Beyond “It’s Complicated”: HR & Finance Alignment for the AI Era (Transform Spotlight Session)

All right, everyone. Welcome in. Hopefully you're not too confused by the sudden drop of the screen and music. Not really sure, but the computer took a major tech issue there. But we're back, and we're live. Can you hear me? In the chat, are you here with me right now? Put in there hello. Let me know where you're calling in from. That was wild. What a way to kick off a program. And today is actually a pretty unique one because we have some special stuff planned, so I'm really hoping that the rest of this goes smoothly. Well, my name is Zach Dahms. I'm President at Achieve Engagement. This is also reaffirming my new computer order that I just put in, so hopefully that comes in soon. But I love what is already coming in the chat. I'm seeing people in from, let's see here. What do we have? Irvine, California, Des Moines, San Francisco, LA, Indianapolis. Ohio's in the house. Ghana. All right, Angela, welcome in here. New York City. Trish in Redding. Atlanta, Susan. We're coming to Atlanta very soon. We're going to share some information about that soon. Chicago, Maryland. Well, I'm super excited about this. This is a very special program because we have some experts and leaders joining us today to follow up a live session that we actually hosted at Transform in March. So I'd be curious, for those in attendance, put a yes. Were any of you at Transform in March with us? Were any of you attending? Put yes in the chat if you were attending. Maybe you came to this session, maybe you didn't. Either way, I would love to see who was with us during that conference. It was so much fun. Talk about an entire week of learning, of connection, and I feel very lucky that we get to continue that journey with all of you. But before we get into some of that, I do have a couple announcements. One, later today, you'll probably get an email about this, but we just launched a new Achieve CPR live event series, CPR being all about culture, performance, and retention, and it's our way of breathing life back into our organizations. And HiBob, our partners for today, if we can give HiBob some love and appreciation for this program, they are also our founding partners for the Achieve CPR program. So one, if you want to learn more about HiBob or the CPR program to start, you can learn more about the link that I put in the chat. And then we're also doing our first live event in Atlanta at the beginning of June. So if you are in the Atlanta area or you want to fly in for the day, we're going to have a bunch of different speakers and facilitated workshops and playbook building on how we have elevated workforce experience and breathe some life into those pillars of culture, performance, and retention. So check it out. Put the links in there. And speaking of our partners at HiBob, I would love just to see and get a quick pulse as well. Have you heard of HiBob before? I'm just curious of how many of you are aware of this amazing group today. If this is the first time you've seen their name pop up, maybe you're a current customer of theirs and you're working globally with their platform and their team. I would love just to see who in the room here is aware of it. So yeah, Brenda, I see in the chat you're aware. I just launched a poll for everyone, so fill that out. But as we get into today's program, one of the things that this specific conversation is so special and what it's all about, it's all about that HR and finance relationship, and how do we continue to create that bond and that connection and that alignment so we can become a more strategic people function so that we can unlock some people impact that's actually connected to the business. There's a lot there that we're excited to unpack, and at Transform, they had a whole live hour and a half session where they talked about these things as a group, and they unpacked some of the different lessons learned, and we had finance and HR and all these different people in the room together. So we are going to play some clips from that program today, and then we're going to unpack some of the clips as well. So afterwards, we'll share some of the recordings with you, but you get inside access to what happened in that room, and we get to follow it up as a group with these amazing leaders. So to be kicking this off, I'd love to first introduce you to the leaders who are joining us for this program. Dr. Ken Matos, who is also Director of Insights Labs at HiBob. We got Brian Martell, who is FP&A expert at HiBob. We got Liana Rodriguez, who is also Senior Director of People Operations and Total Rewards for Viz.ai. So Liana, Brian, Dr. Ken, if you would join me on the virtual stage here. I'll stop sharing here, and I appreciate you all hanging on. I know I was MIA there for a second, and I'm assuming I'm moving a little slow, but as long as you're here with us, we'll get the discussion going. But Brian, I'd love to have you maybe jump in first and introduce yourself, and coming off of Transform, what's top of mind for you? Yeah, sure. Hey, everybody. My name is Brian Martell. I've spent my 20-year career in finance and accounting in one form, shape, or another. Over the years, I've sat in the seat, I've done the job in both accounting and FP&A, which is a function within the finance team, and spent the last number of years working in financial software companies trying to bring software and technology back into the office of finance to try to help my finance brethren work faster, smarter, more efficiently, all that good stuff. So, I love finance, I love accounting, I love technology, and I'm really excited to bring a finance lens to this conversation here on the panel today. Awesome. We're very lucky to have you. I appreciate you being here with us. I feel like as an HR community, we don't often get the true finance lens as a part of these conversations, which I'm hoping to grow more of. So thanks for joining today. Liana, I'd love for you to jump in next. Hello, I'm Leanna Rodriguez. I'm the senior director of people ops and total rewards at Vest. My scope is really broad. At my current role, I own the infrastructure side of HR, and I also serve as a strategic partner to our go-to market and GNA team. So what that means in practice is that I'm constantly sitting at the intersections of people strategy and business performance, close enough to finance team to understand how they think, and close enough to employees to know what the numbers are actually telling me. I love it. Well, we got people, we got finance in the room, and now we also got Dr. Ken. Dr. Ken, please introduce yourself, and yeah, what are some of your thoughts coming off of Transform? Absolutely. So I am Ken Matos. I'm the director of the Insights Lab at HiBob. That is our research department that helps to understand