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HR Sucks. . .But It Doesn’t Have To With Annissa Deshpande

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR

 

The majority of people agree that HR sucks, but it doesn’t have to. HR leaders have to think modern. They have to break away from the traditional way of thinking. They have to learn how to align themselves with the goals and objectives of the business. Business leaders have no time to teach new recruits about their company. It’s up to HR to do that. HR is responsible for the success of a business.

Join Ben Baker as he talks to Annissa Deshpande about adopting the modern HR mindset. Annissa is a former HR executive of a Fortune 500 where she oversaw the successful hiring of 20k people in 150 countries annually. She is the founder of lōglab where she helps teams think bigger, align to business goals, and create great experiences for employees.

Learn how to align with business goals so that you can succeed together as one company. Find out how curiosity plays a role in being an HR leader. Discover the importance of business partnerships and more today!

Listen to the podcast here

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR

 

HR Sucks. . .But It Doesn’t Have To With Annissa Deshpande

[00:00:50] Welcome back to another episode of the show. Welcome back, my wonderful audience. You guys are amazing. Every single week, you guys come back. You share, you email me, and you talk to me on LinkedIn. You tell me what you like and what you don’t like. I appreciate you guys so much. Thank you for being part of this show. Thank you for making this a five-year phenomenon. I couldn’t do the show without you.

In this episode, we’re going to go in a little different direction. I was introduced to our guest by a buddy of mine, Raul Ochoa. He sent me her website. I looked at the front page and I said, “I got to have this person on the show.” On the front page of her website, it says, “HR sucks but it doesn’t have to.” I knew right then and there, I need to have Annissa Deshpande on the show. Welcome to the show, Annissa. I’m so excited to have you here. I love that comment on your homepage.

[00:01:56] Thanks for having me. It was interesting because I had a marketing firm help me come up with the website, the brand and the message. I read the book StoryBrand by Donald Miller and he had an example of something edgy. He said, “We paint crap for a painting company.” I was like, “That edginess resonates with me,” so I told the firm, “I like this type of edginess.”

We were talking about HR. They have a seven-step process that’s associated with StoryBrand where you identify various parts of the story very much like a screenplay. The message that kept coming out is the pain point was everyone felt like HR sucked. One of them was bold enough to say, “Why don’t we make your tagline be ‘HR sucks but it doesn’t have to?’” It took me a long time to be like, “Am I okay with that? Is that the right way to talk about it?”

It is a conversation piece. It gets people’s attention. It resonates with people because I get calls from friends and relatives all the time that are asking me questions about HR or raising an HR issue to me. I’m like, “You need to go talk to your internal HR person.” They’re like, “Do I have to? I don’t want to.” This is a very common feeling that I get from people that I wanted to capture and let people know there’s a different way to approach HR.

[00:03:23] It sets you apart. I’m a big believer in the brand. Anybody who knows me knows I’m a brand guy. I love StoryBrand. I love that book. For me, if you’re going to make a statement, make a statement. If you’re going to have a brand, have a brand. Be different. Be unique. Stand on your own and say, “This is what I believe in and I’m going to own this.” If you’re going to make that on your homepage, you got to own it. I love it because it’s a conversation starter whether it’s somebody who’s starting out at HR or a CEO.

A lot of times CEOs tell you that they want modern HR, but they're not operating in a way where they're encouraging or enabling HR. Share on X

We’ve got an issue. Over the years, HR has not lived up to its brand promise, but it doesn’t have to. It allows you to go in and have that conversation about change. That’s a powerful conversation that needs to happen because as we said off-air, we’re not 2019 or 2000 anymore. This is 2022 and beyond. The world has changed. We’ve had that Black Swan moment. People have changed. People’s attitudes about work have changed. People’s desire and what they’re willing to put up with has changed. We need to be able to respond to that within the organization. Let’s start off and talk about who you are. Let’s get into where you came from because you came from big Corporate America and did some incredible things. Let’s get into that and then let’s get into where HR is and where it is going.

