CHRO of Genpact - Piyush Mehta - Career Club Live

[00:00:00] Hello everybody this is Bob Goodwin, President of Career Club and welcome to another episode of Career Club Live. Before we get started I would like to encourage any of our HR professional or talent acquisition professionals

[00:00:23] to be watching or listening. To please check out our newest initiative that we call journey forward, a way of building the candidate experience and enhancing the employer brand by providing differentiated resources to candidate who may not be moving forward in the talent process

[00:00:40] for a particular role but one that you would like to continue to build a relationship with. Again you can learn more about that at Career.club journey forward. So I am really, really pleased speaking of HR professionals for today's guest. I'm going to read this

[00:00:56] because this background is pretty cool. We've got the privilege of hosting PUSHMET to the CHRO of GenPAC, a global leader in digitally powered business process management services, PUSH with this extensive experience in driving human capital strategies across global organizations

[00:01:13] has really been at the forefront of transforming workplace cultures to thrive in the digital era. Today is going to be sharing his valuable insights on the evolution of HR, the role of technology in enhancing employee experience and the strategies

[00:01:28] GenPAC employees to nurture talent and leadership in an ever changing business landscape. So if that I'm looking forward to delving into the mind of one of the industry's most forward thinking leaders, FUSHMETA. That's huge welcome. Thank you Bob. Real pleasure to be on this podcast

[00:01:47] with you. And thank you for the good words that you said in my introduction. It's a pleasure to share what we are learning and what we continue to learn as we go along. Yeah, absolutely. I've benefited so much from our initial conversation and look forward to building

[00:02:03] on that. Like I said, I know that listeners are just going to really appreciate you what you guys have built the learning that you've gotten through the exercises that you've gone through and just your business acumen is really, really great. So with that we've got more

[00:02:19] content probably than time so if we can jump into it that would be great. Sure thing Bob, fight away. Cool. So for those who are not as familiar with GenPAC do you

[00:02:31] might just kind of explain a little bit about the history of GenPAC, how your business model is transformed and how you guys have grown through the years? Sure Bob. So look, GenPAC is a global professional services and solutions firm. We focus on delivering outcomes to our Fortune 500

[00:02:51] clients. We are at this point of time 125,000 plus employees across 30 countries. Yeah. And we are defined by our purpose which is the relentless pursuit of a world that works better so that's about where we are today. Now we started actually as a company which was about

[00:03:15] process expertise and domain and has a back office for the general electric company at the turn of this century so you know 25 years old. In 2005, we spun off into an independent company

[00:03:31] and subsequently we became, we went public and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So many things as you would imagine remain constant from our early days which is our focus on clients,

[00:03:49] our deep domain expertise but over a period of time we've also evolved from a business process company predominantly to being focusing on outcomes, solutions and professional services for our clients. Yeah so I mean 125,000 global 30 countries trick question where is the home office?

[00:04:15] So interestingly Bob we don't have a home office. We have, you know and I want to say this we've been of virtual headquartered company for pretty much the last 12 years. So even before it was not fashionable to not have headquarters so we have our leaders distributed across the

[00:04:44] world to where our clients are or where the relevant stakeholders are so for example we have our largest employee based in India so I'm based in India but our CEO and most of our client facing

[00:04:57] leaders and our commercial leaders are based in the developed markets largely in the US and the UK where our clients are. Yeah and so when you guys spun off from GE what was the approximate employee

[00:05:11] headcount? You know it was I would say it was approximately probably 10,000 ish when we separated from GE. And so one of the things that I thought was fascinating is you guys grew and the needs of your

[00:05:28] clients expanded and you guys kept getting bigger and bigger what was the talent acquisition strategy because you and you guys continue to be in a high growth mode how have you kind of been able to keep

[00:05:39] to talent because you're in a people intensive business how do you how do you recruit and keep the talent? You know so that's probably one of the most important questions which is related to our