what's going on in the lived experience of our customers, primarily CHROs, CFOs, and others who are trying to help the business work better. And so I spend a lot of my time focused on what's actually happening, as Leanna says. What does the data say, and what is actually happening when you unpack that data? And trying to turn that into strategies that help our customers get to better success. Well, we got a powerhouse group here. I'm excited to have you all with us in our community. So what we're going to do for everyone listening, we're going to play some really short video clips from the live session that happened at Transform, and then we're going to unpack some of those clips as a group. So as we're going through this, and everyone listening in, feel free to add your own questions, your own thoughts. We'd love to hear what some of your takeaways are as we unpack these things. I think that's the real power of this community, kind of peer-to-peer learning experience. And yeah, if you want some of these experts to build off of anything they're sharing in the clip or in the dialogue, put those in the Q&A and the chat, and we'll work those into the discussion. So, that being said, since Ken wrapped us up right there in the intros, we're going to play a clip of Ken to kick us off. So- ... let me share my screen, and fingers crossed nothing horrible happens with my computer again. And put in the chat to make sure you can also see and hear this for me. We're going to be playing some different videos, so I just want to make sure it's coming across for you. Have you ever left a meeting with finance thinking we spoke different languages? Yeah. The laughter makes me know we hit a good nerve. What's really interesting about those conversations is they kind of had two threads. For some people, it felt like cats and dogs. We don't think alike, we don't talk alike. They care about money, I care about people. They care about numbers, I care about feelings and experience. But for others, it wasn't. It felt more like flip sides of the same coin, where people would say, "Yeah, I can't have a conversation about people without also talking about the money used to pay them and the money raised from the work that they do. It's all the same conversation. I don't understand how that's not obvious." And that made us realize that there was a real opportunity to have a conversation about how do you get to be in that better place? We're at an HR conference, so we're going to focus on what HR can do to get into that better place. So what are we going to do for the next hour? All right. Clip number one, the coin, right? Mm-hmm. And I think that's one ... I love the analogy there of we sometimes are thinking in some ways of cats and dogs, and now we're also thinking of it's two sides of the same coin. And now, Ken, you have a couple of weeks after the Transform Conference. I'd love to hear your thoughts, just one, and even HR leaders in the room, I'd be curious, where do you feel like you land in this scenario? But which thread do you see come up more often in the field right now, the cats or dog dynamic or the flip sides of the same coin situation? I think what we're probably going to be experiencing a lot more right now is some cats and dogs dynamic, primarily because things are really disrupted in the workplace right now as people are trying to figure out what's our labor strategy, what's our AI strategy. That's a really prime place to trigger the exact thing that drives these two groups apart, which is believing that one of them is actually the business, and the other is a cost to the business. I think where you're going to see unity is where people are saying, "The business is the people creating value for our customers and bringing in money." And so it is a circle, and that is why I think the coin metaphor is so appropriate. We're just functioning on different aspects of it. I think when you are stressed and worried about what are we going to do, you lean more into that cats and dogs dynamic, and there's more room to pull apart when you really should be coming together, because that's the only way you're really going to succeed in this moment. And seriously, for everyone who's attending, I would love to hear, do you feel like you're in a cats and dog scenario reality with your organization, or do you feel like you're operating on two sides of the same coin with finance and the business today? And we can be raw and real. It's okay if you're cats and dogs at this moment. That's just the situation. And yeah, Leanna, Brian, anything to add on that front of coming to mind as we think about those two worlds, and even what maybe HR leaders might do to kind of get to a more productive space in this current state? Yeah, I'll jump in real quick. I'm going to talk a lot more about this as we progress through the session here today, but I think it's both. I think it is two sides of the same coin, and I think it does feel like cats and dogs a lot. I think one of the big messages I want to bring to this audience here today is it doesn't have to be that way. So as we continue the conversation, I'm I'm going to be sharing some tips and tricks and recommendations on how you can think about sort of building a healthier relationship from both sides of the aisle, if you will, to have everybody kind of get along better and come to the table better prepared and more empathetic to understand sort of the other side of the table and kind of where they're coming from, and how you can make each other more successful. And Liana, anything to add, like coming from a people leader perspective? Like, have you had to go through your own Ken dog scenarios to get on the same side of the coin? Yeah, I think I would agree with both Ken and Brian, right? At times, we feel like we work in two different sides, but at the end of the day, we are working towards the same thing, which is the profitability of the organizations. Because without profits, without revenues, there is no organizations . At the end of the day, we actually work towards a common goal, although how we get there could be a different story. Yeah. All right. I think that's a perfect time for to play the second clip from the session. So I'm going to share my screen here again. We have Ken again with us. When HR brings an investment idea to finance, what's finance really listening for? Yeah, it's a great question, and I kind of actually want to start this by de-stigmatizing a stigma of finance, because I think a lot of leaders in the company outside of finance probably feel this to some degree, which is that finance can often be seen as a bottleneck. Finance, like we kind of tongue in cheek say, "It's not CFOs, it's CF-nos," because you're getting a lot of nos to your budget requests or hire requests or software requests. So I always like to start by saying, even though sometimes