Miriam McLemore (16:01):
So can you talk a little bit about the importance of that relationship between technology and a CHRO?
Edith Cooper (16:10):
Sure. Well, the CHRO role is a fascinating one because you are responsible for all things people, whether it's hiring or developing or paying or moving them around, all things people. But if you were to ask most leaders what they're responsible for, they would say something similar, and they would add to that whatever P&L line or function that they might have. And I highlight that thread because it's really critical to know how an effective HR strategy is one that's really very much in partnership with all the critical business lines and functions within an organization.
(16:53):
Now, I would also say let us not for a second diminish the subject matter expertise that exists with an HR function, because all of these different things are complicated. The way that you think about recognizing talent and reviewing and developing and compensating requires a level of experience and science. That's really important.
(17:15):
But the thing that I always found was critically important and very exciting was creating partnerships with other key business leaders in the organization. In my instance, it was Goldman Sachs. You mentioned you were the CIO. I spent a tremendous amount of time with my colleagues in the sales and trading risk areas and the business leaders there, because I would sit at management committee, which was the convening of the top people at the company, and I would hear about how we would stand up these risk systems to really make sure that we were appropriately monitoring the risks of the company.
(17:54):
And I would listen, and I was like, "Well, I need some of that. I need some of that technology. I need to figure out a way."
Miriam McLemore (17:59):
"How do I get some?"
Edith Cooper (18:00):
"How do I get some of that?" And listen, I think it's a space where that has historically been under-invested. And so we spent a lot of mental energy on the guts and the infrastructure related to getting all those people hired and paid in a very, I would say, then, low tech manner. I think things have progressed tremendously, but my thought partners in really leveraging technology and science and data science differently were engineering colleagues, were leaders of some of the risk-taking businesses at Goldman Sachs. And it really enabled us to take our talent game to the next level.
(18:43):
As an example, we spent a lot of time talking about the significance of managers, and everyone at the top and throughout the organization would say, "Yep, managers, they're really important." But then you started digging deeper, it's like-
Miriam McLemore (18:57):
What does it mean? Right.
Edith Cooper (18:57):
... what does it mean? Is it really important?
Miriam McLemore (19:00):
Yeah. Okay.
Edith Cooper (19:00):
What are the attributes-
Miriam McLemore (19:01):
What is the measure?
Edith Cooper (19:02):
... of being a good manager? Isn't it just kind of like nice, nice stuff that... Actually, a colleague challenged me, "Eh, it's just this nice, nice stuff. Make people feel good." I'm like, "I don't think that's what it is."
(19:13):
And so we worked with some of the data scientists that worked in some of the other businesses to answer some of these questions. We learned that by looking at a pool of employees in a particular business, that if you had someone who had been defined as a good manager based upon certain criteria, that you were 70% more likely to be a strong performer yourself. I mean, think about that. So all of a sudden, it's like, wow, that's pretty impressive.
Miriam McLemore (19:42):
Strong leaders hire strong leaders.
Edith Cooper (19:43):
And then you dig further.
Miriam McLemore (19:44):
Yep.
Edith Cooper (19:44):
You dig further and you say, "Yeah, but what are the attributes of a manager?" Like, "Oh, we've got all these reams of information on review scores and nobody believes in," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, "Oh, well, maybe we better get a little bit more deliberate with respect to what these attributes are." And that was one example.
(20:06):
Another example was what's happening to the pipeline. We all spend a lot of time thinking about the pipeline, ensuring that we get extraordinary everything. Organizations want extraordinary everything, all different kinds of skills, perspectives, backgrounds, et cetera. And then you look and you go, "But where are they? What happened? We hired all these people, and we don't have the right engineers. We don't have the right diversity, broadly defined. What's happening?" Well, we actually started to do the work to determine, what does the career trajectory look like? This is not complicated tech. This is not. But imagine the potential of where we are now.
(20:49):
With some of the generative AI tools, we have the opportunity to really just look at the data in a more and more powerful way. We also have the opportunity to do harm. And there we go back to where we started, which is how important it is to really have a close partnership between those who are the subject matter experts, in this instance, those that are in HR, and those that really understand the power of the technology today but also the potential of the technology going forward.
Miriam McLemore (21:30):
Yeah. It's interesting, in this world of generative AI and how fast it's changing, I think HR is one of the spaces where, very quickly, from reviewing resumes and creating job descriptions and things like that, AI is a productivity tool.
(21:53):
But as you say, people have to stay in front of that to ensure that the expertise of HR is brought to the front. I say often to customers that we can, as IT leaders, take lessons from both finance and HR, because finance and HR have required all of us leaders to be good financial stewards and good people managers, or hope that we worked hard to make sure we were.
Edith Cooper (22:30):
We can always aspire to greatness.
Miriam McLemore (22:33):
But now in the world of technology, we also need leaders to be good technology managers and have that same understanding. But they still need to rely on the expertise of finance, the expertise of HR, and the expertise of that technologist, and not take a set of tools to transplant that expertise.
Edith Cooper (23:00):
I think that's right. I mean, we are in extraordinary times, but I suspect that if you look back on your career as a CIO, there have been other times that seemed quite extraordinary, and some things evolved as one would've expected, some things perhaps did not. But there is no doubt that the tools that are being developed and will continue to be developed will impact the way some jobs are done-
Miriam McLemore (23:26):
The way we work.
Edith Cooper (23:27):
... and the way people work, which, going back to the significant role of leaders, broadly defined, is how are you actually preparing your humans to be humans, which is really critically important, but also to embrace and generate ideas on the applications that these tools might have, because that, I would suspect... And I've got a never-ending learning curve. I have a wonderful universe of folks at Amazon who are so patient and take the time to really say, "Well, a lot of the interesting ideas are going to come from people starting to use the tools, and you can take a top-down approach, or you can make it part of the way people work." And that is incredibly exciting. It's a big opportunity.
Miriam McLemore (24:21):
Yeah. Completely agree. And you know at Amazon, keeping the bar high on talent is one of our core principles. And so having data, because we are very data-oriented, I think, is powerful. As you described, the value of not just doing the HR routines but actually becoming a data-driven people organization.
Edith Cooper (24:49):
And just getting smarter, I mean, in any large organization, but even a small one. But large organizations are particularly fascinating because of the number of data points that you have, and some of them are people transactions. People want to know how many vacation days they have. People want to know what the policies are. People get reviews, people get paid, people get... All of these things generate information that could be kind of interesting with respect to where things are headed, as long as you think about it from a responsible perspective, because one of the things that I think about a lot and I actually am concerned about is using the past performance metrics for a predictor of the future, because quite frankly-
Miriam McLemore (25:32):
Not a good way to go. Yep.
Edith Cooper (25:33):
... if we looked back 10 years ago and looked at the demographics of those that were successful, we would probably not be sitting here, or maybe 10 years ago, but 25 years ago, because I've been at it for a while, but-
Miriam McLemore (25:44):
Yep, me too.
Edith Cooper (25:44):
Yeah.
Miriam McLemore (25:45):
We wouldn't be sitting here.
Edith Cooper (25:46):
Yeah.