader and how a people leader is going to use this. And so we I'll give you some stats, we just rolled this out to about 1500 employees, as a pilot, we had 99% of the people leaders fill out and really can complete their evaluations, we had almost 98% of our employees participate in their self evaluations. And now it's just really making sure it's a partnership.
Chris Rainey 13:05
All right now now you've just been tricked me, who's the partner? You've intrigued me now.
Sue Quackenbush 13:11
We're working with Accenture to
Chris Rainey 13:14
help. Okay. And in terms of the technology, though,
Sue Quackenbush 13:17
the technology we're implementing SAP SuccessFactors. Okay.
Chris Rainey 13:21
And they're helping you build it. It basically what you just described, yep, as well. But they're helping you as an advisory coming in helping you to strategy execution, implementation Nice. Well,
Sue Quackenbush 13:34
and I think the thing is to that lesson learned, it's holistic approach. So when you have an implementation partner, and you have a technology partner, and you have the business, and you have your your people in what we call people and culture function, there's a lot of moving parts, right, it's very easy to have siloed thinking, especially when you're doing such a large transformation, just get this done. And what we've learned is you absolutely have to pull back and say, How, what's the experience? What's the holistic experience for the leader, for the individual participating in this in this approach, and when you don't do that, that's when you miss things. And that's when it doesn't go as smoothly as you'd like. So we've been really investing. I'll give you an example. When we were doing our performance calibration. My leader who runs talent development, facilitated all of them. Now it was close to 40 of them. But it's it's again, having a dialogue of this is new to the organisation, how do you train leaders to think about it differently or to think about it because they haven't done it before? And so I can't emphasise how much time you need to take to really work on the communication and making sure people understand and making sure that when it is rolled out it actually is utilised.
Chris Rainey 14:57
Yeah. What was the consequence of not Doing that, in your experience?
Sue Quackenbush 15:03
Well, you're you sometimes you have unintended consequences, where you know, you might send something out that just completely confuses the audience, or just really will not, you know, causes such that people will adopt it, and they won't actually partake in doing the process or the approach. So you have to be really mindful that this is a partnership all along. It's not, hey, here's something that HR deploys, and you need to do it. That does not work. No,
Chris Rainey 15:35
oh, I literally in my last podcast we were talking about the same thing is in bringing the business on the journey with you is 90% of the battle. Because then after you deploy it, there's no soul, there's no cell needed. Because they've been part of the bill, they've been part of the process. They understand what it means for them for function, their organisation, the value to the customer. And then you roll it out, and everyone's on board, you have those champions that you have on board, right. That's what point people people think normally, and then the work begins and then to be honest, then the work actually begins. doesn't end there. And that's the thought of the of the journey. One of the big challenges I keep hearing and you probably know this amongst your your own personal network it and it's kind of like the same old story of like the, you know, deciding which partner to go with. Every leader I speak to, it's like a debate back and forth happens at every one of our events. Time. Why did you decide to go with SAP SuccessFactors? What given your experience than then the companies you've worked in the past? You've implemented multiple HMOs in the past? Why SAP SuccessFactors?
Sue Quackenbush 16:43
I mean, I think there's a combination of things. Number one, you're always going to look at the top ones, right there's there's workdays there's Oracle's there's sa P, and we looked at them. All right, and then part of it is during those conversations, you're also looking at, okay, how do we believe we can grow with this beyond just a HR system? Are there other aspects to this within finance are other areas of the organisation? Can we continue to grow with this? And maybe the organisation is not ready to do so. But where's that longevity? And how does it can be expanded? And, you know, so our decision was a bit on that as well. So functionality a bit on Okay, is there other areas that we can expand into that we need to go to that then also, you know, a lot of times is, do you have a relationship already with that organisation? And you know, from a from a commercial perspective, so you have to take in multiple factors. But first, you have to really do look at all the different options to come up with, Okay, which one could best fit for you?
Chris Rainey 17:47
And what was it the things that stood out to you that you were like, Okay, this is the right direction for us?
Sue Quackenbush 17:53
Well, it was a combination of all three, it was combination. Yeah, we are, we are already partners, as an organisation, as organisations, we have the ability to expand in other functions. And then this is one of the top platforms out there.
Chris Rainey 18:09
So you also to also gives you the confidence that you're prepared for the future? Yep. as well. So I want to ask that question. Because I think it's just a constant debate. amongst members, right, right.
