The Power of Risk-Taking in HR Leadership and Career Growth

[00:00:00] Mo Fathalbab: 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 for today's conversation.

I'm excited to be joined by Steven Childs, CHRO at Panasonic Automotive. He's also a daredevil who loves surfing, motorcycle riding, and skydiving. Welcome, Steven. Yeah, thanks Mo. Thanks for having me. I'm, excited about this skydiving bit, and you might be the first, CHRO that I've met who's into skydiving.

And I'm wondering if you, see that as unusual, given that, you know, CHROs typically are risk managers, perhaps, and, you seem to be a bit more, risk forward. 

[00:01:04] Stephen Childs: Definitely not risk averse. that's true. And I think, the first time that I went, I actually invited a lot of people from Panasonic and they were like, the HR guys invite me to go skydiving.

I go, Hey, look, if you get hurt, no worker comp, right? This is all outside of work. But, yeah, I think, maybe it's a little, a little different. as, again, most of the HR people, that I meet are. At least from a job standpoint, fairly risk averse. I'm, definitely not, which we can kind of talk about how that maps over to corporate strategy and, forward thinking and transformation. I think there's a, I think there's a tie there. 

[00:01:48] Mo Fathalbab: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we definitely wanna get into that and, I know that you guys have had some transformation and so we certainly will, dive into that. but first, tell us maybe a bit about your career journey and what brought you to the field of HR.

[00:02:04] Stephen Childs: Yeah, actually, probably like a lot of HR people, I hear stories that, I wasn't, searching for HR. I think HR found me, which seems to be fairly common story in the HR profession. Out of college, I opened my own, temporary business, contract, employment staff augmentation, and there's a lot of HR in that, as you can imagine.

Employees and workers' comp and payroll and drug testing and onboarding. And so I learned a lot of HR, during that timeframe, but it was really as a entrepreneur, business owner. And later on I trans, you know, transitioned into. executive recruiting, engineering, recruiting. and then Panasonic actually was one of my clients and they talked me into, Hey, let us save a little bit of money.

Why don't you come work directly for us? And that was 27 years ago when they were trying to grow a business, from 400 people to, at that point they wanted to double, but they did a lot more than doubling. So it's been quite a journey since I started. How many employees do you all have now? So a little over 8,000.

So, you know, I tell this story. Somebody goes, Steven, how did you stay at one job for so long? Sort of knowing my personality, and I said, well, it's been something different every two years. And a lot of cases it was a new, a different job every two years. I started out in, talent acquisition as I mentioned, and basically volunteered for.

Whatever bad job came along, people didn't want. I volunteered for that. I give that piece of advice pretty often. Volunteer for things that most people won't take. and I think I've had just about every job in HR. but during that timeframe, we went from 400 people again to 8,000 people. We went from revenue of 200 and something million to multi-billion in revenue.

and we've acquired companies. And now we've been acquired. So it's been, it's been a journey for sure. 

[00:04:13] Mo Fathalbab: That sounds like an amazing journey. So to what, extent was the change in the role every two years driven by the business climate versus by your desire and willingness to step into something that nobody else wants to do?

And, why is that advice that you give people regularly? 

[00:04:31] Stephen Childs: I think it's a combination of both of those. I think the fact that the business was transforming so often, into something else that a number of jobs came open. So the ability to grow was, there, but I think it was the willingness to take on a, we're gonna divest this whole division.

Who wants to help do this divestiture, lay off these people and go through this reduction in force. And I said, I'll do it. Right. That didn't sound like something that's fun to do, but you definitely learn something through that process and you help people transition as well as you can. Right. And then same thing.

We just acquired a company who wants to help with this, acquisition. I'd say, Hey, I'm in and I'll help with the acquisition. So everything was to me a, learning experience. Then I didn't have to volunteer anymore. So whatever came up after a while, it was just ask Steven, you know, you know, sort of the old commercials, Mikey likes it.

