Trent Cotton has spent 20 years listening to HR get treated as the department that only says no. His upcoming book argues that model is done, and in this episode of the Team Check-In, host Emre Ok gets him to make the case. Cotton, Head of Talent Insights and Analyst Relations at iCIMS and host of The Human Capitalist podcast, lays out the five mindsets he believes the next chief HR officer needs to survive the next 30 years, from reading an org chart like a building to running real experiments instead of publishing dashboards.
Cotton walks through what happened when Google removed engineering managers entirely under Project Oxygen, and why the result surprised the team that ran the study. He also traces a bank's mid-tenure attrition problem that wasn't about pay, cites the MIT finding that 95% of AI pilots fail, and keeps coming back to the book's central metaphor: Themistocles trying to warn Athens about an invasion nobody wanted to see coming.
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Emre (01:03.82)
All right, so with that said, hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Team Check-In. With me today, I have self-professed HR Lother, host of the Human Capitalist Podcast and the head of talent and insights at ICM CIMS. Trent, how are ya?
Trent Cotton (01:28.844)
I'm doing well. How are you doing?
Emre (01:31.425)
All good, all good. He is hot off of the hottest gates of Thermopylae, and we will be discussing his book, Futurist today. But before we do, once the book is out and once you have your hands on it, you will be chalk, you'll be hit with so many stories of ancient Greece and Rome. And for me, as a history and mythology nerd, that was wonderful. But Trent
Where does this interest come from?
Trent Cotton (02:03.378)
I my interest for passion was my interest for writing started young. now it's just kinda like I I have these ideas, it's like I just gotta get out of my head, put on paper. And you know what? If people read it, great. If they don't, at least it's out of my head and I can move on with my day. so yeah, I'm really passionate about the people function. And, you know, you you called me a self proclaimed HR loather. And usually whenever I introduce myself, I tell people, you know, I spent
20 something years as an HR practitioner, but I got into HR from the line of business. So I was a banker before, pretty young, put myself through school working as a banker. And the one department that I loathed working with was HR because all they said was no. They never offered any kind of alternatives. They weren't really helping me. They were more of a an obstacle than they were a partner. And so when I decided to make a career shift,
HR became the target.
Emre (03:03.346)
I fully get that. And that is what we will be talking about today. Trent's upcoming book actually discusses how the role of the chief HR officers and officer and even like the position and the department of HR will need to adapt and evolve in order to survive in the next 30 years. So we will be getting into that. And I think Trent and I, we you you and I have something in common. We both came into the HR space as outsiders.
Trent Cotton (03:31.949)
Right.
Emre (03:32.255)
I came I came into it as a literature major who was not expecting himself to find myself in here. And you came in from like the banking from the more business side. And can you just elaborate a bit on that feeling of being the outsider in HR? Because HR does get a bad bad rep, of course. There is like the stereotypical HR person. And it is the one stereotype that we try the hardest to break on this show.
And I would love to get your point on being the outsider to the HR.
Trent Cotton (04:04.514)
Yeah, I kind of felt like this is going back in time, but I was entering the cast of mean girls, you know, like you can't sit with us. And the first probably six months to a year, most of the people that I worked with on the team were you're never gonna make it, you don't know what you're talking about, you're not HR, you didn't study HR, you don't know compliance, but it it took a couple of just Eureka moments whenever I was meeting with a hiring manager because I was doing recruiting at the time.
And you know, I I was recruiting for a bank. So I was talking to the hiring manager about portfolio runoff, what's the average yield spread, you know, how do they handle their operations, like very business tactical things, all things that I would have asked whenever I was hiring a lender to work for me. And I realized I was like, you know what, I have something that the rest of these HR people do not have, which is I can speak the language. And so I just leaned into that.
And whenever I was asked, you know, what my role was, whenever I was in senior leadership for HR, I never said CHRO or head of talent and culture or any of the titles. I always would tell people I am responsible for the largest asset producing revenue and the largest expense in the organization, which is its people. And every decision that I made went through that lens. So are we driving enterprise value? Are we protecting it? Or are we putting it at risk with this people decision? And I think when you reframe it that way,
You become that McKinsey, that KPMG consultant that the the the C suite wants HR to actually be. And so I guess my call now is get out of that click. I don't know about you, but I mean to me that was the only word that really described. I mean, they even all went to lunch together and would not invite me for months on end. I mean, it was but I'm used to being an outsider. I've always been kind of different, always kind of been my own person. So it didn't really
bother me, but it did have me scratching my head going, okay, on the business side, HR would have already called me and said, You're excluding one of your employees. Like what what's going on here? You know? I thought it would have been a lot more inclusive than it was, I guess, bottom line.
Emre (06:13.726)
actually I came into like the office and the corporate landscape from a teaching background. And honestly, the parallels I can draw between like the stereotypical high school like student ecosystem and the workplace, that is an entirely different podcast. And but I would love to talk to you about before we get into the book and before we start picking away at your metaphors in the book, I want to ask you about you.
Trent Cotton (06:22.349)
Trent Cotton (06:29.068)
Yes.
Emre (06:43.896)
Discuss HR as this broken operating system, right? Focused on three things consistency, compliance, and risk mitigation. And I think that is the stereotypical HR that we see. And why do you think this system is broken?