Sue Quackenbush 18:24
Yeah, it is a constant debate. And And again, you're you're looking at it from multiple, multiple facets. And the other thing is, you're not putting in a system for a year. This is a multi year commitment that you're putting in. Yeah. And no system is perfect. So when you look at the other facets of it, you really did have an ability to make a decision. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 18:45
Love that. Back to our point before about employee experience. I know, as part of that you're really passionate about, you mentioned honestly, retention and engagement for connections, but you delve into Tell me a little bit more about your thoughts in terms of how that then helps build community? Because I think that's an important part of it.
Sue Quackenbush 19:02
Yeah, so, you know, look for for, for companies, definitely growth companies, fast growth companies, there's this you're always looking for great talent. And not only are you always looking for great talent are also looking to you want to make sure you retain the talent you have and you want to engage it right. And you want that talent to grow at the pace of the company's growth. Right. And so that's that kind of that balance. With regard to you know, we have a hybrid work model. Close to 40% of our employees are remote, and especially during COVID A lot of individuals came into organisations in the remote from a remote standpoint, that sense of belonging and making a connection with the organisation is critical. Because when someone feels that they are connected, and they have a sense of belonging to the organisation, changing and moving to another organisation gets that more difficult, right and so I'm a big believer in when individuals connect and have a sense of belonging, they're going to engage more, they're going to be more open, and they're going to partner more across the organisation. And this is this is this is critical in hybrid work environments because some individuals never get to see other colleagues except for video. Right? They're not in a physical setting with these with individuals. And you've had that across distributed teams as well. Definitely. And so one of the first thing is, and I've done this in other organisations, too, is come in and that really understand what's the employer brand? Like, what is the employer brand? Why do people come to the organisation? Why do they stay at, you know, real vibes, real people, that's our employer brands. And we did this by really looking and doing research across the organisation say what makes it work here. And this really resonated. But from that, you start to tell the story of the organisation and really starting to make those connections and building community either through remote clubs. So we have a remote connect Club, where we have our remote employees have social activities and learnings so that they're feeling a sense of community. We also have a number of ERGs, employee resource groups across the organisation, again, building a sense of community. I'm doing a series of real talks podcast, internally and externally, just to spotlight some key Dynatrace is across the world. So we're doing we're also doing employee evangelist videos, which will be coming out later this year. It's really about how do we get we did put together newsletter global newsletter, I know that sounds old, but because everyone was very much wedded into their teams, and they didn't really understand cross function, cross glow, were really spotlighting all the different activities, that that really showcase the vibrancy of the organisation. So all of that builds sense of community, but it's all through connections, and we all connect in different ways. And so the more you have through either ERGs, or different subject, clubs, I mean, this really helps individuals feel a sense of belonging to the organisation, besides just their manager and just their team.
Chris Rainey 22:28
Yeah, beyond that, right? Because normally, you'd have that interaction. If you're all in a workplace, you're on your team. But when you work remotely, you're only confined to your team. Exactly right. And so how do you create that stickiness and that sense of belonging beyond the boundaries of just your own team, as well. So I love the activities you're doing. And I think it's important one, you've done a great job, which a lot of leaders don't do great is you created a brand around it. Dynatrace is what was the what the saying you mentioned again, I'm assuming there's some merch around. I keep building on it. Yeah, you create a podcast. So it's a great, authentic medium to connect with people, you've got email, you're giving people choice, and they can consume the content, however they want to somehow sleep, some people might like to read an email, some people might like to listen to a podcast, some would like to join the ERGs. But that is kind of creating value in those activities in the self in themselves is what's then creating that culture. And that's that sense of belonging.
Sue Quackenbush 23:34
Absolutely. And then also refreshing our values. And then defining those behaviours that really show tell people how to show up under these values. And we we've just gone through that exercise and really simplified them, we only have three, making sure we have a
Chris Rainey 23:51
contract, can you share those? What are the what are the three values now?
Sue Quackenbush 23:57
And win with integrity, engage with passion? In no win with integrity, now you're putting me on the spot someone with integrity, engage with purpose and innovate with passion?