we embody that, we being finance, that's actually not what we're trying to do, or at least when we are doing it, it's because there's a bigger mandate at play, right? So fundamentally, finance is responsible for marshaling, shepherding the very, very finite resources of the company. Keeping track of the money, making sure that we're not wasting it, making sure that we know how much of it we have, making sure that it can last, right? So that the company doesn't go out of business or something like that, right? So there's a very serious thing that's happening here, which is protecting the company's resources. So when people come to finance and say, "I need this," or, "I want that," or, "I want to hire this person," or whatever, and you get a no, it's not necessarily because we want to say no, it's just because we have to marry it with kind of the bigger strategic picture of how we're allocating these finite financial resources of the company. So we'll talk more about this as the session goes on, but like the very first frame when another team comes to finance with a request for a new hire or the purchase of a new software tool or something like that, the first thing we're thinking about is, "Okay, help me make the business case." It's almost like, "Help me help you make the business case." Right? So if you can help tie this purchase to... I mean, for finance, kind of like our greatest hits are going to be like, if you can tie it to saving money, making money, or mitigating risk, that's what's going to get our attention. Because that we can sell to the CEO, that we can sell to the board if we have to. And if it's over a certain threshold, we are going to have to go to the board and say, "We need to spend $50, $100,000 on this, and so here's the case." So the more you can come to finance kind of with, and we'll talk more about this today, how to do this, but that perspective of like, "Okay, this is a business case. Here's why we need it. Here's the problem that we're solving. Here's what we get if we solve it. Here's why this solution is the right solution. Here's our expected ROI." The more we can get the conversation to that place, the easier it is for all parties involved to get what they want. One thing I love about that clip as well is like you really start to paint a picture about how we're on the same team here. Like, help me help you. Let's work through this. I'm not your enemy trying to cut anything you bring my way. We're allies in this scenario, so let's workshop it out and kind of get aligned on there. So Brian, I'd love to kind of pass it back to you on that. You talked about saving money, you talked about how does it help make money, and then also how does it help mitigate risk. And I'm curious, I kind of have some assumptions into the back of my head, but which one do you feel like HR leaders tend to overuse? And then on the other side, underuse when we're trying to build these business cases? Yeah. So first I'll say that all three are effective. Right? All three will get the attention of finance. Finance, we love saving time, we love saving money, we love making more money, and we love reducing risk. So all of them are good , but not all are created equal. I would say that probably the ones that get overused the most are time savings and efficiency. So like finance, don't get us wrong, we love time savings, we love efficiency gains, but they have to translate to something bigger. They have to translate to dollars, and whether that's cost savings or whether that's growth, or whether that's ROI or something like that. I think the one that's really powerful and really underused is risk mitigation. Risk mitigation is really powerful because it ties into that psychological principle of loss aversion. Right? That's not just a finance thing, that's a human condition thing, where if you study any kind of psychology or sales psychology and stuff, they'll tell you, it's like anchoring on loss aversion is always more effective than upside gains. I think there's a principle called disutility, where you feel the pain of a loss more than you feel the equal amount of gain. So anytime you can come to finance with that sort of risk mitigation, loss aversion frame, it'll really get our attention, and the more you can quantify that, the more you can really map it to a very direct business impact. If we don't do this, then this really bad thing happens, and that really bad thing is going to cost us X dollars.That's a really, really strong foundation for a business case. It reminds me of when I was overseeing sales op back in the day, and we would talk a lot about leveraging fear and greed as sales tactics to get buy-in, and fear was always ahead of greed in many ways, right? People were more scared of losing customers than gaining customers in many ways. So, I think that's a really interesting piece there. Liana, for you as an HR leader, people leader, when you're coming up with the business case, are there certain tactics or ways you kind of approach building that and deciding, should I be leveraging the risk mitigation? Should I be leveraging the making money piece? How do you maybe decide or understand what angle to maybe use when building that? Yeah. Thank you. I think you can tell I work with finance a lot because- ... I am literally in agreement with Brian. The thing is, HR leaders almost always lead with make money because it feels like it's the biggest swing, right? The problem is that unless you can really draw a direct line, and I'm not talking about going through a couple hoops to get into this direct line, but it's really a draw a direct line from people program to revenue. Finance will poke holes in it really fast. So the safer and more honest move is usually mitigate risk, because the math is clearer, in my opinion, and the emotional stakes, like what you said, Zach, are higher than people realize, right? If I can show that not investing in this specific whatever initiatives that we come up with creates a specific quantifiable exposure, which is the risk there, that's often a faster yes than a growth story that depends on a lot of assumptions. And I've learned to save the revenue narrative, saving money, for when I have a real data to really back it up. Mm-hmm. So for example, like when we talk about eLTV, right? Making the business case for eLTV investment. If you don't know what eLTV is, it's really an employee lifetime value, where you calculate average yearly revenue divided by total number of employees, and then you divide it by average tenure. And this is kind of not just another metrics. This is my secret weapon for getting leadership buy-in or finance buy-in when I have to make people investment by turning abstract concept into hard numbers that finance teams understand. Revenue, right? And instead of just asking, "Hey, I need a training budget," but you now able to