Erin McAuley, chief people officer Springline Advisory, shares how to drive continuous transformation during challenging times.
By Debbie Bolla
HRO Today: What’s the biggest challenge you are currently facing and what are your plans to overcome it?
Erin McAuley: The biggest challenge I’m currently facing is shaping a culture of innovation in a traditionally risk-averse industry. We need to be bolder than we ever have been before because innovation and risk management can coexist. Success isn’t about taking wild, unfounded swings or innovating for the sake of innovating—no, success is about taking calculated risks and innovating meaningfully. We’re striving to be an organization that invests deeply in transformation to co-create the firm of the future together. This is the core foundation of our “Scale with Soul” credo at Springline.
HROT: What drives successful transformation at your organization?
McAuley: We have a foundation around the three “Vs” of successful transformation: vision, velocity, and village, and they all play off one another. When employees are bought into and a part of the vision, they can help you spot what’s helping or hindering the velocity toward the shared vision. As a member of the village, you can give them co-authorship and foster a sense of ownership. When you give people authorship and the ability to co-create, they become more engaged because changes aren’t happening to them, but rather with them and through them.
HROT: How can HR apply them to their work?
McAuley: Let’s take company culture as an example. If you want to cultivate a winning culture, you cannot simply preserve the current culture. You have to plan for how everyone is going to evolve and grow together.
This means getting every employee involved in authoring that culture—both quantitatively through things like structured assessments and qualitatively through storytelling and conversations. From there, it will continue to develop over time as everyone remains involved and engaged. This ensures alignment as you evolve, grow, and celebrate what has been created. The last piece of the puzzle is to demonstrate the culture as who you are together—a team that’s playing to win, not just to not lose.
HROT: What is one of your favorite ways to spend free time?
McAuley: Over last summer, my family and I got really into watching the Olympics, especially Simone Biles’ comeback. Her return to the mat was a lesson in leadership. Sure, she could have pushed herself to be at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, but instead, she prioritized her health and well-being and took a step back from the spotlight. In our always-on hustle culture, some people saw this as being risk averse, but I disagree. She weighed her options and decided that the risk in Tokyo was not one that was worth taking for her, and it took strength and confidence to make that choice.
It required boldness and innovation to come back in 2024, and now she has 11 Olympic medals as well as 30 World Championship medals. She’s the most decorated gymnast of all time and is widely considered to be one of the greatest gymnasts ever. She is a winner because she understands how to balance innovation and risk, and that’s a lesson we can all take into the professional sphere to drive meaningful success.
Erin McAuley is chief people officer at Springline Advisory.
