Daria Rudnik (00:02.25)
Welcome to Build by People Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Darya Rudnik, and this show is for HR and L &D leaders in fast growing organizations and scale-ups, those building real impact from within and shaping AI-ready organizations. If you go to daryarudnik.com, you can download the State of HR in AI Transformation 2026 report, fresh new. And today we have a very special guest. I'm very excited about our conversation today. It's Chris Farr.

a leadership focused operations executives in the MSP and technology world, where he helps businesses build better teams, stronger leaders, and more effective operations. His work centers on creating clarity, accountability, and scalable people practices that support growth without losing culture or performance. A key part of his story is that everything he shares comes from hands-on experience leading in fast moving environments and not just theory.

Welcome, Chris. I'm excited to have you here today.

Chris Farr (01:02.761)
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Daria Rudnik (01:04.76)
Well, tell us a bit about your journey and about your leadership experience.

Chris Farr (01:10.699)
Well, I started in the financial world as far as doing IT and kind of cut my teeth there and started just through that process and did that for well over a decade and then went into the small to medium business world and started just doing that, kind of the same type of thing, but just for a different industry. And then through that journey, I wound up at where I'm at now with Envision Technologies as a managed service provider.

And so that's where we handle everything from your outsourced IT perspective. Anything IT related can be done under one roof and just handled from that aspect. And so yeah, that's really what got me through and where I've been and yeah, always enjoyed IT and just seeing other people grow within the industry is always good too.

Daria Rudnik (02:00.142)
Thanks. What I'd like to ask you about, you've been working in the company for 10 years and you've seen it grow through different stages. Obviously, within those 10 years, something evolves, something changes. How do you see HR supports or can support or could support organizational growth?

Chris Farr (02:29.637)
Well, as you're a small business and you're scaling and you're growing, think that HR, you could lean on them to kind of help build that bench, so to speak, to make sure you've got good talent that has been vetted and has been looked at. Because as you grow, you're going to get to a point fairly quick, potentially, where you need new talent. You just need more people that can come in, depending on how fast that growth comes. Because sometimes you're planning on fast growth.

And then sometimes it comes a little bit faster than anticipated. So just having that resource on your team that can help you get the right people in the right seats and get the right people at the table and just to help build as you're going. That's the first thing I could think about that an HR person could be huge and instrumental in as far as building an up and coming business.

Daria Rudnik (03:23.458)
We all know that HR can do equipment and operations, admin, learning and development. How do you see HR supporting business strategically?

Chris Farr (03:35.245)
Strategically, making sure that you've got all the processes in place, and all the procedures, and just everything that they can help deliver, especially from an employee onboarding standpoint. And just making sure that when that team member comes onboard, that they've least seen the same material that everyone else has seen. Whether that's training, whether that's history of the company, the whole gambit of what they need to know before they take a seat on the team.

So at least they know what the culture of the company is because that HR representative is normally the first one that they're seeing when they come in on day one to get paperwork signed, to get their onboarding information done. And so just making sure that the first thing that they're hearing and seeing is the culture of the company because that's what's driving us all forward. You can put different things in place, but if everyone isn't embracing the culture.

you're really not building something that's worthwhile at the end of the day.

Daria Rudnik (04:33.55)
Who's responsible for culture? Is it HR?

Chris Farr (04:35.699)
Everybody. Yeah, I think everybody would be responsible for it. But I really think just because the HR representative would be the person that they're kind of dealing with day one and right there, you know, it kind of starts with that person, you know, but if everybody else isn't, you know, going with the same message or following the same culture, then it really doesn't matter. So at the end of the day, you know, it's everybody's responsibility to make sure that the culture is getting pushed forward.

Daria Rudnik (05:05.656)
Do you have any good examples from your work of when HR was, like your partnership with HR was successful? mean, HR really helped you in some situations or, yeah.

Chris Farr (05:20.205)
Yeah, I think from coaching aspects, you know, when you have to have those tough conversations with people, know, that people just don't like to have. But it's nice to have an HR representative, you know, that's trained and, you know, knows the, you know, the ins and outs and is just great at dealing with people, you know, where they can kind of come in and be that extra voice or that extra person in the room to kind of help, you know, guide, you know, kind of help guide that employee and that supervisor, you know, through uncomfortable conversations.

