Speaking the CEO’s Language: How HR Can Connect Strategy to Metrics

[00:00:00] Mo Fathelbab: Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization, People and Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network of executives in the field of human resources. Each week, we bring you in-depth conversations with the country's top HR executives and thought leaders.

[00:00:28] For today's conversation, I'm excited to be joined by Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, where he works with senior executives to elevate leadership performance and aligned business strategy with people outcomes. Welcome Bob.

[00:00:40] Bob Goodwin: Mo. It's so great to be with you. Thanks so much.

[00:00:44] Mo Fathelbab: Bob, great to be with you.

[00:00:46] What an opportunity, Bob. Let's start with your career journey. tell us about it and what brought you to the field of executive leadership.

[00:00:54] Bob Goodwin: Well, thank you for asking. So my background is in sales and marketing actually. And, um, so. I, really enjoy that. I love marketing. It's, it is so much fun, but I've also always been a big networker and I love meeting people and connecting people and stuff like that.

[00:01:10] And when you're a networker, you end up meeting a lot of people in job search. And so I. I, you know, people are like, call Bob. He's nice. He knows a lot of people and he'll help you. And what I discovered very early about job search is that it's really a big sales and marketing exercise. What is your brand?

[00:01:26] What's your unique value proposition? How do you communicate that? All that stuff. And so in. 2021. I started career club to really go kind of chase my passion, which was helping, um, people in career transition was the original value proposition and teaching people how to do that. What I discovered along the way was that many executives who are in seat were struggling with a lot of the same issues that people in job transition were struggling with.

[00:01:55] Again, what is my unique value proposition? How do I craft a career path, you know? Just getting comfortable talking about themselves, things like that. And so, you know, what it kind of has morphed into is both helping, you know, in a group setting, job seekers, and then, you know, working with organizations, helping their executives become the best version of themselves, and making sure that they're carving out and crafting career paths that are meaningful to them.

[00:02:22] Mo Fathelbab: Well, I love that. And I also love the article you wrote in the summer of 2025, issue of Executive Network People and Strategy Journal.

[00:02:30] Bob Goodwin: Thank you so much. That was a great article. It was a lot of fun to write. Thank you.

[00:02:34] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. so the title was Speaking the CEO's Language, and it talked about CHRO perception and the core issue with how HR is currently perceived in most boardrooms.

[00:02:46] Um, so the question for you is, why does this matter for organizational strategy?

[00:02:52] Bob Goodwin: So maybe take just half of a step back is. You know, I, work a lot with SHRM. I, love SHRM's mission and helping, you know, the workers, and the workplace is really, really important to me. And so, of course you start to get to know a lot of HR professionals and I start tracking, you know, well, what are HR executives and professionals talking about listening to things like that, which is where I get to see a lot of your great work, Mo.

[00:03:18] So again, it's great to, I'm a fan boy too. We, mutual admiration here. Yeah, yeah, So, um. But what I started noticing was that there was this real dichotomy between what HR people are talking about in their news feeds, like what they're receiving in their news feeds, you know, and, not bad things, but you know, mental wellness, employee engagement, turnover, retention, you know, whatever the buzzword of the day is on quiet, quitting, quiet, staying coffee, badging, whatever, And then, um, I, looked at. Two years worth of what HR executives were getting in their news feeds and compare that to two years of data with what CEOs and CFOs were getting in their news feeds. And maybe not a big surprise, but it was really kind of interesting to see the data was that they're not talking about the same things.

[00:04:12] So if we see something like employee engagement over two years, that's showing up. 25% ish of the time in a CHRO's newsfeed, approximately 6%. A CEO or CFO's newsfeed. Conversely, if we look at what's in the CEO's newsfeed, it's gonna be things like profitability, cash flow, revenue growth, share price. And how often are those terms showing up in the HR newsfeed?

[00:04:40] Oh yeah, they're not. And so there's like this big disconnect. Yeah. And so that was kind of part A of, what led to this. And then maybe the second piece of it was. During COV, HR had a very prominent and rightfully so seat at the table because all hell broke loose. And you know, just the workplace as we knew, it just instantly got turned on its head.