[00:05:05] My story is that I have over 25 years of experience in HR, IT, finance, and strategy. I worked in corporate environments for twenty years. In my last role before starting my own firm, I was the head of global talent at a Fortune 500 called AECOM. My team was responsible for hiring 20,000 people annually in 150 countries. I was leading the hiring for the entire company and then I was also working on internal talent initiatives that impacted the business, things like performance management and succession planning.

We were trying to move away from a compliance mindset or a mindset of checking the box to how can we make these activities into value-added activities for the business. How will these activities drive the business closer to its business goals? I was loving that work, but I had been in executive roles for over ten years so I was a yearning for something different. I was feeling like I could have a bigger impact if I could touch more companies. It was great doing this for one company, but what if I could do this for a variety of companies and not have to just look at one set of business challenges?

In 2015, I decided to launch my own company. We are a modern HR advisory services firm. We have a couple of service offerings. We are moving more into modern HR coaching and advising. A lot of times, we work with CEOs and HR leaders and help them broaden their mindsets because it has to happen on both sides. A lot of times, CEOs tell you that they want modern HR but they’re not operating in a way where they’re encouraging and enabling modern HR. There’s a little bit of that, but then there’s also coaching HR leaders to think bigger, to help them focus on working on the business goals as a starting point, and then aligning the people programs to that.

We do a lot of coaching. We also do some fractional Chief People Officer services primarily to investor-backed companies. That’s where they have a VP of HR or a strong HR manager but they don’t have that real partner to the CEO. I’ll step in and play that role as needed. We’ll probably talk about this, but we also do content. I wrote a book. We’ve got some online video courses. We’re trying to add, impact and broaden the HR thought leadership, which still tends to focus a lot on compliance-type things. It needs to move more towards how do we impact the business in a meaningful way? Those are the three service areas.

I launched my own business in 2015. As you know, running your own business has its ups and downs but it’s never boring. In 2018, we rebranded the website. Lōg means people in Hindi. We’ve been called lōglab since 2015, but in 2018, we worked on our messaging and our brand. That’s when we came up with the whole, “HR sucks but it doesn’t have to,” and here I am now.

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR
Modern HR: A lot of times CEOs tell you that they want modern HR, but they’re not operating in a way where they’re encouraging or enabling HR.

[00:09:06] Before we get into all that, I want to go back to the fact that you hire 20,000 new employees on a yearly basis. I would say that 99.9% of people haven’t got a clue of the challenges, logistics, thought process, and strategy that needs to go into recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and bringing 20,000 people into the culture on a yearly basis. What did you learn from that in terms of process, procedures, and being able to do that on a massive scale that helped differentiate you as you’ve moved forward?

[00:09:57] We were a professional services company. Early on, when I got the job, I started to think about the function as the supply chain of the business. If you didn’t have the people that you needed to service your clients, then you were losing revenue and impacting your client satisfaction rate. I started to take the function of recruiting and think of it as an essential service to the business. I started to talk about it that way with the leaders so that they could change their mindset around it.

Even at a company where everything was dependent on recruiting and talent development for the company to be successful, a lot of the leaders still had outdated thinking around recruiting. They didn’t understand what they needed to do. They were not equipped to have strong interviews to assess a candidate and ask them questions about what needed to get done or whether this would be the right person to help things get done.

What I learned during that time was the way that you frame your function, and if you can connect it to what the company is trying to achieve, versus talking about it within the jargon of recruitment. It’s like putting your metrics in the context of business metrics. It’s not looking at a metric as a time to fill, which may be how you manage your department, but looking at the inability to fill a requisition and its impacts on revenue and customer delivery. Taking that approach and connecting what is sometimes considered a back-office function to the business enabled it to be viewed as a strategic function within the company.

The other thing I learned as part of that is when you start having conversations about what you do in that context and people start to understand how important it is, you start to get more funding for what it is you need to do. We were able to move out of that cost center mindset where it was like, “Can we cut?” to “What do you need to be successful?” When people started to make that connection, we saw that trickle down to other areas of HR.