Daria Rudnik (05:47.822)
Well, you know what's interesting? When I was in HR, we always tried to partner with business leaders. And it's also kind of a gray zone. Who's responsible for what? You need to fire a person. Who's firing the person? Is it HR or is it business leader? When you need to promote someone, who's promoting them? How do you share roles between HR, what HR does, and business leader does when it comes to their people?

Chris Farr (06:17.069)
Well, I think it's really a team effort. I think that it's best if HR and that department head or that manager or whoever is directly over that particular employee. I think it's good to have both in the room because the manager or the supervisor would have the background as far as how that employee behaves, what kind of product they're delivering, just how well they're performing, where HR kind of brings a different aspect to the table.

You know, they're looking at it from a benefits aspect. They're looking at it from, you know, making sure that, you know, that the payroll information gets updated, make sure that their company file gets updated. You know, just making sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed that that manager or supervisor necessarily wouldn't be thinking about because that's not their wheelhouse, you know, every single day. But yeah, I think it's a team. I think it takes both of them.

Daria Rudnik (07:09.134)
How could HR leaders build trust and real partnerships with other business leaders, executives in organization? Sometimes HR is too soft or on the other hand, too hard. How do you find this balance?

Chris Farr (07:24.669)
Well, think they really, finding that balance is the toughest thing to do because they have to be strong on one side because they are the representative of the company, you know, from that HR standpoint. So that's they're the ones, you know, that's kind of put teeth into the in all that paperwork that you signed, you know, when you first come on board. But they also have to be, you know, not necessarily lenient, but at least understanding, because I think at the end of the day, I think a fair HR person is better than a lenient or a stern one, because, everybody would rather just have someone that's fair.

you know, that sees both sides of it, even if it necessarily doesn't go the direction that the employee thinks that it's going to go or the leader thinks that it's going to go. As long as it's fair, I think having that perspective, at least working with the business leaders, it means a lot because that manager or that supervisor, you know, sees that person day to day, sees that employee day to day where the HR...

representative can come in kind of not necessarily with an outside perspective, but it is a little bit just because it's outside perspective of that particular department. But they know, you know, what needs to be done. And so I think that's that's where it kind of comes into play.

Daria Rudnik (08:31.402)
Yeah, yeah. I'd like to talk about your personal leadership experience because you're leading your team and like within your area of work you also influence how other people like in your partner companies, client companies, how they lead their teams. Do you have a recipe for a great leader?

Chris Farr (08:50.477)
That's a tough one, but I think the best thing a leader can do is listen to their people, and not necessarily lead from a room with a door shut. Get out there with the people that they're in charge of and listen to them, because just because you're pushing down different processes, protocols, different ideas, the direction the business is going.

the ones out on the front end, they're the ones that are doing the quote unquote wrench turning, so to speak. They're the ones that's putting the vision to work. They're the ones that's taking it and the vision that's being pushed down, they're making it happen. And so you may think from a room of leaders, this is a great idea, this is gonna work. But if you don't necessarily talk to the people that are doing it, you're really losing that whole perspective. And so you may go through it thinking everything's getting done fine.

where you may be burning employees out just from something that you push down. I think communication is the biggest part of it.

Daria Rudnik (09:50.496)
It sounds like a learned experience. Do you have a story? mean, how did you learn that?

Chris Farr (09:55.63)
Well, I mean, really just going through it because you always think that you have a great idea when you're sitting around a leadership team table and you're talking about the direction the business needs to go or that you want to go. And you think you've got this great idea that everybody signs off on and everybody's all for it. But then you look around and you just start seeing that it's just not working. And then you may just have to tweak something or you may have the wrong department even doing.

the job that needs to be done. You may need to retool it, move it to a whole different department. And we've seen that in the past. I've seen it in different places where we've had just the wrong individuals doing what we wanted done to get that end goal done. And then once you move it or you pivot or you change just a little piece of it, then it starts moving. So yeah, I've seen that multiple times.

Daria Rudnik (10:45.175)
Mm-hmm.

Well, scale ups and fast growing companies, they have to kind of navigate a lot of uncertainty and they need to change a lot. And I'm sure you've been through that when you as a leader, know that things need to be changed, but your people, don't always understand why and okay, are we changing that again? Our leadership is such a, they don't know what they're doing. They're changing their mind every second. What's the best way to support employees and people going through this?

multiple changes and constant uncertainty.

