HR as the CEO’s Secret Weapon: Leading People, AI, and Growth with Mary Kelly
In this episode of the Build by People Leaders podcast, host Daria Rudnik speaks with Dr. Mary C. Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy commander and executive leadership advisor. They explore how HR leaders can earn a seat at the executive table, lead organizational transformation, and leverage AI while keeping people at the center. Mary shares insights from her extensive leadership experience, emphasizing problem-solving, mentorship, and proactive involvement in both business and technology initiatives. The conversation highlights how HR directors are uniquely positioned to develop leaders, drive engagement, and even prepare for executive roles like CEO.
Key Takeaways - HR prevents problems before they escalate.Strategic HR is about creating solutions, not just managing issues. - Small gestures drive engagement. Simple recognition and personal connection can dramatically boost motivation and productivity. - HR leads the AI transformation. Technology is a tool—success comes from guiding people on how to use it effectively. - HR experience prepares you for the CEO role. Understanding people, processes, regulations, and budgets builds the foundation for strategic leadership.
Daria Rudnik (00:02.474) Welcome to Build by People Leaders podcast brought to you by Adra.ai, your AI-powered coach for leaders in tech. I'm your host, Darya Rudnik, and this show is for HR and L &D leaders in scale-ups and fast-growing companies, those who are building AI-ready organizations. And today I have a very special guest with me, Dr. Mary C. Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy commander, economist, and executive leadership advisor.
She works closely with HR, C-Suite and Allende leaders inside fast growing organizations who are trying to do two hard things at once. Building leadership capability at speed and earn credibility at the executive table while everything is changing. So thanks for being here, Mary. I'm so excited to have this conversation.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (00:53.196) Now is the best time ever to be a human resources director because things are changing and HR is leading.
Daria Rudnik (01:02.602) I love it. Okay, that's an amazing start. Well, tell us about your journey. I mean, you've been in so many different roles. Tell us about that.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (01:11.768) I was very fortunate. I was in the US Navy for about 25 years. Most of that time was in Asia. So I am very accustomed to dealing with big people issues. At the height of my responsibilities, I was in charge of about 26,000 people, billion dollar budgets, large areas like military bases, lots of buildings, lots of logistics, things like that. So I am used to dealing with
very big problems, but every big problem is solved by one person doing their job. And that's why HR is so important.
Daria Rudnik (01:52.48) I mean, I love it. And well, you've worked with huge organization, thousands of people, big budgets, but now you're helping companies in scale-ups and fast-growing companies, they're much smaller.
What advice, what can you bring on the table with them? How do you, how your experience helps them?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (02:17.674) One of the things I tell all of my C-suite leaders, my CEOs, my CFOs, my CFOs, everybody, is if you don't have your HR director sitting at that table, you are making a critical error and it will cost you. It's gonna cost you in money, it's gonna cost you in people, it's gonna cost you in talent. Because right now, every organization has a challenge. And I use an acronym for this. It's a US acronym, I apologize for the English.
but it is how do we be armed? How do we attract, recruit and retain, mentor, manage, evolve and develop, not just our people, but the organization. So we need to attract the right people and then we need to keep the right people. And the way you keep the right people is yes, you manage them, but more importantly, you mentor them. And then we have to evolve our thinking.
And that means leading the organization. right now, and I know we're going to talk about it, AI is a huge part of this revolution that we are seeing. And we as HR need to be leading that because operations isn't, sales isn't, we've got to be the ones leading this. And then we have to develop not only our people, but we've got to be the ones to develop our bosses, our leaders.
So many times people think of the HR person as an ancillary job that just handles problems when the problems occur. But a good HR director is going to be there to prevent the problems from erupting in the first place. And they're going to be the ones when somebody says, want to do that. A lot of times people say, well, HR is going to tell me why I can't. Between HR and the lawyers, they're going to tell me why I can't.
And I'm here to say HR is going to tell you this is how we're going to do this. HR is all about the how and the possibilities. So again, the acronym my love is armed. How do we attract, recruit and retain, mentor, manage, evolve and develop our current and next generation of leaders, but also our clients and our customers. Because wouldn't it be great if our clients and customers never looked for anywhere else except working with us. And that's what we want.
