309 - Why AI Should Give Us Time Back, Not More Work: Ray'n Terry (Chief People Officer, MOO)

Rayan: I think it's all kind of intertwined in my mind as to what AI is right now. If we have something that makes our labor quicker or more efficient, if we aren't mindful of what that's removing and what we refill that with, I don't think it's necessarily maybe a wise path forward without thinking through the ripple effects. And I like to think is If I worked 40 hours this week, or 50 hours, or 60 hours, realistically, actually, the work is not done either way. So therefore, if I have an extra hour, would I be smarter to redeploy that into myself, into my own sewing, well, being Pilates, whatever that may be. I guarantee you, and I can feel it, I know it. I am the better leader at the end of that hour of redeploying it than if I would have just, like, put more work back into that hour. But you have to pause because if not, if there's no conscious thought of how we're redeploying this time, you're just going to keep working.

Daniel: You're listening to the Modern People Leader podcast, where we go behind the scenes with today's top HR leaders and and work experts. We talk to them about how they've gotten to where they're at, what they do every day, and what they see coming next for the future of work. Hope you enjoy.

Co-host: Rayan, welcome to the Modern People Leader podcast. How you doing?

Rayan: Thanks so much. Pleasure to be here.

Co-host: And what is it? Uh, you're joining us from London, right?

Rayan: I am. The accent is American, but I'm actual a, uh, dual citizen sitting here in London today.

Co-host: Nice. It's so great to have you today. There are a lot of things that we want to dig into in your tenure at your current employer, moo, but also you've done some really cool things in your career. Before we can get to the juicy good stuff, we have a couple quick traditions that we have on the show. The first one's what we call good news stories. It's just a way to start things off with some positivity. You're American, so you know we're positive. And so we will all share a personal or work related good news story, and we'll go from there. And we prefer for our guests to go first.

Rayan: Cool. All right. Personal good news story, which actually kind of ties to work, I would argue, in the long run. I have decided to teach myself how to sew. And I cut the most perfect skirt for myself and actually left the house this weekend in an entire outfit that I sewed out of an old bed sheet.

Co-host: Oh, wow.

Rayan: It's a big deal.

Co-host: Apart from like eight seasons of Project Runway that I. I've watched. I don't know anything about sewing, but

Rayan: I do know I don't either. I just look at something, I'm, oh, I bet I could make something out of that. And then I just hope for the best.

Co-host: So natural. Because the construction's always the M cut. I do know the cut is really important.

Rayan: This is my thing. And I do think it makes me a better leader to like, have something to like literally use my hands with. And you just kind of put your brain in a different spot. So I'm gonna nail this sewing career here.

Co-host: Team Daniel, what do you have?

Daniel: Today is my wife's birthday, so it's Tori's birthday. We've got a sitter for tonight and we're gonna go to this place in Austin called Sammy's. It's an Italian restaurant. It's really good. And it's one of these places where you have to get a reservation like a couple weeks in advance. I didn't do that, but I set up like the, the open table notifications. And yesterday at like noon, I got one of the notifications, quickly clicked it, got, uh, a reservation. I was like, thank God. Like, I didn't want to screw up this birthday. But yeah, got a fun night in store for us. And then we're going to go to Port Aransas, which is one of the few beaches we have here in Texas. And yeah. So Friday we're going to Port A and it's going to be like an extension of her birthday celebration.

Co-host: Amazing. Happy birthday, Tori. My good news, I'm going to go personal and it's kind of a continuation because we recorded on Friday or Thursday. I can't remember now. And so my good news going into the weekend was my. So I'm like, Tale of two worlds my life right now. I have two teenage daughters, 14 and 16, and I have a five month old son. I got remarried last year. We were like, we knew this was going to happen. My wife was pregnant at the, at the ceremony. And so like I'm doing a lot of baby things right now, a lot of baby things as you do. And I love it. I really do love it. But this weekend, so my wife and my daughter were.

Rayan: Sorry.

Co-host: My wife and my son were in California and my 14 year old daughter was on a school trip in D.C. and so it was a rare weekend that my 16 year old and I had like the entire weekend to ourselves. We went to like a 10pm movie showing at Alamo Drafthouse, a cool like funky cinema chain here in the U.S. we, we went and saw live music and went to like a small little festival. We went for a walk run on the hike and bike trail here in Austin on water. So it was a awesome weekend. So that is like my good news is it lived up my weekend with my, with Astrid. My 16 year old lived up to everything that we wanted. My buckets are super full and it's super nice for my wife and my son to be back. I miss a week away from your 5 month old is a long time. And so as soon as I got to the airport he was like reaching his little hands and uh, it was

Daniel: really probably looked different. He's probably doing new things.

Co-host: Oh my God. Yeah, he's grown so much so that

Rayan: was such a wholesome. Both of you had such wholesome little answers there.

Co-host: It almost like we're podcasters or something, right? Like almost give the audience what they want. So enough about us. Ran. I was serious earlier when I was like, look, I'm going to pause that because I want to hear your background. You have a super cool interesting. You've had an interesting journey. I have no idea when I joined, right before we hit record, I heard something about Arizona. I don't know how that ties in and how you got to the uk. And you've been a chief people officer for years now and so I call it the Brene Brown question. Like what's your story? Like give us a scoop and you know everything that led to you being the Chief People officer at moo.

Daniel: Let me ask you something. Do you know exactly which team in your company has the biggest impact on growth? Here's a quick story about a 2,000 person company focused on member growth. For them, that team was customer care. But here was the challenge. They had limited visibility into that group. About 10% were clearly top performers, another 10% were struggling, and everything in between was reactive. The real opportunity wasn't just improving performance broadly. It was building a proactive strategy around the employees most tied to revenue and retention and tracking the right leading indicators before problems showed up in the numbers. Using Compete, they were able to 1 isolate the employee cohorts directly tied to retention and growth, 2 track leading indicators like trust and management and ENPS 3 identify early attrition risks before they impacted revenue and 4 connect workforce structure and cost directly to business targets. So instead of reactively waiting for quarterly results to expose problems, they shifted to proactive optimization of the teams that are actually driving business performance. Compete helps leadership teams connect workforce data to growth outcomes to see what's coming before it shows up in the numbers. If this sounds like something that you're looking to do at your company, book a conversation@compete.com MPL that's compete.com MPL yeah, no pressure.

