Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You know, being passionate about what you do and, you know, you wanting to learn more. And they see that and being that servant leader. I'm not a fan of a leader coming in that doesn't know under the hood. So it is key that you're a servant leader. At times. You're a follower. What do you need done? You need a report? Let me help knock that out.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Ever walk into a workday environment and realize, wait a second, there's no roadmap, there's no steering committee, no intake process.
Oh, no wonder my team's drinking from a fire hose.
Well, that's where Tara Rucker shows up. She's been leading in this space for 13 years across customers and partners. And she's known for one thing, taking workday programs that are stuck and stale and turning them into something strategic.
Now, she doesn't start with just fixing modules. She actually starts with people. She calls it a listen and learn tour, talking to leaders across the hr, it, legal, and even marketing to figure out what's really working and what's not. In this episode, we dig into how she rebuilds trust inside organizations, how she turns steering committees from a checkbox into a movement, and how she keeps workday programs from falling back into that post. Go live fog, and you'll hear her favorite line. Assessing, optimizing, and elevating workday, because that's what really gets her up in the morning.
All right, so we're so excited today to have Tara Rucker with us here on Wavemakers. She has been in the ecosystem probably one of the longest that one of the few, and we've known each other be connected over the years, and it's spoken here and there, but it was really the last year or so that we started speaking more and then actually finally met each other at Rising.
And her energy and enthusiasm is just so contagious. So we were excited to have her join us. So thanks for joining us today, Tara.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Yes, and I'm completely honored. So excited to talk more about my workday experience and the strategic part of it and the foundational part of it.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Well, yeah, let's get started. I mean, why don't we just start out with, you know, what got you in the ecosystem. You've been, what, 13, 13, 14 years and kind of, you know, because you've hit a lot of. You've been at workday customers, you've been a partner, you know, collab and all that. So, you know, share a little bit about that.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I started my HR technology career actually with Ceridian and When I decided to stay home for a couple years with my last child, came back to work, wanted to work in the Indianapolis area and found a company that had Ceridian. Once I started working on the customer side, I realized the global constraints of the application. So I was vetted with finding an application that could first bring in all the disparate systems we were using and have that global capability.
That's where workday rose to the top. When I presented this to the executive team, they were excited and started the implementation project 13 years ago for Interactive Intelligence. And I've been hooked ever since.
So I've done a full implementation both as a customer and also a partner. I used to work for Collaborative Solutions where I went internal and built there as a customer, Workday and Salesforce teams, but have also done many feature implementations from Learning Talent, Recruiting Help, Benefits, org, Studio Talent, just name it under the agency, but have built workday teams from the ground up. So I love coming in to assess and develop a sustainable support model that is key. My favorite part is really assessing, optimizing and elevating workday. That's what gets me up in the morning. So I developed strategic roadmaps, established steering committees, implemented release programs, conducted auditing and compliance reviews, identifying HR risks and spearheading really the employee manager engagement initiatives, as well as standing up sprint processes. But I thrive on being a servant leader. I'm an architect at heart. I know how to get under that workday hood and help the team with ideation sessions and the final tech reviews.
So I really love jumping in as needed. I think that's critical at a director level is you still are an architect at heart, but I love empowering others to grow and give them those stretch opportunities or the shadowing opportunities. But on a personal side, all summer I've been flipping a house, so that's definitely used my negotiation skills, my project management skills as well.
So I think my creative side comes out in workday, you know, as you come up with innovative ways to elevate your tenant.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Wow. So flipping a house. Hold on, that could be a whole nother conversation. Exactly. Were you, I mean, were you managing all vendors or were you doing some.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Of it, you know, yourself and I were doing that. Now I'm not doing the difficult things like putting a new septic tank in or painting the outside of the house. I'm doing, you know, I'm painting countertops and painting doors. I'm re, you know, landscaping the area. So I really enjoy it. People think I'm crazy. I love it.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: What's easier a house flip or a workday implementation.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: What's easier? A house flip.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: That's hilarious.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: You only have to have maybe two or three people buying in versus a whole organization or steering committee, so.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: And see, that might be a little easier.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: That's true. I guess.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Then you, you've got permits and stuff that could feel like a steering committee. So as you deal with all that.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: There'S definitely comparable things with them.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: That's, that's so funny. As you were going through all your stuff, I literally was nodding because you actually see that.