Chris Rainey 24:10
There we go. So you know, Whenever someone's puts you on the spot, it's like, oh, God,
Sue Quackenbush 24:14
backwards, do but
Chris Rainey 24:17
I don't think it matters, what order they it's what is this? They all count, it doesn't matter. And you mentioned, what are some of those qualities that you mentioned, that you want leaders and employees to show up with? You mentioned that you revisited it? Is that what you were saying? Sorry? Yeah,
Sue Quackenbush 24:33
so under our values, there's there's key behaviours and you know, so the behaviour of it near when you engage with purpose, it's really listen to understand and you know, it's about feedback. And so each one of them, it's very much Okay, can I see this, this behaviour demonstrated? And we're, we've we've now bake this into our approach. formance enhancement, so performance enablement has that so when you're thinking about how an individual shows up to work, and what they produce, you're looking at it to through two different lenses. One is the work, but then the how factor and the how factor is absolutely wrapped around the values do does an individual live the Dynatrace values, and you can only see that through the behaviours they demonstrate.
Chris Rainey 25:27
And you're tracking that for the one to ones and the performance reviews and stuff like that. That's where you're collecting that information. And I'm sure that's kind of giving you in a team a good idea of your talent, pipeline and potential future leaders. But also holding current leaders accountable. As well, to make sure they're showing up in the right way for their teams. Yes,
Sue Quackenbush 25:50
absolutely. And it's, you know, you wanted to the, the, the the fun part about this is, everything is connected, right. So real vibes, real people, okay, our values, our behaviours, they all have to, they all have to hang together. Otherwise, it just feels really disjointed. And so when you start to embed your values and your behaviours, into each of the different aspects of the lifecycle, so talent attraction to hiring, to onboarding, to performance, enablement, career development, it all has to hang together. Otherwise, and that's the experience, right? That is the experience. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 26:32
you want to look at each of those stages and employee experience or lifecycle for that lens that you're describing. And now when you team sit down, and look at each of those, you can kind of put those lens glasses on. I look for her. I'm like, you know, is this is this real wives what I keep forgetting now realise, people and making sure that that is the lens that you're making decisions from, it's also a great foundation to look at things for right as well. I love that. And then that's the that's the connectivity and the glue, right? That a lot of companies are missing as we move to hybrid. I think we were missing it before even was in the workplace. But I mean, it became even more challenging when we became distributed. Right.
Sue Quackenbush 27:16
And you know, one of the things we want to talk about we want to play with is the real people too. So real bide, you have a lot of different programmes, and you can see in office and also remote connect clubs and things like that. But when you think about real people showcasing Dinah tracers, and really saying, Okay, this is what you know, Dynatrace looks like and reflecting. And you could really then how does that reflect our diversity of culture, diversity of thought, a different perspective. So you can take this and really, I would say play off of it, but really build off of it throughout all the different aspects of an organisation.
Chris Rainey 27:54
Yeah, I want to revise for all people t shirt. When I meet you, if I meet you at the event, then we're gonna get some real people. You know, I feel like HR leaders in general just need that T shirt. You know, I mean, like, that's like it. So it's almost like he's an HR brand, like the profession, visor faithful. Anyways, how has this changed the way you entertain, think and work? Because this is also a big shift within your own team about how you operate, as opposed to conventional HR operating models or strategy. I hope that makes sense.
Sue Quackenbush 28:35
Yes, so I would say it's interesting at my the traditional operate in operating model, I mean, we do have an operating model, I would say the employee experience or real vibes, real people is the wrapper. But then I also have workplace experience as well as part of my function. So what we say internally and externally is how we reflect it internally in our facilities and also through our remote network. And so it's not it's a complete wrapper around all of the experience is and that we support the organisation with and programmes and initiatives. And so I would say it's a more holistic way of thinking about this to say, hey, does this hang true for what we're saying, you know, we create a buzz in our in our facilities. So how are we creating that buzz? What programmes are we doing it does a tie to what we're saying with real lives real people? Right? And so are we authentic? Are we welcoming? are we ensuring that new Dinah tracers coming into the organisation really feel connected? Really feel a sense of belonging and just truing that up? It just helps you really it's the guide rails, right? And it's to say, Hey, are we living what we're saying we're living and how do we in our next evolution of this space is putting in true and Employee value props for different personas. So that's what we're working on, we'll be rolling that out more.
