Mark Stelzner - What 20 Years of Transformation Taught Me About Change

[00:00:03] Welcome to the HR Data Labs Podcast, now part of the WorkDefined Podcast Network. Join us as we explore the vital role of compensation, strategy, data, and people analytics in navigating today's complex business world. With the resources of WorkDefined, we're now bringing you deeper insights and actionable ideas from top experts. Now, here is your host, David Turetsky. Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs Podcast. I am your host, David Turetsky.

[00:00:30] And like always, we try and find the best, brightest, the most bold people inside and outside the world of HR. And today, we have with us my friend, long time friend, long time guest on the program, Mark Stelzner from IA. Mark, how are you? I'm getting by as you know from our commerce. But it's good to see you, Mark. Yeah, me too. We actually had maybe a 20, 25 minute conversation.

[00:00:57] I know it actually felt like that, but it was only a 15 minute conversation before we got out of the car, before we got into the episode. And all of us, you know, sometimes you catch up with old friends and we're like, wow, why don't we do this more often? And you realize when you're talking, the reason why we don't is because we're all so darn busy. That's right. Yeah. No excuse though. Breaking through with intention. No, no, no, no, no. We really need to speak more. Mark, tell people a little about what's going on with IA and, you know, we have a big anniversary this year, don't we?

[00:01:27] Yeah. Just in January, we turned 20, which is why I look so young and trash over 20 years since I started this crazy band of misfits. But it's interesting. You know, I was just talking to my team last week. We're somehow the beneficiary of the moment. So we're, we're one of the firms that are actually growing through the chaos that's facing our entire industry and I'd say the world at work writ large. But with that comes a lot of responsibility and reflection given the size and complexity of the organizations. Yeah.

[00:01:57] For it. And also the fact that we're in high demand means like we were discussing previously, that we need to be very intentional about finding space to refresh, relax, you know, reach hard, which is getting harder and harder, as you know. I do. And with all the pressures on human resources and businesses in general, to keep the wheels on and to roll toward a different destination now than we ever have. And, you know, you were at the forefront of a lot of these things.

[00:02:26] And, you know, we've talked about this in the past that HR is changing and that's what we're going to be talking about today in our, in our episode as our topic, how it's been changing over the last 20 years. But before we do, Mark, what's the one fun thing that no one knows about Mr. Stelzner? Oh my gosh. You would think that I am a fantastic singer because of my voice. Yeah, you got the voice for it. It is terrible. I am a terrible singer.

[00:02:53] I have one go-to song, which is Sweet Caroline, but that's about it. There you go. That's all you're going to want to hear. So if you've got a drink and, but people think, Hey, it's karaoke night, Mark, get up and do it. No, I've got a face for radio. And my mom says, it's as far as I can go. So that's it. We're going to test that for you because I'm going to HL tech this, this fall and we're going to go to a karaoke bar and we're going to test that there.

[00:03:18] And we're going to actually tape it and we're going to let people judge for themselves. Okay. Done. Sold. All right, cool. Well, before we went to our topic, let's take one break for a commercial message. Hold on. Hey, this is William Tincup.

[00:03:47] And I'd like to talk to you a little bit about practitioner corner podcast. It's a wonderful podcast about the journey of the paths of how practitioners, both HR and TA kind of go from high school, college, all the way to where they are right now. Some of the things that they've learned, how they've been successful, people that thrive around them, et cetera. It's a fun podcast. You'll love it. You'll learn from it. Subscribe to it. Thanks.

[00:04:12] So, Mark, the topic for today is it's been 20 years since you started IA and it's been a phenomenal one. And as you said, you're, you're a victim of your own success.

[00:04:35] And you are, you're one of those people that we look for answers to some of the hardest questions happening in the world of HR. And for those of us who've known you for a really long time, especially in compensation as well. So talk to me about what you've seen changing in the world of business. And then, you know, the next question we're going to get into the world of HR.

[00:05:01] And then after that, we're going to also talk about your world and how IA has changed as well. Not only commercial, but really as a way to be able to look back on, on how you've had to respond. No, appreciate that. I mean, the pacing of everything has just accelerated to the point that we really have time to think. And, you know, we're not here to make this necessarily about AI.

[00:05:25] But if we follow what AI promises now, and we project that backwards, what's left now is the hard stuff. The heady stuff. So if AI does what it's intended to do, the burden of being human will grow exponentially. And therefore the burden of being a leader in this function or a leader of an enterprise exponentially increases with pressure, expectations and outcomes.