[00:05:06] And you know, HR was very front and center to make sure that, you know, work kept getting done, that all the accommodations were being made and amazing, important work got done that was followed by. George Floyd and the horror of that. And so, you know, IND came to the fore, right? And so we saw all this effort and things going on around diversity and inclusion.

[00:05:32] And so again, that was very much of an HR led thing. That's kind of come and gone a little bit. Right. You know, we don't have to argue the merits of that, but it's, the reality is it's definitely waned. And so well, what's the next thing for HR besides return to office mandates? And so, you know, the, reason to be you go, it's like, how do we continue to reinvent ourselves, right.

[00:06:03] And not wait for the next crisis. To occur, but to be much more proactive in, you know, redefining just like we do with our, executive coaching folks, reestablishing what's our value proposition and how do we most resonate with our core constituent, which in this case is the CEO, the CFO and the board.

[00:06:22] Mo Fathelbab: Okay. So it makes sense to me that when you look at the data, the CEOs get different data, different information. The CHROs, they have different jobs, they have different responsibilities. Makes sense, but what you're getting at here is, are we speaking the same language? So what are some of the linguistic, approaches?

[00:06:45] What do CHROs use in terms of language, if we could dig into that a little deeper, that may be different from what the CEOs are, speaking?

[00:06:54] Bob Goodwin: Well, it's a great question and it's gonna be a lot again, of things that your audience, our audience here or, and, would be used to hearing about in terms of employee engagement, turnover, retention, you know.

[00:07:09] Talent acquisition, things like that, which are all important. There's an intuitive sense that these are important, but the current environment that we're in right now is very much focused on efficiency. Doing more with less.

[00:07:26] Mo Fathelbab: Ai

[00:07:27] Bob Goodwin: Ai, by the way, which is obviously one of the key catalysts behind all of this.

[00:07:33] Yet, if we look at the, income statement, the profit and loss statement for a company, right, which shows revenue minus cost equals income, the number one expense line item for virtually every company is compensation and benefits. It's people. So, I mean, we are very much in the middle of the biggest line on the income statement, but not necessarily in the middle of talking about it in a way that resonates with the CEO.

[00:08:07] So I wanna be very clear too about the article. that you referenced, I claim to have broken no new ground on this. I mean, a lot of these are existing ideas, existing principles being shaped for the current environment that we find ourselves in, and how to make sure that, you know, the HR executive is able to approach the CEO, the CF.

[00:08:32] O again, not just like either A, you know, trying to get money for their budget or trying to make a qualitative or emotional case. 'cause it's the right thing to do, Mo Right. We want to take care of our people, Mo. It's gonna make them unhappy Mo, if we do, they're losing their motivation. I mean, if we look at Andy chassis.

[00:08:55] At Amazon, Jamie Diamond at JP Morgan. Um, what's it Joe Stanky at? At and t just recently, you know, came out with this memo that it was heard around the world, like they're losing their appetite for soft. Sounding kind of words and things that don't directly tie to the business. You know, wall Street is unrelenting.

[00:09:17] Private equity firms are unrelenting, and we need to be able to tap into that. And so I don't know that it's necessarily, in many ways a reinvention of HR. It's just sharpening the point that why these things actually matter and how they tie to. Financial outcomes that the CEO, CFO and Board genuinely care about.

[00:09:41] Mo Fathelbab: And so what you're saying is these things actually have measurable results that'll speak to the language of the CFO and the CEO and yet. CHROs, lean on this type of language instead. Why do you think that is?

[00:09:55] Bob Goodwin: Some of it Mo is for, I think, really good reasons. You know, I think a lot of people and, ones that I know like you do, I mean, I know a lot of CHROs at this point.

[00:10:06] They are good people. Yeah. Who care about. People. Yes. And people are emotional creatures. Yes. You know, we want to think that we're rational and maybe we are sometimes, but we're also very emotional people. And you talk about. You know, the expression, bring your whole self to work. Yes. People do. You know, and, it's like, I've got aging parents that's weighing on me.

