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How to Build Talent-Centric Organizations Powered by People · Humanity Working

0:02
SPEAKER_04: And I start asking the questions, like, why do you think you have a recruiting problem?
0:06
SPEAKER_04: Right?
0:07
SPEAKER_04: Why, why, you know, why can't you get talent?
0:09
SPEAKER_04: Tell me about your process.
0:11
SPEAKER_04: How are you finding talent?
0:13
SPEAKER_04: You know, and then they, you know, the next thing I find out is they've got some, you know, 20-something HR person who's doing recruiting.
0:19
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, that's not a they're not a recruiter.
0:22
SPEAKER_04: They're human resources.
0:23
SPEAKER_04: Those are distinctly different jobs.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: Hi, everyone.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, Paul sits down with Carol Schultz, who's the CEO of Vertical Elevation and the author of Powered by People: How Talent-centric Organizations Master Recruitment, Retention, and Revenue.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: We'll include a link to the book in the show notes alongside links to some of Carol's other work.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: This is a wide-ranging discussion covering how organizations need to go way beyond recruiting when it comes to talent management, and why even the people doing recruitment in many organizations don't have the right skills and are often in the wrong roles themselves.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to learn here if you are in any way involved in finding and nurturing talent, or you're an employee who wants to stay relevant.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is brought to you by Billion Minds.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Billion Minds helps companies be ready for the future of work by developing adaptable, resilient employees.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Learn more about Billion Minds on LinkedIn or by visiting billionminds.com.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and if you like this episode, please like and review us on your podcast app.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get on with it.
1:25
SPEAKER_04: Hey Carol, welcome to the pod.
1:28
SPEAKER_04: Paul, thanks for having me.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: So there is a lot to get through today with you.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, first off, uh, I just want to start by uh calling out your book, which I've got right here, which is uh Powered by People, How Talent-centric Organizations Master Recruitment, Retention, and Revenue, and How to Build One.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: That's a long subtitle there, girl.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so so lots of super interesting stuff in here.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: I know you mentioned uh the book actually has been out for a while, but I know you mentioned that there is an uh an audible version of the book, which is uh which is just coming out right now, right?
2:05
SPEAKER_04: Yep, it's due out very soon.
2:07
SPEAKER_04: Just I'm just it's all it's been narrated and I'm just listening through it to make sure everything's okay right now.
2:12
SPEAKER_04: So it it should be out within the next couple of weeks.
2:14
SPEAKER_04: Excellent.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: All right.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, we will uh we'll definitely make sure that we include links to uh links to all of this.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, as I say, really interesting, uh, really interesting read for me.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the reasons why it was so interesting is because you call out this concept of a talent-centric organization.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: And I think a big learning opportunity for me was to gain like a deeper understanding of what it takes to actually um bring top talent into an organization and how that's a that's a skilled discipline in its own right that is distinct from other activities that typically happen inside organizations.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, so why don't we start with how you would define a talent-centric organization in the first place?
3:03
SPEAKER_04: Right.
3:03
SPEAKER_04: So there's really three core principles to a TCO.
3:07
SPEAKER_04: Uh, the first is leadership working under an aligned vision that everyone can articulate, not just the executive team.
3:14
SPEAKER_04: Uh, it's it's really places focus on your people.
3:17
SPEAKER_04: Everything you do drives better experiences for your people, and this includes the C-suite.
3:23
SPEAKER_04: Second thing is a talent development strategy from recruiting to succession, beyond succession beyond the C-suite, right?
3:30
SPEAKER_04: And this includes uh building uh diversity so as to not suffer from groupthink.
3:37
SPEAKER_04: It's not building diversity to check a box, right?
3:40
SPEAKER_04: Um, and the third thing is what I call built-in blind spot awareness from established feedback loops, right?
3:47
SPEAKER_04: So this is this is about shifting how you work, how you think, and therefore how you work.
3:54
SPEAKER_04: And that begins at the leadership level, and then you trickle it down throughout the organization.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, really interesting stuff there.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: I will say that um on the podcast, um, gosh, I would want to say about three or four months ago, we had um Phil Liban, who's the former CEO of Evannote, and he said something on it which uh which struck me.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Um he said that um he said there's a thing that you in quotes learn at CEO school.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: Obviously he was being ironic, but he said, there's a thing you learn at CEO school, and it's like when you are asked what's the most important thing in your company, you you have to say your people.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: And and so obviously he was being quite tongue-in-cheek when he was talking about it, but there's a lot, there's a lot to that, right?