[00:05:50] And so what I see certainly in the enterprises that we have the good graces of working with, that the notion of planning. And then strategizing and then funding and then resourcing and then executing and then reflecting and learning and doing it again and again and again is antithetical to the world that we live in.

[00:06:13] So we had a potential opportunity recently that we turned down with a large pharma company, well-known pharma company, and they had asked us to come in and help them build a five-year strategic plan. And my response was no. So they were really surprised. Well, you can, you can hire anybody to do that. But at the end of the day, you just need one thing, which is a North Star, like something immovable, immutable, that's going to remove because you're going to get lost.

[00:06:40] But short of that, all we have are strong hypotheses and goals. Oh, yeah. One, no one can predict what will happen in five years. No one can execute on a five-year plan. And so this pacing, this relentless pacing combined, David, I would say with the turnover that we're all leadership. So you combine faster expectations, shorter life cycles and expectation for quicker and more efficient and effective delivery with the arrival of new and new leaders.

[00:07:09] It's just untenable. And that's what changed. Just the notion of time, the notion of performance. Oh, absolutely. And I want to do an example, Mark. Yeah. I want to do an example because we used to talk about five, 10, 15 year outlooks, right? What's the company going to be in five, 10, 15 years? And 15 years ago, that was okay. Because to your point, the pace of change in organizations and large enterprises, probably the M&A and other than, you know, real big market impacts like 2008.

[00:07:39] And one would argue some other big crises that we've had, like 2001. You'd say, well, yeah, I mean, a five-year plan sounds pretty good, right? It sounds pretty short term. That's right. I think about how we talk about performance management. I'm not, and I'm not getting the HR yet. We talk about performance management. We talk about one-year plans and I'm like, how can you do that? But three months seems like forever, you know, when you're changing things up.

[00:08:09] So how is it that the enterprise has changed so dramatically? So where five-year plans seem so ridiculous right now? I mean, is it AI or is it something completely different? I think part of it is stakeholder expectations. Part of it is just a sense of currency. Like we reward currency, even social currency, right? If we think about the visualization of what we do, you know, TikTok and Instagram coming

[00:08:35] in a material and meaningful way since I started this firm. So our incentives and consumption just have significantly shifted. And what we think we, you know, reward and award and what we think we incent versus actually how humans behave often aren't inextricably linked. And it's harder and harder to lead because you don't have much time. And so even when we think about the characteristics of leaders, it's always been a problem where

[00:09:03] if you take your highest performing individual contributors and you say, great, now you're going to be a people leader, doesn't mean one equals the other or shouldn't the other. But, but the notion of sort of individual contributor career paths that didn't exist 20 years ago. And if it was, it was a rarity. It's probably because you're holding on to a terrible person who can't be with people, but there are high performers. Yeah. Reward them. But all that to say is that with some notable exceptions, meaning sometimes there's family run

[00:09:33] companies that have just sustained some manufacturing capabilities, their ways of working, but their brand and their reputation have maintained simply extended into the modern era. Perhaps certainly there's industry focus associated with this, but the half-life to extinction in the corporate environment is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And therefore the speed of displacement or disruption is faster and larger and faster and larger.

[00:09:58] And so we spend more time looking over our shoulder or looking left and right is, you know, than we do perhaps looking forward. Look at the examples that really talk to what you're, what you're speaking about. Think about the BlackBerrys, the research in motion. Think about Nokia. Think about AT&T or other notable information age companies that started with a bang,

[00:10:24] grew to being the monster in their category and then disappeared relatively quickly, long took to their start. And then you have the apples in the world that at one point in time, and I think it was around 2008, if I'm no, it wasn't 2008. It was a little early, maybe 2001 or 2002. They were almost extinct as well because the categories in which they were strong in were totally dominated by Microsoft and others. And then they started getting into a lot of other things like music and whatnot. And then they started to think about that.

[00:10:54] Does it mean that an organization isn't looked at like a monolith like it used to be? And that disruption is more of the name of the game rather than being the constant fear, but now it's the constant reality. Yeah. And I think right now at a time of financial and societal unrest, there's a lot of people enjoying some happy hunting.