[00:10:30] I've got a kid who's off the rails. I maybe have a marriage or significant other relationship that's not going on. I might have a health issue that I haven't disclosed yet, or maybe I have, but like the whole human being. A lot of this is feelings and it is, you know, mood driven and circumstance driven.

[00:10:50] And so we talk like a human being. 'cause by the way, we're human resources. And yet, while all of that is true, it doesn't at, that level, translate into why it matters from a business outcomes perspective. And the article seeks to make that connection a little bit more tightly for folks. So we keep caring about the things that we care about.

[00:11:16] We just package it a bit differently.

[00:11:18] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. And emotions matter and having CHROs that care matters, but what kind of gap is this creating in terms of the CHRO perception?

[00:11:31] Bob Goodwin: Okay, so if I'm speaking very directly, you know, I think in some cases it is an existential crisis for HR. Um, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal.

[00:11:42] Very recently that was talking about layoffs and the number one functional area over the past two years that have been affected by layoffs is HR That starts to make it sound like HR is, a luxury, or at least somehow more expendable than other functional areas. And so. There's that, you know, we are seeing in some cases where with public companies, they're doing away with the CHR role because again, if it's this more qualitative, soft, squishy kind of stuff and a Joe stanky AT&T says, Hey, this whole family thing, I'm over it.

[00:12:24] Like, I don't care. This is a business. And that's all I really care about. Then the people who are talking about these squishy things may not feel like they're the most important room at a person in the room at this point. And perhaps I don't need them. And so again, I don't wanna overstate the case, but at the same time, the numbers are what they are and it doesn't need to be this way.

[00:12:47] So I do believe that for HR will continue to evolve. You brought up ai. So I think that a lot of people see some low hanging fruit that if, HR is the compliance policies, procedures, folks. I can just hop on an app and go, you know, just ask, you know, chat PT or our company's version of chat PT you know, what is the, you know, paid time off policy here?

[00:13:16] Hey, my associate just said something untoward me. Like, what? How should I respond? The app just told me. And so I don't need all these HR people to go look up, you know, what the policy is for this. I can just put in people's hate pockets and they can go look up the answer for themselves. So there's a lot of things that left unattended to, I think conspire, unless we have another.

[00:13:43] Fill in the blank, you know, crazy event that happens that all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, we've gotta get, you know, HR back in the room. I'm suggesting that HR can be much more proactive in doing this, and, again, not in any kind of a negative sense, but in a way that truly adds value to the enterprise.

[00:14:04] Again, for me, it's mostly an understanding, you know. Some business acumen issues, and then packaging. Just packaging it in a way that the audience, C-E-O-C-F-O is more likely to receive it and res respect, understand, and invest in what you're advocating for.

[00:14:24] Mo Fathelbab: So part of what you talk about in your article in that regard is, financial fluency.

[00:14:30] Yes. And being able to speak that language and, the, how that is critical, to see that this is not a cost center, but a driver of business outcomes. Yeah. I'd love to hear more about that.

[00:14:42] Bob Goodwin: Yeah. So this maybe like a couple of examples that I think are accessible to anybody who might be in the audience, today.

[00:14:49] One is. Do you genuinely understand how your company makes money? So you, you could be, you know, somebody that just sells coffee cups and like, okay, we have them made here. Cost of goods sold is that we ship them. Our profit margin is pretty straightforward. We sell coffee cups. This is our profit. I understand how that works.

[00:15:13] But then you've got companies that in multiple countries, they've got multiple divisions, multiple product lines. Alright, for the big three, the big five drivers of revenue and profit at your company, do you understand how they make money? Because if you do, you can start to be, again, one, be proactive, two, be more creative, and three, clearly be more effective in developing human resource, human capital strategies that help the company make money, which is really the essence of a business.

[00:15:46] So I think, do you understand, and again, I know this sounds like elementary school. But it's shocking how often, and not just HR, it could be marketing, it could be sales, it could be lots of different functional areas who don't genuinely understand how the company makes money. So, do you know the company's business model?

