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The Post HR Generation with Luke O'Mahoney · Disengaged

• James A. Seechurn: and welcome to another episode of the as discussed podcast. Today I'm joined by Luke O'Mahoney, who founded Sapien X in 2022. Luke is a former head of people, Luke hosts the PX espresso podcast and has his own weekly newsletter as well, which I recommend checking out. Luke's central thesis is that the way we think about HR is of date and we need to rethink the way the HR function operates within the business, even its existence as a function at all. And his approach to think about things in more of a product-led mentality, i.e. starting with a and finding a solution. So we had a lot to talk about, really. We have a ⁓ high degree of crossover in of how we think organizations should adapt and... ⁓ the realities and the risks that organizations are currently facing, namely their need to adapt and be nimble and react very quickly to changing market forces. And to do that, traditional systems of control and hierarchy aren't necessarily the right way to organize a business so that it can move quickly and respond to those threats. where I tend to think about things from a people motivation standpoint and how pay reacts with that, Luke thinks it from an organizational structure standpoint, how to rethink. the organization in a way that gets the most out of people to do that. So in addition to thinking about how this different mentality work within a business, we also talked about practically speaking, if agree with how we people within the people function should be thinking, how you might change the way you do work. and acknowledging the difficulties of working with an HR function, namely the lack of time to get anything done, let alone doing things differently. has some really wise advice, think, for anyone looking to think differently about that and to improve the organization from within, both making easier on yourself and also improving the effectiveness of the HR function. So without further ado, I give you this next episode with Luke O'Mahoney of Sapien X, I really hope you enjoy it. Mr. Luke O'Mahoney ⁓ welcome to the As Discussed podcast. How are you doing? Luke: Really well, thank you. very well. It's towards the end of the day here. I think it's your morning, isn't it? I'm in the UK. James A. Seechurn: It is, yeah. is, yeah. Thanks for joining me at the end of your working day. I know you're busy with a lot of things, but I've been looking forward to this discussion for a few weeks. We had this on the calendar for a while, and we struggled a bit with scheduling, particularly with the US-UK time difference. So I'm very interested to talk to you because you've got some really interesting ideas. And I'd really like to start off just with, use this term, it's a really awesome term, post-HR, generational post-HR. I'd love you just to tell me a bit about what that means, where you got the idea and where that came from. Luke: Yeah, absolutely. So the post HR generation as a phrase emerged as a sort of umbrella term to describe. the work that I'm doing to help people in HR teams shift from HR operating models, which are very driven by ⁓ like Ulrich and centers of excellence and silos ⁓ and and efficiency ⁓ and to a more product centric and product operating models. So the post-HR generation as a term has come to an umbrella term for that, but as a ⁓ bigger philosophical statement, it's more a declaration of the systems by which we've operated and executed HR and how we've designed organizations and how we have thought about the experience of work I think don't serve us now in this new era of work, particularly and accelerated by the pandemic season, which I'm sure we all remember with. mixed memories. That certainly accelerated the shift to how people think about their work and the role that work plays in their lives and how much significance they place on that work and what they need to get out of that work. not only do I think traditional ways of working and thinking HR are quite restrictive and keep the function locked in a support capacity and are there in support of the business rather than being a key driver of growth for the business. There's also the very human experience of work, which I think needs a very different approach and an intentional design approach. And on the actual phrase itself, the post-HR generation, I don't know if you have oatsley as an alternative to milk in the US. obviously over in the UK and sort of globally, there's been a shift away from dairy products and... James A. Seechurn: Okay, I do. Luke: the emergence of alternatives, Oatly being one. And one of their slogans, which I've always really liked, is the post milk generation. So it was a direct, as I was creating a mood board around how do I want to articulate and what brands inspire me, what brands are going against the grain and pushing innovation or bringing something new. Oatly as a brand always stood out to me I really liked that phrase. And in the same way that they're trying to encourage a generational shift away from. James A. Seechurn: smoke yeah yeah Mm-hmm. Luke: milk-based, dairy-based drinks and create a viable alternative. It's kind of a similar, like from a movement perspective, it's a similar idea. How do we get, we've always drank milk, i.e. we've always done HR, but maybe that's not good for us anymore. Maybe there's another way to do this. Maybe we should be thinking slightly differently. And yes, some of the outcomes might look similar, but maybe we need to think very differently about how we're building. workplaces and how we're designing the experience of work. And so this post-HR generation is my way of capturing that idea in a single phrase. James A. Seechurn: I love that. I also like that it implies a generational shift because a lot of the time when you hear a new phrase, it implies sort of an immediacy and it's like, you've got to change immediately. But you're kind of saying, well, no, we just need to have a generational shift, which is really how change happens in organizations. doesn't, it never happens tomorrow. It's just, well, let's help the next generation think about how they might learn from the lessons of the previous. And that's, I thought it was a very nice. Very nice phrase. I didn't make the connection between that and Oatly, actually. We don't have as many Oatly ad boards around here as there are in the UK, so ⁓ I didn't make the direct connection. Luke: It's more because I hang out in trendy coffee shops and so you have the post-HR denervation stickers plastered everywhere so perhaps that's just a niche to me but it was certainly an inspiration that captured the essence of the movement well. James A. Seechurn: friend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not cool enough for trendy coffee shops. I've tried a few times to get in. They just sort of hold their hand up at the door. It's kind of weird to be honest. It must be something I said. Luke: You I don't know. You look cool enough to get in. I don't know how I managed to work my way in there. I'm a nerd for sure. James A. Seechurn: You're too kind. Hahaha. Now you mentioned the Ulrich model. Now this little history lesson, which you're going to give by the way, what the Ulrich model? That's the idea of just you do this, you do that, kind of really just putting people in their lanes, right? Luke: Hmm. sort of. It was ⁓ all and all it was born out of a good basic principle. ⁓ But for the Ulrich model, ⁓ and ⁓ would look, I mean... there's utility to the model. It works and particularly at scale, it can work for what it was designed for. I forget who to credit this to, but I learned the quote from Chris Metcalfe, who's someone I worked with very closely. But essentially it was this idea that all systems are perfectly designed to produce the outcomes that they produce, if that makes sense. And so the Ulrich model is a very effective model for creating standardization and scalable processes and scalable experiences which are transferable and scalable, largely without nuance. And it's also a very good model for efficiency and effectiveness of delivery. And for me, the original model looks and feels much more like a procurement model. than it does an organizational design model. It feels like it's designed around making the most out of the limited budget you have, but in a very transactional and procurement led way, not necessarily in a human centered design way. And also very much in service of the business and what is right and needed for the business. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Luke: not necessarily from a lens of who are our users, who are the end customers of work, who are the end customers of the processes that we design. Like there's very little thought to the end user, it's much more about the efficiency of the process than the end user experience and the value created is probably one-sided and rather than... James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. And the end user in this case is the employees of the company. Luke: as certainly one of the end users of work for sure. Yeah. You could definitely argue the primary benefactor, the primary customer of work is employees. Now there's multiple stakeholders, not least the business itself who need to derive value from that exchange, of course. So the Ulrich model is very good at standardization and process and efficiency. And as you described or started to describe, James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Luke: a sort of key feature of the Oroch model is the centers of excellence and these very siloed specialist functions with very little cross-functional meaningful design. A lot of it is we're working in L &D, we're working in org design, we're working in talent acquisition and like all of these parts of the employee experience and employee journey and all of the key functions of... or the traditional functions of HR are very much split out into these centers of excellence and carved out into these silos that don't necessarily create a cohesive experience. But just to my add on that is like, it's not inherently bad. Like it is very effective and efficient at doing what it's designed for. I just think it's a suboptimal