Trent Cotton (06:48.141)
Mm-hmm.
Trent Cotton (07:02.338)
You don't need policy cops. you need advisors. And I think that let me let me start with a story. I had someone that that came that was on the operation side of of HR and they wanted to get into what I was doing in in my particular department. And so she came in and my way of coaching people and and kind of teaching them the job is usually I kind of do it in threes. So let's say an employee investigation.
I run the first one, I run the second one, and then I give them certain parts that they need to do, like the research or, you know, even some of the documentation, because we all know that's a a pretty heavy labor lift. And then the third one, they run, and I'm co pilot, providing some feedback, kind of being their their safety net. And so we were on a a consult with the manager, and it was the third time. And so she told the manager, she said, Well, according to policy, and I interrupted her.
I said, well, actually, I said, let let's not talk about the policy. You know, you John, you can't do that, but what you can do are these three options. Let's talk through each one of them. And so I messaged her before we got off the phone. I said, I need to talk to you right after this. And I said, never lead with according to policy for two reasons. One, you're not providing advice. And two, you're not taking ownership. You're blaming the policy. So you know, you're
metaphorically kind of personifying something because you don't want to take the blame. Stand in that decision and say, we're not going to do that. And here's why. People are going, you're going to increase your credibility and they're going to understand, okay, you care about me more than the policy. And that's why I think that that part of HR is seriously broken. But it can be changed. Just very minor tweets and leaning into the five mindsets can get you out of that and get you into the real fun work, honestly.
Emre (08:57.412)
Exactly. And you touch upon this a lot in your book, and that is something we've discussed to death on this show as well. HR having a seat at the table, right? That is what everyone is talking about. That is that that is this constant pain that's this thorn in the side of the HR person, right? Not being included in strategic decisions. And like you said, I think the reason for it is this it's the circular thing where
Trent Cotton (09:14.85)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (09:26.092)
The department and the people in it are treated as policy cops. So like from the top down, they sell they they expect them to be the policy cops, but the more they act like policy cops and administrators, the further they become removed from the actual strategic conversation. And it almost becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. And I think so.
Trent Cotton (09:30.638)
Mm-hmm.
Trent Cotton (09:49.175)
Absolutely.
Emre (09:53.359)
This entire book and this entire manuscript that you the manifesto that you wrote, it's all about HR actually getting that strategic seat at the table. And that's what I love about it.
Trent Cotton (10:08.066)
The the thing with the the whole seat at the table, and I think one thing that causes a primal reaction for me, meaning I I can't control it, it just kind of comes out, is whenever an HR professional says, I deserve or actually anyone says, I deserve a seat at that table. No one at who has a seat at that table ever asked for it. They earned it. They have credibility, they have experience, they have a point of view, and they're known for execution and they have the data to to
back it up. And so a lot of times, you know, I have a seat at the table doesn't necessarily mean to I have influence in company decisions. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. They are almost sometimes on the very opposite ends of each other. Because if all you're there is just to make sure, like a like a hall monitor in elementary school, you know, you never really wanted to tell the teacher's pet who told the teacher everything.
You never really wanted them to hang out with you at lunch, especially if you were like using bad words and things like that. That's kind of how when you just stay in that policy and that compliance and that risk mindset, that's why you don't get invited to the party. But if you come and you go, Hey, I like that decision. Have you thought about X, Y, and Z? Here's some implications that I'm seeing. You want me do you want me to go and run some data? I can do a couple of models for you and then come back to you. That's a completely different involvement than, well, you can't do that because
the EU AI Act says that you can't do it. Okay, well what can I do? Well I don't know. Okay, got it, got it. You're no longer invited.
Emre (11:43.233)
well again, it is kind of a two-sided thing where if the HR individual isn't brought into the company with that, you know, saying, Hey, we need this people person, this people ops person to actually implement this, you know, implement these strategic decisions, to actually have the leeway, to have to have the space to say, like, okay, I am gonna be the architect, I'm gonna be the scientist, I'm gonna be the engineer, I'm gonna.
run these experiments. I am going to come up with these strategies. And if the person isn't brought in at that capacity. And I think what we've seen a lot, and the more I see when I talk to people from all different walks of HR is let's say when a startup is founded, the people strategy side is the last thing to be brought on. And it is brought on when it's like when there's a dire need for it. Right? What? Yeah, exactly.
Trent Cotton (12:32.77)
Yes.
Trent Cotton (12:38.539)
Mm-hmm. To clean up.
Emre (12:41.016)
To clean up. And I've seen how some like brilliant and like reading some of the anecdotes in like the different mindset, I've seen how bringing in that you know people strategy mindset early on can actually make some massive changes in an organization. So with that said, I actually want to look into the five mindsets that you highlight in the futurist manifesto. And
Trent Cotton (12:58.497)
Absolutely.
Emre (13:10.84)
By the way, I love personality quizzes just as much as the next guy, right? I love the yeah, the sec the second like I hear the word personality quiz, I am a Ravenclaw, right? It's it comes natural to me. And initially, when someone hears the five mindsets for the chief HR officer of the future, you start thinking, it's a personality quiz, it's a character trait, it's this, this, this. And
Trent Cotton (13:17.635)
Really?