If people could continue to have those conversations or could take their function and align it to what the business was trying to do, and show the impacts of what they were doing on business results, we found that they were able to get investment. That was a big lesson for me. It taught me that HR doesn’t necessarily need to have this cost-centered mindset.

The function of recruiting is the supply chain of a business. Share on X

[00:12:31] That’s a huge thing. I deal with organizations across North America. The one conversation I get with people is, “That’s too expensive. We could never afford that. We don’t have the budget for that.” It’s the mentality of HR that sees itself as a cost center. They see themselves as constantly going with hats in hand and looking for nickels and dimes, where they should be sitting there going, “If we spend $1 million, we’re going to make you $8 million.” If they can do that, the company will give them $1 million all day, every day, and twice on a Sunday if they know they’re going to get an 8X return on their investment.

A lot of HR professionals don’t have that business acumen. They don’t have that language of business. They don’t understand what drives business and even how to ask the right questions to be in that business mentality where they can put themselves in a position and say, “We want to help this company succeed, but we need the language to be able to understand how we can be able to help achieve that.

[00:13:54] There are a couple of things that happen, but first is a lot of people have been raised or have this HR career to where they can totally focus on clients. I did not start my HR career early. I entered HR much later in my career after I had more business exposure. It was possible for me to come in with a different mindset, but if you started that in more of a traditional environment, that’s the way you were raised. You think like, “My job is to make sure that the company doesn’t get sued, to be the police and make sure employees are doing what they should be doing,” versus, “I’m here to enable the business.”

First of all, you have to paint the picture of what modern HR looks like. I even have a video out there on Traditional versus Modern HR. Once you start to move to that modern HR world by asking questions, by trying to learn the business, and by not coming in with an HR point of view, but being open to where the business is going and then thinking about how would that impact HR, that’s how you can start to develop those skillsets. Once you do that, you do find that the view of HR as a cost center goes away.

I even say that if you’re in this position where your CEO or CFO is coming to you every year and asking for a 10% reduction year over year, you are a cost center. If you can align your work to what you’re doing and how it’s going to help the business, enable and help it grow, then you’re going to get more of that investment. A very easy way to start to show your impact is first of all to look at turnover. Turnover is profit and institutional knowledge walking out the door.

A lot of HR departments and companies accept it as a way of doing business, but you don’t have to. You have to think about different ways that you can reduce turnover. If you can reduce turnover or even make a minimal impact, you save the company a ton of money. Most companies are willing to invest even in a pilot test to see if it will work. That’s a great way to make a business case.

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR
Modern HR: Try to connect your function to what the company is trying to achieve, versus talking about it within the jargon of recruitment. Put your metrics in the context of business metrics.

 

[00:15:55] It’s a matter of looking at things innovatively and differently. We’re working on a test case for a company. We’re talking to them. They are a 58,000-employee company and they’ve got 8,000 new employees. It’s a merger and acquisition. They’re bringing 8,000 new employees in from another organization. Traditionally, to onboard those 8,000 people, that’s $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 per employee. It’s somewhere in that range. We’re talking in millions of dollars.

What if you could do it as an ongoing podcast and be able to have those conversations, build that culture and those relationships, and get people to understand from various points of view how to be able to not only understand the culture, but the mission, vision, values, and how things are done within the company on an ongoing basis? You’re able to bring those people in more effectively, more cost-effectively, and be able to do this at a small percentage of what it would cost to do it traditionally.

It’s having organizations and the HR departments be open to looking at different ways and different thought processes. They’ve always been the don’t-get-sued police. I know many organizations where a lot of employees don’t realize that the chief role of HR is not the employee advocate. It’s to make sure that the company doesn’t get sued. When we look at the role of HR and how it’s morphing and changing, and the value that it can add, how do you as an organization promote that within the organization to enable the industry to change from the ground up? It’s not just one person that has to think this way. The industry has to think this way. HR as an industry, an association, and a thought process needs to change to be able to be seen as valuable and not as a cost center and as a driver of business objectives.

