Jason Desentz, CHRO at Toshiba USA

Show Notes

Reinventing a 150‑Year‑Old Startup: Toshiba’s CHRO on Influence, COEs, and AI

Summary

How do you modernize a century-old manufacturer under private equity—while unifying fragmented HR teams and systems?

Jason Richard Desentz, Chief Human Resources Officer for Toshiba in the Americas, breaks down what it really takes to lead transformation at scale. With roots in Detroit automotive and training in Lean Six Sigma, plus an MBA and DBA, Jason explains why today’s CHRO must think like a business operator first.

He shares a simple but powerful career framework—rotating between HR centers of excellence and field roles (“work on” vs. “work in” the process)—that builds credibility and speed. Jason also unpacks the politics of change: how to socialize ideas early, tailor the pitch, and win stakeholder buy-in. He frames AI as an enhancement, not a replacement, and makes the case for cultures that embrace smart risk-taking and fast learning from mistakes.

Expect practical guidance on consolidating legacy orgs, avoiding complacency, and bringing Gen Z voices to the table—all while keeping the business, people, and process aligned.

Timestamps

[00:45] – CHRO scope at Toshiba: PE-backed reinvention and consolidating standalone units

[03:23] – From legacy to reinvention: “a 150-year-old startup” mindset to refresh processes and culture

[06:45] – The modern CHRO: business acumen, P&L fluency, and Lean roots

[07:32] – COEs vs. field HR: “work on” vs. “work in” the process and career pathing

[09:49] – Influence over edict: politics, context, and stakeholder buy-in

[12:11] – AI as enhancement, not replacement; right- vs. left-brain leadership

[14:03] – Normalize mistakes: psychological safety, coaching, and the 5% rule

[19:02] – Closing playbook: persistence, calibration, and learning from Gen Z/Alpha

Takeaways

- Audit legacy processes with a startup lens to align with future culture and strategy.

- Sharpen business fluency—P&L, operations, and Lean—to elevate HR’s strategic impact.

- Rotate between COE and field roles; volunteer for cross-functional projects to accelerate learning.

- Socialize early and sell smart: build context, coalition, and influence before implementation.

- Treat AI as an enhancement: blend left-brain data with right-brain values; calibrate tools to your org.

- Create psychological safety for calculated risk-taking; learn fast from mistakes and move on.

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What is HR Voices?

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.

Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.

There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.

HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”

Rebecca Taylor (00:17)
Hello and welcome to this episode of HR Voices. I'm here with Jason Desentz. He's the Chief Human Resources Officer at Toshiba. And I'm so excited to have him here because we were just talking a little bit about some things that I think are really going to resonate with our audience here. And I said, wait, Let's start hitting record so we can talk about it when people can hear about it. So Jason, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Jason Richard Desentz (00:38)
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm looking forward to the discussion.

Rebecca Taylor (00:42)
Yeah, me too. So I'm going to start with kind of the very beginning just to sort of set the lay of the land. So CHR of Toshiba, obviously big company working in the manufacturing space. What's it like being in a role like that? How many employees are you overseeing? Who's under your remit? I'm going to start with one simple big question.

Jason Richard Desentz (00:59)
Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. Wow. Let's just throw out the big one. You know, it's not what I thought it was going to be years ago when I was starting my career as an HR professional. Like, I've been a CHRO. I've had the privilege of being in this level of role for over 10 years now.

⁓ And you learn a lot, you also have a lot of falsehoods about what the role is, but also the roles changed. So the role, when I first saw it as a junior role was more around, you know, politics.

lack of a better term, feel good stuff in HR. Not that CSR activities aren't important, but just talking about that, really no substance. I'll be honest. It was more about making people feel good. You have a good culture, happy environment. And I think with me being in the role in Toshiba is in the Americas, which I'm over, is in a shift, has been over the last couple of years. ⁓ They were bought out by private equity and were...