show the math behind it and say, "Management training could improve retentions by six months," and this is where your eLTV comes in. And that's measurable boost to your organization's average eLTV, but also you now can talk the finance language to Ken's points earlier around risk, around the numbers, around the money. So this is when we'll talk more later how I use it as my secret weapon. I was going to say, I'm itching to get to that, and I even have something for Brian, but I know it's part of the clip later. But yeah. Anything to add there, Brian or Dr. Ken? I would just say one quick thing, and then, Ken, you look like you have something to say, so I want to give you a chance to say it. But there's a great question or comment from Jeffrey in the chat, and he calls out the fact that part of this problem, and you're spot on, Jeffrey, is that there's a disconnect in how each of these teams think about the metrics that they focus on. So HR is focused on kind of one kind of metric. He cites things like conversion, volume, time, et cetera, whereas finance tends to focus on sort of a different lens of metrics. Financial metrics, cost metrics, things to do with dollar signs attached to them. That's 100% true. So I think a big part of what we'll continue to talk about here today is by breaking down the silos and building bridges and relationships between these two teams, what you want to try to be doing is learning each other's language. If you're in HR, you want to not only build the relationship and the trust and the partnership, but by doing that, you want to say, "Hey, finance, what are the metrics you care about? Teach me. Educate me." And then finance should hopefully be doing the same thing back at you. And so you're learning each other's language. You're learning why you care about the things you learn or you care about. And then hopefully what starts to happen is you can kind of bridge the divide between the two sets of metrics and start to find out how they relate to each other, and that creates just a better kind of flywheel of conversation and trust and transparency and all that kind of stuff. Now, easier said than done, but there are ways to do it. There are frameworks, there are tools, there are things that you can do. But a big part of it is good old fashioned just relationship building and kind of walking down the hall and saying, "Hey, I want to invest in building a relationship with my counterpart," and understanding where they're coming from, put myself in their shoes and vice versa, so you can start to learn how each other think and talk and speak and all that kind of good stuff. I totally agree. I think the thing that I would add to what Brian was saying is that metrics are a little bit of a trap because they are static numbers that, as Brian and Liana both point out, live in two different language sets. There's a real need to do the work to show the relationship between those two sets of metrics, because, yes, HR talks the conversion, volume, time, but those things lead to money. The idea that they are not the contribution that creates the cash is sort of pulling yourselves apart in a way that isn't actually happening. The problem is we don't have a lot of really great systems and technology to both track the right metrics in the appropriate level of nuance and then do the analysis that says, as this goes up, this goes down. Is that what you want?That relationship tracking is really where you win the battle. Right now, we tend to do that in a very organic, relationship-building way between people. But if you really invest, and I think this is one of the places where AI can potentially make it easier to do that stitching and show those relationships, it becomes a lot less of a heavy lift to make an argument. Yeah. Sorry. To add to that, Ken, I think that was my point before around saving the save money talking point. Yeah. Right? Unless you really have data to back it up, unless you really can create a direct line between your people program and revenue, I would not even go that first. Yeah. I would prefer to go in to mitigate risk first, such as like compliance exposure or manager's effectiveness, tied to your engagement survey, because you have the data from the HR side, and you can tie it to retention, you can tie it to legal exposures when it comes to compliance. Yeah. And it's the building of that relationship that creates the value. It's not just the metrics in and of themselves. Right. I think we get stuck on the metrics. It reminds me of even this situation and any other situation, a lot of times I'll find myself in certain debates or conflicting conversations, and then all of a sudden you step back and I'm like, "Are we saying the same thing, but just saying it differently?" Yeah. And it's like, "Oh, we are." And so once you kind of get to that stage of like, "Oh, we're actually saying the same exact thing. We're actually agreeing right now. We're just using different terminology and language for it." And I think that's sometimes what happens here, right? How can we just figure out how to convert what we're saying into a unified language that we both understand? So, and I think Liana starts to bring a really great framework for that. So let's share this next clip. For me, I have my own magic spell. I call it my CABM. It's C-A-B-M, and that stands for one, C is for credibility. It starts with financial fluency. You don't have to speak Brian language, but you have to know enough of that language so that they stop translating it for you, but instead you start partnering with you. And then for me, also, the A stand for align the business problem. We talk about this. Suzy, you mentioned it, right? Align the problem. What is the problem that is the most important for finance? It's four things, cost, efficiency, risk, and revenue impact. You touch on revenue impact, you touch on efficiency, right? So when you understand that, right, don't lead into that conversation with your solutions. Lead with the problem that finance matters the most. Connect the dot. And then the B for me is build the case. Brian mentioned it as well. Co-build it with finance. You come in, instead of with finished proposal, bring your draft and ask them to help you building it. It's a co-built, start with curiosity. It creates curiosity for finance, and this is when you frame it in a way that, "Well, you building this with me," most likely they will give you their support. This is not manipulation in any way. For me, this is partnerships. I started early building that curiosity with my finance team. "Do you have any curiosity? Do you think this is something that visible for us to do together?" Right? And by the time you get to the M, that's like the CABM, right? I call it the CABM. It's make the decision easy for them to say "Yes." Remember the health benefits, right? The value is so clear, they