[00:18:02] You’re right. The pandemic has helped to illustrate the point that HR needs to think differently. We need HR as a guide to help us navigate uncertain times, to be innovative about workforce models, and to test different things. There are a ton of opportunities for HR. I don’t know how to answer the question of how we get the industry to change because that’s a lifelong thing that I will be working on.

There’s a lot more curiosity than there was five years ago. There’s a lot more openness. What we’re dealing with now are very standard change management issues where there’s a fear of uncertainty. Also, it’s up to leadership teams to enable that modern HR, to take a chance and to invest in something that may or may not pan out those first few times that they try it. It’s like innovation. You have to experiment a little bit to see what’s going to work and what’s not. That’s an uncomfortable space for HR.

I preach a lot about data analytics and technology in the use of HR. You and I were chatting about this before we recorded this. There are so many opportunities, but those aren’t places where HR people traditionally feel like that’s their strength. There’s always this uncertainty about data. There’s that uncomfortableness. You’re trying to apply data to one of the most unpredictable things in the world, which is how people behave and react.

Turnover is just profit walking out the door. Share on X

[00:19:28] The X factor is human beings.

[00:19:32] It’s understanding that there are patterns that can help you make decisions, but you’ve got to balance that with your intuition. We’re not saying to just look at the data and make a decision. We’re saying you should bring more of that data into your discussions and decision-making to inform what the decision should be. It starts with an open-mindedness from people that things are changing. It’s a lot of fun to be a part of something that’s being invested in. A lot of people enjoy creativity, experimentation and being curious. It’s changing that mindset to asking questions to learn about the business and be able to build things that are relevant and impactful to where the business is trying to go.

Once you’ve had a couple of successes with that where you’ve seen, “We did this performance management system. We were able to now connect it to our business results and to all of these great things. It has led to a better performance the following year because we have productive discussions,” you start to enjoy modern HR much more because it’s more interesting to work on and there are bigger results and rewards that you see from it.

[00:20:40] What do you think the role of curiosity is?

[00:20:45] The role of curiosity in business is huge, not just with HR. In my book, Meg, the coach, often has a saying, “Be curious, not furious.” It’s the saying that I learned from somebody many years ago. If you can approach things from curiosity and a growth mindset like, “I want to learn. I’m here to get it right and not to be right,” it’s going to change the way that you are viewed in the business.

Some people think it shows a lack of confidence if you don’t come in there and say that this is the way it is. I think it shows confidence when you say, “Here’s what I’m thinking. I’m pretty confident, but tell me what I may be missing. Help me fill in the blanks to create a full picture. I have this perspective, but it may be missing these blind spots. You have this other perspective. Together, when we connect this, this is going to be a well-rounded view of what’s happening.”

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR
Modern HR: HR needs to develop some really strong partnerships. Partner up with your finance team. They’re going to help you think about things in a way that you may not be accustomed to.

 

[00:22:08] The larger the organization that we deal with, the bigger the silos that I see. We see silos with every organization, and the good, the bad, and the ugly that go along with it. How do you think HR can help disassemble those silos by building better alliances with different departments and creating a better understanding, not only of what HR objectives are but having HR have a better understanding of the objectives of the other parts of the company and building in programs that benefit everybody together?

[00:22:46] It’s up to HR to be extraordinarily curious about what’s happening across all areas of the business. HR needs to develop some strong partnerships. If you’re working in a traditional HR world and you’re not sure how to take those first few steps to move to modern HR, one of my first suggestions is to partner up with your finance team. Every finance team that I’ve met over the last five years wants to see HR succeed and is willing to put the time in to help build those business cases. You’re not expected to have all the answers. We all have strengths and weaknesses. When you’re building a business case in HR, one of my first suggestions is always to involve your finance team because they’re going to help you think about things in a way that you may not be accustomed to.

They also know the way that executives are looking at finances and business cases, and they can give you insight as to the best way to prepare this so that the executives can consume it. To answer your question, HR has to be extraordinarily curious about what’s happening outside of HR, whether it’s finance, IT, business operations, sales, etc., and make sure that their objectives are addressing some of the larger trends that they’re seeing across the organization. They need to promote collaboration by demonstrating collaboration across the various areas of the business.

