Why CHROs Are Retiring Faster Than Ever
Steve Degnan, Advisor, Board Member, and former CHRO of Nestlé Purina, provides an unfiltered take on the realities of HR leadership. He shares lessons on resilience, the power of discomfort for growth, and balancing strategic priorities with employee well-being. Steve also emphasizes the importance of transforming HR into a true strategic partner to drive business and people success.
In today’s episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Steve Degnan, Advisor, Board Member, and Former CHRO of Nestlé Purina PetCare. Steve shares his unfiltered perspective on HR leadership, discussing the importance of resilience, embracing discomfort for growth, and transforming HR into a strategic powerhouse.
He provides insights into balancing strategic business priorities with employee well-being and navigating challenges like hybrid work and tough organizational decisions. Steve also emphasizes the critical role of humor and grit in thriving as an HR leader.
🎓 In this episode, Steve discusses:
The realities of HR leadership
Earning respect as an HR leader
How to embrace discomfort for growth
Balancing strategy with employee well-being
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Steve Degnan 0:00
If you ask me, generally speaking, in the industry, why people are retiring early, it is a grind. You mentioned this whole return to work thing earlier, that is, that's a no man's land of angst and ill will. I got emails from employees at the time that were comically, insanely nasty. And I remember sitting there like kind of laughing, like you actually sent this to the head of HR, are you nuts? Like when I was coming up, I would never have even considered that for a moment. But people were doing it. There was no satisfying anyone. And there still isn't on the whole topic. So you got to be built for it, and you've got to have this combination of an awesome sense of humor, extreme resilience and a focus on moving forward, and even then, you're gonna get head punches that you're not expecting.
Chris Rainey 0:59
Hey, Steve, how you doing?
Steve Degnan 1:00
I'm doing great this morning. Good to be with you again, Chris,
Chris Rainey 1:04
welcome back to the show. Yes, you know, it's so crazy what it's been like eight years since, not to age us both,
Steve Degnan 1:13
especially me,
Chris Rainey 1:16
as well, and or interestingly, you were at Nestle, Purina for that entire time right before you retired, right so that's quite rare in this day, in this day and age as well.
Steve Degnan 1:26
I know that it was a blessing. I was 32 years at Nestle and Purina, Purina, the subsidiary of Nestle for those listening, and almost 20 years as CHRO of Purina. So I had a good run, wrapped it up a couple of years ago, but was wonderful,
Chris Rainey 1:46
amazing. Well, how are you? How's the family?
Steve Degnan 1:50
I'm doing great. I'm doing a lot of work with nonprofits, both in St Louis and otherwise, and just trying to switch it up and do things I haven't had a chance to do, so, yeah, it's a good time. So I
Chris Rainey 2:03
was excited about this, because when we spoke before the episode, we was thinking, you know, what can we talk about, right? Because there's a lot we we cover everything on the show. And I thought, what will be really interesting for the audience today is to talk about, you know, some of the hard truths, truths that are not really discussed as life as a chro, and sometimes when you when you're actively in the role, it's quite hard to talk about some of those things for obvious reasons. So I'm super excited to kind of lift up the veil a little bit and give people kind of an unfiltered view of really what it means. And that's one of the one of the goals of the podcast is really help prepare those leaders for tomorrow. So I want to go straight into the deep end. Let's not waste any time. You know what's, what's some of the hardest lessons that you learned as a chro, and why should future leaders brace themselves for these
Steve Degnan 3:00
it's a tough area. It's not for everybody. And early on, I never thought I would be an HR person. I got recruited into it by a great mentor several years into my run with Nestle. But hard lessons that I've learned, some of them, I'd say, are personal. You know, they're unique to the individual. They have to do with your own maturity and approach, I would say, first and foremost. And this, maybe is for everybody. Everybody wants this strategic role in HR, and you want to be the, I think it's consigliere or consigliere,
Chris Rainey 3:44
whatever. Yeah,
Steve Degnan 3:47
for for the big boss, and you want to be that, that right hand person everybody remembers, I guess, from the Godfather movie. I think the character's name was Tom, who kind of handled all the stuff on the side. It takes years to kind of work into that in some situations, when I first got to Purina, as the head of HR, Nestle had just acquired the organization, and anybody from Nestle was not going to be really trusted, liked or appreciated. So even though the CEO at the time like selected me. Ostensibly, it took a long time to build the trust up. Now, maybe four or five years now, at the time, I had an HR department that required some fixing and adjusting and so forth. So I sort of naturally just went there. But eventually the relationship got really strong, and by the time, his name was Pat McGuinness. By the time Pat retired, we were very close. He recently passed away, wonderful, kind of legendary guy and the pet care community. But it just takes a while. In some regards, you can't just parachute in and be. The man, it's not going to work that way. Sometimes, okay, the person that followed Pat, we had known each other and had developed a relationship along the way, so immediately that was a much more satisfying relationship. And I sort of had that going in with that gentleman. But it can take a long time. And I always say, you know, don't go in just assuming things are going to be a certain way, because this job is very dependent on influence and relationships. And you, if you don't have it, you have to work at it. And if it's there, appreciate it. But that would be probably
Chris Rainey 5:41
did you do that like practical because I get a lot of need to say that, but in a practical sense, how did you do that? You mentioned you could be free four years, looking back as anything you'd have done differently to maybe make that one year, if possible, rather than free.