Chris Rainey 30:06
So to make an even more customised, bespoke employee experience, because you're
Sue Quackenbush 30:13
a technologist, right? Or, you know, as a technologist or as a sales professional or as another professional, what does this mean to you? What's the, what's the relationship you can expect between yourself and the company. So we're in the process of fleshing them out, pulling together from the original research we did around real bites, real people, and our values and our culture. So it really all speaks in hangs together. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 30:42
well we call is if you can also connect that with like, the different stages people are in their career, and how you can support them. So if you look, for example, from a comms and Ben's perspective, they're gonna be looking at their very different set of benefits that they need at that particular age of age, whereas someone first coming into the business is going to be very different. So also creating personas around you don't want to pigeonhole people, obviously, but you don't want it but you don't want to send communications to them that just isn't relevant to them to your point, anyone needs to feel like, okay, this is aimed at Chris, and what this means for me, and it helps me and that is one of the incredible things around technology and AI is we can now tailor that at scale, and create a unique employee experience for everyone. Whereas before, it was just like a blanket statement that avoided all of that and even didn't even take into consideration cultural nuance, depending on if you have a global business, right? Or just in general, the diversity, neuro diversity of how people consume content and information, as well. So it's really exciting, that the how far we've come right, that we are able to be able to provide this to our employees and to our customers and, and to our communities.
Sue Quackenbush 32:01
Absolutely. And it's it's so there's so many facets to this. So having that umbrella helps. And then when you think about the cultural differences, right, so having a global organisation, how do you become a global team? That's the other thing, right? And so when you think about that community and bringing it across the organisation, because we just did an engagement survey for the first time, our highest ranked question was about I feel like I'm part of a team. Great. But when you start thinking about okay, small team, to a larger team, to a functional team, to multifunctional team multi geographies, we still have a journeys to work on that, because and when you have these umbrellas of of an employer brand and employee value props, it just really helps provide a little more information of expectation setting. And your point about tailoring our tailoring will probably start on learning and development because we know that career growth is a key driver. When you then think about different benefits depending on different life cycles of an employee. We're not there yet. I mean, we're we need to, quite honestly sit back and really understand okay, what do we currently offer globally? What can we offer globally, we'd currently offer an EIP that is global and provides a lot of mental health assistance. But that's our only real global benefit. Everything else is very much bespoke to the different countries we operate in. So you have a ways to still look at that. But right now, our focus will be on the learning and development, the career conversations, the feedback and making sure individuals really understand why and what they do fits into the company's overall mission, vision and purpose and how do they their efforts really feed into the growth of the organisation and there's alignment because that drives connection too. And sometimes it's really hard you can feel pretty disconnected if you know I'm not a technologist or technology company, how do I fit into that organisation? What's my contribution to the organisation to help it continue to grow and being able to really shore up those questions? Is our first step before we then start to even tell her further Yeah,
Chris Rainey 34:25
notice this is a lot it's all walk ahead of everyone right? as well. I love the fact that you mentioned in the starting with the learning slide you've seen that that comes up time after time was one of the most important factors is the reason I left my company after 10 years because I felt like I just wasn't growing, learning development and to your point. I also didn't understand my role in the company's success. And I was super disengaged because I was like, Okay, I'm great at doing sales I'm making millions of pounds for business but what what's the why? Like what what like what is the My role in More than just asked to sales outside of that in a success in the future to company, if you can connect those two things together, and lead and leading with purpose, a lot of companies are doing stuff like that now connected people's purpose to the business and then understanding and seeing huge results. Unilever is a company has been doing this for many years, they put over 15,000 leaders through that training every single year to understand how to connect those two things together to your point through their learning programme. And then as you said, the learning and development tools are come so far as well we can create that customised learning experience now. And that's kind of where AI is coming into all these tools to be able to based on where you are individually to tailor it to, to you we just did we just couldn't do that before. It required heavy, heavy heavy lift on l&d teams to create so much content. But we can now use that using large language models and AI and many, many other tools. We've just built the world's world's first AI copilot ourselves. And we can, you know, onboard a few 1000 HR members of the team and create every single one of them their own custom learning pathway based on the skills they want to develop, and the AI will build it for them. Right being able to do that is just incredible. And people are much more likely to want to do it. Because they feel like it's for Chris. It's absolutely. Oh, that tailoring. Yes, you know. Yeah,
Sue Quackenbush 36:25
