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I think the age of AI is profoundly human, in my view. I think it's about the vision, courage, empathy and integrity to navigate over what the next few years are going to throw at us in a profoundly human way.
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You might not be as familiar with today's guests as you are with other HubSpot executives, but that's about to change. After leading companies like Sonus, Atlassian and Rivian through major growth stages, she joined HubSpot as our chief people officer in June of last year. Helen Russell is leading this AI first culture shift here within HubSpot, ensuring that, in her words, we're building windmills, not shelters. She also says that leadership in the age of AI is profoundly human. I could not agree more. In fact, I've been talking a lot about how relational intelligence, the ability to connect and build trust with humans, remains your most critical asset in in this AI first era. We'll get into all of that and more on today's show. I'm Sarah McDevitt, and this is Owning the Outcome. Helen, I'm delighted that you're here.
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Thank you very much, Sarah.
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So tell us the Helen Russell story. Tell us about your path to becoming HubSpot's CPO during this massive AI first shift and the way that we're working.
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I started off in exact search, actually, and it was in searching for and providing talent to this company called pegasystems. And obviously I was enjoying the spoils of that because I was charging them an arm and a leg. They asked me if I would do that on the inside. And that was a revolutionary thing at that time, to have sort of recruiters on the inside building your teams, because companies were used to going to search firms and agencies to do that. And so I went on the inside at pegasystems, grew the company across Emea, Then I went to do the same thing at Siebel, and was doing that for about six, seven months when the global head of HR asked me if I would take on HR as well. And so initially I didn't know if that was the right thing for me because I saw myself as more of a hunter and somebody coming from more of a sales background, if you will, but actually loved it. And as you know, when you're growing up in Emea doing hr, you have to be really technically competent. And so I knew that at some point I wanted to take on a global role. So I went and took on international for HR with Yahoo, and I lived in Switzerland to do that. I then came back to London for four years to do my first global role, which was in the marketing, marketing consultancy world and basically lived on a plane at a time when my kids were 6 and 8 and I just wasn't seeing them. And so that then resulted in me relocating to the US 11 years ago now for the role with Sonos, and then have found myself taking on different responsibilities and roles during that time, always in a slightly different industry, always in a slightly different location, and always with a very different challenge.
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Helen, I have to ask, what is your real name? Because I find it suspicious that your initials are hr. Like, what is your real name? Helen?
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The joke I've told, and sometimes the literal think I'm serious, is it took me a long time to find a guy with a last name beginning with Rich because that was obviously part of the decision criteria.
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That's a great story. That's a great story. A lot of leaders, I think, are still trying to sell AI to their teams. And you've spoken about AI, I think in a way that feels more hopeful, even protective. How do you build trust in AI across a global and diverse workforce like HubSpot.
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You said in the introduction about building windmills and not shelters. And I've shamefully stole, unashamedly stolen that from Ben on my team, where I just love the description. Some leaders, you know, when the wind blows, they will build that windmill and just accelerate the pace at which they move with the wind. And others hunker down, the shelter comes over their head and they're like, nope, I am digging in and I'm not moving. And I think that great leaders recognize that change is really uncomfortable and that there's a fear that comes with it. And so you have to actively engage your folks in that change. And so I think it's just really being incredibly intentional about how you are talking about and bringing people along with you on the journey. And I will tell you, early on in my career, I took the strengths finder profile and I had my number one strength as activator, like get out of the gates really quickly. And I had somebody on my team, God bless him for being so open with me. Said Helen, we're still at the beginning of the 100 meter line, just sort of adjusting our stand here to get our feet in the thing, ready to look and we look up and you're just like crossing the finishing line through the ribbon. Can you slow us? Slow down and bring us with you. And it was a really courageous move on his part to say you need to modify. And so luckily that happened early enough in my career that I've been very conscious about doing that.
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Sarah, there's a lot of, you know, partner leaders listening to the show. You've helped build people systems at some of the world's fastest growing companies. How does the AI shift? What does that mean for people leaders today?
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Well, I think the number one thing is to be AI literate themselves. I think it's impossible to expect to drive change and adoption if you aren't modeling that. And not only modeling it, but you have to be able to do it to understand then the gains and opportunities that can be afforded by your team. So AI literacy is the number one thing that whether you're a leader or not, that just should be, should be table sticks. And of course that then requires a level of tech savviness. Now, arguably not as tech savvy as we would think it needs to be because I think once you're starting to finesse, how am I using prompts and how am I just sort of getting my personal day to day more productive, but knowing the right questions to ask not only when you're using it yourself, but the right questions to ask of your team and for not to have them be threatened by your questions and your challenges. The other thing is data driven. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of people doing my role today and I'm part of a community where we constantly calibrating, but I think it's making sure that you are being incredibly data driven and that you're focused on outcomes and impact, not on input. And I think right now a lot of the measuring is around adoption and usage. Are we using it and are we adopting it? Which is awesome. But ultimately it's like what are the consequences of doing that? Let's focus on the outcomes. The other thing, I saw a really interesting LinkedIn post a couple of weeks ago where an AI thought leader was talking about. There's a lot of conversation right now, especially on the customer service side, around deflection. Isn't this awesome? We've deflected, you know, 70% of our calls because now our agents are handling it, which is great. He said. But the interesting question is, and so now what are you doing with the capacity that you have back from those teams because they're not having to get in and solve those problems themselves. So it's the, so what? That's the really interesting thing. And so again I think I'd encourage everybody to think that way. I also think the other thing that's really interesting is it almost heightens the level of customer centricity that you need to adopt. And I say that because I was at a conference called Transform a couple of weeks ago, and the head of HR for Anthropic was on a panel with me. And what she was saying is that they're seeing this issue where people are latching onto the technology and saying the technology does this. And so we're going to go go with it as opposed to, hang on a minute, what's the problem we're trying to solve? And how can AI enable that? And so really, from a customer centricity standpoint, it's like, what is the problem we're trying to solve for you versus let's just sort of sell you these features in the assumption that that's going to address your problem. And I think finally, emotionally intelligent EQ is going to be more important in an age of AI than it ever was, because you're going to have to bring that in order to keep your employees engaged and motivated. And as the environment around them starts to change, that's nothing that AI will ever replace. And so it becomes an even more important attribute for a leader to bring.