And they're in the process of consolidating, doing some really great things to better the stance of the organization. So someday we can go back being public. That's always the goal, right? Whenever that happens. So they brought in me as a leader of one of the leaders to bring in to kind of help with that vision and that strategy to bring together the way Toshiba has typically operated, at least here in the United States, has been mostly as they do acquisitions, the company sometimes runs standalone. So you may have multiple companies in the same region. You have different HR teams.

You have different payroll systems. It runs its own independence. So finally, think recently they're bringing them all back, which is great. So my background's kind of been a hodgepodge of different things, but transformation and transition has been most of that. I grew up in the automotive industry in Detroit. So I saw a lot in the late 90s, early 2000s of consolidation and then Lean Six Sigma principles helping to bring back the best of any kind of process.

right, and continuous improvement. the role itself is different. Now today's HCHRO has to be very much a business person. So I'm also educated both as a master's in business and a doctorate in business. So why did I do that? Well, that's because in order for me to be an effective HR leader, I have to understand how businesses run. I have to appreciate things in the P &L. I have to understand how operations and continuous improvement. ⁓

know, Lean Six Sigma works. In order to do that, I had to educate myself. And that has helped me really connect quickly with leaders because I can somewhat see it from their perspective. And I've had the luxury before joining Toshiba of owning my own consultant firm where I've got a chance to see other organizations and other industries.

Rebecca Taylor (03:34)
Yeah, that's cool. So you got to witness kind of everything to really kind of embed yourself in a business when you're really trying to overhaul lots of things probably at the same time, right? Because transformation, going from public to private equity, going back to public again eventually, that's no small feat for any company, but especially for a company that's, how old is Tashiba? It's like a hundred something years old, right? Yeah. Yeah. Happy birthday.

Jason Richard Desentz (03:36)
We'll see you guys later.

150 years old, 150 last year.

So it's yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. And I've had the

privilege of also working in startups and startups, a whole nother challenge, right? Because you got to look at it. And so the way I kind of look at Toshiba, and it's funny you mentioned that 150 year at one point, I used to say that it's like a 150 year old startup. You kind of have to. And that's not a negative. What I mean by that is we have to look at every single process all over again as if it were new and decide whether or not that fits our current culture. Is that going to fit our future? If not, what do I need to do to change?

And if so, what are the components and who do I need to talk to to make sure that we're all aligned together?

Rebecca Taylor (04:34)
Yeah, I'd argue it's funny because I

come from startups. I've worked for big companies, but startups are always kind of where I've really found my nation, where my heart always is. And I always argue that I feel like every company needs to operate like a startup in some ways, right? Because you have to be constantly looking for ways to change the way that people change, the way that technology changes. It's like you have to kind of keep on the edge of innovation without sounding like a, I don't know, a keynote buzzword, but it's, you know, it's easy to fall behind if not.

Jason Richard Desentz (04:45)
Okay, I would agree.

No, you know, it's interesting. saw her name was Andrea Young. She used to be the CEO of Avon and I had the privilege of seeing her probably back in, well, I'm going to say this is 20 years ago, 06. And during that time frame, she did a, I was in the automotive industry and she did a presentation to all the executives teams and stuff. And what she said was that she did a turnaround of Avon. It was a dying breed in the late nineties. I mean, it was like your mom's kind of company, Avon calling kind of thing. what she did is she, yeah, exactly.

Rebecca Taylor (05:10)
Mmm.

It's like if Edward scissor hands, yeah.

Jason Richard Desentz (05:33)
She innovated it in such a way that they became profitable. But what she realized is that then she became complacent. And then she said, my biggest mistake was that you have to kind of keep reinventing. You have to kind of keep re-upping the culture every so often and refreshing it. And that was a big aha moment for me when she said that because she herself, who was a change agent, became stagnant. So she's encouraging all other leaders to constantly, like you said, that's where a startup is a great example.

