Name: Signal Over Noise: What Actually Matters from UNLEASH & Transform
Uploaded: 2026-04-07T18:16:12.517Z
Duration: 59 min 16 s
Description: Signal Over Noise: What Actually Matters from UNLEASH & Transform

Transcript for "Signal Over Noise: What Actually Matters from UNLEASH & Transform": Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. My name is David, and I'm on the marketing team here at Better Works. And I am calling in from Jacksonville, Florida, if there's any other Floridians in the audience. But we'll give everyone just a couple minutes to join us, trickle in. I know people are usually in back to back meetings, so maybe they're catching some water in between meetings. And so we'll get everyone a couple minutes as we go over just some housekeeping items. But as you all are joining, would love to hear from you all, you know, where you're tuning in from, if you did attend one of the conferences or perhaps both, which ones that you are at. And then if you didn't attend, you know, which one maybe you wanted to attend or have heard a lot about. And so I would love for you put all that in the chat, make a new friend today. Like I said, my name is David. I am here on the Better Works team, and just truly excited about today's conversation. Our team was at both events, the past, you know, I guess, last month now. But myself, I was at Transform. You know, we were talking earlier. It's a little difficult to wrangle two weeks in Vegas, although I know, some of our panelists were there for two back to back weeks. Just information overload. And so we're really looking forward to, today's session. We have some awesome speakers joining us. But just for some quick housekeeping items, chat, please use it. You know, we would love for you to make a new friend today, share insights that you had from the events, or maybe what you're hearing based off of LinkedIn posts or talking to your friends and colleagues. And so we'd love for this to be a very interactive session, hear from you all based off of the questions that we'll go over. And we also will launch polls throughout the session. And so these will relate to the question. We'd love to hear from the audience where you stand on some of these, what you may be experienced at your organization. And so those will pop up. You'll see them pop up on the screen, but then also you will see in this chat section to the right, another tab will pop up that says polls. And so use the chat, answer the polls. If you have any questions, use that q and a section. And, yeah, again, we're just really looking forward to today's conversation. And so with that, let's go ahead and launch our first poll. How did you feel? You know, if you attended transform, unleash, both, maybe just seeing all the comments from people, how do you feel leaving it? You know, are you leaving inspired, energized, excited for what's to come, excited, but also a little bit overwhelmed, curious, skeptical? Where where are you at when it comes to leaving these events? You know, you often leave on such a high note, but then as you process the sessions and what you learned and what was talked about, you know, the head could just be spinning. And so as you all answer that question, let's go ahead and meet some of our speakers. And so I'll go ahead and bring our speakers to the stage. That way you can meet them, hear a little bit about their companies. And then from there, you know, we'll dive right into the questions. And so we will go ahead, and we will start with Ali Collins. And so, Ali, once I bring her to the stage, we'll go ahead and introduce herself. And then after Ali does that, then we'll jump to Rebecca, Harris, and Jesse. And so without further ado one second. We're having a little technical difficulties. Alright. Was There we are. So we on stage? Oh my goodness. So sorry. I thought you were bringing me on stage. I'm so sorry. Alright. So yeah. Hi. I'm Ali Collins. I'm the chief marketing officer at Better Works. We are a performance and talent intelligence platform. We're all about helping HR teams connect goals, feedback, skills that can help you make better talent decisions aimed at driving actual business outcomes. So my team was out at Unleash, and I was personally at Transform, hopefully seeing some of you that came by our booth. You know, I think we came away with a lot of signal, a lot of noise, a lot of questions, and definitely some strong opinions about, like, what's hype and what's real. So I'm super excited to dive into the conversation today. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Thank you so much, Ali. And now let's pass it to Rebecca to hear more about you. Hello. Thank you. And I think I joined a little bit early because I was just playing around, and I'm I just got excited. So hi. I'm Rebecca Taylor. I'm the head of content and community at All Voices. I was at Transform. When I go to Transform, I've been there a few times, so I'm excited to dive into a little bit more about this year and what was kinda different from last year. And I actually joined the All Voices team recently. I started in the January as a podcast host and webinar host, and now I officially joined the team full time effective, I think it was, like, Monday of last week. And so AllVoices is an AI powered employee relations platform. So we're really all about building the right investigation tool for any HR team that needs it, focus on documentation, using AI to get proactive insights into what could be, you know, signals over noise in your organization too. So that's why I like the topic of this conversation too. It's, like, sorting through what are people saying versus what are the things to really kinda pay attention to with themes and trends. So I'm excited to be here. I'm in the great state of New Jersey, if I haven't said that already, and very glad that I didn't have to do back to back Vegas trips. So shout out to the Candor team who did both. I love it. And then we'll go ahead and meet Jesse. And so Jesse, as he's joining the stage, will go. ahead and introduce himself and tell us a little bit about where he's coming from. No. Thank you. Welcome. Yeah. Jesse Fries. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn't attend Unleash. I did transform this year and have done for the last five or six years. You know, I am both the founder and managing director of StartUp Experts, which is a community of about 2,500 finance ops and HR leaders. Been around for eight plus years, and we had about a 150 members at Transform. So across four days, we ran about a dozen events from dinners to workshops to wellness walks and and so on. My daytime job is as a business consultant for Sequoia Benefits, which also had a big exposure at Transform. Really excited to, you know, share my perspective and and learn from the other, guests here. Great. Thank you so much. And now we will welcome Harris to the stage. And as Harris comes up, then he can give us a little bit more about himself and his company. Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me, team. Harris, founder and CEO of Kendra IQ. We're an AI powered compensation and workforce planning solution. So everything from global benchmarking data to running your comp cycles, total reward statements, analytics, building out your job architecture, modeling out your headcount, all of those different things you can do in a single platform. We integrate with every major HR and finance system out there, so it's all connected and integrated. I'm based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Just like Jesse is, we we high five on the bark. No. That's never happened. But we do see each other quite often. And I I was at Transform and Unleashed. I saw someone say they were Transform and Unleashed. That that's how I felt after two weeks in Vegas. But it it was great, and glad to be here. Great. Thank you all so much. Like I said earlier, I am really excited about this panel. Just the team that we've assembled here just to hear from all the different avenues from the floor, from the sessions that they join, just from what they're hearing in their circles. And so let's get started with our first topic, you know, across both conferences, not surprisingly. One of the biggest topics was AI. You know? And what we talked about and with the panelists last week when we were just going over what they were hearing from the conferences is, you know, a lot has changed, and the conversation is a lot different than it was, honestly, even just a year ago. And so our first poll with this session, we're gonna go ahead and open it, is how would you describe your organization's AI maturity today? From the sessions, you know, some are just very advanced. Others are really trying to, learn and just, you know, see what's out there when it comes to AI. And so we'll leave that poll opened. And as those responses come in, you know, we wanna highlight one of the takeaways from one of the attendees who emailed us saying, you know, their takeaway was that AI is sweeping organizations, but we're not necessarily discussing the change impacts or providing our teams the skills or trainings to be resilient to all this change. And so thank you for letting us know your takeaway. And with that, let's start with you, Harris. You know, there seems to be a gap between what's being said on stage and what's actually happening in organizations. And so how are you seeing that play out? Totally. I'll say I'll I'll first call out, you know, what has changed since last year is last year, there was a lot of conversation around it. But this year, a lot of the executives are talking about it. There's board mandates. There's requirements. There's some, like, pushing and prodding from organizations and companies around leveraging AI. What hasn't changed, though, is I think that the the delta between execution. A lot more people are using AI on an individual basis, but, you know, like, the like, the note that you mentioned, David, like, there's a few things that are, I think, pretty big gaps. Right? Like so for example, organizations are not necessarily they're saying, let's use AI and then go. Instead of setting setting, like, KPIs, what's the objective of AI? Like, what what are the KPIs? What do you wanna achieve? So if there's not not everyone's defining good rules and parameters around it, what the success look like. Number two, there's, you know, maybe less training and support. It's much more bottoms up adoption by individuals versus, like, company level support and structure around some of this stuff. And then number number three, to use AI effectively, think you have to create this environment where, like, people can learn and experiment kind of like agile development methodology, like some of the same principles there, and and really kind of creating that environment structure to be able to do that successfully. So I I think there's a number of different reasons why there is a gap between the intention and what and ex successful execution. I wanna add to some of that too. You know? And I'm speaking specifically about transform. There's always a difference between who's on stage and who's in the audience. Right? That's kind of, like, the whole point. Those that are on the stage, they're there to kind of, like, help to kind of maybe inspire, teach folks that are in the audience. But what I noticed, and I'm talking to a lot of folks kind of in the hallway sort of after some of the keynote sessions, is, like, the people who are on the keynote stage have hundreds of thousand dollars of resources to lead big transformations, to get a lot of, a lot of help from a lot of different avenues, whether that's headcount, bigger tools, more time because they have a little bit more of that luxury because they are a big company. When you look at the attendees who attend Transform, it's usually HR leaders of, like, more mid sized companies. So folks that they have fewer resources. Sometimes they're an HR team of one. Maybe they have a recruiter on staff with them. So they're absorbing so much more workload themselves. And hearing from, you know, someone who's at this huge, you know, 10,000 person company talk about their successful AI implementation kinda doesn't feel like it mirrors the reality of what they're talking about. And that was kind of some of the frustration that was heard except for one conversation with Ina Lammon from Procore where she talked about they were you know, her organization is about the same size as some of the average attendees that transform. And so I think there's more of a demand for, like, more, I guess, realistic speakers at some of these conferences to kind of balance it out a little bit more, like, the highly aspirational versus the realistic and how to bridge those together. And I think to add to that, we're seeing some of that gap even within businesses themselves between, what's the highest levels of HR leadership believe is happening with AI adoption and what is actually the reality. So we just released our annual state of performance enablement report, and we saw that, you know, 60% of HR executives think they're communicating a clear AI vision. Only 8% of employees actually agree with that. Right? So that gap, I think you're seeing it between these, you know, companies that are on the leading edge of AI adoption up there on the keynote saying, like, we've got this, versus, you know, the people that came around to my booth, at at the conference. There was a lot of still questions about, like, what actually do we need to be doing. I saw one of the panels that I saw in at Transform, this chief people officer from Athena got, like, a giant round of applause when she said, you know, before we actually start rolling things out with AI, you should really be asking yourself whether we should even be doing these things in the first place. So I think while last year, it was, like, you know, a little bit of fear around AI, questions around AI, now it's this charge of, like, we're running, sprinting forward, and there's hesitation all around. Right? And there's a gap between that. So I think we're feeling we felt that very palpably there. Yeah. And and I agree with that. I mean, I I was at Transform, which naturally, I think, is geared towards, you know, a smaller company. I am curious, Ali and Harris, since you went to Unleash, you know, I think my understanding of Unleash is that it's geared to larger Yes. companies. Right? So from your perspective, you know, were those organizations or those leaders on stage talking to the right audience? Because that your your comment or Rebecca's comment about Transform, I think, is right on. That's, you know, a common critique of Transform and that You put CIHROs on stage, but what they're talking about in the budget that they have isn't necessarily relevant to the individuals listening. Yeah. I think, so I have some notes from, like, the lighthouse panel at Unleash. You