Unlock True Culture Change: HR Leaders Must Become Changemakers

“That experience was a really pivotal one and has allowed me to build a passion around advancing fairness and inclusion and belonging in organizations... that passion for creating belonging, building community, and making people feel welcome so that they can do their best work has really been the theme and the driver behind whatever I've done. And it's helped me see my role in organizations as a changemaker.”

Explains the personal origin of his passion for HR and his self-perception as a changemaker.

“For every organizational change and for every process change, you have to get every human interacting with that process to change their behavior. And as we know, changing human behavior is not an easy task. And so, I'm a huge fan of Prosci's ADKAR model.”

Highlights the fundamental challenge of change management and introduces his preferred model.

“rather than having corporate people fly in and do the training, we actually pulled a group of store managers, trained them how to train, and then had them train all their peers because people can receive it better from people who are peers versus corporate leaders.”

Provides a specific, actionable strategy for effective change implementation that challenges traditional methods.

“We implemented a what and how framework to performance management so that it didn't just matter what you accomplished, but how you modeled our values while doing so mattered just as much.”

Demonstrates a practical way to integrate values into performance evaluations, fostering cultural alignment.

“When you add a prerogative to make decisions based on skill, as opposed to personal affinity or which college somebody went to or the pedigree of the brands they've worked at, it creates a lot more fairness and gives folks who have the skills but may not have the resume that looks as sparkly as somebody else, it gives them equal access to opportunities.”

Articulates the significant benefits of skills-based assessment for fairness and equal opportunity.

“to be a changemaker is to always feel like you're pushing water uphill. Status quos and old mindsets and processes and programs that don't work anymore are really hard to change. So just be mindful that you're signing up for hard work, and that requires persistence... and it also requires a lot of self-care.”

Offers a realistic perspective on the challenges of leading change and emphasizes the importance of resilience and self-care for HR leaders.