I mean, and again part of it is from our conversations, but you actually see that on things that you post and share and your LinkedIn profile and I mean that is all true. You when you were going through all those things, but. Well, we're going to talk about. Because I know that leadership that's so important to you. Well, first of all, actually you said you were passionate about roadmaps because most people would assume that companies have these.
Okay, so you know, why do you think that is? And I mean all the environments that you've been in, were they always there or not there or not?
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Many environments, very shocking. And it can be a small organization and it or a large organization. I was really shocked with larger organizations not having any steering committee roadmap intake process. I think what happens is folks up or implement workday and then they start drinking from a fire hose and they're in that reactive versus proactive mode and they don't know how to get the most out of workday. You know what I see too often and I've come into several organizations where they've never had a workday leader. They've given it to maybe the VP of IT who has many other applications to worry about, but not realizing what a beast workday can be, what great things you can do. It's many applications under one. It's benefits, it's time tracking it's absence. There's so much to it that you really need a progressive and proactive leader at the helm, ensuring that the latest and greatest are there. You're looking at HR risks. You're working closely with the SOX team, with the developers, ensuring where your PII information is going with integrations. There is a lot to it. That's a lot. But too often it's sitting stale and stuck because at implementation you're not. You didn't reimagine your processes in the first place or if you did, you're not relooking at those processes on a yearly basis to say, well what can we do? Or you aren't and I should say you aren't looking at your, the releases. You don't have a solid release program in place as well. So it is critical to be forward thinking with workday and not reactive.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Well that's true. I mean when you went in these environments that didn't have it because obviously as we said earlier, you know, they're out there. So how you were able to get this implemented and the way that you were weaving that.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: I guess what I found through my tenure was coming in and doing a listen and learn tour. Too often you hear I'm going to hit the ground running, I'm going to do all this stuff. No, you've got to get a pulse of the organization, what the current team is doing, how they're perceived, what the leaders want, what issues the leaders are dealing with.
My last position I probably talked to over 100 people. It wasn't only functional leaders, it was outside the HR realm. It could be marketing, it could be, it could be legal, it could be the delivery group, engineering group really to understand what are the needs because they all use the application.
So once I was able to gather what are the current issues, what are, what do you feel needs to occur for your team to quit being in the workday inbox, what's your vision?
I'm able to then bring that together, start to give ideas of a roadmap and it could be foundational fixes, it could be a new feature, something that we currently own that we haven't implemented with, catching them up on the releases, the little things that creep in that are missing as well. It is key though with the steering committee that you bring a cross functional group together to then look through the initial roadmap, make sure you're spreading the love that you're not doing five projects just for total rewards, that you have a holistic look across your organization and you've got those foundational fixes with the cool stuff, even the bigger features and the low hanging fruit. Once you do that, you really establish yourself as that trusted advisor. Gosh, they're listening to me. They want the best for me. This is how I've also been able to grow the team, double the team because they know that we're invested and we're going to make efficiencies and automations to what they do in their business unit.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Interesting. I mean, I mean this seems just like common sense.
Do you think that this wasn't though done?
I mean it you know, is it not done in the implementation? And I understand, like you said, after you go live, you know, you're just drowning and everything.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Like, is it not even coming up through the vendor?
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Is it not there isn't that at least the times I've been through implementation, there hasn't been that. Here's how you build a team, and this is what the structure probably looks like to be most successful. Here is a start, at least a quarter start to a roadmap. Here's how you build out a steering committee. I learned all this through frustration, through being slammed, having 350 backlog items. How do I tackle this? And I don't like sitting stale and stuck. That is my personality. So through the years, I've gotten to this point where I have that solid roadmap, the steering committee, the release program, the SOX compliance program to get and then auditing, you know, is our data clean? Because that's a big complaint, right? So it took, you know, several years to get to this point. And that's where I'm passionate about spreading that knowledge and spreading the tools that I've developed to get to this point.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: You know, as you have the steering committee and you have the roadmap, do you push back and say, here, you know, what is it? You have time, resources and money, Right? That's your triangle. So this is it. So do you push back on the functional groups and say, you figure out here, here's your wish list. You figure out the priority and then, you know, I've given you our triangle. And unless you want to add to any one of those. Yeah. Or do you take the list and you try to come up with something and then go back and present it to them? I mean, which approach?