Hey, yeah, Steven likes it. Give it to Steven. Steven will take on something new. And that sort of became, sort of my motto. And it's served me very well. And some of the things I took on, I wasn't ready for mo. so that's also good experience to take on something you're not quite ready for and figure out how to, learn it really quick and, then manage it.

[00:05:59] Mo Fathalbab: Yeah. So I'm curious. I think that's really just, stepping into your fears or is it. Not having the fears in the first place. 'cause I would imagine that some HR professionals aspire to, to get to levels, such as yours, and yet, maybe they may not step into these opportunities. That sounds scary.

[00:06:21] Stephen Childs: Yeah, I think it's, I think that's a combination too. I think some people really do worry about if I do this, I hear this a lot, If they don't feel like they have 80% of or 85% of what's required for that job, they're really hesitant to jump into it. And I've never really thought about that part of it.

Right. And some of it might've been the fact that, it's naivety. Yeah. Being a little naive, but that sort, sort of served me too, is just have some faith that you're gonna be able to figure it out. And the stuff that you learn figuring out is actually, It's better than actually going to a class now.

I'll say, do both. Go to the class and learn it and actually take it, jump in there, in the fire and learn it too. There's multiple ways to do it, but I think I was always better if I, if it seemed like 65% or 70 I was in. 

[00:07:18] Mo Fathalbab: Now, is that something you developed or were you born with it? this innate willingness to jump into the fire and go into the unknown and, step into the fears and, skydive.

[00:07:31] Stephen Childs: I think, part of it I think came pretty natural to me. I think there was a little bit of a, a lack of worry on my piece, but I do executive coaching and about half of my clients end up being CHROs for obvious reason, being a CHRO myself. and 85% of the CHROs that I coach have an issue with saying yes to things that they don't think they're capable of.

So a lot of it is sort of that helping 'em with the misguided understanding of what they're capable of. This is their vision of what they're capable of. Helping 'em through that and actually saying, yes, I have a, book coming out too, and one of the chapters of the book says it's about the power of yes and saying yes to stuff that really scares crap out of your Mo, right?

If you say yes to things, get involved and do that. Once the next time becomes easier and the next time becomes easier. Eventually that fear is sort of like change management in general. The fear, I wouldn't say ever goes away. You know, if I get on a surfboard in a shark infested waters, I still feel a little bit of nervousness, when I do that.

But I've done it enough to where it's not gonna, it's not gonna hinder me from that experience. And then when, you do something really hard, you. You learn a lot and there's a lot of confidence building. once you do something hard, even if you fail and you pick yourself up and do it again, there's still a lot of confidence building in that process, which you need for growth.

You need to go into an interview and, you know, sort of exude some confidence that, hey, you're gonna figure it out. You don't know everything. You're gonna be able to figure it out. 

[00:09:18] Mo Fathalbab: So, as an established CHRO, what's the moment in your career where you were included in corporate strategy, where you were able to drive change?

[00:09:28] Stephen Childs: Yeah, I think, you talked a lot about, culture and whether we're gonna be, you know, worried about, the culture transformation with being acquired. when we originally started this culture work, on our own. I think that was the first opportunity, and this was before I was, the work started before I was actually a CHRO.

And I think the work that I was doing to make us a best place to work company, really changing, I would say first starting with candidate experience and then that led to everybody experience and developing this culture, sort of led to this interaction with the executive team of. How are you gonna lead your organization?

Right? We started asking some real fundamental business questions, and I will say that most of the, conversations with the executives were about, profitability, product development, how quick we can do that. manufacturing operations. So, so when you asked about culture related to where that fit, within our, operation and, corporate strategy, it wasn't really on the map.

and we started this culture work and I brought all the executives in, to sort of deep dive on why this is so important, having them talk to CEOs and CFOs and CIOs and when we completely revamped our organization. Then I basically got brought to the table through the culture work. And with that then it became sort of this story of, okay, what's next?

How do we manage transformation? All kinds of transformation. That came back to the organizational change management, which kinda led to COVID happening, and then us leading COVID, us leading, one transformation after another. to where now any transformation happens, they bring us in and we have that seat at the table.