[00:16:04] The second one is ebitda, so, right. You know, so earnings for income, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. And so it, it kind of sounds like MBA lingo, right? But it's basically cash flow. How does this thing, you know, kind of make positive cash flow? Because without cash there is no business and. For private equity firms in particular, that's their king measure is cash flow.

[00:16:33] And so that's why they're always trying to squeeze expenses out of the thing to drive ebitda higher profitability, cash flow higher, because that becomes the basis for, you know, times five, times eight, times 10, whatever the multiple is valuation to create the valuation of the company.

[00:16:52] Mo Fathelbab: Yes.

[00:16:52] Bob Goodwin: Well, so if you don't understand.

[00:16:56] How the private equity firm is evaluating your company's performance and all they see is ways of whacking expenses versus you being able to say, I get ebitda, but if we let go of this many people, we can do that. And that's a short term. Gain, but potentially with a lot of long-term pain associated that is not in your best interest PE firm.

[00:17:22] Let me do the math for you, because if we let go of this many people, that means this much production isn't going to happen. That makes us this more dependent on fewer people. Now our margin for error is lower. And so kind of scenario planning, risk management planning to be able to make the case of I understand your need, I understand why you have that need.

[00:17:47] Let me show you potentially a more creative solution to get to what you want. That is a person that's gonna be much more effective in a meeting than somebody who's taking orders on. I've gotta get rid of 25 people. Okay, lemme go figure out who we're gonna get rid of.

[00:18:01] Mo Fathelbab: So, Bob, I, wanna just capture something you said.

[00:18:04] Let me do the math for you. Is that maybe a good summary of this entire conversation? Let the CHRO do the math for you so that the CFO and the CEO and the board and the private equity folks can come on board and say, oh, yes, I see the math. You're right. Let's do this.

[00:18:21] Bob Goodwin: I, yes. And, and yes. And when you start to understand the math, you start to understand more of the puzzle pieces and how you can rearrange puzzle pieces.

[00:18:33] So for example, and Peter Capelli Wharton, I'm, I think you probably know Peter. Yeah. Um, you know, does a great job of talking about. You know, we will talk about productivity in terms of revenue divided by number of employees equals productivity. You know, so a hundred thousand dollars per employee. Um, what he's kind of brings to light is yeah, but you've also got agencies on retainer.

[00:18:59] You've got. Outsource or augmented staff in India or Lord knows where, right? Well actually that should all be included in the number. 'cause those are human beings doing work on your behalf to generate, you know, a certain return. So when you start to understand like, wait a minute, there's more pieces of the puzzle here.

[00:19:20] There's more, you know, ingredients in this recipe that we can play with, then it allows you to be more creative. More innovative in solutions. 'cause again, a lot of times the executive is going to make a very blunt instrument decision. Let go of 5,000 people. Okay Mo, we can do that. Let me go explore some other ways that, because your real, real need is an EBITDA number.

[00:19:47] Am I right? Yes, of course, Bob. That's what we're looking for. Got it. Let me gimme a week and let me come back with some options for you. Then it's, do the math and in so many cases, because the numbers, you know, with, comp and benefits being such a big number, like little tweaks add up to big numbers very quickly, right?

[00:20:09] And so. You know when you can do the math for them, even if they disagree with your math a little bit. Or as the kids say, your maths don't math that. It's like, okay, fine. Let's say that I'm wrong by a factor of 50%. Let's, take it that. It still works, the math still works, and you still hit your, desired, it must be at least 10 x of the investment that you're asking me for 'cause Interesting.

[00:20:36] All the examples I've been giving you so far have been more like in cutting budget, cutting numbers versus making investments. Things and how we're going to hit, you know, whatever the hurdle rate is. Like there's another NBA word, right? Yeah. The CFO's like, Hey, if you want me to give you a dollar, you've gotta show me where I make at least $10 for every dollar that you know you're asking for to be invested in.

