Name: The AI-powered Revolution: Becoming a True Strategic Partner
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T20:30:36.568Z
Duration: 52 min 53 s
Description: The AI-powered Revolution: Becoming a True Strategic Partner

Transcript for "The AI-powered Revolution: Becoming a True Strategic Partner": Welcome, everyone. My name is Jenny Kate Purcell, and I'm on Cornerstone OnDemand field marketing team. Thank you for joining us for the AI powered revolution, becoming a true strategic partner. This is our second session in our learning breakroom series. To see more about this series, you can click on the button at the top of your screen that says learn more. You'll see our first recording and some upcoming sessions that we'll be talking about a bit later. To give you some background on this learning breakroom series, it's meant to be a break from your day to recharge. Maybe grab a cup of coffee or some tea or a snack and join us for conversations around topics like AI, modern content strategies, and tips for measuring return on investment or ROI. So when you join this series, you'll be surrounded by your peers, and you'll hear some fresh perspectives and walk away with some ready to use tactics that will help make your L and D program smarter, more engaging, and more impactful. So again, we'll talk about what's coming next in this series later on. As I mentioned, today's topic in particular is the AI powered revolution, becoming a true strategic partner. I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to our speakers to introduce themselves. Thanks, Jenny and Kate. Welcome, everybody. We are glad you are here. Again, my name is Beth Noble. I head up the Galaxy team within Cornerstone, which includes our content focus based out of, as I put in the chat, sunny. I know it's surprising. Sunny Seattle today. And, again, happy to be here again with Natalie. Turn it over to you next. Sure. Hi, guys. I'm Natalie Augustine. I'm part of Beth's team here at Cornerstone. I've been here at Cornerstone for about seven years now. Prior to that, I spent thirty years on Wall Street running training and development organizations. I sat in your seat. I know your pain. So I'm here to help and and, answer questions, and we'll have a great conversation today. So thanks for joining, I'll hand it to Robin. Good to meet you all, happy to be here as well. Also on Beth's team, Robyn McNeill and another former practitioner. So I was the director of training for about a decade for a technology organization before stepping over to Cornerstone for about four years and definitely happy to come and learn and speak with you all today. Thank you both for being here. I think, you know, for today's agenda, we're gonna first kick off, and I'll help to sort of level set this whole topic of being an internal strategic partner, sort of a different way to be approaching the discussion with the lines of business. Natalie's gonna talk through really about how to change the conversation. And when we say that, sort of what are the information sources, the data sources that you are leaning on that might help to elevate that conversation when we're talking with different lines of business. And then actually, the part I'm most excited about is actually putting this into practice. And so Robin is actually going to share one of her examples from when she was, again, in seat in the type of role that many of you are probably in and how she was able to establish that strategic partnership with one of the lines of business in the organization she worked with. I will share a few other examples before we wrap up. So looking forward to jumping into the conversation. So the the first section, we'll dive into kind of what does it mean to be a strategic partner. And so wanted to encourage everybody in the chat, you know, when you think about your internal potential strategic partners, what what is the, you know, one or two that you're really targeting to expand your work with this year? So what part of the business? So maybe it is the, you know, chief revenue We're trying to get, again, aligned in how we can support from an l and d perspective with that part of the business or the technology department. CIO, CTO, we're seeing an elevation in in their visibility in an organization because of the drive of AI. So, again, feel free to sort of add in any comments you have about what might be the strategic partner you are most focused on beginning to work with more closely this year. So now I can keep track of any of the comments there. So just to kinda get level set for the discussion, you know, if you were able to join us in January where the topic of that webinar was really around measuring ROI in the world of AI and how that really has changed, as it relates to measuring ROI specific to content. And we sort of outlined this, you know, framework sort of four steps. So I think these are a nice carryover into the discussion today where we're further talking about how do we align to business objectives and look at how do we determine those the metrics, the metrics that matter. And the the metrics really come down to what are the strategic priorities for the businesses that, that we are we are supporting and that maybe are coming to to us to help. It is no surprise. There's been a lot of changes in in business in the past twelve to eighteen months, certainly with the influence of AI and how that's reshaping different roles in the organizations, the skills that are needed. The timeline to obtain those skills is decreasing, so we need to be able to, obviously, to be able to support people more quickly getting into the new skills needed for their roles. And and some of those critical roles in the business are experiencing dramatic talent shortages. So it further encourages why we need to be able to quickly develop the skills within the talent that we have. Obviously, ongoing pressure around productivity and and how people can continue to be agile within the organization. And then just really looking at how is learning positioned as a true business imperative, And that goes back to those strategic conversations. You know, I think historically, again, few years ago, we would be receiving many requests, I think, from people in the business saying, you know, we need to create, learning. We need your help to, you know, create this course or, you know, develop, again, something