Rayan: Let's start with a London piece. So I am, you know, my accent is American, sitting here in London. So long story short, in university, in college, I studied abroad in London, Dublin and Edinburgh. And I am not kidding, I landed at Heathrow. So London's major airport. We weren't even out of the airport yet on the study abroad trip. And I was like, this is it for me. Everything about being in London felt. And mind you, I was like 21. Everything felt I was meant to be here. I can't describe it. It's silly. So then I proceeded to spend 10 years saying to anyone that would listen to me, like, the cashier at Starbucks, the CEO at Target, anyone, I'm going to move to London. I'm going to move to London. And, um, not having any idea how I was going to do that, but after a series of probably luck, maybe a little calculation, who knows, I got to London. So I have been here in London for nine years. I started my career as HR at Target, which we all, of course, we're Americans. We all know what Target is. Started there with Target, ended up taking a role at Groupon. Um, Groupon at the time was headquartered out of Chicago. I think it might be still. Um, but ultimately, Target didn't have international locations. Groupon did. So I figured if I was good enough, I could get into Groupon and hope that they would move me to London at some point. And actually, two years on the dot of my start date at Groupon, I had my visa in hand and moved abroad with Groupon. Was there for five years holding various roles within International, then went to a recruiting platform, the Stepstone Group, where I had international locations. And now I'm at MOO for like five months.

Daniel: I, you know, I think we've had two people on from Groupon. And so I don't know if you would have crossed paths with them, but was.

Co-host: Yemi Akisanya was one. And then Kristen Barber.

Rayan: I know Kristen really well. I love Kristen. Adore Kristen. Hi, Kristen. Yes.

Daniel: The HR world is so small. I feel like everybody knows everybody.

Co-host: I was going to say rip Group on, but I guess that's not the case.

Rayan: There they are.

Co-host: Okay.

Rayan: And I'm gonna stand by Groupon. Have the best talent, like, if you look at, like, the leaders who graduated, if you will, from that era of Groupon, everyone is doing incredible in their careers. And, uh, it's still there. It's still there. I got a massage like, a year ago from a Groupon. Um, it's still there.

Co-host: All right, I'm gonna have to check that out. Me too, because I'm on that baby budget.

Rayan: Yeah, it's changed, but it's there still. And I think that, you know, Groupon's whole thing was like, taking care of local merchants. And there's something I think that we deeply all inherently understand about the concept of, like, taking care of your community. It's a cool business.

Daniel: It really is. And so speaking of businesses, I know what MOO does, and I actually ordered something from MOO maybe like a month or two ago. I got some stickers.

Rayan: What'd you order?

Daniel: Yeah, I got some stickers, some MPL stickers. But for. For. For the person who has never heard of moo, or let's say you meet a stranger and they're like, what do you guys do? Are you like a milk company? Like, what's up? How do you describe to a stranger what MOO does?

Rayan: So MOO essentially brings brands to life. So think business cards, notebooks, water bottles. So if you're at a conference and someone hands you their business card or you hand yours out, that's probably moo. If you are at just, uh, got to go to this beautiful luncheon where you get the goodie bags and the swags. The notebooks and the water bottle were printed from moo. So we're print and manufacturing and essentially getting brands to either give to their customer different flyers, notebooks to explain who they are, or giving to their internal employees as a part of anniversaries, onboardings, so on and so forth. Pretty cool brand.

Co-host: And so you've been at moo, you said five months?

Rayan: About five months, yeah.

Co-host: And so how are things going? So there's just a few major, kind of once in a lifetime enterprise changes happening right now. So really interesting time to start afresh. And so, you know, what led you specifically to moo, and I guess, like, how looking back on almost the first, like six months in, like, how are things going so far?

Rayan: So what brought me to MOO is I was on my campaign to find, uh, another role I took last year, really taking the time to map out what did I want, knowing that maybe that would narrow my funnel as companies that were out there. Yes or no, I chose to narrow my Funnel to go with what I really wanted. And what's interesting about MOO is when you're interviewing for Chief People Officer, you're almost interviewing opposite of what you would do in a normal setting. So normally you kind of tear up and the CEO is like your last interview. Well, of course for cpo, that chemistry between the CEO and the CPO is really important. And very long story short, I totally, what I believe, fell flat on my face and did terrible in my second interview with the CEO at moo. It was a disaster, in my opinion. I called the recruiter on the way home crying. I called my girlfriends crying. I just wasn't my best. And it came up in the interview. I wasn't my best. I was mortified. And about a week later I get a call and he wanted to bring me back to the next round. So ultimately, uh, there's a lot of things about MOO that are incredible to work for. But I thought at the time, and it's proven true, if this CEO has seen me of what I believe is my worst and still wanted to explore me as the chief people officer, as the steward of humans of his organization, imagine what I could do at my best. And so ultimately that's why one of the big, big reasons I picked MOO over the other opportunities I had online at the time.

Daniel: I feel like you always hear about, like the stories about, you know, I nailed my interview. It was supposed to be. I was not expecting a 40 minute interview. Ended up being 3 hour coffee with the CEO and I was hired 2 weeks later. I appreciate you giving us like the real, the real, real. Why do you think that you, you did so poorly? Like, what Was that just like how you personally felt or was that the reality? I guess is what I'm asking.