Steve Degnan 5:59
Listen, Chris, I always say relationships are time spent, and everyone is different. You can get there really quick if you've got a certain chemistry with a person and with others. In the case of Pat, like I said, it was going to take a while to develop that trust. He was an industry veteran, widely respected and very externally facing. And it was you weren't going to just work your way in and say, Hi, I'm here. You should appreciate me. Would I have done anything different? There's a couple of things. I don't know that they're specifically about that top role, but I'd say, yeah, there are tactical things I would have done different. I'd say, for anyone listening to this like you're asking me, how, how do you do this? How do you build it? Your department has to be highly competent, and if it's not, you can't sit there and demand a great relationship with the CEO. So if your team is not executing at the top of its game, you really don't have any credibility. So if your recruiters aren't recruiting Well, if you're, if you're, you're customer facing. HR, people are, are not handling things well and credibly, and there are complaints and sort of cynical attitudes about your group working it up to its way up to the boss. You can't go in there and say, I'm your consigliere. Here I am. Let's talk about important things when your team stinks. So you've really got to make sure your group is doing everything it's supposed to do, and doing it well. And I'd say that's probably one of the things that's most glaring in our profession that does not get talked about very often is the actual competency of the department doing the basics well. And you know, HR is not for everyone, like we started out talking about. It is a collection of disparate functions. I don't know that somebody 100 years ago, decided all of these things are together because they
Chris Rainey 8:03
have to do with people, and when he added more, right? Yeah, that's
Steve Degnan 8:07
right. So you have everything from dealing with unions and labor relations to high level people analytics and everything in between, and all the traditional services that we're supposed to provide
Chris Rainey 8:18
now, sustainability, even some companies, right, right? So it's, it's a it's a
Steve Degnan 8:23
broad group of activities that need to be managed well, and you need to know something about all of them, and you need to have an opinion about all of them. And it's very easy to screw one of those things up. And when you do, it's like I said, it's hard to march in and say hi, I'm an important person you should listen to.
Chris Rainey 8:43
Yeah, no, I love that when you on the journey and this, this comes up a lot in my private conversations, but not necessarily, can be discussed on the show when you don't agree with the company's direction, or you don't agree with a decision the CEO has made. How do you still make your voice heard and sort of balance that you know, for example, many sit arrows in my private conversations are losing their mind about their company, saying, hey, everyone has to come back into the office now, after a couple of years of really adjusting, finding a rhythm and really trying to make hybrid work and be intentional about how people show up and how they work, right? How have you dealt with that over your career?
Steve Degnan 9:27
Yeah, first of all, I'd say this gets to the crux of being a leader in this function. You better embrace the angst, and if you're expecting to have a life that's lovely and free of stress, you should do something else. I'd say that goes for everybody, like in a C level role, but in HR, it gets really magnified and exaggerated. So good example, this whole return to work thing is a good source of angst for all of us. I would say that to the original question. Question When you disagree with things. I've had plenty of experience with that, and if any of my former colleagues are watching this, they'd say, Yeah, Steve, disagreed with plenty of stuff. I think it's critical that you make yourself heard Okay, and your first instinct is not to express an opinion and to go along to get along. Your life is going to suck as an HR leader, and you've got to find a diplomatic way to make sure that you relate how you feel about things. Early on, I wasn't as good at that. I hope I got a little bit better. If some of my old peers are watching this who experience me in meetings disagreeing with things, they're probably laughing right now. Now I tried to mix in some humor as much as I possibly could when I disagreed with a certain take on something. But there were moments in my career, and there's sort of like these defining moments where if you don't take a stand on something. Why are you in this role, especially when it has to do with the way our people are treated, or being ethical or finding the right way to do something? So I was reflecting a couple of days ago. We did some outsourcing. I don't know 1015, years ago, like every other big multinational company has done, and the first rounds of it weren't really great, and I didn't like it. And yet it was inevitable. There was no way I could stop the thing. It had a mind in a life of its own, and we were all trying to make the best of it. But when I went to meetings, I made sure I was heard. We had a names will go without naming the vendor. But we had crazy vendor that was like, one incident could affect 1000 employees, for example. So if we didn't pay a whole factory, we were only counting that once in payroll management, right? So they were like, we're at 99.9% accuracy, and then, because that was only counts as one event. So I like in that scenario, I was really sounding off, and I was probably obnoxious about it. But there is a time to be obnoxious. There are other times to be more subtle.
Chris Rainey 12:13
Does that, does that confidence build more throughout your career to be to to challenge, you know? Because I'm sure early on, you know, I suppose it does it make it easier that you have that level of experience and the years tenured in the company, that you have more of a trusted voice to challenge? Yeah,
Steve Degnan 12:30
it's probably easy for me to say that, you know, years of service tend to really help an HR person. There's a couple of reasons for it. If you're in an organization long enough, you start to know everybody and everything, and you know certain patterns of behavior and so forth. But I want to share a quick example with you of that. Okay, so my parent company, and by the way, I love everybody at Nestle and Purina, I had such a great career. So disclaimer, anything I'm talking about here, anything applies everywhere. Okay, so my Nestle stuff I'm telling you about, it's not unique to nestle. So at one point there was a big centralization effort. This goes back up probably right around the time I first talked to you. Okay, so, and I did, like you said, I never would have brought this up back then I can talk about it. Now, there was a big centralization effort going on. I'm guessing some very smart consultants showed up at Nestle's door over in bevi and said, You should centralize every single HR person in the company, even though Nestle is this gigantic octopus of a company, and it's hard to do things centralized, if nothing else is Steve's opinion. So my group in my department was in scope for doing this. Now, Nestle is a big company, big company. Purina is a gigantic part of it. So at the time Nestle, Purina was probably about 10 billion 10,000 employees, and, you know, I think I had a strong case for saying, hey, I need my own recruiting and analytics and other things. We had centralized payroll administration and all the basic HR services prior. But I was, you know, I started to push back, and I was told, Nope, we're doing this. And at the time, to your point about maturity, and do you get more confidence as you go along? The answer is yes. So in that case, I very calmly told my CEO at the time, Joe, Listen, I'm not up for this. I'll get us all the way to the very moment they tell me to start firing people, and then I'm out of here. I'm not doing it. I'm not wrecking this thing that I had a hand in building and that is performing quite well. I just won't do it, and someone else is going to have to do that. Someone else could have the opportunity. It's okay. I'll go find something else. And I was at peace. I'd actually started to network. I was kind of looking out and. More than I ever had been. And then a miracle happened. A new head of HR took over, and she said, we're not doing that. And boom, Steve was happy, and we started over. But
Chris Rainey 15:10
you're willing to walk away, and I've heard this many times before, you were willing to walk away, yes,
Steve Degnan 15:16
and I have to be you have to be able. And you know, you better save up what they call some fu money, right? And that
Chris Rainey 15:26
before I quit the other side, just
Steve Degnan 15:28
you got to be able to walk away, because you got to live with yourself for the rest of your life. And now, earlier on, I had to eat some stuff that I didn't like, and had to kind of roll with it. But then you say to yourself, how often you know, am I going to keep doing this? And do I want to keep doing this so and guess what? No one's going to be out to get you for telling the truth. They're probably going to respect you more for taking a principled stand on it. And I am friends and close with all the people that were involved in those decisions at the time, and I don't it wasn't personal. It wasn't personal for them or for me. It was just business, and I can understand their point of view. Maybe I would have been pushing the same thing if I was in their spot. But we all act like adults, and we can all stay friends, but that's one of those things, yeah,
Chris Rainey 16:21
one of my questions I had, but you kind of maybe already answered it. I was gonna ask you, you know, what matters more when you're fighting for a seat at the table? Was it respect or is it results?
