Welcome, everyone. This is a podcast about
leadership. I'm your host, Jonathan
Kirschner, and it is a fantastic day to have three of my favorite
people on this podcast here today.
There are some common denominators, clearly HRCHRO,
that's going to be a a big topic for us.
But what we really want to get at at the core is leadership.
Because leadership as we all know, is one of the most
consequential variables. It might be the most important
thing when it comes to shaping a better future and, and what an
incredible position the CHRO sits in, in order to influence
and in order to make things happen from a leadership
standpoint. So we're really privileged to
have Maxine, Bill and John 2 here with us.
Maxine Carrington, the chief people officer at Northwell
Health. Little small hospital system of
106,000 employees. It is actually New York State's
largest healthcare provider and and Maxine, you've been with
Northwell since 2008. So that's a, that's a little bit
of time and covering a lot of ground COVID, AI transformation,
just tremendous amounts of change.
Maxine is incredibly well regarded and known within the
industry and, and recognized by modern healthcare as one of the
top 25 women in healthcare. So thank you for joining us.
I'm considering all things going on in in 106,000 employee
organization. I really appreciate you taking
the time to be with us today on this podcast.
Thank you and thank you for all the incredible work that
Northwell does. And we have Bill Strahan, I
don't know, 4 miles away from where I'm sitting right now in
Center City Philadelphia at Comcast headquarters.
Bills, the EVP of human resources for Comcast
connectivity and platform businesses.
Oh my goodness. I mean Comcast.
What I mean are, are this podcast is happening because of
Comcast. All of our Internet on this call
is is Comcast supported and. For the business, John of.
Course, but any talk about complexity and, and moving from
sort of, you know, kind of a traditional, should I say
traditional cable company? In some ways, you guys were the,
you know, our cable, but you know, from that to a technology
powerhouse, such a global technology powerhouse.
So it'd be really, really interesting to hear from you,
Bill, what that journey has been like.
And then we have John Toohey, who is the managing partner,
Trilogy Talent Advisors. And John's been doing incredible
work for the last 25 years, placing CHROS and C-Suite
leaders for some of the biggest organizations around the world.
And we're really, really looking forward to hearing his
perspective, not just, you know, hearing as a Chr in the Chr
seat, but what is it like to place CHRS and what are CE OS
and boards asking for right right now?
What kinds of trends are you seeing John?
So we've got Bill, Maxine, John, this is like an All Star crew
basically. And I delighted to, to, to dig
in. So I, I want to start with just
with you, Maxine and Bill, you're, I mean between both of
you responsible for over 150,000 employees in your respective
organizations. When you wake up on a Monday
morning right now in 2026, what's the first thing on your
mind? All.
Right, So you know, I'm chuckling to myself, first of
all, Jonathan, thank you certainly for the opportunity,
but also for the impact you and your organization I have had on
Northwell, right, all of your coaches helping our leaders to
to grow and evolve and deliver greater value and impact.
So thank you. So I chuckled to myself because
the first thing is, you know, thank God I'm breathing is the
first thing that comes to mind these days, you know, when you
wake up. But the other thing I've sort of
trained myself to think about certainly is, you know, what's
on the agenda for today? Who do I need to connect with?
But then there's also this concept of seeing around
corners. You know what might I not be
thinking of that I've got a, you know, make sure I'm thinking of
what might I not anticipate today that I may want to think
about and be ready for. And so sort of training myself
and and that's what a Monday morning looks like today.
And I don't get the Monday scary's by the way.
I get really excited actually for the week and what we get to
do. So grateful to be in that place
as well. I love that.
I love that this metaphor of looking what's around the corner
and it's so easy. I, I know my Monday morning, if
I just sort of default to opening up the sort of fire hose
of, of my e-mail and slack, you know, it, it, it becomes
essentially just this like reactive catching up and, and
you can easily, you know, just spend the entire day sort of
reacting and, and, and, and trying to play catch up.
But this notion of sort of seeing beyond the corner that
that's like the Super skill I think leaders need to possess.
It's how do you live in the now, but also be proactive and sort
of see what's, what's around the corner, what's ahead.
I appreciate that. I also, Maxine, interestingly
enough, somebody asked me the early this morning is like, what
advice would you give a leader today?
I'm like, breathe. I'm like, you know, you
mentioned like breathing and and, but, but yeah, but with the
the, the sort of torrent of change that we're all
experiencing, like breathing being being pretty important,
intentional breathing. That is so.
Well, thank you, Ed. I'd love to be with you on a
Monday morning. That sounds so peaceful.
You're welcome. I'm mixnatic here.
Bill, how about you? What's a Monday morning look
like? Yeah, I, I not to, not to take
the question, you know, too too specifically, but I bet Maxine
has the the same experience that I do that we, you know, we both
run operations that are 24/7, 365 S sometimes Monday is the
day after you worked on Sunday. You know, if, if there is a flu
epidemic in upstate New York, I bet Maxine's watching the
numbers and you know, you don't, you don't always get to take the
time off. So, so the first thing about
Monday is, is it, is it the, the first day after Friday or is it
the first day after Monday? I, and I don't say that
sarcastically as much as, you know, the, the rhythm of the
rhythm of time. And it's going to really go to
my, my substantive answer, but it's, it's different depending
upon the business you're into. And when you are in a service
business where like important things depend on you, like, oh,
by the way, saving your life through remarkable caring
healthcare, you know, the, the rhythm's a little different for
for me, though, to, to get to the what the questions really
trying to get to. I think it for me, it's about
the tensions. It's the meaning that the
tensions between how do I both go faster and then have the
focus to think about the particulars that I need to be
on. How do we innovate and yet keep
the stability for people to have the rocks and anchors and
pillars that they need? And it's not about how do you
get any particular thing done or necessarily what's like the item
priority for the week. It's about constantly managing
the dynamism of trying to find the balance.
