Michele:
Another fantastic speaker. Um, he has spent his career in HR as an executive working with some of the some of some well known companies and brands. But what I really like about Randy Yes, is how he breaks down the approach that HR should be taking when they decide or decide not to work with data in the workplace. So, Randy, come on up. How are you doing today?
Randy:
Great, Michelle, how are you? I'm feeling good. Yeah, I mean, after after that last with Lynne, that was great. I was I was happy to be able to kind of watch and observe that in the In the Green Room. So seems like you've had a great day so far.
Randy:
Well, just a little, a few tech issues, but we're managing through that best. That's what I'll say.
Love it. Love it. Well, I'm happy to be here. And thanks for having me.
Michele:
You're very welcome. Can you tell the audience a bit about your background in HR?
Randy:
Sure, I sometimes describe myself as the accidental HR guy, because I actually studied music. I was a jazz saxophonist, or I should say I am as the journey always continues in music. And so if you would have told me when I was in school, playing saxophone that, you know, someday, Randy, you're going to be the head of HR, at some really interesting companies that have been one HR, you know, that would not have resonated with me. And so, but if you would have told me at the time, you know, someday, Randy, you're going to be in this role where you can inspire people, and you can drive change, and you help people do their best. I mean, like, yeah, you know, Sign me up. So as it would happen is I actually a lot of just, you know, both luck, and some good decisions, and right timing, and then probably more importantly, paying attention to people smarter than me, I found myself being a part of really interesting tech companies at interesting times, both in the recruiting capacity, talent, acquisition and such. And then also head of HR. And so, on that journey, I had a chance to work early on with Google, from about 2005 to 2012. And during this really critical hypergrowth time, where data and people was really important. And I did that all in Zurich, Switzerland, which was kind of crazy. I was the head of all the talent acquisition across the EMEA region, Europe, Middle East and Africa. And then from there listening to smart people in 2012, they were telling me about this great startup, the only company they leave Google for it's run by this guy named Elon Musk. And so I had a chance to join Elon as his head of HR at SpaceX, which was a pretty adventurous and unique opportunity. And then from there, I had a chance to kind of align more with my values of working for a founder, who was working on helping to drive change through health, wellness, music, and that was with the iconic company, jawbone, or I had a nice run as the head of HR. And we get to do a lot of interesting things and grow and scale the company, and then also implode the company and pivot to another type of company. And so it's been an amazing journey. And now I spend my time helping founders and heads of HR, think about people issues, I work closely with my wife, who's the author of storytelling with data. And we're growing a company where we're helping people more effectively tell their stories with with the data that you so it's been a great ride, and yet, I still get to continue playing the saxophone, which I love. And we have three little kids. And so I get to be a dad too. So So I love that.
Michele:
Absolutely. So you've heard a few of those large companies, but they still utilize data. When when you think, well, they're tech companies too. So it's not a surprise. But on the HR side, when you look at data, or think about data, as or works relates to people, what are some of the ways you've used data to really make make better decisions? I'll I'll start there.
Randy:
Yeah, I mean, you know, in Google is probably a great place to start, because I think Google early on saw that there could be information around the way in which we work and interact, that can be helpful in how we drive the business. And it starts with, you know, some of the most basic things which I, I think back to a time when I was speaking to a whole bunch of HR professionals, and I asked them the question, and I said, you know, Alright, show of hands and no one's gonna judge, but how many of you with at least 50 You know, 75% accuracy could tell me what your headcount is today. Raise your hand if you think that and, you know, Michelle was like, half the room kind of slowly went up. I thought, Whoa, I said, That'd be like going to your, you know, your doctor and you're like, you know, what were my what was my blood work over the last few years? They're like, I'm not sure So the very start of it is from a people standpoint in data. It's amazing how little we actually have and no in us. And it's important to recognize that fact, because many people want to jump to really trying to do interesting and innovative things with data. And yet that most basic place that we should be starting with like, is a bit elusive. And so and I think a lot of that has to do with some of the inherent challenges with data. And we can talk a little bit about that. But when it comes to working with data, the the things that we can see and the insights and in my career, the chance, I've had to be able to look at everything from, you know, what drives people to leave a company? Or what are some of those motivations of why people don't feel like they can do their best work? Or, you know, what makes a manager a great manager and another manager in your company not so great? Or can we predict, you know, who might actually leave the organization based on signals we're getting. And that's just some of the, you know, basic things around, maybe attracting talent, hiring, making sure we have the great, you know, managers to lead the team. But then we were, I mean, even at job on if I think we were dealing with, you know, the wearable space, we were looking at other things like, you know, the next all hands meetings where you're, you're seeing the different speakers, well, some HR leaders would say, you know, I have the pulse, I have my thumb on the pulse of my organization, I say, oh, yeah, well, I can actually tell you what the pulse of my organization is based on this speaker versus that. So there's so many the, it's so big, it's so wide in terms of the areas you can drive really dramatic change and impact with data. But it's remarkable how often we try to start running instead of starting with some of the small things like that basic question of, hey, what's the headcount and, and that is just some of the nature of it, we can talk a bit about that around, especially HR leaders don't tend to be data minded. And I talked to one HR leader who said, you know, look, Randy, the reason I went into HR is because I'm not good at math and data. And we have to figure out where are some of those gaps, so that we can truly harness the power of looking at information and driving positive change as a result of that?
