The Intersection of Internal Culture and External Mission Shape How You Lead, with Cheryl Yuran

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Cheryl Yuran about the intersection of internal culture and external mission shape how you lead. Cheryl Yuran is a community builder. That's to say, she's long mastered the skill of ensuring every voice in the room is heard and considered without losing sight of the bigger picture. It's a skill that serves her well in her current role as Chief Human Resources Officer for Absorb Software. Before joining Absorb Software, Cheryl served as CHRO at Plex Systems, falling in love with the software industry while leading the cloud-based manufacturing solution provider's HR and people strategy. Prior to Plex Systems, Cheryl held senior HR roles across multiple industries and disciplines. The common thread among her roles has been a close tie to business operations and enabling success. Cheryl loves to unwind spending time with friends and family, going to new restaurants, concerts and cheering on the Michigan State Spartans at nearly any sporting event. Cheryl holds a Bachelor of Arts in employee relations and psychology from Michigan State University.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts. We're your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends, and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner-oriented content around all things leadership, HR, talent management, organizational development, and change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI family of podcasts.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Sheryl, you're in. Welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Thank you. Glad to be here.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  It's a real pleasure to be with you. You're joining us from Michigan. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah. Today, we're going to be talking about the intersection of internal culture and Absorb's external mission and how that shapes how you lead. I'm excited to talk about Absorb and your role and all the great things that are happening. And as we get started, I wanted to share your bio with everybody. Sheryl Uran is a community builder, and that's to say she's long mastered the skill of ensuring every voice in the room is heard and considered without losing sight of the bigger picture. It's a skill that serves her well in her current role as Chief Human Resource Officer for Absorb

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Software. Before joining Absorb Software, Cheryl served as CHRO of Plex Systems, falling in love with the software industry while leading the cloud-based manufacturing solution providers HR people strategy. Prior to Plex Systems, Cheryl held several senior HR roles across multiple industries and disciplines. The common thread among her roles has been a close tie to business operations and enabling success. Cheryl loves to unwind, spending time with friends and family, going to new restaurants, concerts, and cheering on the Michigan State Spartans at nearly any sports event. Cheryl holds a Bachelor's of Arts in Employee Relations and Psychology from Michigan State University. Sheryl, thanks

• 2:05Speaker 00

  again for joining us. It's a real pleasure. Anything you would like to add by way of your own background, personal context, before we dive on in?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  You know, I think as I look back on my career, I've been a lifelong learner and have done that by early in my career, jumping in between operational roles and HR roles. And then, as I grew my HR career, just as you mentioned, bouncing into different industries, which gave me just a very different perspective on the function in general. So really glad to be in the learning industry now, given my career.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I think it's a great place to be. I love the HR profession. I really got pulled into it and like it captured my interest first and foremost because of kind of the learning and development piece and just how intrinsically just like fascinating and vital and motivating and empowering that whole endeavor is. You know, I just, I just think that is at the core of like what makes us human and like how we interact, you know, as people and, and I just love it. So that's really what pulled me in. It seems like that's a common thread in what interests you in the space. And yeah, I'm just thrilled to,

• 3:16Speaker 00

  to be able to chat with you. And as I mentioned in the introduction, you know, I know you're really interested in this intersection of internal culture, external mission, how those two things, you know, can really, sometimes there's a tension. Hopefully, there's, there's a nice compliment that's happening between those two. How have you seen that play out at different times during your career, you know, in previous roles? And how is it playing out currently at Absorb? And then maybe we can unpack that a little bit.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think earlier in my career, I think I saw more of that tension side where there's always this desire in leaders and building a great culture built around engagement and a learning culture, but then also just driving their own performance metric goals. And things that focus on more of the financial metrics tend to be at odds with some of what we look at as the human capital metrics. And I think at Absorb, what I appreciate the most is that commonality between our mission to our customers and the mission that we have internally within our organization. And it drives, I would say, a huge amount of credibility for me and my peers. Like, we can't do things like you and I are doing