Trent Cotton (13:23.564)
Yeah.
Emre (13:39.609)
The way you are framing these mindsets is these are not different people. These are all, you know, the qualities and mindsets and approaches that you know the chief HR officer of the future needs to have. And I love the way they all tie into each other. And
Trent Cotton (13:59.351)
Yeah, I call it more of an operating system than personality types. Because you know, if it like I love disc. I love, you know, Plum's thing about what drives and what drains you. Like all the different ones. I like it because it does give you an insight into what makes you tick. However, you and I both know one of the things from those personalities, you can be aware and maybe change. Like if you're disc, like I'm a I'm a very high D. I can be an I for a certain period of time, but my
Emre (14:04.825)
Yeah, of course.
Emre (14:11.982)
Mm-hmm.
Trent Cotton (14:28.78)
where I feel the most comfortable is as a D. So there's certain things that I cannot change about how I'm wired. I didn't want that to be the mindsets. The mindsets you've got to, and I I talk about this in the in the book, there's an altitude model. You need to be able to fly at all of those altitudes. So a pilot flying at 30,000 feet who descends down to 5,000 feet, they're not a different pilot. They haven't lost any of the context in their descent.
It's just their point of reference and what they're looking at to be able to land the plane is completely different than it was at 30,000 feet. And that's what I'm calling people to do is really kind of lean into these five mindsets because each scenario, each part of the business, and just about every day, you're going to need to be able to shift between all five.
Emre (15:16.32)
Exactly. And before we get into the first one you introduce, the architect, I want to ask you about the metaphor you actually start the book with, right? Athens before Xerxes. So at the whole situation of Athens before Xerxes is there is a looming threat in the future. And it's this almost looming sense of unease, like the hair creeping on the back of your neck. But
Trent Cotton (15:25.816)
Yeah.
Emre (15:44.535)
As is the case with any looming threat, of course, there is the sense of denial. There's the sense of, it's not that big of a deal. It's this idea of, I live in Gotham City, sure, but the Joker's never gonna hit me. Like that's that's not my thing. So what in I mean, when someone reads the book in fully, they will understand what the Persian army stands for in your book. But what is the looming threat you see?
Trent Cotton (15:50.019)
Love it.
Emre (16:13.082)
for l or this you know, this looming Persian army that you see for the modern HR person.
Trent Cotton (16:19.394)
You've got a couple. All right. So the most obvious one is AI, and and I'll unpack that one a little bit later because it's not a one and done. There are several layers to the AI threat. The other threat is what's going on with the workforce. All right. Part of it is as a result of AI. The other part is just a lot of really bad structure and hiring decisions that we have been making for 20 years without actually stopping and going, why is this not working?
All of that is catching up with us now. And you've got this change. So if we look at the role, and and again, my minor was statistics and finance. My favorite quote is in God we trust, everyone else must bring data by William William Demming. That's always been on my approach in HR, but I was very different. You know, I wanted the data before I made any kind of a decision.
I think one of the things that the pandemic forced HR to look at was people analytics because now the C suite was going, who's exposed? Do we have any kind of forecast on like where our next weakness is going to be, especially if you have client facing roles? what's going to be the impact to revenue? Can we move people around? Like all of these things were data based and very strategic about the people function.
And I think that's really when HR got a wake-up call and said, okay, yeah, I majored in business, but I didn't like math. So I went into HR. Now I'm going to have to start doing math again. And so we started seeing people analytics really take hold. But I think now we've gotten into this thing of, well, we have all these dashboards. We have these really cool charts. We have these forecasts, but I can't, all I'm doing is reporting the data. So I think that's the other part is this evolution of really kind of stepping into what is that business analyst or that business consultant?
aspect of HR truly need to be because the C suite is demanding something different.
Emre (18:12.6)
And one of those things that the people analyst and that a char person has to be is the architect. And you start you start the architect chapter with the example of Hadrian, the Roman Emperor. And I think the Hadrian, the Roman Emperor having this massive construction project and with the Pantheon and
Trent Cotton (18:36.108)
With Yeah, with a Pantheon. Mm-hmm.
Emre (18:40.206)
What I also love about Hadrian's story overall in history is Hadrian looks at the Roman Empire and he thinks we only get one proper Julius Caesar per like tens of emperors. We have one great emperor who keeps the keeps Rome strong and takes it to a new age, and then we get five or six that will drag it down. And he says, My job is to make sure Rome.
Trent Cotton (18:58.029)
Right.
Emre (19:10.038)
stays strong and firm until the next good guy comes around. So and that is such I think that is such an HR position to be in. But let's talk about the architect mindset. What is it?
Trent Cotton (19:28.824)
So it is looking at the organization like an architect would look at a building. I'm always amazed, especially whenever I go into like really tall buildings that have got all these really unique architecture aspects of it. So I can't remember where I was because I I travel a lot for where but I remember walking into this hotel and it was it was huge, but it had like this spiral staircase in the middle and
It was it was beautiful to look at and and highly functional. But in my mind, I'm going, someone saw that and understood, okay, well, I need a load-bearing wall here and a load-bearing wall there. So that way this can float. And that's just one floor. I mean, this was like a 30, 40 floor hotel. And so like my mind just kept going, Wow, that's that's impressive. So the architect mindset is looking at the organization as a whole.