Chris Farr (11:22.049)
Yeah, you're right. The only constant in life is change. And so, yeah, it's always a thing. And the biggest part of it is going and making sure that they understand the reason for the change. know, just pushing change for the sake of change. You know, nobody likes that. And you're going to burn people out and people are just going to get tired of it. And so I think just making sure that they understand it and what's the end goal, you know, what's going to benefit the company by doing these changes.

And explaining to them too, admitting that some things maybe had been wrong. If you put something in place and you had to change it, just be honest with them. We tried this, we thought this was gonna work, we made mistakes too. And so just being open and honest through that process, I think it would just speak volumes to the employee that all they see is just a lot of changes coming down the pike.

Daria Rudnik (12:13.912)
But if you need to change something, something going on, for example, let's say mergers and acquisitions, and you know that things will be changing, but you cannot reveal that. You cannot tell them, because you know that some people will just go, will be looking for a new job, but you don't want them to go now. How do you handle a situation when you can't really tell everything is going on, but you still need to be open and honest and transparent?

Chris Farr (12:42.477)
Well, I think it starts from before that particular thing starts, because if you don't build the trust and you don't lead by example before you get to a point where you're in a situation where you can't necessarily share all the details of something that may be happening, if you lead from a good place before that, then you've got a team of people who trust your guidance and knows that at the end of the day, you're going to have their best interests in mind.

And even if it's a decision that has to be made later on down the road that technically they may not want to be made, you know, I think they know that as long as they know that you're fair, you know, about what was going on, there'll be understanding at that point, you know. And so, but if you, if you leave from a place where, know, you're constantly hiding or you're constantly not sharing or, you know, they know that you don't have their best interests.

then you get into that situation where you can't share all the details and that's when things kind of go sideways. So I think it just starts from day one, the day that you step into that leadership role, you know, being the leader that you want to be and having your employees backs. Then it makes the other conversations when you can't necessarily be open. It makes those a whole lot easier.

Daria Rudnik (13:51.872)
I I love how you're saying that because, for me, in my personal experience, the best transformations I've experienced and I've led started when they were successful because there was this culture of trust and communication and transparency. And people knew that, I mean, no matter what, we're aiming for one goal. And yes, there are cases when leaders cannot tell us everything.

but we trust them that they have our best interests at heart. We trust that they will be fair. We can survive with kind of uncertainty for a while, but when there is no trust, every small mistake, every small misalignment, everything will trigger more anxiety, more fear, more frustration. Eventually that creates a much harder transformations.

things happening with AI. Now every company basically is going through a major transformation because everyone is implementing AI. What do people experience? Okay, they're preparing a placement for me. That's why they want to build a bunch of agents that will be doing my job. They'll be fired. Or they are excited. Okay, we know that this company is there for us. They'll support us. We want to learn how to use AI. So kind of building this culture helps not only with attraction,

and engagement, but also in major transformation that organizations are going through. What do see how AI is influencing workplaces?

Chris Farr (15:26.667)
way I've seen it is that people are more or less embracing it in a manner to make the employees they have more efficient. Not necessarily looking at it from the standpoint of being able to replace a body with the AI. Because we're still in a world where people want to talk to people. so having that personal interaction, that's still important. Who knows what's going to change years down the road.

But right now though, is just in, I mean, even though it's been around a while, it's still in the infancy as far as everybody using it, you know, on a day-to-day basis. But I think people are using it in a lot of good ways, you know, just ways to take what used to take you 20 minutes to do, knocking it down to five minutes, you know. And then, so then you're still able to work in your job that you're working, but you can be more efficient in the areas, you know, that you need to be more efficient in.