But again, but I'm going to say the tensions.
I like that word because it's, it's, it's almost like a
gravitational system of the, you know, planets going around the
sun. You're, you're just trying to
make sure things stay in orbit. At least for me on a kind of a,
there was those moments like a Monday morning when you're
reflecting rather than like the To Do List or something like
that. Or hey, let me remind myself of
the values it's living in, the dynamism of all the various
forces that are simultaneously at play.
I, I love that metaphor and I'm thinking, I mean the way you
painted this picture of like almost, you know, an, an
orbiting system of planets and you've got that, you know, that
the interesting thing though, is like what happens when you get a
little, you know, sort of like curveball, you know, that throws
off the balance, right? So, you know, that's a but, but
this dynamism, it's interesting to think about the like the
paradoxical nature of what we do, you know, like do we need to
solve for now or the future? Short term, long term?
It it it's it is this constant. You can think of it as a
juggling act. But but it but but even more
eloquently, like to your point, bill, about dynamism, like
you're in that. And then it's about how do you
shift and constantly prioritize and re prioritize.
That's really so OK, that that brings me into like the the
seat. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm kind of
like empathizing and, and the seats getting hot, you know, the
CHROC is getting hot. This is a question really for,
for the, for the three of you. And, you know, I'm, I'm kind of
fascinated. So air has been, you know, in
doing leadership advisory for 17 years now.
And, you know, I remember the first time I met a CHRO and I,
you know, very blessed to have many, many great relationships
and a network of, of, of senior leaders and, and many CHROS.
And it feels like the role has shifted a little bit.
And, you know, in some ways, you know, there's nothing new under
the sun. In other ways, it feels like
this role has has changed. And in some ways, even if you
look at just the last three to five years, it feels like the
role has changed more in that period of time, say COVID to
now. How has the role shifted?
How has it changed? And you know, to the extent that
that you have a crystal ball, you know, like where, where is
it going from here, right? I guess I first, it's a great
question and then I do think your instincts are, are correct.
For me, I think the role has has continued to grow and evolve by
kind of broadening and deepening.
You know, I think if you go 5, seven years ago, it was how does
the company manage the competition for labor, both
attraction from the outside, retention from the inside, and
then kind of running the systems that that made you a an
effective competitor for labor. And I think now effective CHROS
are by definition multifunctional players and are
more than ever are C-Suite executives first and thinking
about those particular levers in competing for labor, but like a
growingly distant second. So being part of the decision,
decisions about if we're going to go in and invest in this
business, are we going to be able to deliver the talent?
If we have these functions and tasks and value creation
opportunities, how are we going to fulfill them?
Are we going to go sort of external contractors that we're
we're sort of managing? Are we going to or should we
just shop this out? Should we invest in automation
and machines? Should we invest in employees to
to do those work thinking more long term?
You're, you're, you're balancing all a lot of different functions
simultaneously. It's, it's finance, it's brand
in general, it's sort of operations purely and you're
bringing and delivering expertise around the people side
of it. But you don't get to escape from
looking at the the business problem from every angle, along
with the CFO, the CMO, the CTO and everybody else.
So the evolution then, if we think about the from to it, it's
like from a place of say, you know, we, we, we need more
talent, we need to attract the right talent, we need to retain
that talent. And, and it's almost like your
job this is in, in the sort of the from state is, is to sort of
be a steward of talent, right, All things talent.
And but, but what I'm hearing from you is that like
increasingly if not fully like you're, you're in the business
decisions themselves, right, in terms of the strategy, you know,
if we're going to go into an M&A or if we're going to do a pivot
here, you know, whereas maybe 10 years ago CHRO is like, no, no,
I just need you to keep figuring out how do we get the right
amount of people and retain those people you're being
brought into those meetings. Is that capture?
That's a good summation. Yeah.
And I, I do think you're, you know, you're thinking still
about competitive advantage, but certainly more broadly, you
know, not just within the context of, you know, the war
for talent only. And then in the context of the
war for talent, you know, you think about growth.
So healthcare has lagged, you know, lagged for a period of
time. You know, that was the narrative
and we had to go out and learn really from all industries a lot
of for profit, right? And and start to bring some of
that thinking and that speed and that agility and that, you know,
those ways in. So now we've we continue to
grow, we grow rapidly. And so you're thinking or
design, you're thinking operating model, what needs to
shift, but then you're thinking still competitive advantage in
brand. And now Healthcare is getting
this wrap of big healthcare affordability is a big issue.
So how do we buffer that? How do we counter that?
And everyone's got to be thinking about it.
You know, I think one shift for us is there's a greater focus on
the external in HR today. And I've been with this
organization since 2008. There wasn't a whole lot of
pressure on us years ago to be engaging with public officials,
elected officials. Now, I think there isn't a month
that goes by when I'm not in front of a senator or a
representative or, you know, trying to talk about workforce,
trying to talk about the brand, trying to talk about, you know,
the challenges we foresee, how we're thinking about AI, we're
educating them so that they become more informed, You know,
so I think that's a, that's been a definitely evolving
expectation. That's really so Maxine, is that
like I'm trying to think about like what's the, the, the
underlying like reason? You know why this kind of
influence policy, right? Influencing.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
And just the greater expectation that you will have a key role in
that, you know, as we think about cost, as we think about
perspectives on healthcare and and reputation and what we do
versus this narrative of big, bad, unaffordable, not
transparent, can't be trusted healthcare, you know, so that's
been definitely an interesting shift.