It’s not a simple fix. Silos are difficult. It could be that we need to redesign the organization. We need to take a look at some organizational metrics to see how we are structured. Do we have too many layers in the organization? Do we not have the right span of control over our managers? These are all data points that we can look at. For example, we have a ton of layers in the organization. A lot of people are managing one person and creating more levels, more silos, and a longer communication string. How can we reduce those and try to streamline some of the communications to make it easier to get ideas up and down the chain?

There are a lot of things HR can do, but they’re not used to thinking that way and looking at both the macro-level of what’s happening across the organization, but also the micro-level of, “What are my peers struggling with around the other departments and how can we all work together to build something effective here?”

[00:25:13] We talked off-air about the term business partners. It seems like a good time to bring that up. Are you truly a business partner or are you an integral part that’s driving the success of the corporation?

The role of curiosity in business is huge, and not just with HR. Be curious, not furious. Share on X

[00:25:28] It’s the latter. You are an integral part of what’s driving the success of the corporation. It’s not that you’re not a business partner, but you need to be more than that. You need to see yourself as an enabler of the business. What people programs do we need to put in place to make sure we can achieve our goals, and how do we get ahead of that?

[00:25:48] A business partner to me is almost like a consultant. That’s my view of a business partner. I’m a business partner because I’m a consultant. You bring me in. I charge you tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I write up a report. We find a problem, fix the problem, and then I go away. I see HR as the ones that stick around. You’re there day after day, month after month, and year after year. I don’t see you as a partner. I see you as an integral part of day-to-day success.

Being seen from the C-Suite level as a partner almost sets you as hands-off or sets you apart. To me, more than anything else, it’s a language thing. I’m a big believer that words do matter. Words drive perception. I want to sit there and dive into that and sit there and say, “When we use the word business partner, are we putting ourselves in the position where we’re not assuming our own place at the table?”

[00:26:57] The term business partner has been around for a while. It was the first step to moving HR out of that traditional mindset and getting people to focus on the business. This is an evolution. That was level one. We need to ask ourselves, “What’s the next level?” Prior to having business partners, the relationship of an HR person to a business leader as someone the business leader could talk to and get some guidance and advice from was missing across many the companies.

That’s why we came up with the term business partner as a starting point to get people to think more about the business. We need to move further into that business enabler role where we’re thinking about ways where we can move the needle when it comes to the business by focusing on the people dimension of the business. Let’s take a business leader that runs a region as an example. They have a number of things that they focus on from sales and operations, finance, and delivery perspective. They need somebody who’s constantly helping them align people around the objectives of the business and enabling the business.

That’s the role to me as the business enabler and HR, to be that person that is with them every step of the way and gives them advice like, “Here’s a blind spot that you have when you’re thinking about the people dimension,” or “Here are the implications of what’s going to happen if we make this decision on the people,” or “Here’s something you’re not even thinking about that I’m seeing a trend of. We need to get together and think about how we fix this.” HR needs to be that collaborator that we talked about that’s looking across all these areas of the business with their people hat on and looking for blind spots, trends, and anything and everything that can impact the business and stop it from achieving its goal from the people perspective.

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR
Modern HR: Business leaders have so many things on their plate already. They need somebody who can help align people around the objectives of the business. That’s where the business enabler HR comes in.

 

[00:28:48] How can leaders within HR enable their teams to be better to be able to drive that mentality shift to take them out of their comfort zone, and take them away from their traditional HR viewpoints and bring them into this new level of HR, and to give them the confidence to be a true partner at the table?

[00:29:11] It takes time. The first thing is providing the context of the business. Back to that early example that I talked to you about in recruiting earlier in my career, I realized that we were talking about recruiting the wrong way. We were looking at recruiting as filling a requisition versus whether we are the supply chain of the business or we are an integral part of the business. It’s setting that context in a lot of ways, “Here’s where the business is going and this is what we as HR have to do to be able to support the business.”