know, they were really focused on, measuring adoption first, not ROI. Most orgs still aren't even past year one at these major enterprises. Right? So while there's definitely talk of, like, we're on the leading edge, and you're absolutely right, these Unleash definitely has more of an enterprise audience, I think the gap is there. It was at both places. I think you felt it across the board. Yeah. Yeah. I think I. saw I saw the same thing at Unleashed too. There there was there's maybe certainly some larger orgs, some orgs with more resources to kind of execute on the vision. But, also, at the same time, I think a lot of the organizations are kind of somewhere in the between their adoption journeys. There's always, like, exceptions and people who've, like, really done an amazing job, but a lot of them were knee deep in adoption, training, change management with with AI at Unleash too. Yeah. And I think what you all shared, really, you know, is shown in the poll results. From the one that we launched, almost every single person that voted is scaling adoption. And so I think whereas maybe last year or two years ago, we would have seen a lot more companies and answers in that just exploring piece or maybe the piloting piece. Right now, you know, as we see it, scaling adoption. And so trying to see where it fits, how to use it in the organizations. And that really, like like we said, was a huge theme from the conference. And so, you know, AI has to be one of the one of the questions and topics that we discussed was so vast throughout those, those conversations. But another big theme that we saw and that we chatted about in our prep call last week was really just how quickly changing and evolving the modern workplace is, but also the role of the CHRO is. And so we're gonna discuss a lot of that here, but we do wanna open up another poll. And so this one is, how do you feel about this concept of the HR leaders taking on more roles that require maybe less people focus and more design and systems thinking? And so as you all answer that one, I will ask this question to Ali to get us started. But how is the role of the CHR evolving today, especially as organizations are thinking about the future of work? Yeah. I mean, I think one of the most common themes that I saw or that I heard in nearly every session that I went to was that, you know, the CHRO, the chief health people officer is being rebranded to a chief design officer, or I also heard it as chief orchestration officer. It's this idea that, like, you're not managing programs and people anymore. You're designing how humans and AI accomplish business outcomes together. Right? Which it kind of reminds me of, you know, ten years ago in as a marketer when, you know, we kind of had to reimagine our roles from these brand visionaries to data scientists that are just measuring you know, really focused on the science of how, to move somebody through a buyer journey. Apple Mussney is the chief people officer from REI, and I saw her on a panel, basically saying that, like, she the employee journey the way that a marketer like me designs the customer journey. Right? And I think that is that was really coming through in a lot of different ways. And I guess, like, one thing that one question that that I'm really excited to see the results of this poll because like, is that what you guys signed up for? Is to be a chief design officer? I don't I'm really curious to hear how that was because I heard it from the stages, but I didn't hear it directly from the folks in the audience actually or or actually telling me, yes. I'm excited to become a chief design officer when my background is so people focused. So, yeah, interesting. Every so we're stoked. Three are stoked. One says that's not what I signed up for. Interesting. So curious what the other panelists have to say about it, but that was definitely a big theme that I saw. Yeah. Yeah. We go ahead, Go. ahead. No. Go ahead. Oh, I I was just gonna say, like so you're talk about Lighthouse Research. Ben and the team from Lighthouse came came by our booth at Unleash, and they they they had done some polling and re around this very very same question. And they had a lot of comments. Like, the a lot of CHROs obviously wanna see the table or have a seat at the table. Some of the, I think, challenges or gaps around, like, you know, what they were facing as they're kinda stepping into this role was, one, kind of being able to speak the language of business more effectively as well because, like, the CEO or the CFO who are, like, the counterparts are are are, you know, are speaking with with in a certain lens. Certainly, like, you wanna take the the human lens to to business decisions. That's that's core to the job. But being able to, like, talk numbers, talk business lingo, I think that that was a key thing that came up. The other one was the was also around, like, you know, with the world of AI, like, what are the how are humans involved? How are agents involved? And I think, like, the CHR has a big role to play there because now you have to think through what does rescaling look like, what what's the right mix of the org. Right? This is not just a it's not just like a CIO question of, like, hey. We need more agents. We need we need need more SaaS software. It's a it's a really grounds up rethinking of what the organization can or should look like as well. Yeah. And even building on the what can the organization look like and what should it look like, the the profile for a CHRO is changing a lot too in this whole process. And we're seeing I had a lot of chats with people in the hallway about this, and this is sort of, like, a recurring theme of what I talked to my HR community about. Because I was in HR for ten years before I left HR and do kind of like what I do now. There is sort of this existential crisis about the CHRO role and about the CHRO or HR career path. And it's not in the sense that everyone's afraid they're gonna get replaced by AI. They're afraid that HR is gonna be absorbed by COOs or that COOs are now gonna be moving into HR roles. And the fear is there because it's happening. And so I sort of see it as this moment where it's like, okay. It might not be what you signed up for, then it's good to start to figure out then what are other things that you can do that you would wanna sign up for. Or, you know, think about how you wanna reskill yourself because that's going to be the job. It's gonna be a lot more business focused, quote, unquote, like that, and it is kind of like more operational, more design. And it's happening whether you want it to or not. So there is sort of this, like, big reskilling that needs to happen, I think. But what I always wanna see is that companies give any leaders the space, the grace, and the resources to actually have that skilling. And it's not just like you're thrown in there and just hope for the best, and then you get steamrolled by someone else who kind of take over. I really think that there's a huge opportunity here for HR folks, and companies really need to kinda give them the chance to to do that, to transition their skills over, to adopt, and to learn just like anybody else needs that help. Yeah. No. I I agree with that. I mean, a lot of conversations that I had with leaders, at Transform and and beyond is exactly tied to that, Rebecca. You know, the the we we think often of start ups, you know, rescaling or or pivoting and and going in a different