But I think the, culture work that we were doing early on sort of gave us sort of the credibility of, Hey, I think we can bring this team in and use them, the way we need to, transform, not just our processes but our people. 

[00:11:49] Mo Fathalbab: So how do you foresee the role of the CHRO evolving over the next few years?

[00:11:55] Stephen Childs: Yeah, I think that goes back to, what my president said to me 10 years ago when he gave me the job, when he came back into the office and said, Hey, you're not just the VP of the organizer of HR. You're the VP of the organization. I think the reason you see CEOs promoting business people over HR people into those roles is the CEOs need business people, and they, require.

If you're gonna have to pick a skillset, they're gonna require the business skillset over this, the HR skillset, and then let them build really good HR teams. So my message to HR people is build the business capabilities. So again, make yourself undeniable. If you have all of these really great HR skills and then you build your strategy skills and your transformation skills and your finance skills and your people analytics skills.

I promise you, there's no way they're gonna leave you out of the conversation. It's impossible, right? That would be a terrible business decision to take somebody who is really strong from an HR perspective, that grew all these business capabilities and not utilize 'em the way they need to, from being a part of all those initial strategic conversations.

[00:13:11] Mo Fathalbab: That is wonderful advice and I love that. So, we're gonna get back to your book in a second. I want to talk about that, but I'm not, forgetting the fact that you've been at Panasonic, automotive for 27 years. So how have you seen H HR change? How have you seen the role of the CHRO change, during that time?

[00:13:32] Stephen Childs: Tremendously. I mean, just like the company's dramatically changed, the role of HR has dramatically changed. I mean, even from being highly administrative, more, I would say reactive to becoming very strategic and very proactive. And again, that kind of goes back to those business skills, having, you know, HR people, having the business skills to be strategic.

That way they can be proactive. The only way you're gonna be able to be proactive, if you're sitting in those strategy meetings or sitting in those board meetings or being asked to be a part of, you know, the five-year plan development, that's when you can be strategic. Otherwise, it's, and still 50%, I think a CHROs are having to be reactive because they're not in a lot of those meetings.

[00:14:23] Mo Fathalbab: And how do we get CHROs in those meetings? What do they have to do to get into those meetings? 

[00:14:29] Stephen Childs: Yeah. This goes back to some of the coaching I'm doing and what I notice in a lot of CHROs, especially CHROs, that if you look at a lot of Fortune 200 companies and you look at CHROs, a lot of 'em are not career HR people.

They're business people turn into CHROs for that reason. 'cause the CEO needs business. And I'll tell you just a quick story. You're talking about the transformation of, HR during this timeframe. 10 years ago when I took this job on the president walked in, he is retired now, but he walked in and said, Steven, I'm promoting you to VP and CHRO.

And I was very excited, as you can imagine going into that conversation. And he left and then he came back later that afternoon. He goes, I forgot to mention something. And I'm like, dang man. I've been in this job six hours and I'm going, are you gonna be fired? He said, no, don't worry. He goes, but you're not the VP of HR.

And I was like, what? Just gave you this job. He goes, you are the VP of the company and I need you to focus on HR. So whatever you've been doing to develop your HR skills, I need you to double down on making sure you do that from a business perspective. And that was a really big eye-opener for me. And then the first thing I did was go look at the top HR people in the us Who are these?

HR people that I can sort of get some guidance from. And so many of 'em were not career HR people, they're business people. So what I started to do and was I started reaching out to CHROs, some of the best obviously in the US and what I noticed was so many of those were not career HR people. And even the ones that were career HR people, had really.

Double down on developing their business. and again, that was the, main message for my keynote at CHERM 25 was, you have to be a business person first and a HR person second. That's where the business is gonna pull you into those meetings. They're gonna pull you into the strategy meetings. They're gonna pull you into like my business partner, because they're business people now.