Michele:
I love it. So I know, I took a little turn, I was like, what can you do with data? But that's not the first step, right. Because what should organization to do first, before diving into data?
Randy:
Yeah, I think there's sort of two parts. So there's almost the mechanical part. And then there's the philosophical part. And and I highlight the mechanical part. And this is that adage of people not knowing what their headcount is, is that first part is that if you have bad data, or inconsistent data and unclear data, then the resulting change or positive impact that you're trying to do, can be difficult. And I think that that is mainly because people are touching data, we have different systems that are touching data. And so sometimes the accuracy and the information that we're dealing with, becomes untenable to be able to actually drive change. So, you know, first and foremost, I think getting a hold on. What we have for information and for the data that we're working with becomes very important. I remember even with some of the data that we were looking at, on why people would leave jawbone, for example. So when I would ask my team, so why do people leave jawbone? Do we know why? And we'd get different answers from different people in the organization. But we didn't have a consistent way of going about gathering and coding and looking at this information so that we could come to some very important insights for, for that decision. And so with little change, we're actually to go about modifying the way in which we could work with the data. So we arm the HR business partners to do a survey and talked about reasons and talked about, you know, the whys. And then afterwards, we could look at it. And in an a real tangible case, one of the reasons we found people were leaving, and I'll tell you how this actually started to drive some different changes. They felt like their work really wasn't valued. They said, You know, I'm working on this project. I don't know if it's important. I don't know if you know, this, this is something that's meaningful. And I said, Well, how are we actually relaying feedback to people that their work is meaningful, and that we're doing and having a positive news. And it turns out that we didn't really have a robust performance review program for the organization. And so people weren't getting feedback. They weren't getting it regularly. And they had no idea and as a result, they were making a decision to, to leave. And so I think, you know, that's a great example where we look at the data, we don't necessarily know how the data is going to play out or what the actions are going to be as far as Oh, but we could at least use that information in a way to get that right. So that first part around the kind of the mechanicals and getting some sort of process in place is important, especially when you have people who may not be so aligned or tuned into wanting to work with data. And for that we can find ways to help them. Now, the second part back to your kind of question is that we sometimes lack having this philosophy around why are we doing something? So, when we think about, you know, exit data, well, why is it important? Well, you can say, well, we want to lose people. Yeah, that's obvious. But that's not really a core philosophy of round why you want to get that information back. And so I think, starting with that philosophy first is hugely important no matter what you are going to do with data, because if you know the why you might have like, starts and stops. Or you might find out that the data didn't work the way that you were thinking or you don't have other data that you were hoping. But if you have the philosophy, that's what keeps you on track. So back to that example that we just talked about with, you know, not really knowing why people were leaving jawbone and using the data to figure it out what ultimately drove implementing a performance review program, is the philosophy that we could then develop from that, where we take a lot of time to hire amazing people for the organization. We want them to feel valued. And we feel feedback should be happening all the time. But my senior, we want to make it a more formal thing that people really know and have something they can touch and hold on to. And that's what we measure this when people believe and is why we do things performance review. So it's that two pronged approach around having that kind of having the mechanics to be able to drive and get good information. But then more importantly, having that Northstar have your philosophy to understand why? Why you're doing?