If you layout an HR strategy that does this, it scares people. They’re like, “It’s too big. That’s not what we’re here to do.” The other thing where HR leaders even get stuck is business metrics. We talked about success metrics for the strategy. I make the first set of success metrics. The business has a goal to grow revenue and if we don’t grow revenue, you can’t say that HR was successful. A lot of the leaders don’t do it as much anymore, but they used to push back on me quite a bit on that, “I am not able to drive revenue, so why should I be held accountable for it?”

I asked them to look at a baseball team and said, “If the pitching was perfect but you lost the game, is that a win? Is that a success?” They were like, “Of course, not.” If the business doesn’t achieve its goals, there’s no way the HR team can claim victory. The HR strategy missed something that prevented the business from achieving its goals, as with the finance strategy or the IT strategy. It’s all of these. It’s not just one group. You’ve got to have that skin in the game. You’ve got to be able to help your team with setting the context of what they’re doing and connecting it to what the business is trying to do.

The other thing we have people do a lot is as they’re doing their day-to-day work, have them ask themselves, “Is this going to move the needle in terms of the goals we talked about, or is this something I’m doing because I need to check a box?” We give them that litmus test and then they’re able a lot of times to figure out like, “This isn’t where I need to be spending my time. I can automate this. I can outsource this. I can send this to somebody else. I should be focused over here.”

[00:31:22] That’s where people need to take a look at technology. Technology is not a crutch. It needs to be an enabler so they could say, “Let’s get rid of the repetitive stuff that can be done through technology and enable us to do the things that we’re meant to do.”

If the business doesn't achieve its goals, there's no way the HR team can claim victory. You got to have some skin in the game. Share on X

[00:31:38] It is technology, but it’s also the highest and the best use of your time. A lot of times, especially when I’m coaching, the CEO will come up with some project and say, “We need to fix our compensation.” HR will drop everything and try to fix the compensation, but they may not have the skillsets to do that. I agree. In HR, we need to be empowered to say, “Compensation is a very important thing. We need to fix it, but there’s a provider that can do this for us that’s going to be much more cost-effective.” I tell HR leaders all the time, “It’s your job to figure out how to get things done and not feel like you have to do everything yourself or within the team that you have.”

[00:32:20] That’s huge. It’s the best use of your time and the best use of your budget to be able to drive objectives. I have a couple of questions then I’m going to let you go. The first one that comes to mind is, where do we go from here? Where will HR go to be able to enable companies to succeed in this new complexity? We’re going into the unknown, the void, and the abyss again. How does HR work side-by-side with finance, legal, C-Suite, operations, sales and marketing to be able to be that person that can help take away the scary and be able to help drive overall objectives?

[00:33:05] This is a time for HR to be bold. There are so many headwinds in the talent market, and there’s potentially a workforce that is deciding whether they want to work for companies or not. Some of them are making a decision like, “That’s not where I see myself.” This may be a little too bold but in some cases, we need to be thinking about alternative employment models because we’re going to have skill shortages for a very long time.

There are so many trends that we can learn and experiment with. I use this example a lot. Uber has a completely self-managing workforce with its drivers. There’s a wealth of information that we can be learning from Uber and how it is able to service its customers with technology but also with a self-managing workforce. What can we learn from that and what can we take and apply to our own businesses? Is the W-2 model where you are working for a company going to be the dominant model going forward or is there going to be some other picture that comes up or something new that we haven’t thought of yet?

There’s a greater separation that’s happening between where you work and where you live. This came to light during the pandemic. For the last couple of years, there has been a total separation between where you live and where you work. To say, “We’re going to go back to the way it was,” seems outdated, but then to also say, “We’re going to demand that people are in the office three days a week,” we need to be thinking about the why. What is it that we’re trying to do?

A lot of the discussion around where work gets done is flawed because the way work gets done has been a challenge for many years. If you think about a middle manager or a leader in a corporate job, they spend 60% to 70% of their time in back-to-back meetings. How many people do you talk to that are like, “It was back-to-back then.” How are you getting work done if you’re in back-to-back meetings? I believe that there are different ways of getting work done that we haven’t addressed yet.