And I would say that more broadly beyond the CHRL role,
but certainly HR is definitely in the room each and every time.
That's fascinating, John. You know, you're, you're sitting
at a unique, you know, vantage point here because you're
placing CHROS, you know, for a living and CE OS and CF OS.
But you know, I am curious, like what are boards and CE OS asking
for like right now that maybe they weren't asking for 5-7
years ago? You know, are you seeing any
difference? Yes.
And you know, to characterize it more as a yes and question
versus a from to question, because everything that Maxine
and Bill said that they needed to do incredibly well six years
ago, they're still expected to do incredibly well today, right.
So those are so it's not like that.
Went away. That's just become more like
table stakes. What happened?
Was it? Became the table stakes, right.
So that's the how you gain credibility to have the broader
strategic conversation. So you know, what I would say
is, you know that what I've seen and I think Bill and Maxine have
both either address this directly or implicitly is that
the, the, the HR leaders move from being a functional leader
to a business leader who happens to be very, very strong on the
people stuff, right. So, so that is kind of their,
the competency that they bring to the business conversation.
But really it is the business conversation that CE OS and
boards are expecting that there's heads of HR will be
literate in and be able to participate as an equal with the
CFO, with the head of sales, with the chief operating officer
and whomever else might be in the room.
So it's a little bit more, you know, from how do we keep
workforce engaged, how do we optimize labor to, you know, how
is our workforce strategy helping us from a competitive
advantage standpoint. And that is a much broader
conversation is a conversation that requires all of the things
that made Maxine and build great HR leaders in 2019, plus an
ability to see around the corners that Maxine had talked
about as one of her Monday morning goals for the week.
And also, you know, have the capability to really Dr.
execution. So there there was always a a
knock on HR, let's say in the early 2000s, maybe into the
teens that it was very hard to measure what H Rs impact was in
an organization. Now it's probably seen as one of
the most measurable functions that you can find within an
organization. But you know, Bill and Maxine
have to be very literate in their ability to show tangible
impact. So it's, I think it's around,
you know, moving from functional to business.
Leadership moving and also an understanding that the Chr is
probably one of the few enterprise leaders that the CEO
has on their team. Everybody else has something
else they're probably responsible for.
You have a business unit leader, you have a regional leader.
I would say the CFO, the CEO and the Chr are really the three
executors who that are looking at the entire enterprise on a
constant basis. And that's really, I think been
a change and it has opened up kind of what we look for in HR
leaders versus what we may have looked for 10 years ago.
And John presumably trilogy talent partners.
The trilogy is CHROCFOCEO based on the comments you Yeah aside.
From the fact that when we started the firm, all the good
names were taken. That certainly is a big part of
why we decided to to name the the The Business Trilogy.
I love it. I mean.
All roles are, are, are incredibly valuable, but there
is this sort of disproportionate value here because of the
enterprise leadership of those 3 roles.
It first you know you you said this term yes and so if.
People who are training to be actors and spend time, and a lot
of them do in improv, you're told that when the person on the
other side of the exchange says something, the worst thing to
say in improv is no. You have to say yes.
And and you build the seed from there.
So it's a it's a technique with an improv and I think it can be
helpful. In negotiation.
Part of it is, you know, a lot of what we're doing now, you
know, you talked about COVID, talk about your political
environment, talk about regulatory change, talk about
AIA. Lot of what we're doing is
improv. You know, how many times during
COVID did we say we're sort of making it up as we go along
because we've never done this before.
The the analogy between improv acting and the way sometimes
you're managing is, is pretty similar.
The Venn diagrams kind of crossover.
And I think that's one of the reasons that this yes.
And concept, which I I think is more like decades old has kind
of come in. I so so I'm going to put out a
flood for an NBC show. If anybody remembers 30 Rock.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and remembers, you
know, the characters there. Liz Lemon talking about improv.
That's where I first heard it. We're we're subscribe to
Peacock. Watch it.
You'll love it. Well, I I.
Mean you're going exactly where where my head's going, Bill,
which is it? It could very well be like sort
of a timeless concept and and, and certainly sounds like it's
a, a very important concept in improv, but I'm seeing a, a
higher frequency of that verbiage.
People are yes, ending me all over the place.
And I think it's a function of exactly just said, like change
is happening in, in bigger, more unpredictable ways, in an
accelerated pace. I would even argue as I've made
this argument that that we're in a, in a context of constant
change, right? It's not even that we're in this
higher frequency or an accelerating change.
It's like constant change. And when that happens, it forces
more sort of paradoxes more, yes.
And like, are you focused on top line or bottom line?
You know, are you focused on the short term or the near term?
Both. You know, is it execution or
strategy? Both yes and right.
So I it's just interesting to think about that concept is a
function of the dynamic times we're in right now.
But something that really has been on my mind.
You know, it's interesting. I'm I'm, I'm an executive coach,
a leadership advisor. I like to do this podcast and
get out and speak a little bit, but I'm also CEO, right?
So, so I'm, I'm a leader myself. And I'll tell you one of the
most humbling variables. You know, we have 45 skills in
the air leadership framework. One of the most humbling skills
is culture building because you think, you know, you roll out a
culture initiative and you know, you, you get up and, and, and do
something that's like very powerful for the culture.