They get pulled into the staff meetings. They're not left out of engineering staff meetings and ops staff meetings. They're brought in to help actually create the agendas for those staff meetings. So once you get to that point, then being strategic is a lot easier because you know what's coming or what should be coming, and you're helping with the corporate strategy within when, which then kind of lends yourself, you know, to creating a lot better HR strategy to support the business.

[00:17:05] Mo Fathalbab: Yeah. we touched earlier on, some m and a activity and acquisitions that you all have done, and I understand you've all, just been acquired, in December. so how does that impact your culture and how do you prepare, as a CHRO for that cultural change? 

[00:17:26] Stephen Childs: Yeah, I think, if you, if we spent so much time building this wonderful culture that we have, which has helped transform our organization to a great place to work organization, and the number one concern when we heard that this was gonna take place, employees are like, are we gonna lose our culture?

and we said, Hey, look, we're not gonna lose our culture. We're gonna make sure that we, spend a lot of time explaining that, To our new owners, which we did. We spent a lot of time working through that, and got a lot of really great feedback, from the private equity company to say, please, whatever you don't change it.

They asked a ton of questions about what did you do and how did you get here, and how did you change the culture, to a point where, okay, that's part of your strategic value, so do not change it. If we're gonna go an IPO and whatever timeframe, we wanna make sure that whatever the best parts of this organization, we don't mess up.

And that was, and still is one of the best parts of our organization. So, but as you can imagine through, you know, any kind of change, people start really worrying. So we sort of had to double down on, don't worry, we're gonna focus on this. This is gonna be one of the biggest things that we, we build into this strategic plan as we get acquired.

and people become a lot more comfortable that all this work and really who we become in this culture is not changing. So, so far so good. 

[00:18:55] Mo Fathalbab: Good to hear. Good to hear. And has there been any part of it that's a little challenging for you all or is it all smooth and easy? 

[00:19:02] Stephen Childs: Oh, no, it's a lot challenge. So one you can imagine we're separating from a hundred and some year old company.

and all those ties and all those processes, inter interwoven processes and shared service processes, everything's gotta be decoupled. And that's a lot of change. So you're basically now separating from the mothership, so to speak, building all of those capabilities and resources within automotive itself and trying to do it over a short period of time.

So. Trying to do your day job and then trying to do these separation activities at the same time, trying to develop all of those skills that are gonna make you valuable for managing things that we didn't manage internally. so this kind of goes back to, you know, line lifelong learner is it doesn't matter what transformation you're in, you better be deep, you know, digging deep and learning as much as you can.

And certainly we've been doing that. It is, very challenging too. put in a lot of new processes, convince everybody it's gonna be okay, and then make sure at the end of the day it will be okay. 

[00:20:12] Mo Fathalbab: And one of the things that's enabled you to be so successful is your ability to build relationships with others in the C-Suite.

Can you talk about how you've managed to do that so successfully? 

[00:20:23] Stephen Childs: Yeah, I think, you know, even coaching people internally within Panasonic and I coach a lot of high potentials that are coming up. I basically say go start having conversations with everybody. And once you start having conversations and you walk up to the CEO or the CFO or the CIO, if you're a director in another organization and you say, Hey, Mo, what is it that you're missing?

what is you're not getting from our organization? Or what, can I do different to be a, bridge builder, for my organization? Some of that. Came a little natural because I was in talent acquisition early on, so I had to deal with every functional group. so I had those relationships, but at the end of the day, I still do that.

I still reach out to the C-suite and say, what are you missing? What are you not getting? I know my team's great. I know you're getting a lot of good stuff, but what aren't you getting? And having those conversations and building those kind of relationships. And you do that often enough. They maybe they don't tell you.

Everything the first time you go in and ask, but you start asking more than once and then you start getting some real answers and it's sometimes very humbling 'cause you realize some of the stuff that you've really been missing and then you get a little, upset too. 'cause why didn't you tell me this like 8, 10, 12 months ago?

But you didn't ask. So once you start asking, it starts, really building those relationships. So it's, you know, I'd say it's communication. 