[00:11:19] Like we're finding what used to be operating companies are quickly moving into holding companies. And yeah, as they're finding these distress assets and they bring them into their hold co in a way that listen, I don't need everything to be profitable at exactly the same time. I don't need all to innovate at exactly the same pace. But if I balance my portfolio in a way that some high percentage of my assets are performing

[00:11:43] while we're investing in others, we can get overall operational lift as a holding company. And that's where like the rise of the holding company, we've been thinking about, you know, meta. Yeah. You know, it was Facebook. It was instant, right? Now it's meta. We look at Google, the alphabet, right? There was an alphabet. Yeah. Need to sort of separate from the brand of the entity

[00:12:08] to diversify then as a holding company and bring in complimentary assets and also potentially to fail and take distressed assets and either sell them for parts or simply shut them down because they didn't get the pickup preps that the market expected. So then for those of us that are trying to navigate this world, there's always tension in that system. There's tension in structure. There's tension in operating model. There's tension in decision authority leadership. There's tension in market penetration and expansion.

[00:12:37] And so all that comes to life is what I would my team hears me refer to as complexity factors. So the complexity factors in organizations are just exponentially growing. While at the same time, honestly, I feel like those that are thriving are relatively small. So we have we have bookends. It's hard to be in the middle right now. It's it's better to do one thing and do one thing incredibly well. Right. Or better to own so many assets that a percentage of them doing well allows you to sustain your business.

[00:13:06] But being in that middle ground right now is a bit challenging, I think, for a lot of enterprises. Well, when I when I heard you talking, one of the things that kind of jumped out at me is when I was doing executive competition modeling and when I was doing valuations, especially around Black Shoals, we always talked about beta. Right. And how high data meant that there was significant opportunity for for growth and significant value.

[00:13:34] Now, do we see based on what you just said, do we see beta as a good thing or do we see it as a really bad thing? Because you can have those small companies that you mentioned at the end rise up and overtake you because they're more nimble. Maybe it actually even had a smaller beta because the growth pattern was relatively linear. And so it's not like all over the place, which is what beta is measuring.

[00:14:00] So isn't it isn't that is it is beta good and is beta bad in this environment? I think it depends on the context and where you find yourself in an organization. If you're growing investing, if you can self fund and self invest and self grow, I think it's still healthy. I still I still think it creates the type of latitude flexibility that one needs to actually thrive, especially during times of duress. I feel like when you're linear and do I see single threaded. Yeah. That thread gets cut or trimmed.

[00:14:29] Oh, yeah. You're done. So, yeah, there's and there's so much risk profiling and risk assessment that I see organizations doing as well, which we spend as much time protecting our flank as we do trying to advance. And that and again, all this is tensions and systems. You know, we thought we had a great product, but then supply chain gets disrupted. You know, we might be oil based, but suddenly the oil supply, you know, we have wars.

[00:14:58] And so so the tariffs between tariffs and wars, what hasn't gotten disrupted? Right. So you you're standing on quicksand and you don't even know it until you're sinking. And that's what I think for leaders right now is you're having to place bets. We've always had to place bets within perfect information.

[00:15:15] But the light can be swept in any corner of our enterprise for any purpose, many of which are out of our control that we create this facade of control and decision authority. When we're in fact, we're just absorbing and moving, absorbing and moving. And that fluidity, frankly, is probably the healthiest way to lead right now because of the fact that we can't really be static and not that we ever were, but we can't be as like for as long as perhaps we contemplated previously.

[00:15:44] But going back to your other point about being a holding company in this world, it seems like that's an amoeba, amoeba behavior where you bring assets in and depending upon the market and the economic and the social economic world that we're in. Right. One might flourish while the other one suffers. You know, there's no more of the, hey, there's high margin in this and there's lower margin than that.

[00:16:14] And yay, we're going to balance it all out. It's, you know, what aren't we getting attacked on right now? What are these vectors to what we're shooting for? And how do we keep that? How do we keep above water with all of that? Yeah. Well, and I think of this, we often talk about a catalyst, like what were the transformation business? Like what are the catalysts for transformation?

[00:16:36] Easy and obvious things, you know, divestitures, M&A activity, the arrival of a new leader, a particular investment thesis relative to tools or technology. Like these are all change agents to bring forward. The benefit of the collapsing of multiple entities into one or the collision of multiple entities to one is you do have to actually have a point of view.

[00:16:56] And what we find, particularly in the work that we do, it's the lack of establishing a firm and fixed point of view on our processes, on our tools, on our expectations, on our policies, all the dependencies that are required for us to execute at scale. Right. And the hyperlocalization of issues that are completely out of our control, the need for us to actually force ourselves to be a bit process led tech enabled to actually unify our ways of working.

[00:17:25] You can't sustain a hundred versions of something for very long. It's too expensive. It's too resource intensive. So, you know, again, amongst the pros and cons, you know, is everything become homogenous and we lose identity. That certainly is a con of sort of the streamlining or efficiency that comes with some of these. But forcing us to actually look ourselves in the mirror and say, in lieu of us taking a decision, all we're doing is perpetuating chaos, which is right here.