Rebecca Taylor (05:58)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Richard Desentz (06:03)
because

you have to look at it as new, because there's nothing in place. So if you took that same approach and said, let's go take a look at this room. I haven't been in here in a while. Let me make sure there's no dust. Let me make sure things are still working. And too often we don't do that because we can become complacent, unfortunately.

Rebecca Taylor (06:20)
Yeah, it's so interesting because you talked about how the role of the CHRO has changed so much even just in the last 10 years. I think that I talked to so many HR people who are kind of trying to figure out what the CHRO role is becoming, how to prepare for it, how to do it. So I'm curious, when you look at kind of evaluating things and kind of avoiding complacency and kind of figuring that out, how does that apply to how you've seen?

Jason Richard Desentz (06:24)
Yes.

Rebecca Taylor (06:45)
HR evolve and what are some things that folks that might be listening to this might want to think about as they're kind of figuring out their way.

Jason Richard Desentz (06:53)
Yeah, if I could give any and I do this a lot, I love to give back what I can. So, you know, others have done the same for me and I always tell others that I coach that it's their job to give back as well someday to keep the keep the momentum. But if you think of each other's two sides, so they have a triangle split between two. So you have two sides. One side, you have your centers of excellence. These are your program generators. So compensation benefits total talent management, excuse me, talent acquisition.

Rebecca Taylor (07:06)
Yes.

Jason Richard Desentz (07:22)
And then on the other side of it, and there's a lot more COEs and on the other side of it, you have your in the field HR people, right? These are those that take those tools and then they go and implement them. if comp comes up with, hey, we've got merit processing this, you know, coming up this month, I need you business partners and.

Rebecca Taylor (07:31)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Richard Desentz (07:41)
field people to go work with your leaders and get it filled out and so we can get it in the system. So then they throw it over. So the folks that create the stuff is what I call working on the process. So they're creating the processes for HR. Hopefully they're asking the field people, does this make sense? Will your managers go nuts if we don't do this right? ⁓ And then the field people are those that have to implement it. So they're the implementers and I call those working in the process. So they have the creators or those that work on the process. Then you have the implementers, those that work in it.

Rebecca Taylor (08:06)
Mmm.

Mm.

Jason Richard Desentz (08:11)
And the

reason why this is important and why I split it because what I tell people is in your career as an HR professional you should be bouncing back and forth between these two sides of the triangle as you rise in your career. Well why is that important? Because it's those that are at my level now that are very successful are those that have done just that and they don't necessarily have to sit in a chair. I will tell you I've sat in almost every chair in HR minus two.

payroll and benefits. But guess what? I've been leading payroll and benefits for the last 10 years. I obviously I know what I'm doing or I know enough now to be dangerous. But also what I did along the way to get educated was if there was a project that let's say was on payroll or a project that was on benefits in HR, I immediately raised my hand and asked to be a part of that project. Why? So I can learn about it, but not have to to sit in the chair.

Rebecca Taylor (08:41)
Right.

Jason Richard Desentz (09:00)
It doesn't mean that I learned the whole job, but what it does, it gives me a sense of the role. It gives me an idea of the complexities because so what I tell people all the time is you should go back and forth between working on the process, the COEs, and working in the process as the implementer. And that ⁓ is really what will differentiate, in my opinion, an all-star HR person ⁓ if they ever want to get to the CHR role.

Rebecca Taylor (09:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think it's really smart to kind of break them down into sort of the two fundamental functions of having a COE or being sort of that business partner. Because I saw a post earlier today, so maybe this is just why it's top of mind for me. But it was like, present your idea when you're implementing it. Present your idea as you're starting to build or as you're starting to kind of figure things out. Because it doesn't matter if your idea is mathematically correct, if all the data backs up, whatever it is you want to do.

Jason Richard Desentz (09:24)
Thank

Rebecca Taylor (09:50)
If you're presenting this without any prior work or context to the people that it affects, they're immediately gonna see it as a threat or they're gonna resist, because they're gonna say, well, if you're changing it, then that means that we're doing something wrong and it's gonna, you know, they just feel sort of threatened and you get that resistance. So the way you have that framed, I think is, yeah, yeah. And it's hard, especially, you know, in a large workforce and all that.