Daria Rudnik (04:36.706) I love it. mean, I love the acronym. what the thing you said about HR helping leaders and kind of developing leaders and sharing, like saying how they can do things. Well, the question is, when you tell someone, your clients, your CEOs, you work with someone you work with, that they need to invite their HR to the table. That's one thing. Well, let's say someone is in HR in a middle-sized company, medium-sized company, and they don't have anyone to tell their CEO.
that they need to be invited. How can they earn their place at the table? How can they prove themselves? How can they do that?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (05:14.88) Mm-hmm. So many times people look at HR as not part of the C-suite, which is a huge mistake. And if your organization is taking that path, you need to correct it. And here's why. Every morning, I was an HR director. I was an HR director for about 3,000 people. And I worked for, in that job, I worked for a man who was not very smart. I'll be honest, he wasn't very smart.
And every day I would go in his office and say, what problems are you dealing with today? And he would go down the list of problems. And I would say, of those problems, which ones do you want me to handle? And he would go, wait, you can handle all these problems? I'm like, yes, boss, that's what I do. And he's like, okay. And at the end of the day, I would come back and tell him I solved all these problems. And then I would repeat that the next day and the next day and the next day. And then finally I said, boss,
You know that morning meeting you have with everybody else where you discuss all the problems? Maybe I should be at that morning meeting so that we don't have to have this conversation every single day and waste your time. Number one, a good HR director takes work off the boss's plate. That's critical. When people, when your boss sees you as the solution to the problems, now it's not just.
they invite you to the table, they assume you're gonna be at the table. And if you're not at the table, you say, you know, I need you to understand that I would be more effective if I had a better idea of everything else that's going on. I need to be at the table. And then you debrief them afterwards. You're the one who's got their ear. So then you say, by the way, this is happening because of this and this and this, and this is how we're gonna fix it.
show up and have the solutions. And that is how you not only earn your seat at the table, but you become the most important person at the table, even if you're not the one doing most of the talking.
Daria Rudnik (07:23.118) I so much agree. love that. Solving problems because in many cases, I did that as well, coming to my CEO and saying, hey, here is the problem. I need you to do this, this, and that. I'm sharing my problems with them. We have problems with people. We have bad retention. We have low engagement. We need to pour more money into leadership development rather than asking what they see as a problem and help them solve them.
Like there was a case when the product was not, the sales were not good in this product. what we do, we train people how to either do better product or sell better. Something that can help business grow. Something that solves their problems, not adds, like not adding more problems to their plate. Yeah, love that.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (08:12.984) That's exactly right. And most, let's face it, most of the issues we deal with are people issues. I am fond of saying that in a relationship or in business, the way you get things done is people. The things where the way you screw things up is also people. So we have to make sure we do it right. And it is so much more efficient and more effective and better cost savings if we just do it right from the beginning.
And so one of the things I love to do is just say, I know that in the past, a lot of HR directors kind of acted like a school teacher, telling people what they couldn't do. You know, can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do that. So as a result, people got the idea that if they had to go to talk to HR, it was kind of being sent to the school principal's office. That's how they felt. And instead, position yourself as a strategist.
to help people do the things they wanna do. We wanna launch this new product and it's gonna be more work for the marketing team and the sales team and the design team. Now, how do we sell it to those people? So that they don't say, no, this is more work, I need more money, this is new responsibility. What you do is you make it a, this is one of the things I did, is we are going to create like the A team, a selective team of people.
who if you are selected for this, this is a very big honor and you're going to be at the forefront and you meet with the CEO and you meet with this team of core people and you're going to be the first to know. So people were competing to get on this A team because it meant that they were super special. And at the end of the day, we all know what people want is to feel valued by their boss, by their supervisor and by the organization. We know people want to be heard.
We know people wanna feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. We know that people want a sense of identity, not everybody the same, but they want a sense of identity, a sense of shared common interest, and they want excitement at work. We know that studies show employees view relationships at work more important than the supervisors.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (10:33.314) The supervisors tend to think of employees as more transactional, where employees are looking for that relationship. They want to feel special. So if you can help people feel like they are part of something really special and exclusive, they will not only rise up to that occasion and deliver what you need, but they're gonna be excited about doing it in the process.