[00:21:55] Mo Fathalbab: Yeah. and I see, of course in just listening to you, you've evolved incredibly as a leader. what are some of the lessons you've learned through your journey, outside of just saying yes?

[00:22:08] Stephen Childs: Yeah. I think, one that I certainly learned early on when I moved into some leadership roles was it wasn't about me anymore, so it became about my team. The more that I quit focusing on me and my career development. Not that I quit focusing on that, but I was more hyper-focused on developing the people around me.

So hiring really good people that were better than me, right? And being excited about that, not worried about that. putting those people in positions to, get some visibility. the more that I did that, the more I hired really good people, the more I gave them visibility. The better I got at my job and the more I was seen as a C-suite level, even before I was a C-suite level person.

Because at the end of the day, that's what you're doing. You're, a coach on a team and you're footing this team together, and you're making sure they have all the tools. you're, knocking down the roadblocks, but at the end of the day, your job is to take care of them and make sure they can thrive.

Give 'em enough room to make mistakes. Let 'em make those mistakes. 'cause that's some really great learning in those mistakes. A lot of managers don't want their employees to make mistakes. And sometimes I'll go to the board and go to our executive committee and say, Hey, by the way, I've just handed this off to so and so.

It might go really bad for a couple of weeks, but don't worry. And when they come in, treat 'em just like you would treat me. Give them a hard time. Right. Really push 'em. and that's just gonna help 'em from a growth perspective. So I get sort of a heads up and I'm gonna let 'em fail a little bit. And then when they come in, I've got the support of the executive team helping this person grow.

And it is a little painful for that person, of course. But that's the, that's sort of the beauty of the growth. 

[00:23:59] Mo Fathalbab: Yeah. Why? So I, I think that is a profound lesson and so many people don't have the ability to allow that to happen. What, do you say to those people and how do you develop that comfort to say, Hey, it's okay if this person feels a little bit and it's part of their learning?

[00:24:18] Stephen Childs: Yeah, actually we had to bring some, some people in to help really, when we were building that culture model. we brought in the Neuro Leadership Institute, David Rock's team, and we looked at a lot of the work Carol Deic was doing around growth mindset, and we sort of brought all our leaders together and said, look.

We know we give people a hard time, right? we want things done. We want it done right. We want it under budget. We want it, with minimum mistakes. But we know that's not gonna happen. And actually some of the beauty of innovation comes with those mistakes. So we were wrong. Here's what we want you to think about.

Go do this. Go innovate. If we're gonna ask you to innovate, you're gonna have to fail. Fail fast. Think through how to do that. Engineering brought in like IDO, the organization to help 'em fail fast when they're thinking about product development. We did the same thing. We put all of our hypos through this innovation training, that helped them feel more comfortable with that because, again, leaders can tell you to go fail fast, but you're still very concerned what those repercussions are gonna be, and we have to go, look, you've gotta, you've gotta manage this, right?

So it took a little bit of cultivating, as you can imagine. three years later we had a, you know, I think a really good, leadership team. Not everybody made the cut during that process. The leaders, some just could not do that. And we ended up having really good leaders that were cultivating their teams, which is what we wanted.

You see, it goes back to that quote I heard a long time ago. Great leaders are those who develop great leaders. And so that's what basically we're asking 'em to do is go develop some great leaders, but you gotta let 'em mess up a little bit in the trenches. 

[00:26:04] Mo Fathalbab: And in thinking about Carol Dweck's work, which I love, she talks about fixed mindset versus growth mindset.

So have you been able to change everybody in the organization to have a growth mindset or... 

[00:26:20] Stephen Childs: Not out of a lack of working on it. We're still working on it. I think that's kind of, I mean, that was a big. Again, part of what we were trying to do from a cultural perspective, we're really kind of explaining, we did some 90 day sprints around growth mindset, what it isn't, what does a fixed mindset look like?

What does a growth mindset look like? And then, you know, learning agility, adaptability. We did, 90 day sprints on those things specifically. and we told people, look, some of this is gonna be really tough for ones that don't want to gravitate towards the head, but. Even the ones that really struggle with it did really great.

