Andy Biladeau, SHRM’s chief transformation officer, sits down with guest host Marjorie Morrison, SHRM’s executive in residence for mental health, to explore HR’s evolving role in organizational transformation. With change management being one of the top CHRO priorities for 2025, Biladeau shares what meaningful transformation looks like, from building trust with teams to identifying the readiness for change and designing strategic action plans. Tune in for actionable insights, leadership lessons, and practical takeaways HR pros can use to lead change with clarity and confidence. This podcast is approved for .5 PDCs toward SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification. Listen to the complete episode to get your activity ID at the end. ID expires July 1, 2026. Subscribe to Honest HR to get the latest episodes, expert insights, and additional resources delivered straight to your inbox: https://shrm.co/voegyz --- Explore SHRM’s all-new flagships. Content curated by experts. Created for you weekly. Each content journey features engaging podcasts, video, articles, and groundbreaking newsletters tailored to meet your unique needs in your organization and career. Learn More: https://shrm.co/coy63r
Andy Biladeau, SHRM’s chief transformation officer, sits down with guest host Marjorie Morrison, SHRM’s executive in residence for mental health, to explore HR’s evolving role in organizational transformation. With change management being one of the top CHRO priorities for 2025, Biladeau shares what meaningful transformation looks like, from building trust with teams to identifying the readiness for change and designing strategic action plans. Tune in for actionable insights, leadership lessons, and practical takeaways HR pros can use to lead change with clarity and confidence.
This podcast is approved for .5 PDCs toward SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification. Listen to the complete episode to get your activity ID at the end. ID expires July 1, 2026.
Subscribe to Honest HR to get the latest episodes, expert insights, and additional resources delivered straight to your inbox: https://shrm.co/voegyz
---
Explore SHRM’s all-new flagships. Content curated by experts. Created for you weekly. Each content journey features engaging podcasts, video, articles, and groundbreaking newsletters tailored to meet your unique needs in your organization and career. Learn More: https://shrm.co/coy63r
[00:00:00] Marjorie Morrison: Hello and welcome to Honest HR. I'm your special guest host for this episode, Marjorie Morrison. Today we're focusing on hrs role in organizational transformation and change management. We're eager to dig into this topic because CHROs ranked change management as one of their top priorities for 2025.
According of course, to SHRM's. Recent CHRO priorities and perspective report. And who better to engage on this topic than Andy Biladeau, Chief Transformation Officer here at SHRM. Welcome to Honest HR, Andy.
[00:00:40] Andy Biladeau: I am so excited to be here. This is gonna be a fun conversation.
[00:00:43] Marjorie Morrison: I, we'll let our audience know that we talked about doing an episode on change management, and I ran into you in the elevator and you said, okay.
Okay. Okay. I'll do it. So I'm excited that we, got us here.
[00:00:59] Andy Biladeau: You finally tracked me down.
[00:01:00] Marjorie Morrison: Yes. So, to start with, as Chief Transformation Officer at SHRM, how do you define. Transformation in today's workplace. And why is effective change management more important now than ever?
[00:01:13] Andy Biladeau: Oh my gosh, this really is gonna be a fun conversation.
I think it's the most common question I get. Right. Your title, chief Transformation Officer. What does that mean? What do you do? I don't see that title everywhere, and so it usually starts a conversation of me then asking questions about where someone works, kind of what their day-to-day experiences and what their organizational strategies and goals are and what.
Type of transformation their companies are undergoing. Because, you know, the reality is every single company on the planet right now is transforming in one way or another. all of them a little bit different, but there are some commonalities across the transformations, that you're seeing out there right now.
I think, you know, the primary one that most people are really focused on is how does AI enable my transformation? I think where the question gets a little bit more interesting is how are you using AI to accelerate your transformation, but also what are you doing with AI to change the customer experience?
To open up new markets, to create new products, to develop new business models. And I think that that's where you're seeing a lot of companies get more clear on what transformation means for them. What are the outcomes or the purpose or the goal that you're trying to drive with transformation? and to your ask about why is that more necessary than ever in terms of having a change management approach that, you believe is gonna set you up for success?
The human beings who are going to drive that transformation are obviously the most critical element. The technology alone is not gonna be able to drive the new version of your organization that you have in your mind. And so your human beings within the four walls of your company are gonna be the ones who are gonna deliver on that vision.
And so change management. Yeah. Top of the priority list for CHROs right now.