I totally agree. And, you know, I think though, depending on where a company is, in this cycle, I mean, when we talk about AI, and there's different types of AI, but the reality is you have to have your fundamentals in place, right, your data, your information, your artefacts that are going to be pulling this, especially if it's within the organisation, right? And so, you know, depending on the cycle of a company's it is in the formative stages and growth stage, are they really trying to the definitions, I mean, look, when I joined the organisation, talent review and succession planning was not, it was still it's nice and easy, right? So we hadn't had definition of what good looks like from a leader, right. And so these are, there's fundamental building blocks that have to be in and they have to be clean and up to date. And, you know, we talked about data, again, the non sexy stuff, but this is what you can, if you have your house in order, then you can continue to build and iterate and then from an AI perspective, really capitalise on that and make someone's you know, the tailored experiences, but it has to be on sound information. Otherwise,
Chris Rainey 37:31
it's like garbage in garbage out, right? Like Exactly, exactly. Any director or any VP of people analytics I speak to on a daily basis, even though we've got all these flashy tools, and all these amazing, they're like, the first thing they sell me that they start with, when I'm like, how do you start there? Like data? Understanding make sure it's clean, makes compliant, all that stuff. And I'm like, All right, so all these sexy things we were talking about? It's like, no, no, ignore all of the shiny things. Focus on that, because otherwise, you're gonna get, it's just gonna be garbage in garbage out. I've always
Sue Quackenbush 38:02
said, and trust me, I like all the sexy stuff. But the basics that you have to have, right? And, you know, and definitions. My goodness, you know, especially in companies that are growing up through acquisition, everyone defines different things in different ways, and are seeing thing in different ways. And you're just like, what you have to just, you have to check that and have that, you know, confidence that what you're going to build off of, is truly something you can build off of, yeah,
Chris Rainey 38:32
when people I heard this, when I was maybe like, 17, I never went to school, I think I told you before I started working like 1617, I just turned 17, I went to this business conference, because I just wanted to understand what business is. And just like it was like a b2b Expo. And I just went because I live locally. And I saw a guy speak on stage. And he was a billionaire of big tech company. And someone asked him, what got you to where you are. And I've lived by this statement ever since. And this is a success for HR leaders. And he just said, I do we do the basics to a higher standard, consistently. Yep, I'm who I What do you mean, he's like, no, nothing else. We do the basics to a high standard, because he said it constantly said it and literally is ingrained in my whenever I sit down to the team, and I'm like, Are we doing the basics? Are we doing him to a high standard? And are we consistent? And if you can do that, and constantly improve 1% You know, even if it's 1% a year, you know, and you're constantly growing and doing it that that's where success comes. And if you look at those successful people they did, they're very, they've become very successful at one specific thing. And I've made sure that a solid foundation, they're doing the basics to high standard. And also I'll add on top of that, at the end, you just got to constantly be innovating. And so if you do that successfully, you and that's what we've done. We've done the same thing in HR leaders for the last eight years, but every year We just constantly improve that. But we've got that solid foundation. And we just keep adding and adding and adding, the quality goes up. There are different types of products, we creating more customer delight amongst our members, providing more value, looking at new opportunities to deliver content for AI. And that's it. We just keep building. That way. Before they go. I wanted to ask this question, because I don't often get to ask it enough. What would you say is the biggest challenge you've ever faced in your career? As a CPO?
Sue Quackenbush 40:32
I think the biggest challenge as a CPO is the malt, the many hats that a CPO wears, right? So from a CPOs perspective, you are the face to enlarge lot of times you are the face and the voice of the employees. But then you also are a business leader that needs to build infrastructure, scalable infrastructure, put in the programmes, the processes, the the data, all of that the metrics, enabling people, leaders and leaders and employees for growth. So you're always kind of balancing the business and the employee side, right. And I think something when you're going, especially through cultural changes and large transformations, it's hard. It's hard sometimes because if you say one thing, hey, we're all it's, we are employee centric, it is all about the experience. But then you have to make some really difficult business decisions, say if you have to eliminate a role or do you know change a programme and potentially minimise it not continuing to grow it? People always assume well, you can't be employee centric and do this well. And so it's that balance of trying to progress the organisation from a human capital perspective, and yet also have that employee lens. And I guess, regard that you are doing this in a way that is positive for all right, and that's a hard one, because sometimes you do have to make very difficult decisions or support very difficult changes in the organisation that not everyone's gonna agree with you and you're not going to make everyone happy. And sometimes everyone's like, Oh, well, that's what you do. You make everyone happy. And you're you're all about the employee. And it's just like, Well, wait a minute, there's also business to run to, and how do you balance the different, I guess, the different agendas? And that can feed throughout the entire employee experience? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 42:38
it's like a paradox. Import, how do you deal with that part? On a personal level? That's not easy, right? Because it can be pretty lonely sometimes.