You, you crystallize and redefine the culture and you
like, I did it, I did it right? And there's this sort of
tendency just like most things, like you do it and then you move
on, right? Like I said it and forget it
kind of thing. But that is not how culture
works. It's that 24/7 invisible thing.
And that also is harder. I think I experienced this as a
leader and I'm curious your experience when everything is
moving so fast and there's so much change or constant change
culture, which is many ways the thing that helps people stay
grounded and orients people. I feel like that can be at risk.
And I'm just curious from your perspective, A, any sort of
thoughts on on the, you know, the importance of culture on
your level of prioritization and and B, what what are you doing
to enhance and build culture when we're in a time where
everything is changing? Yeah, you know.
We so at Northwell. You will never have any leader
at Northwell on a stage without them referencing culture.
It is in our to talk about culture.
It's funny, if you can see behind, there's a, a little sign
there and it's, it's our values at Northwell.
We call them the truly's. So it's everything from
compassionate, truly compassionate to truly
innovative, to truly inclusive, truly together, et cetera.
And we try to give that language to everyone when they have to
describe culture to, to anchor it back to those values, right?
If you need a simple way to not get overwhelmed and describe our
culture, we could talk about the unofficial stuff too, right?
And in each entity, but by and large, it's, it's those values
because compassion is the thing that we sell, you know, in
healthcare, we have to be compassionate, but we also have
to innovate. We have to make sure we're
providing cutting edge care, delivering, you know, the, the,
the most competent expert care that we can to save lives, to
improve quality of life. So we have to be innovating.
And so I, I think about the context Bill described earlier
too, because you're trying to direct culture, but then you're
also sensing it at the same time to make sure that all the
artifacts, all the signals you're sending are for the time,
right? Because we talked, you know, I
mentioned the broader environment recently.
So politics, you see the shift there, right?
We're talking about the environment, we're talking about
the economy, all of those things.
Bill mentioned tension. You know, can stress culture
because it's people who express your culture, right?
Your decisions and your policy processes and policies express
culture. But you have to, at the same
time you're trying to drive it, retain it, fight for it.
You have to be sensing, is it still relevant?
Is it still going to help us achieve our goals?
This is going to give us competitive advantage.
So we're always doing both at the same time, you know, and who
we recruit for, what we celebrate, what we reinforce,
what we communicate, the signals we send, but at the same time,
sensing who is the workforce today, what are their unique
challenges? What do patients want?
What do communities want? And do we need to shift things
in the culture to be responsive and relevant?
So it is a fast fascinating time to your point in the context of
so much change, you know for us, you mentioned COVID earlier in
Digit and AI, you know we're implementing Epic which is a
well known electronic medical records system.
We are their largest implementation ever.
So we're in the middle of that. We just changed our CEO and CEO
and Chief nursing officer and Chief development officer and
chief strategy. I could keep going all at the
same time. And then we decided let's
integrate a new house another health system in at the same
time, right and etcetera. So I'm so grateful for the
culture we've built through the years because there's no way we
could be as stable as we are and and still thriving.
Not perfect without having focused a whole lot on culture
through the years. And the last thing, because I
can't help it, I'll mention I always talk about when culture
gets tested. So during COVID, you know, as we
come out of the acute phase, other health systems are
reaching out, you know, asking how come your turnover never
went as high? How come you didn't experience
this, that or the other? And we would always respond with
culture. And it was built through the
years, but it wasn't built for, you know, a pandemic.
We didn't have a pandemic in mind when we were building the
culture. It was about making sure we're
delivering the best patient care, right?
But intro COVID and, and that is the biggest test.
People are dying, team members are dying.
Talk about being stressed. But I mentioned truly
innovative. I will give you just a quick
story and then I'll, I'll stop. There was a moment we had to
stand up team member testing, right?
Because COVID hits. We've got to develop the test
for it and we need the infrastructure and the plan for
it. We set everything up.
Team members and their families are going to come and get
tested. I get a call the day before and
at this point I'm the deputy chief feed officer.
I get a call. Max, we can't open up tomorrow.
We don't have the swabs. We don't have enough swabs.
So we have to pause operations on opening the next day
expecting people to come get tested.
Later that day, I get a call from one of our Innovation
Center. Max, we're going to be able to
open. We were able to 3D print swabs
for you, right? And so in that moment, I say to
myself, this is our culture that no one said die, no one said
we're going to give up. It was we're going to figure out
a way. And they 3D printed the swabs
and we were able to open and begin testing our team members,
You know, so you look at those moments and just gratitude for
the culture, but then always worried about it too, because of
all the pressures, everything we're going through right now
that you want to preserve it, but make sure it's the strongest
and most relevant. What's?
Fascinating for me and unless you speak about this, is that
culture is not just this thing that like a feeling.
It is, you're describing it as like the enabler, like the
reason why you're able to change isn't because of, you know, some
change management program or some brilliant person here.
It's, it's the cult, the intentional sort of
strengthening of that culture is what is served as the platform
for allowing you to move so quickly and do the amount of
change that that you've done. That's that's really like a
different way of looking at it. So it's a different paradigm
for, for orienting the culture, culture as an enabler.
That's, that's a beautiful story, Maxine Bill, when we, you
know, one of the first times we met, you were actually on stage
doing a keynote on this topic of culture.