Daria Rudnik (10:56.579) You know, while you're saying that, kind of think, well, I'm sure you've had those kind of bosses who think we're here to pay them. We're not here to entertain them, motivate them, create this A plus players team. They need to do the job. How do you deal with those people?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (11:17.482) I was coaching a CEO who we were walking. I remember this. were in New York City and we're walking into his big building and I'm walking kind of next to him and people are saying, good morning, Mr. Smith. Good morning, Mr. Smith. Good morning. How are you, Mr. Smith? Hello, Mr. Smith. And he ignored them. He was rude. We get up to his office and I'm like, what was that? And he's like, what do you mean? I said, people are saying hello to you and you are ignoring them. And he says, his words, he says,
They pay me to run this company, not be nice to people. And I said, you know what? I said, you're right. You are paid to run this company. But I'm going to tell you that one of the reasons this company works or not is because of these people. In fact, that's the biggest reason. And if you're not nice to these people, you should not be surprised when they show up and they're not giving you 100%. And Gallup just came out with a worldwide poll last week.
that said 22 % of employees are engaged at work, which means, easy math, 78 % of your employees are not fully engaged. And it's because of stuff like this. If you were just nice to people, people would be better engaged. People would be more productive. People would be better at their jobs. People would tell their friends that this is a great place to work, but you're just being mean and rude, and that is a turnoff, not only for them, but for me.
for your clients, who wants to see this? So then he said, same guy, he says, well, I guess I could fake caring about people. Lord, so sure, go ahead, being authentic, go ahead. And I said, okay, we're gonna start small. I said, we're gonna go back downstairs and we're gonna walk through these people and this is what you're gonna do. I want you to walk over to these people, we're gonna choose five, we're gonna start small, five.
And I want you to walk over and say, good morning. It is very nice to see you hold out your hand, shake their hand and say, thanks for being here today. That's all it takes. That's all it takes. So we did that and people were like, so all of a sudden the guy is being, you know, they're a little suspicious at first. And so they're like, nice to see you, nice to see you a little suspicious. And we get back up to his office. said, now that took seven minutes. What do you think is going to happen next?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (13:43.906) He's like, I don't know. said, they're gonna go talk to their friends and say, Mr. Smith just talked to me. Did he talk to you? They're gonna feel a little bit special. Even suspicious, they'll feel special. I said, all you have to do is do that every day. And now, instead of five, we're gonna go to 10. We're gonna do more. And he says, I don't have time for this. They always say that. I said, you know what? You don't have time not to. If you have to make a decision between answering
two more emails about something that's not important or telling people that they are important, I'm going to tell you, you need to err on the side of the people every.
Daria Rudnik (14:24.847) I love the story. That's an amazing story. It's a great example. And like, since you mentioned Gallup research with like 22 % people engaged and sometimes it's 22, sometimes it's 28, but I think it's never above 30. The interesting thing is that when people join your company, they are engaged, 100 % engaged. So all of your people at some point of time were 100 % engaged and then they lost their motivation.
So there was no need to motivate people or engage people, just shake their hands, say how thankful you are, build good processes, create amazing organization. They will stay engaged because they came to you engaged. I love this story.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (15:08.652) It's exactly right. And we demotivate people, which means we can also motivate people. If people showed up motivated and now they're not motivated, somebody along the way demotivated them. There's always the question, can you actually motivate people? I would say yes, because you can definitely demotivate them. If you can demotivate them, you can certainly motivate them.
Daria Rudnik (15:32.207) Well, you mentioned AI and I love the topic and it's a huge influence. It changes work dynamics, it changes how we think and how we work. And obviously HR need to be part of this AI transformation in organization. But in most cases, we're not. Like in most cases, there is either a CTO or like someone in charge of R &D or even chief AI officer, but not HR. Why do you think that is?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (16:01.012) Yes. Okay. So because AI is technology, we tend to think that technology people are going to lead the AI revolution. And that is simply not true. And here's why. Their job is to get the tool, which is the AI, into your hands, but they don't know how you're using it. So because they're not using it like you are,
They can't lead this. It's the difference between the person who builds the bicycle and the person who rides the bicycle. You, HR, you are riding the bicycle. And when you're riding the bicycle, you know how the gears work. You know if the brakes are working. You know when it's comfortable. The person who builds the bicycle and never rides the bicycle has a totally different relationship with the bicycle. AI is a tool. Your IT department, they're fabulous, but they're not using it like you are.
So when you think of all the possibilities of AI, and I would even ask AI, I would go into Claude and Perplexity and Chat and Gemini and all of them. And I love all of them. I have the suite where you have the full component of about 3,000 different tools. And I go in there and I try to do something with AI every single day because I need to learn. So it's something that you have to learn every day.