[00:05:53] growth and you know getting to where we are as an organization and our future as well Bob. Think about the talent question as to how do we fuel our growth as being fundamental to our

[00:06:08] existence now the way we've thought about it always is that it is always going to be more about build as opposed to buy. Now let's a part of this is you know starts off with our DNA when we

[00:06:24] started like I told you in the you know 2000 timeframe this industry didn't exist and we were growing like gangbusters. So the only opportunity we the only constraint we had to grow it was you know great quality talent and while high potential talent foreshore existed in very large

[00:06:46] numbers in the developing markets which is where we grew out of think about India think about China think about Eastern Europe you know there was massive supply of high potential talent but to be

[00:06:59] able to train them and equip them from being high potential to high performance was a massive challenge that we had and it was probably the biggest constraint we had to grow.

[00:07:12] We built a training and an upskilling engine that I think in many ways led to our being able to scale and be successful as an organization. So the idea was ready talent is not available in the market

[00:07:33] create an engine in the organization which is able to transform as we as we higher tile talented the entry level and build them into high performance talent so training and the reskilling engine became fundamental to our success and our growth and that's been a belief all along.

[00:07:51] So do we hire people from outside that lateral levels the answer is yes okay is that important for us the answer is absolutely yes as we think about new technologies you know seeding talent in

[00:08:04] the organization and so and so forth but the bulk of our talent needs are fulfilled by building talent growing talent and investing talent and therefore the internal marketplace which gets talent ready from an upskilling perspective and the internal talent marketplace from the perspective of demand

[00:08:28] and being able to marry that with algorithms that take ready talent and then bring them into bigger roles that we need for our growth is an absolutely fundamental part of our talent strategy.

[00:08:41] And one of the reasons I was so excited had you on because again since I pre-usual you guys were ahead of the curve on something because it's the half life of skills you know keeps the

[00:08:53] managing having it in your DNA to be able to reskill up skill and repurpose talent to where it's most needed you know it's just that's not going away it's like a more as law kind of a thing

[00:09:07] it's just gonna keep spinning faster and faster and faster and sounds like you know not sounds like it's evident that you guys have built the model to have optimized that.

[00:09:17] Bob you said it way better than I could ever say you know we have kind of patented the line of half life of skills is three to five years and you know are entire reskilling strategy is

[00:09:30] built on that and that is one of the key parts of our talent strategy and our overall organization strategy. So just slight detour but it makes me think about a couple of things.

[00:09:42] One is you know two three four five years ago tech companies you know were in this talent war and seriously overpaying for talent and over hiring for talent and then that

[00:09:56] led to what one overpaying but two then a bunch of layoffs and it sounds like there's some built-in insurance in your system that kind of doesn't necessitate you having to overpay for talent

[00:10:09] you can buy the high-po talent you can acquire that and I love how you say that turn high potential into high performance and then be able to redeploy it as market needs dictate

[00:10:21] instead of this sort of slashing of talent when it's like well we don't have to slash so we just need either upscale a reskill and redeploy it and it keeps you out of these weird boom and bust cycles.

[00:10:35] Yeah so you know again you are spot on with that approach look let's start with the fundamental pieces behind all of this which is you know growth and for the organization to grow is the most fundamental need for you know establishing a powerful talent strategy because growth is

[00:10:59] a great problem to have and once you have growth all the other problems are great problems to have. So I would say it needs to start with you know and we've been blessed as an organization

[00:11:11] knock on board as to having grown every single year of our existence and once you have that kind of you know engine pulling the business forward everything else from a talent perspective is

[00:11:27] able to fall in place okay so that's number one number two I think look it's it's really important to have a clear view on why people want to come to work you know and we have we have a

[00:11:41] reasonably strong point of view on this I don't claim you know to have to to suggest for a moment that it's the absolute right view but we are convinced that it is it is the right approach going forward

[00:11:54] and once we are clear about that I think it establishes it puts all our talent programs and our talent agenda in perspective so think about the four reasons as to why people come to work