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR
Modern HR: There’s potentially a workforce that is deciding whether they want to work for companies or not. Companies need to start thinking about alternative employment models.

 

Even when the pandemic happened, we tried to take our days in the office and put them on Zoom. What did we learn? We learned that we all got Zoom fatigue after eight hours of being on video calls. It also wasn’t super productive in the office. You were just able to hide it because you were in the office for eight hours and things were getting done, but it still wasn’t the optimal way to do things. There’s so much opportunity to explore and figure out what the future of work looks like, and that is what HR’s role is in every company and as an industry.

[00:35:47] It’s being brave enough to ask why, why not, and what if. If we could start asking those questions, we’re going to come up with some better models or at least some different models. We’re going to try them and we’re going to succeed sometimes and fail others. We’re going to learn from everything and we’re going to move forward. Businesses today need to stop saying, “We’ve always done it this way.” We need to look and say, “If we change this, how is this going to enable us to do things that we couldn’t do today?”

[00:36:23] That’s right. The workforce innovations have not really happened other than the computers more than we did in the past. If I go back to how my dad started working in 1967 or 1968, and when I started working in ‘95, there was very little difference. We drove to the office every day and sat at our desks for eight hours. Maybe he had a typewriter and I had a computer, but we still had the keyboard and we both attended a few meetings. That fundamentally hasn’t shifted.

I talk about this with education as well. I have a niece who is graduating high school. I remember in her junior year, I asked her what courses she was taking. They’re exactly the same courses I took 30 years ago as a junior in high school. I was hoping the textbooks are more updated, but we haven’t done a lot of innovation in these spaces. We haven’t had to because they worked, but now we have to. People have learned so much over the last couple of years. We need to use this as a time to reinvent and not to think about going back.

[00:37:34] If we’re going to take one thing out of this conversation, it’s time to be bold and innovative. Your book is called The Comeback. I want to give it a quick shutout. Your website is TheLoglab.net. I have one question I want to ask you before I let you out the door, and this is what I ask everybody. When you leave a meeting and you get in your car and you drive away, what’s the one thing you want people to think about you when you’re not in the room?

[00:38:23] Is it one thing or could it be two?

[00:38:26] It’s your time. You could have two.

[00:38:29] First, I want them to think of me and my contribution were a value and they learned something. I want to walk away learning something as well. Second, I want them to see me as someone who comes to the table with a creative way of solving a problem that either brings them some comfort, relieves them a little bit, excites them and energizes them to pursue a new way of thinking. Those are probably the two things that I would like people to leave with after an interaction with me.

[00:38:59] It’s a brave new world. We need to think creatively, be resilient, and look at things differently. I’m excited about it. Thank you for being such a phenomenal guest. Thanks to Raul Ochoa for introducing us and thank you for being such a wonderful insightful person to my audience.

[00:39:18] Thanks, Ben. I appreciate your time and I appreciate you having me on your show.

 

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HR

 

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About Annissa Deshpande

LBL Annissa Deshpande | Modern HRAnnissa Deshpande is a former HR executive of a Fortune 500 where she oversaw the successful hiring of 20k people in 150 countries annually and designed internal talent initiatives to achieve business results. While most HR programs are heavily focused on compliance, Annissa helps teams think bigger, align to business goals, and create great experiences for employees. She founded lōglab in 2015 and now combines her 20+ years of experience in finance, IT, and strategy to help companies modernize HR to grow revenue and create a place where people love to work.