Just try it 15 minutes, put it on your calendar with your morning cup of coffee or tea, whatever you like, and just spend 15 minutes learning. Make an effort to learn, number one, because you are the user. Second, your IT department is gonna help you make sure that you're not getting into a place that's gonna compromise your systems. That's their job, and I get that.
but you're gonna have to be the one to lead it for everybody else. Sales isn't gonna lead this, marketing is not gonna lead this, operations isn't gonna lead this in most cases. So when you find a tool that you think might be helpful, this is how you embed yourself with your leadership by being helpful. You say, we are hiring three more people in this year.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (18:14.624) So my gentle suggestion is this is how you take your job descriptions and this is how we are using AI to make these job descriptions more interesting. Boom, here's this. The problem is in many organizations, people think hiring, firing, that's HR's problem. No, it is everybody's issue. But you have to get them into that because if people just pigeonhole you as the person who does the hiring and firing, they are not engaged in the hiring and firing.
So I, and I had one, I had one guy in one department and he was horrible with his people. And he says, I'm just gonna have to keep, you know, having people hired and fired until I, until HR sends me good people. It had nothing to do with HR. It had everything to do with, he was just a terrible boss. So again, this goes back to the part where we have to mentor and manage our leaders and lead our leaders. That's our job is to lead our leaders.
So if I'm an HR director today, I would say, hey, go into one of these AIs. How can I, as the HR director of this company, better use AI to support my people? And look at the suggestions and then say, OK, I like that idea. How do I do this better using AI? How do I make a presentation stronger? How do I do better company research? How do I help find candidates in places that we
haven't perhaps looked. Ask AI to help you use AI. I know that sounds crazy.
Daria Rudnik (19:50.189) I love that. mean, again, it's a great learning tool. lot of people, majority of people using AI for learning. And so if you're not familiar with this tool, go and try it. And obviously, like you said, if companies going into AI transformation, well, someone has built the tool, but someone will be using the tool and someone HR need to train people and help them learn how to use the tool, help people get together and
decide on kind of what is the policies, what's the governance for this AI, because it cannot be decided by, again, by tech people, by lawyers. It needs to be a collaborative effort to create those policies and governance, and HR are the ones who can facilitate that. And it's a lot about how our brain works, about critical thinking, evaluating AI outputs, how you work with AI. And again, that's HR job to train people on that.
like fully supported, HR definitely need to be part of this. And if you're not there yet, go to chat.gpt and cloud and learn. It's fun. I promise you it's going to be fun.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (20:55.422) It is. the other thing that I've seen very recently was somebody, and again, I was in the company and somebody said, yeah, we're going to hire a 20 year old to manage our AI. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. They don't know anything either. So everybody thinks it's a generation thing that is AI. I'm like, they don't know anything either. They didn't grow up with this. Nobody did. This is brand new. I said, there's nothing from stopping you at your age. The guy was about 50.
I said, you need to be smart on this because it's a tool. This is like you owning a construction company and not understanding how a hammer works. You have to understand how the tools work. I said, and there's nothing that says your younger folks are gonna be any better at this than you are. So you've got all this experience and are you telling me you don't wanna learn? And he actually looked at me and said, I'm tired.
I'm not sure I can understand it. And that's when I realized that he's a little bit scared. He's a little bit scared of looking dumb, of not understanding, and he's a little bit worried about being pushed out because he doesn't understand. And I'm like, look, nobody understands it. We're all learning together, but you gotta be willing to learn at every age.
Daria Rudnik (22:17.069) That's a great point. I no one knows. I we're still in this experimentation stage. was no, there were no clear answers. Even if you are an AI developer, there's still lots that you don't know about AI.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (22:28.204) And people are saying the pace of change is very fast. It is. And I had a group of people yesterday and I said, you know how it feels like things are moving really quickly? This is as slow as technology is ever gonna be for the rest of your life. It's just gonna get faster. And they all went,
Daria Rudnik (22:48.953) Yeah, true. Okay. Well, I love you the stories you're sharing, but I know we have one story. We'll keep it till the end. And it's a story about how being a chat director can actually prepare you to become a chief of police and CEO. Why being a chat director is the best training to become a great CEO. We'll tell the story later, but for now I want to ask kind of some questions about you, some rapid fire questions.