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Almost ask almost any leader inside any organization um what is most important, and they'll say, it's our people.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: But then, as you point out in the book, really interestingly, there is a there's a big difference between that knee-jerk response and then actually living it in terms of how you structure yourself um as an organization.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: And I know that you've seen kind of quite a big delta bit between those two things, between what people profess and then how they run as an organization.
5:07
SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, we we live in a world where people blow a lot of sunshine up your skirt, you know?
5:13
SPEAKER_04: Um and they, you know, when when the rubber meets the road, that's really not what happens.
5:19
SPEAKER_04: Unfortunately.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: So do you think it's just because the do you think it's just because the organizations haven't even like considered how to be strategic about it?
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Or is it more along the lines of uh of they actually think in many cases of people as I don't know, a commodity?
5:41
SPEAKER_04: That's a really good question.
5:42
SPEAKER_04: And I think I I I would say it's probably some combination of that.
5:48
SPEAKER_04: Um people can really, you know, CEOs can really believe that their people are the most important thing.
5:57
SPEAKER_04: But like I said, when the rubber meets the road, are you really willing to put the work in?
6:02
SPEAKER_04: Do you have the commitment to seeing that through to fruition?
6:05
SPEAKER_04: Because it takes time to do it.
6:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:07
SPEAKER_04: And if you're a large company, it takes considerably more time.
6:11
SPEAKER_04: Right.
6:11
SPEAKER_04: And and that's why I don't think I I I I assert that there's probably no large company, uh publicly traded company that is down-centric because of that.
6:22
SPEAKER_04: You know, they just it's just too much work for them to do.
6:25
SPEAKER_04: And everybody wants to blame recruiting.
6:27
SPEAKER_04: And recruiting is not the problem, it is a symptom of the problem.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
6:33
SPEAKER_04: Um I mean, recruiting doesn't work in a lot of ways, but that's part of the reasons why it doesn't work.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Now, now you talk about talent strategy um as being broken down into four elements.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: So we should explain that that as you're looking at these talent-centric organizations, you you effectively talk about it as being like a combination of talent strategy and overall business strategy.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: But within talent strategy itself, you talk about that being broken down into four elements.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's really helpful actually because it starts that process of thinking about all of the different things you've got to think about if you are serious about talent.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: So, what are those four elements and why did you land on those four?
7:17
SPEAKER_04: Right.
7:17
SPEAKER_04: Well, recruitment, retention, development, and succession strategies, right?
7:22
SPEAKER_04: And of course, when you think of retention strategies, I mean, the development strategies is really sort of a subset of that, if you think about it, right?
7:31
SPEAKER_04: If you develop people the right way and give them what they need, they're you're gonna retain them longer than you might otherwise.
7:38
SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, listen, I didn't just make that up.
7:41
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I've been I've been at this for over 30 years.
7:44
SPEAKER_04: And uh this idea came to me after I'd been in this in a professional recruiter for 16 years.
7:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:52
SPEAKER_04: Right.
7:53
SPEAKER_04: Um, and I'd been a coach a little bit less than that, uh, because I started my coaching training in 1998.
8:00
SPEAKER_04: So I'd been a coach at that point for about 10 years.
8:03
SPEAKER_04: And it it, you know, I got out of bed one morning, Paul, and I thought, I cannot make the emotional trip down the corner, down the hall and around the corner into my office.
8:14
SPEAKER_04: I couldn't, I just couldn't do it.
8:16
SPEAKER_04: I thought, there is so much wrong with this business.
8:19
SPEAKER_04: It doesn't work effectively.
8:21
SPEAKER_04: Let me see if I can figure out what the problem really is and what you need and what I can do to solve it.
8:29
SPEAKER_04: And I started interviewing lots of executives that I knew at different levels.
8:37
SPEAKER_04: And that's really what came out of these, out of these conversations and out of what I had experienced from people.
8:44
SPEAKER_04: And you know, at that point, 16 years later, I heard a million stories about why people are leaving their jobs or want to leave their jobs or open to hearing about something else, whatever that might be.