that might be aligned to a regulatory compliance requirement. It was more, reactive as those requests were coming in. And what we're seeing is that many of you are pivoting to the way that you're approaching those conversations in a more strategic manner and really looking at that business alignment. So asking questions ahead of time, right, instead of sort of that we wanna be responsive to the business need, but that we really need to understand how is that aligning back to, you know, the KPIs for a specific organization or tackling a specific challenge or business goal that they need to, support. So that's where, again, we're really looking at how do we position ourselves to be more proactive and truly a consultative partner, back to the business. So part of that, I think, comes into what are the business leaders that we partner with really expecting. I think the second thing there is really the highlight around being able to tie back measurable impact to their KPIs. So understanding what is that business leader that is coming to us with a request as specific as they've identified an enablement requirement? What does it tie them back to? What are we trying to move the needle on? And really being able to help guide that conversation and leveraging whether it is, you know, data to help support the discussion, or looking at some of these external, data sources, reference points, research that is recognized. And, again, if you hear it from sometimes an external, source versus just us saying the same words, it can be more powerful for we're able to cite, again, an external source that's coming into that discussion as well. We'd frame this around sort of, again, a five step, framework of when you are requested by a certain part of the business to, again, engage, to really sort of look at it and and whether you're actually using these same words or maybe you've got your own type of framework that you structure the discussion. But first, always thinking of when somebody comes to you with their request, it's leaning in on the discovery to say, you know, I'm hearing you say, again, this is what the need is, but really wanna better understand what are the goals, the KPIs that you're trying to drive to? What's the pain that you're trying to solve? That discovery is so critical because that's what we're gonna carry through, as you go into and and kinda lean into that if it does end up being a, you know, an effort that we can support from an l and d perspective. But understanding from the very beginning what are the goals that we're gonna be measuring that back to. And then really being able to identify from a skills perspective, what do we need to to change? What do we need to upscale with a certain population? You know, what might be some potential barriers that we're that we need to, again, uncover and address before we can really go into the design stage and identify what is gonna be the best path forward. So understanding what is the audience, what are the unique challenges that they have, what is the way that how do they work, sort of what is their flow of work if there's somebody who is in front of customers and only has a limited amount of time, if there's somebody who works a certain, you know, type of shift, if we need to have a specific delivery date. Like, all of those things, obviously, and I'm sure all of you are already leaning in on this. But as it goes into that design phase, it's really so important that we're capturing that information. And then, you know, final piece there really was around measurement. So understanding by knowing those KPIs up front, what are we trying to move the needle on so that we identify how are we gonna capture the data around the learning program that we're gonna develop, codesign with them. But then how are we gonna measure that we addressed what was the, again, original priority? So being able to have those measurement points addressed back to the original discovery that we were able to uncover as we were partnering with, the specific business owner. So those are just some themes. And I think as we, go into the next section where Natalie's gonna walk through how we can change the conversation. And what we're talking about in change the conversation is really how again, what are some external sources maybe from a research perspective that we can lean on that help to elevate the discussion. And before, you know, we pivot and and Natalie can come back on stage and and join me is, you know, in the chat, feel free to add what are some of those external go to data sources that you leverage. Right? What are the whether it is for human capital or talent or it could be from a technology perspective, AI, what are those external research sources that you lean on and that you can pull into your discussion to help really sort of beef up the validation of of what we're trying to accomplish? So, again, welcome anybody to add that into the chat and then give an opportunity to Natalie to walk through, some of the data sources that we lean on. Sure. So thanks so much. So as everybody's putting their stuff in, I'm seeing Berson. I'm seeing Gartner. I'm seeing let's see who else. McClain, LinkedIn, Training Magazine. Great. You're gonna hear a couple of mine. I like to look at experts like McKinsey and SHERM and Gartner and the World Economic Forum as I'm kind of trying to build my voice so that I'm I'm viewed as a trusted voice at the table. Prime example is one of the things that that, I'm looking at doing in the next couple weeks. SHRM is hosting an AI HI conference in San Francisco. And so I'm headed to San Francisco to really dig in with those business leaders to understand what are the challenges that they have, what are their perspectives. And it's all focused on how AI is changing HR and and changing what we do on a daily basis. So one of the things, we all know that HR is kind of no longer defined by policies or people operations alone. So here, you know, the most forward looking HR organizations are really ones that are mastering stakeholder management. And so wanted to find what we think about what what exactly are we talking about here when when we think about stakeholder management, and it's aligning diverse interests across the enterprise to create a unified value for the business. So we know that's important to do. Sometimes our stakeholders don't know that, so we have to to to drag