approach for the modern business and the modern experience of work that we're trying to design. James A. Seechurn: Right. Yeah, and is it fair to say that most companies now do operate within the Ulrich model? They have these centers of excellence and you can sort of see it manifested in the HR function, the product function, the engineering function, et cetera. Is that the kind of modern manifestation of that? Luke: The Ulrich model is still definitely the dominant model for enterprise level, for sure. Because again, you can imagine how standardization works at scale from a business perspective. But it's certainly not the optimal. I don't think it's the, ignore the great stuff around people experience design. I don't think it's actually the optimal model for driving business growth either. So I think there's a... James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Luke: as an opportunity with product-centric models which are by definition value creating that can absolutely accelerate both business growth and business outcomes along with creating more intentionally designed experiences of work that actually solve real problems for internal users and drive business growth at the same time. James A. Seechurn: Mm. Right, right. Yeah. And in many ways that that model really does come from the industrial era. And we get a lot of the way we do things from the industrial era and things like scientific management and all of these models, all of these systems and all of these ways to sort of extract more effort out of each unit of person. It really comes to the idea that people are making things on a production line and lot of that. know, Henry Ford obviously popularized a lot of them. But something you just mentioned, I'd love you to expand on a bit is like the nature of work is changing and Luke: Mm. Mm. Bye. James A. Seechurn: the pace of change of the world around us is accelerating and the companies then do well, can respond and adapt really, really quickly. And to do that, silos really kind of hold people back. So tell me bit more about what you are thinking is an alternative way to go about addressing that problem. Luke: So ⁓ at a sort of bigger picture, ⁓ proposing and what I'm presenting and SapienX exists to ⁓ enable accelerate is the adoption of a operating model for people teams. ⁓ And that happen ⁓ at a level in a small team, or it can happen at a large enterprise level in ⁓ what has been an Ulrich HR org that's shifting. to a product operating model, which is a bigger task, quite an undertaking, but I'm actively engaged with a number of companies doing exactly that at the moment, which is very cool to see. So the key distinctions between the two is the traditional HR model focuses on support, service, administration, and kind of like the management and the ⁓ efficiency of... work or the processes that sit behind how work gets done and like you say there's some tiebacks to you know Taylorism and you know the sort of traditional way that work is viewed which that is anchored to. A product's operating model actually is there in service of growth and in creating value and moving away from traditional practices and ways of working that keep James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Luke: the HR function as a back office function and not as a strategic growth function. So that's a big distinction. And then operationally how that looks is that rather than thinking about the work that HR does, which is what most HR functions do, it's what the Ulrich model and other traditional HR models do. They look at the work that HR does or should do and they put that into buckets and they create teams around it to deliver HR work. What a product operating model does is takes a step back from the work and actually looks at the problems that exist within an organization. So being a problem centric function versus a solution centric function. So traditional HR, very solution oriented. What can we do? What should we do? What will we do? What has worked elsewhere? Let's implement those things here. Let's take the Ulrich model and let's just implement that without giving it much thought. For example, a product centric model and a product operating model more broadly shifts the focus from solution to problem. So let's actually have a look at the problems and how we identify problems within an organization at employee level, team level, at org level. Let's have a look at problems and then build and mobilize. autonomous and empowered teams around those problems to solve those problems. And so it's a very, very different approach, which requires a very different way of thinking and a very different way of, or a very different skill set and an emergent development of the types of people that will be in those roles that are much more commercially aligned, design focused, actual product managers, people that really can understand. how to mobilize around a problem and build solutions that are validated by feedback, are built in conversation with end users and which are there to solve real employee and organization problems and drive business growth at the same time. the main point there is problem led or problem focused over solution led, which is traditional HR. James A. Seechurn: Right. Yeah. And it's interesting. There's an interesting psychological shift here as well, traditionally HR is there to protect the business in many ways. A lot of the HR systems are there to protect from historical issues around people built from the Ulrich model. you know, and onboarding is to make sure people know how to do the job that you want them to do. Luke: Mm-hmm. Sure. James A. Seechurn: Performance improvement plan is there to protect the organization if you have to get rid of them essentially, you know promotional checklist are there to make sure people aren't gonna screw everything up if they get into the role It's all built from a position of fear. I would say for most of the traditional HR Positions fear that you're gonna overspend fear that you're gonna have a lawsuit fear this for them and it sounds like you're shifting it to be more is it fair to say more forward looking in that sense like and sense that the product function is more about Luke: Hmm. James A. Seechurn: let's be ready to find out what this product needs to do based on the feedback we get from our customers. I feel like there's a slightly different angle there and a more forward looking shift in the way that HR function should be as well. Luke: Yes, so I think it's important to acknowledge that there are are table stakes, right? And those table stakes are employment law, the ethics, there's like, there's core things that I don't think should be housed and owned by HR, for example, these are organizational concerns, like are we being fair and ethical? we? James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Luke: Are employees protected from an employment law perspective and are we protected as an organization? Like these things are really important, but they're table stakes if you're going to grow a business. They're just table stakes. you're going to hire people, if you're expand into new markets, whatever you're doing, if you're expanding a business and you're going to hire and grow through people, table stakes. We need to understand law. We need to understand. what's fair and what's right, what's ethical, we need to make some decisions around that. Part of that actually is a function of your people product, because you're gonna make decisions around how much weighting you place on some of those things. So in this conversation, I'm ignoring the nuance in the sense that individual companies need to make decisions about how they design their organization to take those things into consideration, but they're table stakes. And they shouldn't be the thing that if HR is to exist in the future, it needs to move away from being the police for those types of things that happen within an organization because that ultimately they're table stakes. That's not HR's responsibility. That is the responsibility of an organization and a business to make sure that employees are treated fairly, the employment law ⁓ locally, regionally, nationally is respected. and adhered to that the company is protected from lawsuit because it's actually conducting an ethical prep, you know, all of these things, table stakes. What I'm talking about actually is the system work ⁓ and how work done ⁓ and a ⁓ post-HR ⁓ generation people function gonna be looking ⁓ more terms of problems within the organization for employees for the that we could solve and that we should solve and what exists that we shouldn't. So what problems exist is number one. Which of those do we, should we, could we solve is number two. Number three is like, well, how do we solve them? So what's the mechanism? What's the operating model? What's the method by which we are going to mobilize around these problems that exist to solve them? And then the final piece of that value chain is, and what is the business impact of solving those problems? And that value chain needs to exist. And so often in traditional HR orgs, that value chain isn't properly understood and can't be articulated in a way that is actually significant to should move action. So problem, the functional outcome of solving that problem, i.e. what actually changes and then that functional outcome, what business impact does that drive? Like that value chain. is built into a product operating model in a way that it isn't built into traditional HR orgs. So that's really critical. And so I mentioned Chris Metcalf is someone that I've been collaborating with and we're sort of co-designing and putting together our product ways of thinking to create a model to share that is sort of uniformed for this shift. One of the things that he talks about is that really what a people function of now and the future should be is actually a combination of research and development and go to market. That's what it is. That's really continuous discovery to find problems that exist, continuous delivery to solve those problems. And then a function by which you can activate people within. James A. Seechurn: Hmm. Luke: the system to use those solutions and how you can, again, from a GTM perspective, bring users, hires talent into that experience of work and that work product. So it's a combination of R &D and GTM, not legal compliance policy, ⁓ side of things. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you really aren't taking that traditional ⁓ techie sort of product driven approach and layering it over the HR function. And I'm curious, I've got a lot of ⁓ questions here because this could potentially fundamentally change the way a company builds itself and especially as... Luke: Sort of. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, I mentioned earlier the pace of change is accelerating so much companies have to adapt very, very quickly. We are seeing lots of innovation in the way companies organize themselves in order to respond to those changes. ⁓ what I want to do, if I had to visualize, say I know it takes time to move into a different way of thinking it, but if you had your way. Luke: Mm. James A. Seechurn: what exactly, what roles would you have in, you wouldn't have an HR function, we have to call it something different, I assume, but what roles would you have and what would they be doing in their day to day? What backgrounds would they have as well? Just give me a brief glimpse into this possible future here of how this people function might look. Luke: Mm. or naming conventions aside, because naming conventions within the HR world is something that you can go round on for hours. I'm agnostic, I don't care what you call it, right? It doesn't matter. As long as the work being done looks more like what I'm about to describe, the naming conventions matter least. if I talk through, I won't give names and specifics, because it's an ongoing project, but if I talk to... James A. Seechurn: print. Luke: to or about a project that I'm currently involved with. Chris and I are jointly delivering for a large European online fashion retailer and we are supporting their shift into a product operating model at scale, which is very cool. And it does affect every aspect of the business once implemented fully. So what we've helped them shape and define is a group of problem spaces that we're calling them problem spaces, a group of, in this case, six. And again, I won't go into the specifics because it's an ongoing ⁓ piece of work, but there's six problem spaces. And so rather than having ⁓ as it currently exists, lots of functional roles and siloed work that's happening across the organization, we're kind of encouraging them to abandon that altogether. define clearly these problem spaces, which is a clearly distinct areas in which, I'll give you a few, so like insight, for example, is a problem space. So how do we collect and use data to drive better decision making, not within HR, across the business? So insight as a problem space. And we'll just take that. Within there, you need a clear definition of that problem space and the boundaries. So where does this start and end? And then you need to start to mobilize a, at least one central team within that problem space that is there to identify problems that exist and to organize and manage teams around those problems to design and solve solutions to then launch into the business. So there's a... tried and tested model for this, which is called the product trio model, which those that are more product aligned may have seen in practice or been involved in, but essentially you would have a product manager who's responsible for the value. So the end product, the end feature actually delivering value, that product manager is there to make sure that the value exists and that the problem is clearly defined, et cetera. You'll then have someone who is playing the role of design. Now, it might be that you have actual UX and ⁓ design trained individuals within your team. I'll point to Megan Trotter, who's a great example of this, who's a self-proclaimed UXer turned PXer. So she was literally a UX practitioner who has shifted to apply that focus internally to the people experience. So UXer turned PXer, which is very cool. James A. Seechurn: Interesting. OK. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Luke: you'll see a lot more of that happening, but also just up-skilling, retraining people already in the function, just, ⁓ that's cool, actually, that's the bit that I wanna focus in. I wanna be part of the design and service design and all the layers of design that go into crafting product and experience. And so you've got product manager, you've got design, and then you have to have someone or some individual responsible for. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Mm. Luke: engineering we'll call it or building, whatever, there's someone that's gonna technically bring this thing into life. And so within that trio, then you'd have obviously multiple stakeholders involved, but essentially you need to establish a core products trio, which is going to be responsible for driving initiatives within that problem space initially. And then as that first trio gets really well established, you can then start to build out additional trios, et cetera. That's the idea. So rather than payroll and compliance, rather than, you know, pure talent acquisition, maybe talent acquisition actually is the exception to the rule. You're probably still gonna have to have a talent acquisition function, but I'll come onto that in a second. So what we end up with is problem spaces with a mobilize and activated product team. And then around that and supporting that, you've got all of the other areas that are still really important. So you've got operations that still needs to happen. Like all products still needs operations. So again, to use a phrase from Chris that I really like, not all work is product work, but all work contributes to the product experience. So one thing when we're, you know, we're talking about this shift to a product operating model for people teams, it doesn't mean that everybody can is or should be a product manager. It doesn't mean that everyone can is or should be a designer. can is or should be an engineer technical builder. That is one layer of the product operating model and the shift to a product centric model that exists and is supported by operations, is supported by, call it customer success and enablement and activation, it's supported by go to market. So some internal go to market as well as that external talent acquisition. So there's different layers. of work that happen around product building. So just for anyone listening, it doesn't mean that anyone in HR or anyone involved in the people function now suddenly needs to be a product person. That's not what we're saying, but the model shifts from siloed delivery of functional work to mobilized ⁓ and empowered product teams within clearly defined problem spaces solving. problems of high value for people, employees, and organization supported by layers of operations, success, enablement, go to market. James A. Seechurn: So this is quite a shift. So all the time, I'm finding this really interesting. So when you're talking, I'm thinking, okay, then what does my, so yeah, what does my talent acquisition function do? Like what does my employee experience person do or things like that? what you're saying is all that work is gonna be done, is gonna be done, but it's gonna be done at different points from a product perspective in terms of where it's at. So the same touch points are there, they're just gonna be covered by a group of people and the mindset of the people doing this. is probably going to be like your example, someone that's more used to the user experience type mentality than the people type mentality. It's quite a big shift. It's quite a big shift, isn't it? Like you're fundamentally altering, basically taking away the HR function. It doesn't really exist in that traditional sense into this model. And you're recruiting, I assume, a more experienced version of people to do those things as well. Luke: it's James A. Seechurn: I guess my question, natural follow up, I have loads of questions, but the follow up question is, how does a company shift away from such an entrenched traditional model, which is so familiar, familiar from a recruitment perspective as well and an internal stakeholder perspective, how does it shift away from that to something that does all the same things but with a completely different look and feel? Luke: Mm. Mm-hmm. Well, first and foremost, like all big change, requires sponsorship at the highest level. So if the executive team, the most senior executive layer aren't at least willing to entertain the idea and support experimentation, which I think is key, by the way, like ingrained within the product methodology is experimentation and the expectation that failure is part of the process of progress. which again is a very big detachment away from traditional HR, which is we must have all the answers, we can't make any mistakes, everything is critical. It's like, things are, but actually that's the mindset that will hold you back. And again, going back to those table stake elements, the table stake elements, don't guess on those, don't experiment on the table stakes, like employment law is employment law. Everything else from an experience design and... James A. Seechurn: non-HR way of thinking. Luke: how could we solve this problem and how could we think about this differently and instead of having X solution that worked in Y company and we'll just take a version of that and plug it in, hey, why don't we get back to first principles and look at how this problem manifests within our organization in its own unique way and that's where it becomes really interesting. But to answer your question, if you don't have sponsorship at a... at a top line level, you're gonna massively struggle to implement wholesale operational product, so operational change, so like full product transformation within your people function, you're gonna find that very difficult. However, you can start locally. There's no reason why you need to do a full product transformation. can just have a, you could just call them a sort of PX growth team, a... James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Luke: a PX experiment team or just a PX team that operates with inside a traditional HR org. You can still experiment with the model locally and scale what works and scale and or scale based on impact evidence, evidence of impact locally. And you can use that to scale. I think a good example is the BBC. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Luke: here in the UK, So the BBC have a relatively traditional... HR org, not least because of the type of organization they are, like risk averse and traditional, like as an organization. But they have within that, or like as a satellite function, they have a PX function that exists to look at and to support design outside of the traditional HR functions. They're looking at sort of wraparound experience design. ⁓ spent a bit of time with the PX design team recently there to help them think about how to adopt a product trio model locally, which is really cool. So it doesn't mean that you have to completely rip out your whole HR organization in one go. That's not necessary and it's probably not sensible. It's more about where does it make sense to start applying more product centric approach and low risk, high impact. parts of the employee experience is a good place to start, you know. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Yeah, and it comes back to this principle of change, right? We always think change needs to be a big deck and the strategy session and everyone bought in and it comes from the top. A lot of the time, FOMO is quite a powerful engine of change. Like if you can do it somewhere and show the rest of the business a new way of thinking. First of people are curious about new ways of doing things, particularly in HR, where it often gets a bit of a negative reputation because it's a more protective cost center. But if you can find a corner of the organization that's open to trying and... Luke: Mm. James A. Seechurn: I mean, there's a lot of good things you're talking about here. If you can make it work, or least make it interesting and show that it's thinking about things differently, you might get some people looking over the shoulder and saying, yeah, what's that group of people doing over there? And that's really the way to get kind of an infectious change in organizations is make people want to try that thing rather than impose it, and rather than have it imposed upon them, as David Brent would have said. Yeah. Luke: I... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I genuinely believe that to be true. mean, I think it's the best place to start. So there's a few ends of the spectrum, right? So a good chunk of my community and people that have engaged with me over the last four years as I've been building, you know, an audience around these ideas and you know, presenting and providing enablement at individual team and org level around these ideas. You have one end of the extreme, you sort of 10 to 100 person startup scale up where you maybe have one people person or maybe like one to five head count like responsible for people initiatives, people in HR initiatives, however they're defined. It's a lot easier there to... rejects traditional HR ways of thinking and working and move straight to product-centric because actually when you start to use product-centric language within a startup scale up, people go, ⁓ okay, no, that's, yeah, that makes total sense. The HR stuff that we were talking about before actually was a bit, we weren't really interested in, weren't, we couldn't see the value in it, we could only see barriers. Whereas you start shifting to thinking about talking about problems to solve and product trios and all of this language that sounds familiar within a startup scale up, you're gonna meet much less resistance and because you're at that early stage, you don't have all the layers of HR infrastructure that are in place that you have to unpick and rebuild. So if you're in a startup scale up or if you're in your first people role, or maybe you're a chief of staff or you're the, you know, the, the office manager is a bit of an outdated term, but if you're that person in a startup scale up where there isn't really yet an established central HR or people function, but you can see yourself shifting in that direction, I would encourage you to lead with a product centric approach because you're going to deliver a lot more value and you're going to start building in a way that supports the ambition. of the startup that you're in, but also scales in a way that won't carry with it all of the legacy HR debt that you'll accrue as you put in layers and layers of ⁓ traditional HR. So at startup scale up, it's a lot easier to start there. When you get into the example I was just talking about, ⁓ the 15,000 plus headcount org, that's a big organization. That's a big... That's something, that's an organization that's grown over many years with lots of layers, lots of expectation. It's a much bigger shift to make, to go right. And to the credit of this company again, I'm assuming at some point once we've finished the project, we'll be able to talk openly about who we're working with and the outcomes, but it's a big leap of faith on their part. But it's one that they've... James A. Seechurn: Mm. Yeah. Luke: they've made over a series of years, because they've been talking about making this shift since 2019. They've experimented with a few different ways internally of getting there. And last year they made a real concerted effort to make the shift. And Chris and I have gone in to support what that looks like and to help get to the point of activation. But they've made... a strategic decision that we are making this shift. We fundamentally are willing to bet that it's the right thing to do and we're going to commit the time, energy and budget required to shift us in that direction. That is a big decision and it's a strategic play. It's one that can't be made lightly. But in the middle, you've got, I'm in a quite a large James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Luke: HR org or I lead a team within a ⁓ large HR org and I want my team to be able to deliver more impact and how could I adopt some of this product-centric thinking? How could I adopt a local product trio model? How could I start to speak and think more product-centric within my team to deliver more impact locally? That's something that any... anyone can do who's operating within a HR org is to start to think about how to apply these basic concepts locally. So you've got the full spectrum from full transformation, scrappy startup and everything in between. James A. Seechurn: I think that's the thing. When you talk about a fundamentally different way of doing things, it often frightens people because it feels like such a big shift. a lot of the time, it's not about getting, it's just about moving in the right direction towards a model that makes more sense. And by the way, When you've completed this transformation with this client, we're going to have to have like the world's longest podcast where I pep you with questions about how it went and the impact and things like that. But I do have one specific question on that actually. What was the real impetus for change or the main things that caused this? Because Luke: Yeah James A. Seechurn: You know, lot of companies are out of problem of thinking, I haven't really got a problem here. I've got an HR function, it does what an HR function is supposed to do. Why would I change that? And you've already spoken a bit about the benefits of thinking differently about this. But what was their real driver to try something different? Was there a problem or was it just they were a company that wanted to do things differently? What was that? Luke: Yeah, bit of both. Individual innovation and leaders coming into the people team that could see opportunity to do something different. is commercial and business imperative. The organization, like all, faces challenges in a competitive market. so ⁓ this goes way beyond HR. Organizational-wide, we need to move more quickly. We need to make decisions quicker. We need to execute more effectively. We need to bring in... James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. Right. Luke: and retain the highest quality talent that we can do. There's like all of these business challenges that exist within any organization. And obviously when you're an organization of the scale of this one, you know, the numbers on the page, like the stakes are much higher, like commercially, the opportunities are bigger and the commercial risk is bigger. Like all of these things amplify. And so if you're seen as a traditional HR function, you're not necessarily gonna be the go-to to like, how do we accelerate our business performance through our people, which is exactly what a good product-centric people function can do. You're gonna be seen as a HR, which is a ⁓ HR actually, all of these processes and things and hoops. and systems are actually preventing progress, they're getting in the way of decisions, they're getting in the way of speed, they're blockers to progress. You can see how very quickly the traditional HR mindset can be seen as a blocker to speed and progress. James A. Seechurn: Well, yeah, so that's an area I want to dig into actually, because this is an area where our Venn diagrams overlap considerably. Now, traditionally, HR people and compensation in particular, it's all built around systems of control. And you see it in things like performance management and merit cycles and performance-based pay architecture and very tightly managed structures that basically imply that we know what you ought to do. Therefore, you need to do it. Otherwise, you're not going to get paid to do it. Luke: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm. James A. Seechurn: That's really hardwired into the psyche. And we did a recent debate around pay for performance and everyone loves pay for performance. The idea of individual pay for individual performance. But to your point, it's difficult in a world, it's easy in a manufacturing world where you know what everyone's doing, you can measure it and even in sales to some degree you can do it. But in a world that's in constant change, the idea of the traditional management by objectives process and setting goals and measuring against those goals and paying people for those goals. Luke: Hmm. James