Daria Rudnik (16:07.31)
you

Chris Farr (16:17.709)
And I think if you look at AI that way, and even some of the things that you do day to day that you necessarily don't like to do, or you're just not good at, which is one of those things, it's a job, you got to do it. Try to utilize the AI to help battle on. If you don't like sending a bunch of emails day to day, or you don't like proofreading, or whatever the case is, something simplistic as that. Kind of lean on AI to take care of that. Or if you have 20 emails from the same person in your inbox and you want those kind of

Just give me the highlights of it. What are the bullet points I need to look for? Lean on it for that. And I think that's what a lot of business owners that we deal with day to day, that's where they're coming to the table talking about AI in a good place. It's not really to replace an employee. And I think if you keep that in mind, you can have the best of both worlds. You can make your employees more efficient and make their day better than what it is, and then also speed up the mundane tasks.

that you just necessarily don't want to do or just takes up too much time out of your day.

Daria Rudnik (17:19.948)
Yeah, I mean, true. It's not about doing more with less. It's about doing more with the same amount of people or even doing more with more people because AI is helping people to do better work and not just replacing. I saw some kind of research sharing that humans without AI are not efficient enough. AI without humans is not efficient. So it's about collaboration, how we work together to produce great results. But how we work together is not just

what kind of tools we're using. And I'm curious like what you see in your work, in your organizations, the clients you're working with, how they building AI on top of their current processes. Like what's the process of this AI adoption in organizations that you see?

Chris Farr (18:10.283)
Well, the first thing is looking at their line of business app, you know, the application that they use day to day, whether that's a CRM, whether that's, you know, a practice management software, you know, whatever that is and looking at it from that to say, what can I do or what do we do within this application day to day that is just taking way too much time, you know, or is something that can just be automated.

And so it really varies business to business. There's not just one thing, unless you just water it down to something like looking at your emails or categorizing different things. Of course, everybody can use that across the board, but you really have to look at it on a case by case and a business by business case and say, what does this particular business need to be more efficient? And then look at it from the aspect of AI and say, okay, with AI, what's available or what tools can we leverage through AI?

to make that more efficient. So it's not really a one size fits all when it comes to AI. Everybody hears AI, you know, it just kind of jumped on that buzzword. But it's really just case by case and it's what do you need at the end of the day? Because you know, we can throw tools at you all day long and it may not be tools that really makes your day, you know, more efficient. It may be something you don't even want to use.

Daria Rudnik (19:12.876)
Yeah.

Daria Rudnik (19:21.325)
Yeah.

Chris Farr (19:26.757)
And even within the same business, if you take a business and their goal is to do A, B, and C, okay, well we can put some type of AI deployment out there to check those boxes. But there may be divisions within that same business, whether it's the HR department, whether it's the IT department, that are going to need different things within that. And that's where it kind of, you really need a either technology leader on your staff, or you need to reach out and have one as a

partner that you trust that can help you bridge that gap and kind of see the forest for the trees, so to speak, and see what you need AI-wise or really any technology-wise to move your business forward rather than just jumping on the latest fad and just hoping it's going to be a one-size-fits-all scenario.

Daria Rudnik (20:15.48)
Well, I hear for successful AI adoption, you need to have an AI officer on your team. I'm curious, is it a separate role? Is it next another C-suite executive or is it an engineer or is it, I don't know, an additional role to CTO or COO or CHRO?

Chris Farr (20:36.877)
Well, really it could vary. It depends on the size of the company and what the goal is. But for the most part, it would be more of an engineer type role who is managing that AI day to day. You may have a CTO or CIO at the C-suite level that's kind of overseeing it, setting the direction. But you really need an engineer at the end of the day to be able to tune that AI and make it work the way you want it to work. Because it's not really a set and forget kind of thing.

It's going to, you you're going to constantly want to grow upon that, you know, and you you put this facet in and it's working fine. Okay, well what else can we do? You know, and somebody at that, at that leadership team table or, you know, someone in the organization is going to have a different idea. So if you don't have an engineer either in-house or, you know, you can outsource it too, you know, if you don't have the expertise, you know, internally to be able to help kind of just to build that because that's the worst thing to assume also is that you could just get it, put it in place one time and then you're done with it.

You have to kind of keep constantly grooming it and it's going to be growing with you. And so yeah, I think it's at the engineer level, it's probably going to take both, but you need somebody there who can turn those dials and get them dialed in just like you want it.