Some of the ones that, were already there helped coach the others, so we found out who those people were and kind of put 'em in sort of some coaching positions. But it's, still a journey, right? It's still a journey to, it's like habit building one-on-one as you can spend, you know, 90 days building a habit and it changes your neural pathways.

But if you stop. And you slow down a little bit. It's so easy to revert back to the old habits. So it's a, it's an ongoing journey for us to kind of keep moving in that direction. 

[00:27:30] Mo Fathalbab: Yeah. So this leads me to, the topic of organizational change. And at SHRM 25, you talked about certifying, I believe over 70% of your employees in organizational change.

I wanna talk about why that's important and how you all have done it. 

[00:27:47] Stephen Childs: Yeah, so, you know, there's a lot of discussions about transformations and we were going through a transformation. I won't get into the long story of that, but, we didn't do a transformation internally, so well, going back 10 years ago.

We learned a lot from that fell fast. One of those lessons learned was organizational change management, how to have a really good base of organization, change management within your company to help with any transformation. That could be an ERP implementation. That could be managing COVID when it hit us.

That could be managing an acquisition, whatever that's gonna be part shortage, you name it. There's just a laundry list of those transformation companies go through. And what we learned a long time ago is we can't rely on a consultant to do it. We need people internally that have those capabilities.

And so I built a OCM organization within HR. And we certified, to your point, we certified 70% of the HR people within my organization to even include my executive assistant and certified organizational change management. We are certifying, I think we're at 98% of our high potentials have been certified at this point, and organizational change management.

So it doesn't matter what curve ball we're being thrown. Again, part shortage, acquisition, you name it. tariff recovery, all these different things. We've got this bench of people that can go in and help with that transformation. Not only figure out what the OCM plan is for the business in itself, but how do we communicate to the employees and which, you know, is one of the most important things.

How do we make sure they know what's going on? They know what's happening next, they out of their comfort levels. So, and. And I say this to a lot of HR people. When I do keynotes, I ask people, how many people are change experts? Almost. It doesn't matter what the topic is I'm speaking on because I wanna see which, how many hands go up.

And there's very few hands go up and a room of CHROs or HR people about being a transformation expert. I go, who's gonna lead it for the people who's gonna lead it? Right? Your CH O's not gonna lead. I mean, your CI CEO's not gonna lead it for the people. It's gonna be you. If you don't have these skills, they're gonna go around you and figure out how to lead these transformations without you and your team.

So don't let that happen. Go get the transformation skills that you need to be a pivotal leader in whatever transformation coming. 'cause a lot still coming. Ai, you name it. There's a lot, there's a lot still coming our way. Do you all have a certain certification that you use? Yeah, we based, a lot of our change on Prosci.

but we actually built it internally. So we built the, we call it OD xm, so it's a combination of organizational change management and, organizational development. so that way not only HR people sort of have that combination of the two, but all of our leaders, and again, our hypos high potentials are very versed in that.

[00:30:57] Mo Fathalbab: Wonderful. So I wanna make sure we talk about your book and, your much anticipated book is coming out. Just be undeniable. and, I believe it's to help, the leaders with behavior change and achieving breakthrough success. So tell us a bit about how to, go about doing that without giving up the whole book.

[00:31:18] Stephen Childs: Yeah. it is just being deniable and the premise to the book simply put is. Learn the habits, the tools and the systems that, help you be undeniable. Make it impossible for people to tell you no to promotions. No to funding for your business. So again, it's not just for leaders, you know, mainly when I originally, wrote the book, it's a lot of the tools that I use in my coaching practice.

you know, part of it's saying yes and part of it is, you know, very much around habit building. A lot. Some of it's around change and how to manage change. It's very, much the neuroscience of figuring out how you develop the skills that are gonna last to get into whatever you're trying to do. Again, in this context, being a, in a leadership position, and.