A. Seechurn: It's another system of control that inhibits free thinking and collaboration and movement and to your point, guess, nimbleness in a way, in a world where you have to react to it, can't plan for. Even now companies are reacting differently to the way they plan the year out because Claude has come along and can automate half the things that once were in someone's objectives for the year. So I guess my broad topic of conversation here is how do you think about some of those traditional Luke: Hmm. Hmm. James A. Seechurn: models or let's talk about performance management, how does that work or how does that evolve into your new way of thinking in the people experience function? Luke: I think you use a couple of phrases that are really key to drill down on. So that whole idea of systems of control and management, I think is bang on for Ulrich as a HR structure. And the shift is going away from of control and systems of management to systems of enablement, of of activation, systems of growth. ⁓ Like ⁓ the ⁓ that product-centric thinking takes us in. Performance management as a standalone, I think is something that has been broken for quite a long time in most organizations. And it goes back to what sits at the heart of a product-centric way of working, and that is to really, truly understand the problem, not... understand the problem as it exists for another organization, not understand a solution as it exists in another organization, but actually within our organization, what is the problem that exists linked to, in this case, performance management or to reverse engineer? What was the expected? What's our hypothesis around performance management now in terms of if we do X, we will see Y. However you break it down, like what's the first principle sitting underneath the need for performance management and to be brave enough to ask the contrary and challenging controversial, do we need performance management? Is this even necessary? Like product thinking gets you to go to that layer because what I see very often, James A. Seechurn: you Luke: in all HR functions is ⁓ you become responsible to deliver solutions that are brought to you. So someone in the senior exec team will say, right, now we need a new performance management system and this company over there are doing this, ergo, I think we should do that. Can you go and build me a version of that? And many HR functions with good intention go, yes, of course. Yes, we'll get on that right away. And it's like, okay, well, the first question, I mean, needs to be, okay, why? What's currently broken? Where's the evidence of the problem? Like, forget about the solution, because you've brought me a solution. Performance management system. Let's put that to one side. What's the problem we're trying to solve here? What's the... unlock we're trying to achieve? What's the business impact? What's the employee impact? Whatever it is, what are we trying to do here? What's the actual driver behind this request? And I think that's really, important. And I think without that, HR functions will remain a support and service function that deliver limited impact and allow... James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Luke: the organization to make bad decisions about how to utilize time, cost, and how to end up engineering really poor experiences of really critical things like performance management and pay and compensation. Like these are some of the most critical and emotive aspects of an employee experience and yet they're left to chance or they're sort of copy and paste initiatives. And if I could use an analogy to bring this to life. Something ⁓ I've been describing that sort of behavior, which is, HR, build us this, hey HR, do this, hey HR, we've seen this over here, we want you to do Y. I've come to define and describe those as a cut the cape request and I'll explain why. So I have young children, my son is nearly six. And sometime just before Christmas, he came running up to me, agitated and upset and saying, I need you to cut the cape off my Batman, daddy. And I was like, what do you mean? Why do you want to do that? I just want you to cut it off, daddy. Just cut the cape off the Batman, please, please. If you've been around children, if you have your own or if you've just been around children, you'll know that when they get into that mode, all they want to do, they're fixated on, I want this cape off. And so as a, know... probably impatient, slightly tired dad is like, no, not cutting the cape off. toys are expensive. We should respect the toy. I'm not going to cut the cape off. Just play with it as it is, which cued of course tantrum, tears, full works, strop as he cried his way down the corridor away from me. And I don't know if I'm proud or embarrassed to say my product brain actually kicked in because I actually had an internal conversation, which was, I don't think you did very good discovery there. Like genuinely, I had this thought, like, I think you need to do some discovery. And I was like, all right, come back, come back, come back, come back. Come and sit with me. Okay. Why do you want the cape off? And so I went through a cycle of discovery with him until I got to the point where he's like, the cape. is rubbing on my arm and it's itching me and I don't like it and I want the itching to stop. I was like okay cool so you want the itching to stop. Fine why don't we roll the cape up secure it with some tape and then the cape is out of the way it's not going to rub on your arm you can carry on playing with your batman and tongue in cheek I was like because I know as your dad in about 10 minutes you're to come back to me and ask ask me to have this cape back on or be upset if the cape's not there. So let's do that. He's like, okay, yeah, okay, daddy, that's fine. So we did it, we taped it up. Off he went off to play and sure enough, I saw him 15 minutes later and he'd already taken the tape off himself because he wanted the cape. And so this is a prime example of how we end up getting drawn into executing on solutions before we actually understand the problem. Sometimes. deploying permanent solutions to a temporary problem, sometimes, oftentimes delivering a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, or at least it doesn't exist in the way that we think it does or we assume it does. So it speaks to the heart of this product-centric model. And performance management is a classic example because the amount of, must have, ⁓ in the last four years, we're probably talking thousands of conversations with... people leaders either directly or as part of a group or as part of a panel, whatever it might be, where the performance management has been on the table and they've all had to have this very similar experience where a senior stakeholder has told them they must do a new performance management process and we would like it to look and feel like this. And it's a problem that endures. And so now I'm giving you all a phrase, the cut the cape off request, cut the cape request and. James A. Seechurn: time. the cape. I love that. I love Luke: If you feel like you're getting a cut the gate request, try and ask some more questions to find out what the itch is before you take action. ⁓ James A. Seechurn: Well, first of all, I think you should think about applying SapienX to maybe like parenting X and then the exact scenario you have with your son there. Like you've got a model, a model of success of how to deal with a difficult child. That's But cut the cape. I feel like immediately as you're talking, I was thinking of so many examples of HR functions or people functions or comp and benefits functions, cutting the cape. And like I do think, and again, this is where our worlds collide a lot more like Luke: Yeah. Right. ⁓ Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: Pay is often at this kind of focal point as a solution to everything. And I wrote about it in my last book, What Pay Costs. We tend to say, okay, but if we just pay them, right, then we'll get everything we need from this person. If we just pay them a bit more, if we just isolate our high performers, if we just take a bit more away from our low performers, and HR gets entrusted with this idea, give me performance-based pay, because then I can get the most out of our people. And... That to me is very much a cut the cape When you really ask this, what are we trying to solve here? We are trying to solve engagement and you're trying to solve human performance and getting the most out of our people. But you've leapt to the conclusion that pay is the right way to do them. Whereas what you should really be asking is, well, what motivates people? And then you come back to things like self-determination theory and what we actually want to engage the workforce. You want to have them feeling autonomous. You want them having challenges. You want them to able to collaborate freely. Luke: Mm. Right. James A. Seechurn: And ironically, the more of those systems of traditional HR control you put in place, the less likely a lot of that is to happen. So I don't really have a question here, but I'm kind of curious as to how that mentality fits into your model. Luke: No, no, it's good. Yeah, exactly, exactly into it. it leads me to the jobs to be done framework, which maybe won't familiar to some listeners, maybe won't be familiar to you, James, I'm not sure. ⁓ It's a sort of marketing slash product ⁓ model for understanding the actual true needs of our end customers or end users. So. essentially within the jobs to be done framework, there's three types, three core types of jobs that exist for most users. They can be functional, they can be social, and they can be emotional. And so what the pay people more so they stay, for example, is like a very functional application of like, we assume that the primary... motivation for everybody here is to earn more. Like maybe, maybe it is, but it might not be for everybody. so jobs to be done framework forces you to actually create and understand, you know, cohorts and segments of your employee population and start to get under the skin of the jobs to be done that exists within archetypes in each of those segments so that you can start to, okay, right. Well, in that segment, pay