can't even say no, because again, the risk of not having it, it's obvious, and the value is already assumed at that point. So that's my CABM, but we can talk more about that in the next- CABM. I love that. I just imagine going into the CFO's office- And it's like, "CABM." CABM, let's go. All right. Liana, let's unpack the CABM a little bit more for our network. And we talked about C is credibility, A is align to the business problem, B is build the case together, and then make the decision easy, the D. Right? Or the M, sorry, make the decision easy. So, talk to us about CABM, and when you think about your peers in the HR community, back to even a similar question I asked before, what do you feel like HR leaders are doing really well when it comes to this? And then, what do HR leaders skip or do really poorly today? Yeah. I would say the B is where many HR leaders often look, because remember, B is build the case together, right? And HR-finance relationships are not supposed to be natural relationship. It is not, right? Naturally, we work in different part of our brain. And most HR leaders really do their homework, put together a polished deck or presentation or something, and walk into finance with their own finished answer. They already know the answer to what they want to do. But that's exactly the problem, right? We come in with a really highly valued sort of a process for us. We think that this is going to generate a lot of a yes answer, but the reality is, that is actually the exact problem, because when you show up with a completed proposal, you are asking finance to approve your thinking.Right? You're not asking them to partners with you. But when you show up with a problem statement and a hypothesis, you're inviting them to co-own that solutions, and those conversations end very differently. So in practice, it looks like 20-minute informal conversations before you've written a single slide, in my opinion. So I always engage that early, like, "Hey, do you have any interest in doing this together?" So one example that I can share is, I recognize our total reward philosophy is probably a little bit outdated in this world of everything moving fast, AI, technology, and all this stuff. So before I even start that project, or before I even put my beautiful presentation, I went to my finance team and asked, "Here's why I think we need to do it. Do you think this is something I can get a buy-in from you? Because I do need your partnerships in this, in creating our compensation structure, equity structures, et cetera." Right? So here's what I'm saying, "Here's the problem I think we need to solve. Here's what I'm considering. What am I missing from your vantage point?" And that one shift changes everything about how the final ask lands. So I don't just ask them to approve my thinking. I ask them to, "Hey, think about this with me. Let's partners together." I think this goes back to what Brian and Ken were saying before, around building that trust and the relationship together. Join me- Yeah ... in solving a collective problem. Right. Yeah. I love that, Liana. I think there's so much worth kind of unpacking there that's so powerful. I think co-building, co-authoring sponsorship, let's call it, for a big initiative, is so important for a couple of reasons. And by the way, this isn't just true in between the relationship with HR and finance. It's true all over life, all over our careers. Any relationship we have in the world, it's like you're going to get better partnership if you kind of co-build early. But in the case of what we're talking about today, what I think is so powerful about this is I think we all are kind of guilty of, to your point, when we come up with sort of our perfect proposal, we've spent a lot of time thinking about it. We've spent a lot of time understanding it. We've spent a lot of time analyzing why it's the right answer. When you put that in front of somebody else for the very first time, whether it's finance or anybody else, they don't have the same level of depth and thought that you've put into it. So it's not obvious to them. It's not such an obvious correct answer as it is to you. So they need a little bit of education. They need a little bit of, okay, explain the thinking, explain the need, that kind of thing. So if you're getting buy-in from them early, if you're getting them to co-author or co-sponsor the initiative months in advance, and you can get them to be kind of that co-author along the way, that's going to give them the chance to understand your thinking, to understand why you need what you need. It's also going to give you the benefit of getting them to kind of offer their opinions, their thoughts, and now all of a sudden it's not just your thing, it's both of your things, right? So when you get kind of to the end of that journey together, you're going to turn around and look back and be like, "Hey, this has as many of your fingerprints on it as it does mine." So it just creates a lot of room to sort of build that mutual understanding of, and kind of having both voices represented in what it is you want to go do. And so by the time you kind of get to that final product together, you're both sort of, by definition, bought in on it. The other quick thought I have on it too is you don't want the first time you go to a business partner, whether it's finance or anybody else, you don't want the first time you approach them to be asking for something, right? That's just not good relationship building. You want to have a relationship in place long before you come to them with an ask, especially if the ask has a lot of dollars attached to it, right? So yeah, start building those relationships early. Buy them the cup of coffee, take them out to lunch, spend a lot of time. You might have to take multiple times explaining what it is you want to do and why you want to do it and why there's a benefit. It might take a couple of rounds to really kind of drive it home. So I think that the moral of the story is build in the time for all of that to happen. Don't wait until the 11th hour and say, "Hey, I need $100,000 to do X" without any context and without any trust established. And that also goes back to create your credibility, right? That's the beginning of the cabal, is create that credibility. You cannot co-build or build anything with anybody if you don't understand the language that they speak, right? So, before you even propose anything, or you even ask anything, you need to understand what is the metrics that finance actually care the most? Who are my stakeholders that can be impacted by what I'm proposing? So if I'm talking about equity structure, I know finance have a lot of stake in the equity, so I need to involve them early, but I also need to know the language of equity that finance cares about. What is the vesting schedule? What is the tax