People AND Automation with Nancy Householder Hauge

Nancy Householder Hauge is the Chief HR Officer at Automation Everywhere, one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. She sees herself as Chief People Officer because she believes in putting people first even in the midst of disruption. Nancy has won the Stevie Award for women in hi-tech and is considered one of the most influential women in Silicon Valley.  Barry O’Reilly admires her talent for spotting winners and her sense of humor. Nancy has coached future female leaders and truly understands the challenges that organizations face when they are transforming. She joins Barry to talk about how she spots future disruptors, the importance of thinking time, and why automating human jobs should be celebrated rather than feared. Spotting Future Disruptors Nancy credits her time at Sun Microsystems with giving her an appetite for companies that disrupt. She believes that getting ready for the future means unlearning the past and being open to something new and different. Three things get her intuition buzzing that a company may be a future disruptor, she says: The people are smart; They are good, as people, and at their mission; They are passionate about what they can achieve. She tells Barry that she joined Automation Everywhere because the CEO asked her a provocative question that made her want to help solve it. Barry comments, “People that are smart and passionate and deeply ingrained in something new seem to be able to ask those provocative questions; and great teams are good at asking those provocative questions of one another... to actually tease out some of the real meaning, the real value, the real things that matter to folks.” [Listen from 2:50] Automation is Good Automating repetitive manual tasks frees humans up to do the work our brain was made to do. It uncovers talents in us that we couldn’t explore because we were bogged down with “arcane processes and mundane work”. “The really wonderful discovery I've had around bots,” Nancy tells Barry: “One is I've never met anybody who wants to go back to manual after they've automated something. And the second thing is we've never built a bot... that didn't promote a human being. In other words, they got to do something more interesting.” Because Automation Everywhere robotized many repetitive tasks, they were able to use the data generated to create individual development plans for their employees, which helps ensure each employee is getting what they need to thrive. This is something that could not have been developed without automation, Nancy proudly emphasizes. Barry comments, “...bots are here to unleash people to do highly complex, creative work and take away the menial tasks that are holding them back from blooming…” “Automation has given me access to my ‘if only’ list,” Nancy continues. [Listen from 9:40] Read the rest of the show notes on BarryOReilly.com Resources Nancy Householder Hauge on LinkedIn