[00:21:00] Okay, well there's another thing I need to know what's our hurdle rate? So I don't come back with, Hey, it makes twice as much money. It's like, dude, I need 10 times as much money, not twice as much money. So, but yes, doing the math for them, but again, the numbers are so big, it doesn't have to be perfect math.

[00:21:15] It's gotta be logical math, and then smart people will figure out the right best option within that. But it just really casts in, many cases, the HR executive in a different light. Then this nice to have squishy, you know, kind of role that is, is, you know, not as business-minded or hard-nosed as maybe some of the rest of the company is.

[00:21:41] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. I'm curious what other examples come to mind, Bob, as, as, you've seen in terms of HR, having done this well and, what made it so effective?

[00:21:51] Bob Goodwin: So, an example that's in the article that I think is just great because it shows creativity. And it shows a deep understanding of some root causes.

[00:22:02] Which is, you know, again, the, easy stuff isn't usually the right stuff. It's just easy. And so an example is with Hilton, the big hotel Hilton worldwide. And in 2024, they, um, they experienced a reduction of 25% in turnover with their frontline employees. So anybody that's been in hospitality, retail, I mean, these are very high turnover.

[00:22:26] Yeah. Industries, you know, sometimes, like 400%. In a year. So four people in one job in one year is 400% turnover. Yeah. And so they experienced a 25% reduction in turnover with their frontline employees. So that's everybody from the desk person to somebody who's cleaning a room to doing backend maintenance, whatever, whatever.

[00:22:48] And, what they found was that one by offering same day payment of wages. These are people that are living day to day, literally paycheck to paycheck. Kinds of lives. I mean, they, tend to not be highly compensated folks, so cash is king. So if they're able to get paid on literally a daily basis and direct deposit, like I can go to the store, I can go put gas in my car.

[00:23:19] I can do just the most basic human things that need to get done so I can come to work tomorrow. So I can come to work the next day and the next day. And so one of the initiatives was instituting same day pay. The second thing, which, is nice and smart and makes a lot of sense, but then I thought what they did that was also cool that took it.

[00:23:40] Much a step further was they also created a journey to manager. Pathway. For people. So like in every business, you know, you've got your high potentials, right? Your hypos and like, you know, Mo is a rock star. Like this guy does not the sexiest job right now. He's got a great attitude, a great smile.

[00:24:00] He's got a customer service mentality. This is, I can't teach some of that stuff. You, just come to the party with some of those attributes. These are people that we need to groom and develop and show people that these aren't dead end jobs, but this is a job with the future and a path. You know, another good example is Chipotle with doing like, college tuition.

[00:24:22] Right. You know, making burrito bowls isn't like the, greatest job all the time. But when I can see that as a step to a college education. That all a sudden becomes very, very motivating for somebody to not quit this quote, dead end job, or I'm not getting a ton of satisfaction now I have a point and a reason for staying.

[00:24:44] And again, this would be another measure, retention matters. So anyway, those would be like a couple examples.

[00:24:51] Mo Fathelbab: And I would gather both of those, examples in terms of their costs were, minimal. And relative to the payoff of reducing retention by 25%.

[00:25:02] Bob Goodwin: But, think about this. If I'm the CFO of Hilton and you're telling me that now I need to institute a program that's gonna pay people daily.

[00:25:11] Alright. I like sitting on cash. Yeah. Like I make money on my cash. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so investment, you know, kind of playing the float basically and being able to make the case. But the turnover that we're experiencing, which one we Recruiting costs, training costs. Getting somebody to be competent. At their job costs.

[00:25:33] All those things are, we don't have enough staff, so we actually got 12 people trying to do 18 people's worth of work. Doesn't get done quite as well, or at least not as quickly as it needs to get done. Like making the business case that, I know you love your float mid CFO, but you're only making this much in float.

[00:25:54] If we institute this and reduce our turnover, you know, 25%, you're making to give our example, 10 times the money that you are making in float, float is what you're doing. You have nothing else to do with the money.

[00:26:06] Mo Fathelbab: That's right. So how does a CHRO go about measuring the float, in terms of the revenue that comes from it as opposed to paying daily?