So, you know, I'm, I'm curious to get your perspective,
especially, you know, I mean, taking what, what is like
essentially like an aircraft carrier and, and like moving it
from traditional cable to a technology powerhouse.
Like what were the implications there, you know, when it came to
culture, Like how did you manage that?
And and what are some of your learns about about culture?
Yeah, sure. Well, the first thing I'd say is
I, I think the shift in, First off, we just got a master class
on culture from the HRO perspective.
So whatever I'm going to say is sort of the footnotes and the,
the, you know, around the edges. I would really just sort of
stop, go back, you know, you can go back.
It was 345 minutes. Listen to what Maxine said
again. And I mean that sincerely.
So, so I'll add mine just sort of in the context of that First
off. Secondly, because the idea that
your culture, I think it's a little bit like when you're
teaching somebody to drive and their instincts are to, you
know, just squeeze the life out of the wheel and, and you know,
it's not that, right? You, you, you have to understand
that culture needs to, needs to shift and it's, it's a living,
breathing thing. And if we see, or if we really
take seriously this notion of the trilogy that, you know,
you're, you're kind of a broader executive, you've got to take
all the aspects of how to be competitive and deliver your
purpose as an organization into account.
So culture is going to evolve along the way.
And it's really the, the management of the development of
culture rather than, you know, trying to hold onto a, a
particular manifestation or expression of it so hard that
you just choke the life out of it.
It's, it's sort of .1. And that's been the case with
us, I think as we've moved more from the purpose and what we do
for a living is the delivery of service, which obviously that
remains, but it's it's actually the design and engineering of
new services and new technology. It's meant a respect and
appreciation for a whole other kind of talent and employee base
and making sure the culture is responsive to, to both sides.
So, you know, more and more focus on innovation as something
culturally celebrated as we grow the proportion of engineers
relative to other people in the company higher and higher.
So that's, that's sort of point 1.2 that I, I, I'd make and, and
it's a, it's a carry on to, to what Maxine said about COVID.
COVID was just so interesting. And obviously what, what people
in healthcare industry did is, is the, you know, first and
primary heroic story of that, of that those few years.
But I'll use it, you know, a provocative phrase.
In the years that followed, I talked a lot to our employee
teams about I think COVID was when we a little bit of a early
2000s term, we weaponized culture.
Meaning if you think of one of the things that a, a clear
culture does for you is it instructs people what to do when
they don't have time to ask for direction, right?
It when push comes to shove and you're, you're choosing between
2 great outcomes or two lousy outcomes, or you're trying to
prioritize scarcity. Culture tells that person what
to do when they don't have the luxury of asking.
And you know, during COVID, while the healthcare folks were
delivering, you know, physical care, they were also delivering
telephonic and video care. You know, I talk about our
frontline employees put the country on their back.
We increase the capacity of our network by 30% in about four
months, which is stunning. That would have been a
three-year run rate. But it had to happen for people
to get to work, get to school, to be able to see their loved
ones, to understand what was happening in the world.
All of those things happened through broadband and the
capacity of the country had a big punch and point towards
Center City business districts, downtown business districts.
We had to build out the capacity in residential neighborhoods for
24/7 capability that just wasn't there.
Broadband capability is a physical thing that gets
delivered in space. And so having to build that out.
And when I talk about weaponizing the culture,
people's understanding that what we do is important, how we do it
with integrity, with safety, with respect for our customers,
respect for ourselves, all including the development of
innovation, all of that fuel people making the right
decisions, knowing when to just drive, when to take a risk, when
to take a chance. And then we've been able, I
think to use that the period as an educational tool to then tell
that story and talk about now, what does that mean going
forward as we face other kinds of challenge, some of which are
merely commercial, you know, as opposed to, you know,
existential. But but it remains the the best
teaching moment and asset that we will have I think for a few
years, you know. Capability, ability, capability
and speed, you know, you described and, and that was the
other thing for us that things we had talked about doing in the
past we had to do in a short. So we were capable of the speed,
you know, Now it also helped that some regulation was relaxed
too for us. And and that's certainly helped.
But yeah, but I mean, so. Many organizations, every
organization in the world was, was challenged by, by this, this
common threat and, and some were able to rise to the challenge
and do extraordinary things. And some got totally just like
toppled or near, near toppled. And, you know, there's, there's
all sorts of underlying reasons, but I would say leadership and
and culture building and the culture that existed going into
that storm probably played a pretty significant role in
determining whether you rose to the occasion successfully or,
or, you know, sputtered out or got toppled.
Yeah, I see. And we don't usually think
about, you know, who wants to think about COVID times.
It was so, so hard and so traumatizing.
And yet the the heroic and, and and acts of leadership that that
we saw were, were just inspiring straight up Bill's point.
You know, not wasting a crisis, right?
That yes, it happened, yes, it's hard to return to, but what did
we learn from it and how can we continue to write?
So just let wait. By the way, Bill, yours was a
master class. Just FYI, we have. 2 master
classes on culture here John. I mean, when you're doing a
search, are are you is culture fall into the criteria or, or
there's like, hey, we just want an enterprise HR leader who can,
you know, move and shake or or who can be incredibly strategic.
Like do you ever get that specific ask?
Like we need somebody who's an incredible culture builder or
yes. But I think the more impactful
thing that we're seeing from a search perspective is how much
the of a more important variable within a candidate's decision is
based on the culture of the organization that they are going
to join. So yes, we all want people who
are strong at managing culture and defending it and helping it
evolve as necessary. But you're getting much more
cultural due diligence from candidates today than you did
previously and I won't as a non CHRO.