[00:17:51] There is certainly a necessity of us to take stock, decide what we're going to win on. And these are the conversations we're really having now that are newer. We still have to do all the things. But what do we not care about? I mean, really conversations we're even willing to risk litigation because we can't, you know, we've got eight people in this country. I kind of can't worry about it. And it comes to comes, it's minimally viable.

[00:18:17] What's market parity to compete in the market in which we offer our goods or services? This is what's required. But we're going to win on this. Those are more of the discussions we're having now. And we've always thought about that commercially. But I would say in terms of enabling functions like finance or IT or HR, the conversation is bringing to the forefront more so than I've ever seen it before. Because in lieu of taking a position, we're going to be moved past.

[00:18:47] And the cost pressures and growth pressures are colliding in such a way that we can't sideline this anymore. We can't just be on our heels. We've got to get on toes pretty quickly. Is what you've said because, and I'm kind of leaning into the comment you made about the we can't wait anymore, we've got to do. Is that because regulatory agencies are kind of suffering right now and we're willing to roll the dice and gamble a little bit? That they're not going to look at us.

[00:19:15] They've got so many other fish to fry right now and there's so many other areas to look at. But, you know, I'm willing to gamble a little bit on that. Or is it that operational work to take advantage of the situations we're in? And if we don't, somebody else will. I think, you know, organizations spend a lot of time talking about their EVP, their value goals, their mission and their vision. And the asterisk is getting a little bit larger, in my opinion, right now.

[00:19:41] Because the notion is, again, this applies to all. There's equanimity in everything that we do. When we mean this, we mean this for all. And we mean this for all in all situations, in all locations, across all population types. And I think, again, more out of necessity than design, we can't afford for that to be true anymore. And this is sad, by the way. I'm not amplifying this to something like I'm super thrilled about. But now organizations are saying, listen, we've shrunk. So go back to our domain here, David.

[00:20:11] The people function gets smaller and has to do more. Smaller and has to do more. So we can't federate ourselves to support the edges of our bell curve. So we have to think about t-shirt sizes, right? What's our extra small, small, medium, large, extra large based on population or impact or where we're intending to grow? They're going to get, sadly, more of X, Y, or Z than perhaps their smaller peers. Where, you know, 10 people quit, we're out of that country. Or what are that more?

[00:20:40] Because, you know, that's having them flowing. And it's expensive to maintain a footprint. It's expensive to have this many business units, to have this many leaders. There's a cost to operations that come into the business. So we have to make these choices. And it's a bit of a gut check, in my opinion, David, for the organization. Because it's causing us to recognize that those were aspirational, maybe inspirational. But for most organizations, they're not factual or functional.

[00:21:05] Like, it's very difficult to sustain that high bar of expectation that we all set for ourselves for very long for everyone. And so behind closed doors, we acknowledge not everyone is unfortunately created equal in the organization. And therefore, that manifests in service and investment and support and benefits and comp and all the other things that certainly we know about. And whether it's spoken or unspoken, inequity continues to grow.

[00:21:31] Go back to the first set of conversations we were having about the timeframes and the, you know, the 5, 10, 15-year viewpoints. There used to be a time when we would never even consider shutting down, you know, a well-established office in a location. We would do whatever we could to rally the troops and to keep that organization afloat because our customers meant so much to us in those markets.

[00:21:57] Nowadays, you know, fast forward to 2026, we're going to jettison that entire market because it's unsustainable in the ways in which, you know, who moves those 10 people? There's no coming back from that. They're going to our competitors or they're starting their own shop or whatever. And the litigation as well as everything else in order to keep that office alive or that location alive. We've got to move on to the next one. Our opinion has now changed, right?

[00:22:26] I mean, the operating model has to change. Absolutely. And the speed at which we can gain or lose or the speed at which our own operational efficiency has to shift based on the state of the world, honestly. You know, we look at even something like supply chain. We look at supply chain disruption. While out of necessity, this country will go dormant or no longer be in effect. Those subcontractors will lose their jobs. But just as quickly, we've got an insatiable market over here that is ready to catch our work.

[00:22:53] So, like, we whack them all down and we can, but it's the nature of speed. And because we're so globalized now that the barriers to entry into both entering and exiting markets are shorter than ever before. But the statutory compliance is also getting more and more complex. So, we make decisions. And that goes into certainly more conversations I'm seeing now than before around HR taking on total workforce management. Yeah.