actually is really important. for whatever reason, maybe it's social economic, whatever. For whatever reason, pay actually is really important in that section, that cohort segment. And we should design Pay and Comp to address that need specifically because it's over there, we can see it glaringly obvious, there's signs for our discovery that that cohort really puts a lot of weight on pay compensation. In another segment, another cohort group, maybe there's more of a social. element to the way in which they want to progress in their career, let's say. So it might be about the acquisition of title actually and status that's more important over purely the pay in itself. an example, maybe this person is on an accelerated compensation route, but actually they don't get a comparative visual title change that addresses that social. the need to be seen to progress that goes beyond the pay. For example, I'm just randomly just picking stuff out of the air here. And then there's, you know, the emotional side for some people where actually it's how do I feel? Like the money itself is irrelevant, but how do I feel about the experience of the promotion, the experience of the... increase in pay or not, whatever it might be. I've just gone like grabbed at things out of the air just for the purpose of linking it back to pay. But jobs to be done as a framework exists across all product and experience design. And it's about understanding the actual needs, motivations of your end users so that you can address those specifically. not just create features that you assume based on some logic will have X effect without any knowledge or understanding. So jobs to be done as a framework is James A. Seechurn: a lot of your mentality is around not assuming. ⁓ much like cutting the cape, your initial reaction was to make assumption and a lot of your mentality is not to assume anything and ask questions. ⁓ And that mentality is definitely, I think, difficult for people in centers because you kind of reach for the playbooks, you know, when something happens as a playbook and it exists already because someone designed it. So your default is to go and pick up the thing. ⁓ Luke: Hmm. Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Hmm. James A. Seechurn: that is supposed to be the solution to the problem that's been brought to you, which is often just to cut the cape. But a lot of what you're saying is ask, do discovery in your own words, do discovery, figure out what is the root cause of this. And that to me is a fundamental psychological turning point between what an HR function does and a PX. I don't want to say you can use the word function, but a PX mentality goes through. So it's more of an observation, but I'm keen to hear more examples of how this plays out. Luke: All right. Hmm. Yeah. No, and I agree, and you summarized that really well. It's like the combination of continuous discovery and continuous delivery that happen literally on an infinite loop where... James A. Seechurn: Which takes time as well, that's the other thing. Like it takes time to do this stuff and in many things in life to get it right and improve it does take time and I think the time alone is almost a negative for traditional HR ways of thinking because of the volume of problems that need to be solved. But I imagine your argument would be if you take the time to do things properly in the first place you're going to create fewer of those problems that take you so much time to deal with in the old world. Luke: us. Yeah. 100%, 100 % and there's like, again, I think there needs to be a distinction between the product operating model that is there in service of... creating a healthy, highly functional work product, if you like, which again means that the business is accelerating towards its objectives and that the experience for employee is really valuable. they want to, a good analogy that was introduced by Jessica Swan is the idea of work as a subscription product. So if you want your employees to continue to subscribe, to the product of work that you offer. That means you need to do that continuous discovery and continuous delivery to make sure that you are listening, responding, addressing and shaping your work product, your people experience product in conversation with your end users in the way that any good product org would and should. And that is part of that. touches on things like sort of more the world's on fire problems or complex ER cases, like the certain parts of the HR sphere that still needs to be protected in terms of, you you still need to have an absolutely trusted internal, let's say business partner to use a traditional language. that you can go to with a complex personal need or complex professional situation or a grievance, like all of these things, all these mechanisms need to exist. So just to be clear for anyone listening, I'm not suggesting that we just get rid of everything that HR is and stands for. There's key things in there that we need to carry forward into the new model. What I'm saying is that that shouldn't be where we stop. We actually have a much bigger opportunity to design the experience of work and the system of work in a way that drives business growth and in a way that creates more value for me, you, whoever, as an employee, as a subscriber to that experience of work. there's, yeah, there's the core stuff that HR does that's really important around being that place where you can protect and listen and voice and share and support critical. but let's not stop there. There's more that we can do. And maybe some of that actually becomes, I'm just speaking out loud now, maybe part of that becomes a function in and of itself. It's like there's an internal function of the business that is there specifically for, you know, what we'd call traditional HR, that sort of, and. James A. Seechurn: right. Yeah. Well, you know, that those traditional things that you mentioned actually, it's kind of brings me to another point, which is the role of the people manager. And many people will know my, lot of my views on this, but you know, I think a lot of the role of the people manager is built on the idea of a factory supervisor. It's someone that's making sure that their direct reports are doing their job, extracting as much effort as possible and being good ambassador of the company. Whereas really great people managers and great companies are. Luke: Hmm. James A. Seechurn: people that remove blockers and empower the people underneath them to leapfrog them and go the extra mile. They're not just there for the extra pay packet, they're there because they're really, really good at that and they're really good at enabling people to be their best. And a lot of things that you described, giving people a safe place, giving people a source of grievance, a place to go, I think that should really be the people manager, that's their job. But I think a lot of people managers, particularly in modern quick-burning companies, Luke: you Hmm. James A. Seechurn: They're not equipped to do that. They haven't had been trained. haven't been given the time to either organically or through training learn how to play that role. And they deflected back to HR, which becomes a defense mechanism on behalf of the company to protect against potential costs that might arise from an unhappy employee. I I'm kind of curious, like in your world, what are your views of this people manager role? Like how might that be improved and how does that fit into the PX model? Luke: Here we go. Yeah. Yeah, you've nailed it. You've nailed it. Yeah. That was a good exercise in product thinking, because you're absolutely right. the often, if you are in a HR organization and you find most of your time is dealing with complex internal grievances or all of these things that we, by the way, just for anyone listening as well that doesn't know my background, I have been ahead of people. I'm a former head of people myself. been in the shoes, I understand what goes on. If you're in a business or HR org where you're spending most of your time dealing with those types of complex employee ER cases, et cetera, the solution probably isn't to improve the ER response process. It might be to look at the first principle, the underlying problem. Why are we having so many of these? And you might find that one of the things that you service is that your people manager capability is lacking and that you could actually win back a lot of time for yourself in the future by approaching the problem slightly differently and working with people managers to enable better conversations, better one-to-ones. It could be any, this is the way you get into the fun part of the products mode, which is once you've identified a problem, that's where you can start to ideate and you can use the double diamond design process, which is a really great, ⁓ just Google it, anyone who's listening, really great framework for approaching design, which starts with discovery as the first part. So understanding the problem. James A. Seechurn: What do they need? Luke: finding as much as you can about the problem that you think exists. Divine, which then, okay, how can we now describe this problem in a really clearly articulated problem statement? Then you go back out into the second diamond, which is where you start to do your design and ideation. So what are all the ways that we could possibly solve this problem? And then you're gonna converge in your final part of the diamond on the prototype or the initiative that you are going to put into practice the test. It's a really nice, simple way to go about discovery, problem definition, ideation and design. Like it's a really nice model, but you're absolutely bang on. And to talk about the people manager capability piece that you brought specifically, it's probably the biggest unlock for most companies is to focus on that. James A. Seechurn: Mm-hmm. 100 % agree. Luke: And there's a, I don't know if you've come across Dart Linsley yet. Dart's brilliant. He wrote an article, he co-authored an article. Yeah, Reimagining Work as a Product was the title of the HPR article that he co-authored. What's really interesting about Dart is unlike me and Chris who are focused on the product operating model for the people function. James A. Seechurn: ⁓ the HPR one. it? Yeah, yeah. Luke: Dart's focused on the idea that people managers are product managers. So that's his thesis is essentially that the people managers, they knew how to be product managers of work local to them, they would be doing a lot of this, a lot of the bigger concepts that we've spoken about here at organizational level, they would be doing at local level. And so they'd be looking at their team, they'd be understanding. James A. Seechurn: you Luke: the problems and bottlenecks that exist locally, they'd be thinking and working very differently to resolve those. For example, they'd be diving into the jobs to be done framework to understand actually what's important for their team members beyond the obvious. So, Dart's a really interesting person. He's great to talk to. His podcast is called Work for Humans. It's brilliant. James A. Seechurn: thing. for humans. OK, I'll listen to that. ⁓ Luke: he's great and he's thinking about it from the people manager level, whereas Chris and I are focusing on the ⁓ people operating model. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, interesting. Okay. So one of the barriers I do think is always the need to measure and prove something is or isn't working. But of course, there's this wonderful old phrase, which is that when something becomes a goal, it ceases to become a good measure. Luke: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: And as soon as you measuring things, start essentially training people to go after the thing you're measuring and make it look good, which is why performance management, many of those systems of control are tricky. So how do you demonstrate the success of a model like this when by definition, Luke: Mm. James A. Seechurn: It's not about minute numbers and proving metrics and, know, traditionally HR is like, you know, retention rate, turnover net metrics and like budgets and number of accepted offers and all this kind of thing. I imagine some of those might still play a role, but also a lot of those metrics have come to guide the strategy itself rather than be a measure of how well that strategy is working. So how do you balance the need to prove success and the knowledge that over measurement can become its Luke: Mm. Yeah. Mm. Alright. James A. Seechurn: self-assist of control. Luke: Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. I think there's the needs to understand leading and lagging indicators, which I think often is ⁓ not well understood in many people functions. ⁓ We tend to have in traditional HR functions, a lot of the metrics are ⁓ measures of outputs. So how many initiatives have we run? How many? you know, how much work have we done over what period in what function, in what silo, how many training programs have we delivered? Like there's a lot of volume based measures, you could say, and again, they would still need refinement ⁓ or leading indicators. So reasonably good at saying what we have done, what's functionally changed, what's we delivered. A hundred of these programs to this group, great. whatever it might be. What's missing often is then the lagging indicator or what does that actually mean for the business? What was the thing that we're have to wait several months to understand? So I think that's one thing. Even if you are staying in the traditional model, just think about leading and lagging indicators. Because if you can start to measure lagging indicators more accurately, you can have a better chance at communicating impact and value. But that's only part of the story. I think with the product operating model, you start to look at things slightly differently. You start to look at, ⁓ I think, top line business health metrics as a primary source of indication of the work that you're doing in the function and how it's contributing to the performance and the health of the organization. I think then you also have your people team. People product team effectiveness, which is, you know, things like the velocity. So how quickly can you get from discovery through to prototype and functional outcome? Like what's the velocity? How quickly can you get things into ⁓ production that can then have a meaningful impact on the metrics that you choose, by the way, which will be organization specific. James A. Seechurn: you Luke: the important metrics that you choose are the right ones to focus on the North Stars that you define as being important for your organization. So you've got business, health and performance. You've got the performance of the actual people function and how effective it is. And I think also you have the health or the adoption of initiative level. performance, if you like. So like a product team would measure, if you were launching a new feature on your app, for example, you'd be looking at activation, you'd be looking at how quickly people find value in that feature. And if it's a feature that is not providing value, you would be making decisions about, well, maybe we misunderstood the problem, so we need to go back and think about it, or maybe actually... our hypothesis around the value created by doing this thing was wrong. And actually let's not waste any more time doing that thing. And so there's different, you'd measure value very differently. So initiative level, intervention level, value, activation, usage, utilization, functional outcomes locally, the performance of the actual people team, how quickly can we execute? How can we move to create value more quickly? And how does that impact? James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Luke: these top line business metrics that we've defined to be really important. so everything should ladder up in a way that just measuring HR outputs can never do. James A. Seechurn: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, so they're going to be fundamentally different because of that. It's always a balance. Like you need to be able to measure things because measuring to some degree helps demonstrate progress, which is such an important principle in motivating a workforce, the knowledge that you're improving or getting to where you're trying to get to. I think the other aspect that often gets overlooked is Luke: Mm. James A. Seechurn: It's one thing to have a metric that you've agreed with the team is the right way to measure the way you do things. It's another way to have a metric handed down by somebody that thinks they know about how you should get your work done and have to respond to their expectation of what that metric might be and what everything you've described as the PX function or PX initiative really figuring out themselves what the metrics are as to whether they're doing what they're supposed to be doing well, rather than having a... Luke: Mm-hmm. James A. Seechurn: you know, a CPO or someone to say, if you don't do this, then you're not doing well. If you do it, you're doing great. If you don't do it, you're doing badly. And it kind of then becomes this kind of almost identity defining metric that you then shape your behavior around rather than the other way around. Luke: Yeah. I definitely don't want to belittle or diminish the fact that that exists. And if you operate within an organization, you operate within the context of organizational politics, organizational hierarchies, I can't pretend that those things don't exist. So I'll speak from a ⁓ provocative antagonistic stance, which is, if it's... James A. Seechurn: right? Luke: I use these words literally by the way because I know how some organizations can be. If it's safe to do so, like you really should be pushing back and saying, okay, that's fine. I hear you. And if you want us to take action on that thing, if you want me to align resource to this thing that you're telling me is really important, how clearly defined is the problem that we're solving for? And if they start reeling in the seat and they can't explain what sits behind the request, then I'm sorry, but the job is on them. It's like, it's fine. This thing may well be important. I'm willing to go with you on that discovery journey. But before we take action, you need to be able to define this problem more clearly so that I can effectively align resources to solve it for you. And if... you would like some support in that discovery, great, let's do that together or whatever. But I think just blindly accepting a request is a fault of yours as much as it's a fault of that person making the request. Now, again, I say that from a position of, you know, like I say, protagonism or antagonism, whatever the correct word is there. But if you feel confident enough to push James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Luke: back and have those conversations, you'll probably end up having more influence and gaining the respect of your peers in a perfect world. In some cases, you'll just be seen as a problem. That's an internal politics thing that I can't address in a single conversation. But the point is, if someone's coming to you with a solution and saying, we want you to do this, then it's an absolutely fair question to say, OK, that's fine. James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Luke: Can you define the problem to me? Can you clearly articulate the evidence that this is an important thing? Because if we, again, the next leap from that is if we do this, we've got to take resource away from all of these things. So is this thing more important than these things? And if so, we need to be able to evidence that and measure that. And that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. No product leader worth their salt would accept. someone coming to their team and saying, build this product, build this feature, they'll say, they would would never accept it. Absolutely not. James A. Seechurn: Right. Well, and that comes down to the different style of thinking between a product leader and, you know, typical traditional HR functions. I think a lot of people would say that sounds great, but I've got my goals and I've got my objectives and I know there's not much value in pushing back. I don't believe there's much value in pushing back. Luke: Mm. James A. Seechurn: And I empathize, I know a lot of people in that situation, they're so beleaguered with this kind of