Jason Richard Desentz (09:56)
Thank

Context is important.

I, you know, so now we didn't even get into this part, but at the level I'm at is all about politics as well. Right. So it's about creating the right, the right pitch, the right cell, if you will. We, and if you think about what, as you rise up in the HR levels, it's less about day to day task completions and more and more about relationship building and influencing capabilities. And that is something that

I used to resist, not going to lie. I hated every aspect of it. thought, yeah, I thought I'd be a sellout. I thought, no, my idea is going to be in my this is going to work. And to your point, I did something similar to what your post said and I got lambasted pretty quickly. So you'll learn pretty quickly. The business will quickly let you know if you if you don't include them, they will quickly revolt. And that is 100 percent accurate. Too often, though, I will tell you that where CHROs fail is they only grew up on one side of the triangle.

Rebecca Taylor (10:42)
Really?

Jason Richard Desentz (11:08)
And I don't mean that to be negative to those CHROs out there that only grew up on one and you are successful. Great. But you can't tell me you wouldn't be more successful had you not jumped back and forth and learned along the way as you rose.

Rebecca Taylor (11:18)
Right, Yeah.

And I think it's a really good point because sometimes it's just how your career path happened, right? And it's just sort of, you know, it is what it is. I think having curiosity is, you know, all my soap boxes and keynotes are always going to be about the power of curiosity and just, you know, trying to understand what is the perspective of someone whose job I'm not doing, especially if it falls underneath my remit, and just asking questions to kind of understand

Jason Richard Desentz (11:37)
Sure.

Thank

I

mean.

Rebecca Taylor (11:47)
how to navigate the people because that's the part, I know we always have to bring up AI, but that's the part that AI is not going to replace. It's the nuance of navigating people, which is the connective tissue of doing business, right? It's like, it doesn't matter what tools we use, it's how a team works together as part of a company to achieve an outcome. And that's the stuff that is, I think it's gonna be getting more time in the sun, I'll say.

Jason Richard Desentz (12:13)
yeah, absolutely. I think the more involved and aware we are of the tools that are out there that we could use, including AI, is absolutely influence.

is done with the right side of the brain. What's on the right side of the brain versus the left? Well, the right side of the brain is all about beliefs and values, and AI isn't necessarily going to hit those. It's going to hit on the logic side of the brain, which is the left side, which is reasoning data points, which isn't wrong. However, we're human at the end of the day. Otherwise, we'd all be programmed doing the same thing over and over. We're just not. unique in that fashion. So AI is an enhancement, in my opinion, of our current capabilities. It's not a replacement.

It's an I gotta write that down. It's an enhancement on a replacement.

Rebecca Taylor (12:53)
Don't worry, I'll send you the transcript. It's recorded here. We'll trademark it.

⁓ No, it's true. is. No, no. Take your time. Take your time. I think the part of where it is an enhancement is also, I think, a really good point because it's when people are afraid of AI kind of taking control as if it's a sentient being. It's an algorithm. It's really about just kind of giving you tools to kind of help you make better decisions and act on things.

Jason Richard Desentz (13:01)
I'm actually reading it down. Sorry.

Rebecca Taylor (13:22)
you know, and that's okay. And again, being curious about it is sort of the way to kind of start to get more comfortable. But I think the something that we talked about before we started recording and that I've seen you say another podcast that I'm going to ask you to bring up again here is just the value of mistakes. Just, you know, when we're learning new things, it's like if we're calling people to kind of be continuously, you know, innovating or continuously trying to change or keeping things fresh.

Jason Richard Desentz (13:34)
Thank you.

⁓ yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (13:49)
It means that we're gonna mess things up every once in a while. So can you talk to me about how you view mistakes, how you, when you're managing your team, how do you embrace failure? Again, a little but big question.