implication? All these things. Until you understand that, and again, I'm not expecting all HR people to be the CFO or to be a finance person, but know enough of their language so that you can now start building this program with them. And one of the things we also said during the session was they want to tell it to you. Like- Mm-hmm ... go and let them geek out with you. Don't try to show up and be like, "I know everything already. I did all my homework." Have a little humility and be like, "You know what? I don't know those particular things. I want to help solve, make money, save money, or mitigate risk. So let's talk about this one area and what's really important to you. What are your pain points?" Let them tell you what you need to bring to win them over. And so Liana and Brian have sort of talked about all this, but I think one of the dangers is how much we want to prove ourselves to our colleagues, and that keeps us from doing exactly what Brian and Liana are saying. And so the more we can be like, "All right. There's a human way to approach this," the easier it is to win them over as your colleague so that you can do all the stuff that they talked about. So a couple of things I'm hearing before I go to this next clip is, one, and I kind of put this in the chat, people buy into the things they help create. So I think, and this goes for any, I would say, culture change initiative as well. If you're trying to push something out throughout the organization, try to pull in your people early and help them bring them in to co-create it with you so that they engage and buy into it. I'm hearing the same thing with finance, right? Like so how can we pull them in early? And then the other thing I think, Brian, that you mentioned that really stood out to me was about not being that person that only goes to finance when you need something, right? I'm sure many of you think of your kids or other people, like anytime they call you, you know they're going to ask for something, for some money or something like that. And I think that's kind of the same thing that finance probably gets annoyed with is sales or marketing or HR, they only come to us when they need something from me, right? To sign off or- Yeah ... give them money. So it's like, okay, how can we shift being that type of relationship and being more of a co-creator, strategic thought partner, collaborator, all those things with that department, and kind of disrupt that perception or brand that sometimes I think departments fall into with finance. Absolutely. And by the way, a really good trick, I'm sure this works both ways, but a really good trick to kind of building that initial relationship with finance, this isn't just a finance thing, this is again, just kind of like human nature 101 kind of stuff. But if you come with just a couple of discovery questions showing that you're eager to learn the language of finance. If you came to finance and said, "Hey, I'd really love to better understand how I can think about this thing that I'm working on through a cost lens. Could you help walk me through a financial model so I could learn a little bit more about how that works?" The finance person would fall off their chair. They would be so excited that you're extending an olive branch and trying to learn more about how they think and how they speak. And then finance should do that back to you too, right? It should be a two-way street. But if you just kind of ask those simple sort of open-ended discovery questions, at the end of the day, we all love being flattered and we all love talking about ourselves, right? So if you do that as an effort to try to break down the walls a little bit and just go in with curiosity, "Hey, I really want to do this thing, but I'm not sure how to frame the business case. Could you help me frame the business case? Could you help point me in the right direction? What are the three things you would need to see from me to make this really powerful in front of the CEO or in front of..." You know? "Could you help me do that?" Those kind of things, I think are simple little communication, relationship-building tricks that will go a long way. Yeah. And I think one example to start for all of my HR peers here, a lot of time we forget to ask questions to finance. How do you actually calculate your cost per employee per year? Once you understand that concept of PEPY, it changes the game. This is where you started thinking, "Oh my gosh, I didn't realize that's how you calculate it." Or, "So that's how you include the cost." This is when you started having these ideas around, how do I present this in a way that I can show finance there is an impact on the PEPY? That's kind of a tip that I can give everyone. All right. I'm going to transition to this next clip, but before I do so, I'd love to do a poll in the chat with all of you on that. Could you calculate the cost per employee per year right now? Do you understand that equation or how that's framed? Put yes or no in the chat. I'd love just to get a poll, and it's okay if no. Then if that's the case, then that's a great follow-up from this session. Set up a meeting with finance right after this call and say, "Hey, I would love to unpack this with you." But so, what a great response here in the chat, though. A lot of yeses. This is awesome to see. Some nos, which is also awesome to see. Great, now you know a starting point for you to have a conversation with finance. All right. Let's get to this next clip. And as I'm bringing it up, I want to warn you all, I think this would be such a great practice to do, but if for someone like me, I feel like it'd be incredibly frustrating at first, but I also see it as being something really powerful. Yeah. I was actually going to give a quick anecdote. I actually had that exact scenario happen to me in my finance career where HR came and they wanted, I think it was a performance management or coaching tool or something, and it was like $20,000 a year or something. And the pitch or the business case that they were making was very much around efficiency. Like, "Hey, the team is currently doing this all in spreadsheets today, and it's just a lot of manual work, and the team doesn't understand what their mission is and the targets and definitions of success and all that kind of stuff, and it's just a very manual process and it's inefficient." And so one of the things that we said back to them is we were like, "Okay, listen. Well, first of all, let's try to reframe that story around a bigger business strategic impact." So a framework you can use, have you guys ever heard of the so what framework? Mm-hmm. The so what? So, like when you name a problem and then you keep asking, "So what?" Okay, so we spend 10 hours a week doing this. So what? Well, it's really inefficient. So what? Well, our teams don't get the coaching that they need. Okay. So