them along sometimes. According to Gartner, CHRO research that they've recently done, 70% of HR leaders say that their success depends on effectively engaging non HR stakeholders, business unit leaders, c suite, employees, investors, and in some cases, external external partners. And sometimes it's it's groups that you would have never thought of, but actually have a stake in what you're trying to do. I really feel like HR has shifted from being a service provider. Keep in mind, I've been in the business for about thirty years, where we were very service centric to being much more of a strategic integrator today. And you see that in some some work that McKinsey has done recently that highlights that organizations operating in, uncertainty, which certainly is the in the world that we're living in today, really requires network leadership. And so that's this ability to orchestrate across silos and across business units and really develop and build coalitions of action. We are the connective tissue sometimes that that is driving that. And we really look when we think about strategy and execution, culture and capability, leadership and workforce, we're the ones in the middle of all of those. And so thinking about what does that look like and and and then as we move forward. It's no surprise that AI, along with digital and technical skills, really remain top priority for development of skills across organizations. In fact, the World Economic Forum is saying 63% of employers say that the skills gap is their biggest barrier to business transformation. And when people were putting in their stakeholders, I saw a lot of transformation, digital transformation teams, cultural transformation teams. We're seeing a lot a lot of that. And and so we know that businesses are changing, and things are are picking up quicker and quicker. And so being able to really be in the forefront of that is extremely important. What's interesting is that the core skills that are expected to grow through 2030 are not just those technology skills, but also a lot of other skills beyond that. And so how do we ensure from a business perspective that we are headed in the right direction and that our stakeholders and us and our teams have the same vision and that we're synced up as we move forward. So we're gonna talk a little bit more about that. Again, I'm I'm just pulling out some stuff that, we'll we'll send out some information, really looking at the, some of the work that came out of the World Economic Forum. I love this idea that they've said that we need to move HR leaders need to move from shareholder value to stakeholder capital to capitalism and really looking beyond just managing what we have to do for our employees, but we're really pulling in. And and and some of you, I'm sure, are seeing this, communities, partners, and society is part of what we're trying to do. It really expands HR's remit across and beyond just talent. And many organizations looking into things like sustainability, well-being, ethical use of technology, those weren't even on our purview five, ten years ago. And now it's a it's a big area of focus. So one of the things we'll do is we'll provide some, some information after the session about the World Economic Forum and some of the work that came out of this year's, meeting. But all of these datasets, all of this information that we're we're kinda touching on is to arm yourself, you and your team so that when you're sitting in those meetings with your stakeholders, you can pepper in these facts to really raise your credibility and to really strengthen your voice when you're sitting at the table. Understanding what's going on in the industry, understanding what's going on out in the space around you, whether it's your industry, whether it's HR, whether it's talent, helps to really bring some power to the voice that you have. So when we think, one of the things when we think about we're hearing it all the time about skills data and and things like that. We know that today, skills is really viewed as more of an HR area of focus. But when skills data becomes part of the company's infrastructure and part of the key thing that's going to help move a transformation forward, the CHRO or the CLO and the CIO will now become go from parallel tracks to moving that transformation forward to really sharing that outcome and moving together. So we're seeing this already in a in a lot of our customers where these these groups and these transformations are starting to come together across the c suite and across. the organization. So my guess is that these c suite themes that you're seeing here are not new to anybody on the phone. We are all faced with something like this, whether it's this exact thing or an iteration of it. When we think about things like skills and agility, it's everywhere. It's all we're hearing about. The question is, can we meet the needs of our business when we hear things like 1,000,000,000 jobs will transform by 2030, or 80% of the businesses face AI driven role solutions. What does that mean? Like, what does it mean for your organization? What does it mean for you, your teams? If HR and talent are not included in that and a key stakeholder in those discussions, they're not you're not gonna be able to meet the needs of that business and and help move that organization forward. So how do you become integral to the success of the business that really helps to lead that? The first and foremost, just like Beth Noble said, focusing on the on the task at hand. Know what you're trying to accomplish. Understand that there are going it it's not a straight line, and you're gonna be all over the place. Understand the vision. Know what the challenges are for your business, for your industry, for your your teams, for your people, and then engage those stakeholders as partners as you create business value. You heard Beth Noble talk about co creating those those KPIs and things like that, making sure that each of you have skin in the game. That's huge and extremely important as we move forward and go through this. Okay. So let's talk about an effective stakeholder strategy. This is key. This is what's gonna help you guys be successful in what you're trying to do. First and foremost, map and prioritize your stakeholders. Identify key influencers, c suite, peers, line managers, division heads. Make sure you're identifying who they