[00:12:09] as one of work for a great company one of work for great leaders one great rewards and what a great career okay and I don't think this is changed ever since I started my career which

[00:12:22] is 35 years back I think fundamentally people are looking for the same four things and if really are about that as to this is the employee value proposition of why people are coming to work

[00:12:34] and our programs and our agenda is built around scaleably and it's important that I say scaleably and sustainably building the value proposition around being the great company around having great leaders around having fair and reasonable awards and having great careers

[00:12:55] then I think we have a winning proposition. Now so it's thank you for that segue because that's what I wanted to go here you kind of kicked off in your description. Jim Pack has been a purpose

[00:13:04] driven company and so this is this is excellent. What I like about that too is it it allows for different value propositions for talent so not everybody has to buy into every single one of those

[00:13:19] all the time they just need to buy into one of them at any given time to continue to have high motivation to contribute and to grow in their career at Jim Pack. So a question for you

[00:13:34] because you've got the benefit of both time geographic perspective is do you see any of those value propositions and again it's purpose it's rewards it's the quality of management or leadership and career development do you see those any geographical differences regional differences

[00:13:56] in the world? No actually I don't look I think and that's a great question I think these are the basic needs as to why people come for come to work in any part of the world. Now what changes

[00:14:13] Bob is many times the context right competition options available you know the nuances of geography sometimes change those contexts right the relative dominance of technology the you know beyond the point the demographic profile of the people who can although in many

[00:14:37] cases I my view is that you know the impact of demographic profile is overstated okay because I think irrespective of generation people do look for these things the enablers for some

[00:14:50] of these things or you know let's take for example technology where is what what is the play of technology in all of this right I think today the newer generations are more comfortable with a

[00:15:03] higher impact of technology on these four fundamental variables and there's a difference there okay so those are the nuances that come into play but fundamentally it is the same four things and I think it's really important that as HR practitioners bear talent strategies this is the not

[00:15:22] start that we are navigating to in our own respective context in the context of the geographies that we work in the context of the industry that we are a part of in terms of the the competitive

[00:15:34] landscapes that we are working out of in terms of the macro conditions around us you know what's the extent of which inflation what's the demand for a particular skill set those are all at a point

[00:15:46] of times specific levels which drive this but it is these four things which should be the not start well I could be very honest it's one of the big takeaways that I've had from our conversation is just the what identifying those but to the durability and the universality

[00:16:04] of those qualities and I think what that allows you to truly have a strategy that's built on those instead of a project chasing things that might change over time the durable notion of those

[00:16:18] four key pillars is I just think vital yeah I don't mean to speak over you but I think there's a vital point to be made there which is you know you hit upon you picked up something that I said

[00:16:35] and you know reinforced it which is it has to be scalable and it has to be sustainable so you know think about one of the things we caution ourselves on is you know the the

[00:16:50] as we look at trends and as we look at changes that are coming up on the horizon it is you know it is the primary role of leaders to be able to look around corners and figure out what's coming

[00:17:05] but equally I think it is our responsibility as leaders to also figure out what's flavor of the month and what's not so as I think about building talent strategies it is really important to be

[00:17:20] aware of what is going to be sustainable and what is flavor of the month so I'll give you an example you know a few years back during Covid one of the things that got talked about often were silent

[00:17:32] quitting and there were various names that was given to it the reality is that look I mean silent quitting indicated that you have a percentage of your population at any point or time which you know could

[00:17:45] vary between 15 to 30 percent of your workforce which is not engaged and therefore is passive now you know there were rooms and rooms of articles written at one point or time on you know how

[00:17:59] this was a new trend actually it wasn't I mean we've known through years through engagement surveys for decades now that there is always a population in an organization which is not engaged and therefore this was not something that was new but you know it just became something very

[00:18:19] fashionable to talk about I give you another example you know the trend of few years back which was about you know we don't want to if we don't want to rat we don't want to rate people in a particular way