Rayan: So one thing is my developmental weakness is essentially being resilient. Once I fall on my knees or my feelings get hurt or something isn't going as planned, it's sometimes really hard for me to like pick myself up in the moment. And so we are 75 minutes into the 90 minutes and every answer just. I didn't answer well. I wasn't performing my best. Maybe I was hot, maybe I was tired. I don't know. So what was happening is my internal weakness was kicking in. My resilience was kicking in. So every answer out of my mouth that I didn't feel was at the expectation I wanted. I'm spir, I'm tilting in my brain. So at like the 75 minute mark of 90, somehow strengths and weaknesses came up and you guys, at this point, I actually just thought I was going to implode. Like, I just physically couldn't handle anymore in my brain. And so I was like, well, honestly Richard, my weakness is right now. And so I just, like, I was just brutally honest with him about where my resilience maybe comes up. And I was like, this is all the answers. I would have answered differently. Here's where I done it. Like, I just couldn't handle it anymore. And I was really honest with him. And yeah, it was not the best feeling in the world. But again, he saw something. And the curiosity of, okay, if you can back me with that, then wait till I show you what I can do with my strengths.

Co-host: Yeah. And I mean, I've. Daniel's the CEO of mpl, but I've been CEO before. And in that scenario, if someone that I'm interviewing was so incredibly vulnerable that like, real time was like, I feel like I'm bombing this. And here's like exactly how I feel like that is the type of person, because you're going to have problems, things are going to blow up, things are not, not going to go the way we expect them to go in business. That's just the way it is. And I want to go to battle with someone who I know, like, if we're in the midst of things not going the way we thought, they have the awareness to like, know that and they have the ability to be vulnerable and like, speak up. And so I can see how that moment just totally transformed that. It's like you went from interview to offer in that moment. I could just imagine that. So thanks.

Rayan: I have to ask Richard one day if it was that quick, but I think too is it's so important that like, a, uh, leadership team understands one another's strengths and opportunities. Because now we can kind of grab me far before I tilt and I can grab him and his opportunity and my other peers within the leadership team, because we all know each other's strengths and weaknesses. And so I can say, hey, we can lean on each other when it's time to play a certain strength versus the next. But then also we can kind of like remove obstacles for the other one before we get there. Because at the end of the day, like, we are human beings, like, just trying our best.

Co-host: So, yeah, amazing. And so when you join, like, clearly this is five months ago, so like, AI, there are probably some big ticket items that are like on the CEO's agenda. Like, what were some of the immediate things that you needed to focus on?

Rayan: We are opening a third location. So traditionally, MOO has been in the US and the uk with revenue primarily in the us, but headcount, let's say, much and much split between the two. And we're actually opening in Cape Town. So since October of last year to today, We've hired over 50 people in Cape Town, South Africa. So my big focus right when I got here was making sure that we had all the ducks in a row. Are we hiring? Do we have the right culture, like all of the bits, um, to make sure that opening in a third country was a success. So that was really my first focus. And then ultimately making sure that we had really great HR and people systems in place. What's unique about MOO is they've got culture down. I'm consider myself a cultural carrier. That's of course, my role as chief people officer. But innately who I am, MOO doesn't actually necessarily need that side of me as much. And so it's been really lovely to flex a different type of leadership and think through some of more of those strategic commercial pieces, because their culture and their value set and what MOO does, just being MOO with the leadership team, the culture's there, which makes my job. It's fun. It's fun to do it in a different way.

Daniel: Reminds me of one of our recent episodes with Amy Schwartz from Wise, now they're part of Google. She had a very similar experience. She was saying how, you know, usually she's brought in and there's like some sort of culture that's trying to be driven within the organization. And they're like, hey, cpo, you figure this out? And she was like, it was so refreshing coming into Wise and. Or wiz. Sorry, I'm in the wrong company coming into Wiz and not having that thrust upon me on day one. And so something we talked about the last time that we met was AI, and this is something we talk about in every episode. I feel like we can't go five minutes without saying those two letters. But I feel like you have a unique take. And I feel like 5 years ago this wouldn't have been a unique take. It would have just been like, you know, the commonly held belief, like, if we have this new set of technology, rather than filling every moment of the day with more work because of the efficiency gains, we should give people time back. And yeah, it's refreshing to hear people leaders say that in 2026. I don't think we hear that that much. And so let's start there. Is this something that you're thinking about, you know, all the time. Why is this top of mind for you?

Rayan: I think I'm thinking about the humanity behind business almost all of the time. So a couple things to caveat is like I love the business element of it. I love companies making money. Like all of this is incredible. And I think so much of the narrative is like having to choose employee engagement over business or de and I over business. All those things. No, it's the same thing in my mind. And so the concept of like being humans in business is always fires me up. And I think with AI is like, I'm a huge fan of AI, I'm a huge fan of technology. In terms of AI, I'm terrible. My team will just laugh at me that I just said I'm a fan of technology. I mess up every zoom call. But I'm not anti using AI and technology. I think that what's interesting is us leveraging this to feedback into the humanity. And one thing that I learned in it was a topic of conversation in college was and come with me on this journey is the impact of actually the washing machine on life. And so essentially, before the modern washing machine that we all probably have in our homes was invented, it took about, let's say, four hours to do a load of laundry after the washing machine. 40 minutes. Yeah. Great women and m primarily women at the time, but great people have to spend less time on laundry. That sounds great. Okay. But then also what was happening at the same time is two things that really emerged from that is one, the expectation of having a clean house increased. So you're not spending the four hours anymore doing laundry. You're only spending 40 minutes. So what else must be cleaned and done? But then I think what's even more curious and topical right now is washing laundry at the time was done in communal wash houses, was done in the river with the community. And so people all of a sudden went from having four hours gossiping with their girlfriends, taking care of the kids, all being together while the washing was being done to isolate it in their own homes, doing it with the laundry machine. I think it's all kind of intertwined in my mind as to what AI is right now. If we have something that makes our labor quicker or more efficient, if we aren't mindful of what that's removing and what we refill that with, I don't think it's necessarily maybe a wise path forward without thinking through the ripple effects. Does that make sense?