are. And it could be that it's all of them. And all of them will have different perspectives on how that initiative, transformation, whatever comes out. The other proof of this that a lot of people don't do is to balance them, rank them, prioritize them. Make sure that all of them have a voice while you're having that conversation, but build out something like a stakeholder value map. Gartner recommends doing that. Link those HR priorities like talent and skills and agility to each group's expected outcome so that you're actually feeding those outcomes, and now you're you're viewed as a partner. Again, cocreating value don't just communicate. McKinsey's research on change leadership finds that initiatives co owned by key stakeholders are 3.4 times more likely to succeed. So bringing stakeholders into the design of the strategy is imperative. Think of the thing invite rather than inform. Right? So you're you're partnering. You're you're getting it with them. They're making those decisions, Identifying KPIs, identifying return on investment that you all agree to, is imperative. Measure relationship equity. Move beyond engagement surveys and really put in stakeholder feedback loops. Establish those clear communication channels for stakeholder engagement. How many of you have worked on initiative or and your stakeholder just, you know, is there for the first meeting and then complains at the last meeting. Right? They never are part of the discussion in the middle. It's imperative that they are part of that discussion throughout. So thinking about things like pulse surveys or pulse inputs from different stakeholder communities, timely and pertinent updates that are co directional, scorecards, metrics, and dashboards only on key, agreed KPIs. Keep that in mind. I was listening to a SHERM AI HI podcast recently, and they talked about tracking perception, trust, and partnership metrics just as rigorously as you track financial KPIs. And I really thought that was interesting because when you think about where successes and failures happen, it's a matter of you've always there's always somebody whose perception of what you're doing is not what it needs to do or it's not doing what we should be doing. What you can cut that off at the at the right at the beginning. Right? So you're you're actively getting them involved, and that's key to success. So just like all of the other trusted partners we've mentioned, SHERM, we saw Versen, we saw, some of the others, Gartner, McKinsey, Cornerstone has its own predictions. And as you can see here, this is kind of what we're looking at for 2026. Cornerstone's helping to drive transformation across HR. Knowledge and professional practice is shaping the next generation of talent leaders. You are that next generation. We truly believe that the modern HR executive is not simply the voice of the workforce. They are the orchestrator of enterprise relationships across your organization. Both Gartner and the World Economic Forum really have identified what a kind of future fit CHRO looks like. And it's interesting because I love what they're saying. One is you're gonna be a navigator. You're gonna anticipate disruption and align stakeholders around adaptive strategies. Right? So this idea of being able to pivot and agile is is absolutely part of our day to day. Integrator, uniting functions through trust and shared purpose. Trust comes from credibility. Shared purpose comes from knowing what you're trying to do and getting that kind of agreement. Human capital and activist, which I thought is a great term. And and this is where you serve as the champion for inclusive stakeholder growth. Right? So you're constantly looking at your stakeholders, tweaking that, moving that moving them, potentially reranking them in terms of which one is taking priority. And then, ultimately, a catalyst. You're embedding stakeholder centric thinking into every transformation of effort that your organization is doing. You're constantly focused on managing stakeholders across the organization. So previously, a lot of people used to think that stakeholder management wasn't necessarily a core skill of corner of of our HR team. That was kind of on the periphery, but we're seeing that it is a core skill and a core currency for HR leadership in this decade. As Gartner projects organizations that master stakeholder alignment will be twice as likely to achieve operational excellence and employee engagement goals. And, ultimately, that's what we're here to do. Our challenge and our opportunity is to ensure that HR becomes the trusted nexus, connecting our purpose of the organization, the performance of the organization and our people, and the value of the people that we serve. So I think there's some great stuff that that's coming. And and I think we as an organization and we as HR have the ability to drive that transformation. That's great. Natalie, I appreciate so much of that. I love how you're talking about getting stakeholder alignment. You know, what's what's interesting and as we kinda go to the next part of our our conversation, you know, we started off in the chat before you got going with that and asking, you know, what are the external data sources, the research that people rely on? And I agree with a lot in the chat. Right? We heard Josh Bersin. We heard SHRM. We heard ATD from a lot of folks. And I think we all as practitioners agree with those. I think what's different and what Natalie is, sort of sharing and maybe encouraging everyone is to look outside of the sources that we are all comfortable with and look at what are the sources that your strategic business partners are looking at. So that's more of where the McKinsey, the Gartner, the Forrester, the World Economic Forum data. And I think that's where you know, again, I I would just encourage to everyone, find one of those sources. Right? Something else that is more aligned to the business, the ones that you're looking the stakeholders that you're trying to partner with of what they're listening to, Mhmm. that that will help to elevate the the conversation. So I think you did a great job of just sort of highlighting, again, leaning in on World Economic Forum data and the number of sources that you were mentioning there of potential ones that that people can take a look at. So thanks for that. Mhmm. So we wanted to just, again, pivot to the exciting part