annual cycle and the volume of work that's been created for them. The words you just said will take twice as long as just agreeing to the thing that they're being asked to do in some cases. Yeah, exactly, and it will take longer, but I think what your point was, everyone loves the individual that brings a new solution rather than a problem. And although you're in the moment feel like, Luke: Mm. Mm. Yeah, and it will take it will take longer. It will take longer, but James A. Seechurn: It's just easy to nod along and get things done. The person that just nods along and gets things done is rarely the person that makes meaningful progress in their career. The person that makes meaningful progress is the person that brings innovative solutions. And it's one thing to say, ⁓ that's terrible. I don't agree. You're not thinking things. That's not the right way to do it. The right way to do it is say, OK, but could we do it this way? Could we try it this way? And then if you go back to our earlier conversation, you become the person that shows the organization. Luke: Yeah, 100%. No, James A. Seechurn: a new way of thinking, which can become addictive, organizationally addictive, if you can be that person that does that thing, especially if it works. But I do think there's a lot of people that are so tired just from the volume of work and that model. Luke: ⁓ I hear you, yeah, I hear you. I hear you, and if we're ever gonna, if you're ever gonna shift away from that sense of complete exhaustion and exasperation, start with some of these pushback conversations because otherwise that is just gonna keep on mounting because the boundaries that you set are going to be. respected one way or another. So you can set your boundaries really clearly and make sure that people understand that it might be that you get a reputation as someone who is difficult. That's fine. I'm totally okay having the reputation of someone who's difficult because they won't just do what I say. I'm all right with that. I'll be that person all day long. But I'm not gonna be there to make trouble. I'm there in... James A. Seechurn: Right. Yeah. Right, yeah. Luke: I'm there to make sure that whatever we do has a value output that is commensurate to the efforts that we're applying to make it happen, right? I would much, you said a phrase earlier, like people love someone who brings the solutions and traditionally that's how corporate world works. It's like, here's my solution and I'm gonna shout loudest and we'll do the thing that. I'm putting on the table because I'm gonna make the most compelling argument. I would much rather someone bring me a problem, like personally, like, and this is, here's the problem, I've identified this problem. Here's how I know it exists. Here's my hypothesis about what might happen if we solve it. Tell me more, I wanna speak to you more. Tell me more about that. And I will then work with you on the process for coming up with creative solutions that might unlock value. I'd much rather be the person that says, yes, and before we do any work, let's make sure we understand the problem. Then yes, when would you like it by? James A. Seechurn: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really healthy. Yeah, so sorry. Yeah, I'm itching to agree with you because it's a really healthy distinction as well. Like there was this, you know, this famous doctor, Ignace Semmelweis, who kind of identified that the problem with mortality was infection rates and doctors not washing their hands and things. But he was so and he was ignored for years because there wasn't any evidence for this guy. But he was so obtuse and difficult to work with that no one really wanted to listen to. I mean, just angered so many people. He had no allies on his side. Therefore, his ideas weren't ignored for a long time. And when he wrote his Luke: Mm. Yeah. James A. Seechurn: research study, was a mess and garbage and it made overreaching claims and all this kind of stuff. He was right, but he couldn't exact any change because he didn't go about it the right way. So it's one thing to be right and that troublemaker. It's another thing want to be the troublemaker that offers to meet you in the middle. And I think particularly in the HR function, that's a fine balance, but it's a fun place to be as well, I think. Luke: Mm. Yeah, I think it's learning semantic tricks for yourself as much as for the person that you're speaking to. So there was a post, must have been three or four years ago now, I a post that was pretty popular at the time and it was speaking to this exact thing. It's like, don't, the idea isn't to be difficult. The idea is to, is to be, to have your opinion respected because you're challenging in the right way. And it's this idea of in HR at the time, it still is a thing. There was a whole conversation that was taken off across LinkedIn about the ability to say no and the fear around saying no as a HR person. I think no is good when it's followed up with pick your word. But I think the word I chose at the time was but. So like the request comes in, we need you to do X, Y, and Z, but how can I enable you to take action on that thing? Like it's perfectly okay to say no, my team does not have capacity for this, but how can I enable you to take action on it? Whatever it might be, like there's a way of saying no and in the case I gave before like. We want you to cut the cape off the Batman. Okay. And let's talk about the problem before we take action. Like that's okay. And then that conversation might lead to them, that stakeholder going, ⁓ actually what I had in mind probably is not a good idea. What could we do instead? Like so whatever you do, don't blindly accept what's put on your desk. Whatever you do, don't. blindly and bludgeoningly say no to everything, but learn to turn those conversations into discovery conversations. So, okay, great, thank you. ⁓ this is really interesting. So when did this problem first occur to you? ⁓ okay, and what's the impact that's having in your function? Does it impact any other functions? ⁓ that's interesting. And what happens now when that thing occurs? You can just go into a discovery conversation. Like it's not, you're not being obtrusive. You're finding information that either will show you that they really understand this thing and it's worth pursuing, or they don't fully understand it and they'll soon realize that in the conversation themselves. And then you can help them come up with a plan to find out the missing information before actually seeing like it's, it's totally cool. And it's just a, it's just a skill to practice asking good questions and. in a way that is natural and not defensive because that's the other thing. Don't be defensive about it. It's like, okay, okay, cool. That sounds interesting. Because going back to my son, right? The first thing I did was I was like, no, not doing that, not cutting it off. Respect the toy. Just go and play with it as it is. And that led to tears and tantrum. Not a good outcome. And so when I called him back and did this sort of discovery and we got to a... James A. Seechurn: Right? Luke: a new solution that we were both happy with that wasn't, that was low cost, it was low fidelity, you know, we could do it really quickly. And it meant that he could get back to playing the value that he wanted to really fast without the irritation. Fine. Right. Exactly. Come back, actually just before, tell me more about that thing before I actually make my decision. And that's fine. Like it's okay. So we, it's just about getting good at having James A. Seechurn: You said, I'm not going to cut the cape, but. Luke: conversations, is what ultimately leads you to down the line, like three or four of those conversations later, rather than them being them coming to you and saying, Hey, here's this solution. It's a, I'm going into a meeting to talk about this thing. I would really like your voice in that meeting because I know you're going to ask the right questions that gets, and all of a sudden your role, your positioning, how you're viewed changes dramatically. So I think it's. not easy going, it requires a bit of challenge, but I think if we're going to enable the broad spread adoption of product centric practice, it starts with challenge, it starts with asking good questions, it starts with being problem focused and it doesn't mean that you have to suddenly become a product manager, it just means if you are being asked by your boss or someone else to solve a problem, it's absolutely reasonable that you... James A. Seechurn: Individuals, yeah. Luke: you find out how much they know about that problem and that that problem really exists before you dive into a solution. I think that's perfectly reasonable. James A. Seechurn: That's a really positive note, I think, to wrap up our discussion. But before we do, Luke, if people want to know more about your thinking or even get in touch, what's the best way to find you? Luke: Best place is going to be LinkedIn. I write a little bit less frequently than I used to, but I'm always active on that. I do have a weekly newsletter, which is a forever free newsletter, which is essentially this. It's me sharing weekly insights and practical tips on how to shift into a more product centric way of thinking and working. And my website is sapientx.co.uk, brand new website which I'm very excited to launch but yeah I'm easy to find LinkedIn is the best place to go James A. Seechurn: That was absolutely fascinating. Hopefully we can do this again. Maybe after that project wraps up, can get some, can dig into how, we talked a lot about how the individual can reshape things using this mentality. I think it would be great to have another discussion on how an entire project based around this change goes and more for the product managers out there, how they might think about doing larger scale change as well. But for now, I'll just say thanks so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. hope your son doesn't come to you with any weird requests and if they do, I won't cut the cape butt is the response that we're looking for. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Luke. Luke: There you go, love it. Thank you so much for having me, James. It's been a real pleasure.