Are you ready? Okay. So,
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (23:20.397) Yes.
Daria Rudnik (23:27.311) Are you a tea person or a coffee person?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (23:29.955) Coffee.
Daria Rudnik (23:31.779) Dogs or cats?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (23:33.25) Dogs, I have two.
Daria Rudnik (23:35.156) are you morning, person or night owl?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (23:38.164) Morning at night I get sleepy and I like to go to bed early
Daria Rudnik (23:42.223) Do you prefer to take a message or a phone call?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (23:47.4) messages because I can take a message quickly and respond really quickly. I love talking to people, but if it's just something fast, can you get this done? Do this, do that. To me, messages are very efficient and I love efficiency.
Daria Rudnik (24:01.935) OK, what did you want to be when you were a kid?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (24:05.72) I wanted to become a veterinarian more than anything. More than anything, I wanted to save all the dogs and cats and gerbils and turtles and parrots and ferrets and everything else.
Daria Rudnik (24:09.604) NNNN
Daria Rudnik (24:16.089) And now you have two dogs.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (24:17.834) Now I just have two dogs.
Daria Rudnik (24:20.429) Where do you go when you need perspective?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (24:23.422) I will do two things. If I need to clear my head, I will read a fiction book on something I would never pay attention to. Most of my work, it's all reading business books, leadership books, people books, all that. When I need to give my brain a break, I will read a fiction book about something that has nothing to do with work.
Daria Rudnik (24:47.343) What's one rule you've broken but don't regret?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (24:53.782) Well, I'm a big fan of not breaking the law in general, like a law, but there was a time when I needed for someone else, someone else needed to collect an insurance policy. And the person who could authorize this had died. And they just needed, in order to get the death certificate, I needed a signature.
And well, I may or may not have forged that signature of somebody who had died. had their ID, I had their permission, but still they were kind of dead.
Daria Rudnik (25:32.247) Yeah, well that's a story.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (25:34.382) That's a little weird, I know.
Daria Rudnik (25:36.047) What's one habit or phrase that people say it's totally you?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (25:42.638) Get it done. You know, we say that, you get it done, know, get it done in the south of the United States, get it done. They will say that I'm that person who's going to get it done.
Daria Rudnik (25:53.616) Oh, that's amazing. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Mary. It was great having this conversation. We still have the story to share, so stay with us. But before we go to the story, how people can reach out to you, how they can have continue this conversation with you.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (26:09.388) My website is productiveleaders.com. I am Mary, M-A-R-Y, at productiveleaders.com. I do answer all my own emails. And at productiveleaders.com, if you do that plus forward slash free, you're going to get a whole host of free business resources, checklists, productivity guides, leadership guides, all kinds of things, totally free, no sign in.
We just want to help people be better leaders.
Daria Rudnik (26:39.919) Great. Okay. All the links are in the notes to this episode. So make sure you follow those links, download those materials and become better leaders. Well, okay. Now please tell us the story. Like why do you think HR, being HR director is the best preparation for becoming a CEO?
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (26:58.934) I think HR directors have all of the skills that makes a great CEO. The number three things, the top three things that gets CEOs fired are they don't understand HR issues. They don't understand the rules around hiring and firing people. HR directors do. The number two thing, they don't understand industry regulations. Even if they work in that industry, if you're a construction CEO,
You have to understand the industry regulations around construction. HR directors understand the regulations. They have to because that's part of the hiring process is knowing what you're hiring. The number three issue that gets CEOs in trouble and gets them fired is they get in financial trouble. They don't understand all of the budgetary constraints, restraints and the process. Guess who understands that? The HR directors.
Why? Because they're working closely with your chief financial officers. They're working with the accountants. They are managing budgets every day. So the top three skill sets that people need, HR, this is just in terms of knowledge, HR, industry regulations and finance, HR directors do. But the number one thing that gets CEOs into trouble is they fail to make a human connection.
with the people who could make them the most successful. Every single HR director I know got into HR because they love people and they really want to help people do well. And if every CEO could understand that, they'd be successful.
Daria Rudnik (28:40.821) Amazing. Well, that's your playbook to becoming a CEO, to becoming an amazing HR director. Thanks for sharing this. Thanks for sharing your story and all of those insights that you have. Connect with Mary Kelly on LinkedIn, go to her website, download materials. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Commander Mary Kelly (29:01.4) Thank you so much, it was such a pleasure.