[00:12:57] Speaker A: I. I found it best to first from my Listen, Learn tour. This is my recommendation and, you know, making sure we're spreading the love. When you bring those functional leaders together, you might have more of a squeaky wheel in one of the areas. But when you bring them all together, they're able to work together, to prioritize, and it's beautiful. I usually, my first meeting, we talk about what a steering committee is, the roles and responsibilities.
By the second meeting, they are talking among themselves and saying, tara, let's deprioritize this or let's move this to fourth quarter border. And they're working as true leaders under one umbrella to make things work. I've also had organizations where they've said, we want to make this happen, we want to make it happen. This year I'm giving you part of my budget to get that senior architect on your team or that manager to manage all this on your team.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Perfect.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: So you. I have been able to get funds from other departments to grow the team because I show them what, what's possible and they can tell my enthusiasm and excitement for elevating the application. And that's what occurs when you bring in a dedicated leader over, you know, the workday application.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: I can already know that we're going to have to like, timestamp that last thing that you just said because everybody's going to be like, wait, how did she get more people on her team? That would literally be a separate timestamp out there.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: Right.
So going on communication, approval and dollars. Wow. What's the secret sauce there?
I was gonna just chime in. I know you had posted that you were talking to a lot of people at Rising this year. Speaking of being stuck and maybe, you know, unsure, unclear about some things. You know, what were some of those conversations?
Were there some. A lot of the same topics or concerns as you were speaking with, you know, folks at Rising this year?
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. A lot was about AI and there are concerns about putting AI on top of a shaky foundation. People don't know really whether they have the right support model. There's questions about the data integrity and even where the data is going. They haven't re looked at their business processes since implementation.
So really concerned about looking at AI when again, the foundation is shaky.
So that was a huge thing. Another thing is I did a brain date with someone from a major corporation and they said, we can't get engagement. How do you engage your employees and managers and get them excited about Workday? So the engagement was a lot of the discussions as well. I really enjoyed sitting next to people in sessions. I love the outside area that they had between the two buildings. And I'd sit and have lunch and engage in conversation and did a lot of brain dates as well. And you just kept hearing the same things. And I heard that at our Workday Indiana user group as well on these common themes about the foundation still isn't solid. And I'm worried about putting AI on top of it.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: The big talk was AI, but it's like you can't forget all those other moving parts, all those other pieces and what you're, you know, just having those conversations. That's whether it's user groups or Rising, it's all these, these issues or concerns. It's nice to share that and get answers, you know, come up with answers together.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah. There's great forums. Again, your regional user group. I press my team when I lead a, you know, group, attend your, you know, regional user group. There's a group of us, you know, various leaders, we text back and forth about, hey, have you used this? Can you give me your insight into this or would you mind doing a demo? Because you have this product so really using your resources, you've got the customer sharing movement group as well. There's some of us, you know, that engage on a weekly basis. So there are resources out there and definitely utilize them to share the knowledge. And I've learned through brain dates creative ways to solve things that I kept hitting my head about. And you know, someone will say, well, I did this and I was like, wow, that's pretty simple. I can't believe I didn't think about that.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: That's what everyone always says. Their favorite thing about rising is the brainy dates.
That's where they really learn. And I do think, I mean, you know, coming from a consulting background, it doesn't matter if you're at a partner or not, no matter what you tell a customer, they're going to go, I want to know someone in my similar industry with the same company, with the same tech employee size, with the same tech stack, tell me what they did. I want to see where it's been done, you know, so that I can make sure. And there obviously is more trust that way. I mean, honestly, that's why we started the workday application Executive Network years ago, to bring executives together because they kept asking the same questions, you know, what did this company do? What have you seen on this team size, what, you know, that kind of stuff. So everybody can kind of self network.
And honestly, that's one of the great things about the workday ecosystem because everybody's so open to sharing knowledge.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Oh yeah, it is wonderful. And even the product meetings, you know, I sign up for on Community, I'm a big fan of those as well, and breakout groups within that and being able to talk about a topic at hand and ask questions or spread the knowledge. I, you know, sometimes I go in to ask a question, sometimes I just enter a room because I know a lot about it and I'm hoping, you know, I can help solve an issue or question for another customer.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Have you. Were you always that way before? Like at Ceridian or is it more?