Steve Degnan 16:30
Yeah, you know, I really hate that term, seat at the table.
Chris Rainey 16:35
I know I've heard it fountains of times at this point,
Steve Degnan 16:40
it's kind of whiny. I've always said you'll, you know what you're talking about, really, with that is influence, right? Like, are people taking me seriously? And you'll get respect and influence when you earn it. So, you know, we talked a little bit about the HR part department needing to perform. There are other personal elements to that. So you've got this executive team that you've got to interact with, and they all have things and agendas that they want to get done. And there's an ebb and flow in life where sometimes you're going to be at odds with every single person on that team, because in HR there are there are decisions that come your way regarding all of them. It could be a compensation thing that you're not aligned with. It could be a certain talent or person that is in question for promotion that you're not aligned with. It could be any number of things that you're dealing with with each of them, and at any point in time you may have disagreements and you need to hold confidences with all of them. And there's this sort of political thing that goes on where at any one time, three or four, if you're on a team of 12, say, three, four or five of them could be coming to you, inventing about the other ones. And then you have a decision to make, which is, I'm going to take with the right decision is, most of the time is, I'm going to take all that to the grave with me, and I'm never going to say a thing to anybody except maybe my dog when I get home, because it's not going to do any good to share this stuff. So if you are not handling that, well, you're not going to get a seat at the table. In fact, they're going to make fun of you or resent you for your existence. And this is this is going to be a fact of your existence as a chro, and you're going to have trust with some and not with others. You're going to have good relationships with some and not with others. And the way you manage that and kind of surf through it, is going to determine how seriously you're taken. And by the way, I'm not bragging, and I'm not claiming to have mastered that either. I don't know if I ever did. It involves stress. It's, you know, there's a new person on the leadership team. You may or may not know them well. You may or may not have that relationship. And the whole cycle starts over. And it's, it's something that continues to renew itself throughout your career and and you're never done, especially
Chris Rainey 19:08
when you've been there so long, like yourself, you've had to, you've probably gone for this 2030, times with different sets of leaders. Yeah,
Steve Degnan 19:15
I think I had at least, well, I had three CEOs, and I had at least three cohorts of leadership teams, maybe four or five, you know, in terms of
Chris Rainey 19:24
how long the people here we go again.
Steve Degnan 19:29
Yeah, towards the end, you know, you got your
Chris Rainey 19:31
reps in, though, you got your reps in. So, you kind of, know,
Steve Degnan 19:35
I didn't want to be the grumpy old man, you know, kind of complaining about everything. You know. Towards the end, you know, I had a good run. And one of the factors that added up to my retirement was, you know, I'm starting to see the same thing over and over, and I you want to be fresh, and you want to be excited and enthusiastic about everything so
Chris Rainey 19:54
separate from your own retirement that we're seeing a massive exodus. And. Many, many CHROs retiring like more than I've ever seen before. Why do you think so many CHROs are retiring right now?
Steve Degnan 20:10
It's a grind, and Chris, I'll tell you, like a good friend of mine, and I've got an older brother that did this too, like you have to answer two questions in your career, especially when you're at in one of these top jobs, which is a grind, you're available. 24/7, no excuses, like you gotta be where you gotta be. And it is what it is. Two questions you should answer about ending your career. Do you have enough? And have you had enough? And, okay, the first one is a mathematical question. So easy enough, the second one, that's hard and it amounts to, what's your stress load? How long do you want to put up with it? Is it affecting your health? And do you want to go forward? And if you do for how long, and how is that going to manifest? So I had an older brother that took an early retirement. I always kind of respected that, so when I had been contemplating it, now, I'll say Purina was like the Disneyland of companies for HR people. I had it made. I had good bosses and and was taken seriously, and we could do fun things and interesting things, and that's still going on there. God bless them. But if you ask me, generally speaking, in the industry, why people are retiring early, it is a grind. You mentioned this whole return to work thing earlier, that is, that's a no man's land of angst and ill will. And I remember when we announced our approach, and we had a hybrid thing, but it leaned towards being in the office more than not. I got emails from employees at the time that were comically, insanely nasty, and I remember sitting there like kind of laughing, like you actually sent this to the head of HR. Are you nuts? Like when I was coming up? I would never have even considered that for a moment, but people were doing it, and you'd shake your head and and there was no satisfying anyone. And there still isn't on the whole topic. So you gotta be built for it, and you've gotta have this combination of an awesome sense of humor, extreme resilience and a focus on moving forward, and even then, you're going to get head punches that you're not expecting. So it's an interesting time to be alive and listen. Good news is, if they're retiring, that's that's opportunity for the people that stick around and but nobody wants to, there's certain messages that are not popular these days, you know, like, you know, words like sacrifice and words like grind, grit, grit. Nobody wants to talk about this stuff, but there's a lot of honor in the profession, like what I didn't mention earlier. Okay, fine. Take special people to do this. It is. There's a fair amount of negativity and acts, you know, like we've been talking about at the same time. Here's what we don't talk about, either you're going to get to help people in ways that nobody else does. You know, the kind of strange thing is, you're the only one that's going to know it. Maybe a couple of colleagues are going to know it that you got it done. But you're never going to have these things you can scream from the rooftop that you did or you achieved, like the head of sales or the head of marketing is going to have, there's just going to be this collection of moments where you really made a difference in someone's life. You know it, they know it, but it's never going to be headline news, and there's immense satisfaction in that. So I think if you're looking for a stress free life, don't become the head of HR anywhere. If you're looking for meaning and purpose and satisfaction. There may be nothing better, but you've got to have the mindset and the makeup to deal with all of the assorted nonsense that comes along with the role. Yeah, I used to you'll appreciate this. Chris being a good British guy when all hell was breaking loose in my job, a common expression I would say to my team is cue the Benny Hill music. Because, you know, just have a sense of humor about the ongoing chaos of life, and it's going to serve you well, yeah, and it's coming, whether you like it or not. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 24:43
Is HR a thankless job?