Co-host: Totally, totally. And you know, one of the biggest concerns and there's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt. You know, at least I'll speak to the US HR audience. But I'm guessing this is probably scales globally. We're all going to lose our critical thinking and. Sorry, that was my attempt at putting like an old person. I'm old anyway. But we're all going to lose our critical thinking and no one's going to be able to like even like know how to put, you know, one foot in front of the other. Like, um, I'm obviously sensationalizing that point of view. And there's like this new reframe that Daniel and I started hearing, uh, you know, in the last few weeks. Let's call it a month, two, three weeks.

Daniel: Yeah.

Co-host: Right. And the reframe is. That's couldn't be further from the truth that by reducing. We all have tedious work, administrative work, you know, these little things that sucked the energy out of us and, and we all are still spending the majority of time in the work versus like managing our lives. And so if we get that time back then it's actually, it should increase the amount of time we're spending in critical thinking. It should increase the amount of time that we can spend on these. All these other value adding things that people are capable of. And I feel like what you're sharing with us is like more in that reframe of. No, not only will we. And I think it's almost like a zoomed out version. Like, yeah, this technology is going to save us a lot of time. And guess what? Maybe there's a world where like we unlock so much time savings and we get that back that we can not only do our jobs better, but we open up more time for our human side of connection and relationships and all the things that we are.

Daniel: Creativity.

Co-host: We have been creativity. All the things.

Rayan: Sewing. Thank you.

Daniel: Yeah.

Rayan: Yes.

Co-host: Yeah. For me, playing the drums, like I have. Have started playing the drums after 20 years off. I played drums like 15 years growing up. And yeah, like, and think about that. Like that it could be like for. If everyone had this time back and we were all able to harness it then like imagine what that would unlock. And so when you hear that, like what does that make you think? This reframe, like how does that sit with you?

Rayan: I think like the trick of this is obviously if I was like, hey, if we all had an extra hour today, what would you do with it? Actually some of us might be like, oh, I've got a lot of work to catch up on. But for the most Part, if you had a clean slate, you would pick preparing for dinner with your wife, you would pick downloading to your wife what you did with your daughter this weekend. God knows what hobby I would pick up. But what happens is it's like this slippery slope that if we're not pausing to be like, wait, what are we doing with this extra time? Automatically we're just going to fill it with more work. Because that's what we do. We especially in American work cultures, and maybe it is slightly nuanced in certain parts of Europe, but, uh, especially we refill it with more work.

Co-host: Yeah.

Rayan: And I like to think is If I worked 40 hours this week, or 50 hours, or 60 hours, realistically, actually, the work is not done either way. So therefore, if I have an extra hour, would I be smarter to redeploy that into myself, into my own sewing, well, being Pilates, whatever that may be. I guarantee you. And I can feel it, I know it. I am the better leader at the end of that hour of redeploying it than if I would have just like, put more work back into that hour. But you have to pause because if not, if there's no conscious thought of how we're redeploying this time, you're just going to keep working.

Daniel: And it almost feels counterculture, um, to like, have this opinion today. How do you at least, like, in the U.S. i don't know, it feels like everybody is just like, refilling their time with more work. And with the work that you do in AI, I know Steven's had this experience, like, you just lose track of time. Like, you start working on something at 2 o' clock and all of a sudden it's almost midnight and you're like, how, what am I doing? Like, why have I just like refilled my time with more AI slop? I think that's how you're referring to it. Steven, how do you talk about this with employees at moo? Is this something that you're talking about? Are you telling people to take a pause?

Rayan: So we aren't doing it company wide yet. I am piloting some things within my M People team. And one thing is anytime we end a meeting early. So it happened today. We had an hour people team meeting. So there's 16 people on the call. So we're talking 16 salaries on the call, an hour meeting, and we ended 11 minutes early. I'm always saying to the team, for the next 11 minutes, you have to redeploy it into something you want to do for you. Not Email not jumping on another call, not slack. Because that out that extra 11 minutes, in theory, doesn't exist because you should be in this meeting. We all thought we were going to be in this meeting for an hour, which means this 11 minutes is free. Go do something with that 11 minutes that actually refills your cup. And then the team will kind of ping back to me what they did. So, options? I called my mom, I switched the laundry, full circle on the laundry. I just went to sit with my puppy. I walked my dog. That 11 minutes starts to add up and it slowly reframes. And then sure enough, you see the energy of people come back when they've just taken a moment to, like, refill their own cup.

Co-host: And so let's talk about this in, like, same topic, but, you know, under the corporate lens, right? The fiduciary responsibility, the shareholder hat. And let's talk about roi. Right? And you said that ROI on AI isn't the extra work you get out of employees, it's the better humans you get back. I just feel like there would be a lot of people that would scoff at like, a comment like that. And so what have you seen that makes you so confident? Like, this is the way, like this, like, because I feel your conviction. And quite honestly, I get excited just hearing, like, you talk, framing the topic the way you are. And so what's behind the confidence? And like, you know, why is this like a hill that you're willing to stand on?

Daniel: Something we've noticed on the podcast is that a lot of HR teams are operating in reaction mode. A process breaks, a form is missing, payroll needs fixing, somebody's onboarding gets delayed, and before you know it, the entire week gets consumed by operational work. Jesse Zvon, author for Built for People, calls this the difference between People Ops and Human Ops. People Ops is the infrastructure payroll systems compliance workflows, while Human Ops is the leadership work that actually shapes culture and performance, coaching, trust, team effectiveness. And the real opportunity isn't just making operations more efficient. It's giving leaders enough space to focus on the work that only humans can do. And that's where Intuit QuickBooks payroll comes in. It brings payroll time, tracking, accounting and team management together in one connected system, helping reduce the operational drag that pulls leaders away from their teams. In this summer, it it's evolving into QuickBooks workforce, expanding beyond payroll into a more connected system for the entire employee life cycle. This will include hiring and onboarding automating workflows for key moments like promotions and off boarding clear visibility into labor costs and planning a single place to manage payroll, time off, benefits and performance. So instead of constantly reacting, teams can spend more time supporting their people. If you want to learn more, you can go to quickbooks.com workforce that's quickbooks.com workforce.