[00:23:22] You know, visibility into contract labor pools, even the notion of, like, who owns these relationships. Procurement eventually sort of grew. Movement systems grew. That happened over the last 20 years where, David, you might be a line of business leader. You've got your own pool of people that you trust. You can contract with them and fire them, hire them, provision them as you see fit. But when all work becomes, we're all contractors, right, in our own way.

[00:23:45] When all work becomes closer to contract work, the difference between what we consider an employer FTE versus contractor seasonal labor, like, we can't really see much daylight between them. And so, the idea of, like, dynamically provisioning resources with skills to do work, well, it makes sense that HR now takes that on because we're trying to manifest skills to provision outcomes. Do we really care where the skills come from as long as we're getting?

[00:24:12] And is it easier to, frankly, turn on that spigot or turn off that spigot of contract labor? Well, it is, factually and factually. But with the assault on HR, and I'm talking more about the Bolt.com, so firing HR and creating corporations, well, I'm actually just talking about how it's harder to be an HR person today because of all the tensions in a business, within businesses, within countries, with regular alternative bodies and everything.

[00:24:40] It's so difficult to be an HR person, no matter what the different, you know, aspect that we focus on, whether it's recruiting or compensation or benefits or whatever. However, it's so hard, though, it becomes almost a fait accompli that, as you were talking about, that leader who has those relationships is going to, you know, accrue them a saying,

[00:25:01] so we're going to have the GP, for example, and be able to establish a beachhead in a different country because they want somebody with a GP, they want an opportunity, they're going to go do it and then ask for permission later or ask for forgiveness later. And then HR comes back and goes, well, how am I supposed to support this long term? Our HR ITs don't support having none more simply. Well, GP will take care of that. Don't worry about that. It's all in their contract. Right, exactly. And that's it.

[00:25:30] So the operational execution pressure then says, now my provider or vendor management ecosystem needs to be equally dynamic. I need to be able to provide extension of support, care, services, again, with a bit of a switch of turning on and off. I mean, even negotiations with the leading HR and payroll providers are different now. It's an answer to fluctuations in populations.

[00:25:59] So the notion, like, here's a minimally viable commit to maintain this price point. Okay, we're talking now tranches that go plus X percent and minus X percent that have to be pre-negotiated because we might shrink. And I'm not going to be tethered to a contract that's going to shrink over time while maintaining a baseline that isn't real. So it's... Well, they are based on PECMs too, which means that your base expense moves based on that baseline. That's right.

[00:26:26] And so if you're stuck, but you know you're a flagging asset or you know that you're likely to do high people displacement due to digital investments, everything's being revisited. And so it puts tension on the entire ecosystem. But the growth elasticity that third parties then can provide you, those markets are growing. Big BPO, like the heydays of HRB, like early 2000s, it's back again. Yeah.

[00:26:53] The portals from the mid-90s, like they're back again. Like what's old is new again. It's just the context in which we're climbing them is significantly different. Well, in the old days, the portals had people behind them. They had a call center behind them. They had IVR. They had... It wasn't AI. It was the precursors to AI, right? It was an outsourced person that would answer your call and you didn't care where they were. They were in the cloud.

[00:27:20] It didn't matter whether they were in Idaho or they were in Prague, whether they were in the Philippines. Probably not the Philippines back then, but we were somewhere else. They may have been in Salt Lake City. Now, we're getting to a situation where you may be talking to an AI who's trained in Salt Lake City or in the Philippines or in Prague. But this disembodiment of that support is itself.

[00:27:47] Is it how it will support or is it maintaining the same crap that we've been dealt for the last 20 years? And I guess going to the next part of our conversation about HR and how HR has changed or how it hasn't changed in the last 20 years. Have we been focusing on the wrong things? Have we been trying to be everything to the company?

[00:28:08] And have we missed the boat on trying to be what we needed to be, which was that business partner we've always talked about, the business partner who was more glad you added. You know, we gave up the administrative crap to the technology a long time ago. Have we kind of missed that boat and now AI is eating our lunch on everything, even strategy? You know, I think part of the problem is we think we can technology our way out of every problem.

[00:28:35] And the multiple continues to reinforce the thesis by producing more and more venture funded, PE funded tools and technology. Tens of thousands of capabilities that are very difficult for one to validate, consume, integrate, maintain and deploy. And what we found is, you know, we're getting just as behind and have been, frankly, for some time in the cloud as we used to on-prem.