[00:18:50] Speaker A: I was internal. We didn't have that community. And that's what, when I picked Workday and they presented that it's, you know, a community of customers that was One of the big selling points for me, I get to engage with other customers and, and be able to.
It's like Pinterest to me. I'm not kidding.
I guess TikTok, it's more TikTok to me where I am out there and like I've got my answer, my question answered and oh, I should implement this. This is pretty cool. And so I have my laundry list so I can be out there and sometimes oh, it's been an hour. But I try to book on my calendar every week to be out on community doing research.
What's coming out, what's the latest and greatest, what are the pain points? Can I answer something for someone nice?
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And the fact that you can find stuff. I'm just joking because that's what, that's what everybody says. I was just throwing a joke in there on that. You know one of the things and I think you wrote about this in your, when you, you did a post with kind of things that you were hearing rising and just that outside of some of the things you mentioned, people feeling stuck and just kind of stale. Is the environment stale. And obviously you have the twice a year releases that you have to deal with and stuff but you know, kind of expand a little bit on more, more what you were hearing there and why maybe you think yeah, you know.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: First of all low engagement with employees, managers, HR executive teams that you know, trying to get them in and that's where you get the more and more reasons to go in. I'm big on the one Stop shop dashboards. Usually when I start with an organization that's one of the first things I build out is an employee. And a manager dashboard has all your tasks, it has all your reports. It is even a portal to get out to other sites and you can have single sign on to those other ones. So it's not trying to find those. You bookmark those, we can provide those links right in your, your dashboards. And so big fan of the one stop Shop to documents wherever you need to do that, you know they're stuck because there's low trust in the data.
So big on setting up daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly audits as well and having the production support team run those to make sure we do feel good about our data, putting validations in place to prevent that data from getting in the system. I see organizations buying additional systems where I'm like I could have put that in workday such as ergs. I've done that twice.
So I've asked procurement to have me as part of the review of, you know, applications, being asked to say, can we do this in workday first? Once you start, you know, building that trust of the data and you get more reasons to get into the application.
You see, you get out of that stuck and stale. But it is imperative that you look at your processes, you look at your security, you get user feedback. I love feedback. I also want to be part of the quarterly people group meetings and have, you know, time with Tara talking about workday or the whole company quarterly meeting. Can we talk about the number one application that the teams are in and if it's not workday, maybe it's slack. How we're engaging, where you're working, where you work most as workday has turned that. So really getting out in front of an advertising workday and giving them reasons to go in and building the trust.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Gotcha. Yeah, I was, when I saw that, I was wondering if it was, you know, people that don't come from or don't know workday or don't come from the industry that is really more of kind of the set it and forget it, you know, the ERP type thing. If it was more based, you know, they're in that culture with that as opposed to. No, this is going to constantly change. Yeah. So different.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: And it's key that you market the application. Otherwise it is. You're going to sit back and people are frustrated because the only time they need to go in there is open enrollment or to do performance reviews. But give them more reasons to get in the application, be creative again, you know, two creative ways for ergs. And we were able to deprecate that application and save money. So I love being part of those conversations with the different functional areas, the different business units on can we do this in workday?
[00:23:26] Speaker C: That makes sense. And I was going to jump in and say, you know, when that comes up and people realize we need something, you know, they. They want it yesterday. But you also have to be very cautious and do it the right way. You know, as a leader. Tara, how do you balance that? You know, a group or organization within an organization. I need it done fast, but. And you're coming in as a leader saying, yes, but it needs to be done right. You know, how do you balance that line? Right.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: That's where steering committees are critical.