Designing it for not just the load bearing that needs to be done today, what what can the site actually handle? So going out and walking the site, yeah, you want a 30-story building, but the the ground as it stands right now cannot sustain that. So we need to build a little bit of a foundation here. And also too, if you want to build something, you want it to last longer than two or three years. So the architects designing for today and 30 years from now, what's going to happen in the environment?
What happens if six more buildings of the same size start being built around it? What kind of compression is it going to have on this building? The CHRO has to do the same thing. And I think what we're seeing in the workforce is you have this blunt sledgehammer going to load-bearing walls and organizations, and they don't see it until it's too late. Now, if we go back two years and we think all of the different people that come out, like CEOs that tout,
We release 1700 people in our customer service because AI replaced them. Well, two things. Number one, I have yet to see any kind of data of saying this one person or these eight people were were replaced by this AI agent or automation. It's not a one-to-one. So fact number one. Number two, really what they're doing is they're divesting out of human capital and reinvesting back into AI infrastructure. Makes sense, but let's just call it what it is.
Trent Cotton (21:45.721)
But what has happened so many times is they released 1700, but then they have to hire 600 back. Why? Because they cleared a load bearing wall without the architect CHRO going, hey, you do realize that this particular division is responsible for X percent of enterprise value. They protect our clients. They, you know, whatever it is. So the architect really has to kind of understand each one of those different walls.
which floor has what, and but they look at it as an entire building with all of these other many decisions about it. So that's kind of the 30,000 foot view of HR. And and quite honestly, you know, I talk about it in the book. You have to move in an altitude, and I've got a free assessment out there. And even before I took the assessment that I created, I'm like, I know I'm gonna score high in the architect, I'm gonna score low on the engineer. I know myself, right?
So I I think it's really, really interesting just to kind of be self aware as you're going through these different altitudes, where your strengths are, where you feel most comfortable, and where you really kind of have to pull something out of it to I guess to kind of function in that particular altitude.
Emre (22:59.788)
Exactly. And it's such a crucial thing to for it's such a crucial thing to keep in mind, especially with this architect mindset, as you say, how many little things are connected to each and every each and each other, right? And like the example of the load-bearing wall is I think wonderfully put and we do live in the age of, you know, I made this drastic decision to
Do this. We do live in the age of I'm gonna make one massive thing and it's gonna give us a huge competitive age. Regardless of the size of the company, everybody's trying to do find their own little growth hack without actually like analyzing the situation. We are in the age of a lot of theory, a lot of, this is how things should be, right? This is how and I think what I also love about your description of the architect is.
The architect doesn't look at things as the way they should be, but as they are. They take they start building through the constraints, right? So because it is such an even like the f the initial example you give gave is it looks it sounds a little, you know, malicious, ha ha ha, evil CEO, I'm gonna lay off an entire division. But the person with the sledgehammer can actually be someone very well-meaning, right? Someone who has this
Trent Cotton (24:24.46)
Yeah.
Emre (24:26.496)
idealized view of, this is how our workplace should be, this is how engaged our employees, this is what we should provide. So I'm gonna knock these structures down with the best intentions without actually spotting what those structures are holding.
Trent Cotton (24:40.738)
Right. And if you think about you know, kind of sticking with that example, if you're renovating a house and you're on a tight budget and you go, I'm gonna save money by knocking this wall out, and then two days later part of the ceiling starts to crack, everything sinks in. Think about the cost that it's going to take for you to fix the problem that wasn't existing before you took a sledgehammer. That's where I think a lot of organizations are struggling right now. And then you add to that, I think it was MIT came out and said ninety-five percent of AI pilots
fail. That's a huge number. So yes. sometimes you sometimes you need a machete and sometimes you need a scalpel. I think right now the architect would probably prefer the scalpel.
Emre (25:23.818)
Exactly. And but also, Trent, who doesn't love an open floor plan where you can, you know, see the kitchen?
Trent Cotton (25:29.862)
trust me, trust me. We've been considering should we buy a house and every time I look at something and it looks like one of those rat experiments, I just close it out like, ew, makes me anxious. I like nice and open. So
Emre (25:39.643)
Exactly. Until someone decides to put a fish in the oven and the entire house reeks. That's that that those are the real problems, folks. Not this AI studs. I love it. And speaking of the scalpel, I think that very neatly translates us to the second mindset. Snap mindset. Now, I am not getting into the sample story you gave.
Trent Cotton (25:46.926)
True. Yes.
Trent Cotton (25:52.124)
Right. Right.
Emre (26:09.398)
In the actual book because it is incredibly depressing. It it is Yeah, so it is the story. Yeah. I I don't think I ever will. I don't think I'm sleeping at night tonight. But it is the story of let's say two different wards in the hospital, in a hospital, and there are two different methodologies, and one with higher death rates and one with not, and someone
Trent Cotton (26:14.958)
Yeah. But it makes the point though, you'll never forget it.
Trent Cotton (26:23.874)
Yeah.
Emre (26:39.622)
Looking at that operation and not deciding to let's say throw out like the baby with the bathwater, horrible metaphor for this, but yeah. However, making these almost that's why initially when I read this, I thought, huh, engineer sounds a lot like the surgeon, like in my head, because making this very surgical change to one aspect of operation.