what? Well, then our really high performers get demotivated because they don't feel like they have... They don't understand the mission, or they don't understand their definition of success, or they don't feel like they're compensated fully because their effort isn't properly recognized or whatever. Okay, then what? So what? Well, then our top performers quit. So what? Well, then we have to backfill them. So what? That takes six months. What happens when your top performers aren't in the seat for six months? Production falls off a cliff. Depending on what role that is, let's say that's a revenue-generating role, that's six months that now we're not generating revenue. Okay? And so you just go on and on and on and on and on. So what? So as I was kind of sharing, I feel like I know a couple good friends where if I were to do that to them, they would try to fight me, right? But as I think about actually going through that experience and then seeing this clip, I'm like, "Wow. Okay. That's powerful." Like, really unwrapping and getting to some of the depths of these impacts and the core of so what we're trying to do, right? So Brian, I'd love to, yeah- Yeah ... if you want to jump in and expand on the so what ladder. Yeah. How's your experience playing that, doing that and, yeah, anything else to add there? Yeah. Watching myself back in the video, which is always a painful experience, I realized that my performance delivery of that maybe wasn't as kind of curiosity-based as it should've been. So I think whenever you do that exercise, it's probably always helpful to frame it as, "Hey, I'm going to ask you a bunch of so what questions." It's all in good intention, right? It's coming from a good place. It's to help us kind of unravel what this thing is and make a better business case. So if I could redo that performance, how I would actually say it would be a little bit more like leads with curiosity. So I'd be like, "Okay, Ken, so what? Like, what's the impact of that? Tell me more about the impact of that." Okay. And Ken says blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'd say, "Oh, interesting. Okay, so what impact does that have? Like, what happens next?" You know? Like, you frame it a little bit more as you just genuinely want to learn more. So I think hopefully everybody kind of gets that part of it. But what's really powerful about that framework is if you're both willing to engage in that conversation and pull on the thread as far as you can possibly pull on it, you learn a lot of really amazing things as you unfold that conversation. And by the end of it, if you just keep asking that question, "So what? What's the impact? What breaks? Where's the pain?" If you keep going on down the line, eventually you're going to get to a really big, strategic, business-level impact. An impact you can tie to revenue, or you can tie to cost, or you can tie to risk. It's almost impossible not to get there, and that's the really important point of that exercise. If you keep asking that question long enough, it's going to lead you to a really fruitful place. So frame it well. Probably have a little bit better tone than maybe I did on stage there. But if you would go into that with an open mind and good intention, I promise you that framework is going to get you to a really good place. Well, I think one of the things that really pops out of that for me, aside from the trauma of my dissertation defense, is- ... really beginning to think about, okay, you're outlining the relationship from the thing you want to do to one of those three things that you said matter, making money, saving money, mitigating risk. So like, you kind of already know walking in the door where the so what sequence needs to end. The specifics of it might vary, but you're going to end up in one of those three buckets, if not all of them. But you also are like, "Okay, at each of these stages, how do I measure that that thing is happening?" That's one of the pieces that I need to bring to do what Liana is saying, is present the data that shows that like, yes, A leads to B, leads to C, leads to money being lost. So we need to do A. And that so what exercise helps you articulate it really cleanly and then go back and say, "Okay, here's the three things that I need to talk about," and we end up where we need to be and the person's like, "Okay, I see why A leads to the end result that I'm going for." You don't ever want to go into the so what without first having a sense of where you want to end up, or, as you point out, that'll be very painful. Because you can technically ask so what forever. Right. That's what I said. Like, I think, yeah, setting the stage, making it playful, "Hey, I'm going to work with you on figuring out the answers to these things. Like, this isn't me just attacking you to like- Yeah ... give me the best answer, and I'm just going to keep challenging every answer you give me type thing." But I think if it's a collaborative, playful experience, like yeah, you can get to some really powerful outcomes. I think for me, being the receiving end often of that so what questions, I actually made it my mission, every single so what questions, I create formula behind it. So like, if Brian asked me, like, "Okay, so what?" Right? So I always show, for example, like, I talk about manager's effectiveness before. I would say, our last engagement polls show whatever percentage of employees is in HR functions or sales functions scoring below threshold. And I see a future here that cohort overlaps with our highest performance. And because of that, based on our historical attrition cost modeling, roughly, I'm making this up, like 1.5 times salary per departure. So we sitting on X number of dollar figure risk if we don't act in the next quarter. So every single so what, I put it in my note- Yes ... and be like, okay, that's what they ask. I'm going to create a formula behind that and connect it with data. Mm. So that's actually a really good exercise Yeah. It's a great self-exercise, right? So before even maybe you have these conversations with the C-suite or the board or the finance team, just self go through the so what exercise over and over again, because you're going to arm yourself with all this type of different types of talk tracks to objections and challenges and questions that are going to come up from those discussions. So, okay, we got one more clip, but before we do so, I do want to launch a closing poll for all of you. I really encourage you to tap into this team at HiBob. They're amazing partners who are leading a ton of research in this space. We've been doing a whole series this entire quarter around the HR finance relationship. So if you were in Chicago, Boston, Austin-- Well, Austin's next week. Where else? We were in LA. We're going to Tampa and St. Pete together in May coming up. And they're constantly