Rayan: I mean, delusion might be behind m the confidence. All right, we know study after study has proven the importance of rest. Yeah, we know study after study has proven the importance of exercise water, the importance of learning new skills for your neuroplasticity. We have also done study after study in the workplace of engaged employees and the linkage to productivity. I think Gallup's latest one was high engagement score was 23%. More profitable companies like all of these studies, you could pull hundreds of them. All I am doing and, uh, my confidence is coming from. If I know that there's value add and positive ROI to a healthy lifestyle and I know that healthy employees make more money, well, then it is the same thing. So I'm confident of the studies that are in all these different buckets. But then also I'm confident is I can feel it in my body. I can see it on my team's face. I can see them taking my feedback with more of a curiosity because they are more, well, humans. And so, no, I can't prove what's happening in my body right now. I'm sure many scientists could. But I do think that we need to kind of get back to, like, we know certain things to be true and we have to trust that sometimes it. Maybe that does make me sound like a hippie or something. I don't know.

Daniel: No, this is what you're saying. It reminds me of when we started the podcast in 2019 and. Or, uh, 2020 and why I wanted to start a podcast on HR because I truly believed, and I still believe it to this day, even though some days it might feel. Feel harder to have this belief. But I still believe that, you know, we can make the world of work better. And that has a huge impact on so many, on basically everybody's life. And it feels like we've lost the humanity, like, we've lost the plot the last, like, year or two. And it can feel. I'll speak for myself. I don't even think I've talked to Steven about this. But sometimes it can feel like a little bit deflating, you know, like the reason we started this podcast is because we wanted to make people's lives better. And for the last year or so, I've questioned whether people's lives are still getting better. Like Are. Is this actually happening? And so I don't think that you sound like a hippie. I think there's. There's a lot of truth, uh, and science to what you're saying. And we. We talked about this the other week with Cameron Price, who's the chief people officer at Medium. And he, similar to you, you know, wants to drive the business outcomes, understands the importance of new technology, but at the same time, in his words, says, we need to touch grass. Like, we need to, like, take. Take a pause, go do the hike. I think he's in Al. Albuquerque, so he's. He's super into, like, mountain biking and being outdoors, but we all need this stuff. And so.

Rayan: Because if we don't have it, like, what's the point?

Daniel: Yeah. Like, why are we doing this?

Rayan: Why are we doing any of this? Yeah. And, like, put in a good day's work. And I think what's interesting is. Okay, what you didn't. You'll see what we are talking about today. We'll spend an hour, 90 minutes together. Danielle. And. But what you didn't see is me calling my mentors the last couple days and having them remind me of different topics and moments that we've had as friends and mentors around work. What you didn't see was me prepping with my neighbor this morning over coffee for this. You didn't see how nervous I got and how people reassured me that I'm going to do great today. So you didn't. You might not see the output of you in your work here in podcasts, making the world better, but hours of the last couple days of mine were arguably better and more fulfilling because of this podcast. And so I guess take a pause, as maybe our impact of HR leaders, or leaders in general, aren't always going to be on the tin. But what happened leading up to that? I love that, if that makes sense.

Daniel: And honestly, I thought you just showed up to the podcast and were a pro. Like, in our internal notes, Stephen had just written down, she's good.

Co-host: I literally just wrote that. Yeah, it's like, she is good. Like, I'm terrified.

Rayan: I just, like, four seconds before we. To, we kind of. I texted a dear friend, and I was like, just tell me I'm gonna be okay. Lie. I don't care. So thank you.

Daniel: Well, you're crushing it so far, and you're going to keep crushing it. Okay, so back to engagement. Moo. Put out a survey recently. Am I getting that right? What was the goal with this survey and what were some of the Some of the findings that came out of

Rayan: it, I think ultimately, like, we are trying to moo touch is so much of business. So while we are printing and manufacturing, for us to understand what our customers want and what everyone is doing with what we're printing, we need to understand what's on, going, happening. And so a lot of the questions were around like, AI's impact of shortening the workday. A lot of it was in the difference between what a company thinks AI is doing or not doing versus an employee. It's very topical, um, to what many of us are talking about, um, and like kind of understanding what is the leadership's responsibility within this whole ecosystem. Yeah.

Co-host: And so ran one of the findings of the survey that, that jumped out at me or like just the, the, the highlights that y' all shared with us is that 84% of employees say their organizations are prioritizing speed over quality more than they were a year ago. And for years I have been on the top of my soapbox, you know, saying we need to be talking about, we need to be moving faster, we need to be having more pointed conversations. The reason we, um, MPL throws live events is because I played with these AI summits because I got tired of hearing HR leaders say they didn't have the answers and didn't know where to get the answers. And so then fast forward to, you know, to present day, just that there's, you know, sentiment data that says that 84% of, you know, respondents feel that speed is more important than quality. Today is like, mind blowing to me. That is like, I think, a positive thing because the reality is these cycles are getting shorter and shorter and shorter and the need to embrace what's happening is only getting higher and higher and higher. And so, you know, I think the counterbalance to that is at the same time workers say that thoughtful decision making, creativity and, and attention to detail are actually suffering. And so what do you think that leaders are missing out on that, balancing that equation?

Rayan: I think that leaders are. And maybe this goes back to the resilient opportunity piece from the beginning is I think that leaders are missing the professional or emotional maturity to pause themselves and not feel that frantic run before we put it on the teams. So if you're thinking about if we are getting that pressure top down, if I'm getting that pressure top down, go fast, go fast, go fast, create more, create more. My job as a leader is to pause, just as I would pause if a difficult message was coming top down or if something confidential was like our jobs as leader in general is to especially human resource leaders, is to pause and, like, mindfully think how we are turning and shifting and cascading those messages and more importantly, that energy down. And so I think what leaders are missing in this whole conversation is one is our burden and responsibility, I believe, to pause and, like, make sure that the pressure to go fast is not breaking somewhere, something else down the line. I also think as HR professionals, we have this unique ability to know and think through the ripple effects of decisions. So if I hold one employee accountable for this behavior today, I have to hold the next one accountable. It's in our nature. We have to think through the ripple effects of humans. So I think we're uniquely suited to pause and be like, wait a second, is speed the answer here? Where is speed? And speed fine. It doesn't actually have to be perfect or accurate. And where do we need to, like, really slow down and consider?