• 4:34Speaker 01

  today and talking about learning culture and then going back to our own organizations and not living that and expect to have credibility with the workforce. So that is, for me, so refreshing as an HR leader to have, I would say, more agency to do the things that we want to do in organizations and do them for the right reasons and be good advocates, not only for our employees, but for our customers. When something's clunky in the product, we can be really emboldened and empowered to walk into the product team's office and tell them what's what and what we'd like to see different. And it's nice to have that power with HR technology rather than just bending the tool to our will or bending the workforce

• 5:15Speaker 01

  to what the tool is capable of. So it really is a difference maker from a cultural perspective. And even just being able to drive that into the workforce and letting them be a part of the product team as well. So we're testing our own product and eating our own dog food, as they like to say, but then it gives every employee a voice on how that product works for their customers. And that, that is really fun for me at this point in my career to be a part of that.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Well, I love that. I love that. And yeah, you mentioned, you know, just the ability to go to internal stakeholders, sometimes when there is that tension, you know, to be able to go to different, different teams, to be able to go to different areas to make the case, right? To be able to push back a little bit. And it's not like, I mean, different areas want, want to do a good job and they want to do right by people, right? So like, but everyone has their own, everyone has their own metrics, everyone has their own accountability. And, and yeah, sometimes it just, it just gets a little complicated, gets a little messy. And, and we, I don't know, like, for one, we don't always, we

• 6:22Speaker 00

  don't always measure the right things. And we don't, we don't always like incentivize the right things, right? And regardless of whatever our good intentions might be. And so, so once we do that, like if there's, if there's any misalignment whatsoever, despite whatever good intentions exist, then all of a sudden, yeah, we end up having those tensions and we end up even having, you know, internal battles around like trying to have good products for our customers or like having good workflows or having like good alignment between what different teams are passing along from one team to another or like whatever, right? Like, there's so many different ways that those things can break down or not be optimized

• 7:03Speaker 00

  within an organization, again, with, with no bad intentions. I'm not, I'm assuming, I'm assuming the best of intentions. Now, we all know that sometimes, sometimes there are bad intentions and sometimes people do have an agenda and sometimes there are politics at play and like that all happens. But I think it's, it's better to just assume, for the most part, good intentions. And most people wake up in the morning wanting to like do a good job and wanting to like be good and wanting to like do a good job at work and wanting to be nice and like, you know, a good person. So I don't think most of the time it does us much good to like, well, too much on, on, you know, assuming

• 7:42Speaker 00

  negative, you know, projecting negative things onto other people. Just, but, but yeah, regardless, regardless, that messiness happens because we're human, right?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  So how do you start to get past that? Like, because that messiness exists, because structural tensions exist, because especially complex organizations, the bigger the organization, you know, the harder it can get. You have, you have these stated aspirations of cultural core values. You know, you have these things and yet, you know, you have like those types of experiences that you described and, and things don't always align.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think part of senior leadership's responsibility is to make sure that all teams have context of what the business is trying to achieve, why our customers use our products, how we make money as a company and what we hold dear, how we make those decisions. And everyone can use that as somewhat of a common framework to come back to when teams get too far off course, because we all have the same business aspiration at an organizational level. Then things kind of start to fracture at the functional level. But if you can give people that common space to go to, to start over and hit reset and hold teams accountable to thinking about their cross-functional partners up and downstream from their own work. And that is something we focus a lot on at Absorb because we're

• 9:10Speaker 01

  fully remote. And I think that complicates that factor where it's harder to remember the people you never see. So we're very intentional about that to try and create that collaboration. And we still miss, like, it's easy to forget those pieces, but then to come back to that. And I can't say how important the, the things that you highlighted are with assuming positive intent. Like, people react to you differently if you approach them with that assumption in mind. And it just changes the dynamic of the conversation. But I think we always have to come back to a few things that we hold true as an organization and then build from, build from there to rectify those functional differences. And usually, it's

