Inside AT&T's culture playbook with Keith Jackson

Speaker A: Hello, HR professionals. Good news for a limited time. This episode of the Love youe People podcast is valid for five professional development credits towards SHRM cp, SHRM SCP and HRCI recertification. Stay tuned to access your certification code.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Love youe People podcast, John. I'm your host, John Duesberg. And if you're new here, this is the show where we explore how people first strategies help organizations and their teams flourish. Today I am very excited to bring you a masterclass in operational HR with our guest, Keith Jackson, the Chief Human resources officer for AT&T International. Keith's path to the C suite is highly unconventional. He actually transitioned from a high stakes sales leadership background straight into the chro seat. Today he brings that sharp business operator lens to make managing a massive global workforce of over 40,000 employees spanning more than 50 countries. In this conversation we unpack how an outcome driven KPI focused mindset can completely transform an HR organization. How AT&T utilizes a 15 person internal consulting team called the Tactical Employee Solutions Team to step over company silos and fix systemic workforce challenges. And Keith issues an essential warning for modern HR leaders navigating AI and new technologies, something he calls the Manager tax. Whether you are navigating a large enterprise or looking for practical ways to better align your human capital goals with real business metrics, this episode is packed with invaluable operational wisdom. So let's get into it. Thank you so much uh, for being with us, uh, for the Love youe People podcast. Super excited uh, for today's show. Keith, welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Well, thank you John. I appreciate it. It's been. We've known each other for over a decade and it's. I'm glad to be here and share with the organization. Maybe um, I can learn a few things myself and maybe you can learn some things from my experience. Um, also want to thank Tim and also Sherm. Sherm. I'm a proud member. Just want everybody shout out to my friends over at shrm. Um, but yep, you do bring up a point. We're in over 50 countries outside the United States and we have approximately 40,000 employees. Some of those countries are large, some are small. Depending on what we have in those countries. From an enterprise standpoint to customer, uh, care support to it you name. Um, um, comes with a lot of excitement, but it also comes with a lot of moving pieces. Um, while cultures are similar in some countries, they're also different and there's rules and regulations. So um, let's just put it this way, it's kind of like, my past life and sales. It's never boring. It's always exciting. Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, thank you for. Thank, uh, you for joining us, Keith, and being willing just to share your journey, your lessons learned and, um, that can help our broader community. Um, and, uh, and also that context in terms of, you know, your leadership scope at AT&T today. Um, so, so actually I think it's a perfect place for us to actually kick off because the journey is a little unique. I don't meet many executive HR leaders that actually have a sales background. Right. And so it's just interesting. I would love, uh, if you would just share a little bit about what that journey looked like. How did you, you know, where did you start? How did that lead you to where you are today? But also, and maybe even what I'd love for you to just, you know, kind of, um, share more on is based on that background, what are some of the. The. The ways that. That has influenced how you lead today? What are some of the, um, you know, you know, in terms of just, you know, what you're measuring and, and just how you're focused in terms of, you know, the, the operations, you know, just given your sales background, would love to just learn and just hear more about that.