direction. And humans, all of us, need to do that as well as we're looking at AI and how it can affect our job and bring more efficiency. And, I mean, the reality is if you look at the average pay of an HR leader, they're paid less than the top five executives at any company, yet three quarters or up to three quarters of a company spend is on people operations. So that doesn't level with those data points. You know, AI, the tools that it brings, you know, all of the wonderful things that we hear aspirationally on stage, you know, in the eyes or ears of an executive is thinking, you know, process efficiency. How can I gain, you know, better leverage? I mean, the reality is the HR leader really need to focus on how can we improve the business outcomes? How can we use these tools to improve revenue, drive better go to market? I think all too often, leaders are focused on using it for their own their own little small projects to improve their efficiencies. And, really, those folks that are gonna level up, that are going to embrace AI and make change at the at a large company scale is using AI to drive additional revenue to look at those high end goals. I love that what you said there. And I will, you know, put Ali and and Harris here on the spot a little bit, you know, not to, to pitch their companies. But, you know, regarding what Jesse just said, like, how how do you see, know, what you may be building and working on and talking to your own customers? How do, like, the HR leaders that you may be working with view it more as, you know, we wanna use AI organization wide to to help with x y z? Yeah. I mean, I think to the point about speaking in terms of business outcomes. Right? Like, I think the focus has to be on, you know, what are the things that are going to move the needle for the business. For example, at Unleash, in Josh Verson's keynote, he was talking about how companies with strong internal mobility are 27% more profitable than those who don't. Right? So that is a clear business case to really understand where are your opportunities for internal mobility. Right? And those are things that products like Better Works focus on. Right? As we're not just giving you skills visibility, we're connecting skills to goals, feedback, performance so you can make decisions with it. Right? So I think helping HR leaders to shift the conversation about the talent to those types of metrics is really where it's where the rubber is gonna meet the road over the next year. And the CHROs who are able to do that and able to get into those insights and start telling a clear story of how the people on the business are driving those outcomes, that's that's gonna make all the difference. Yeah. Yeah. No. What I'll what I'll add is I think there's a, like, a couple of challenges that make this difficult in execution. I I know Better Work Better Works helps with that, Sequoia as well, and and so does KinderIQ. The two things I wanted to call out is, first, it's garbage in, garbage out. There's a lot of data, like right? But that's in different systems. It's not connected. There's, like, bad data, gaps in information. And so, like, AI is only as effective as, like, your your inputs as so I think solving that is really key. I mean, like, a a core part of what we do as well as, like, connect HR data, but performance data, like, equity data, etcetera. So you you have a full view of your workforce. So I think that's that's really key to, like, unlocking that power for HR teams and CHROs. I think the other thing is empowering these organizations to be multiplayer. So a lot of these, like, decisions are multiplayer. Like, even if the the HR leader or team is a champion, they're working with their counterparts in, like, finance, the CFO, the COO, business unit leaders. So, really, like, you know, whether it's our tool or some of the some of the folks here, like, really kind of unlocking that multiplayer decision making. Right? Like, if you're thinking about, like, how much you're gonna spend on employees next year, like, it's it's you have to think about it from so many different lenses or what's the right org structure or what the right people you need or, like, do you wanna hire junior people or senior people? Like, what skills are important and less important? So, like, all of that is I think it requires triangulation across different functions to to really be successful. Love it. And I will, you know, preface this next theme, you know, is one that always comes up. And this one, I think, you know, has been very popular, super focused over the last few years, but really especially this year, and that is the topic of managers. And so I truly believe we can do an entire webinar just on managers and. all that they're going through right now, all that they need. But just based off of the conferences and what you were hearing and seeing in a multitude of the sessions, you know, we hear that manager enablement is becoming a bottleneck. And so we do wanna launch another poll just to hear from you all in terms of what you're seeing at your companies with your managers, how it's just showing up for you. And as you all answer that one, I'll have Rebecca start this one. Why why do you think this role is becoming so critical over the last few years, but especially this year? Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is because the manager is gonna be the person that employees are gonna listen to the most. And I don't mean in the sense of, like, they're gonna take a command and execute on that command, but the manager is also the person who an employee is going to trust the most. And so managers are that critical layer of translating goals, strategies, priorities to their team who then has to know, like, this is what I need to know in order to execute on my job well. And there it's not so much about managers as the ones executing physically doing the things. It's really about having the judgment and the discernment of knowing where to deploy resources, where to, you know, prioritize solving different problems. You know, what are some certain things that I can assign to a member of my team? How can I empower them to figure out how to solve this problem maybe using tools like AI or maybe just, you know, through having conversations with the rest of us on the team to understand where we might be blocked and what it is that might be going on? So, like, managers really are the ones that translate, you know, the vision, the the the goals, and the objectives down to the people who own the piece of it that they own. Because when they can do those pieces really well and everybody across the board does those pieces really well, that's how you get big company achievement. And then, like and it sounds like a Silicon Valley like pitch, but it's like big company achievement comes when we all work together. But, like, it's common saying because it's true, and managers are like that glue that can really make that happen. But if they're not empowered or if they don't have the level of information and access that they might need to be transparent and clear with their team or if they don't have those communication skills, those storytelling skills, those true leadership and management skills, then they can also burn out that layer of people underneath them and almost have, even with good intention, have a negative effect. Right? Because we're very bad at training managers. We take high performers, people who did a job really, really