Presumed to be able to add much more than Bill and Maxine did on
culture building. But if you can't clearly
articulate your story, and if it doesn't hold up under scrutiny,
you're losing great people who otherwise could be incredible
contributors to your organization.
By the way, sorry Bill, I just wonder also, you know, when you
think about acquisition, you know, M&A and through the years,
I mean we had to learn to start with culture because I think
back in the day we started with, you know, you've now adopted our
policy, you're now adopting our process, you know the light
switches and you have our name. But now we start with
relationship 1st and culture 1st and let's compare our values
1st. And you know, so I'm not sure
how just your perspective on that evolution as well.
Or maybe you were starting with culture in the beginning as
well. You know, I, I.
Know exactly what you're, you're saying, I think.
And I, I can't say that we, we always started with culture and
I, I to be direct, I can't honestly say that we start with
culture. Now what I think it does is it
there's a, there gets to be a fork in the road pretty, pretty
early, but it but a fork in the road that says, OK, we need to
acquire this. And then but why is it?
Is it going to be just an integrated extension of our
footprint? And they, they have to be able
to fit in culturally because they're going to be just like
us, but in a new place or maybe in a new market or because they
know we're going to keep all the people or do we really want the
the assets, the technology? Do we want, you know, the market
share, something along those lines.
And then we're going to maybe cherry pick the folks against
the standard of culture. It tells us I think as much how
to do the M&A or whether depending upon how we want to do
it, is it going to work or not. Because if it is that notion of
it's going to be just like us, but in a new place.
And so they've got to be, they've got to think and they,
they've got to be culturally aligned to us.
If, if the culture is wrong, then we're, we're, we're
probably not going to do it. We're going to be much more
selective about how we get it done.
But it's an excellent point. And if anybody's working in M&A
and you're not thinking about that, you're, you're making a
mistake. What, what, how do you think
about that? Or how do you, how do you know,
Maxine, when you're looking at a target, whether they work for
you or not? Culturally, Yeah.
It's a, it's a great point and, and obviously we're looking at,
you know, the dollars and their performance and, and then you
know, the way we build the relationship too will vary.
You know, in some contexts it's an affiliation, it's a
partnership with maybe a view toward full ownership in the
future. And sometimes we've had to walk
away because we couldn't get the finances there or we were so
culturally misaligned that we said this is going to be more
pain than you know and value. So it it plays into the
beginning of the conversation and those conversations can
take, you know, years. Nuvance.
I mean, that's a 7 plus year conversation before we said yes,
we're going to bring new vents in and then of course having to
clear every regulatory hurdle. But we spend a whole lot of time
upfront, you know, going out. We do these big celebrations at
the sites, we do a lot of dinners, we do a lot of
gatherings. And we're not leading with, you
know, on this day your paycheck is going to change.
On this day, the brand is going to change.
It's leading with listening and getting to know.
And then we work a whole lot on what we call cultural immersion.
So we assess what we call their cultural artifacts.
How do they make decisions? Who are the decision makers,
Right. So all of those things.
And then we go on a journey together.
So a lot of high touch in person sessions around the values,
around the mission, those types of things to get to know our
identity in that regard first. Now behind the scenes, we have
folks assessing and determining a timeline of when we make
certain changes, but we don't lead with that.
Bill, this reminds. Me, you know, you were talking
earlier about you can't like squeeze it, you can't like push
it too hard or it you know, kind of like backfires.
And you know, Maxine, it's, it's, it's really another master
class in strategy, you know, with regard to culture and
particularly in M&A like connect understand do all of that first
before kind of saying, and here's how we sort of operate
and here's how things might change, right?
That's that's really, really beautiful.
I do, you know, going back to that orbit system, Bill, that
kind of that dynamism that as a leader we have to sort of
somehow find a way to keep it in balance.
There is actually a new planet that was discovered called AI.
OK, so let's like get that little elephant under the, you
know, under the rug and, and just, you know, let's just call
it out, right? This is on everybody's mind.
We're all using it, all of us, and it's tremendous.
It's not just like a new cool technology or like a calculator.
It, it, it's arguably something that that will be
transformational, if it hasn't been already, will be
transformational to every sort of paradigm within work and
outside of work, right. So you know, I am curious to get
everyone's take on what is your greatest hope and what is your
greatest fear with regard to AI? So probably not a function
inside of an organization that has more opportunity and more
disruption within a company than HR.
Related to AI, you know, it's because AI is going to change
the way we work. It's going to change who does
the work, it's going to change where they do the work.
It's going to change how many people we need to do the work,
etcetera, etcetera. Also, AI loves data and HR is
one of the largest repositories of data that an organization
has. So there's a lot to, to work
with there. I think my, my fear is that
without a lot of thought, there may be a, a rush to use AI to
kind of how hollow out HR processes before really
understanding what it is that you're losing.
So, you know, you get headcount reductions in HR that are
labeled as AI efficiency. And then six months later, you
know, you're in a cultural crisis because there's no one
left who knows how to address an issue, right?
There's not a human there. I think my greatest hope is kind
of on the flip side, you know, HR is forcing boards, forcing CE
OS to continue to elevate the function and take the, the, the,
the work of the CHRO, you know, more seriously than they ever
have before. Because, you know, it is that
human AI integration, which I think is what's going to drive
businesses forward. Those decisions are genuinely
consequential to an organization and they probably touch every
part of your business. So, so I think, you know, more
than any other transformational change that I've seen in
business, the Chr is driving the AI conversation at a general
management and board level, much more so than I've seen in other
transformational initiatives. And that's a real shift.