And I, say this, and I say this in the book, and I say this on this podcast 'cause a lot of my, probably most of my clients will probably listen to this podcast. So I don't say it lightly. It's a hundred percent successful. The tools, if you just use the tools of building habits, developing systems, and doing the work, it's, really amazing of what, how you can rewire your brain, to accomplish things that.

I keep putting stuff on my list because there's no way that I'm gonna guest a lecture at Columbia, which was on my list, which I have whatever I put on my list. I work really hard and use the tools and it's just still to this day, one of the best parts of my whole career, are watching people use these tools and see what they're able to accomplish, which, you know, a year prior they would go no way.

No way. I'm gonna be on this board. No way. I am gonna be, speaking at Harvard. No way. I am gonna be doing whatever, is on their list. And this, these transformations just keep happening over and over again. So, it's, really cool to see people use the tools, but that's basically it's the tools, to really make yourself undeniable.

[00:33:30] Mo Fathalbab: Well, I can't wait to read it. so a couple of things before we let you go. We gotta touch on ai. What are you seeing in the way of AI and how it's transforming your work? 

[00:33:40] Stephen Childs: Yeah, I talked about this too in my keynote at SHRM 25, and I sort of ended with this because you talk about another transformation, you gotta be ready for it.

And I basically said, look, if AI is gonna be a transformation in an organization, I promise you it is, and I promise you, CEOs are gonna be coming to the HR leaders to go explain to me what we're gonna do and how we're gonna use AI to make our organization more efficient, fast, efficient, flexible, and you better have an answer.

And part of what I encourage my team to do is, not only, work with our engineering team to start working on tools. They have to go through the training and really understand ai, what it isn't, the different versions of ai. There's a lot of things that are ai, machine learning to generative AI to you name it.

So they need to learn what that means, which is gonna help 'em work with whoever the engineers are that are gonna come in, which they're doing. Now I have engineers working with my team to develop digital trends of their work. But how do you develop those use cases? What is the best use of the AI within an HR organization and how do you determine that?

What research and who do you talk to? and then how do you figure out how to prioritize and sort of start that AI journey? So that's kinda what my team's doing. So there's so many free resources. There's no excuse not to have yourself and your team trained in AI and, the tools and the strategy.

and then that's just gonna make the whole HR organization a lot more, useful to help the whole organization go through the AI transformation, which is already here. And one thing that I put in my presentation is if you see where most organizations are in their transformation, and then you see where HR is so far behind the organization.

To begin with that it's gonna take some catching up. So I kind of tell my team too, it's sort of, you're doubling down on this. You're gonna have to disproportionately do some training just to catch up with where the organization is from a strategy standpoint, to be able to get a little bit above it to start helping with the transformation.

So it's a lot of work, but hey, it's pretty exciting, right? It goes back to lifelong learning and something's always been thrown at us to where we're gonna have to. Dig deep and learn something new to, to be successful. 

[00:36:21] Mo Fathalbab: Last question, Steven, what is one piece of advice that has shaped your work or personal life?

[00:36:29] Stephen Childs: Yeah. I mean, I would say it's kind of going back to saying yes, it's really tough. This the change management aspect of saying yes to things, getting involved, networking. get out of your comfort zone. If you can get out of your comfort zone on a regular basis, it becomes really fun. It becomes really nerve wracking at first, but then it becomes really fun.

And I, I see that, in people that I coach and, people that I mentor. And as they start working through a lot of those yeses and conversations with other people, the amount of doors that opens up for people is really even hard to explain. and until you really go sort of a little more overboard than you're used to with saying yes to things, including learning and, not just taking on, some terrible jobs and some good jobs, but actually saying yes to learning and doing some other things, the doors, become, very frequent that get opened.

So it's, a pretty cool thing to watch and it's been a really cool thing for me to experience, but. Probably even cooler to watch other people go through it. 

[00:37:39] Mo Fathalbab: And that's where we'll end it for this episode of People and Strategy. A huge thanks to Steven for your valuable insight.

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. 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.