Steve Degnan 24:48
Like I said, it can be at times, and I think that's why HR people tend to get close to each other, and there's sort of this community of people who get it because. There's nowhere to go with, with some of our issues that we deal with. And if, like I said, if you're dealing with things in a confidential way, you got nowhere to go. There's sort of a priest, Rabbi, you pick the sort of Guru character that you want to compare it to, but, but there is this sort of element to the role that is unique, and it's it's hard to share, and you've got to take some intrinsic satisfaction and pride in what you do, because you're not going to get all those pats on the back. You have to be satisfied getting things done in the background. Now, a great boss and a great CEO, and I had three of them, they will give you credit, and they'll call you out, and they'll thank you. But not all of them are enlightened, and you're not always going to get that depending on the environment that you're in, so
Chris Rainey 25:52
it's tough. Yeah, I understand that. One of the things that we I hear about a lot, and we spoke about this briefly, is, why does everyone else in the business think they can do HR job better than you?
Steve Degnan 26:06
Yeah, that's true. Okay, so HR touches everything, and it's unique that way, right? There's only a couple of functions that touch everybody and everything. HR is one of them. And by the way, as the head of HR, you need to keep that in mind. When you're developing new policies, practices or managing change, you got to take everybody with you and invite them along. Another thing I would tell the leadership team at critical moments and the you know, the return to work thing, was one of them, it's like, hey, I'll take point on this. I'm happy to do it, but we'll put all the announcements out under my name. That's what I'm here for. And by the Chris, I mean that's that's important when I say, embrace the angst you're there to kind of be the point for the company on tough decisions. So don't be afraid when you're announcing something to put it out under your name, like you should do that for the CEO. You don't have to make them to put all the crappy announcements out. If there's a restructuring, if there's a reorganization, if there's any bad news whatsoever, if it's our approach to coming to work, you do it. Offer to do it. You're the HR person. That's what you're there for, and if you don't have the stomach for that, maybe you shouldn't be doing it. But okay, back to the the original question was, why does everybody think they can do HR? It's because it's accessible and and it's part of everybody's life, and there's some common sense to it, and they're staring at it, and especially if you're offering up mistakes and problems that everybody can see. They're going to say, I could do that 10 times better than you. And they're just looking at sort of the retail, transactional part of human resources. They're not looking at what's behind it. So I think it's a mistake to appoint non practitioners into HR roles. It happens quite a bit. Though. There are companies that will rotate people through the role as sort of a development exercise. There's some noteworthy executives out there who have done it. I'm not saying that you can't if you have great listening skills and you can learn quickly. Yes, you can do that, but it's not ideal, due to the complexity we were just talking about a moment ago. You got labor relations. It's very nuanced. There's relationships involved with unions. There are approaches to training and development and the way we practice that there. There are the complexities of payroll and simple administration, where one mistake can cause a colossal failure. So I don't think it's it's easy, and it's managing that collection of activities that requires a lot of discipline. And there's analytical acumen that goes with it. There. There's a simple mathematical capability that goes with it. There's all of the same management acumen required to run a big HR department as there is to run a marketing department and so on and so forth. So to think that you don't have to develop a base of experience to do that is kind of silly. Now, how do you handle it as a head of HR, if you got people roaming around saying I could do that better than you, you develop a defective team, and you develop expertise, and you develop a very nice way of managing careers, like I'm listen, I didn't start out in HR, so I am a big fan of having some business in the business experience outside the HR department. That's a good thing that makes you relatable, and it gives you some on the ground experience that you otherwise wouldn't get and but I think it's better done early on as a junior person, rather than parachuting it to the function mid career or later on. But. So, yeah, I think the main reason is it's the it might be the only function that everybody has to deal with, because everybody has benefits. Hiring managers have to hire people. They're going to deal with your recruiting department. They're going to have opinions on it, often wrong and misinformed and unscientific and but if you're good, and you know what you're doing, and you're highly informed on it, you can convince them. Maybe Steve knows what he's doing. I think I'll give him a chance. He seems to, you know, have a brain in his head. But, yeah, I've dealt with that quite a bit.
Chris Rainey 30:35
I can imagine. That's why That's good. Where you companies do that, well, have great business partners. Yeah, right, that obviously can effectively communicate and support and advise those other leaders as well, right? So that doesn't feel maybe isolated or, Hey, what's going on in HR?