Michele:
Absolutely, always going back to the why. Yeah, it's important no matter who you are, where you are. So you've determined your why, what is the next thing? And we have a question, but we want to we want to hold off on that for a minute. Yeah. Once you know your why, and you're, you're fairly sure. And you're so what committed to your why, what's the next thing organization should be looking at doing moving ahead with their data? Well,
Randy:
I think I know you did, in sharing the why, like, we can't underestimate like the importance of the why and repeating and not only the why, from why we believe maybe on the HR side this to be important. But if that why isn't consistent from the top down meeting, like when we talk about this, you know, let's even talk about, you know, this concept of, you know, organization that says, We want to have a balanced and diverse workforce. Okay, hurray, that sounds like a great why, but it's not really a why it's more of a statement. So why is that? Well, if you don't spend the time from almost the top down, and find ways in which this becomes repeatable and known and questioned and discussed, then then that why is is pretty useless. And so you one example is, you know, Google, the importance around a diverse workforce was that many different people use our products, and we believe that our products are going to be most amazing if the people building them are representing the people who are using and working with them. And that's why we want to continue to focus on building a diverse workforce is because we'll build amazing products if we have an amazing and diverse team. Okay, that's a consistent why. And that's a great place to start. But that's just the beginning of the journey. Because I think that the other components are around, you know, is this a pithy repeatable phrase that sounds good to the media? Or is this something that actually embody in all the things that we're doing? And we would often see this, for example, on, you know, the critical hire that had to happen in a particular group, in conflict with the mission at hand, like, we want to have a diverse and workforce. I need this position higher tomorrow, or we're not going to have a business because we need to get this on board. And how do you bridge that gap in between with some of the constraints that might exist? You know, for example, if let's just take women in engineering, like we can count up all the women graduates from computer science degrees, and we know roughly how many women in engineering are out there and how many people are trying to hire them. And if your goal is to increase, for example, the number of women in your engineering team, there may be a conflict because you're drawing from a smaller pool, which is going to cause some constraints and other challenges on that hiring side. And so while the mission and the philosophy in that having that might be important from the top down, there has to be it has to permeate throughout where there may be moments in which you'd say, well, it might take us somewhat longer to find that but in service of what we're trying to do And we know that the overarching benefit of this is going to be far greater, we know that we will put more focus on reaching a harder to reach, you know, demographic and a pool. So I think that's the first thing. And I don't know if I kind of I, you know, I keep coming back to the why. And so I don't want to miss your question. So let me get to that piece.
Michele:
You know, I like that you dug in deeper into the why has to be number one from the top, it has to be driven through throughout the organization. And more importantly, understanding you have to be able to facilitate or really be actionable in the widen, even at the most difficult times, right? Yeah. Oh, it's gonna be too hard. That's why we have you here, because you can do hard things, aren't you glad?
Exactly. Well, and I think the transparency and consistency across the organizations become the most important things like that consistency of just because it's hard, does not mean that we abandon our why exactly. Having that y in place helps us navigate through even when it's there. And, you know, we've seen companies do this who, you know, held themselves accountable and put things out that will hold them accountable. And as a result, then there may be things that they don't want to happen, like, we missed our number, we failed, we did not hit the objective we have, but that doesn't mean we divert from the why, if you truly are committed to that, and that goal, again, coming back to the data, then, you know, we have that information to hold ourselves accountable against our making progress against that.
Randy:
Absolutely, absolutely. I like that. And I would also add, when you have that, why in place, and you know, you're going to have difficult things, you sit there and usually have strategies that you develop, to help you get through those what are difficult now become easier, because you have a strategy, you have resources all laid out to help you. And you can go back and say, Hey, we did this, we tried that. These are the results we have. And oftentimes those are not put into place prior to and it happens over time you develop those. But usually nobody in a lot of organizations haven't gotten that far even thought about what happens when and if we encounter this.