[00:26:17] Bob Goodwin: Right. So, so that's where you would, you know, again, I think the collaboration. Is important. Um, so you're, I would be approaching, like, I think I understand one of the root causes. We've done the research. What we have learned is that people go, because we pay every other week and they're going to jobs that pay weekly.

[00:26:37] And we've actually done the research that if we were paying daily, they don't wanna leave. They actually like working at Hilton. These are employees are doing really, really good work, but because they're leaving just for a weekly cadence, paycheck, what we learned was if they had a daily cadence, like we wouldn't lose any of them.

[00:26:56] So here's the turnover cost. This is what it's costing us in guest satisfaction scores, right? People not, you know, returning to our hotel or whatever the, measure would be. plus again, all the, training, recruiting costs, you know, lack of quality, et cetera. How much do we make on, on, i, you know, your objection is that I, but I make money on the float.

[00:27:19] Can you help me dimensionalize that? And, be very honest. It's like if there's, if the numbers don't. Work. Yeah, I totally get it. I'm not asking you to do something that's like a bad decision for us. I just need to know what the comparison case is. Can you share that with me? Yeah. I mean, somebody can say no.

[00:27:35] Yeah. I mean, if they do, I mean, I guess you've got the right to say no, but it's like I'm just trying to help Hilton make more money. Yeah. Have more satisfied guests and continue to grow the way that we wanna grow. I believe this is a place where we can do that in a very meaningful way. Could you share with me what the, I don't, I wouldn't know how to guess the float number per se.

[00:27:55] I would need to be told that.

[00:27:57] Mo Fathelbab: Yeah. Great, So in your article, you talk about five metrics that every HR leader has to master. We don't have time for all five right now, but maybe can you go into a couple of them for us?

[00:28:09] Bob Goodwin: Yeah, I mean, what is turnover costs? Um, and, again, that sounds simple and like, I'm not trying to, you know, come across like I've discovered this new metric that nobody's ever thought of before.

[00:28:20] But, you know, we're coming to the end of the year right now. We're gonna be going into Q4 before we turn around. Good. And maybe there's, um, you know, we, lost people in a certain role. we haven't replaced them yet. All of a sudden that starts to look like a budget save. And we just close that open headcount because now I don't have to pay the salaries, and so I'm just gonna very neatly take that as a budget save.

[00:28:46] And it's like, okay, we can do that. That is a viable option. And people do that all the time. However, let's look at what the true cost to the business is by losing that productivity. One and then two, we also know from, our mental health and like wellness data that sick days or taking short-term sick leave is up because we are leaning on people too hard and either they're just creating their own breaks and calling that a sick day or they genuinely need a mental health break.

[00:29:25] So we're paying for this one way or the other. You may not call it what it is, but that's really how this is playing out. And so I think that turnover, um, and again, creating a sense of urgency around turnover, because we've got lost productivity, you know, when people leave, particularly when it's, you know, regretted.

[00:29:48] Turnover. Meaning somebody's leaving that we wish didn't leave. Right. So voluntary turnover. Particularly if people that we would like to be keeping, alright, now that work isn't getting done, I can measure that. I can measure the advertising costs to go post this job and socialize it. I can measure.

[00:30:07] The time that it takes. 'cause we know that we do six interviews, including a panel interview in total. That's 25 hours of time. Our average rate to pay for the people who participate in recruiting this person is, you know, $150 an hour. Do the math, you know? Then there's the ramp up period, there's the training cost, and we know this person isn't gonna be at full speed until at least month four.

[00:30:30] Mo Fathelbab: There you go.

[00:30:31] Bob Goodwin: Right. And so, okay, well that's not hard math to do. You just need to know what your numbers are and kind of, and, in the article, you know, we provide, you know, kind of some templates for people to kind of figure out what some of their costs are. But that would be a real one, and I kind of alluded to it a minute ago.