building research and practices and frameworks to help HR leaders in our community navigate these things. So if you want to learn more about HiBob and take some time with them, I really encourage you to do that. We'll leave the poll up for a second, and let me play this last clip as we wrap up today's program. And one quick follow-up, because I love what you just said about co-build the case with finance. Two things I'll recommend, if any of you are sitting there and be like, "Well, I'm intimidated," or, "I'm shy to go to my finance team and ask them for help, they're expecting me to come all with a buttoned-up answer." I agree with Liana. I think if you went to the typical finance person and said, "I want your help. I want to co-build a business case or a proposal or something," most finance professionals would fall off their chair with just happiness and gratitude that somebody else in the business is coming to them and they want to partner with them. All finance wants to really do is build these partnerships across the organization. And we're awkward introverts more than anybody else, so we're too afraid to do it sometimes. And so the more you go to us, that's going to be great. The other thing I'd say too is one of the benefits of co-building a business case to something is that you're inception-ing the finance person to already agree in a way to what it is you're proposing, because they're a co-author of it. So if you guys co-build the plan together, and then when you get to the final moment when you go to the CFO and you make your proposal, you've already got the buy-in from your finance counterpart because he or she helped you build it. Right? And they sanity checked your assumptions along the way. They pointed out what you could do better. You were sort of subliminally getting their buy-in the whole way, and so by the time you get in front of the formal presentation, a lot of the work has already been done for you. I love that. Talk about so much of what we've been unpacking this entire conversation was how do we move from this less transactional, I only reach out to you when I'm going to ask for something, and I'm going to build this amazing business case ahead of time, and actually just make it simpler on yourself and maybe save some sanity and start co-creating and building a relationship on the front end. So we're coming up on time. We got five minutes left. Whether it's about this clip or not, I'd love just to hear some closing thoughts and parting words of wisdom for our community. We have a whole network of HR leaders and people leaders on the call. What are some things you would maybe kind of close in terms of encouraging them to take action on, right? Like calculate, go figure out or calculate the cost per employee per year. That would be a great takeaway. So that's mine. I stole it. So what else would you three kind of recommend and share? And Brian, I'll pass it over to you first. Yeah, I would say, don't be afraid of finance. I know we have a reputation of being curmudgeons and difficult. Try to get past that, and just come to us with genuine curiosity, open-end questions. Ask us how we do things, try to learn our language. Hopefully that will get some reciprocity, and we'll do that back to you, too. But I think if you approach it through that lens of just genuine curiosity and partnership, and a willingness to put yourself in your counterpart's shoes and learn the way they think and learn the way they talk, and like we said, build in plenty of lead time as you're building these relationships and trying to build these proposals. Those would be some of my top tips that I think will go a long way. Thank you. Liana, you want to jump in next? Sure. I think the HR leaders who will win with finance aren't the ones who get better at presenting. They're the ones who stop presenting altogether and start co-authoring. And I kept saying throughout this panel, build the case together, right? But I think I undersold how radical that shift actually is, because most HR functions are set up to be the people who show up with answers. Usually, we know all the answers. I'm kidding. But becoming a function that shows up now with questions first is a genuine culture change inside the HR team, not just a tactic. So I will leave you with this. Find your Brian, right? Identify that one finance person who seems most curious about what HR is doing and ask them to connect for coffee on company's card or something. Not with an agenda, not with an ask, just to understand how they think. I think that relationship is the foundations and everything else that you're going to build on. I just imagine this, everyone's going to finance, asking them to get coffee, and then they're like, "By the way, can we use the company card to do this?" No. Yeah. But- You're getting some of the coffee, so I don't see why you'd say no. Ken, yeah, closing parting words of wisdom I want to double click on that so what ladder and the importance of sort of building out why you think this will work. So, starting with a very clear, "This is what we want to achieve, this is what I want to do, and here's how what I want to do gets us to one of those three buckets we talked about." I think a lot of times we let that be organic and abstract. Even if you don't have all the numbers, just being able to say, "A leads to B, leads to C, leads to D," makes your argument an argument and not just, "I want money to do X." I think that's where a lot of people fall down, and they let it be intuitive when it really needs to be more spelled out, especially for people who live their lives by spreadsheets. I love it. Well, thank you so much to the three of you for taking some extra time from Transform to even join in this session, and this was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed kind of revisiting some of those lessons and then unpacking them even further as a community. So let's give it up for these amazing leaders for joining us today. And for all of you, thank you for joining today's program, taking time out of your busy schedules to learn, to grow, to develop your craft. It means a lot and the world of work needs it, so I applause you as well. And if you want to keep hanging out with HiBob and achieve engagement in the community, HiBob and us, we're going to be in Austin next week. We have Atlanta coming up at the beginning of June, and then we're also going to be in Tampa in the end of May. So I'll add at least I got Atlanta's link in the chat. But if you're in any of those other cities, come find me on LinkedIn or shoot me a message. I'll get you some of the information. Liana, Dr. Ken, and Brian, thank you again. This was so much fun. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, everyone, that wraps us up. Have a great rest of your day, and we'll see you at the next one. Bye now. Bye. Bye, everybody.