[00:18:30] because we believe that rating people puts them in compartments and therefore you know doing away with performance ratings which is you know in itself a very noble I would say objective the reality however is organizations still continue to pay bonus and organizations still continue to

[00:18:51] discriminate rightfully or you know a distinguish between strong performance and not so strong performance when they pay out bonus right no organization goes out and says that we pay the same bonus to everybody and therefore then you are different in how you are rewarding performance so

[00:19:10] that's not consistent in my view we're doing away with performance ratings because you know there's some level of lack of consistency between the two so you know whether for right or wrong and

[00:19:21] this is a controversial point that I'm making I think it's important for us as practitioners to distinguish between what is scalable consistent and an established trend going forward as opposed to something that's delivered of the month. Yeah no I appreciate that and you know we're inundated with

[00:19:47] news and social media and all these things like you say whether it's silent quitting or whatever that like oh well I need to pay attention to this because I've seen an article on this you

[00:19:57] know 150 times in the last month it must be a thing and you use the term North Star earlier and it's like okay I'll take that data point let me see how this aligns with the North Star it does or

[00:20:12] it doesn't and then have the clarity to be able to say no that's actually not strategic or like you say just kind of basically call BS on it and go that's not a thing or it's always been a thing

[00:20:24] you just put a fancy term on it to drive clicks but what's called what it is flavor of the month so I appreciate that distinction and you know taking a stand on something which I always appreciate when

[00:20:38] people say this is controversial I start going yes because if you're gonna actually take a stand on something out of conviction so I think that's cool. I want to talk about technology because this really becomes the cool intersection of if you've got these North Stars which you've also

[00:20:57] your very technology forward technology enabled company how do you guys and I want to talk about things like Amber and genome how they actually help advance into liver on those value propositions. Sure thing so look our fundamental belief is that technology is a massive

[00:21:19] massive enableer of being able to drive the fulfillment of talent needs of an organization it is a massive enableer and look that's not rocket science I mean it's pretty well established now so you know you refer to Amber Amber is our always on employee engagement platform

[00:21:43] it is an AI driven chatbork that reaches out to employees real time across the company so 125,000 plus employees being in touch real time within engagement tool that helps us establish how people are feeling at any point your time and you know with the power of data

[00:22:04] and being able to link it to geography the business one is a part of you know how long you've been in the company tenure the manager that you work for you gender, etc etc it is able to provide us

[00:22:21] massive insights real time and the good news is that you know I mentioned it's an AI driven chatbork so the chatbork as it reaches out to individuals is able to drive the dialogue based on

[00:22:41] the responses and the specific things which the individual is saying so it's not a standard set of questions that the engine puts forth to the employee and you know it helps us keep a real time

[00:23:00] pulse on employee engagement morale and sentiment real time interestingly we think that this is such a powerful tool to employ productivity that it is the only non-financial metric that goes into the bonus pool for the top 120 people in the company including the CEO

[00:23:24] and the leadership team so the the bonus pool of the top 120 people has three metrics two of them are financial you know revenue and margin and the third one is employee engagement as mentioned

[00:23:40] by Amber so that's how important it is for us wow do you do the finding do the findings route back to the four pillars of how connected you see up to the purpose rewards management

[00:23:54] your career development you know again spot on Bob you're doing this so well it is like I said it's the not star right so think about the the engagement that Amber has with employees the the

[00:24:06] entire engagement the questions and the responses are built around exactly those four things how close do you feel to the purpose of the organization you know what is how close do you feel

[00:24:18] awarding you what is your view on the quality of your supervisor on the quality of your leadership and it builds on those things by the way it's a two to three minute interaction that the

[00:24:29] tool has with the employee but it gives us really really powerful insights that's cool in can you talk about genome for a minute yes so look genome is our learning platform it is

[00:24:47] so you know a few things genome was built on going entirely virtual across all our learning in gen fact okay our view was based on the fact that knowledge and access to knowledge is freely

[00:25:05] available in the world okay however there is a very important context to that learning and that knowledge that exists out there and therefore I could go to the internet and pretty much learn