8:56
SPEAKER_04: So that's it, and it really boiled down to these things.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: If I were being very traditional about this approach, right, I would I might be forgiven for thinking that talent um starts and stops with the idea of taking external talent, as it were, and bringing it in.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: So in other words, recruitment, right?
9:26
SPEAKER_01: And that the moment the the employee steps through the door on their first day, that as a uh in terms of the talent problem, the talent problem is solved.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: But what you're driving at here, which I think is very interesting, is that you're thinking of talent from the uh from the moment that the first outreach happens to the individual, basically up until the last day that that individual is employed.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's a really interesting um mindset.
10:03
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I I think you know, a lot of it, Paul, is really I want to be careful about the using this word.
10:13
SPEAKER_04: It people are just ignorant to it.
10:15
SPEAKER_04: They just don't, it's like living in a blind spot somewhere for them, right?
10:20
SPEAKER_04: You know, they don't know that they don't know that this is how it needs to be done.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:25
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, I think, you know, a little bit of what I'm hearing from you is companies, many companies look, I think, and they may not even realize you're doing this, look at people as a commodity.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:39
SPEAKER_04: Right.
10:40
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, it you have to look at this process as a comprehensive process, not a commodity, people are not a commodity.
10:48
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you might think they are.
10:50
SPEAKER_04: Uh, and there's many businesses who I believe think, I mean, I'm horrified by stories that I hear.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Course, there is a lot in a lot of stuff in the news, and has been a lot of stuff in the news over the uh over the last um year or two, really, about uh I guess you could call them trends.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, things like the quiet quitting thing, and um, and then obviously there's been high profile um firings inside um inside particularly many tech companies as well.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: So um lots and lots of layoffs uh that have been announced anyway, larger scale layoffs.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: So let's start with the um let's start with the quiet quitting piece of this.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: And and uh and I know that you're uh reverse to these to even these terms, which I totally get.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: Um but I'm curious, there was definitely something that was going on during the uh during the early ways of COVID, and people were moving from one part of the country, and there were people who were uh who were leaving their jobs.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: What were you observing during that period, during the uh during the pandemic?
11:54
SPEAKER_01: What, if anything, did you see at a human level, at an individual level, that was in some way different?
12:02
SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, people now had an opportunity through no fault of their own or their companies to actually see what it was like to work from home.
12:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
12:14
SPEAKER_04: I I mean, I knew people that, you know, younger people that moved back in with their parents.
12:20
SPEAKER_04: They're like, well, you know, if I've got to be stuck here for the next year, you know, why do I want to be stuck in an apartment by myself?
12:28
SPEAKER_04: So people moved back to their families and got used to it.
12:35
SPEAKER_04: And companies started realizing, you know, I mean, the smart ones, we better figure out how to make this work, either 100% remote or hybrid.
12:47
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I've I've you know, for my own podcast, I've interviewed, I've interviewed founders that founded their companies with remote workers.
12:55
SPEAKER_04: There was never an office.
12:58
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, that has, I think that has in in many ways helped people.
13:06
SPEAKER_04: Um, I mean, it's listen, there's pro pros and cons of everything.
13:10
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, quite again, as you said, I all these terms, I wrote an article about it that was in leadership now.
13:17
SPEAKER_04: Um, I think it might have been the end of January, called um stop letting the latest trend dictate how you run your company.
13:25
SPEAKER_04: Because all these things, whether it's quiet quitting, which is about, you know, people really not working very hard and maybe being out looking for a new job, even that's not new.
13:36
SPEAKER_04: I hate to break the news to you.
13:39
SPEAKER_04: But I I I know it's been going on for the 30 almost one years I've been in the business.
13:43
SPEAKER_04: I'm sure it was going on before I came in the business, right?
13:47
SPEAKER_04: These are just new terms that are catching, they're catching, catching on like wildfire, and people think they're new, but they're not new.
13:55
SPEAKER_04: There's nothing new about any of these things.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is interesting, I guess, with the power of social media and just the way in which media has changed in general, just the like putting a name to something can be all we need for it to apparently appear to be a new trend or uh or whatever it happened to be.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: And certainly that certainly that's been the case for that.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: But as you say, um, over that period, you do have you know people physically moving, in some cases of uh thousands of miles away from their employer, uh, people where their life circumstances are changing dramatically, right?