Speaker C: I started right out of Georgia Tech and a sales development program, sales leadership management program for Bell south at the time. And, um, I was in, um, different sales roles up until the. I worked my way up from seller to operations to training to actual director of sales to actually finally the uh, VPGM of uh, the state of Florida. Until I think, John, I've told the story until that one day the CEO called and said, hey, I need to replace my chro. She's moving into a new position. And none of the succession plans have candidates with backgrounds in sales. And of course I told him, well, good luck with that. No one's really going to. No one's in HR has got sales background. He goes, yes, yes, I know. And that's why I'm picking you as my chro. So we, we joked a little, John, about it. The fact that I was like, what did I do wrong to get into hr? Well, actually, I can explain that. Um, it's actually been probably the best decision of my life and my career because I think sales and HR are both people, businesses. They're both exact same. Um, whether it's sales, your people that you're leading in order to serve your clients and get, um, a. And make an objective and also have customer satisfaction. It's the same way with Running an HR organization and supporting those client organizations as well, I probably would. I would tell you what made me successful in sales has made me successful in human resources and that's. I always approach the job from the outcome driven perspective. What are we trying to achieve? What is it? Um, how will we measure that today? And then what was success look like? So I become, um, I'm m very KPI driven when I was in sales. You can't be. All of us who support sales today in HR know it's totally KPI and objective driven. But I brought that with me into the HR organization, driving some of my, uh, direct reports and team that work for me crazy. But at the end of the day, uh, I believe I would. The biggest, the best takeaway and compliment I would get from that was my teams will tell you I never, I never didn't understand what Keith expected of me. And I think that's always important for us to be that from that perspective. I also, I got that probably a little bit from my undergrad days at Georgia Tech and I probably got that all from a nice business book I read early in my career where the quote was, people respect what you expect when you inspect. And it's pretty simple, you know, if you met M, if you are really objective and clear on what you expect and then you share that with the team and then you measure it, then you will always end where you want to be. Some other things I learned in the sales side that I brought into me into the HR side is as, um, I think, John, I shared a story with you in the past. Whereas when I was in sales, I took over this market that had never made a quota in a decade. Never. It's kind of one of those things. It's like, why, why did you take that job? Well, um, number one, those are the jobs you want to take. And one of the things I decided to do there, uh, was replace that leadership team. And at the time I was filling gaps with that leadership team. Little did I know was what I was actually doing was addressing a really hot topic today called skills. I was hiring for individuals that were good in training, a training leader, someone who's good in technology, someone was good in analytics, someone who was good in marketing and product, and then also someone that was good actually in labor relations because this was actually a unionized workforce. What I also didn't realize at the time when I was hiring for these gaps or skills was I was also hiring diversity. I, uh, have a diverse workforce and a diverse work team that was working for Me that brought all these skills to the table. And I also were, uh, hiring people that were smarter than me. So my takeaway from this and what I've always done now, ever since I've been in the HR organization is hire a diverse team, hire with people that have the skills that you need to fill those gaps that you have in the organization and hire people that are smarter than you and get out of their way, give them direction with these KPIs and say what we're trying to solve and then move forward with that perspective. I've taken that from sales and I've moved that into hr and, um, been pretty successful with that over my career.

Speaker B: I love, uh, the quote that you started with, which is sales and hr, both people, Businesses.

Speaker C: Sure.

Speaker B: And, uh, you know, you have external clients, you have internal clients. Um, and that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker C: But.

Speaker B: But say that the, the book. The quote from the book one more time. I think people respect what you expect or expect when you inspect it.

Speaker C: Was it.

Speaker B: Or get that right.

Speaker C: If I remember it correctly, you're this, this young undergrad, right out of college, reading all these business books, trying to figure out, how am I going to be successful in sales? I believe the name. The guy's name was Harvey Mackey, and he was an envelope salesperson. He sold envelopes.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: And he became a really great. It was a great leader in that. But it was. People respect what you expect when you inspect. And what I've found in my career is many times leaders will tell, some tell a team or organization what they expect, but they'll never go back and then measure and inspect to see is what you were asked for happening. And I think when you do that, then you gain the respect of the individuals. I would always say that, uh, we all have a thousand things coming at us at one time. So you'll get one objective thrown at you, and then you'll start to work on it. Then you have another objective, and then you kind of forget about the other one. But when you're tracking all those, then you don't forget about them because you're like, okay, that's important. And I'm inspecting for that, and I'm making sure the team is staying focused on that with all the other things they got. They're juggling at the table at the same time. So, yes, I'm kind of the king of the dashboards.

Speaker B: Got it. Uh, I love it. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Keith. And you know, this. It kind of tees, uh, up. Our next question, which is at this the sheer size and magnitude of an organization like AT&T, it's, you know, where my mind goes is, hey, that, that sounds like sound advice, but how can you possibly do that across all these different countries, you know, all thousands upon thousands of employees? I, I have to believe that just there's going to be silos that get built. Different, uh, teams and organizations, they can have nuances to culture and how they do things, how they operate, especially across different countries. So talk to us a little bit about how do you break that down? How do you honor what makes each team, uh, special, uh, but also get to realize the efficiencies of a larger organization like AT&T. Um, kind of bringing in that dashboard, bringing in that outcomes focused kind of mindset. Share with us a little bit of what that looks like and how potentially leaders can apply that, uh, across their teams today.