[00:02:54] Marjorie Morrison: It's interesting 'cause I think I hear you saying it's almost like two-sided. It's the internal change management and then the external, which is what you're talking about with your clients and your future of the growth of a business.
[00:03:04] Andy Biladeau: Yeah, completely. And I love that you had that observation because you know, the way that we talk about SHRM's transformation that we're undergoing, I think is really similar to a lot of other companies. I think. The internal operations of an organization are directly reflected in the customer experience, meaning how your company is organized, how it's operate, how it operates, the processes, the technologies, the relationships, the culture, all of those things that we think are isolated to the internal confines of a company.
They actually come through to the customer in. Overt and less overt ways. So if your company, for instance, culturally is highly siloed, right? And the teams don't necessarily work across networks very well or collaborate very well, a lot of times what you'll see on the other side, Marjorie, as a customer, is it feels like a very pixelated experience as a customer, that it's difficult to kind of tell what that company is saying or what they want you to do or how they provide value to you.
And so when we talk about transformation, a lot of times with clients, it comes down to what is the customer experience that you're trying to drive? And then let's go ahead and take a look internally at your people processes, technology, culture, leadership, and how those are operating and what might be coming through or sneaking through to the customer experience.
[00:04:19] Marjorie Morrison: Wow, that's so fascinating. I'm wondering, as I'm listening to you too. Is it also flipped where sometimes the transformation is coming from the clients and that what the clients are saying or customers are saying, and then that's actually the impetus of the transformation.
[00:04:34] Andy Biladeau: Yeah. Really astute observation.
so what you're seeing more and more is the, permeability of the external customer experience and then the internal operations of the organization come together, meaning. That to your point, how do I take real time voice of customer data, reflect that into my product roadmap, my marketing messaging, the way my teams are organized and operate now in order to make changes in any one of those areas, whether it's people, process, or tech, you've gotta have internal agility within your company and you've gotta have human beings and people who are able to make those pivots and be dynamic.
Without necessarily being defensive about what their teams own or being process owners in the sense of they see their part of the work as being isolated from other parts of the organization, and so. In order to enable that dynamic you're talking about, of getting voice of customer input to inform what you wanna do as a company, you've gotta have a team who's ready to listen.
[00:05:31] Marjorie Morrison: Yeah.
[00:05:31] Andy Biladeau: Coordinate and respond.
[00:05:33] Marjorie Morrison: How do you know when your team is ready for that?
[00:05:35] Andy Biladeau: Oh, no. Team is ready. And I think that's, part of the fun is there is no organization out there that's fully. Agile in a sense where they can make those pivots in real time and it goes really smoothly without any friction.
Right. And I think that a lot of the data that you're seeing in employee experience and engagement, results right now are teams feeling friction between different functions or silos within their companies. And they're feeling like the company's moving too fast, or I don't always understand why the company is prioritizing something.
And I think that's where you're gonna see a lot more focus internally within organizations around just clear communication from the top of, these are our priorities. This is why there are priorities. Here's what that means for you to set the groundwork so that people have a chance at being agile and able to shift and move and pivot.
[00:06:24] Marjorie Morrison: Same advice on that, like for HR pros, like those are the things that they should be looking for.
[00:06:29] Andy Biladeau: Not only should they be looking for 'em, but I think even a step beyond that, modeling that behavior. And I've seen some really neat examples lately of HR organizations. Really taking off their HR hat and becoming business analysts and actually immersing themselves in different parts of the business to under understand the internal operations of each team, and then be able to step back and look at it then with their HR hat back on and say.
We're hearing a lot of noise in terms of turnover or engagement in this part of the organization. But because I have this cross-functional understanding of the company, I'm realizing that something that's happening upstream of them is actually resulting in that.
[00:07:07] Marjorie Morrison: Wow.
[00:07:08] Andy Biladeau: And I think it's a huge role. Oh, massive.
Wow. Massive. And I think being a system thinker as an HR professional is gonna be so essential. And having the curiosity to go out and learn about your company in a way that maybe you never had to have before. Because ultimately you're gonna have to model for the organization, how does this collaboration look?
Where is agility necessary versus where do you leave things be? And I think HR is in a unique position to have a perspective on that.
[00:07:36] Marjorie Morrison: I, agree with you too. Is my time here and I just, I feel like it's the heartbeat. Yeah. It's really the heartbeat of a company and I love the idea of. Thinking about HR as a systems leader.