Daniel: You also mentioned that part of the survey was on AI's impact of shortening the workday. Can you tell us more about that? What did y' all find there?

Rayan: So essentially, you know, could we. The conversation in the survey was around, like, where are people redeploying this time? Most companies are redeploying it back into productivity and getting the task done. Where I think that our role as, uh, senior HR leaders is to start to redeploy that into the people and making sure that we, yeah, are pausing to think the ripple effects, which is kind of what I just said. So I just repeated myself. Sorry.

Daniel: That's great. Something else that I thought was interesting, and I feel like we're experiencing this internally because we are trying to automate as much as we can. And this is Steven's body of work, so I won't take any credit, but whenever reviewing the output of the work, I find Stephen saying, like, I have no bone to pick. Like, this is the bots. Like, I'm. We're just, like, talking about how we can make it better. And so something that I found surprising was that 78% of AI users say that they've received recognition for work that was largely generated by AI. And so slightly different. Like, mine was like, more like constructive, uh, feedback, where this is, like, people getting recognized for their great work. But how should leaders think about performance, contribution and recognition when it's becoming harder to separate the human effort from the machine assistance?

Rayan: Yeah, I think this is super important. Is. Let's use annual performance reviews. I could right now, in seconds. Frankly, anyone without an HR background could, in seconds, create a Performance Management Annual Review Framework. And I could probably, off of the hour we've all spent together, write both of your annual reviews using AI. Which means this is. None of this is really real or value added. And so I think one is like thinking through why are we still doing the things as people leaders that we were ever doing in the first place and what is the point in this new world? I think that we're going to see a lot of changes in job descriptions. We already are seeing huge changes in resumes, ATSs, recruitment. This has already been happening, especially in the recruiting space. I think we're going to see more and more changing into the learning and development talent management space. I think the recognition point is interesting of like what are we recognizing employees for if the body of work could be created anywhere? And I think that's where we recognize tone of voice when delivering a message. Collaboration with your peers, using good contextual judgment that AI couldn't know even if you had your bot set up, some contextual things that AI just couldn't know. There's so many other ways to recognize someone than just like the written form or the deck or the recording it. Just as I've said before, you just have to pause and like really consider it.

Co-host: Yeah, I was just trying to imagine like some of the companies and I worked for large companies, so I worked at Ernst and Young and I worked at Goldman Sachs and I was just trying to think about those organizations getting through the annual performance review and maybe they, I mean this is again, I'm old, so this is like uh, m. Over a decade ago that I worked there. Maybe they're doing it more frequent now. But even if like let's say twice a year, that would be a lot of performance two cycles in a calendar year for you know, 10,000 plus companies. And I'm like trying to wrap my head around like people already were like this is bs. This is what I got.

Rayan: Before AI, we all thought it was bs, right?

Co-host: And so now it's like, oh well, Steven got a top rating and all he is doing is working with the bots and they're literally doing all his work for him and, and he's getting the top performance review. Like I just think that I had not realized this until this conversation that like traditional performance may be about to like fall off a cliff type of

Rayan: thing or at least how we assess it will be. Yeah.

Co-host: And I think that I can just imagine like the energy and trying to defend an outdated process that no one even believed in anyway or because that's what companies typically do, they're like oh uh, let's dig our heels in. We've always done it this way. This is the annual review process. Like what if we don't do it this way? Like I could imagine like that being one reaction and then another reaction being like okay, we've got six months to totally rebuild this for an AI, an AI powered world. And you know, I'm curious to get your thoughts. I just feel like a lot of companies are going to dig in their heels. It's like you know, head in the sand type of thing. I just based on my data set, which is hundreds and hundreds of conversations with world class HR leaders, I think the vast majority of companies are still going to dig their heels in. Traditional companies are going to dig their heels.

Rayan: Well I feel like I just sound like a total hippie or they're that's disrespectful to hippies. I don't know what the word is but okay, why, why are we doing this in the first place? It's like I understand like as an HR leader governance and like compliance and legally mitigate mitigating legal risks. Like that is a part of my job and like arguably my fastest thing that I could do to harm the company would be to mess up something legally. And so so many of us, which makes total sense are using performance reviews to make sure we're documenting performance, we're identifying high performers to make sure we've got performance tracks and career frameworks we're tying to compensation making. So it all makes sense as to how we do it. I still think that we need to be analyzing and assessing talent. The robust documentation behind it all to me seems redundant now because we can all manipulate that documentation quite easily. So at Ah Moo, we're doing mid year right now. So again I'm relatively new and so one of our values is imagining it better but essentially like how could we do this different? So already we've changed at ah mid year reviews. It's really light touch. Only people that are in like certain scenarios of the employment life cycle would need to do a full review. So for me I'm new enroll, I never had an annual review so I'll have a proper good old fashioned sit down mid year that makes sense because of where I'm uh, at in my life cycle where my direct reports, they might have a lighter touch but yes, I already have in my mind. I've got about a year or six months to figure out how to really do this better. Yeah, I don't have that answer, but no one does. I think we, like, owe it to ourselves to, like, it's just going to be silly. It's going to be just everybody repeating the same thing. And then like somebody put on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago. How long till everybody realizes these are just computers talking to computers? And I do think that, like, specifically with performance management and traditional reviews, I hope things change, but I don't have the answer yet. I will let you guys know when I do.