And I think the HR leaders, the ghost in the machine here.
So you know, you can have wonderful AI transformation that
still has soul to it, but not if you're if you're not, if you're
human capital leader, a significant voice in that that
process. John, thank you, Bill, but
where, where are you at with AI? Yeah, so.
You know, like other organizations, you know where it
within HR, within company, obviously we're using it sort of
I'd say we're using it in big places.
You know, some, some material, rebuilding A processes, you
know, big, big tools. If when we would, if you're a
customer of ours and you engage with us, there is AI running
that instructs whether it's an online interaction that you're
having with, you know, an automated text bot or it's a
human being who's writing or a human being who's speaking to
you. Or if you go to a retail store
and a person knows who you are, they're you, they're being fed
AI driven tools to talk about how to retain you as a customer.
That that's a big deal for us and it's working pretty darn
well. And then, you know, using it
small where everyday people are kind of accelerating their work,
whether it's first drafts or finding information more quickly
within the company's systems, using AI sort of search as
opposed to other things. So it's, it's being used a lot.
My, my hope is that we actually use it well and we kind of don't
get Dumber because of it. And I, I, I say that a little
smart alecky, but a little bit like, yeah, I hope we don't get
Dumber. And meaning to think that all
the answers are already there. All the solutions are there.
I just need a bot to quickly organize it for me because I
don't want to have to. I'm not going to think about it.
I'm not going to bring my experience, my humanity to it.
That, that's, that's my biggest fear and my, I guess my biggest
hope is that we, we do it well. So it's just, it's maybe the,
just the like John, it's the opposite sides of the coin.
And by doing it well, I mean things like, and, and I think
this is a cautionary tale for HR leaders because everyday
somebody's trying to, excuse me, everybody's trying to sell you
some AII think to buy it well, to use it well, to build it
well, you have to have some fundamental idea of how it
works. You don't have to be a data
scientist, you don't have to be a mathematician, you don't have
to be a computer scientist. But if you don't understand the
basics of you know what a, you know what a frontier model is
versus LLM versus machine learning, If you don't
understand how training data is used, all of those kinds of
things. If you don't know how to
properly structure prompts you, you're really on the verge of HR
malpractice because all you're doing is getting a kind of a
gussied up faster version of asking for a random answer to
probably an important question. And, and, and John, I'll throw
in a commercial for air consulting here.
One of the first places that I saw a serious attempt at that
conversation was with you. You partnered at the time with
Microsoft and had just a wonderful.
We were here in Philadelphia at at The Four Seasons about a
year. Year in change ago yeah, yeah
and. I, I have to tell you, I was
first. I was like, what the heck is he
doing this for? Because I at that point I'm
thinking, well, that's it. That should be a technology
company. This should be, you know, any of
the big technology consultants, the strategy, not a leadership
company. I couldn't have been any more
wrong about the importance of you leading with that.
And you couldn't have been any more right or insightful in
bringing that to the market and bringing that to the service of
your client community. And I was grateful for it then.
I remain grateful for it now. Bill, thank.
You so much and we're still at it more more than ever huge huge
interest in how do we help our leaders become AI ready and wow.
I totally agree, though, it's it, it, it and, and John, to
your earlier point about like, because, because it's so much
fun and it and you see how much time it saves and, and, and you
think about what that translates into from on the bottom line.
And so you get into this sort of AI euphoria and it's like, I
want more, I want more, I want. And then six months later, you
know, you're like, oops, where's that person?
Or oh, I forgot, we forgot how to do that or right.
So and and and Bill to your point about like.
You know. And this, this is my biggest
fears that we essentially delegate our critical thinking,
right? That's that's the and, and, and
as this becomes more sophisticated by the week, by
the way, by the, I mean, you just argue, you say by the day,
but it's like, Ah, well, I'll just ask AI and and then what
happens to that part of our brain responsible for critical
thinking that that scares me. You're just working on.
Improving your props. You know that is a better
promise, but that's it. Maxine, what's what's going on
in your world with AI, What you're hoping to fear, You know,
it's so. Interesting what Bill said,
because I think sometimes you know about all of the
stakeholders that were managing through this right from the
board to in our case even unions.
So we've got about 30% of our population.
And even when you saw the Screen Actors and you know, some of the
strikes and that whole debate over technology and you know, I
was meeting with one of the unions the other day and it was
we don't want it replacing the clinical judgement of our
nurses, right? And I'm saying to them now think
about the burden on nurses today because of all the
administrative stuff they have to do.
Do you think their clinical judgement is best positioned and
enabled today? So the way we're trying to look
at it is can we create capacity so that they it can actually
improve their judgement? That's how I want you thinking
about it. But they're, they're asking the
right things and they're challenging us in the right way.
To Bill's point, we have to be thinking about it.
So yesterday on our enterprise wide HR town hall, we had one of
the consulting firms present specifically on HR and AYAI,
excuse me, and there are these, you know, these different
levels. So the exploring level, the
experimenting level, the establishing, the scaling and
the innovating. And then, you know, tested the
team on where would you say North Pole HR is, right?
And we've got the integrated sites coming in with where they
are in the journey as we pull them into where we are in the
journey. So it's interesting to see the
feedback from the team. You know, a couple years ago, we
from an HR standpoint, because we've got AI and the rest of the
system happening, but we actually LED with a digital
assistant because I had to start to change the HR, HR service
delivery model because Northwell was scaling, getting bigger.