[00:30:48] Another example would be, employee wellness and, you know. Where, people are well intended, but maybe still kind of missing a little bit is, but Bob, we have an EAP program. We've got wellness things. We've got, you know, things to breathing, things that people can, you know, tap into and whatever they're doing, which is fine from kind of a symptomatic perspective, but it's not understanding the root causes.

[00:31:17] Of what's driving this. I'll use this as an example, around layoffs, since that's very much in the news these days that. You know, one of the things that we're seeing is that the thinning out of middle management, and it's very in vogue right now, they call it the great flattening to, you know, just remove layers.

[00:31:38] We want to be more efficient and, yet the problem is, that middle management often is the glue between strategy and execution. And so as we lose the glue, right, we lose connection between strategy and execution. Second, people often say, and I, think it's a accepted truism at this point. People don't quit companies.

[00:32:01] They quit bosses. Okay? And so I am now left, you know, so thankfully I'm a manager and I didn't get laid off, but now my team went from 12 to 20. Okay? That's a lot, that's a lot more to take on. And so do I have the ability just literally time-wise to provide people with the care that they need to be able to be productive and continue to grow?

[00:32:28] What ends up happening is, you know, like where Microsoft and, face or meta, you know, are, you know, stack ranking people, what do they call it? Rank and yank. And so then they take the bottom 10%. Well, all we're doing is breeding next year's class of low performers. Not because they're bad people don't want to do a good job, but they're not getting the support they need because there's, too big of span of control.

[00:32:58] So it's kind of helping you. We can put numbers against those things and in the meantime, we are creating burnout conditions for people. Yeah. And it's very different than it was three and four years ago, right. Where there was more. I, say this nicely, coddling of employees, and now it's like, no, like, dude, this is a company.

[00:33:18] This is work. Do your job and we pay you. You do work. That's the deal. See you later. And, yet back the whole self, people absorb all this stress and either it's gonna come across as loss of productivity, and you can see it in engagement scores and pulse surveys. People will tell you like, I, I'm not doing well right now, particularly young people.

[00:33:41] And so being able to make a case that we can let go of that many people. I just want you to help see the downstream effect of where this goes. And I'm gonna put a number against this and let's see if that justifies the, you know, immediate expense. Save that we, we believe that we're getting, it's that really in the long-term interest of the business.

[00:34:06] But again, if you don't how the company makes money and how they measure, you know, what good looks like from an investor perspective, that becomes very challenging. And then you just lay off however many people you were told.

[00:34:17] Mo Fathelbab: So great stuff, Bob. I wanna get to your template to help make the case that this is an investment and not a need.

[00:34:24] So in your article, you talk about a template to help HR, actually make the case. can you quickly walk us through that please?

[00:34:32] Bob Goodwin: So one is, what's the problem statement? What problem are we seeking to solve here? And it needs to have numbers certain, so it's not like people are unhappy. Okay, but what does that mean?

[00:34:43] I don't, I know what people are unhappy. What does that mean? We are seeing above trend attrition rates. We're seeing above trend. You know, lack of employee engagement. Like pick the metrics that matter that you're choosing to solve for and like, here's what it's costing us today. This is the problem. My proposed initiative, including the investment to solve for this is x.

[00:35:09] Okay, fine then. and the, you know, expected return as measured by those metrics that we started off with in the problem statement. Look like this. Okay, so here's the problem and why it matters. Here's what I'm proposing. Here's why, how I believe this is going to pay off. Then an implementation plan.

[00:35:31] Show how you're gonna roll this out. And again, because the numbers that we're dealing with tend to be pretty chunky. you don't have to get all this done by the end of Friday next week, right? Like you can have a measured. You know, implementation plan to which you're suggesting that may just be the nature of the project anyway, but show them like, okay, Bob, that's a great idea.

[00:35:53] Help me understand how would you actually implement this in the real world? Glad you asked Mo Q1, Q2, Q3, and we'll be at full state and we should be getting the full benefit of this by then. And then lastly, because this is exactly where A CFO for sure is gonna go, and A CEO probably is gonna go, what are the risks?