Co-host: I do too. And I'm going to keep bugging you because I feel like you're the type of person, Rand, that can, like, find an answer. I don't know why we don't know each other that well, but I do feel like you're the type of person that will help get us there. It's going to require all of us, in my opinion, to figure out, like, whatever the new mental model is for performance. And I do think it's going to have to be new or newish. Like, I just don't see us marginally changing what was happening. But we'll see what happens.

Rayan: Like the compliance pieces of it. I get that. And so, like, realistically, do I think I can fix this before Q4 preparing for annual. No, probably not. Just to really do it well, I could start to chip away at, uh, it. I could start to change it. I think you're going to see really cool companies coming out with challenging ideas. But yeah, I'm going to have a good one. I just don't know.

Co-host: Yeah. And so we don't have a lot of time left because we're about to go over and. But I talked too much. No, no, you talked perfect. This has been amazing. What a great way to start my week off. I'm like, totally energized. I want to bring it back to humanity before we get to our final couple of traditions. This has been like a humanity sandwich. We started with humanity, we're going to end with humanity. And leading, I feel like leading with humanity, you know, front of mind in a high pressure environment when the stakes are so high. And the stakes are really freaking high right now, for all I know. I know you're passionate about that. I'm also passionate about it. I feel like many leaders struggle with the balance. We talked about some of those challenges earlier. How do you define leadership that prioritizes human connection? Like how what are. And maybe it's not a definition and it's like traits that, you know, I'll let you take the answer where you want to take it. But you know, what are your thoughts there?

Daniel: One thing keeps coming up on the podcast and that's leave. It's one of those processes that everybody has, but very few get right. And we just talked about this the other week with Kim Smith from Tilt, and she framed it in a way that, that really clicked for me. Not every employee experiences leave the same way. Someone every detail up front, others feel overwhelmed and just want you to simply tell them what to do next. But most companies deliver the exact same experience to everyone. It's one thing to have a compliant leave program, it's another to have one that actually works for the human going through it. And that's where Tilt comes in. Tilt is a leave experience platform that helps teams move beyond one size fits all processes. Using Tilt, companies can tailor the leave experience to each employee's needs, keep managers aligned on coverage and return to work, automate complex workflows like pay and compliance, and give HR the space to focus on support and not spreadsheets. In other words, the tech handles the complexity so that the people team can show up where it matters most. As a human, leave isn't just an HR process. These are life changing moments that can make or break the employee experience. If you want to learn more about tilt, go to hellotilt.com mpl that's hellotilt.com

Rayan: mpl so it goes back to what I said at the beginning is I don't feel in my heart of hearts great business and that business pressure to deliver and being human and leading with humanity, I do not see them as I have to give up one to drive the other. They are very much the same thing. And how that plays out is like clear expectation setting. So I expect what I expect of you, what I don't expect of you, what you can expect from me, what you can expect from me. I always do clear expectation setting because at the end of the day humanity and bringing like the person back into it is like, how do we all achieve something today and close our computer so we can go back to our families, our loved ones and our hobbies? We can only do that if we know what is expected of us and we have the tools to get there. And so again, I think that like setting really high clear expectations in some ways sounds less human, but I actually would argue guiding someone as to where they need to be is the definition of human. Same thing with feedback. Me letting one of my direct reports continue down a line that's probably mediocre. Great. In three years, five years, she's going to go to another company, and she's either going to take a lateral move and play the same tricks, or she's going to take a step up and not be prepared for it. Me giving her that robust, painful feedback today is investing in her and her family and the human being there. And so I think that it's like, set these really high, audacious business targets, be very clear about them, does that. It's not two separate things. Like, good business is good human.

Daniel: Yeah, The. The last normal job that I had before we became podcasters and quit our jobs, I was working for a company called Humu, and I was on the marketing team. And our VP of marketing every month would set, uh, a meeting to come up with, like, our top five, you know, objectives as a team for that month. And then each person would come up with, like, the five big bodies of work that they're gonna get done for the month. And as long as we got that work done, there were no questions about what we were doing in our free time, about how much time we spent on that work. As long as the quality was good and we were delivering, there were no questions. And I got so much time back for my humanity. I knew that if I really focused for two or three days of the week, all day, I could get everything done and I could maybe make time to go to the gym, you know, one afternoon or, you know, we also used to get every other Friday off. And I feel like, you know, a lot of companies were doing similar things a few years ago, maybe not so much anymore, but I didn't feel like, on the hook, like I needed to use that time for work. Some people would like if they had a heavy meeting week and they needed to catch up. But I didn't feel guilty about being a human and doing.

Rayan: Yeah, and I think that what you just said is important is, like, I'm not saying that we should all just, like, play all the time and business isn't important. We all need to know, like, there's a time and a place to strike the balance. And that's what we can't lose is that good judgment is to, when do you go back to work and when can you go to the gym? And not every week is going to be the same. My last company at the Stepstone Group, on Fridays, like, the entire people team would come into the office because we had such a fun time. And at the beginning of the day, I would write from everybody, like, what are the three things you need to get done today? We'd put on this huge whiteboard what are the three things you're going to get done today before you open your emails? Because then the email is going to tell you what do you feel you need to get done. And then throughout the day, everybody would go to the board and cross it off. We got more done on a Friday playing. There's music. Like we were all together. It's not like we were just like sitting there trolling away, but we all knew what we wanted to work on and we were all cheering each other on to get there. To me, that's a little micro example of like bringing the human into business and why it does increase productivity. It's really easy to do, by the way, the way.

Daniel: I agree. Well, we are officially over and we still have a couple of traditions. The next one being rapid fire questions. So we ask the same set of questions to every guest and we'll try to get through them as, as quickly as possible. So question.

Rayan: Can answer M in like one word or can I answer in like a what? How. How snappy am I answering?

Daniel: You know, some people have longer responses, others are like one word. I don't know, a few sentences, max. First question, what's one piece of advice that you'd give to somebody starting an HR today?

Rayan: Learn how the business makes money.