Steve Degnan 30:52
Yeah, like, it's worth a word to like on the whole HR department topic. And I'll say this because I can now to your earlier point that I can't speak on guarded, you've got to have good customer facing HR people. They can't be weirdos. They can't be mean. They can't be like a misplaced security guard that somehow ended up in HR that has this police mentality. You know, it can be kind of sad, you know, to have well intended people that scare people away. For a while, I was kind of early on preaching to my team, come on, guys, we got to have relatable people in the department. We can't have people that scare people. And there some of that still goes on, and that sounds mean, and maybe it sounds intolerant, I am not against eccentrics. There's a place for everybody,
Chris Rainey 31:45
not in HR,
Steve Degnan 31:49
especially a customer facing role in HR, like any kind of representative or generalist or business partner that deals with people, you've got to have that rare combination of approachability, sanity, extreme listening skills, and when it works, it's like you said, it can be amazing, but when you get kind of a fat head or a jerk in one of those roles, it's insanely alienating to the people that they have to work with, and You've got to be the one that takes action and replaces them and finds the right mix. And it doesn't mean everyone has to be a shrinking violet, or everyone has to, you know, sit on their opinions and not express them. It's just an elevated way
Chris Rainey 32:35
everyone gets really coming from, yeah, one of the things I wanted to ask about is, you know, what's the, you know, what's the secret of being calm during layoffs and restructuring, both personally, yourself and professionally, right? Because there's an impact, obviously, personally and then, of course, professionally, how you deal with that?
Steve Degnan 33:01
So it's, it's a defining moment for human resources when you're dealing with those situations, and the way you deal with them can affect the way you're perceived as an individual, that your team is perceived and your company's perceived forever. I have relatives that were in the auto industry back in oh 809, when massive layoffs happened, and they were handed a box, since unceremoniously and told to leave with 2025, years like the service. And I sit there and look at that, and I'm like, how could you possibly, possibly have allowed that that is such a disregard for the dignity of people. But on the whole, how do you remain calm? That's your job. So having a lot of experience as as you're coming up, being in those situations will help. Early on in my time at Nestle, USA food business, it was mid to late 90s, they were changing the company and trying to divest sort of commodity type businesses and bring in higher value add businesses. And it was a time of chaos and a lot of layoffs and a lot of that sort of activity. So I was immersed in it at the time. By the time I got to my CHR role, CHRO role, I had a very clinical view on those sorts of things. We didn't do a lot of it at Purina, but I was highly informed on how to do it by the time those types of decisions would get to me. And that's when you're clinical, and you go into these things, and you try to be the most professional you possibly can, and that's how you remain calm. And you've just gotta absorb it and have an organized approach and a plan that is methodical, that takes into account the needs of the company to save money and do what it needs to get done, and the needs to maintain dignity for. For everybody who's affected by the thing that's about to happen, and if you do it well, even the people who depart will like the company if they feel like they're treated fairly, and they may stay a consumer and a customer of your business for the rest of their lives, and they'll have some pride in the time that they spent there. If you do it in a lousy way that's sloppy and sort of not recognizing the dignity of the people involved, then you're going to pay for that in one way or another over time. But original question experience and depth of thought will help you remain calm. I'm on I'm focused on task. There are several objectives I have to absolutely achieve here. I need to protect the business and the employees, and you stay hyper focused on it, disregarding all of the insanity and chaos that's going around you. Yeah, that's the best answer I could give you.
Chris Rainey 35:58
Made that seem really simple, but how do you deal with it in terms of not letting it emotionally consume? You
Steve Degnan 36:07
have good friends and some hobbies and interests and and make sure that work is not all consuming and the only thing in your life, and you have some balance, and have people you can go to to vent that are outside the business and doing in other worlds, so that you've got some perspective on life and how people react to things. But yeah, there are moments in these HR careers, it's just it's going to suck, but it's going to make you a better, wiser person when you get on the other side of it, slightly
Chris Rainey 36:46
taking a different pivot. I want to talk about recruitment. Because, you know, when I started doing this 20 years ago, it was always one of the biggest challenges. 20 years later, why is hiring still the most critical and most, I would say, dangerous job in HR, right? Because that's still, it was still sort of like it's we've never really solved it, and we never, almost felt like we never will, is there's an evolution.
Steve Degnan 37:18
Well said, listen to your first point. Why is it the most critical? Because if you get it right, you save yourself so much trouble down the road. So we have training departments, we have disciplinary procedures, we have all this infrastructure that exists because we don't get hiring right the first time, whenever
Chris Rainey 37:36
I never read four by it like that,
Steve Degnan 37:39
yeah. Like, like, think about it, if you get a higher right that, like my favorite people, I call them the ones that can figure it out. They're the ones that don't express helplessness. Like you guys didn't train me on that Well, I didn't have a class on that. You hear all this sort of learned helplessness along the way. In human resources, the people you want are like, Hey, Steve, will you send me to this class that I found? Because it's really cool and it addresses this topic, and I love people like that, and that's what you want to try to find when you're hiring people. So the growth mindset, the growth mindset, yes, exactly. Growth Mindset, self starting, curious, all those things. So we're all human beings. It's part of the human condition to to have people that fake it, to have people that are, in some cases, sociopaths, that that will say and do anything to get hired, whether or not it's true, and they're out there. So I guess the art of the whole thing is to have a combination of systems, processes and human interaction that gives you the best chance of screening through that. And always have been a huge adherent in the HR function of investing heavily and being your best in recruiting. I've mentioned to you before, I'm a fan of a guy named John Sullivan, who's sort of a hiring guru at a university out in California. He I had him into Purina One time to speak to our executives about how to best win the talent war and using creative ways to get after it and so forth. But I think you've got to educate your leadership team that it's super important and probably the most strategic thing you can do as a company to be good at recruiting. I didn't like to rely on outside recruiters. I'm proud of the fact that we rarely use them. And no offense to anyone watching this that's in that industry, because they're critical in their way too. But for us, I considered recruiting the family jewels, and it's like, we're going to do this right, and I want to have the best systems on. And I want to have great