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Speaking of the people that we serve and the partners we serve, a lot of our listeners are helping, you know, enterprise customers adopt AI. Not just the tools, but the mindset which is what we're talking about here is, you know, what are some of the things you've seen in HubSpot that actually help people shift from a place of resistance to a place of readiness?
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Yeah, well, I think every single time. I mean, Simon Sinek says this all of the time. You start with the why. You start with the why. And I think we're obviously experiencing, you know, this emergence of companies that are getting to $100 million in, like, less than a year. $100 million ARR. In less than a year. I mean, just think about that. And AI is supercharging these small companies to enable them to do that. And so that's creating a very dis. Disruptive environment. And so I think starting with the why, it's really important so that you can secure your place as a company in the future. Then it's showing them the value and start to explain what are some of the use cases, what are some of the values that we are sort of benefiting from and then bringing them on the journey. I mean, we have grow day next week. Day spelt D A I God, we're creative and we have our grow day next week. But again, this is a demonstration of our investment in our Employees to make sure that, you know, we want to make sure that you are all feeling that investment is there and that our role is to prepare you or better prepare you for what the future is bringing. And then obviously we win because you all get better at it, but you win because you become durable and resilient with your own skill set. And then the other thing I would say, what gets measured gets done. You know, we're sort of tracking adoption, we're tracking usage. Obviously we do that with our customers and it's super important that we do that internally too, to make sure that we can find pockets where that isn't happening and figure out how do we help unlock it. And again, I think the thing to bear in mind, Sarah, that in times of change, to drive meaningful and lasting change, it's about mindset. It's about mindset and going back to that see this as an opportunity versus a threat is the most important thing that you can do. And then recognizing that change starts with you.
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But from your vantage point of where you're kind of sitting within HubSpot, you're obviously dealing with other departments, marketing and sales and ops for you. What does a strong AI power cross functional partnership feel like to you? And what can our partners learn from that in terms of modeling themselves? And I mean, let's get super practical here on this, Helen, like, give us the good stuff.
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Yeah, well, I mean, even putting AI to one side, all of the research talks about the most effective thing you can do as a leader to drive cross functional collaboration is to constantly compliment and call out and advocate for the very functions that aren't yours, number one, which sounds really easy, really easy. And it's really hard because your natural place is to defend and promote your team. So first things first, in a world of driving collaboration and cross functional work, start with advocating for and calling out the teams that you're working with, number one. Number two is sorting work around like projects. So again, I mean, we have goals at a HubSpot level and there's not one of those goals that isn't taking a village to get after solving. So whilst there's an owner of each of those goals, that owner is hugely reliant upon people from various different teams to get after that goal. And so it's making sure that there's a fluidity in how those teams are working and they're not getting sort of hung up by the team that they report to or the function in which they reside. They're driving towards what's the right thing for goal Number three or goal number four. And the other thing I would say there was an article written about this, God, probably 20 years ago, and it talked about the challenge of operating in a matrix, was that as soon as you see something that sort of looks like it sits outside of your sphere of influence, you sort of point to it and wait for someone to sort of come in and pick up that work, run at it, lean into the gap and run at that work. So where it's like, I don't really know who owns it, then that means that's you until you figure out who does. And so it's really this very fluid way of working and not getting hung up on what's my team, what's my reporting line. It's like, what's the right thing for the company? How do I run hard against this goal? And obviously leveraging AI, to me, Sarah, is not really the thing in this. It's actually about how you work and AI is just an element of it.
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What are you hopeful about, Helen? What are you hopeful about for the future? You know, as cpo, as a person, when it comes to work and AI.
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You know, I look back and I had a moment in my career that I've always referred to as my crucible moment. And it was when my then boss went out on maternity leave and had me step from the European job to the global job on the day that the brand new CEO started in the company and neither of us knew we were getting a brand new CEO and it involved relocating here to the US for four months to cover it. And that was the learning moment of my lifetime where I spent the majority of my time thinking, God, what the hell is has he just asked me to do and leaning over my skis at any given time, like, oh my God. But it stuck out as an incredible moment where I had this accelerated growth. And I think that's today's our crucible moment and it's embrace it and lean into it. Because we'll look back at this and say, my God, that was an incredible opportunity for us to learn and grow.
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B
Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining us today. Really, it's been a pleasure. So insightful. I've so enjoyed it. And remember, if you're enjoying our discussions on owning the outcome, you can can subscribe for new episodes that drop every week.