of, alright, what does this look like in in real life? And Robyn's gonna join to walk through an example that we can expand on. And just as she's getting started with it, the, you know, the first question we asked was about who is your sort of priority internal strategic partner that you're looking at trying to work with this year. Not by naming names, but if there was a certain internal partner that you're finding to be kind of the most challenging or maybe the one that you just have had the hardest time getting alignment with, it might be the same stakeholder you mentioned at the beginning of the call. But just kinda curious again who who folks are targeting to say, gosh. This this one is just a it's a it's a challenging one for me to get aligned with for one reason or another. Look forward to hearing that feedback. But, again, what we wanted to do was sort of now take a pivot and and take some of the best practices that Natalie was sharing and saying, what does this look like now when you actually are are in a scenario and trying to support an internal stakeholder and maybe finding one that you weren't expecting? And so, Robyn, appreciate you sharing the story of your experience, when you were actually in in seed and in the field. Thank you, Beth. And I will name names. My CIO's name was Mark. So we're gonna talk about Mark today. And, when I first had an opportunity to talk with Mark, it was very early into our development of Cornerstone, and we were looking to implement a learning solution. We were ready to take the next step and start to explore that as an option. And I saw Mark as someone who was going to redline my contract and who was going to maybe if I'm lucky, give me some resources to implement this learning solution. I anticipated him almost more as a barrier than as an advocate. I saw him as someone I had to win over in order to get my priorities done and really saw it as almost adversarial. I wouldn't say that we behaved adversarially, but I definitely more feared that he was going to say no than I rejoiced in having a partnership with him. As we got to know each other and we started talking about where our business goals were, that was when I started to realize how much of our partnership really interwove together. And I had no idea the value of having such a strong partnership with my CIO. All of a sudden, what I thought were going to be very just quick, concise conversations where I said, yes, we need this, this is why, no, we need this, kind of always being on the defense was actually something that became much more collaborative. He absolutely questioned my budget many, many times, sometimes to a value where I hadn't thought of the things he was thinking about and the resources that we needed to allocate. But more so what I was finding is as we started to learn each other's role and really learn how we could collaborate together, we were finding more opportunities and he was becoming an advocate for me. All of a sudden, as we were talking about Cornerstone as a solution, as we were talking about where we wanted our learning organization to go, he was coming up with ideas too. And he was taking those ideas to tables that I was not invited to. He was going to our CFO and having really candid dialogues about the value and advocating for me. All of a sudden, I was also learning about all of these little built out situations that were going on in our various departments. I saw that a number of you mentioned that some internal leadership, senior leadership, front office leadership can sometimes be a challenge. What I was finding in my organization is everybody had to solve for training already. They were all doing their kind of one off thing. And I didn't always have visibility into that. As the learning developer and as really kind of a one woman show when I started out. I didn't know what every single person was using as far as software. I didn't know that somebody had 20 licenses for some sort of content development and they had that developed. But my CIO did, Mark did. And through him understanding that I was a credible source and that I could be a strategic partner with him, he started bringing me into those conversations. And he started introducing me to that leadership that may have kind of helped me a little bit at length and said, okay, how can we make this work together? It really allowed us to have a much, much more robust partnership that lasted the decade that I was there with him. All of a sudden where we had all of these cooks in the kitchen, everybody with their own idea of what learning was supposed to look like, We could all sit together through this common resource of the person who knows all of the technology, of the person who has visibility into everything going on. And he was the one that was actually advocating for me and my system. All of a sudden, didn't have to be in the room necessarily, and I knew that he was going to be the champion for me. And that relationship absolutely changed the landscape of my organization and allowed me to really grow what started out as a one woman show into a 50 plus learning person development and a really robust learning solution. So thank you, Beth, for giving me this opportunity to share that insight. Yes. And I think what you pointed out there at the beginning is sometimes we can be surprised at where our internal strategic business partner and advocate can come from. Right? So he went into it with a certain perception and came out with really a a champion for all the work that you're doing. And I think a lot of that was established based on your credibility and the way that you approach the conversation with him. So. a few other examples that we wanted to, you know, share. So if that internal stakeholder was, let's say, your chief revenue officer, chief sales leader, Again, a lot of this, I think, starts from that first stage that we were mentioning of doing discovery. And so when a sales leader who's often gonna be asking about enablement is coming to say, we need to do training on x, It's really taking that pause and saying, what are we really trying to do? What what is the challenge that's underlying here? So in this case, it could be something like, we're trying to increase our win rates or decrease the time to sail, having greater forecasting predictability. So, again, those are parts of the business that aren't necessarily those types