• 9:52Speaker 01

  just different priorities. And people are trying to accomplish what they're being held accountable for and how they're judged as being good or not. And you're doing the same and just trying to find some medium there where you can either prioritize together or accomplish things together is really important.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what, I think that comes back to what we were talking about in the introduction. Like, so that's one of the reasons why learning and development is so important and why it's so foundational to everything that we're doing. You know, and a lot of times when I say, you know, learning and development or a training program, you know, people think training program, people think like a formalized, like, we're going to go all on an offsite, we're going to go do a weekend retreat or whatever. And it certainly can be that, but it's much more than that. It should be much more than that. And let's talk a little bit about that, you know, about how, you know, any shifts that you're seeing and how companies are going about training and upskilling their employees.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Today versus five, you know, 10 years ago, like I, I, I think it's significantly different now than it was, you know, even yeah, half a decade ago.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Right. And I, I would even say that it's different now than it was six or 12 months ago. I mean, the, the pace of change is astronomically higher, like we are running our organizations almost in perpetual change motions now. Like the, the old knowledge changes slowly, we get to a stability phase and things get normal again. That has changed dramatically where we don't really enjoy that period of stability for very long anymore. So I, I think organizations from an upskilling perspective, they need to be thinking about how to get that learning into the flow of work. So it can almost become just part of how you work is how you learn and it's not so episodic. I think that's a, that's a huge shift that we're going through and some organizations are getting it right.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  And others are still trying to fit back into the traditional training, learning and development tactics. And I think they're struggling to keep up with the pace of, of change as we're seeing it today.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  So maybe it's obvious, but like, what is the role of AI in all of this? Um, you know, chat GPT came on the scene, what was it back in like late November of 22? Or something like that. Um.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  And no one knew what to do with it, but it was there.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think AI is fundamentally changing so many things about learning and it is only begun to scratch the surface. So I think where we see a lot of our own customers and ourselves using it today, a lot of it starts in content creation. So it can take something that would take days or weeks, just a matter of an hour to get something that's good and usable out there. Um, so that is a big piece. Access to information is another one where now people can search in natural language in the flow of work and get a quick answer rather than relying on a peer or searching for course content. So access to information is really big. And I don't think we can ignore the amount of self-learning that is happening from an AI perspective.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Whether we as an organization have adopted AI or not, that is a go-to resource now for individuals. So they're not necessarily only leaning on the formal programs that we've done internally. So I think that's another dynamic at play that there's a lot of sources of information out there that we haven't necessarily sanctioned for company use. Um, but I think where we still have a lot of room to grow is where we're starting to see the behaviors actually change. And how fast we're changing, how fast we're adopting change and building that into our workflow processes and measuring that properly.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, that informal learning piece, um, I can't, I, I don't think that can be overstated. How important that is, like, like all those other things, absolutely true.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  The availability of information, the, how quickly you can get new content out, like all those things, absolutely true. Um, but yeah, I mean, I can, I can just Google any question.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  And I could, I could, you know, Google's been a thing for a long time, so I could Google any question for a long time, right? But it's different now, like now I can Google any question and it's not just like a bunch of like search results. Now it's almost like I Google a question and the Google AI like within the results now almost comes up with a whole training module, like instantly, right? With, with links, with videos, with like everything and it's interactive, so I can ask follow-up questions. I, you know, it's, and, and that's, that's just Google, right?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  And it's, it's, it's incredible and, and you know, was, you know, someone with a learning and development background, this is the kind of stuff I love. And, and on the one hand, I'm like, this is awesome. On the other hand, I'm like, oh, there's lots of learning and development professionals who are like wondering about their jobs.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  But, but you know, it, it, it just, it means we, we gotta up our games, right? Like we gotta make sure that we're doing, we're actually adding value in ways that are, are meaningful. Um, but, but yeah, it's, it's an incredible opportunity. It's, it's an incredible time for people to like constantly be having the opportunity to just grow, which is cool.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think L and D still has such a strong space in helping all of that make sense. Like getting back to the context piece, you, there's so much context. You think about as you move up in your career and you become more senior, part of what makes making decision-making easier is you just have these instincts that you've built over time. So I think the next phase of this is how do we build those instincts faster and more deliberately to help people make sense of all this information they have ready access to.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah. So fascinating.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  So at Absorb, you know, what, what are the, some of the biggest problems you feel like you're solving for L and D teams at the moment?