Once, you know, I do that, listen and learn and become that trusted advisor, that really is to my advantage because they know I want to do it right versus fast. But a steering committee is invaluable to matching the nice to haves with, you know, say quarterly okrs and have that nice balance and have the leadership team knowing that they need to present resources as well for testing, documentation or whatnot. But really establishing yourself among the leaders really helps to lower that. Drinking from the fire hose and being strategic about what you need to do. I bring in excitement and sometimes that's my weakness is I bring that excitement and they want to get on board and do all this cool stuff. But it is a balancing act to have the foundational fixes, the low hanging fruit and the bigger features and making sure you have a little bit of each of those in each of your quarterly initiatives.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: And I'm going to go back because we still talk about these steering committees and all of a sudden I'm remembering a conversation I had at Rising with someone absolutely passionate about it. This was their responsibility. No one else was passionate about it. So we're never going to be able to move anything forward. So what would be the number one resistance do you think of like, you know, someone can talk about it and yeah, we should do this and all this kind of stuff, but they're not getting the buy in. You know, what would be the, I guess top reasons for that and how to overcome that? Because this obviously exists. Yeah.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Again, I'm just going to keep going back to that listen and learn chore and you're establishing yourself, you're saying, I hear your issues, I see your vision, I see your pain points with inefficiencies, lack of automation. I want you to be able to focus on other things than taking care of something in an inbox or being worried where data is going to go once you have those conversations. And I also establish one on ones. A lot of my week is one on ones. With leaders constantly talking about projects, what tickets are coming in, what issues. I work very closely with the people operations group, the leader there to say what are your common tickets coming in and how can we solve for it? They've got to know that you've got their back and you want to do what it takes for their teams. Also to not be in admin kind of things, not to be in Excel spreadsheets and manual emails and that, you know, invest in their career pathing or other things that they could be doing to wow, you know, our full employee base.
So you know that listen and learn tour, when you present a high level roadmap at first it's really cool to see people go wow, this is, this solves or this knocks out this issue. And I'm So glad we're going down this path. That open communication, that excitement about workday has been successful with each company where I've led the workday platform.
[00:27:07] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: That makes sense.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: And Tara's to kind of piggyback off that if someone's coming in, maybe as that as a contractor, as that client side advisor or advocate or you know, a lot of times you think roadmap inside. But some, but contractors sometimes come in, you know, wearing that hat to, you know, how could that. Do you have some advice or how could they take that initiative as maybe they're independent but they still are acting, you know, as that advocate. What can they do to maybe get that buy in even more but more from as you're coming in as an independent resource?
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm big on at first to stabilize the platform, it is bringing in consultants and I've done that my previous positions. I think it's key to bringing those. The fresh eyes in. These are people that are seasoned and pushing back and best practices.
So big fan on stabilizing using external resources, whether it's your partner, whether I've used independent consultants. Internal teams are taxed and that's why they're in the stale and stuck mode. And to bring in that excitement. The fresh set of eyes I think are key to really find out where those foundational cracks are, where efficiencies are needed, where there's missing key features to benefit the company. And again, once I present where we could go and the systems we could deprecate, it pays for itself. And that's my big presentation that I have to the executive team when I come in is I'd love to bring in a couple external consultants to help us, you know, maximize this area. I can deprecate this. You can see the cost savings.
So that, that is critical bringing those fresh eyes in.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I like the way that you frame that they have fresh eyes because it does.
You know, so many times you look at it so much that you can only see what you see. So.
[00:29:08] Speaker C: Or that same problem. That's all that's in, you know, in your mind. It's like, no, there's another way. But you're just kind of burnt out from dealing with that on a daily basis. So.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And that is, is so true. And I've seen that with external consultants or when I start and I, I come in and say, okay, we're using these three systems. Did you realize this functionality is in workday? Had no idea because they're just doing their routine. They're not looking at releases when the release program I put together takes two months, you are really vetting out what's out there.
I keep a running list of my wish list items. I bump it up against that. Oh gosh, we can tackle this and this thoroughly vet out, you know, test the application which Scoffs loves and you should do it anyways. Have a full project plan, get people involved and then a full review with the stakeholders in those areas to be able to roadmap those cool features or be able to let them know, guess what? It solves this issue. We've been having this to do step is no longer a to do step. Yay. Or we no longer have to produce this report for you because it's now, you know, this feature has done this for you.
So with each release they get excited because It's a whole PowerPoint presentation during the stakeholder weekly meetings that we conduct to keep them engaged and forward looking and not just again being reactive to their tickets.
Yep.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: You know, I know that this is your personality. I mean everything that you said up until now, it is all engagement and interaction, talking, listening.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I'm not. I just say it's that's so important. You know, it's just.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: It is very important.