of goals aren't necessarily being openly shared, but really diving in and better understanding what does that look like today, what what is sort of the the baseline, the current state, what are we trying to get it to so we are clear also on what those metrics are. You know, in this case, those challenges might be tied to something like, you know, inconsistency in the delivery of our sales messaging or in the the confidence rate of our sellers in being able to negotiate as an example. And then that by having that information, it can help guide what might be the type of approach that we can lead the the stakeholder to. So, you know, again, maybe that is something specific that we all know about, you know, developing a certain microlearning path or making sure that practice, something role play is gonna be involved so that people can then come out with a greater confidence, as well as competence, in that specific area. And, ultimately, again, from a metrics perspective, delivering back on how have we been able to improve on the pipeline conversion rates or improved how the deal is flowing through the sales cycle. So those types of outcomes are speaking the language of the sales leader, the CRO. Another example, and I know a number of people mentioned that, when we said what what were well, who's sort of the stakeholder that's the most challenging in in mentioning senior leadership. This example is not this is more about how are we building our leadership pipeline, which could be owned by anyone within the organization. But, generally, there's somebody there that's looking at, succession planning. Natalie, did you wanna chime in? Yeah. I just when you're thinking about about building out these things and and making sure that, when you're going into those deep dives, you're really looking at it from the perspective of the stakeholder. This because what's important to that individual and what's important to us in HR are usually two different things, and we've gotta kind of bring them together so that ultimately, we're still going to get the same outcome, but it's gonna meet both our needs from an organizational perspective. So keep that in mind. Leadership is an interesting one because that's usually not one particular organization who's looking at. leadership development. You know? It's across the organization. And so what's gonna happen is what I need as a leader, and if you're talking to, let's say, department head Bob over here, Bob's gonna say, I need x, y, and z. And potentially, you know, Mary Sue over here is is talking about, you know, a, b, and c. And those things all ultimately, they fall under leadership pipeline growth. Right? But you've gotta kind of bring those synergies together and and recognize that they're still doing the same thing. Ultimately, it's not just about developing leadership. It's about positioning the right people to move the organization or to move the needle in the organization. So helping to kind of elevate that conversation really does help. Well, I think what you're highlighting there as well is that we play an even more strategic role by pulling that conversation together. from two different groups that are trying to tackle the same problem. I mean, we all. have seen where you've got silos of different groups that are trying to address what is fundamentally the same problem. And so with, again, leadership pipeline development, if you think about what's the overall outcome, if we were able to address and put a process in place that's consistent across the organization, you know, dynamically meeting people sort of where they are, I think this becomes even more important, especially with the pace of change that's going on right now so that we ensure there's consistency. We're seeing more and more movement of individuals as their skills become transferable from, you know, one part of the organization to another. And so, again, if we are working collaboratively and that we play the role of being that sort of central conduit to understand what's consistent about the leadership requirements in sales organization, customer success, engineering, operations, etcetera, we can then build a more powerful program that's gonna measure back to the organizational goals. So I think that's a a great point about, sort of the uniqueness of of leadership, but overall, the role that we can play. Mhmm. The last example, was just from a a chief customer officer. So for your customer success organization or whatever it might be, sort of termed, the, you know, general business goal or one often that's measured is that improving of the the CSAT, the customer success, measurement, right, that's most commonly used. And so really trying to better understand what might be that specific challenge that we've identified as we dig into the CSAT CSAT scores that are coming from customers, where oftentimes they might elevate, you know, this example we're saying sort of, slow process for, escalation and resolution for customer issues. It that that's just one example. It could be a number of things. But, really, again, understanding what's that ultimate sort of challenge that has been identified and making sure we gain that agreement, do that discovery upfront so that then we know what we're going to measure back to. When we put forth an a potential learning solution that we'll know, this is this is the thing the needle that we're trying to make a difference on. So, again, the L and D solution could encompass any variety of, different components, all levers that we are leveraging and and bringing into programs today, but being very intentional about about those. And then, again, from an outcome perspective, we can measure back to and know that if we're seeing an improvement, even, you know, one or two points on that CSAT rating, that we can have a direct tieback because we gained agreement from the very beginning that that was the most important metric that we wanted to be able to, again, make a make an impact on. So these are just, again, a couple of examples of trying to bring to life what that strategic being a strategic partner, what that might look like, where we might be identifying, what is the business goal and the challenge that that executive is faced with, and ways that we can help to elevate the conversation. So, you know, for today, what we did is sort of walk through what might be a type of framework, a way