Jacob Little
AVP HR
Cornerstone OnDemand
Episode 190
Unlock True Culture Change: HR Leaders Must Become Changemakers
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleMay 14, 2025 · 10:51
Thesis
“Jacob Little advocates for HR leaders to be 'changemakers' who drive cultural transformation by deeply integrating values and adopting human-centric, skills-based approaches to foster belonging, fairness, and engagement within organizations.”
Show notes
Jacob Little found his first real professional community at Walmart's Pride Employee Resource Group. It's where he learned something that has since defined his entire HR philosophy: belonging isn't a byproduct of good culture. It's the thing you have to build intentionally, at every stage of the employee lifecycle.
Now AVP of HR at Cornerstone OnDemand, Jacob has led cultural transformation work at some of the largest organizations in the world — and his most revealing case study involves rolling out inventory management technology at a major retailer. The technical implementation was straightforward. The human one was the whole problem: for every process change, every employee who interacts with that process has to change their behavior. His response was to stop using corporate trainers and pull store managers into a train-the-trainer model instead — peer credibility doing in weeks what top-down rollouts take quarters to accomplish.
Jacob's current focus is on integrating values throughout the entire talent ecosystem — not as a launch event but as a design standard. His "what and how" performance management framework measures not just what employees accomplish, but how they modeled company values while doing it. And his case for skills-based assessment is straightforward: when you remove subjective judgment and replace it with observable capability, you reduce bias, increase fairness, and enable talent to move across the organization in ways that traditional hierarchies block. His parting message to aspiring changemakers: the work is hard, the resistance is real, and self-care isn't optional — it's structural.
- The ADKAR change model in practice — how peer-led training at a major retailer drove adoption that corporate rollouts couldn't
- Values integration across the talent lifecycle — building culture into interviewing, performance management, leadership development, and rewards simultaneously
- "What and how" performance management — evaluating both what employees accomplish and how they modeled values while doing it
- Skills-based decision-making — introducing objectivity into talent processes to counteract bias and enable cross-functional mobility
- Belonging as intentional design — how Jacob's experience in ERG leadership shaped his conviction that inclusion must be built in, not hoped for
- Advice for changemakers — persistence, relationship-building, and self-care as the structural requirements for sustained culture work
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What you'll take away
- 1Leverage your unique, human-centric perspective as an HR professional to drive business change, rather than focusing solely on technical aspects.
- 2Implement change using a structured model like ADKAR, emphasizing peer-led training and reinforcement mechanisms for greater adoption and success.
- 3Integrate company values into every stage of the employee lifecycle—from interviewing and performance management to leadership development and rewards—to achieve true cultural transformation.
- 4Shift to skills-based assessment and decision-making to introduce objectivity into talent processes, counteract bias, and enable dynamic allocation of talent beyond traditional hierarchies.
- 5Embrace the 'changemaker' role with persistence and a structured approach, prioritizing relationship building, buy-in, and critical self-care to overcome resistance.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Instead of corporate trainers, empower peer managers to train their colleagues, as people receive information better from peers than from corporate leaders.
- •Challenge traditional talent assessment methods that favor personal affinity or pedigree by adopting skills-based decision-making for fairer access to opportunities.
- •Move beyond rigid organizational hierarchies and silos by leveraging a skill taxonomy and talent marketplace to 'swarm' employees to high-priority business problems based on capabilities.
In Jacob's words
“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.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Employees' number one concern is covering monthly expenses.
- •Companies often neglect the human aspect of change during technical implementations, leading to resistance.
- •Historical talent processes are often biased, favoring pedigree or personal affinity over actual skills.
- •Traditional organizational structures and silos limit an organization's agility in deploying talent to critical business problems.
- •Leading cultural transformation or challenging the status quo is inherently difficult and can be discouraging.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Dave has a unique background that really informed how he approached his career
What's Your Career Journey?
You led a cultural transformation initiative using the ADKAR Change Management Model
Exploring the ADKAR Model
Can you tell us about a time when you successfully integrated company values across the talent ecosystem
Integrating Company Values into the Talent Pipeline
Jacob, could you discuss how focusing on skills development has impacted career growth
WSJD Live: Skills-based Assessment and Decision-Making
Jacob, what parting advice would you like to share with our community
A Change Management Champion's Final Words
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
Full transcript
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