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  I think at the moment, part of what we're solving is how to make sense of this all and still fit it into a learning and development structure, like organizations still have defined learning needs. And you need a defined learning approach against those needs. And our latest product Aura is a phenomenal answer to this speed and access to information question. So it helps people in the flow of work get access to what they need for the task of the moment. So it's not that they have to rely consistently on taking a course outside of the flow of work. It's something embedded in the work that they do.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And L and D teams then are making sure that the system has access to enough information to be useful in the moment and that the information is current. And then L and D teams can also spend more time thinking about things like leadership development. In this new world, the leader's role is changing too, and how do we get them ready for that? And that doesn't necessarily live within a system. And that's the really hard work that we need to put some real good mental energy around. So we're, we're helping develop tools within our system that, that can address that. But I think with Aura, the system of agents that work together to create a cohesive experience for the learner in the flow of work is really a game changer for L and D teams.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  And it helps pull L and D teams, I think, further into the business. Because if you're working within your own tooling system, not in a separate learning module, then you're beginning to blend learning right into the business flow of work. And I think that makes us much more a strategic partner to the business than we have been in the past.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I really like this idea of just building, building like real-time learning into the flow of work. Again, if you have to, if you gotta pull people out for a three-day retreat or an off-site or whatever, and there, there's still a place for that, right?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  There's still a time and a place for those types of things and team building and like leadership, you know, executive development or whatever. Like there's, there's different reasons why you would do those sorts of things. But, but for the vast majority of types of things that people need to do day to day to just reskill and upskill and just like learn a new product or, or, you know, just practice, like they need to like practice how to like do performance reviews or like whatever, you know? Like these, these are things that you probably can and should be doing in the flow of work. Rather than taking half a day or a couple of hours or even an hour and going into a separate room and like doing a classroom training, uh, or, or even sitting at your computer screen and like watching a video.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, for an hour or something like that. We all know that those, like the amount of retention that happens in those settings is so low. So when you can do it in the flow of work and you start to apply what you're doing, um, you actually, yeah, you actually like learn stuff and you actually retain stuff and that's what we all want. Um, that's what business leaders want, that's where the ROI is.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  That's what, what employees want, because then we actually feel like it's worth our time. I mean, we've all been there, we've all sat in those rooms where we're just like, why in the world? I'm so busy, I have like all these emails stacking up, all these things I have to get done and I'm just like sitting here wasting my time. We've all been there and it's so frustrating when you don't see clear alignment between what they're having you do versus what you need to get done. And so building it into the flow of work just makes perfect sense for everybody.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely a game changer.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  Awesome. Well, this has just been an eye-opening, fascinating conversation. I know we've only scratched the surface. Uh, I also know at the time, I probably need to let you get on with your busy day. But before we wrap things up, I just wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team, uh, and then give us the final word for today.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say the easiest way to connect with me is definitely on LinkedIn. Um, I do try and reply to messages if you've heard something like what we've talked about today and something stuck with you. So please reach out to me via LinkedIn, would love to hear from the audience. Um, final word for me would be if you haven't started with AI, get on your journey. Um, it really is a fascinating tool. I like to think of it not necessarily as technology, but like hiring a recent MBA grad and adding them to the team, ton of knowledge, needs context and direction. But, um, just starting with something simple like data analysis is such an eye-opening experience.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  I will share what, um, something we did on my team that was a great starting point for our team is we took, um, leader performance reviews for the last two years and extracted all of the verbatim comments from their leaders and put it into a spreadsheet, gave it to AI and asked it to do analysis on the development needs of our, of our leadership. And it was absolutely fascinating, the tools that it came out with in terms of just the insights into where leaders are strong, where they need help. It even noticed that there's the new hire needs and then there's the second phase, which comes at three to five years, where there's this need for upskilling from a leadership standpoint. And we've used that to create the framework of our new leadership development program.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  But it, it was easy because we talked to it in plain language. We gave it a hard data set that we would have never been able to, to work with on our own before. And it was a great way for the entire team to start to see the value and different ways to think about using it. So I would just say, if you feel like you're behind, you're probably not, you're probably right where all your peers are at. But jump in and just start playing with it and you'll be surprised what you're able to accomplish with it.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  I love it. I love it. Cheryl, thank you so much. It's just been a real pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Cheryl can do for you. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe, that you can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day. And I hope you all have a great week.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe and please join us again soon.