Speaker C: I've had the opportunity many times, uh, within att, because we're a company made up of, um, a lot of companies we've acquired and merged together. And um, uh, I think what we've always done from day one is kind of, we've always defined what the objectives are. Number one, who's the boss. Number two is what the objectives. And number three is kind of our North Star. And you always have to have that North Star of what, what are you trying to accomplish overall? If not, you give. People object and they don't understand how they fit into the picture, but you also have to give them, here's your goal, here's your objective, here's the strength that you bring to the table. This is why we acquired you, this is why you're a part of this organization. And ultimately this is what we're trying to accomplish. You can do that from, um, Enterprise standpoint, or you can do that, uh, from an organizational standpoint. You can do that from a country standpoint. In the case of, um, we have a large population in Israel and India that we do a lot of our IT operations. And their North Star is for us to bring the technology functions to the table that enable us to serve our customers in the most efficient and effective way possible. So that's their North Star. And then they have objectives underneath that where they can try to figure that out. Of course, you know, then once you have the objectives and once you have the North Star, you know what's coming next. You execute and you measure. I just brought that up a few minutes ago. But you also have to have what we call that common playbook across the organization. Now, does this always work? Not Always, John. We always. In big large corporations, it can actually happen in small groups as well. But in big large corporations, you'll have silos. Probably every year when we do the employee survey, we get feedback around. It's hard to get business done in this organization due to silos. Um, luckily for us, we've chipped away at that over the years. And that's not the number one thing piece of feedback that we get from our employee surveys, but it's still there. But I could tell you one of the ways. I'll give you a quick story of how we went about solving that in the HR organization. Several years ago, in the HR organization, our clients would come to us with a problem. One example would be, uh, we're trying to solve for attrition. We have attrition. We have an attrition problem. So my HR organization on here, my fellow HR friends will know that, like, okay, well, that could mean a lot of different things. That could be compensation. That could be the people we're hiring. That could be the tests that we're doing for the people we're hiring. That could be also the training we're doing for them. It could be performance management, it could be benefits. It could be all those things. Well, several years ago, when a client would come in with that problem, we would say, okay, well go over to the compensation team and fix that. And they said, well, then you need to go over to this team. And it seemed like we never were resolving the issue. It was like attrition was a problem every year. We never were solving for that. A couple other examples were onboarding. We never were. I remember one of my peers outside of AT&T said, oh, don't go. Try to focus on that. That's a dumpster fire. You'll never fix that. Well, we actually have done that. And how we've approached that is we put together an internal consulting team within HR. Small 15 people. Again, back to I mentioned earlier. 15 people with totally different skill sets, totally different tenures, totally different backgrounds that all bring together what I need to solve a problem for the client organization. We sit with that client and go, what are you trying to solve for? In this case, it might be attrition. This is where we are today. Here's what the market says. This is what I'd like to get to. How do we go about solving that? Okay, so in a perfect world, that's what it would be. My then HR consulting team, which we call Test, for lack of better word, my boss came up with that. It's the tactical employee solutions team. So just easy call it test. But what that team will then go is work across those silos within the HR organization that are working very effectively and efficiently. But work across those teams to come together with a solution and then bring that solution back to the client organization to say have we accomplished what we're trying to do? And then we implement and then we measure to make sure that we've um, effectively solved that problem. If we haven't again back to m measuring KPIs, then we go back and do that will again until we get it fixed. Um, but that is a way that we have approached silos. You'll never break down all the silos with an organization. You'll never break down all the little fiefdoms that are in the business organization. So what you have to do is you have to come up with solutions and processes to address that and be able to move forward with the client solutions in the organization. So that's how we go about addressing a lot of that we have in the organization. But at the end of the day it kind of comes back to if uh, you're in 50 countries, it's having that North Star, it's having those objectives, clearly understanding what we're trying to accomplish as an organization and then truly what are the objective measurements to how we're going about accomplishing that?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, that's great Keith. I really like the grounding of the North Star. And as maybe as obvious as that seems, I feel like it's easy to get so consumed in the day to day that we lose sight of what's the bigger picture for the business that we're trying to achieve. So I really like that tactical question for you here. So when you talk about this internal consulting team, um, are these folks who are part of the hr, uh, team at, AT and T or is this kind of like a cross functional team that you pull together for this?

Speaker C: The answer is yes and no. So it goes back to um, when we originally put the team together. I was looking for individuals that were very good in HR technology. I was looking for people that had experience in the compensation and benefit sides of the business. I had looking for people that were at um, new talent acquisition. So I was looking at each one of those silos and looking for that expert in that organization. But then I supplemented that with bringing outside resources, Even outside from AT&T, I brought in technology resources. So one of the tools that we use, um, a lot of this a technology tool at ServiceNow. So I was looking for Someone that had had an effective implementation of ServiceNow in the marketplace, bringing them in that way, they didn't have any of the AT&T paradigms. They could come in and kind of go, this is how you solve this issue. And then how do you work that through? So it's a balanced team of 15 that have tenure within HR, the organization, that also have skillset, that bring in from outside of AT&T. Then there are a few that I bring in also from the organization as well. Um, usually for what I do for that developmental purposes, they bring a skill that I need. But then I bring them in, let them work this group for two years, and then I spend them out. Because once you've been on, once you've been one of those 15 team members and you've done this for two years, number one, you can burn. You can burn out. But then number two is once you've done that, and then I spin you back out either into the HR organization or spin you back out into the client organization. Your purview of how things operate within the HR organization is so wide and so deep that you become a better leader in the end result. From that perspective.