interactions. We actually spent some time, about 10 years ago on design thinking as it, it regarded recruiting and the people that were coming in to talk to us during interviews. So from like if we were going to hire someone that was not from St Louis coming to see into Purina, to consider the company. We studied everything from the time they got off the airplane, how they were transported over to the company, the route that they took when they walked in the lobby, who greeted them, what they were experiencing. Because we wanted to win and we wanted to put our best face forward. And that's the kind of hyper detail you have to get into in order to do things well. And I don't think most people are doing that. I had, and I'm not taking credit for that. I had really awesome people on my recruiting team that were competitively oriented to want to win and be better than the people we were competing against. And when you really get into it and start thinking about that, the ideas flow and they come and you can do great things. So but it's, it's, it's always going to be that tough algebra or calculus problem to find the right mix of tactics, interview techniques that are legal, by the way, and aren't going to, you know, put you full of bias and and put the wrong face forward for the company, and then educating your hiring managers on all of that and how important it is because, you know, the if you're in an unsophisticated, underdeveloped recruiting approach in a company, and you have these managers that say, I have this one magical interview question that always works, or the knucklehead that says, Sell me this pen during an interview. I mean, you see some really bad stuff out there, and your team has to have the guts to say that's not appropriate. And there are better ways to do this, and there are, there is research backing up why we should do it this way instead of that way. And you need to come along and learn this stuff. But if we're too timid, we sit back, and we sort of want to make that the managers happy and let them do things their way. Yeah, and you end up with a bunch of lousy hires. I there have been a couple of times where I've actually wanted, like, a, not a formal, like real investigation, but I wanted to investigate what went wrong in a hiring process that was high profile, that we didn't get right. And a couple of times it was like we hired a psychotic but there were a couple of times where some of the interviewers that were involved on the team were not aligned, and they were overruled with their concern, and then we hired the person anyway. So
Chris Rainey 43:00
I remember earlier in my career, I had a interview for, I say, earlier about five years of my career, a head of sales role, and I went into this, this interview, and I probably had like five different people come in one after another, like 10 minutes, and then they kept coming in, and I was getting grilled by every single one of them. One of them literally ripped up my CV in front of me, this is a real thing, and said, you ever got it what it takes to work here? And another guy came in and said, you know, you don't have any education. Basically, their whole style was like to see if I could handle the pressure, right? And it was ridiculous. I had a guy literally come in and say, Look, have you seen my watch? Do you know what it takes to get a watch like this, like this, most insane interview process, ever? Glen Garry, Glen Ross, yeah, yeah. Basically, 100% right? And I was like, and this went on for like, three hours, right? And then I got they went, the last person I met was the founder and the CEO. And he was like, they all gave me great feedback. You handed it, well, you got the job. And I was like, I don't want this job. He was shocked. He was just seeing a shock on his face. I was like, if this is the culture that you have, and this is the I didn't even use the word culture. I don't even know the word culture back then either. This is the business that I'm part of. I don't want to be here. I would I be successful here 100% but there's no way I'm working for a company like this, and my friend that she set me up with that interview, and he was like, Oh my God, my CEO found was furious that you said no to the job. And I was like, if that's how you, if that's the experience down get coming in that you think that you you have to lead that way and go for an interview that way, like so just I was also, I felt so disrespectful of my time but I came there, and then they're sort of judging me. I was like, This is crazy.
Steve Degnan 44:44
It's performative nonsense, you know. And there was a
Chris Rainey 44:49
sell the pen thing. It actually was under your chair. This is real as well. Under my chair. There was a they were like, sell us. What's your underneath your chair? And I was like, what? And then there literally was a hole puncher. A, literally, an old school hole puncher. And they said, Sell me the whole Sell me the features and benefits of the hole puncher. And I was like, this is serious. Oh, my God, he actually wants me to do this. This was like, 20 years ago, 1015, years ago. I was like, This is insane.
Steve Degnan 45:18
If you're if you have an ungoverned process,
Chris Rainey 45:23
or a CEO, or a CEO that he clearly was driving that culture and that way of working as a CEO and founder, right? And he was very out of touch. I want to move on, because I got so many great questions. I want to ask you, if you could redo one major decision in your HR career, what would it be?
Steve Degnan 45:42
I'll give you a couple. Maybe one's humorous, and if any of my team's listening to this, you know, put a smile on your face, because we eventually got this right. But we were redoing an annual bonus program that we had, and we were adding some elements to it that allowed individuals to over achieve, blah, blah, blah, all good stuff. Okay, so there was a team working on this compensation, people, HR, generalists and some business people. They got to the end, and they came in and presented it to me and a few others. And the name they had picked for it was the only issue I had. And I was like, it occurred to me, like, maybe I should say something. And I pulled a couple of them aside after the meeting. I'm like, I don't know about this. So the name they had picked, right? Because you were able to have a little bit more and overachieve, they picked this name, plus you. So I pulled the team leader aside, and I'm like, hey, you know, I'm worried that the cynics and smart asses in the organization are going to end up calling this Fu and because there's a lot of wise guys in our company, and I mean that in a good way, I'm a wise guy too, and that's why I was thinking this. And of course, they're like, no, no, no, Steve, that you're I don't think anyone's going to do that. Blah, blah, blah. And these were all really great, nice people. So I'm like, Okay, fine, let's go with it. Well, guess what happens about six months later, the whole freaking place is calling it the fu bonus plan. And,
Chris Rainey 47:18
oh my god,
Steve Degnan 47:19
so let me change it. That ended up being called Purina. Plus you should have followed your gut on that one. And now there's a couple of people that are watching this, like throwing rocks at the screen, that were involved in that, but that's a funny one. Here's a more poignant one for you, Chris and I honestly listen. I think I got the decision wrong. But in hindsight, I don't know that I would have done it differently, just kind of based on who I am. But when I first showed up at Purina, got appointed to be the CHRO, the then CEO, Pat who I mentioned a moment ago, said, All right, Steve, if you want to blow up the whole department and start over, we'll do it, meaning we'll fire everyone, lay them all off, and you can rebuild the whole thing. Okay, I'm brand new first CHRO gig. And
Chris Rainey 48:09
that was your first CHRO gig. That's a big Wow. What a way to enter.