Yeah. And I can give you a great example of that. So for example, one of the things that when I talked about, I'll just go back to the Google example about really trying to focus on this diverse workforce is we knew what the mission and the philosophy was that we wanted here to we have the numbers that were going to hold us accountable for how we're making progress or not. And then there's this other component, which is almost kind of weighing in the human nature component. And by that I mean, so I know recruiters, I've known recruiters, that's what I started my career in. And recruiters, apologies to any of the recruiters watching, I hope you don't disagree, but recruiters will gravitate towards the path of least resistance, okay, their goal and objective is I need to fill this position. And so when you give a challenge to say, you know, you need to feel this position. And we're really trying to optimize for making sure we have the best chance of hiring the most diverse workforce. So there's sort of two approaches you could make to that. So Company A may say, we want to make this everybody's objective, okay. Every recruiter has this as an objective that they make this a point to, as part of what they're recruiting have some focus on diversity recruiting. Okay, company B. And I can tell you because we took this approach is, I love that idea. But unless this is, it's one thing to have make this like a focus, it's another thing if this is your job. So what we did is one of the things is we we carved out recruiters, we said, the only thing you will be focusing on is making sure you continue to keep the diverse representation of candidates at the table, your whole job is to recruit. And now that came with some trade offs. So we talked about smaller candidate pools, you can't set expectations that that recruiter is going to hire at the same volume, someone who's fishing out of a massive, you know, a dense pond. And so but driving kind of behavioral changes and understanding and making changes his changes in iterations along the way, I think, are like important tenets to remember is that having the philosophy is important, but you need to be able to adjust understand human nature and make adjustments along the way. And I feel like if you do that in a very humble approach, which is we don't know how this is going to work. We're going to be very transparent. We're going to adjust along the way, but we're not going to lose sight of why we're doing this and why this is important. And that, you know, we had we did that in Europe, for example, and again with the diversity of alette, you know, 12 engineering centers across You know, 12 different countries in the unique diversity challenges across, you know, all of Europe, Middle East and Africa is very different than, for example, here in the US. And so for us, we found the most could come from focusing on driving up the women in engineering and targeting that, in that group that was completely focused on where this was their job. And they had to make sure they were reminding others, the way that we could approach this in their hiring was focused on on a different candidate pool, we had some of the highest success rates for bringing up our Women in Engineering focus that we had set forth. And so you have to understand how human nature works. Make adjustments, but don't lose sight of what you're trying to do from a philosophy standpoint.
Michele:
I love it. Um, I want to get to the question we have in the chat, because we only have a few minutes left, probably jumping the gun for this blog. I'm curious as to what Randy thinks about the future work in people data, specifically with the rise of call for separation between dei initiatives and HR.
Randy:
Yeah, and I, I mean, it's hard without it's great question. Thanks for that. I think where that's going is what's going to happen, but in especially as there's a call out of what is trying to happen on DNI what's generally happening in HR. And I think, on that, I would just say that a couple things. One, there's a bit of a warning around, remembering that people who deal with data and analytics often lacked the people context for what is behind the data. And I think for HR practitioners and leaders, the best thing we can do is to make sure that there is always kind of context and we have better understanding of like, we are dealing with people, it is not just data that the data can help inform us. But we're also dealing with people situations, and other things that are unique to the people component of it. So I think one is to make sure that we don't separate. We don't keep too isolated that oh, this is this is people data and and this is HR stuff, like there has to be some commingling. I think, on the DNI aspect of it, I think that we're seeing, you know, entire functions that are starting to separate and be separate from the HR function. I think that's kind of another topic. But I think it's again, this approach that from the leadership, if they feel for example, if innovation is important in organization, what you will often see is that you have your engineering organization, but then there might be this group that's going to be focused on innovation. And in some organizations, they'll say, we want this group separate, so that it's directly aligned to the CEO that shows that it's important, the CEO knows and has a direct line of responsibility to that group and the changes that are happening. So if the question is around, a DNI and HR being separate, I think a lot of that's going to come down to almost that example that I'd shared about the recruiting function where you can make it part of everyone's mission, or you can actually say, we need to make this a priority, and therefore, we want to have these functions. separately. I don't know if I'm sure if you can understood the question in the same way, but
Michele:
I did, too. Number one, HR and data not mixing, where they don't always have the same skill sets data, people don't always analytical over here, have the best people skills and understand what may be driving the data. And HR people like that's those are numbers, I don't do numbers, you want the compensation group go down the hall. Right. And so that I do, I do agree with that. I think also, the separation of HR and Dei, where the eyes is connected to the CEO is a huge, huge move and important move for many organizations, not all of them. It depends on who's running HR. Yeah. And if that HR person is dei focused, and they have been driving and going through, you know, leading through that lens, then and not just white women lens, right but but the the eye on a larger scale, and understanding where their blind spots and having other people in there to guide that's that's a different place. If you don't have enough of those places, then sometimes it's better to separate it. But I think overall, you're going to have a blend of the analytics, you're going to have a blend of the HR as well as somebody who can communicate those two things blended together to leadership. Because if you don't I wanted a rare engineers second talk to people. I've been told there's an operator, equipment operator to executives. It was it's very that communication support is really, really key no matter where you are in the organization. But being able to bridge those two is definitely definitely key to driving sustainable equity in the workplace.