[00:25:17] whatever I want but the important thing is that that the context of gen fact which is a P to P professional services and solutions organization is very different from the context of let's say

[00:25:33] a B to C organization and therefore there is a contextual element to every bit of knowledge that exists out there for it to become relevant for our employees so that's number one number two is

[00:25:49] when you take something virtual like learning it allows you massive scale it allows you access across geographies it allows you the ability to access knowledge where we are faster than let's say a classroom approach will be what you lose out however is the collective nature of learning people

[00:26:10] learning together so genome established both these things an organizational context to all the knowledge that exists out there and the ability to learn collectively we basically took what is now 90 plus skills and over 600 subject matter experts in the company we nominated them

[00:26:33] as gurus for these 90 skills and we built a learning infrastructure where these gurus were able to access material across the universe and contextualize that over a period of time to the needs of and then we allowed free access of 125,000 people to these 90 plus skills and allowed them to

[00:26:59] up skill themselves in these now these skills continue to be redefined over a period of time the subject matter experts continue to rotate but just to give you an idea of the scale of this for the fourth consecutive year our global workforce completed approximately 10 million learning

[00:27:20] hours on genome so it allows us to re-skill at scale and address new capabilities at speed the benefit we had you know I want to stress on that bump because I think it's really important

[00:27:36] is we took at that point in a time when we built this our innovation leader for the company and I out of our day jobs for three months to conceptualize architect think and build what is now

[00:27:56] genome and you know the 10 million hours of learning on genome that that we talk about so it was a massive commitment that we made from an organization point of view to get here you know

[00:28:09] think about I give you some idea of how we are able to scale with this you know we launched Gen A I as one of the 90 skills that we talked about last year and our objective was how do we just

[00:28:21] familiarize people with Gen A at the basic level okay this is not making them experts over a four month period we had 40,000 people learning on what Gen A I was at a basic level of

[00:28:34] proficiency today we have 80,000 people learning the skill so you know that's the kind of scale and speed it's able to give us wow does based on you know the where an individual employee is

[00:28:49] in his or her career and development the skills that they've acquired maybe the skills they've identified that they would like to acquire but also the needs of the business does Gen A or does

[00:29:02] a human make recommendations of PUSH we recommend these next 10 courses for you or you're to develop more skills in these areas so it's a proactively recommend or do I choose what I want to

[00:29:15] learn more about? You have both options you can choose and to that extent we've democratized learning you know an individual can choose from those 90 skills that's what they want to pick up but we also

[00:29:27] have built the capability to the point that you're making where we are leveraging something called AI Guru which assesses their skills and proficiency levels which are extracted from their bios and then their genome learning data and then our capability frameworks to recommend learning

[00:29:51] bots based on employees rules and business needs so great question it is actually bought. Yeah I'm rarely accused of an original idea PUSH so that's the price that that's a two

[00:30:04] guys are working on because it just makes sense that that's what you would be doing and you're kind of them tied to your internal talent market and then like where do we see gaps and how can we get

[00:30:15] certain groups of people up to speed to start to fill these gaps so we can be the future needs of the internal marketplace so that makes sense to me. I want to because we're about 30 minutes

[00:30:28] in and there's a couple other key areas that I'd love to move into if that's okay with you. Sure, Bob. Yeah so if anybody goes in Google they'll see that you speak conferences

[00:30:41] you do interviews and you are very much a thought leader in the wacky world of HR and technology. You know during the pandemic that that was a very obviously you know catalytic event because

[00:30:56] suddenly the world went virtual and organizations had to figure out how do we do this. Like you said you guys kind of grew up natively remote so that was less of a struggle I assume but

[00:31:08] but what it did do is it brought CHROs right next to the CEO every day to help us figure this thing out for some people that window open and they are that door open maybe has been a metaphor

[00:31:24] and they ran through it and for others it was open for a while but it's closed again. What advice would you give you know other CHROs to build on the gains that they got or

