Jenelle Buatti

I've had a lot of great mentors over the years that I still keep in contact with. One of them is a person who pulled me into HR from operations and just said, I think you have a gift, come try HR with me. The second person challenged me, because I grew up in corporate companies, large-scale companies, and he said, you have such a entrepreneurial mindset and problem-solving mindset, try a small company, because you're going to be able to wear multiple hats, you're going to be more strategic, you're going to be able to influence decisions a lot faster, and the agility of those companies, I think I would find very invigorating and exciting, which he was right. So that's kind of when I made the switch to smaller companies. Three, both my parents, entrepreneurs, own their own companies, so I've always kind of had that type of mindset.

It was a quote, it was one of my old bosses, and he said, be so good, they can't ignore you.

A lot of us are... I think I grew up... Chasing Knowledge. I would say focus it... focus on the experience. Focus on gaining multiple types of experiences in different contexts. So you're building your wisdom over time versus just knowledge. And what I mean by that is knowledge, especially with AI, you can find knowledge anywhere, but our wisdom of different experiences and challenges, and within different contexts, now we can discern what actually can work in this environment. We can lift and shift our approaches. And that judgment piece, I think, is going to be critical moving into the future. I would also say... If not you, who else? Don't doubt yourself.

Gosh, I mean, the digital... the digital transformation. And it's being amplified by AI. It's gonna be robotics soon. And it's changing the way we work. It's changing the way we're organized as companies, it's changing our mindset on what are jobs versus just the tasks we do within them, and really being able to separate the two so we can rethink what jobs mean while AI automation starts to take on some of those tasks. And it's moving at such a pace But it's hard to keep up. There's no playbook for it. And when you do figure something out, something changes. So I think it's really being about being agile right now. It's not just about moving quickly, it's really understanding what is happening out there. Starting to anticipate and watching the trends, and then going, okay, for our specific context. What is the best move we can make with the decision today, knowing that we're probably going to have to iterate and adjust? Having that product mindset, I think, is one of those skills that we should all be starting to adopt. I think there's two things. One, as a... Just as an HR focus. We got many... most people in human resources got into HR for a reason, and it was mostly around really helping employees and people in general enjoy the work they do, find meaning and purpose in the work they do, to To start to build their skills, and have to have that network and collaboration and learn from others. However, I think the work was... very activities-driven, very compliance-driven, probably very process-driven. So we were never really able to achieve what we set out to achieve. But now, with the tools available to us. I think we're going to be able to make a significant difference in terms of people's lives, how they see and show up at work, how they experience work.

I think it's honesty... It's... I don't know, it's hard to name the values, I think. That's a hard one. I need to think about it. And I say honesty because I think there's a lot of... inauthentic things happening right now. Like, you can go onto LinkedIn, And just see. you can go on Instagram, you can see it. And just being true to yourself, being true to those around you, because without that honesty, we can't move forward. Without calling it out, without move... just... You can't get behind the mission if we're honest, I think.