Yeah. You know, and looking at it all.
[00:07:50] Andy Biladeau: Well, you're actually a really good example, Marjorie, you and I were talking the other day about how within your role, you're actually able to interact with so many different teams. So fun and Yeah, it's, it is, and it's a large part of my role as well. It is really fun because you start to connect dots that no one else can see.
Because they're looking in their lane exclusively, and the value that you've added and others can add by having that systems mindset or enterprise mindset, I think that that's the direction that HR is gonna start to move over the next few years.
[00:08:18] Marjorie Morrison: I really like it. It's, and also it's empowering, you know?
Yeah. Powering to the field that the role's gonna become even more important when the threat of AI is coming in and how much of AI is gonna replace this. Yeah. But when that's something AI really can't quite do as well as what. What a good, you know, HR person A, a real human who's listening and understanding completely.
So recently SHRM asked HR executives, which area of HR needs significant transformation. And their top three answers, were you ready?
[00:08:52] Andy Biladeau: Go for it.
[00:08:52] Marjorie Morrison: Manager development, leadership development, and employee experience. So how should HR teams go about determining what exactly needs to change in their organization?
Then what steps can they take?
[00:09:06] Andy Biladeau: Well, I think first of all, those three results don't surprise me based on the conversation we're having, right? Because in this new world where our processes are converging, right, our, technologies are converging. Our teams are converging. Again, ultimately, with the goal of creating that unified customer experience, our internal operations have to reflect that.
And so internally, as these things come together. You're going to need a different type of manager and you're going to need a very different type of leader. So, you know, let's role play a little bit that you're a leader over a function who realizes that you're having a downstream impact on someone and you need to go have a conversation with that other leader about how the teams need to work more effectively together.
that's a lot different than having a process map. Drive the conversation and much more around a human conversation to say, I think our teams need to collaborate better or differently, or interact and engage or integrate differently. That's gonna require a completely different skillset from a leader and then a manager to be able to facilitate that and set the environment where that's possible.
And so those three things don't. Surprise me, that doesn't, and then the employee experience one I think is really interesting. 'cause I think that's reflective of a lot of employees who are feeling like, my job feels like it changes every day. Or I'm having to interact with teams I've never had to interact with before.
Or you're asking me to learn or skill up on areas that weren't in the job description. And I think, again, it's a spot where. As these companies start to come together more, you're gonna see it at the leader, manager, and employee level like you never have before.
[00:10:39] Marjorie Morrison: Yeah. It's so interesting for me too. 'cause I'm doing a lot of work on burnout and a lot of those things Yeah.
Said are really some of the key issues of like the underpin of burnout comes from not knowing exactly what your job is. Constant change, chaotic environments. So in a way, transformation, we're in this. Burnout time is really needed to be able to kind of get people back engaged in on one one track.
[00:11:04] Andy Biladeau: Yeah, completely.
And I think even the word transformation kind of has a negative connotation in some companies because people have change fatigue or do feel that burnout. And I think that's a little bit of a fundamental misunderstanding of what transformation should mean. In that it's not necessarily about you're going from point A to point B, it's much more about you are going to be an ever evolving organism as a company,
[00:11:30] Marjorie Morrison: Right
[00:11:30] Andy Biladeau: and you need to be able to constantly respond to external market factors that are pushing in on you. And then internal, you know, operational factors that are changing all the time. And that's, more of a mindset or a state of mind, right? Of, of, in terms of transformation versus we were company A and tomorrow we will be company B, and here's the checklist of things we need to do to make that happen.
[00:11:51] Marjorie Morrison: It's like a muscle, it is like you gotta, and if you don't use it, you lose it. So it's like you gotta keep it strong. So I guess I'm curious. Is this new? Like what did companies do in the past? Like, oh, you know, we talk transformation now, but we've been having companies forever. What was it like, I know this isn't fair 'cause we didn't plan this question.
No. I'm just curious where did you know what, did it used to be?
[00:12:12] Andy Biladeau: This is one where I actually do feel like I'm at a point in my career where I can start to say the phrase like I remember how it used to be. and it very much, I think one, well, two factors that are driving kind of this urgency around it.
One is the. The variety of things that are influencing companies right now, meaning the constant pressure to grow and finding new ways to grow. So that is absolutely top of mind for CEOs and C-suites, and then that translates into pushing the company to do different things or be a different organization.