well, and then we put them in charge of a whole team of people. And that does not constitute the same skill set, and that's always been sort of the biggest kind of gap. So I think it's about kind of finding the balance between, you know, where are where are the skills that we need in the organization? How can we pull other skills out of people to do the jobs at this manager level that we need them to? And how do we combine that with other data? Like, mean, I All Voices is employee relations. Right? But everyone thinks of employee relations as sort of the big dramatic things, like harassment, discrimination, all things that are real. But employee relations is also managers not giving feedback to people or giving unhelpful feedback to people and navigating that so that those pieces are connected really, really well. So having the right tools to give the managers the road map that they need to do the thing that they need to do to execute with their teams properly is, like, where everybody needs to be focusing more than anything else right now, in my very humble opinion. I completely agree. And I think a lot of the challenges that you're describing have been ongoing. And part but part of what, you know, makes it that much more difficult is, okay. Now we don't just have humans. We also have agents that we're managing, and a lot of companies are really flattening right now. So, I saw a panel that, the chief people officer from Bayer was on. She said they went from 8,000 managers to 2,500 managers across 88,000 employees. Right? That old playbook of, you know, trusting managers and and and assuming that, like, they're good without, formal systems of how you decide who actually is skilled and ready to become a manager, that that old model is gone. Right? Like so if we're going to be flatter and if we're going to depend on more agents, the structure and the systems level is where we really need to focus. I think that goes back to the being a chief design officer. That's what this is about. Right? It's at making sure that your managers that your your systems and your structure is actually the way that it looks the way it needs it it's supposed to. But when you're choosing to move someone into a manager role or when you're enabling a manager, you make sure that they have the right skills to do the job better than ever, especially, you know, if if 2,500 people are doing the job of 8,000 now. Right? So Yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll add some color to, this from. a composition and and benefit benefits perspective as well. So, you know, like, what what gen is it? Gen alpha, Gen z? Like, the the employee employee relationships also change and what what people what what the employees are expecting is different. They want, like, hyper personalized benefits, hyper personalized compensation packages. They want to go really go deep into, like, what the business KPIs are, what does it mean for them, and, like, make those choices and trade offs. And so, like, you that's that's a really hard problem solved in a centralized, like, tower structure when you have, like, giant HR team. Right? And, Ali, what you were saying, like, there's even leader HR teams. There's leader, like, managers. So providing the frameworks, the some of the tools, the processes, educating managers to be at the center of execution, I think, is is really key when when when employees are expecting a a a net Netflix like experience when it comes to, all these, like, HR decisions. But, Jesse, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. No worries. I mean, I I think, admittedly, I'm still forming an opinion on this topic. You know? And and maybe I'm an observer, and I'm just waiting for, you know, the the market to catch up. But, you know, I've been in the space, HR, for twenty, twenty five years. We all know that leadership and management is really important. You know? Teams excel because they're effectively led and and vice versa. You know, in in our day to day conversations, both at Transform, but also within start up experts, you know, we're inundated with these new tools to try to, you know, improve efficiency of leaders. And and, directionally, they're all great, you know, whether you're talking about, you know, online coaching or, you know, you know, performance management or, you know, helping to better organize communication and social media, all these tools are great. But, you know, to Ali's purse point around the number of leaders and their span of control, we're just getting more and more complexity, more and more responsibility. And, ultimately, leadership is all about knowing your individuals, being able to communicate and relate with them, having effective, conversations. And I'm not sure that having more, you know, pretty, you know, things to to share with them is the right way. Right? Like, it's just more and more that we're piling on. And I'm not sure, taking it back to my prior comment about, you know, driving effectiveness or or improving business outcomes, is really gonna be solved by layering in more tools. And another side point I I heard recently on another panel conversation that I thought was fascinating was there was a gentleman that runs an AI company. He was saying that, actually, you know, working with your learning models is a form of leadership. Being able to communicate and coach how your AI is going to work is not unlike working with an individual on your team, you know, setting expectations, being clear, having a feedback loop. And I thought that was really interesting, particularly in light of, you know, HR. If they really are managing people, but also a lot of the AI strategy, you know, we're doubling what their day to day responsibilities look like. I like that. And I think, you know, as you were talking, Jesse, you know, from both events, you know, like, tools, like, was so just front and center. And I think one of the, the lines that, Ali was talking about is, you know, no one is buying AI. They're buying better decisions, and the trust layer is what separates the companies that get value from the ones that just bought a shiny object. And so, Ali, we'd love for you to talk a little more on that and then just hear from you all your thoughts too as well. Yeah. I mean, I think trust and decision making just got a lot more complicated. Right? Like, there's just this enormous pressure to show AI progress, and there's a lot of different approaches to how go how to go about it. Right? But I think to build trust with the CFO, with the CEO, with the board, what that's going to take is really speaking their language, like, away from using HR program language and starting to find the KPIs and metrics that really are going to build trust. You know, for us, we're seeing that those look like productivity, internal mobility, manager effectiveness, impact to retention, really understanding the costs of bad talent decisions. Good, I think, and and building trust is going to look like walking into board meetings with, you know, here's how our people decisions are tied to our top three business priorities, and here's the actual evidence that that's actually happening. Like, I totally agree with, Jesse that, you know, just another tool is not going to help you, and in fact, the shiny object syndrome can make this problem worse. So I think companies really do get really smart about designing what they what the outcomes they're trying to drive are and figuring out, okay. If