Trent Cotton (26:49.538)
Right, especially considering, yeah.
Emre (27:09.89)
Operations and actually achieving these drastic results, right? Making these small tweaks into how things operate and achieving these huge changes. So how do how did you come up with the engineer and what does it symbolize in the context of the modern work?
Trent Cotton (27:29.346)
Right. So if we look at the architect who's looking at how to build with what we have today for what we need tomorrow and all of the different aspects, the organization as a whole, the engineer is kind of that one step below. They are obsessed with the gaps in and the scenes I talk a lot about in the book. So why is that load bearing wall? Yes, it's a load bearing wall, but where is it connected? Like, is there a way that maybe we can hollow it out a little bit? That engineer really gets into those.
Answers and they're obsessed with it. I my last position, we had a I mean we were software development AI company, and so I was surrounded by engineers. And one of the things that really interested me with them is they could look at an entire system and go right to the gap. And like they could not move past it. And there were several times whenever I was trying to put a new program into place.
They would zero in on something like it's not that big of a deal. But to them it was. And so I I'd learned I've got to fix that gap because I can't get them to move forward until they feel like there's some kind of resolution. And I think that's important whenever you're looking at, you know, especially driving that enterprise value across the organization. Where, where does sales connect to operations and operations to finance? So you may have a problem.
And it looks like a sales problem, but it's really a handoff problem between sales and sales ops, which is showing up in finance, who is the one that's bringing the symptom. Right. So it's having that that process mindset of really kind of digging in and saying, okay, no, you're looking at one symptom. The root cause is here. And that's why I always talk about the the five whys. And anytime you're leading some type of a workshop and you've never done this before, it's very uncomfortable.
Because most HR people, most of us, we're so used to just giving a solution, diagnose and solve, diagnose and solve. What the engineer does is it kind of takes a step back and and continuously ask itself, am I solving the right problem? So sales is not meeting its numbers. Well, why is sales not meeting its numbers? Well, they don't have a healthy enough pipeline. Okay. Well, why don't they have enough pipeline? Well, demand generation, we cut the number of people there, so we're not sending out as many emails.
Trent Cotton (29:47.085)
Okay, well, why do we cut? Well, we were trying to save here. And so you get all the way down to this one decision that caused all of these five symptoms above it. You you deal with that, and then you just start working sequentially until you get to the original presenting problem. Engineers naturally think like that. And I alluded to earlier, that's one of my weaker areas. Now, whenever I dig in, I have to kind of like turn off part of my brain to really kind of focus on it.
But once I lock in, I become like an engineer. I I will not move off of solving that root problem almost to a fault. but it's something that I have to really make a very conscious effort to do.
Emre (30:28.588)
Amazing. And HR is so often the department of processes, right? We've with so many people who've come on this show. if I could summarize the one advice that all of them give to our listeners is don't fall in love with a single process, right? Don't fall in love with a single process, just make all these changes. And I think one line from the engineer chapter is that I really loved was
A system isn't just steps, right? And I think that is what how all of us and like yourself, I don't have that engineering mindset. It doesn't come natural to me. So when I look at it, I see the steps. I see this happens and then sequentially this follows through, and then it's going to be this. But the engineer, like you said, looks at the seams, looks how information is moving through all of it. And I found that, yeah.
Trent Cotton (31:08.451)
Right.
Trent Cotton (31:12.675)
Mm-hmm.
Trent Cotton (31:25.728)
And and can I give like I I like the advice that that you kind of summarized. Let me reframe it as an engineer. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. So anytime I'm running a workshop, I prevent people from going into solutions. So for my day job, I'm doing a lot of AI workshops with clients and prospects, really kind of looking at the recruiting process.
What needs to be human? What could should you automate? What could should be AI? And I put that rule in. We're not solving. So if we're talking about automating a process, whenever I say not getting into solution, think about, okay, well, we need to automate this step of the process. And you've got engineering and a couple of people in the room with you. They're going to go, Well, we we need to use Nathan. No, we need to use Google automation. No, we need to use Zapier. They will chase and argue for 45 minutes. Cut that off of the past and say, We're not in solutioning.
We've identified an area that we want to solve for. We know that we want to do it with automation. Now let's move on to the next one because it keeps people focused on how do we get down to that root problem. So fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Solution is where people go to die. Like, you know, it it's part of their psyche. You know, I'm a Nathan person. Who cares? The problem is this. How do we solve for that? We'll worry about the solutions later.
Emre (32:44.46)
Again, as a Ravenclaw, I fully agree with you. No, I think the true mindset that the the out of all of these, the mindset that actually helps you pinpoint that problem, pinpoint based on looking at the evidence, is actually the scientist. And I loved how you pointed out the HR person of today, the person who's in HR, we do not lack the data, right?
Trent Cotton (32:47.273)
Ha ha ha.
Trent Cotton (33:13.101)
No.
Emre (33:14.142)
I work for a company that will help you get the data, all of it and more. But it's all about
Trent Cotton (33:20.354)
Shameless plug.
Love it.