14:34
SPEAKER_01: So they were working in a fancy office in a, you know, in a in a tall building where part of the identity of who they were was defined by going up to the fancy office.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: And now they're doing the same kind of stuff, but they're doing it to your point out of their parents' basement or whatever, uh, or whatever it happened to be.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: So those are kind of interesting, uh, interesting personal changes, but it's happening on a individual by individual basis.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: And everybody's story is subtly different.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: The one thing that we did see, right, um, and definitely as we were kind of speaking to to individuals about this, is that if there was a collective thing, the collective thing was almost a collective re-evaluation, whereby people were just like, okay, things are different now.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: What does that what does that mean?
15:23
SPEAKER_01: What are the new possibilities?
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Right.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: So now I could work for a company based anywhere in the world.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: In that uh new world, what does it what does it mean for an organization in terms of being able to to get top talent these days?
15:42
SPEAKER_01: Is it easier?
15:43
SPEAKER_04: Well, I mean Is it harder?
15:44
SPEAKER_04: It's well, um maybe, maybe not.
15:53
SPEAKER_04: I would say it depends, which is uh unfortunately my typical response to many, to many things.
15:58
SPEAKER_04: Um you know, it it it depends on the company, right?
16:03
SPEAKER_04: So if you are, you know, everybody says they want A-level talent, but A-level means different things to different companies.
16:12
SPEAKER_04: Right.
16:13
SPEAKER_04: So, and and we'll I know we'll we'll talk about this later.
16:16
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, when when you start actually to create a position description, but you've got a talent strategy in place for different for different positions, you know, one of the questions I always ask, and I encourage everyone to ask, regardless of how you're doing these searches, is is what we have just built, does that person want to come work for us?
16:36
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, that is super, super important.
16:42
SPEAKER_04: And I just think that it's different for everybody.
16:48
SPEAKER_04: Not ever, I mean, not everyone wants to work from home.
16:52
SPEAKER_04: And then there's a lot of people who do.
16:54
SPEAKER_04: I've been working from home since for 21 years.
16:58
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, often, you know, what what I think companies started to realize was oh, people aren't just sitting around eating bonbons all day.
17:07
SPEAKER_04: They're actually working, but they're working on their own schedule, which is frankly brilliant, which is really how it should always have been.
17:17
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's different if you're selling to people, you know, you're you're if you're in sales, you're selling to people during business hours, you know, and same thing with maybe customer success.
17:24
SPEAKER_04: But, you know, a software engineer, I mean, why do they need to punch in at, you know, eight o'clock?
17:31
SPEAKER_04: So there's there's depending on your job, you can be really flexible with how you work that.
17:36
SPEAKER_04: I talked to somebody, it's been in the last two weeks.
17:39
SPEAKER_04: I cannot recall who it was or what what how this came up, but they said they knew somebody who their company basically demanded, they hired them remotely and then demanded they come back to the office, which meant this person had to move to a different state.
17:57
SPEAKER_04: I said, you know, did they did they give their company the big F you?
18:00
SPEAKER_04: And they said, no, she really liked the company.
18:02
SPEAKER_04: I said, Wow, wow, that's amazing.
18:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:05
SPEAKER_04: You know, that's I mean, I'm not so sure.
18:08
SPEAKER_04: I I mean, I wouldn't do that.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: But so I I one of the things that to me I think is really fascinating about all of this is if you uh were living your life on like on LinkedIn today, for example.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully you're not.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully you've got better things to do.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: But uh but but if you but if you were and you were looking at the top right hand corner of the screen on LinkedIn, which is the bit that shows you all of the headlines, first thing you'd be seeing is like every day it's this company has just announced mass layoffs, this company has just announced mass layoffs.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Um started with tech companies, now you know appears to be expanding in in other areas.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: If you were if you were counseling a frightened employee right now, either somebody who has been like impacted by layoffs or is worried about being impacted by layoffs, how should they be thinking about everything that I just described, all of that information that they're consuming on a day-to-day basis?
19:13
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think listen, you need to, you know, the the typical CYA, right?