Steve Degnan 48:14
And I'm, I guess I was 39 years old at the time, and I'm like, I couldn't get there mentally, and I didn't talk to anyone about it. I kind of kept this to myself. And I just decided, do I want to be that guy, and I'm going to have to live with this, and if I do this, the whole company is going to know this, this big a hole came in here and blew up, you know, and fired 4550 people, so I didn't do it. Now, do I have some regret? Yes, because there were some bad actors and some bad players and some restructuring that was needed, and I had to live with that and manage it, and manage a few people out. And it became much more difficult than it would have been had I taken up the offer. Now what I should have done was negotiate that. I should have said, Okay, Pat, maybe not all, but how about some. And I could have, but I turned it into this binary thing in my head, and I just said, No, I'm not doing that. And if I had it to do over again, I would have thought that out a little bit clearer. And nobody knows this, by the way, so this be the first time maybe a couple of my teammates knew it. But might be a surprise to some watching, but I would do that one over and probably think about it a little bit more. That's
Chris Rainey 49:37
an interesting one, because we always look at it as sort of an either or, or supposed to an and, or like a there's, here's the middle. There is a middle ground option, but it's easy, especially in those high pressure moments, to look at it as all or nothing, and then you spend, as you'd probably said, months, maybe even years, having to slowly now go through that and. And make those changes. What would you say is, what do CEOs really want from their HR leader? Are you? Man, is it three or four? You said
Steve Degnan 50:13
three or four. And actually, before that, before I even moved to St Louis in Nestle, I worked with directly, probably half a dozen C level executives. So, but, but the CEOs are unique cases, so, so the question is, what do they want from their HR person? I'd say it varies, and a lot of in the most enlightened ones will have an HR agenda, and and that can be really fun. There are others who are newer or have a different orientation, and they just never thought about, I've got this HR resource, and you may have a role in teaching them what you're there to do, and revealing that to them. But if I had to pick the most common elements, number one, they probably want an ear and someone to vent to, and that means you're they're not necessarily looking for your opinion, but they do want an active and enthusiastic listener, and You've gotta understand that dynamic, and whether or not they're seeking an opinion when they're going off about so and so who did this and they weren't happy about it, or whether that not, they just want you to sit there and be their confidant. Number two, I'd say, and this requires some wisdom, and it requires you to have good insights and observational skills. Many times they're looking for some political acumen and some political advice or to validate a certain direction they want to go in politically so. And there's politics everywhere. Chris, my opinion is if you use them for good, you're never going to go wrong. If you use them to play games or be cute, then you're always going to go wrong. But in any big institution of any, I'd say even medium sized to large or even small institutions, there's politics. So what do we mean by that? It means, how's a certain executive going to respond if I do a B or C, and what are my choices? What are my options? What have I not thought about? What could I do better? Is there a way to communicate something other than directly, that would be more subtle, that would do us all better in this business? And how can I best maximize our influence for our unit within the greater whole? And a good CEO is thinking about those things all the time and wants someone with an informed opinion to participate in those discussions with them. And I guess that's the essence of being a good consigliere, if you achieve that level, and that can be a very satisfying or interesting or fun part of the job. If you get there, the best CEOs will let you do your thing and they'll respect your expertise and say, Hey, Steve, we got this issue, and I talked to several of our employees, and they seem upset about this. Can you look into it and they're not going to micromanage you? And you go do your thing, and you have your team with you, and you get it done in your report back. But, and I'd say it's sort of a continuum where they're all different. They all have different needs. There are some that are earlier in their role, some that are maturing, some that are very mature in their role, and they're all going to have a different point of view and perspective on what they want you to do.
Chris Rainey 53:39
So it's interesting, because earlier, I'm sure both early in the career, may we want in the role, want more guidance. Suppose that's right from your others, as you said. Just want a listening ear. Because, you know, who else can they vent to? All right, it's super interesting that one, one of these always talk about is sort of, and we could do a whole podcast on this. So it'd be great if you could think about maybe kind of freak to top three things when you when you think about this question, you know, what does it take to transform HR from order takers to true strategic partners?
Steve Degnan 54:21
Okay, so, no, okay, this is existential and but where it begins is who's in the group, who's in the department, who you selecting in the role? Okay, so if you, if you are the CEO, and you're picking buffoons and morons to be in your HR department, it's going to manifest itself a certain way. So you got to have a quality person. And I'm not claiming to be that person. I'm making an observational statement here. So you got to have high quality people in these roles if you even want to start talking about transformation or achievement or winning or being the. Best, so pay attention to the quality. So if you are the CHRO, that's that you've gotta have a team that can win, and you've gotta select people that can not only execute well at the basics, but also think strategically easier said than done, right? So that's a combination of observing them and watching your team and who can get things done, who can execute, and being willing to select them for promotion, and, you know, having a future vision for where you want to go and where you want to take it as an individual, so that those that's kind of the general overlay of the whole thing. I was blessed that both in Nestle and Purina, they require a long term strategic plan on people and culture. And if you don't have that as an HR leader in the organization that you're in, you should argue to have it that whatever sort of strategic planning that your company is doing, there ought to be a component of it that involves people, the culture and how it's all managed together, that gives you the platform to sort of put it out there. This is where we want to be someday. It's in the strategic plan. Now I need the leadership team to work with me on how we're all going to realize that. It's just like there may be a strategic plan on technology or or your brands or how to grow the business, and you as the HR person, are going to be part of that, and they're going to come back to you and say, Hey, Steve, how do we manage the talent around getting where we want to go? There's going to be a need for you to engage the rest of the organization on how do we realize these people and culture goals and where we want to go? And there could be technology elements to that, and there could be future of work elements, like think the last one I did, Chris had two major components. One was the future of work, and the other was flat out, just about culture and where we wanted to evolve both. We kept it simple. Believe it or not, I consulted with David rich on that, and I asked, I actually sent him our strategic plan. I'm digressing here, I know. And he came back to me and he said, Hey, degna, there's too much in this. You need to really simplify. I'm like, how simplified sounds like a day for flight. Brilliant advice, and it was well received. So when we finally got it done, but so got to have talent. You have to have a certain mentality that you are accountable for helping develop on the leadership team, like to all these earlier points, why doesn't anybody respect HR, why does everybody think they can do it, you're the person that influences that the most. So the way you talk, think, work and act and demonstrate to others that you have a enlightened point of view. And you want to modernize the way that we deal with people, and we want to use the best technical tools we can find. If you're doing that, it's going to influence everybody else and actually get them very enthusiastic about where we could possibly go, and if you involve them and take them along with you and develop that, that's going to help you transform the organization. So there's a technical element of it, there's a cultural element of it, and there's a influence element of it with with everybody that you're working with. I hope that makes sense.