Emre (33:23.414)
wait, wait till the very end. But however, you pointed out that it was all about looking at the right data, measuring the right data, and seeing, okay, what sort of decisions are we going to make? So can you elaborate a bit on the scientist and the crazy experiment they did at Google letting go of all the managers?
Trent Cotton (33:47.161)
Yes, yes. So it's called Google Oxygen. Everybody hears about Google the Aristotle project. Not a lot of people hear about oxygen. So they decided we're just going to eliminate all of the engineering managers, have every engineer report directly to a director. Look good in theory because their mindset was, well, all these engineering people are doing is or the the managers are providing technical expertise. That was a part of the job. And so they did it.
Emre (33:52.74)
Mm-hmm.
Trent Cotton (34:15.404)
They realized, my gosh, we made a huge mistake, reinstated everything. And then years later, the people analytics team pulled the data back and they went into it with one particular hypothesis and they wanted to test against it. What they found is that retention, productivity, psychological safety, quality of product and output, all of those things were driven not by the technical expertise of the leader, but by their ability to be able to coach.
And to be able to develop and like the soft skills, right? And so they went in and and honestly, I love the the case study that I was reading because they actually said, Well, we're not gonna publish this, this is not our hypothesis, but they went ahead with it and it drastically improved the development plans for leaderships. it it affected their onboarding plan. So again, r the right problem, supported by the right data, and testing the right hypothesis.
had enormous effects on everything, like things that you would you wouldn't think that doing a management survey and really trying to figure out what makes a great manager would have an effect on onboarding. Well it does, right? Because now they're looking at the root problem. So the scientist follows the scientific method, form a hypothesis, run experiments, gather the data, and then make a not a solution, but make a recommendation.
I think what some HR people do is they go and they have a hypothesis, they go and find data to support it, and then they go and report it to the board. And they call themselves, I'm I'm data forward. That's not data forward. Data Ford is going and and I gave an example of something that I worked on. We had in banking and our retail side, we had some some attrition happening in that two to four year.
Now our one to two year, it was great. I mean, great retention, great engagement scores, our our five year and beyond, same thing. It was just something going on in the two to four. Well, immediately I solved it. we have a we have a pay problem. But I said, you know what? I'm going, I'm I'm gonna do the engineer and now I need I I need to do the scientists. I need to go and test some things. So I went and looked at pay scales. They were paid in market.
Trent Cotton (36:40.15)
And actually, our incentive plan was better than what was going on in in most of the market. So it wasn't compensation. And I had two other hypotheses that were just completely wrong. So then I pulled in some focus groups and I talked to the two to four. And what they felt like was the one to two years gets all of this training, all of these coaching sessions, because the company really invested in getting them ramped up. And then the five year.
They've already mastered the systems. They know who to call whenever something goes wrong. They've built a book of business. Their retention is based off of the fact that they know how to do the job and they've created that their own internal system of connections. The two to four year kind of felt like the middle kid, right? Like no one cares about me. I'm I'm expected to just produce. That was really enlightening. And so what they weren't, they weren't looking for more compensation. They were looking for more connection.
And so based off of that, we ran a couple of experiments. We did I think it was in Dallas, one of the large metro areas. We pulled everyone that was in that job family in the two to four and started working with a couple of the regionals and a couple of the managers who just really loved coaching and developing people. That was their skill. We created like a masterclass and we made it optional. We had about an 80 or 90% participation rate. And what we started to see is not just the retention go up.
We also started seeing a really interesting signal. People in that cohort would actually go to their manager and say, This bank and this bank are actually coming after me. I don't want to leave. And we were able to salvage before the offer was ever made, before they even went on the second or the final interview. We were getting an at bat, you know? And I think that was like one of the moments where I was, wow, I should test hypothesis more often.
Emre (38:30.228)
Exactly. And I think you point to point to this in the book as well. there's a difference between being a reporter and being a scientist, right? you can conduct a million surveys, you can gather all the data in the world, and if all this leads to is look, this is how engaged our employees are. This is the Yeah, exactly.
Trent Cotton (38:51.628)
It doesn't tell you anything. Why why are they engaged? Is it by generation? Is it by tenure? Is it by like those are the kind now that I've operated in that mindset, I ask more questions and I interrogate the data. And that's what a scientist does is they interrogate the data until they feel comfortable. But then they come like in that that particular example that I just gave, whenever I went to senior leadership, I said, here's the hypothesis that I had.
Here's how it was proven wrong. Here are two other hypotheses that I threw out there. They were wrong too. Here's what we actually found. And here are some of the early signals. We only did this in Dallas. I'd like to now test it in these four metro areas, and it's going to require X amount of budget. Can I have it? The C-suite will look at it and and also two, I tied it to revenue. I mean, these were revenue producers. Like if we can retain
Emre (39:35.642)
Mm.
Trent Cotton (39:46.691)
Then we're saving this expense and we're potentially adding this much to the pipeline, which is going to help us be able to meet X goal. So I came in, hypothesis, what was disproved, what was proved. I own that I made a mistake initially diagnosing it. So there's some credibility, there's some humility there. Here are a couple of different alternatives that I'd like to do. I offered six metros and I want to do it. Okay, you only want to do it in three? Cool. Let's do it in three.