[00:29:02] And the reason is we're taking releases turned off, right? We're leasing these capabilities, but what's not mandatory, we're not absorbing. We're not taking the release notes. We're not socializing that the OEs aren't saying, oh, this would be accreted to me in this following way. We're not doing sprints of releases, etc. So most of the value that was inferred of a one to many model that came through SAS or the promise of enterprise SAS is not being utilized.

[00:29:28] When we look at the enterprises that we work with, they're fractionally using the licensed tools and technologies that they've purchased. Because the thought was delivery technology is going to overcome the foundational shortcomings that we have internally. So when I think about, like, what hasn't changed, the underlying, like, non-sexy dependencies haven't changed. Go back to our portal example from the one whole minutes ago. Content. Okay.

[00:29:57] We thought we could kind of get away with crap content for a long time. Because content. And we had. Well, it was in David's head. So we had to have the expert, but the expert didn't have to write it down. Well, then the expert wrote it down. And then we realized, well, when the expert wrote it down, we've got 150,000 variations. But at least we've got the expert and we've got it written down. Now all AI exposes is the chaos underneath. Is bad data. Is bad processes.

[00:30:27] Is bad, you know, a lack of authoritative content. And to be helpful, it'll just bring it into the square for us all to chaotically navigate or say, that's not right or that's not pertinent or that's not localized to me. So taking the human out of the loop, but not putting the human back into building a stronger foundation for growth is a mistake that certainly we've made. And we're paying for that right now because it's slowing the ability for us to consume capability.

[00:30:55] But on the flip side, if I'm a CPO today, which again, think about even the naming convention has changed. Right. I'm a people officer and not a chief human resources officer. It's not about us in HR. It's about the people that we serve. Certainly even the titling has evolved and changed across the organizations. I'm wearing three hats that I've got to keep moving. I'm spinning these plates at exactly the same time. One, I'm the business partner to the CEO and to the president of my organization.

[00:31:22] And I'm the senior peer to my C-suite. This bullshit seat at the table stuff has been gone for a long time. We're not, we're standing on the table. We're at the centerpiece of the table. We're not dancing on the table. Yeah. Well, sometimes we're dancing if we're still hosting parties, but God forbid some of that. Don't have fun, Mark. Don't have fun. But, but like that demands a lot of time and attention. And when we talk about turnover then, well, guess who's working on the turnover?

[00:31:50] Who's working through these very sensitive searches as we continue to displace and replace peer groups within the C-suite, even board turnover is just to the chief people officer. Then we have, I run a P&L. I've got a function. I've got a budget. I've got capital projects. I've got headcount. I've got to run HR, whatever we call them. Right. And then third is I'm still the flag bearer for what it means to be a good contributor to the organization.

[00:32:20] Right. So I'm personification of the optimum talent of ways of working, of behavioral change. I'm the spokesperson still. So when we've got tension across those three different roles, you get dragged asunder constantly and you're always having to give something up. I'm, you know, the more CPOs I've talked to, wish they had a COO, wish they had some CFO, I'm sure as well. To run HR, to run the P&L. So the transformation office is new.

[00:32:50] Many, we work disproportionately with large enterprises. So the advent of the transformation office, not as a project, but as a continuous function that has projects, programs, and initiatives, holds the HR budget, you know, sustains the capital budget in partnership with IT or operations, is the proxy to finance for expectations, works with corporate strategy very quietly and securely to align to maybe moves that haven't been discussed.

[00:33:16] It's like the new advent of what we do in what order with what dependencies. How do we provision resources and dollars? How do we secure business cases? But also this notion that we're constantly prioritizing and deprioritizing. We need a function that wakes up every day. That function didn't exist 20 years ago. There was a project maybe, and we cut a logo cake at the end. But this is now this way it works. How high sounds do we have to, you know, go to to change the way we did shit? Exactly.

[00:33:44] But if I, you know, if you ask to, if you put an AI tool, put Copilot against the Outlook calendar or Gemini against the Google calendar of a CPO, you will very quickly see where she is spending most of her time. Not necessarily because she wants to, but because she has to. So we're in the mix of everything, which is what we wanted. But we're not staffed to be able to support it, unfortunately. What I didn't hear you talk about, which was really important, especially during the pandemic, is that cultural leader.

[00:34:12] The person who keeps everybody enthusiastic to keep working despite horrible stuff that was going on in our world. People dying around us and the support we needed to not lose our freaking minds because our way of working completely changed 100% in one day. That's right. Or one week. And all of a sudden we started working differently. Our kids were home and they were around us and our spouses were home.