these are the KPIs I'm trying to achieve, what are the systems? What are the processes that are gonna help me get there? And be really selective about choosing solutions where it's well designed, the part the the partner the the business that you're partnering with is part of helping you architect, helping you be this chief design officer so that you can answer those questions confidently. Because I think that's where trust is breaking down is that if you're speaking one language and the board wants to speak a different language, that's where trust is formed. Yeah. I wanna add to that too because this is like, you know, there's always sort of been the HR versus the company vibe. Right? I mean, coming from HR myself, I was always like, how would you not care about the things that I'm talking about? And having to learn how to translate that was it was awkward, and it was, like, challenging. And it's not something that is going to be easy, and I I think that that's okay. It will help establish trust because it'll help to establish understanding. But I I also think that it's just as important to be honest about what you don't know. And so to axe you know, to ask curious questions to your CFO, to your CEO, and to you know, I always say learn out loud. So that's kind of also where sometimes when you're at these conferences, you know, a lot of the keynotes specifically are you know, they sound great. Right? Because you're telling the story after things happened. It's like, you know, we learned that this was not going to work, and so we quickly pivoted and did this. But that's not how that feels when you're actually in the moment of it. And I think it's okay for, you know, HR folks, especially. We're all figuring this stuff out as we go. So is your CFO. So is your CEO. So bring more of that learning, curious, in the moment type of language and questions to your conversations, and don't feel like you have to show up to every single meeting with a perfectly polished thing that you built in a void that didn't get feedback before you packaged up so nicely. Right? So, like, I know it can feel really, really vulnerable and scary sometimes, especially when you feel like you have so many competing priorities or you already you know, I'm not even gonna say impostor syndrome because I think it's bigger than that. You're already uncertain about what your career could look like because everybody is right now in the age of AI. But it's okay to just kind of go in and be like, hey. This is what I'm trying to figure out. This is what I've done to kind of get there. Here's where I got stuck. What do you guys think? Can you help me? I think there's a lot to be said in bringing more of that into these conversations with your leadership. Mhmm. And that's like a a perfect segue into our our next theme and gonna launch another poll for you all. But on this topic, like CEOs, boards, like you all mentioned, are really pushing, especially for HR, play this stronger role in business outcomes. And so would love to hear from our audience. Where are you maybe personally getting stuck here? So we have a variety of options, but we know there's not enough options that we could put here. And so if there's anything else that you wanna share, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the chat. But while you all answer that one, let's stick with you, Rebecca, because you were hitting on this topic. But, you know, with this clear pressure coming to show progress and especially around AI, how are HR leaders balancing that pressure with what's actually realistic, and what is good look like right now when it comes to partnering with the, the leadership team as a whole. Yeah. For me, good look good good always looks like coming to a conversation with a problem that you're solving and then sort of explaining, here's how we're going about trying to solve this problem. So, you know, if you're sitting in an HR seat and you're trying to, you know, get some sort of buy in for an initiative or you're trying to figure out what you should be working on or what your team might need, it's always important to kinda start with, like, the big company challenges and issues that you might be facing. So it's like, we're off of our revenue goal. We're churning customers like crazy. No one likes our product. Right? Start with a problem statement, and then follow the, like, follow the breadcrumbs to kinda figure out, okay. What's the part of this that's in possibly my remit that I can that I can sort of take on as a thing that can solve that bigger problem? Are we having, you know, communication issues between sales and account management because we have so much turnover or so much growth? What's the cost of that, you know, very HR specific type metric and how it's impacting the business? So it's kind of like, you know, the when you think of things in terms of problem statements and not this is what other people are doing and this is what we should do, you can get a lot closer to what your CEO and your CFO is gonna care about and what you need to prioritize because we all have fires everywhere. Right? That's why we all get paid the big bucks. There's always gonna be work for us to do. So a lot of it is just kind of, like, getting to your biggest problem first and then working your way through what's the part that I can play in helping to solve this. Yeah. I I can comment further on that. I I think that's Rebecca, that's really well said, and I don't have that much to add because you said it so well. You know, I think, you know, having a solution to talk to, you know, c suite is exceedingly important. You know? And and, you know, within the start up experts world, we've had numerous conversations on, you know, trying to make that translation between, you know, what a people leader thinks and feels and how they communicate and how to to put that in a business spin. So it is very strategic to dollars and outcomes and, you know, future strategic direction. You know, really being thoughtful around, okay. We have this problem. How is it going to affect the entire business? And then, you know, you know, from the perspective of the people leader, again, you know, managing people, managing your workforce, highly influential, and being able to take it to the c suite and and make a business case. Know, I was really proud at at the beginning of transform. We actually, as a group on Monday afternoon, led a, learning workshop. We had about 60 attendees for dinner across the street or some lunch across the street. And one of the individuals that that facilitated was Diane Sadowski Joseph from Clarinet. And going into transform, knowing that we were all going to meet a lot of AI companies, you know, she shared a lens, which she calls a fire score, which was really, you know, how many people will this AI tool impact? Is this something that you should be doing strategically for your company? You know, let us through an let us through an exercise of evaluating, you know, what tools, you know, ahead of HR should be looking at and what criteria to evaluate them. I really thought it was a really smart filter, if you if you will, because it framed, you know, is this a problem that the company needs to solve? Is this a tool that can solve that? And if so, then you build a business case to take it back, you know, to the CEO or the CFO, whomever, to make a business case. And and, like, if you do that effectively, you're able to level up strategically your