One thing is critical is those stakeholder engagement meetings and that it's not only me with leaders, it is the architects and managers over the architect and developers that are in those meetings as well.
Engaging, talking about again, what's ahead, what's next that we're on the community and we're looking at solves for the inefficiencies and keeping them abreast of what's going on in their area.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: Right. I mean what about companies that don't have the luxury of having a bigger team or a director that's still very hands on. I mean what percentage of your week would be meeting with everybody because I get the value. But then what do you. On the other hand, you know, I've got two people on my team or three people on my team and a Ms. Group. You know, I mean how can.
Is there an abbreviated way to do that that still would be successful?
[00:32:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I have been very fortunate to come into an organization assess put a proposal together of both the team structure, what's ahead, what we need to where I get the buy in and the funds, whether it's from other groups again to make things happen. And so really having a leader take a look at that. I understand sometimes teams are small, but you've got a Cadillac and you can't Put a teenager behind that Cadillac if you want to get the most all the bells and whistles out of it. And it does pay for itself in the long run. When I did work for Bed Bath and Beyond and you know, you could see the end coming near, we had to deprecate systems and it was able to deprecate poor systems and bring that functionality into the system and save almost a half a million dollars for the company. When you have that mindset of thinking outside the box, being creative, using the resources, I've even taken folks from people operations, taught them how to do EIBs, taught them how to audit. So I use resources outside of the workday team. So that's probably the number one recommendation I have is how can I use analysts or other resources to help us out to make things happen. And people in other departments were like, I get to learn workday. Absolutely. And they're excited about it. So. So I've not gotten any groups to say, nah, you know, we can't help you all. They have team members chopping up the bit to look and help out under the workday hood.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah, no, definitely. I've seen that where people take kind of that tier one stuff and push it back into the ops group. Yeah, that's a great idea.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: And I was going to say as a, from a leader, as we wrap up here, just as a leadership, you know, what's kind of that one main thing that a leader should have, that one characteristic or trait that is just essential that would expand into some of those other groups and bring in a win. You know, what is that one?
[00:34:13] Speaker A: As you can hear, it's relationship building. Relationship building. And I don't do it just in the HR group. I do it throughout the whole organization. I do it in the ecosystem, I do it in my user group.
So I have a lot of resources to pull from when trying to solve something, when resources are constrained, internal. But you know, with that, everything else falls into place. When you become that trusted advisor, people are on the workday bus along with you saying, what's next? How can we help? How can we maybe help fund things to make this happen so they know you have their back.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. By the way, I've heard great things about the Indiana User group. Literally a conversation I had rising, someone who, who knew you and they were active there. So. And you can see, you can definitely see with some of the user groups where there's just, you know, really strong participation and there it's been phenomenal.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: Actually. Myself, Teresa Walla, who still runs it to this day started it up, gosh, I think it was 2013 and it has really grown.
I think we had over 100 at the last user group. We'll have another one here in November. Already have a sponsor for that one. Have a sponsor for February because they see all that we're doing in the engagement that our groups are having. And again, I have, I've been engaging with the various leaders through text. I was getting some ideas on some of the questions too that you've posed and getting their thoughts on the struggles or what are qualities that they think a leader should have. And we're pretty aligned on that.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
You know, obviously we talk with both leaders and we talk with both, you know, candidates. So I want to kind of take independent contractors, you know, as a leader, I guess if you're looking at contractors and there's a trust factor, I mean, I know when I go and use a vendor, you're always going, oh, am I going to be regretting this?
You know, am I going to be redoing this work and things like that. So, you know, what are the things? And let's just say a contractor, if I'm going to bring in someone who has their own business to help me out, you know, what are you looking for and what would, outside of knowing them or recommendation, what would give you that trust factor?
[00:36:35] Speaker A: Oh, definitely having those consultant skills. They know how to push back.
They know how to gain trust and build those relationships.
You know, definitely know best practices coming to me with ideas as well, instead of me presenting all the issues or ideas and I don't have to worry about them.
So I have some tried and true consultants in the ecosystem. Have I had some that I've had to let go pretty quickly. Yes.
But through the years I have some that have really shined.