Speaker B: That's great advice. And it kind of naturally goes into this next topic of, uh, the way you kind of put it is the pendulum that swings at some point from generalist to specialists, back to generalist. And you know, it, it sounds like, you know, with these consulting teams, I mean, you have a little bit of both, right? But maybe share with us your, your thoughts around kind of the advantages of having a generalist, uh, approach, uh, when you're building out your HR team versus a specialist approach. Also, where, where is AT and T now or where are you looking at, you know, in the future when it comes to this?

Speaker C: No problem. Um, I think specialists are essential because they solve the how of a problem. So ServiceNow, this is how you solve this problem with ServiceNow, or this is how you solve this problem with workday. Where Workday, Human capital systems piece. Or this is how you solve it with compensation. But generalists are really more about solving the where. Where will this matter the most? Where will it stick? They know enough about the organization. Specialists are deep and generalists are wide. So a specialist can go deep into a solution. A journalist can go wide about how that's going to be perceived in the workplace, how I have to do the change management, how I got. Will this work here? Will it not work here? And if it will, how do you go about doing that? In a perfect world, you pair Generalists with specialists. Intentionally. That way, the specialists drive the solution, and the journalists then drive the adoption, the alignment and the execution. So in a perfect world, you bring those two together and you have a little bit of both. From an ATT perspective, when I talked about the pendulum swinging for years, as I mentioned, we were acquiring companies and we were bringing in the very best talent. But then we found very quickly that it was hard for those individuals to get something done within this monstrous organization because they only had a piece of the puzzle of how things get done. So we worked very diligently for a decade or two building these generalists. Our talent, uh, development program, our talent management program was moving people consciously throughout the system. I would be an example of that. I was in sales, and then when I was in hr, I joked with you. I think I've done everything three times. I also joke with you. I think the third time I finally got it right. But I've been moved consciously by my leadership team through the organization, where one would probably say that now I'm an HR generalist, I know all about it. Then we got to a point, probably about four or five years ago, where we found that AT, AT&T, we were full of generalists, but we didn't have any specialists that could go deep. So we've changed our talent acquisition and our talent approach to also bringing in this group of specialists that can go deep on a subject, whether it's cybersecurity, whether it's real estate, whether it's finance, whether it's hr. But these are real specialists in these core principles within our organization. And then what we do is we pair these individuals with generalists, because number one is that that specialist can only be successful if you pair them with a generalist that can help them figure out how to get that done within the organization. I find if you're perfectly in the middle of a leadership team that has a lot of specialists and a lot of generalists, you'll be very effective. If you have a lot of specialists, then you're going to have a lot of silos. And you have a hard time getting things implemented within the organization. Likewise, if we found if you have a lot of generalists, then you don't have anyone that can go deep on that solution that you really need. In some cases, that means you're bringing in consultants or you're bringing in other people short terms to help you solve it. But if you bring in your own specialists and generalists, you'll really land the plane very nicely within your organization and be Able to accomplish those goals that you're trying to achieve.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's, it's interesting, uh, just to hear how the pendulum has swung, uh, for at&t. And I was curious where you would peg yourself. And so it sounds like you would, you know, place yourself on the side of the generalist.

Speaker C: Well, um, that's a self diagnosis. Sometimes my boss would tell me when I get really, um, anal or something, she'll probably tell me I'm a specialist. Uh, but then I, that one of the things I think I do, I can pull myself up and be a generalist very quickly.

Speaker B: You know, this, it, all of the, the work that, you know, you're describing, the test, the consulting team, how you're bringing different talent groups together to solve these problems, generalists and specialists kind of leads to our final uh, uh, topic which is with the best intention. You mentioned solving a big problem like onboarding. Sometimes, uh, even with our best intention, we're implementing a new technology or capability or we're implementing a process and it has downstream impact that maybe was unintended. And what I mean by that is the term that I just kind of, it just clicked with me when you, when you had shared, uh, previously, which is the manager tax, we have this great process. We have this new awesome way that we're going to, you know, we're going to execute on something, but it requires, you know, more time, uh, to be taken to, you know, to complete that or do that or training and so forth. And so, and that means less time that manager is spending with their team to develop them on the business and so forth. So I just thought that was really an interesting perspective. When we're designing these processes, how do we minimize or mitigate the manager tax? So tell us more about this. Uh, tell us, you know, okay, you know, you know, your experience around, you know, maybe any, any examples that you've experienced with this. But also what are some of the ways that you, you do try to avoid or minimize that? Um, across, across your, your teams as well.