Jason Richard Desentz (14:01)
No, no, no, it's a good one because I think this is I don't know. It's weird that I don't know why people don't talk about it because it's life's about making mistakes and improving it. So so I'll give you two answers and I'm sorry if I'm giving you two. One is personal. I have two older sons in their 20s now, but all growing up and still to this day. In fact, I said it to my one son last week is I expect you to make mistakes. It's what you do after it. That defines you as a person. Do you get up? Do you brush yourself off? Do you?

Rebecca Taylor (14:07)
It's life. Yeah.

Jason Richard Desentz (14:29)
Lament and you know, Mopi, do you apologize when you make a mistake? mean, there's there's there's a little bit of, you know, allowing people that whether it's your parent or whether they work for you to be, you know, this is a paternalistic instinct like you want to coach, you want to mentor, but it's OK that they make mistakes because you know, that's part of the learning process. Second, at work, I tell everyone that works for me. I will support you if you do great things.

for the company and not so great things. Now, I hope you do more great things and not so great things, but know that I have your back and I have my support. What that does is, and that doesn't mean I support them 100 % if they make an absolute zero tolerance mistake, but what it gives them is the ability to say, boss supports me. He's going to allow me to take risks. He's going to allow me to explore. Like you said, be curious. One of the greatest jobs I ever had was an OD, OE consultant in the autos. And I had the luxury, it was the best job ever.

Rebecca Taylor (15:08)
Right, right.

Jason Richard Desentz (15:25)
Because guess what? I don't do anything. All I do is ask a bunch of questions and get people to figure it out for themselves. It's a wonderful job. it is. It's like exactly like ⁓ they coach executive CEOs. And it's funny what comes out of their mouths because nine times out of ten, they're human, too. They put their pants on the same way you do. But for some reason, we put them up on this pedestal like and then when you talk to them, they're just normal people. They have the same insecurities. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (15:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's like coaching, yeah.

Yeah, we get in our heads.

Jason Richard Desentz (15:52)
They don't like to be told that there's a mistake and you know have a five percent rule out there too that I tell leaders that there's five percent of the people out in the world that just can't stand you and that drives people nuts when I tell them that and and I tell them that because I don't want them to focus on the people they can't influence what I want you to do is focus on the people you can but yet still provide minimum level of service to those you can. ⁓

Rebecca Taylor (16:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's really, really solid advice

too, is just don't try to get everybody to like you. Just accept that there's gonna be people that just are not going to. But if you can say that you did your best, you did sort of the best version of the job and you kind of understand what it is that you need to do, that's what it is. That's what we're all here just trying to do.

Jason Richard Desentz (16:31)
And I have made my share of mistakes. of my favorite ones. I know if I should share it, but one of my favorite ones is just a simple misspelling. A mistake, but I recognize it and I apologize after. in my apology to this, I guess I will tell it. So there was someone I messed up. I was a generalist at the time. So I messed up on a retirement paperwork. Big deal, right? Like this person didn't get their first paycheck after retirement. my God, what did I do?

Rebecca Taylor (16:50)
Yeah.

Jason Richard Desentz (16:54)
So I made a big mistake, I put in the dates wrong, whatever. So I wrote her a personal email and I made another mistake in the mistake just to let you know. So what I wrote was I meant, I'm sorry for your inconvenience, but I didn't spell it right and autocorrect redid it and said, sorry for your incontinence. And I.

Rebecca Taylor (17:12)
I knew you were gonna say that, no.

Jason Richard Desentz (17:17)
I about died because she sent me an email back saying thank you very much for taking care of it. I reread my own email so I know she didn't make she didn't say anything. She didn't you know so I know she read it because it wasn't very long and I was just I was mortified but I guess you know what it did every time I reread every one of my emails every time after that one incident. So making the mistake can improve you can improve and that's just a simple one right but it's

Rebecca Taylor (17:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep, I've done stuff like that too.