That means that this is the budget, and this is what I'm going to commit to that you should see on the PL by X amount of time if this is successful. That's a scientist. And those types of scenarios, and that's how you position the solutions. I guarantee you, you'll go from a 20% approval rate by the board and the CEO and the C suite to probably roughly 60, 70%. I mean, that's a huge swing because they know when you're coming, you've done all of the work, you've done all the analysis.
You didn't just quickly diagnose something and you're tying it to a business KPI and you're talking and relating it to enterprise value. That positions you as a consultant. They'll forget that you're in HR. And that's exactly what you want.
Emre (40:55.692)
Now, in the book you actually use the while I love the movie Moneyball, I am not a baseball person. I mean
Trent Cotton (41:03.576)
Same, same. I'm not a sports person, so anyone that knows me and reads it, they're gonna be like, What?
Emre (41:09.966)
Well, then my apologies, Trent, because I am coming at you with sports. While I'm not a baseball person, and I am a huge basketball person, which is very ironic because you can't see it. I'm sitting down, but I'm actually 5'7, so I shouldn't be a huge basketball person. However, the the mindset you've described right now is the perfect backcourt, right? You have the playmaker with the architect seeing the entire field. You have your, you know, sh surgical shooting guard with
Trent Cotton (41:16.267)
Right.
Emre (41:39.375)
The engineer, yeah, the forward with the scientist. Now we're reading everything, but we need someone who's gonna dunk the ball, who's gonna be in the front of the court. And I think this metaphor is slowly falling apart, but we need the COO. So can you elaborate on that particular mindset? Because I love the fact that this that you point out, HR needs to know the business.
inside and out, all the different departments, all the different functions, ch enough to have a conversation with people from all those different departments.
Trent Cotton (42:15.758)
Agreed. And so if you've ever supported a really good CFO or COO, they have this mindset. They understand how all the gears work and how they're all connected and how it makes the watch be able to tell an accurate time. They can ex they can give you the time, but then they can also go down to just about every level of a gear. But the way that they look at it is again driving that enterprise value. And just a quick little caveat. For years I've been trying to figure out
How to describe this movement of money and and creation, value creation. And our my CEO, CEO now used to be CFO, he called it enterprise value. I said, I love that. I love that. So I Mark Thompson gave me the term. It's not a Trent term, but I like it because when HR is looking at how to drive enterprise value, all right, that includes risk, that includes protecting, that also includes accelerating.
And creating. So it's it's multi-pronged. You're looking at it as a source. So yeah, sales brings in that asset, right? That's that's the end. But if you're producing a product from design to product to engineering to QA, like every step of the process, that that product is gaining value that you're going to put out on the street and hopefully be able to sell and retain a profit to turn around, reinvest, and accelerate that process.
That's how COOs and CFOs think. That's why this particular mindset is so critical. It's taking the vision and the understanding of the organization of the architect, the engineer who understands all the different gears and how each one of them play into driving that enterprise value, the scientists, they want to see the facts. They want to understand that you've tested it. The the COO is now about executing, like getting it out there. What's the 30, 60, 90 day plan?
They're very tactical. And I think that that's a part with HR. And and and it's not all HR. There are some parts of HR is like, hey, we did a program. Fantastic. Let's move on to the next one. Well, did it land? Did you know it we created a new EAP? Okay, cool. That that's fantastic. How many employees are using it? Are we seeing a difference in mental health? Are we seeing a difference in productivity? Like what what happened after?
Trent Cotton (44:38.06)
It's not just show up, throw up and be done. It's really kind of digging in and seeing it through to fruition.
Emre (44:44.886)
Exactly. And Trent, execution is one thing, but execution is also quite messy. Right? The entire the the entire process of execution is quite messy and things don't always go according to plan. And when things don't go according to plan, who do we turn to?
Trent Cotton (44:51.006)
yeah.
Trent Cotton (44:57.507)
Mm-hmm.
Trent Cotton (45:01.528)
So go on.
Emre (45:03.146)
Exactly. And let's move on to the next mindset with this, the coach.
Trent Cotton (45:10.573)
and everyone listening's going, I've got that one.
Emre (45:14.052)
Sure, sure. I mean, every everyone and everyone everyone and their grandmothers have a coaching certificate, Trent.
Trent Cotton (45:15.286)
Not the way the not the way I'm describing it.
God, get life coaches. I I I love not not I mean not knocking if you do it. There is definitely need out there, but the coach that I'm talking about is completely different. They live in the uncomfortable. All right. So one thing with HR, and I think that we've we've over rotated on leaders need to be nice. Leaders need to be effective and human-centered. Those are two totally different ways of doing it.
And you talked about teaching earlier. I I did a stint in teaching as well. But I I look at the coach as kind of being a a parent, you know. There I've got a 23-year-old daughter. There have been several times where I've had to be really hard on her. It was out of love. I was not putting her down. I was not trying to damage her psyche. I was trying to prevent her from making a mistake, right? Or or seeing that she made a mistake and how to course correct that behavior. That's what the coach does.
They live in that execution. So you can have all the other four mindsets just humming along. But if that coach is not looking and saying, okay, here's the plan for today, all the way through the next three years, here are the scenes that I need to to really kind of mind. here's the data that whenever I'm talking to leaders that I can lean on and say, We've already vetted this. The COO, I've got a plan, but the plan's not working.