So I think the volume and variety of external factors pushing companies to evolve. That's, we've never seen anything like that. Right. Number two is technology, the rapid pace of technology, and I think that frankly, there is a lot of hype out there, but I do think there's also a lot of reality, right, in that technology is disrupting the way that people work pretty dramatically, right?
Right, right. And so you take those two forces and they've always been there, but they're just amplified in a way like they never have been before. And this may sound a little bit scary or intimidating, but right now is probably the slowest that we will ever have to move as organizations, and it's only gonna increase in speed as a pace of change continues to increase.
[00:13:27] Marjorie Morrison: Wow. Yeah. Why do you think that?
[00:13:29] Andy Biladeau: Well, I think that because technology is advancing so rapidly that people are being forced to figure these things out in real time without having a full answer. Meaning like
[00:13:39] Marjorie Morrison: interesting, right? You can't, yeah, you can't get stuck in analysis paralysis. You just gotta go.
[00:13:43] Andy Biladeau: Completely and. Like, I'll say the way things used to be, you know, on projects where it was a transformation. So I started my career in management consulting. You know, let's say that we wanted to, we had a new target operating model for the company we were helping. We would go in a room, right? We would build out a capability model, we'd build an org structure around that.
We would then map individuals to boxes and do skills analysis. That's like a. Eight month project it used to take us and we would hand it over to the client and then it would be, you know, maybe a six to 12 month implementation. That process is compressed now to six or eight months, end to end, right?
Because things are being disrupted so quickly where wow, if I can automate my MarTech stack, for instance, like, okay, then I've gotta reconfigure what those individuals do or redeploy them to other areas, or dynamically shift the Oregon operating model to respond to that. No longer is somebody sitting in a conference room mapping all of that out on a whiteboard like I did 20 years ago.
[00:14:38] Marjorie Morrison: Right. they're just reacting to it as it comes.
[00:14:41] Andy Biladeau: It's happening incredibly dynamically. Yeah. And you know. This is where I think HR having a holistic mindset or an enterprise mindset, they're able to intelligently say, okay, if that's gonna impact this part of the company, what are the knockdown impacts three teams over that we need to be getting ahead of and planning for?
And that type of change is just constant and ongoing and persistent. Right. Radically different than the old model of we are at point A and we're going to get to point B.
[00:15:08] Marjorie Morrison: Can you think of any pitfalls that HR professionals fall into as they're kind of working on Yeah, share. Please share.
[00:15:16] Andy Biladeau: Well, I find myself doing it all the time too, right?
Which is, I think the number one thing I see is bringing a solution mindset to a conversation, meaning presupposing, that you know the answer already before you enter the discussion and. I grew up in HR,
[00:15:32] Marjorie Morrison: I do this too, i, find myself doing it too because I, yeah, I gotta work on it. I know.
[00:15:40] Andy Biladeau: And I think growing up in HR and specifically I grew up in the learning and development space, I would see every business problem as a training problem.
Uhhuh, right? It was just a lens through which I looked at the world and I was a hammer looking for a nail. So anytime I sat down with a business leader, when I worked at Target, they would share what they were experiencing or what they wanted to do. And my first instinct or response was. I know from an instructional design perspective what we can build for you.
I think that in this new world that we're talking about. Stepping back, listening to the challenge or the issue or the problem and saying, okay, now that I understand what you're dealing with, let me go back and look at, maybe it's a recruiting challenge that you're having, or maybe that's part of the solution.
Maybe we need to reorganize your team. Maybe we actually need to do some retention interviews to make sure your critical employees stay. Maybe we do need to upskill your team. It's gonna be a. Combination of factors and forces that come together to solve the business problem versus HR looking at it from the lane that they represent, or that they work in.
[00:16:40] Marjorie Morrison: You know, I wonder too if that isn't a relief in a certain sense, because that doesn't make HR have to be, I have all the answers and here's how I'm gonna fix it. It's almost like what I hear you saying is. It's a time to just stop and listen, hear what people are, where's the friction coming from, where's the resistance coming from, where is the issue?
And then working on those kind of solutions together.
[00:17:01] Andy Biladeau: Completely. Actually, kind of a funny story that came up a couple days ago. So Johnny, our boss, right, was sharing a story about how a couple months ago he was experiencing some. Some back pain. And so he went to a back specialist and got a consult and you know, went to a few other individuals and then he went to another doctor who actually looked at it differently and said, you know what?