Randy:
Agreed. Yeah, and I think we're seeing this in I just, I wish I had the stat handy for me, but one of my colleagues and HR side of things brought up how much progress over the last few years has been made on bringing in either in heads of HR or heads of Dean DNI initiatives around people, underrepresented individuals into that role, and it's gone up tremendously. And so there is this is, again, another spot where you can say, uh, it would be ideal if our head of engineering and our head of sales and the all these other roles, but it's great to see that we can make some progress. And, you know, it's funny for me to be talking here as like, white male head of HR, like I'm, I was in favor a while ago, but it's now a time where there's an opportunity to really bring forward talented individuals who can, you know, better understand the challenges and changes that are going on in organizations. And I think it's great. And the progress that is happening is, is there it's not where we necessarily want it to be or where it could be. But I think we're making great change there. And I think a lot of that comes down to organizations being more transparent around their initiatives, and diversity and in staying committed to that. And, you know, for those watching, I would highly encourage this. Checking out, for example, Pinterest is a great example of companies that have put forward what their goals have been. And if you go and put in Pinterest diversity hiring, you can see from 20, I think 2015 was the first year that they put forward their goals that they were shooting for. And it's a great example of an organization that put goals out there, missed them, learn from them adjusted and not adjusted, because Oh, it's hard. But instead of, for example, we want to make sure we have, you know, this percentage of this demographic. And they found out that that was perhaps not the right approach or too broad or missing the point and the things that they drive not only from a putting numbers and things out there, but in committing themselves and holding themselves accountable. But also they talk about how that alone drives all other actions, all of their relationships, all of their communication throughout the organization. And that's just a great example where taking that step, but holding yourself accountable can actually pay dividends throughout the organization because it drives other behaviors. So I would highly recommend check out. They always make it public they put they put out there, I think they put up. Yeah, I just was actually looking so they have up recently, their stats that they've put up. And what I love is that they actually show where they were at from, you know, 2015 to last year to this was at the end of 2020. And so they've, they've committed to that. And that's not always easy, because you can see in some of these cases that they've actually, you know, missed the mark in some cases. And yeah, so they're pretty transparent about that they focus on what they're doing. And then not just the numbers, because there has to be more than just the data. But it is talking about the changes and things that have happened in the organization. So Pinterest is, is working hard on it. And I think that they've done a great job of holding themselves accountable, which is part of that process if you truly want to drive change.
Absolutely. Randy, how can people connect with you?
Randy:
I'm on LinkedIn. And I think that's a great place. I'm reading Affleck very good. And I'm on Twitter that I'm not so active there. And then again, as I mentioned, check out storytelling with data because I think that's the cornerstone of just not showing the data that your Excel spit out. But instead, what is the narrative you are trying to share? What is the change you're trying to make happen. And so at storytelling with data, we drive a lot of, we have a lot of great conversations, there's podcasts, there's video, there's a lot of learning opportunities to improve the way in which you communicate with your data. So that's also a great place to check us out. And we have a good following on LinkedIn. So be sure to follow storytelling with data on LinkedIn as well.
Michele:
I picked up the book and I have to find time to read it. So it's next to my spin bike. So once you know the new year starts,
it's an easy read.
Randy:
That's the best part about storytelling with data. It's and it's translated in Tober, I think 20 languages. It's used by over 150 universities as a textbook. So I will look forward to your review after you. You check it out. But thanks for checking it out.

Michele:
Thank you so much for joining us, Randy. Bye. I'll talk to you later. All right, thanks so much. This was great.
So that was Randy he shared his experience with Google data. HR and data don't always mix but it was absolutely fantastic. I love the comments and engagement we have. I am going to now do something very, very special, which is share a bit about one of our sponsors. And then we'll go to the next speaker. And our next sponsor is coming up, I promise is the next it girl. The next girl is a nonprofit that focuses on getting black and brown girls into it. Haha, you thought it was fashion, didn't you? The founder nopea Nivola received her Bachelor Science degree in computer science from Charleston Southern University in the state of South Carolina. She thought being at a predominantly white institution that maybe she was just one of few students major in computer science. But when she went on the industry, she was been very much alone. As a black woman in tech. She founded the next it girl about five and a half years ago in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she has the first chapter She then moved to Atlanta where she started the second chapter, and now has a third one located in Charleston, South Carolina, her hometown. If you know of any young girls, black or brown who are interested in learning more about tech from the ages of 10 to 21. Yes, they even go through college. Be sure to go to the next it girl.org Not only is it a fantastic organization to be involved with. They are also virtual. They've worked with companies like Amazon, they've done certain things like taking computers apart because you don't want them taking apart your computer at home. But it gives an opportunity to take apart the computer at somebody else at our program that is specifically geared around young girls to empower them to go in to tech. So thank you so much the PA for bringing forth a great program, especially bringing it bringing a chapter back home to the great state of South Carolina.