We're growing for profit, we're growing into other markets, but
I can't grow HR at the same scale.
And then I also needed to upscale our people so that I'm
not paying people a whole lot of money to answer PTO questions
that honestly, you know, an agent or something can answer,
right? And so we LED with the digital
assistant and, and now, you know, it's from recruitment to
certain the support center and HR to, to other areas, But now
with teams experimenting and having contests around building
agents. So we're allowing them while
we've got formal platforms, but also saying it's OK to
experiment. So go ahead, build your own
apps. And we've done that.
Go ahead, build your own agents so that we can rely less on the
outside and build a lot, you know, internally as well, of
course, passing every New York City's got laws and regulations
around this stuff, etcetera. And we have to comply and we
want to ethically do the right thing too.
So, so that's where we are. And then we are thinking about
the broader workforce as we project shortages in certain
areas if we can for sure. And we've done a whole skills
analysis in the org of all the skills at Northwell.
We've got a team that's been scoring the impact of AI on
those skills to be able to say to the organization, we believe
this work can be not just augmented, but maybe even done,
you know, using technology. Now let's look at these people.
Can they be, we have a corporate university, Can they be
reskilled through the corporate university if they've got a
passion into some of those areas where we project shortage that
pay very well as well. So that's sort of our the
narrative we are socializing right now and trying to get the
org ready for that. Yeah, it's really.
And what's your, you know, greatest hope and fear?
Yeah. So, you know, honestly, the the
fear is I've been reading more about the environmental impact,
you know, even when you've thank you, even just that, please and
thank you make me a. Bunny rabbit that plays hockey,
that just, like, burned down the tree, right?
Yeah, that's right. Now and the water for the
cooling. And so honestly from a macro
standpoint, that's my biggest fear.
And then, you know, the opportunities around capacity,
but I mean, the societal shifts, the cultural shifts beyond the
workplace that this is going to like affection.
It's going to be very, very interesting as we create more
capacity for folks. Does the work day, the work week
become three days? Does it become four days?
I mean, and then how does comp get it?
If so? My brain is, you know, trying to
contemplate all of that. Those are some of the
conversations we're having as we try to be futurist.
Yeah. Thank you.
Maxine OK, there are a lot of HR leaders, there's a lot of
leaders, but within that a subset of HR leaders and CHROS
who listen to this podcast regularly.
And, and it's hard out there. Like it's, I don't care whether
you're an HRCFO at any function, it's just, it is not an easy
time to to work in this world. What's one thing?
I'm sure there's many, many things, but what's one thing
you'd want our HR listener to remember tomorrow morning?
I'm I'm happy to go first. So we talked a little bit about,
you know, competition and about the, you know, John's wonderful
company is named Trilogy is these, you know, these three
entities. I think the, the need for the,
for people leaders, HR leaders, CHROS to sort of think of
themselves as as part of this triumvirate that you're, you,
you are in the competition business.
You're not in the interior design business of just thinking
inside the four walls of your organization.
You've, you've got to think about what I do makes us more
competitive to achieve our purpose as a, as an entity.
Sometimes I think that's lost on HR and I think it's a, it's a
critical driver to help you prioritize and actually, frankly
to choose the HR talent around you love.
That so Bill is in this class of Chr OS I call elite Chr OS, you
know, kind of fanning out. Same thing with John and, you
know, coming back to the seeing around corners, the thing that's
going to distinguish you is, you know, John described the table
stakes before, but the ability, yeah, to be reading, to be
learning, to be scanning, to be a bit of a futurist, right?
I think that's important, the seeing around the corners and
making sure you've got a voice in that and that you're
educating folks on that. I think it's going to
distinguish and and better ready the organization for any change.
I love that. So we got to be an enterprise
leader. We could it's not this is not
about just leading within your sort of four walls like you have
to, you know, traverse across the organization and and and
this you use the word actually sense making earlier on the call
next scene, but but also like sing around the corner, taking
that time to really like think beyond the next quarter or the
next even year. It's always been important to do
that. But but wow, is it very
important right now. Amazing, John, what what What's
a parting message from your You got to be a better.
Leader, you have to be a better leader in your own teams because
your people currently and historically are being trained
for jobs that are not going to exist five years from now.
They are being trained to run steam engines and electric
powered world and and it's your your training programs are
outdated. The way that they're they're
being educated is outdated. And you really need to start
looking at that because you're just, you know, go going to
Maxine's issue around labor shortage and and talent
shortage. It's going to be exacerbated by
the fact that the people that we do have are trained to do the
wrong things. Wow.
I appreciate. I appreciate that message.
Of course, this is a podcast about leadership.
So that's a great parting advice, John.
And, and I do think that the there is a huge risk in getting
stretched too thin, being that enterprise leader and maybe
perhaps spending over indexing on strategy and, and, and trying
to forecast at the expense of spending time with the team,
right? And leading through others,
because that is ultimately, you know, if you're just doing it
yourself, it's not leadership, right?
It's through others. So I mean, that's a yes and
right. So you got to do what you're
doing, Bill, what you're doing that scene and and obviously to
to hold it all together, right, We've got to be not just good
leaders, but great leaders. This was just a fascinating Rich
discussion and I'm just so appreciate you all being guests
on this podcast. And that will conclude now.
But thank you very much, and we'll look forward to more great
episodes on a podcast about leadership.
Thank you Bill, Maxine and John for an amazing episode.