And again, I know when they come in, go do your stuff. I don't have to worry about them because they build the relationships even at they feel like an employee at times because they've gotten to know the organization pretty quickly and they know how to push back. They aren't just, oh, you want this order takers.
[00:37:33] Speaker C: Yeah, that's nice. They actually are solutioning and listening and providing those, those best practices and their knowledge.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: And they also know how to present options. That's something I was impressed with. Someone is, oh, here's the way that you do check ins. They presented three different options and I was like, I didn't know about option three. This is pretty impressive. And so it gave the leaders in those functional areas options of what was going to work best. You know, here's the fastest way we can do it. Here's kind of a moderate or here's a pretty aggressive, sustainable, scalable solution. And they have three to pick from. So I love those consultants.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: No, absolutely. I mean, that's why you hire them, right? It's like, I want this off my desk. I want you to educate me, and I don't want to have to manage you, you know, really, at that point. So. And I alluded to this earlier, you are so passionate about leadership. You are passionate about your teams. You can tell over the years that you take pride in, in the teams that you build and keep together.
You know, what is it? And I'm kind of asking this question for you to speak to leaders.
What is it that leaders need to do to have build a successful team, but also keep it so that they can accomplish their goals? Because in the end, you're only going to be as successful as your team is, right?
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
You know, being passionate about what you do and, you know, you wanting to learn more and they see that and being that servant leader, I can't talk about that more that you can jump in. I'm not a fan of a leader coming in that doesn't know under the hood. I think you need to have that architect background. And Nan, I've stood up many a feature in my day and even at a director level because of the resources I've had to stand up and, you know, whole feature by myself. You know, like workday help had to do that. So it is key that you're a servant leader at times. You're a follower. What do you need done? You need a report. Let me help knock that out. And that you have their back, that you help push back when needed. And once you drink that workday Kool Aid, they want to learn more and you give them those opportunities.
At my past job, I had someone say, I really want to learn benefits. Great. Go shadow and be able to get your fingers on those keys to help open enrollment. I have no problem with that. I love when people come to me and say, tari, I found this on the community. Can I move forward on this? Oh, absolutely. I love that proactiveness of the team members as well. And again, I don't have to worry about them. I don't have to sit in the stakeholder meetings because I know that they can run them. They're engaged. And I've gotten such great feedback from the various leaders on, you know, my staffing choices because I want that Consultant mindset. Even better is that global mindset that you're not just thinking us centric, you are reaching out to the global team members to make sure that it's global friendly. Whatever process that we put out.
[00:40:50] Speaker C: Oh, it's great.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: I would say tree. I know. I felt like I should do a PSA to leaders. It's like no one likes siloed environments.
[00:40:58] Speaker C: No, they're not going to stick around that long.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true.
Are we? Are we at this point?
[00:41:08] Speaker C: I know. It's like I feel the wave coming in.
Maybe barrel rush time. I mean, we could continue chatting probably all afternoon.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: Oh, I can.
[00:41:18] Speaker C: Plenty of topics.
But yeah, I think it might be time for the good old barrel rush and.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: All right, so our barrel rush thing is what we call our. It's like our quick round. So I don't know, on the last couple of podcasts I've aged myself saying fast money or things like that. So if for game show stuff that people don't remember. So it's a quick round. You're inside the, you know, you're riding the wave now we're on the workday wave and you're in the barrel.
[00:41:45] Speaker C: So got to get out.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: All right, so here we go. If you had a magic wand, what workday functionality would you absolutely redo?
[00:41:56] Speaker C: Recruiting.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Everybody has to use it. Both external, internal. Me myself going through jobs, searching, you know, the parsing the res resume was pretty rough. A one page application would be phenomenal. Instead of having to click, click, click, click through a social account like Greenhouse has. But I heard it's coming and very excited about that. And there's so many right now bolt ons making it all work. You know, the higher score and Phenon and Eversort and Paradox and each have a SKU. It'd be nice to kind of have more of a one experience, one application under that.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Oh yeah. A quick scroll on LinkedIn can just tell you that people are not a fan.
I know they don't understand that and each customer sets really the their own things. But yeah, people either hate it or hate it less. I mean there's, you know, there's some.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: Very verbal people out at least.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: Exactly.