Daria Rudnik (21:49.096)
Yeah, I heard someone saying, I have so much like, we've automated so many things, we got lost in all of those automations. What do we need to do? How can we manage all of these automations? How can we update them? How can we make sure that they actually align with the process? If processes changes, like that should be reflected in our automation? I had episodes with some of the HR leaders who were basically leading AI transformation because they were showing

example, hey, let's do that. Hey, here's how we can do that. They arranged hackathons. They arranged this learning so people learn how to use AI. How do you see from your practice or maybe an ideal world, what's the role of HR in AI transformation?

Chris Farr (22:36.821)
Well, mean, that's a good department to have it kind of spearheaded in, you know, as far as the ideas that can be put into place for the company, you know, and more or less from a thought leader type environment, you know, that can push that down to the engineer, you know, that we had talked about, or even push it over to the chief technology officer, you know, whatever other C-suite employee that may wear that hat at the end of the day.

because usually from a technical standpoint, they're going to be looking at the tech side of it, where HR is going to be looking at the day-to-day operations of what's really needed to move this forward, to make life easier on the employees. so, the HR department could be a great thought leader from the AI standpoint.

Daria Rudnik (23:23.416)
Well, it's definitely it's tech part, it's operation, but it's also a skills part because we want people to know how to use AI. don't want them to fall into some kind of using AI outputs without critically evaluating it. We want them to notice and find those hallucinations or biases or whatever AI can give us. So it's about building the skill of critical thinking, kind of system thinking, basically literacy, obviously.

The other thing organizations need is building governance around AI, like who's making decisions, what should be automated, what should not be automated. Well, if we talk about European countries, they have this European AI Act. I know some other countries, have maybe some other local AI Act. And I'm sure we'll have more of these regulations around AI. So how can HR people partner or should they be partners in that process of building this?

AI governance systems in organizations.

Chris Farr (24:24.013)
think they should from the standpoint of what AI are we going to use and not use from a business standpoint. and like you said, just that governance of, know, this is what we're allowing, this is what we're not allowing. And so yeah, if they don't have a seat at that table to be able to help kind of, you know, do that in the beginning before it gets any larger within the company. Yeah, I think that would be a bad idea if you don't let them in, you know, at the beginning and let them out, let them through, you know, let them be in that process, you know, as this is building.

Daria Rudnik (24:29.772)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Farr (24:52.875)
Because also too, that's just another type of policy or just different protocols that are new that that employee's going to have to abide by. And so if they don't know what we allow, what we don't allow, that's going to be problems. Because you don't want them just using any type of AI or installing just anything on their computer AI related just because it makes their job easier. Because that particular product may not have been vetted by the company. So you don't know exactly what you're allowing access to.

Daria Rudnik (25:17.75)
Really have them.

How can you make sure people don't use chat GPT for work?

Chris Farr (25:24.493)
You're right.

Daria Rudnik (25:27.79)
That's true. Well, thanks so much. Yes. Thanks for sharing your experience with how you as a business leader partner with HR leaders, how you as a leader build your own leadership team and build your team and develop them through clear communication, listening them first. And I'm going to ask you a few rapid fire questions to get to know a little more about you as a person. Are you ready for that? Okay. Are you a tea person or a coffee person?

Chris Farr (25:53.121)
I'm ready.

Chris Farr (25:57.965)
coffee.

Daria Rudnik (25:58.702)
Dogs or cats?

Would you rather take a message or a phone call?

Chris Farr (26:05.517)
Yeah.

Daria Rudnik (26:06.914)
really? What did you want to be when you were a kid?

Chris Farr (26:12.749)
wanted to work in IT surprisingly and it worked out.

Daria Rudnik (26:19.21)
What's one rule you've broken and don't regret?

Chris Farr (26:22.893)
speeding. Yeah, just driving a little too fast.

Daria Rudnik (26:30.318)
Yeah, some people share the same on the show. Yeah, I know it's this feeling of speed and control. Well, Chris, that was a great conversation. Thanks for being here today with us. Thanks for sharing your experience. How people can reach out to you, how people can find you.

Chris Farr (26:36.685)
In a hurry.

Chris Farr (26:51.853)
LinkedIn, that's the best place there. So yeah, any questions, concerns, anything they want to bring up, that's the place.

Daria Rudnik (26:58.88)
And we have the link in the notes of this episode to this episode. Well, thank you so much for being here and to our listeners, thanks for listening to the episode. If you like it, please rate it five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for the next episodes. Bye.