[00:34:41] And, you know, that caused a lot of stuff as well. And so, and I don't mean for you to comment negatively on what you were saying, because I think what you were saying was that now the CPO has to look beyond culture. They have to put their pom-poms down. And because I've had pom-poms, believe me, I've had pom-poms as a CPO. And, you know, more little crap about that. That was probably what I did anyways.

[00:35:09] Well, and what you've done is you've distributed the load to the expectation of being a business leader of any shape and kind is that this is now hyper localized to your function, to your people. Because the storyline isn't universal anymore. It could be the contact center function is getting decimated and replaced through a gentic enablement, right? So that's a very different cultural story than the finance function, right, is looking

[00:35:35] for more efficiency and effectiveness relative to time to close on a quarterly basis. Right. We're very different incentive plan relative to the sales or marketing functions, right, which are thinking about growth or customer reach or customer sentiment or relationship management in a different way. And our supply, you know, we've got to be able to cut the line and reestablish the line for manufacturing. We're dynamic manufacturing. So, like, because we're so complicated and we always were complicated, like, let's just

[00:36:04] be honest, there wasn't ever truly one storyline. But at least the feeling was the storyline was the ground level and we can then do variations. The ground level isn't consistent anymore. So we can't tell the same, Sal, I should say, I actually said Sal, probably meant it on one level. We can't sell the same story. Right. That we used to because it's not true. And one thing I do find is HR leaders still and always have not wanted to be disingenuous to their people.

[00:36:31] So the notion of pop-poms might find maybe there's a direct correlation or causation. I haven't done the research. If I'm not hearing from my CTO as much, it might signal that we don't necessarily have good news to share. Yeah. And we've seen that happen very recently where the bad news is coming from the CEO, obviously. I mean, in many ways, that's the place it should emanate from.

[00:36:55] But their messages have not been checked with the head of HR or the CTO because the messages suck. They're really bad at delivering really bad news. Yeah. And I would say that's why we're seeing a lot of turnover at that level as well, because the what got us here isn't going to get us there has always been true, but it's certainly true now. And a lot of people who are at a nexus point of the belief system of what an organization stood for and what they built their career on, it's somewhat unrecognizable in many cases

[00:37:25] right now. And so these decisions or investments at the expense of, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, HR in the room is the one wave in their hand saying, I don't know if we should do this. I don't think this is right or this doesn't match to what we claim we are. And if it's done nonetheless, then I was overruled, which means my purpose here is probably not. Right. Exactly. And what would they do then?

[00:37:51] Because if they are tied to those decisions, Mark. Yeah. It's got their stamp on it. That's right. Either implied or explicit. And that's exactly. A lot of people exit or HR gets dragged, you know, in the sense of I was the executioner, right? Why? Exactly. How could this have happened? And then, you know, that's going to cause me to go deeper and deeper inside to not want to raise my hand and say, I'm the flag bearer yet again, right?

[00:38:21] More focused operational efficiency. So, so, you know, all that is causing turmoil, like internal turmoil. I talked to a lot of CPOs that are honestly in tears out of both frustration, exhaustion, and just a, you know, a shared recognition of the fact that I don't know if I can do this, whatever this is right now for very much longer, at least how it's. Yeah. And maybe that, maybe there is some truth to that.

[00:38:49] And I want to get to a third question, which is how IA has changed as well. But before we do, let's touch on that a little bit. We were talking before we got on the episode about how our lives have changed. And maybe there does need to be a change in what people operations or HR or, or, or the office of people or whatever you're going to call it is HR. Maybe it does need to be different. And I'm not getting on a soapbox and saying we need to be something different.

[00:39:18] I'm a comp guy by background. I don't love all the, all the pieces of HR, to be honest. You know, let's be honest. There are some things I hate like performance management. Let's all, I'll just say right there. But maybe we do need a comeuppance. Maybe there needs to be a bit of an upheaval in HR and it needs to shake up. Yeah. And I, and I think we have been through that upheaval, upheaval in waves and with spikes and valleys over the last two plus decades, 30 years that I've been in this industry for sure.

[00:39:48] So I don't think that narrative is necessarily different. I think what's changed, if I go back to something I said a little bit earlier, you know, the work that's going to be left for us, meaning our human work, where we put our hearts, where we put our minds, our opportunity cost, et cetera, is heavy and heady. Because what we will do, because frankly, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Trillions of dollars are invested in our AI overlords. It's going to come true one way or another.