Most underrated skill. A workday pro should have proactiveness.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Very proactiveness. You're researching, you're suggesting, you're demoing the possible, you know, before it becomes an issue and ask or a need.
So I love when I have a team member, an architect who is in a stakeholder meeting and said, oh, I, I saw this on Community. I would love to demo it to the stakeholder if we're doing our team meeting. Sorry. And, like, absolutely. They will love this. I love that you're out on the Community. I love that you're anticipating the possible need and go for it.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: No, that's good. That's good.
I like that.
[00:43:46] Speaker C: All right, my turn.
What's the best career advice you've ever been given?
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Listening before responding. Don't look like you even want to respond. You know, like, you know you're biting your lip that you're truly listening to what someone has to say. Whether it's an issue, whether it's a need, just listen. And if you need extra time to respond, let them know that, you know, I hear what you're saying. I want to make sure that I give you the right answer or take us down the right path. Can you give me a week and let me do some research, have my team do research? We might even have a demo for this.
But just listen before you respond.
[00:44:33] Speaker B: That's good. Excellent.
[00:44:34] Speaker C: Excellent. All right, so I think we might be the last question here in the barrel rush, which is. Gotta say my favorite.
All right, Tyler, what is your go to song to get you pumped up or if you're having a rough day, you know, get you motivated? What is that song?
[00:44:51] Speaker A: It is I'm a Survivor by Destiny's Child.
It just helped to elevate my mood, makes me feel unstoppable.
[00:44:59] Speaker C: I love it.
[00:44:59] Speaker B: Okay. I love the fact that you just mentioned Destiny's Child.
That's awesome.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: You're gonna go listen to it now, aren't you?
[00:45:08] Speaker C: Exactly. There are some people that may not know who that is. You need to listen. They are a fantastic group, very empowering.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: Group of women, for sure. I think I remember talking with someone. I think Destiny's Child actually performed at one of their conferences in the. The conference was definitely younger people, and half the people are like, who's this? Who's Destiny?
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Well, that was like, Duran Duran.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: I was gonna say they probably. Yeah, I heard that.
[00:45:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm there with my Duran Duran shirt. I was.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: I saw your Duran Duran shirt.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Oh, I was so excited. And I kept thinking, more than half of these people probably don't know who Durant is.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: I love it. That's so good.
[00:45:50] Speaker C: Well, we definitely will turn more people on to all kinds of genres and music, which is why I love that question.
[00:45:56] Speaker B: But I appreciate the commission check that they get off of people going and listening time of Survivor, the royalty check.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: It's a great one.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Well, this has been super fun and you know, thank you so much again. Just our hour, hour and a half conversation at Rising. You can just anytime I've talked with you, you can just see the passion that you have. Obviously Indiana user group knows this quite well, you know, and others are seeing that. So, you know, just really enjoyed it. Congratulations on all the success that you've had. We'll continue to have and just glad that I've gotten to know you a little bit better.
[00:46:35] Speaker C: I was just going to say all the posts that you put out there, you know, the positivity, the tips, you know, regardless of level, you know, thank you so much for doing that and just guiding people, you know, continuously ecosystem. So I just want to say thanks on that.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Thank you and thank you for all that you all are doing that WD Beacon.
Just absolutely so excited about and have checked it out several times obviously. So thank you.
[00:47:02] Speaker B: Well, thank you for your knowledge on there. And you know, we, we'll definitely put a link in the podcast notes so that everybody can connect with you and if you reach out to her again, it's Tara, not Tara.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: Yes, thank you.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Do not think. Yeah, do not think Gone with the Wind. Think the opposite. So.
All right, well thank you so much.
[00:47:23] Speaker C: Thanks again, Tara.
Bye everybody.
If you've ever been the one holding a program together, you know how much this conversation resonates. And what Tara reminded us is that it all starts with listening, not just adding more tools or features. Her advice on building a strong workday program around relationships, trust and input from all sides is exactly how you keep things moving forward.
If you want more of her perspective, you can follow Tara Rucker on LinkedIn and check out her article building your workday steering committee on the brand new career platform WD Beacon.
And remember to like, follow and share wavemakers so you and others can keep hearing real stories that help you learn, grow and stay successful, all while riding the workday wave.
Until next time.