Co-host: We haven't heard that one in a while, but that's so, so, so, so, so important. Hr. Future HR leaders out there, take the

Rayan: advice and Ash, your CFO will teach you. Finance will teach you. Just ask. I, uh, just had my CFO today. I didn't understand something he said. And I said, can you explain that to me for like five, five minutes? Like I'm five. They will give you the time. Ask, learn the business.

Co-host: Interestingly, I've realized like, I am a salesperson because I always want to know, like, how, what the sales process is. What's the motion? You know, when does our swing vary? So great advice. Next question. If your team gave you a superpower nickname, what would it be?

Rayan: I think it would depend on the, the era. I bet brave would probably pop up. Something around being brave and yeah, being something around bravery.

Co-host: I think I was trying to think of a name.

Rayan: Yeah, I was gonna say Brave Queen. Like it changes. It does change. Like I'm new in role here, so like, there's parts of me that haven't, you know, it changes with role and a bit of age. But I would guess like that underlying current ah would have something to do with courage. But I don't think my current team has seen that yet. So in Like a year from now, maybe I would be wrong. I'll email to you, we'll do some

Daniel: thinking on some names. Next question. What's a strategy or practice from another company that you'd love to steal?

Rayan: Oh, my God. Target's succession planning tool from like 2008. I've tried to recreate it myself. It was the best tool so anyone that has ever worked for Target succession planning at Target. Incredible.

Daniel: Stephen, I have an idea for a new type of episode. I think we should go back and look at all of the responses we've got to this question and do like deep dives on. Like, we'll do an episode on Target's success.

Rayan: That's such a good idea.

Daniel: Yeah.

Co-host: Ah, that is a great idea.

Rayan: It was incredible. Like I would. I'm sure there's like some ip. You can't steal ideas and stuff, but no one did it better because if you think about it, you have thousands of stores. You have to cascade succession plan the ripple effects, everything flawless.

Daniel: And now we have the benefit of Claude and Chat GPT. They can do all of the research and, and put it together for us.

Co-host: I was gonna say, like, if they put anything on the Internet at all about this. Yeah, uh, our clod bots are gonna get it and we're gonna have, you know, we'll have a juicy conversation that we could have around it if not.

Rayan: If Target literally just like put up the it for sale. I myself would buy out of my own pot. Like, it was so, so good.

Co-host: Amazing. Now I want to go deep on.

Rayan: I could draw, I could draw it to this day on a piece of paper for you if you needed me to.

Co-host: Well, we may have you back, so just. We'll hang on to that. And that brings us to our last question for you. And it's one of the main reasons why we've had so many, like world class guests on this show who if you were to think of an HR leader that is just like really pushing the envelope, really, you know, showing courage and bravery to take us in a new direction. Like, who should we have onto the show next?

Rayan: Her name is Kathy o'. Grady. She is, does fractional CPO slash consultancy work. She was head of international HR at Groupon. She was then at Pario. Um, AI. But what's interesting about Kathy is she's constantly getting another master's in some sort of human psychology and why humans behave certain ways. So not at all tied to hr, but kind of exactly tied to hr. And every time I call her, she'll like, say this other little HR ticket, like, tip and trick, and I'm like, oh, my God, that's brilliant. Kathy o'. Grady.

Daniel: The Groupon Mafia is strong.

Rayan: I don't know Groupon Mafia.

Daniel: I don't know if you have, like, a. If there's a better name for that, but, like, what do they call, like, the PayPal mafia? And then you got, like. I feel like in hr, the big ones we've. We've heard on the show are now Groupon. EA Sports, I think was a big one. Pepsi. Am I missing a few?

Rayan: Rachel. Rachel Keter at, uh, Target is also. Rachel Keter at Target is. She would be up there on. On who? I would recommend.

Daniel: Okay.

Rayan: No one does it better than Rachel.

Daniel: We'll have to reach out. All right, last tradition. One word or phrase close. And it could be anything that's coming to mind right now. So either one word or a few.

Rayan: Rest.

Daniel: Rest.

Co-host: That's a good one. I'm gonna go with energized. Kind of the opposite angle of.

Rayan: But it's not the opposite. I would argue it's the same.

Daniel: You need the rest to be energized. And I'm gonna say optimistic. Yeah, I was. I've been feeling, like, a little bit, like, down on. Just, like, the current state of work. Like, you know, one week I'll be super excited about everything, and then the next week, I'm like, ugh. Uh, after talking to five of my buddies, they're all, like, super bummed about work. And I know that that's not representative of everybody, but it felt like it's been feeling like we've been trending that direction, and so I needed some positivity.

Rayan: Remember, some days it's okay, too. Like, we all want careers and passion projects. Some days or weeks or even years, it's okay that it's just a job. Like, you have a date tonight, and somebody has to pay for that date. Do you know what I mean? Like, this is a job. And, uh, on bad days, let's appreciate, like, that's okay that it's just a job. Tomorrow it might be a career. Today sucks. It's just a job.

Daniel: I love that advice.

Co-host: Brandon. Can we just have, like, a daily chat with you? Like, I. Of course, we bring. This has been such a joy. We rarely record podcasts on a Monday morning. Our time, obviously, it's evening, you know, late afternoon, evening, your time. But I'm so glad we did this. I couldn't. I can't think of a better way to start my week. And now you're part of the NPL family. And so many of our guests have come back and, uh, joined us for a second go. And hopefully you're open to that at some point.

Rayan: But this has been a delightful hour and a half or whatever it was. I've absolutely loved this. Truly awesome.

Co-host: Well, thank you so much again for joining us.

Rayan: Enjoy. Enjoy your lives outside of your workday today.

Daniel: You, too. Thank you.

Rayan: All right, bye.

Daniel: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Modern People Leader. We really, really appreciate it. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five star rating. It would mean the world to us. And connect with us on LinkedIn. We want to know what you think about the show, and you can find links to both of our profiles in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and see you on the next episode.