[00:31:38] maybe had to re-energize. Yeah so Bob I smile because you know it's interesting I see the question posed often about you know HR having a seat at the table you know CHROs being close to

[00:31:56] how do you get close to CEO's etc etc look. I have to tell you I'm I'm first of all in um I am a bad person to ask that question too because I've always been fortunate in that respect and I think

[00:32:14] you know to a large extent our business model the fact that you know we we were a new industry which didn't exist 20 years back we grew like gangbusters therefore bringing the right talent in place was

[00:32:32] the single biggest constraint to growing our business. Help to establish you know the talent agenda as one of our key strategic challenges and levers so you know our HR teams never had to

[00:32:50] engage in the discussion about having a seat at the table are we close to business etc etc. Business loved us business pulled us in this was as much a business challenge as it was

[00:33:03] a talent and an HR challenge number one so I've always had the benefit of never having I mean it was considered totally totally table stakes and barely entered our thought dimensions as to

[00:33:19] you know should we have a place at the table. Now that said look my view to this is very simple the responsibility for having a place at the table rest squarely on us as HR people and as

[00:33:33] talent practitioners we need to understand business we need to put business challenges as the key challenges that we need to solve for and everything that we do needs to be in the service of

[00:33:49] solving business challenges. Now look that's easily said many times that's a cliche but I you know I will tell you I give you a simple example you know think about one of my roles before I came to

[00:34:05] GE and GenPAC was working in a company where you know we had to build a hiring tool to hire great frontline salespeople and in building that hiring tool I spent six months on doing research

[00:34:21] on what were the right competencies to hire frontline salespeople for or what you know what what were the competencies that tool needed to be built on and the reality is that if I had done

[00:34:35] meaningful internet research I would have come up with the competencies that a frontline hiring person needs to have in about two days as opposed to six months of research and gotten it 90% and I could have spent the balance five months and 28 days in building a tool that would

[00:34:57] execute well and hire really well as opposed to you know spending time on that coat on coat reasonably meaningless research in the context of what we were trying to do. And I think those are the

[00:35:14] examples of where we need to step back as HR practitioners and say you know it doesn't always need to be about perfection focused really hard on execution leg business needs be your not star

[00:35:29] and if you're really solving business challenges out there there is no reason why business won't love you so I you know I actually think this is amazingly simple and I think you know it is important

[00:35:41] that we don't preoccupy ourselves with this morning importantly go up there and help business solve the challenge. Yeah it's interesting because first of I agree with you you know it's focusing on the

[00:35:51] business and why that is cliche apparently it's devilishly hard for some people to get to that place and it seems like you know that the the seated the table cliche again is more it's not an

[00:36:11] aspiration it's a result like like if you are contributing to the business and you're not just the policy and police you are procedures police you know and there there's a function of that I mean you know

[00:36:24] compliance and you know there's legal things and stuff like that has to be paid attention to but at the same time you know if you're just focused on the businesses you said you were

[00:36:35] you were benefited from the fact that that was core to the very beginning of the company was cracking the code on this but do you see AI is maybe a new door to to re-energize a CHRO that wants to re-orient

[00:36:53] themselves and their team to be more integrated into the business. Yeah I'd be careful as I go there look I already made the point earlier that advances in technology and changes in technology

[00:37:07] are a very very powerful catalyst for you know moving up the value chain delivering with speed catering to business needs all incredible you know any blows that said I think it's important

[00:37:21] to identify against scale and sustainability in what we are going after Bob as opposed to you know spreading it thin and trying to layer everything and anything that we do with AI without necessarily

[00:37:36] understanding where it's going well that's not true that's back to the North Star concept right is 1.5 technology a lot because you're right I mean this is like the perfect use case for

[00:37:47] flavor of the day or flavor of the year kind of a thing and well we're just buying AI I was trying to figure anything out that's got AI attached to it then there may not be directly

[00:37:58] aligned to the businesses North Star and in that case it becomes a red herring not in the Avalor 100% correct so you know in the examples that I talked about I would say that if I were to step