to be thinking about those strategic conversations with your stakeholders. And then Natalie highlighted, again, talking the language of the business. And so, yes, the sources that we have commonly used in the HR and l and d world are part of that, but changing it and thinking about how how much of an impact it would have if you walked into a conversation with your CIO. And as part of that, you pulled in a data point from Gartner or from Forrester, a source that you know they are likely looking at. It changes their perception and the way that we are seen as a as a partner, to the business. And then really, again, leveraging all of those external sources to help, again, support the discussion. And and I think the the story you know, Robyn shared a story directly from the field today. Always be looking for ways you know, they they there's a lot of talk about the power of storytelling, I really believe in that. If you're able to pull in an example of either what you've heard from someone else or the way that you've worked with another stakeholder in the business, in include that in the discussion as well because it helps to expand the way that people are thinking about the role that you play within the organization and how you really can be a strategic partner. So we appreciate everybody's participation today, and we'll jump into the q and a. So if you've got any questions, feel free to pop those into the q and a section. Before we get over to that, I just wanted to highlight a couple things. You know, exciting from Cornerstone, there is a lot going on within the organization right now. As many of you are our current customers, you might be aware that we have an update a new release that's coming up in March. It's crazy to think Monday is March. But, again, in that release, there is an incredible amount of new innovation and, and updates. So really encourage everybody to lean in on that. Also, again, from AI perspective, there are a lot of tools just in general that, across the Cornerstone ecosystem. So we mentioned a few here, but encourage you all to, be leaning in on that as well. Talk to your account managers, to make sure that we are, making you aware of what's available to you. And then as a follow on to today, we will provide some follow-up resources, some things, particularly what Natalie highlighted. So just to make sure that you've got those resources, a copy of this deck in case there's any examples in there that that might be of particular help to you. So, again, definitely appreciate you all being part of it. And then we'll do one a couple last plugs if Jenny and Jenny Kate wants to jump in on some upcoming events that we have. Yes. Reminder, keep putting your questions in the q and a. We'll get there very shortly. But first, I wanted to invite you to a couple of upcoming sessions. The first one is our LinkedIn live event happening on Tuesday, March 31. This will be a live walk through of our March 2026 release that Beth was just talking about. Plus, we'll be talking about what's coming next and what you'll see throughout the year for our Cornerstone Galaxy solution. There's a link to our LinkedIn page in the doc section. So go ahead and give us a follow so you can get all of that information. And then this series will be continuing on Thursday, April 2, with a session called the Human Skills in the Age of AI Critical Thinking, Judgment, and Decision Quality. You can register using the QR code that's on this slide or click on that Learn More button at the top of your screen. Or there's also a link in the docs section. So plenty of ways to register, and we hope that you can join us for that so that you can keep on learning. And we'll bring some of the the learnings that Natalie will be able to share after attending that HIAI conference that SHRM's hosting. That's coming up in March as well. And we appreciate, actually, for the the next webinar, we're gonna bring in one of our partners to talk to us as well. So, yes, appreciate and excited if any of you are able to join us. And it does look like we've got a number of questions. We've got a couple of good questions that we might wanna touch on. So Melody asked, when a business leader comes to you with a vague training request, we never get those. We never get those. You know, we need training. What do you do? What what what's your next steps? The ultimate thing is what's your need to really press that individual. What's your ultimate goal? What's coming out of this? What do you expect to see? What's the behavior you're expecting to see? You can go backwards from there. But once you know what they're trying to accomplish, what does success look like, what you start getting them talking about all those things because that's you know, what is this leading to? What is this helping support? Where in your organization are you expecting to see movement if we do this? Don't jump right into what topics are you looking to cover. Right? Focus on results. Focus on solutions. Focus on what the business impact is going to be, and that's what you're gonna see, when when you're gonna see benefit. Anyone else on our team? Yeah, I think that you said it perfectly well. I would really ask to kind of just drill down and ask them, okay, what are we looking to get out of this? What does success look like? How would you define a valuable program from this? I feel like a lot of times you end up almost being like a short order cook when people come. and they say, oh, I need training for X, Y, Z. And I think turning it back on them and just making them think critically about, know, they have a reason why they're coming to you and asking for training on Excel. And more often than not, it's someone's encountering challenges and it's a time management issue. And what I find a lot, and I do a lot of curation over on this side as well, is oftentimes the actual course requests that they're asking for are. part of it, but there's more topics and. more strategic recommendations that you can offer that get to the root of the issue. So just really asking about what led to you asking for this. You know, I wanna have a great understanding and make sure that I get you the right coursework. So tell me the story of, you know, why you're coming to me today because I wanna do right by you. I wanna get you the right content. That's great. other thing is always ask what their what what they're willing to