[00:40:15] So that train isn't going to stop or even be derailed or distracted. It's, it's happening. And if one organization says I'm not okay with that ethically, five more will pop up to say, I don't have that hangout. What do you want to do? Exactly. So, you know, we're, we're, we're dealing with, you know, too much, too much of everything. But what's left when we separate all that noise, if you're an HR business partner and you want to be helpful, which inherently I think almost everyone wants to be, but certainly

[00:40:42] within HR and you strip out the transactional, which has always been the goal, right? I mean, how long we talked about elevating to more strategic value add. What is left is pretty heavy. It's work. It's analytical work. It's work. It's ODOE work. It's the confidence, the super confidential work of, you know, the manifestation of the other things that we've been talking about, which is the shifting change of what it means to work at all.

[00:41:08] And so elevating into that, while we commoditize the capabilities that take up some relatively high percentage of our HR capacity and our end processes means, you know, in your world for compensation, you know, are we going to go to dynamic skills-based compensation? Right. Do we, you know, but what's left, you know, can we really, is market data really going to work in the future world?

[00:41:36] Do we even need employees and what the notion of full-time equivalency looks like? Do copper ratios really matter? Do I want everyone to be contract? Like all this stuff that we're going to have to question everything, which pay parity and other initiatives are forcing, which is good. It's right in front of us, but it means we don't actually get the relief. I was just talking to my own team about this a couple of weeks ago. Like sometimes I don't mind booking my own travel. I like sending a calendar invite.

[00:42:05] I don't mind drafting an email. I don't mind logging into a system because I just need a break on the mental load. Right. I don't think we're prepared for eight, 10 hours a day of what will be left, honestly. And that's going to require us to reach a function and our expectation of what it means to work and therefore our employees writ large. You and I could have multiple episodes on how the HR changes because of what you just said.

[00:42:33] And you mentioned before we were talking about workforce management and how we're changing expectations about the break from the 5, 10, 15 year plan down to the, you know, how are we going to manage within this year? And how does HR take on workforce management? There's a lot of data there. I love that. But we should talk about that in another episode. I wanted to speak a little quickly about how it has changed over the last 20 years because I want to give you a little opportunity to kind of be proud.

[00:43:02] You're a proud papa here. You should be proud of what your organization has achieved over the last 20 years. And it's funny, my team brought up a picture that I had from 2006. And boy, I'm paying the price of my friend. But, you know, it's funny. I talk to a lot of people now, as you might imagine. Sustaining a business for this long is difficult and challenging. And part of it is we give ourselves permission to throw away anything at any time, but at least in.

[00:43:29] So annually we gather, we question what we've done, how we've done it, what we've learned along the way. And we're constantly having to change as well. If we were static, first of all, this would be terribly boring work. Sure. Times it can be terribly boring work, just to say it. But we've got to keep this interesting and we've got to move at the same pace that our clients are moving. Right. And we've got to make this interesting for our people to get the level of engagement and certainly longevity that we've been grateful to experience. But right.

[00:43:58] So so part of like when I coach people that are a lot of people are going on on their own right now, because, again, the barrier to start Tretti Consulting is low. Right. Like you can you can get it going really fast. So so mistakes I made that in hindsight, I could have avoided that I have changed as a result. You think you need all the clients. You don't. You need to play like mathematically. You can only absorb a certain capacity.

[00:44:26] You need a fraction of a fraction of your addressable market. There's a perception you need to be able to do all the things. No, you need to be able to do one thing.

[00:44:56] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you get caught. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:46:49] Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. And Mark, I just want to know one thing for those people who don't know Mark very well. Mark has been one of those people that you can rely on. His reputation precedes him. For those of us who know him and love him, he has been a constant source of not only insight, but a truth. And when you, you know, 100 percent buy into whatever he says or whatever I say, it doesn't

[00:47:17] matter because that's part of what he was just saying. It's part of his truth. And I have enjoyed the past 20 years listening to him and knowing him. And I'm looking forward to another four years of hearing for Mark Stelzner and his viewpoint. So Mark, we're going to do this again soon. I really appreciate your time. It's so valuable to me and to my listeners and viewers. We really do appreciate you. Exactly. I would love it.

[00:47:47] And, you know, I'm one of those weeks I get up in the morning, I go, I got Mark Stelzner on my calendar. Yeah. Anyway, so thank you so much for being here. And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe. Thank you for listening to the HR Data Labs podcast. Don't forget to hit subscribe and share it with your network. You can also check out the recordings on Spotify or the HR channel now on Roku and Fire TV. Thank you. Take care and stay safe.