There's something in your elbow that is actually causing the pain in your back. And that was actually the root cause of the issue. Wow. Right. And I think it's just a really good example of how HR is going to have to diagnose business problems in the future, which is okay, I may be hearing noise or I may be seeing data of the check engine light is going off over here.
But if I can step back and work into what I think is causing that, I'm gonna be so much more valuable to the organization and fix the issue systemically. I love that. Versus treating a symptom. Yeah,
[00:17:52] Marjorie Morrison: I love that analogy. That's so good. So how. Like that's, that makes a lot of sense.
[00:17:58] Andy Biladeau: Yeah.
[00:17:58] Marjorie Morrison: But now we have like an HR professional who now has to do it.
Any tips or strategies for them on like how do they build trust to do that buy-in or, I don't know, any communication tips or something like that?
[00:18:12] Andy Biladeau: Completely. I would say get super curious. Right? Become a student of your company.
[00:18:18] Marjorie Morrison: I love that.
[00:18:19] Andy Biladeau: Every business leader. Would love to share their vision or strategy or goals of their team or function or group.
Go out, have the meeting, really understand it and the, and what you learn in that meeting might not be readily applicable the next day, but maybe in six or eight or 12 months, something's gonna come up. And that prior context and knowledge is gonna help you solve a problem because you understand the upstream and downstream impacts of those different teams.
And so I really encourage HR professionals. To get smart on all areas of the business. So even as an HR business partner, right, your first priority and obligation is to the client that you serve internally and you're, hip to hip with them in solving their challenges. But it doesn't mean that you can't go talk to other parts of the organization to figure out how there's inter relations between those different teams.
[00:19:09] Marjorie Morrison: The curiosity thing is so good, you know, and I'm gonna guess as a therapist. Yeah. I often think that therapists and HR are similar. We're people people, yeah. You know, I'm going to guess that most HR professionals are curious, and that's kind of why they chose that career. and I, tie curiosity with listening, like being a good listener.
'cause I think they go hand in hand. Right? Yeah. It's, and it also goes back to not knowing the solution. Right? Right. So maybe it's. Leading with curiosity, but making sure that we listen, which is a skill that I think a lot I'm working on it too. I used to be such a good listener and I find I interrupt way more than I used to partly.
'cause I'm afraid if I don't say it, I'm gonna forget it. Yeah. But the other part of it is just that we're all in a hurry and moving so fast and you wanna get your point out. But that listening I really do think can be super helpful.
[00:19:59] Andy Biladeau: Completely. And what you find, and I know I'm sure you've experienced this well, two things.
The first one is. When you give somebody a chance to speak and actually get their thoughts out and verbalize things, I think for them things get revealed that maybe they hadn't realized until they had to share it out loud. And so if you create the space for someone to communicate an idea, a lot of times it's gonna unlock something that even they didn't know was the yes.
Right. Yeah, I agree. And it's gonna open up a whole new idea path that didn't previously exist. So that's like the first thing that can be a really good byproduct. The second thing is. I can't tell you the number of consulting projects that I would roll onto. And I would start to, I would look at this, the statement of work, and then I would start to build the SOW, and I would have to remind myself, stop, you don't know what the answer is, and go out and talk to people before you get ahead of yourself.
'cause the process is the goal. The goal will reveal itself. I love that from the process.
[00:20:55] Marjorie Morrison: I love that the process is the goal. That's, that's huge. It's.
[00:20:58] Andy Biladeau: It is, and I think we are all in a hurry sometimes, but of our own making to solve, to address the symptoms, Uhhuh versus having the conversations with everybody, getting all the information on the table and then stepping back and going, what is it we're truly trying to solve for?
[00:21:13] Marjorie Morrison: Well, and that allows, going back to, you were saying earlier, HR to be part of this transformation, the systems thinker, it all ties back to that. So what about when you have an employer and you have their vision and they're like, you. Suzy HR person. Yeah. This is our vision. But then you have employee pushback.
Yeah. Like, do you see that? Any advice on sort of how to manage that? Would, or would, it be the same?
[00:21:38] Andy Biladeau: I think it would be relatively similar. I think listening is a superpower. and I think it, it's a superpower because. Like we were just saying, it reveals things to the person that maybe they didn't know until they had to say it out loud or had a chance to say it out loud.