19:17
SPEAKER_04: You need to cover your ass.
19:19
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, uh any employee really needs to look at what they want out of their own career, where they're going.
19:29
SPEAKER_04: Um if they're I I I think I've I said, and in fact, I'm sure I said in the book because I just listened to the chapter that talked about that.
19:38
SPEAKER_04: Uh, I think I think it was in chapter three.
19:41
SPEAKER_04: Um and I had this epiphany long, long, long time ago.
19:46
SPEAKER_04: I mean, uh probably maybe, I mean, north of 20 years ago.
19:50
SPEAKER_04: Um it came to me when I was having a conversation with somebody I'd known.
19:55
SPEAKER_04: He was in first line, he was, I think, a first, first or second line manager.
19:58
SPEAKER_04: I can't remember.
19:59
SPEAKER_04: I think he might have been a first line manager, sales manager at that point.
20:02
SPEAKER_04: And he worked for a very well-known company.
20:05
SPEAKER_04: And his company got bought by another very well-known company.
20:09
SPEAKER_04: And at the time that they got acquired, I'll never forget this.
20:12
SPEAKER_04: He was at 130% of his annual number.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh, yes, I remember the story.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:17
SPEAKER_04: Right.
20:18
SPEAKER_04: It's in the book.
20:19
SPEAKER_04: And um, the minute the other company acquired them, they readjusted his quota.
20:25
SPEAKER_04: He was now at 80% of his annual number.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: You're being generous because you named the company in the book, but I don't know.
20:30
SPEAKER_04: Do I name the company?
20:31
SPEAKER_04: It's it's IBM.
20:33
SPEAKER_04: So, okay.
20:33
SPEAKER_04: I couldn't remember if we had done that or not.
20:35
SPEAKER_04: I thought we had because, you know, I don't, I there's, I mean, I don't have any loyalty to IBM, frankly.
20:39
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, they they could they could stand to use to learn how to be talent-centric, but that's a whole separate conversation for another podcast.
20:46
SPEAKER_04: And um, and and and it's and and he wasn't the first person who said this to me.
20:52
SPEAKER_04: I've talked to many people over the years, not in a long, long time, that said, you know, IBM is famous for managing your income.
20:57
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
20:58
SPEAKER_04: Right.
20:59
SPEAKER_04: So, you know, it companies are only, and I hate to say this, you can be as talent-centric as you want, and every company should strive to be that, but companies are really only loyal to you is insofar as it suits their needs and interests.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:16
SPEAKER_04: Consequently, you should only be loyal to them insofar as it suits your needs and interests.
21:20
SPEAKER_04: And as I point out in the book, that doesn't mean you should be looking for a job every two years.
21:25
SPEAKER_04: Just be smart and cover your hiny.
21:30
SPEAKER_04: Right?
21:31
SPEAKER_04: It, you know, if the minute you say, Oh, I'm never looking for a new job, boy, the minute you're gonna get laid off.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:39
SPEAKER_04: And and again, it doesn't mean I'm not here to say you should be looking for a new job every two years, three years, five years, whatever that is.
21:46
SPEAKER_04: If a company is really giving you what you need, stay with them your whole career.
21:52
SPEAKER_04: But don't ever say no to a good headhunter call that wants you to be open to listening to something else because you never know when you know.
22:00
SPEAKER_04: That 2% of really great recruiters is going to call you up and say, I've got an opportunity for you.
22:05
SPEAKER_04: You know, they don't they should never say that, but right.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh now let's speak about it a little bit from the perspective of the employer.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mentioned all those mass layoffs.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: Um so curious to your thoughts about um about what is going on inside these larger organizations.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: And we know, kind of looking into the data, that many of them probably overhired at certain uh at certain points.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: Um and now they're using an opportunity to cut back.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: Um I will tell you, us having spoken to uh to many folks inside these some of these uh some of these organizations, um the hiring in many cases was uh was a little bit um not well thought through.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: And certainly the firing um is the downsizing is not very well thought through either.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: We're very aware of some incredibly talented people that are out in the marketplace right now um that have done terrific work inside inside their organizations.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: So I'm curious as to uh as to whether you've seen much of the same thing.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, we've already talked about the strategic element of this, but but these waves that you see inside these organizations, how destructive can they be over time?