Speaker C: All of us are probably under some, um, pressure to work more effectively and more efficiently. Um, that probably the first time I saw the manager tax hit for me and my organization was when we were first implementing human capital management systems. We were doing the first PeopleSoft, the first Oracle, the first work day. All of those pieces, when you were implementing them, you were going to go, this is going to be so much better. It's going to be self service. HR doesn't have to be in the middle of this anymore. Self service the the manager can now do self service and get to decisions quicker and faster. But what I saw was, is what we really did was move that task from an HR employee through an HCM system to the manager. While they could probably move faster, they actually in some cases didn't because this was a task they didn't do. In the past the HR person was doing this or it was a task that they don't do so very often and by doing it they weren't very good at it. Had to read of job aid or whatever. What that happens when you implement this manager tax is a, a couple things follow up, fall out. Number one, the worst thing can happen is non compliance. The business, the business just doesn't do it. I don't, I don't know how to do it. Can't do it. Lack, lack of time to focus on it. I can't accomplish it. Or in a worst case it creates what I call HR shadow organizations. Okay, you just dumped all this work on me. I don't want this manager to do this. Now I'm going to hire some administrative people to do the work. Well you didn't. For the enterprise, HR solved their problem. They, they reduced cost to reduced employees. They moved that, shift that burden to the frontline manager. But you just shift the cost and the inefficiencies now to the client organization. Not to mention you totally lost control of the process and now you may have to go back and clean things up that are not done effectively. So here's the next wave. We have AI coming in now within the organization. So a lot of my peers and myself are implementing that through the organization. Don't, let's don't make the same mistake that we did with the human capital management systems when we're using AI. Look at what time it is taking for that supervisor or frontline manager to be able to do that task. Today when I implement that AI tool, will it take less time? Will it be more understandable? Will the employee, will the AI be able to walk them through it very effectively, very efficiently, meet all the expectations, but do it with less time. If not, then all you've done is shift work and then you come up with Keith's self definition of manager tax. You've now taxed the organization. You've just shifted work and that wasn't what you were trying to accomplish. What you were trying to do was remove these administrative tasks from the organizations or limit those impact to those administrative and taxing organization where you could give back time to that supervisor, back time to that employee to serve your customers versus doing tasks.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, this is, that, this is a really, uh, powerful, uh, insight, Keith. Um, you know, I, I haven't heard of the term shadow hr, uh, organization before. Uh, but, um, but you know, one of the things I picked up on there was especially when you're doing something for the first time, right, Implementing a new HCM system, a new comp, something that's brand new, and we think it's going to be solve all these problems. Problems. Not realizing we're creating these, you know, we're shifting the, the work or the inefficiency. So, um, really, really powerful insight. And of course we're all navigating AI today.

Speaker C: Ultimately, if you're shifting the work to the front end, you're probably becoming inefficient because the people that do these tasks every single day in HR can do it more effectively and more efficient. But if you can build that into AI and not shift that work or a piece of that work, that's less impact to the front line, then you can be effective. But that's easy to answer that question. But at the end of the day, some of us fall into that. We fall into that problem area where we're trying to reduce our costs, reduce our headcount, be more effective, be more efficient, and we think technology is going to solve that problem. If that technology is only shifting the problem, then we haven't solved the problem. We really have to go deep on that technology to make sure it's solving the problem.

Speaker B: Yeah, this is great, Keith. Uh, thank you so much. We could keep going. I, I wish we could. Uh, we're out of time for today, but, um, really, really grateful for your insights and um, all of the knowledge, the nuggets that, that you shared throughout this conversation. So really appreciate that. Keith. As we wrap up today, remember this. The insights you've gained are only as valuable as the action you take. Leadership and culture transformation. Start with each of us at ITA Group. We help people and brands thrive together. Because creating a workplace where people feel seen, valued and inspired is how we drive meaningful change. For more strategies, tools and insights to help you lead with purpose and build people first organizations, visit itagroup.com insights thank you for joining us. And until next time, keep leading with your heart and making a difference as a People first leader worth following.

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