And so I think that's part of it. The other is it's going to trigger a thought process in the Listen E or listener around. It's revealing something I didn't think of before and. I think if you create that open dialogue, Marjorie, the reality is sometimes people need to be seen and need to be heard, and once they say it out loud, they can put their shoulders down and then go back and reengage differently.
But if you don't create those moments to slow down and let people explain their thinking or why they're doing things, they're gonna, it's gonna turn into potentially resistance or change fatigue.
[00:22:27] Marjorie Morrison: Yeah, it's, I say this all the time, that when you think about who you wanna spend time with just in your personal life, it's usually those people who are really good listeners Yeah.
Who don't judge. Who aren't there to tell you what to do. Yeah. That are just listening and they're just good. Like, 'cause more than half the time we're not, listen, we're not talking to get an answer. We're talking to like what you said, get it off of our chest, and then to hear ourselves talk and then you learn as you go.
Yeah. And so I think that is such a key and it, it's so. Basic, but yet it, we forget. And it is also a skill. And I love how we're kind of tying this listening curiosity and listening to transformation. Yeah. And for an HR professional to be part of this throughout an organization, so you're not just talking about it as this person who's telling people to do it, you're actually doing it too.
A sure with, Project Buffalo. Yep. And, which I think is really cool. And for, our audience, when you walk around the SHRM office, there are buffaloes, pretty much all throughout everybody's desks and cubbies that say, charge the, charge the storm. Charge the storm. So. Can you like, at least tell us a little bit about how you describe that process, what it is, how you decided to focus, and what can HR learn on your experiences so far?
[00:23:48] Andy Biladeau: Yeah, so just a quick primer on the nature of our transformation, right. Very much a, customer or member experience transformation. So when I came into the role went through all of our voice of customer data, so wanted to hear everything I could and learn everything I could about what our members were telling us.
What did they want more from us? What did they want less of? What could we do better? What were some better ifs? And from all of that, one thing that we found was as a member of SHRM, it's a little bit difficult sometimes to find my way to all the things SHRM has to offer. And so part of what our transformation is, to centralize and personalize the membership experience, and that's very much based on what our members told us they wanted.
So absolutely trying to take that approach that we were talking about earlier, which is be a really good listener, be really open to ideas. It's more about sharing what you've learned than proving what you know in terms of had I come in and had a vision of like, this is what it's gonna be. That might have run against what our members were telling us.
So. Start with your audience and back into designing it with them in mind. So that's sort of the nature of our transformation, but there's a lot that's going on internally to be able to support that. And one of the things that we're doing is actually bringing cross-functional teams together to build out that personalized, unified member experience.
So going back to this concept of. Your internal operations are reflected in, our case, the member experience, right? That's the internal transformation that we're undergoing right now. And you know, I work really closely with Jim Link, the CHRO, because there's a lot of cultural implications of that, meaning we do have to be good neighbors to each other as teammates across different functions because we're all in this to serve our members.
And so that's meant, you know, a lot of. Project Buffalo Live sessions, that's meant a lot of round tables and road shows and conversations. And I think it's how you show up and how you model the behaviors to the organization that you start to see incrementally build over time. And it's just been a real joy here at Germ to watch our employees embrace it.
Right?
[00:25:50] Marjorie Morrison: Yeah.
[00:25:50] Andy Biladeau: And work together and collaborate. And again, I just think it's gonna ultimately serve our members. It's ultimately gonna serve us.
[00:25:57] Marjorie Morrison: And I, I think what's so beautiful about it too is. You're also really demonstrating that it's not easy. It takes work. It isn't like kinda what we said, this is what we're gonna do.
Go. Yeah. It's much more about listening to the people, understanding where they're at, getting, you know, kind of everyone's buy-in that this is the goal of where we wanna land and how we get there isn't a straight line
[00:26:17] Andy Biladeau: Absolutely, and you know what the hardest parts are, those moments when I'm having a conversation with someone.
And I find myself trying to lead them to a destination, right? Or convince them or persuade them instead of doing what you were talking about earlier, which is keep a completely objective mind, completely hear them out, understand where they're coming from, and then you're on the same playing field in terms of coming up with a co-created solution.
And so even for me personally, and I think that's probably why leadership development came up so high in the results of top priorities for CHROs, is because we're in a moment in time where leaders do not have the. Answers to all the questions. Right. Right. And there's no one individual who's smarter than the collective wisdom of their company.
And again, I'm reminded of that on a daily basis.
