Jacqui Canney, CPO of ServiceNow, on approaching HR with a product mindset

The HR world is small, and it gets smaller as you move up in the industry.

Jacqui Canney’s career path is a good illustration of this phenomenon. Before she became CPO at HR software company ServiceNow, Canney spent more than two decades at Accenture, where she connected with Pam Craig, the firm’s former chief financial officer, who helped her land her first C-suite role with Walmart. At Walmart, Canney got to know Bill McDermott, then CEO of SAP, who would later tap her to lead HR at ServiceNow.

Guidance from these mentors, coupled with experience at two companies that are considered incubators for top HR talent, helped shape Canney’s strategic and values-driven approach to HR today, she told HR Brew.

Thinking with a product mindset. When Canney joined Accenture (then Arthur Andersen) in 1989, she was a recent college graduate looking for a stable opportunity that would allow her to use her accounting degree. She spent several years working as an auditor, with 90% of her time on the road. After tiring of all the travel, Canney pivoted to HR and “fell in love with it,” she recalls.

“I got to do work where I was helping people figure out what their next moves were going to be,” Canney said. The job, she continued, allowed her to match employees’ professional interests with Accenture’s consultant and client interests, all while contributing to productivity and growth.

In joining the HR department at Accenture, Canney became part of a talent pipeline that has produced dozens of CHROs and CPOs. Accenture’s former CHRO, Jill Smart, told HR Brew her employees received a crash course of sorts in how the consulting firm’s businesses operated—something Canney said she believes set her up for success in later HR leadership roles.

“There was an integrated strategy,” Canney said. “If the CEO wasn’t talking about talent the same way the CHRO or anybody underneath them [was], it would not be successful.” At Accenture, she learned about the importance of aligning HR strategy and business strategy, something she’s continued to emphasize as CPO for ServiceNow.

Canney was also involved with driving digital transformation at Accenture, something that was a priority both for former CEO Pierre Nanterme and CHRO Ellyn Shook, who stepped down from her position this past August. As chief digital HR officer, Canney began to think about HR from a product mindset. After Accenture acquired the design company Fjord in 2013, her team leaned on these in-house resources to simplify HR processes like onboarding. “Instead of being process and policy driven, it was experience driven,” she said of her approach to HR at Accenture. “And I believe that’s where a lot of companies are striving to be today for their people.”

Putting values and culture first. Canney built up an expansive HR network over the two decades she spent at Accenture, and one of her connections helped her land her first C-suite HR role. Craig introduced her to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, and in 2015, Canney joined the retailer as global CPO.

She likens her experience at Walmart—which has also served as a stepping stone for HR executives such as PepsiCo CPO Becky Schmitt and McKesson CHRO LeAnn Smith—to the equivalent of an MBA.

While at Walmart, Canney continued to think about digital transformation from an HR perspective, and she said this prepared her to take on a strategic role with ServiceNow, at the intersection of people and product. She also observed firsthand how HR leaders are increasingly expected to speak up on a variety of sociopolitical issues, such as the protests against racial injustice that occurred in 2020. During moments of social or geopolitical unrest, Canney said she came to believe, “your culture and your values are what are going to keep you firm on your stance.”

This lesson came in handy when Canney was named as CPO of ServiceNow in July 2021, and had to make decisions about health mandates amid the Covid-19 pandemic. While ServiceNow didn’t require workers to be vaccinated, it did require them to test for the virus in order to go into the office—a mandate that didn’t go over well initially with some staff. After rolling out the mandate, Canney started hosting video discussions called “Keeping It Real,” during which her team would explain why they made certain decisions affecting the workforce.

“We would bring people in to have these conversations that had differing points of views, and just have respectful conversations that could be direct, but respect our values and our culture,” she said. “And I do think that transparency has taken us all the way through to where we are right now.”