23:22
SPEAKER_04: Destructive to the company?
23:23
unknown: Yeah.
23:25
SPEAKER_04: You know, I don't think that, you know, when a company gets to a certain certain size, I don't think it's destructive to them.
23:33
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's it's not great for you.
23:37
SPEAKER_04: And it, you know, people talk about it and it gets, you know, now of course it goes out all over all social media.
23:43
SPEAKER_04: Um but I I I just, you know, these are waves, right?
23:50
SPEAKER_04: So it's kind of like our an economy goes into a recession every X number of years, about.
23:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:55
SPEAKER_04: And the people are surprised when we have another one.
23:58
SPEAKER_03: Exactly right.
23:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:59
SPEAKER_04: Really?
24:01
SPEAKER_04: You know, it I mean, nobody wants to be in a recession.
24:03
SPEAKER_04: I mean, you know, they hopefully we're not gonna go into one.
24:06
SPEAKER_04: I think we're going to, but we'll see.
24:08
SPEAKER_04: Um and it's with companies, it's the same thing, right?
24:13
SPEAKER_04: And and I believe it's primarily, I don't have any any figures or facts on this, but based on, again, uh, you know, just looking at what I've seen for the last 30 years, the companies who are doing the primarily primary layoffs are publicly traded companies.
24:31
SPEAKER_04: Doesn't mean that if somebody says, what about Twitter?
24:33
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, well, they were public, now they're private, that's a whole separate issue.
24:36
SPEAKER_04: But and it's not that privately held companies don't, because if you know if you're if you're a smaller startup and you know, you've only got X amount of of investment coming in and you've got X amount that you're selling, if you're not, you know, if those numbers don't make sense, you're gonna have to lay people off too.
24:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
24:55
SPEAKER_04: But so it does come in waves.
24:57
SPEAKER_04: And I think it's a really important, Paul, that people remember publicly traded companies make decisions based on the based on the stock market.
25:08
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, really.
25:10
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
25:11
SPEAKER_04: And it's just to be aware that if you go to work for a publicly traded company, this could happen.
25:19
SPEAKER_04: I had somebody say to me years ago, well, I I you know, I I want to go to a publicly traded company because it's it's more secure.
25:25
SPEAKER_04: I said, Where'd you get that idea?
25:29
SPEAKER_04: I don't think that's the case at all.
25:33
SPEAKER_04: As we have seen, right?
25:34
SPEAKER_04: Microsoft laid off 10,000 people by email?
25:38
SPEAKER_04: Ugh.
25:39
SPEAKER_04: I I I am that boy, that chap's my ass.
25:44
SPEAKER_04: There was a way better, way better way to handle that than they did.
25:48
SPEAKER_04: And they should have handled it in a different way.
25:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
25:51
SPEAKER_04: Where each person had a conversation with their direct manager.
25:55
SPEAKER_04: They could have easily done that.
25:58
unknown: Yeah.
25:59
SPEAKER_04: There would have been a lot less bad press, I think.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think you've yeah, you you you do touch on some really interesting points because um I loved how you pointed out that the the damage is not is actually not that great for the uh for these organizations.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And there are a bunch of reasons why.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons why is actually pretty simple, which is that there are there are still, you mentioned Microsoft.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: That's actually my former company, right?
26:23
SPEAKER_01: You mentioned Microsoft.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: The there are still millions and millions and millions and millions of people out there who would give their left arm to go work for Microsoft.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: And within that, those billions of people, there are some really, really, really talented people who Microsoft can recruit.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: And that will probably pretty much always be the case once you reach uh once you reach a certain size.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: And so other organizations, organizations that are smaller in nature, will look at those and go, well, you know, they're almost leading the way.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: I'll follow, uh, I will I will follow that.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's kind of a different situation.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: If every time you are like like having knee-jerk responses to both your the hiring, the retention, um, the development of people inside your organization.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: For example, every time that you look at your overall figures and you say, you know what, here's a way in which we can really uh really cut really effectively is let's just axe all of our training programs.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: Let's axe every every piece of personal development inside inside the organization.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Every time you do that, that's adding a layer in the narrative that your employees have of you as a of you as an organization.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: And when you're not in a world where you've got a million people who will give their left arm to work for your organization, that can be specific very damaging.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's the most interesting thing for me.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
27:50
SPEAKER_04: You're you're you're right.