spend. Right? It's not coming out of your budget. If they have skin in the game, if they're putting budget money from their budget into this, they're gonna be a lot more involved and a lot more engaged. Well, that's a good segue into Jenny posts a a really thoughtful question, which I I think everybody can see here. But can you walk through a concrete example of citing an external source like the ones we mentioned, directly changing senior leaders' decision or unlocking budget? So I think, first off, I I would say that the use of those types of sources is first to help elevate the way that strategic or or leader sees you, like, to to see how we show up because now we're talking the language of the business. So it's not necessarily about necessarily memorizing, like, a specific stat, but maybe it's about, you know, reading something and and use AI for this, frankly, is to say, you know, I read this article. I there's a lot of things that are in, like, The Wall Street Journal where, again, a lot of, leaders, obviously, always, seeking information. The Wall Street Journal can be a good source. But use AI to say, okay. I'm meeting with my CIO. I've read this article. Like, what are the salient points that I could pull in to help sort of elevate this discussion? Like, that's another way to been help sort of change the way that you're speaking. So I think first and foremost, it's about positioning you a little bit differently. But then that opens up the gateway to say, you know, as a result of this, I wanna better understand. You've come to me with this ask of we need to build enablement. What I'm what I wanna do is better understand what are you ultimately trying to measure. Right? What are what are you trying to change the game? What's the result that you need to get to at the end of the year? What's the deliverable that this enablement is going to affect, and how are we gonna measure back to it? Think it's sort of just thinking through, you know, again, leveraging external sources to change the conversation and and sort of show up where they are of the things that they're reading. But then having a couple of key questions, I think, ahead of time, prepare two, three questions that'll help you get there. What we're trying to do is understand what's that ultimate. sort of project goal, challenge that they're trying to solve and then be able to work backwards. But understanding what that goal is, that's where I think then there's an opportunity to unlock budget. Because they don't wanna unlock budget when it's, like, just to develop a training. We're not just developing. a training. We're solving that problem that you have identified and shared with me. That make. is a very different conversation than we just need to build some enablement. Natalie, did you have some thoughts on that as well? No. I I think you're spot on. I mean, and then and that's key. I think we've got, just in time, I think we've got another great question. Melody, you're all over the questions, and I love it. If you were starting from scratch in a new organization today, what first two to three conversations would you have? I'll take it first, and I'll turn it over to you guys. But I think one is CIO. The what you're seeing across the board is technology is driving business decisions left. and right, whether it's CIO, CTO. The idea of understanding how that is going to come into play into some of the things that you're going to be meeting, wanting, creating is going to be imperative. I think another conversation that I would would have is making sure whether there was some kind of a people initiative, whether it was a CEO or a CAO, understanding what what the people's kind of role will be in the organization, you know, what the expectation is, what kind of culture you're building, what kind of organization are you having, because that's gonna drive a lot in. your organization. Yeah. So those are those I mean, clearly getting those conversations as quickly as possible and building those relationships, huge. Yep. I the one other one I would add to that is, you know, I think, revenue drives the business. So I think any way that you can, you know, try to be engaged with the chief revenue officer or chief customer officer, because, again, that's that's fueling the organization. So I think that's another one that I would definitely prioritize. And as far as the past said about turning a skeptical CIO from a gatekeeper into an active advocate, I would say that I wish I could say it just takes a couple of emails, but it's really about establishing credibility. It takes a lot of time. In my instance, I really had to know my stuff. I had to be prepared to answer the questions. He hadn't really anticipate the questions he was going to come to. I did a lot of research on Cornerstone. I watched a lot of case studies. I saw every single customer story that I could think of that was anywhere near our vertical. And I that way, I could go back and give more than sort of hypothetical anecdotal evidence and say, this is an example of an organization that's, to best point, saved money through investing. in this. Because really it's about ROI and our ROE to return on efforts. How can I make sure that I'm making their job a little bit easier so that. as we sort of develop this, it becomes a partnership? It becomes us against the problem and not L and D against the budget, because we L and D is a cost center and Yep. CIOs and CFOs love to point that out. And so I really had to be prepared to be able to say, yes, short term, we are going to spend money on this. Long term, we're going to reduce churn. We're going to have stronger managers. We're going to limit our new hire onboarding time. We're going to ramp people up to speed. And I had to be really prepared that whatever sort of adversarial approach they had, eventually, I just exhausted them into submission to the point that they wanted to be my friends. But, like, she has answers to everything. That's great. Thanks so much, Natalie and Robyn, and everyone actually for participating. Loved the questions and the feedback that everyone shared. Again, hope that everyone found value in the time that you spent with us today and very much look forward to the next discussion. So please do sign up and join us on April 2, but appreciate you being here today, and have a wonderful rest of your afternoon. Thank you. Thanks so. much.