Sue Quackenbush 42:49
It's, you know, it is very lonely. Because you, you have to be because you're as a leader, and especially a CPO. I mean, people are watching, and listening to what you say, your body positioning your body language. And you you, you do want to have that positive, but also practical approach. And, you know, sometimes, you know, you just have to always try to remain calm, and also understand where that person is coming from, or those comments because it's too easy to get into, especially these days into the emotional, I guess, spin ups that happen on you know, divisive or challenging discussions that happen in the in the workplace. And you're always like, what the way to stay balanced is to stay calm, and always ask the questions of truly understanding where an individual or a team or leaders coming from, to hopefully work through a solution to move forward because at the end of the day, we're all in organisations, we need to move forward, we need to work together. And you you really want to be making the best decisions. And and I think that's really hard because emotions, we're all emotional, you know, we're human beings, we're emotional and something we might hear something or half hear something and people run off in different tangent different directions. And it's like, that's all very distracting to a business. And I you know, how many times are CPAs involved into these, you know, conversations where it's like, well, wait a minute, let's just, let's just pull back and understand truly what's at play here. And what is the solution forward?
Chris Rainey 44:45
Yeah, I can imagine that sometime can be overwhelming, like what kind of mechanisms have you put in place over the years to help you decompress? When you're when you're feeling like that? Well,
Sue Quackenbush 44:55
I two things I would say every morning I do meditate. Every one not every morning I wish I could do every morning I do have a peloton that I love. So you just put your air pods in, you blast the music and you go. So that to me is like, you know, those are kind of my two things. It's the meditation in the morning to start the day off in a good spot. It's if I can get on the bike. I love it. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 45:22
So in the morning, it's like it's a double decompression, like in the morning, yeah, meditating. And then in the evening, you're kind of getting rid of all of the stress of the day, with the peloton.
Sue Quackenbush 45:36
peloton in the morning and the meditation the morning by the
Chris Rainey 45:42
Fed and so you deserve it after that in the morning, actually, that's a good way it's a good way to set you up. Doing that in the morning is is an incredible way to set yourself up for success to start the day. I
Sue Quackenbush 45:53
think well, nine and 10 times if you don't do it in the morning, it's not happening at the end of the day. So
Chris Rainey 46:02
I always say I'm gonna do that. And my wife's like, No, you're not. And I get home and I'm like, I can't be bothered. Because every single time
Sue Quackenbush 46:11
I do not have the discipline to exercise after the day. Yeah, and especially in our roles. Oh my goodness, like things happen. Like every day, sometimes my new saying is, every day is a new box of chocolates. It's like what's gonna happen today and you know it, you know, for your best laid plans of what you need to get done. You only have so many minutes in the day to do it. So start the day off, right? It'll feel much better. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 46:36
Well, it's I didn't expect us to go down that road. Yeah, no, Sue. But I'm glad I asked that question. Because I feel like it's important. These are the things that we don't talk about enough in the HR space, as well. And that sort of the the Navigating the paradox that you just described, being pulled in two different directions is tough. And I think many leaders I speak to learn that the hard way, when they get into those roles, they're not really prepared, if that makes sense for that, so it's great to shed the light on that, as well. And also, it's important to also take care of ourselves. And I know that HR HR NACA, got a good track record of actually taking care of themselves, from my experience, from speaking to leaders. So we all know about the sort of put your own oxygen mask on first analogy. So we need to get better at that. But I appreciate you coming on the show. I know. We'd have to check in in again, a year's time because you got a lot ahead of you, right. We've got some really cool projects, a lot of work that you're doing and you're just getting started. But I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with everyone. And I wish you all the best until next week. Thank
Sue Quackenbush 47:46
you so much. And thank you for having me on the show. It was a pleasure. You're welcome. See you there. Bye bye
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Richard Letzelter, CHRO at Acino.