Jason Richard Desentz (17:45)
I made a double mistake, so how's that? ⁓

Rebecca Taylor (17:45)
It's big though. Yeah. No, I think that's great. And I think it also

kind of speaks to her response is also she responded with grace just in, you know, she knew what you meant. She's not going to sit there and, you know, harp on that because it's like, look, you know, hey, guess what? We're all human here. We're all trying and auto correct gets us. mean, auto correct will get you.

Jason Richard Desentz (17:55)
she did.

Thank

I'm an old man because I still text voice texting my kids crack up they're like dad you don't have to say everything you can you can really shorten it and I'm like all right

Rebecca Taylor (18:16)
That's like my dad too. I'll get like a wall of text because I know he's just reciting. I'm like, okay. Yeah. no.

Jason Richard Desentz (18:18)
That's me. Sorry. I'm not that old, but

like I'm old enough to like pre-cell phone days, you know.

Rebecca Taylor (18:25)
I love it, I keep telling him to send me voice notes. I'm just like, how about voice notes? Because then can hear your voice, if I can't talk and then I'll call you, we could talk it through. Yeah.

Jason Richard Desentz (18:30)
That's a good idea. I should do

that one. You just gave me an idea. ⁓

Rebecca Taylor (18:34)
Yeah, anytime. Well, I know we

are just at time for the end of this session. Do you have any closing thoughts for those who might be listening about when they're trying to implement change or they're trying to kind of find their way as maybe a CHRO navigating this new world? Any closing thoughts for people?

Jason Richard Desentz (18:52)
Yeah, quite a few. I'll be brief, though. I think at the end of the day, make sure you're checking in. Like I think what you said, too, is making sure you're checking in with the right stakeholders of whatever change you're doing. You're updating them. don't get frustrated if it doesn't go through the first time. That happens. And it may not go through the second time. It's up to you and your tenacity.

If you think it's that important to implement and that important to produce something that's different, new or whatever, it's up to you as a leader to stand behind your gut feeling and push it through and constantly not say no. It's hard. It's hard when people keep telling you, including your own CEO. And then what I say is try again, just a different way. ⁓ So don't give up is one of my closing things. And I think with AI coming in, don't be scared.

Rebecca Taylor (19:31)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Jason Richard Desentz (19:40)
It's not the first time that something major of evolution occurred and changed human existence. This is happening fast. And I would think many people might argue it's happening obviously faster than the Internet impacted everything, faster than maybe telephones impacted anything. But it doesn't mean it's not the same thing. So rather than panicking, understand what your capabilities are and work with it.

Rebecca Taylor (19:58)
Yeah, it's true.

Jason Richard Desentz (20:04)
and use it to your advantage. Don't fight it because it's here to stay. The reality of it is though, is you need to be cautious and aware of its capabilities because not everything that I think is out there is really what's going to fit your organization. So you need to find that calibration. So that's the other last piece I will say. And then just have fun with it. Have fun with AI. Try to do some really cool things. And do things you don't necessarily understand. And ask your younger staff that may have more experience like in TikTok and all that fun stuff.

Rebecca Taylor (20:24)
Yes! Yes!

Jason Richard Desentz (20:33)
I don't I'm not very good at that, but I trust that my staff also I let them try new things. And I think that's what we need to be more focused on is bringing that Gen Z into the workforce properly. Gen Alpha is going to be right behind it. And and you know what? I'm not resisting. I'm embracing and embracing means educating, embracing means listening also. So that's something I want folks to it's a lot there. So I want everyone to consider those things, I guess.

Rebecca Taylor (20:33)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think it's great. No, I love this. And I so appreciate everything that you're saying too about just sort of be curious, embrace it, let other people kind of also teach you. So let people who are maybe more comfortable, you know, with different technology, let them become more of an expert and learn from them. It's like, everything is sort of cyclical. We're all just here trying to do our best. We can all just learn from each other. So this is great. Well, thank you, Jason, so much for being here. Thank everybody for listening and hope you all have a great day.

Jason Richard Desentz (21:06)
Thanks.

That's right. Of course.