And it's a people problem. It's a leadership problem. All right. Where are those leaders? And it's driving a talk about it, a behavior to outcome map. So this group, this sales group, is not hitting their numbers. Why? Let's look at the behaviors that are driving the current outcome and then put that against what are the behaviors that should be happening in order to hit the outcome that we stated. And sometimes that means having a very difficult conversation. I remember sitting down with a leader that I loved personally.
Trent Cotton (47:15.09)
but just some of the data that I was getting back. I mean, he wasn't hitting his numbers. we had an awful attrition in his particular region. And so finally I just sat him down. I said, Bill, we got to talk, man. And here's the data. This is what it's telling me. I've done a couple of focus groups and I've really dug in. You're you're creating problems here in this scene. You're not looking at this scene. So why? Like walk walk me through why. Why why did you skip over that step?
And it's not being I call it being a prosecutor, but not in the sense of of being like just very aggressive, but really just trying to get into the fact finding. And usually when you do it that way, you help the person understand, like, whoa, why didn't I do that? I'm like, I don't know. That's why we're having the conversation, you know. And here are some behavior modifications I want to test for the next 30 days. Let's see if it shows up in the numbers. And if it doesn't, we'll adjust, you know? So it it's having a difficult conversation, but kind of walking alongside of them and going,
I'm going to give you again using a doctor metaphor. I'm going to give you this prescription. If you start seeing side effects in the first two weeks, we're going to change the prescription. Same thing with this type of coaching, but it's living in that uncomfortable.
Emre (48:23.982)
Yeah, and if employee attrition lasts longer than four hours, I don't know. But
Trent Cotton (48:28.598)
Yeah. Yeah. Well and and too, before before we move on, that coach is also coaching the CEO because the fish rots at the head.
Emre (48:37.824)
Exactly. Exactly. And to be honest, this whole book, I think, can be summarized with the first thing you said about the coach, and that is living in the uncomfortable, right? Because the init the initial metaphor of Themistocles trying to warn the people of Athens about the upcoming Persian invasion, and it's about
Trent Cotton (48:52.087)
Live any man.
Emre (49:05.412)
Going for the uncomfortable thing. It's about upsetting the status quo because, this is comfortable, this is safe, and we can't stay in this for a while. And I don't want to be the person who rocks the boat. But the all these different mindsets that you've pointed at, they all take a different approach to the boat. They all do different things to the boat. But if there's one thing in common that they do to the boat, is to rock it. So
Trent Cotton (49:33.763)
Yes.
Emre (49:34.766)
That living in the uncomfortable is, I think, the perfect thing, perfect metaphor for the HR person. Now.
As we wrap this up, as we finish all, as we go through these five mindset, if an HR person right now, listening to us in their organization, feels like that, Themistocles, feels that they can see this looming thing in the horizon, but they don't know what to quite do, or maybe they do, maybe they have their intuition, their gut feeling, they have their ideas, but they're not sure on how to implement it. What would be the one advice you'd give them?
Trent Cotton (50:14.766)
Start small. Start somewhere that you can influence. I think, and and I was very guilty of this. I want to I have this great idea and I think it's going to work for the organization. I'm going to push it as an organizational initiative. Well, you're going to res you're going to get resistance easily. But if I'm supporting a particular division and I've got this one department that I get along really great with, we have a great rapport. We're definitely partners and they're willing to try and test things.
ideas that I have because they're just kind of forward thinking, start there. There's where you get your data. There's where you get your case studies. And there's where you get your internal champions that when you do say, I think this needs to go to the division level, they're help, they're selling it right along with you, you know? So start small. Start in the areas that you know that that you can actually get things done. And going back to Thermistocles,
one of the ways that he got Athens to do it was not just by fear mongering. He started working he he was a brilliant strategist and an even more brilliant politician because he started working the different factions within you know, the the political parties to where it actually kind of became their idea. That's that's how you do HR. So I that's why I I was so passionate about starting with him.
because I really do feel like HR is in this thermistocles moment.
Emre (51:42.422)
And that is how you do a podcast. Trent, thank you so much for coming along. Where can people find you and when can they get their hands on the book?
Trent Cotton (51:51.836)
you can definitely find me on LinkedIn, TrentCotton. You can also go to TrentCotton.com if you're interested in learning more about the futurist and taking the free self-assessment. you can go to the website in the upper right hand corner. There's a become a futurist and it's got everything there. And the book, I just submitted it last night. I'm going to do one final review, but it's coming out probably middle of September. So excited. And actually, you're the first podcast that I'm actually going through the book in detail. So thank you.
Emre (52:21.366)
Amazing, amazing. It's an honor. It's an honor. And if you're on the market for a performance management software, you can't go wrong with the highest rated one for the Microsoft Teams ecosystem. And if you want to try it for free, you can click the link in the description. And if you're listening to us on iTunes, Spotify, where If you podcasts, leave us a like, subscribe, it really helps the show out. This has been the Team Check In, everyone. Trent, this was amazing. Really nice meeting you. And bye-bye, everyone.
Trent Cotton (52:46.284)
So thank you.
Emre (52:48.812)
All right, that's the show, man.
Trent Cotton (52:50.721)
Loved it, man. Thank you for reading the book.
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