Silver - one episode plan $4395.00

  • One 60-minute recorded interview to understand who you are, what you do, why you do it, who you do it for and why they should care. This interview is designed to show your true value and enable you to shine
  • Four 2-3-minute videos that come from that interview that help you tell specific parts of your story that you can put on your website and used through social media and email campaigns regularly.
  • Four 30-60 second audiograms designed to enable pecple to have a quick understanding of your value and why they should search you out to find out more through their use on your website and social meda.
  • Six images that you can use through your social media on an on-going basis.
  • Five or Six tweets that can be sent out regularly.
  • An edited transcript of the interview that enable you to ganer even more market materials and have approximately 6500 words on your website that provides SEO benefits.
  • One 25-35-minute podcast episode on the Find Your Pro Show with a marketing that looks like this

GOLD - four episode plan $10998.00

  • One 60-minute recorded interview to understand who you are, what you do, why you do t, who you do it for and why they should care. This interview is designed to show your true value and enable you to shine
  • Three additional 60-minutes recorded interviews that can be testimonials with clients, case studies, best practices or top questions of your clients answered. The goal is to provide value to your audience that creates trust with them and gives them reason to buy from you
  • Sixteen (4 per interview) 2-3-minute videos that come from that interview that help you tell specific parts of your story that you can put on your website and used through social mead and email campaigns regularly,
  • Sixteen (4 per interview) 3060 second audiograms designed to enable people to have a quick understanding of your value and why they should search you out to find out more through their use on your website and social media
  • Twenty-four (6 per interview) images that you can use through your social media on an on-going basis
  • Twenty four (6 per interview) tweets that can be sent out regularly.
  • Four (one per episode) edited transcripts of the interviews that enable you to garner even more market materials and have approximately 6500 words on your website that provides SEO benefits.
  • Four 25-35-minute podcast episode on the Find Your Pro Show with a marketing page that looks like this

PLATINUM- twelve episode plan $27750.00

  • One 60-minute recorded interview to understand who you are, what you do, why you do it, who you do it for and why they should care. This interview is designed to show your true value and enable you to shine.
  • Eleven additional 60-minutes recorded interviews that can be testimonials with clients, case studies, best practices or top questions of your clients answered. The goal is to provide value to your audience that creates trust with them and gives them reason to buy from you.
  • Forty-eight (4 per interview) 2-3-minute videos that come from that interview that help you tell specific parts of your story that you can put on your website and used through social media and email campaigns regularly.
  • Forty-eight (4 per interview) 30-60 second audiograms designed to enable people to have a quick understanding of your value and why they should search you out to find out more through their use on your website and social media.
  • Seventy-two (6 per interview) images that you can use through your social media on an on-going basis.
  • Seventy-two (6 per interview) tweets that can be sent out regularly.
  • Twelve (one per episode) edited transcripts of the interviews that enable you to garner even more market materials and have approximately 6500 words on your website that provides SEO benefits.
  • Twelve 25-35-minute podcast episode on the Find Your Pro Show with a marketing page that looks like this.

The SILVER option is designed for companies on a limited budget or who would like to try the power of the Communicate Your Why program before committing.

It provides you with a reasonable amount of shareable content and access to our network. However, for most companies, this may not provide a full year's worth of marketing materials. If you purchase a SILVER package and decide to upgrade within 30 days of the airing of your episode, we will credit 90% of the SILVER package towards either a GOLD or PLATINUM package.

Our expectation is that we will release your episode within 30 days of the recording date.

The GOLD option is a basic yearly marketing package.

Optimally, you would release an episode quarterly and use the content that accompanies it to update your marketing on a quarterly basis. It is literally four times the amount of marketing materials as the SILVER option and allows you to not only tell your story but create a case studies with clients or talk about specific ways you add value to your clientele in a non-sales way. We would suggest that you have us interview other employees, suppliers, strategic partners and/or clients with additional episodes in order to add additional value and tell a richer and a more robust version of your brand story.

Our expectation is that we will release your episodes quarterly.

The PLATINUM option is designed as a monthly marketing package

It gives you the content you desire to stay top of mind with your clients and prospects, talk about ongoing developments and tell a more robust story. Again, if you purchase a GOLD package and decide to upgrade to a PLATINUM one within 90 days of starting the original GOLD package, we will credit 90% of the original purchase price towards the price of the PLATINUM option. We would suggest that you have us interview other employees, suppliers, strategic partners and/or clients with additional episodes in order to add additional value and tell a richer and more robust version of your brand story.

Our expectation is that we will release your episodes monthly.

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