[00:38:10] back and say where am I going to apply you know the benefits of AI the areas I would reach out to first are you know for example employee engagement it allows us to stay in touch with 127,000 employees

[00:38:25] scalably therefore and sustainably I think that's a great application of AI you know training and scaling because that is super critical to the future the current and the future of our business so again I would say that applying AI in that particular space will give us massive leverage

[00:38:43] those are some of the things you know we hire 45,000 employees a year you know if I could figure over way in which I can leverage AI to be able to hire better higher faster create a better experience

[00:38:59] for the people we are interacting with through the hiring process that's a fantastic application of AI so I would say it's important to focus on what is going to be able to be the right areas for

[00:39:13] scalability perfect okay I want to just change into one more topic here and I'm looking forward to this piece which is career advice obviously career club we're working you know a lot with job seekers

[00:39:29] and I always love to make sure that we're able to provide them with the benefit of some very successful people in the career advice so the first thing I want to ask you about is when you're hiring

[00:39:42] or promoting talent, push what are some of the core qualities or attributes that you're looking for I would say you know the hunger it's you're a you it's it's one could use various terms for it

[00:40:04] what's the energy your person brings to the job what's the hunger your person brings to the job what's the drive of person brings to the job what's the curiosity look I think those become hugely

[00:40:16] odd view has been that we can teach people pretty much everything else but you can't teach people to be energized and can't teach people energy and can't teach people hunger and drive and curiosity

[00:40:27] so people don't have that then we have a challenge it's a key attribute for us Bob as I'm so real quick on that is that's something that you into it or is that something that

[00:40:38] you can directly interview for I think it's both it's evident from you know the kinds of things the person has done in their in their career and when you're hiring fresh even in their earlier

[00:40:52] career it's evident from the conversations it's evident from everything else it's not that difficult to figure and so it's both you know interview and intuitive okay and then so so what's called that

[00:41:08] passion what what else do you look for look in today's world I think the need to be able to communicate and network becomes very important okay because that in many ways along with curiosity

[00:41:26] and passion then enables the entire learning and contribution that an individual is able to do and me so to us you know that part and they you know with that you know when I'm saying that it includes

[00:41:44] collaboration it includes the ability to work in teams all of that right so I think those two then become very powerful combinations for what we want to what we want to look at as we grow

[00:41:56] people and build people. Conversely and I'm just thinking of this question on the fly what are things that would be huge turn-offs for you like deal breaker I'm out entitlement

[00:42:11] I am old this a lack of positive attitude pessimist people with low energy people with no drive to learn hmm yeah so I want to jump all over like three of those things immediately it's funny when I'm speaking with

[00:42:32] people who might be you know feel like they're subject to ageism bias I'm like that may be true there may be people who who have that bias but there's things that you can do that that will either contribute

[00:42:46] or counteract that and one of them is bringing energy right so like because the the the bias would be your out of gas like you know your your tire drool you can't do anymore it's like no like

[00:42:58] bring the energy the second thing is on curiosity and continuing to learn and being able to show that which is pick on chat GPT because that's easy and like being able to show proficiency

[00:43:09] and interest and continuing to learn and when when we can dispel and have practical examples and like you say also the ability just into it this person's curious they're motivated they're positive you know they're high energy like those are the kinds of qualities that people are

[00:43:31] looking for and whether you're you know 25 or 55 if you're bringing those qualities for the right company for the right manager you're going to be an attractive candidate one of the dobley of me yeah so what is the best career advice you've been given

[00:43:53] if something comes to mind yes it is you know build deep deep business acumen if you want to work in the corporate world and you know work with business make sure you understand business

[00:44:10] better than or as well as the stakeholders you're working with it'll allow you to serve them much better it'll allow you to engage with them much better I mean you know just simple things that

[00:44:27] I think of when I when I you know when HR people ask me for advice in my team do you understand a P&L do you understand the commercials of the business do you understand how the business makes