Chris Rainey 58:21
No, I love it, and I love the fact that you just said you have to be demand it. Be intentional. Be proactive. Don't wait, because then, obviously, of course, naturally, then you're beginning to become an order taker. If you're waiting, it's going to happen to you, right, as opposed to being
Steve Degnan 58:37
at your point. You know, you use that term order taker, like I've been a big proponent of as an HR person, you have to have an agenda. I remember interviewing one of our up and comers who wanted to get an HR director job one of our key departments, and I asked him, What would be your agenda if you got over there? What do you think is wrong with that group from your observation? And the person absolutely froze and didn't have an answer for me. And to the person's credit, the next day, they asked to have another appointment with me, and they came in and the guy says, You just surprised me, Steve, I wasn't expecting that question, but having thought about it now for an evening, here's my agenda. And he had incredible insights that proved to me he had been watching the group and what they were doing, and he had opinions on talent and where some of the issues were, and we all have to have that you're like, you're not a potted plan. You also
Chris Rainey 59:35
respected, right? You're not going to, yes, be respected by those leaders if you don't proactively come with that now, does
Steve Degnan 59:43
that mean you have to be running in your mouth and all the executive team meetings and yeah, no. In fact, some of these opinions are best expressed afterward or in a private setting, because they may have to do with embarrassing people if. Some seven, right?
Chris Rainey 1:00:00
Yeah, you got this, yeah, Listen, before I let you go, I feel like we should do a whole series on CHRO. Is unfiltered
Steve Degnan 1:00:09
series anytime, yeah, I
Chris Rainey 1:00:11
always ask this question, but I really want you to think about it for a second and just give us your unfilled opinion. You know, what is? What is your advice for those HR leaders of tomorrow that are going to be sitting in that seat one day, what do you wish you heard perhaps, that when you were coming up that you now know that you could leave with our audience before we let you go. I had a couple
Steve Degnan 1:00:33
of great mentors that made me do things I didn't want to do. Chris, so honestly, I hated union negotiations. I had a boss that made me do a couple of them made me manage a lockout That was insane and dysfunctional. For those listening, if you're not familiar with that term, and if your people, if you're at the end of a labor contract, you don't have a new one, and but the group hasn't gone on strike. The company actually has the right under US laws, to lock people out until a contract is achieved. It's a very bare knuckles, hard ass tactic. Actually, this is the last time Nestle ever did this, ever, and I managed it, and it was not fun, and I could tell you stories about it forever. Did I want to be there? No. And this superb Boulder, HR executive at the time, we're still in touch. His name is John Holloway. He said, Degnan, you got to learn this stuff because you're going to be accountable for it someday, and the only way to learn it is to do it. So you asked me what I would tell up and coming HR, people, is do some hard things, do some things you don't want to do. My last boss at Purina Nita Lee, wonderful person. She had this expression, embrace the uncomfortable. What does that mean? That's the only way you're going to learn is to do things you're not necessarily comfortable doing now. Does it mean you have to do that for the rest of your life? No. Does it mean it's the only thing you're ever going to do? No. But if you avoid that stuff as much as possible and always go for comfort on your way up, I guess that's an option, and you there are people that have a decent career doing that. But I would argue, like, especially in the HR function, especially in this role, what you want to have is some wisdom. How do we achieve? Achieve wisdom? You achieve wisdom through cuts and scars, and you go through a little bit of duress. So there have been three or four assignments I had my career, I didn't like back some of them, I absolutely hated. But when I reflect on what helped me the most to, you know, be empathetic to some of our employees who I ordinarily, otherwise wouldn't have known about, or to have some insights about some really critical things that are happening. It's the tough assignments that prepared me the most. So look for those. Try to get them. There's a couple of I really admire, a couple of people that I won't mention their names, but there's a couple of people that came up in corporate at Purina and Nestle that actually sought out going and taking some factory assignments, or being deeply exposed to those that work in manufacturing, and that's kind of like giving up your champagne. They knew
Chris Rainey 1:03:28
it was going to be rough. Basically, that's a common thread of you know, throughout my years of doing these interviews, is those moments where you seek discomfort is that's where you grow and learn the most and develop right? And it prepares you for because inevitably, those moments are going to happen. There's always this, you know, we live, we were talking about living in this vehicle world, and it's never been more volatile.
Steve Degnan 1:03:55
It's counter intuitive and counter cultural. You know, if you think about, remember those videos that were popular for a while, especially like Silicon Valley companies, where these kid kids, people would be like, I'm going to work today. Look, the chef is cooking this. It's all gourmet. And I got my latte on the way to my desk. I think I may get a massage at lunchtime by the on site masseuse. And yeah, these over the top ridiculous things. And yeah, that's a good selling point to get people in the door, I suppose. But when you really start talking about development and getting better as a person, it's getting yourself through these challenging moments. And I guess the another part of the art of it is on the flip side of that is having people in the company that can support you, listen to you, offer some help and encouragement while you're doing that. For some of us, tired old people, we didn't always have that,
Chris Rainey 1:04:53
well, listen. I just want to say first and foremost, thank you so much for having you given back to the profession. I. Um, you when I first started my job, you were so, uh, or this company, you one of the first people to say yes to come and share your experience on the show, and it meant a lot to me and the team and to everyone listening. So congratulations on an amazing career. And I'm saying that as if it's completely over, I know there's a new chapter now beginning, and I'm excited for you, but I just want to say thank you so much to everything that you've given to the profession, that you've given to our audience, and super excited for this next chapter for you. And we wish you all the best on the new journey. Thanks.
Steve Degnan 1:05:30
Mike Ryan, congrats to you two on what you built. It's amazing like watching it and keep doing what you're doing. Appreciate you, man.
Chris Rainey 1:05:39
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