[00:36:13] Associated with what you're recommending and what are your contingencies. And so again, being proactive, anticipating the objections and, you know, even concerns, valid concerns so that you've, you talked about doing the math for them. I wanna do some of the thinking for them and show that I'm not just like trying to do, if something I, I'll just show you the good parts.

[00:36:37] I haven't even thought of the bad parts, but like, let me talk you through how we've thought about this. Now, I think the most ideal way of doing this is in collaboration with, for example, your finance colleagues, because they do own the numbers and not just the reporting of the numbers, but the actual achievement of the numbers.

[00:36:59] And so finding someone you know in the company or someones who have a shared interest. In, you know, making this a reality so that you look like you're being collaborative. And this isn't just an HR thing. It could, you could have sales come in the room with you. You could have finance come in the room with you.

[00:37:17] You could have marketing operate. I mean, who all has a shared interest in the better that you're proposing? That looks like teamwork. That looks like collaboration. It also keeps you from any blind spots that you may not have thought of. It also will probably identify some benefits that you hadn't thought of.

[00:37:37] So anyway, what's the problem? How are we gonna solve it? What's the return implementation? And we thought about the risk and contingencies, and here's how we would propose to address those Great stuff.

[00:37:48] Mo Fathelbab: Bob, what is one takeaway you want HR leaders to remember in their next C-Suite meeting?

[00:37:55] Bob Goodwin: Understand. Okay, stephen Covey, seek first to understand, then to be understood.

[00:38:01] So from they are your client, they're your internal customer. What is important to them? How are they seeing what's going on? How are they measuring opportunity and or challenges? And make sure that you are tapped into that. And you know, Madame, CEO, if I understand what you're saying, it's this, that and the other thing.

[00:38:26] Am I, do I understand? That's it, Bob. Awesome. Let me go away. Think about that. Come back to you with the, some creative solutions. So it's being very centric to them and not being so worried about being in pitch mode and sales mode. Listen first, make sure you understand. Before you're presenting a solution.

[00:38:47] Mo Fathelbab: That's better, sales than pitch mode, isn't it?

[00:38:49] It's still sales.

[00:38:51] Bob Goodwin: It's effective sales.

[00:38:52] Mo Fathelbab: Effective sales. I love it. And last question, Bob, what's one piece of advice that has shaped your work or personal life?

[00:39:00] Bob Goodwin: Thank you Mo. So, um. I, would suspect a lot of people in the audience might be familiar with a book called Man's Search For Meaning by Vitor Frankl.

[00:39:09] Of course. And for those who don't know, Viktor Frankl was a, psychiatrist, Austrian psychiatrist Jewish during World War ii, and spent three and a half years in a concentration camp, and I think the survival rate was like 4%. From that he lost his wife. His parents, his siblings, and what he came out of that with is everything can be taken away from a person except this final freedom, the freedom to choose your attitude and your actions.

[00:39:40] And so it's all about autonomy and agency. And not being a victim, but I've got the, ability to always choose my attitude and my actions. I can give it to somebody else and be a victim. It's not my fault, it's the economy. It's my boss, it's my wife, it's my genes, but I can always take it back. I can always take it back and reassert my autonomy, so that, just really sticks with me mo that, that I've got, even when things feel like they're going out of control and, just all the craziness, I always get to choose my attitude.

[00:40:15] I always get to choose my actions.

[00:40:17] Mo Fathelbab: You know, I just recently did an interview and, somebody told me they read that book every year.

[00:40:22] Bob Goodwin: I do too.

[00:40:23] Mo Fathelbab: And I'll tell you what a great book, it's a reminder and I need to read it again 'cause it's been about, 20 years. Bob, thank you so much. And that's where we'll end it for this episode of People and Strategy.

[00:40:34] Again, a huge thanks to Bob for your valuable insights. Thanks for tuning in. You could follow the People in Strategy podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on podcast visibility. So if you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review to help others find the show.

[00:40:52] Finally, you could find all our episodes on our website at SHRM dot org slash podcasts. And while you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter. Thanks for joining us, and have a great day.