[00:27:03] Marjorie Morrison: Yeah. I mean it's, I also feel like these are skills that translate to anything in life. Yeah. Right. It could be personal relationships, it can be friends. I mean, really like. Get, just being that person that can, you know, take a step back. 'cause I, do it too.
And I think some of it's just we're busy and we don't have outta of time and so it's just like, I gotta cross this thing off. And, I do think it is leading to the burnout and maybe the, so much of this is just slow down. Take a deep breath and remember that like when everybody's working together.
Technically it should be easier anyways.
[00:27:39] Andy Biladeau: Right? And because you're moving in the same direction at the same time, with the same intent and the same goal. And I think for me personally, I've had managers and leaders who there was a lot of false urgency, right? And it was just about checking the deliverables off the list.
And I think when you get into those really hard moments and you maybe do some reflection. You ask yourself why it's harder to answer that question. And so I, as a leader, really, really try to make sure that my teams always understand why we're doing what we're doing, which is great because I always, there's going to be difficult days and challenging moments, and you're gonna get on the rumble strips.
And I just want my team to be able to step back and be able to say, I know why we're doing this. I know why it's important. I know what we're ultimately trying to do for Sherman, for our members, and if they have that context and vision, I think it makes it a little bit easier in those moments to have grace and work through challenges.
[00:28:32] Marjorie Morrison: I love that. So for HR Pros tuning in today, what's one thing they can start doing tomorrow to lead through change more effectively, even if they're not in the C-suite?
[00:28:44] Andy Biladeau: Go on a listening tour, get to know your business, become a student of your company, and I think the superpower that's gonna differentiate in addition to listening, the superpower that's gonna differentiate HR in the future is their ability to be enterprise thinkers and system thinkers.
Because when you occupy that position, people are gonna start coming to you for answers to questions about how the company functions and operates, and the solutions that you could provide are gonna be put in context to solve their business problems.
[00:29:14] Marjorie Morrison: So when you think about the future of work, what trends do you think will reshape how we think about transformation and change management?
[00:29:20] Andy Biladeau: So looking back over the last 20 years. Our organizational models and our operating models were reflected in our technology stacks. What I mean when I say that is if you were to look at a, functional org chart of most companies, what you would see are absolutely, you know, these teams and siloed functions.
And then if you were to look at the mirror image of the technology supporting those teams and functions, you'd have seen very siloed technologies. I think what people don't always realize about the way that technology is evolving is that all of those technologies are beginning to converge
[00:29:56] Marjorie Morrison: together, yeah.
[00:29:56] Andy Biladeau: And I think what you're gonna see over time, Marjorie, is the org chart and operating models start to converge. Oh. And I think we're actually gonna be a reflection of our technologies versus the inverse.
[00:30:06] Marjorie Morrison: Wow. And I think I like that. Think. That's profound. So I think so that's really profound. And you know what we didn't really talk about too when we talked about the way technology's happening so fast.
Yeah. That we have to transform. There's a lot of benefits to that too. There are, I mean, we can really augment ourselves and do so much more than we could have in the past. With technology, it's almost embracing it rather than fighting it. 'cause it's here
[00:30:29] Andy Biladeau: complete here. Yeah, I think there's no denying at this point that artificial intelligence is absolutely gonna disrupt the way that we get work done in an additive way, but I think in, a way that is going to remove a lot of the things that we held very closely is employees and workers.
and so I think some of this is gonna be leaning into what superpowers do I have that I can provide strategic value back to the organization. Given the assumption that technology will replace some of the transactional administrative work. And I think that that's gonna trigger, you know, some reflection, amongst individuals of what brings you joy, what type of work do you like doing?
And again, how do you redefine your role or your value add to the company?
[00:31:09] Marjorie Morrison: I love it. And that's going to do it for this week's episode of Honest HR. A big thank you to Andy for sharing his deep insights with us. Honest HR is part of SHRM's HR daily flagship content series. Head to SHRM dot org slash HR daily to learn more and sign up for our newsletter.
You can also catch us on SHRM's social media like. Comment and be part of the conversation. Thanks for joining. See you next time.
[00:31:41] Narrator: SHRM
This podcast is approved for 0.5 professional development credits, AKA PDCs toward SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification. Enter the following PDC activity ID in your SHRM activity portal to log your credit. 26 dash K-E-H-J-K. That's 26 dash K-E-H-J-K. This ID expires on July 1st, 2026.