role, and then you are invited to those conversations when those that next big decision is happening. That was great, Jesse. And we have just a few more questions, for our panelists here. And, you know, a few of these are more rapid style quickly into it. But before we get to those, we do have one final official question, and we'll start with Jesse on this one. And this one is more on the theme of finding your people and really just the community in HR. And this, I think, was especially a big takeaway from the transform audience. A lot of, the emails we received, a lot of even just the LinkedIn posts that you, may have seen on your feed really talked about this, especially when it came to transform. And so, Jesse, we'd love for you to start us off here, but, you know, why do you think that resonated so much this year? Yeah. I mean, transform has always been, I believe, more about the conversations in between the sessions. I mean, there is amazing learning. There's great people on stage. But oftentimes, when you debrief with individuals that have attended, you know, they're all about, like, it was great to spend time with my peers. I mean, we all you know, the folks that have been in this space for a long time have, you know, heard that, you know, hey. HR is lonely. You know, it's an interesting statement because I often feel that in the power of online community and all the conversations we're able to host, in many ways, we're more connected now than we ever have been. But I do agree that the you you know, an HR leader, folks in our space have more on their plate. There is more anxiety. They're being given a lot more responsibility, and that is the concern. Is is, like, whether I'm a team of one or, you know, I have a small team trying to solve for this, Aspirational aspirationally, we're hearing that, you know, there's companies doing it, and there's solutions out there, and there's being a lot thrown at you. But the reality in the hallway is very different. Everybody's just trying to figure out, you know, what the truth is and how to level up, you know, in their own day to day. I think a lot of it comes from, like, building on what you're saying, Jesse, is, like because when you're also in a community like that, you can say, I don't know what I'm doing to the person next to you. Whereas it might not be something that you feel comfortable saying with your coworkers because of all of the reasons. Right? Like, there might be pressure. You might not feel as comfortable with them. So there is something also very freeing of just being in sort of, like, a hallway of your peers where you can all just sort of, you know, go to these sessions and say, this all sounds really great and really, you know, aspirational, but don't know what I'm doing. Do you feel the same way? That that moment of realizing that we're all just figuring this out together, I see so many people it looks like a weight is just lifted off their chest because it's just a very real thing that you can start to navigate when you have a good community of people around you. You know, there's a loneliness epidemic, so just that those IRL connections are always really, really good too. But a lot of it becomes it's because there's that extra layer of vulnerability that you can have in a community that you can't always have at your company. Yeah. And I think I always joke that so I've been an HR tech for a while, but I did a brief stint in fintech. And I always joke that, like, I'm so grateful to be back with people people because of the desire to learn from each other. In fintech, I learned that there are industries where there's no desire or curiosity really to hear from each other or lean on each other. I think you guys have always had that, and that's one of my favorite things about working with HR. But I think especially, right, like, we're y'all are being asked to lead transformation while the ground is shifting underneath you. Right? Like, I get a kind of a visual thinking about it of, like, remember that meme of Sandra Bullock in Birdbox with the blindfold of, like, it feels like you're being asked to lead this transformation while blindfolded as to what the future actually holds. There's so much going on in the macro environment. There's so much going on in the world that's just floating all around you. And how are you supposed to navigate it all and also be a visionary? Like, that's really tough. So wouldn't you need each other for that? So I'm just so grateful that, you know, I got to go see it and be a part of it because I think I think that's what, like you said, is really special about Transform. So not to be like a shill for saying go to Transform, but if you haven't had the opportunity to go, I think that is one of the it's a key business case to go, right, is you need to go build those relationships with people who understand what you're going through while you're trying to navigate all this. So Absolutely. And I think, you know, we have just a couple more questions here, and we're not gonna start with anyone specific. So whoever, feels the most inclined to speak first, go ahead. But we'd love to hear from the four of you. The first question is, from both these events, transform, unleash, maybe other conferences you attended this year, maybe some that are coming up, what is one thing that these conferences got right or get right, and what's one thing that they may be overhyping or missing? Yeah. I think, like, maybe with all the things that people said, like, creating the community spaces, I think some of the the best learnings happen in between sessions and in between meetings. Like, I think creating the the the ability for people to kinda mix and mingle and exchange notes, I think, is is pretty magical. And then I think in terms of, like, what what they could get right, I think think Rebecca said this early is maybe, like, calibrating some of those sessions. Right? Like, depending on the audience too. There's a there's a lot of, like, mid market companies, like, bringing people who who executed, whether it's AI or other initiatives at that scale versus what a what a Fortune 15 might do and stuff too. So I think just calibrating the sessions, bringing more bringing more practicality to some of the the content is probably probably gonna be pretty helpful. Yeah. I mean, I I agree with that. I you know, I always think about when we get smaller groups in the same room, you know, with individuals being vulnerable, you really can celebrate the imperfect. And, you know, a lot of what is on stage is a perfect vision of the future, or at least it's a somebody sharing a story of what good would look like or does look like, but it's artificial. And I would love to see, you know, more genuine you know, these are folks that are on stage, and, yeah, they're struggling. You know? And they have a very vulnerable moment of, what's working, but also let's talk more about what isn't and what can be learned from that. Yeah. I think there's you know, I can't speak to Unleash because I've never been to Unleash, but I can always kinda speak to Transform. And even just events in general, I think, you know, kinda building on what we were saying, creating the community element is part of what makes Transform work so well. It's also kind of necessary because of the disconnect between what you see on some of the stages and the reality of the people that are kind of there and attending. So it sort of becomes it it becomes almost a necessary thing, which I don't think is a bad I don't think that's a bad, you know, element. Right? But I do think there's sort of an interesting chance to maybe even rethink, you know, how speakers are paid or whether or not speakers are paid because I know that there are a lot of really strong HR folks who would love a chance to be up on that stage, but because a lot of the vendor you know, a lot of vendors sort of claim stage time to pitch their product, which you know, through a panel, which I understand. But I think having less sponsored panels and more paid HR practitioners having a conversation together would also just add a unique value that I know people want. Can't say how, you know, necessarily that would work, but I know, you know, there are there are speakers who come to these who'd come here who are highly compensated, who don't have the same kind of value as others who are a little bit closer to it. So I think maybe a little bit more of a balance of that representation. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's always we're always gonna be focused on the strategic, especially at this stage that we're at with AI adoption. I do think that I was hungry for a little bit more, like, concrete examples of exactly what what do we mean when we're talking about being a chief design officer. What does it mean to be ready for having your teams managing agents? Right? Like, that was something that was talked about a lot in the hypothetical, but very little in the, like, how do I actually go practically implement these things. I think there were a few examples of AI strategy things where, okay. Great. But I bet the rubber meets the road when I go back and try to figure out how to implement these things. So I also, like, definitely felt that, of course, we needed to be focused on AI, and that's, like, what's at the forefront of everybody's mind. And working with for an AI company, like, I'm all about it. But I did feel the difference in previous years from, you know, just the amount of sessions that were focused on people problems and actual, like, being supportive of the humans that work here. So I do think that, the pendulum has swung really far away from, you know, topics of inclusion and things like that, and I really, that was palpable for me. Yeah. I really like that. I will, end it with one very important question. But before we get to that question, I am gonna launch one last poll for the audience. And so this one is, you know, if there is any company here, any of the speakers that you'd love to learn more about, connect more, just go ahead and answer that question, and we will be sure to pass this over to the speakers. But while you all answer that, the final question for our panelists, and, again, whoever feels most inclined to answer first, go ahead. But if there is one thing that you hope to still remember or be thinking about a year from now from these conferences, what would it be? Yeah. I mean, I can take that first. I mean, at the end of the day, it's you know, people management is about people. Right? It's like, don't forget don't lose sight that, you know, you know, it's about knowing your team, really understanding where they are, what challenges that they have, how can you improve that individual, and in turn, you know, the efficiency, the outcomes of the company. Like, we talk a lot about all these tools, a lot of up into the right technologies and movements and things that you know, the shiny, quarters, all all that stuff. But, ultimately, it's really focusing on the humans that are doing the job and just getting that relationship right. And I think if everybody focuses on that, then everybody will be better off in a year's time. And I think that only happens if HR or and people teams are truly the ones that are navigating the AI shift and leading it for companies. And so I think my hope is that when we get back together a year from now, next year is unleash and transform. It's stories of how this has really happened and been led by those groups and not stories of getting left behind or of getting pushed out of the equation or, you know, the fears of what it looks like when we you know, HR starts reporting to CFOs. Like, I'm fearful of that that could start to happen over the next year. And so I'm really hoping that if if people leaders can really get in front of this change and be the transformational visionaries, that we won't be having those conversation. Yeah. I'm kinda building on what you're saying too. It's just sort of, like, how HR is changing. It's like the you know, we're talking so much about how we need to rethink our roles and how it's really becoming about designing the workforce for the future. I get a little bit more specific because I'm an HR nerd. I'm very curious what next year when we're gonna be talking about things that we threw away that we always took as sort of, like, an absolute essential for the job, whether it's something we measured or something that we did or something that we owned and what that's been replaced with as we've redesigned this. Like, there was a talk about, you know, thinking about budgeting and headcount as not just the, you know, the salary, the benefits, and everything of that role, but also, like, how many tokens are they gonna need to be able to do their job? Like, what's the token budget for a VP of engineering at a series a company? I was like, yeah. Ali, I was with you. I heard that. I was like, oh my god. You're right. Like, that's something I never even had on my radar, but that's becoming sort of the the future of how we're looking at budgeting and headcount. So another area is, like, what are things that are just gonna go out of date, and what's gonna be more relevant instead? I'm super excited to see that. Yeah. Because some of our customers are already actually measuring fixed and variable cost, like, tokens for agents along with humans with Kendra Qsets. It's all it's already happening. So, like, the I I think my my one thing to kind of take away for next year is, like, the space is is gonna continue to change. So, like, creating this having the mindset of, like, embracing the change and creating a sandbox for your organization and just being open about it that, you know, like, we're gonna learn, make mistakes, and figure stuff out is, I think, really, really key, not just for the the HR leader, but for all all these organizations to truly be successful because not everything is gonna work on day one. Absolutely. Well, we are almost at the top of the hour. And so first things first, I just wanna thank you all. One, to our panelists, thank you all so much for taking the time to join us for today's webinar. I dropped all of their LinkedIns in the chat, and so would love for you to connect with them, follow-up if there was any questions that they said or comments, Follow-up with them. I'm sure they would love to continue the conversation. And then thank you so much to all you for attending. I know there is so much going on in the world, especially at your companies. And I think someone mentioned it earlier, but just constantly in back to back meetings. And so thank you for taking the time to attend live. And for those who watch the recording, thanks for watching the recording. But with that, we'll let you all go a couple minutes early. But thank you all so much again, and I hope you all have a great rest of your day and week. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Drew.