[00:44:40] money do you understand how the business is going to grow do you understand what you know as you break the P&L down into one of the important components do you understand how

[00:44:51] you know money gets made all of those things become super super important and then moving up the value chain you know do you understand how this works for your clients do you understand the

[00:45:02] P&L of your client do you understand how the client makes money do you understand what your business is trying to do for your client I just think understanding and developing deep deep business acumen

[00:45:14] is fundamental to being successful in any role in a corporate but very important the in the HR function yeah so it's funny because like we're working with candidates you know and you read a resume and all it's got is basically what the scope of their responsibilities were

[00:45:34] right they've kind of bulletized their job description is what they did at company x unlike know the language of business is numbers how did you contribute to the business and sort of the three main value buckets did you help the company make money save money or mitigate risk

[00:45:52] can you dimensionize your contribution in one or more of those ways and to your point about business acumen it's shocking how often people cannot do that that's so well said mom that's so well

[00:46:07] so last last question if you could go back and talk to 25 year old future so I know that hasn't been that long ago but if you could what with the benefit of hindsight what council

[00:46:19] would you give 25 year old future yeah I've thought about that one before I've been asked that one before bomb and at the risk of you know this may come across as arrogant I want to tell you

[00:46:28] it's not a big problem because across as I haven't learned that's not the case I would I would do exactly as I've done through the last you know 30 years since you talk about

[00:46:42] you know when I was 25 exactly the same way because I think I've had an opportunity to learn I think I've had an opportunity to work with some great people I think I've made some great

[00:46:53] big mistakes I think people have indulged me a lot I've had my share of more than my share of luck being at the right place at the right time so I won't change anything yeah but that's interesting

[00:47:06] because in one way it's kind of a different question because like PUSH you haven't even you regrets over your career well that answer is no but what you just described were some things

[00:47:16] that you have learned that I think that you could communicate to somebody else which is you know again continue to learn take chances be open to making mistakes but you gotta learn from them right

[00:47:29] sounds like you've had some great mentors who have quote indulge you and then the point that you made on the previous question just about continuing to drive your business acumen

[00:47:41] to be able to drive the performance of the business so yeah so let me add one more bump in that case look I think in that case what I would add is I wish I had learned to communicate better

[00:47:55] because I think the power of being able to communicate one to many with a point of view and to enable learning through that is just huge and I think you know I wish I had learned

[00:48:12] and focused on communicating much better because I think it would have been able to be much better awesome PUSH amazing I knew this was gonna be a home run and you exceeded my expectations

[00:48:25] so thank you very very much if people want to learn more about June backwards the best way for them to do that well they can go to our website and you know engage with the organization there

[00:48:39] you know they can then follow the links there and reach out to us for relevant stuff that's the best way to awesome well CUSH thank you very much again the the what I love about the the depth and quality

[00:48:52] of your insights is there built on the back of performance and a track record and that these aren't just highfalutin ideas but these are things that you guys as you say hit put into practice at scale

[00:49:04] and sustainably and so I've just benefited tremendously from this and I hope our viewers and listeners have as well so that thank you very much folks if you have listened and

[00:49:14] watch thank you very much for taking a few minutes out of your day today and we hope to see on the next episode of Career Club Live again PUSH thank you thanks Bob thanks for your patience I mean you know

[00:49:24] the the 45 minutes plus of conversation does require a lot of patience to be able to listen to me more importantly look at disclaimer that I think is important we if I have given you the impression

[00:49:37] that we've solved for it all we have it we are on a journey we are learning as we are going along okay and we are making mistakes and we are learning from those mistakes and hopefully it's a

[00:49:46] virtual cycle where you know we are refunaling what we are learning from in the mistakes we make so you know if you have a point of view and you have thoughts on what we could do differently to the folks

[00:49:56] of there who are engaging with this podcast we'd love to hear back from you and thanks for once again awesome thank you very much okay thanks again everybody and we'll see you on the next episode