27:51
SPEAKER_04: And and you know, I've I've said for many, many years hiring is far more critical to a small company or a startup than it is to, you know, IBM or Microsoft.
28:02
SPEAKER_04: They can turn people over, they're not going out of business.
28:05
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
28:06
SPEAKER_04: Right.
28:07
SPEAKER_04: When it happens to a small company, it can crush you.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, let's uh let's talk about just a couple more things as we finish up here.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm uh we talk we talked about a little bit, but I'd just like to go into a little bit more detail.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: If you're a company, um like I'm recording this from Tulsa, Oklahoma today, right?
28:33
SPEAKER_01: And one of the interesting things about being in an area like Tulsa, I've only lived here for a year or for a year or two, is that you start to realize that um there are elements of a community like Tulsa that are actually quite localized, and then there are elements that have become much more nationalized.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: So for example, uh Tulsa, Oklahoma is the home of something called Tulsa Remote, which allows uh people to and actually gives people a 10 uh up to$10,000 to do this to come in and continue working from wherever they were working previously.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: So you could come from, let's say, uh Denver, Colorado, where you are right now, move to Tulsa, they'll give you an incentive to do so and carry on working for your company in Denver.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: Right?
29:15
SPEAKER_01: Right.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: So what's interesting is if you now think about that from the perspective of an employer that is in Tulsa, what that means is that in the old world, your pool of people that you are gonna recruit from is probably people that are, you know, within half an hour or a 45-minute commute of wherever your uh of wherever your physical office is.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: And there's good and bad associated with that, right?
29:42
SPEAKER_01: The good is that that pool of people are themselves probably looking for companies that are local.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: And so you are um, you are in a sense the a small pond.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: You might be a small fish, but your pond is small, is small as well.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: Right now things are fundamentally different, right?
30:01
SPEAKER_01: In the sense that, yes, you can recruit from anywhere in the world, but also everybody that happens to be local can go to any company in the world.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: And do they want to go to your company in Tulsa, Oklahoma?
30:13
SPEAKER_01: And if they are gonna go to your company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, maybe you're gonna have to pay more to get them because you if you want the top talent that lives in New York, they're gonna expect to be paid like a New York employee instead of a Tulsa employee.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: So this is complicated.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Right.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious as to as to like if you're a if you were a company today that was in, say, Tulsa, Oklahoma and was based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and have been doing this for 20 years, right?
30:37
SPEAKER_01: What would you do today to stand out to this pool of employees to make sure that that pool of employees wants to work for your company.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: They've never heard of your name, they've never heard you've not got any brand equity or anything like that, but you need to stand out to them.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: How do you how do you do that?
30:56
SPEAKER_04: Well, you have to start building it, right?
30:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:59
SPEAKER_04: Um, I'm as I'm assuming that we can that, you know, that you're not just saying you have no brand equity and you know, good luck.
31:05
SPEAKER_04: So you have to start building, you have to start building brand equity.
31:09
SPEAKER_04: And there, I mean, there's lots of ways to do that.
31:11
SPEAKER_04: I'm sure there's more ways than I can even come up with because I'm no branding expert.
31:15
SPEAKER_04: But what I will tell you is I believe that you get your employees to start going out and talking about your company, how great it is.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:25
SPEAKER_04: You hire a great PR team to start getting stuff out into your local papers, interviews, um, things like that, articles.
31:35
SPEAKER_04: You start doing, like I've got some people I've interviewed on my podcast that they, you know, they have particular charity work that they do as a company.
31:46
SPEAKER_04: That's very visible to your community.
31:51
SPEAKER_04: And you know, those are just the things that make you visible.
31:54
SPEAKER_04: But by having your people go out there and talk about how great you are and why you're so great, that helps.
32:03
SPEAKER_04: Um, I think that that, but there are a lot of people who are sick and tired of living in some of these big cities.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:11
SPEAKER_04: And they're thinking, you know, I'd really like to move somewhere that's traffic's not so bad and people aren't rude and and it's not as expensive to live there.
32:24
SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, those those are people you can you can get.
32:27
SPEAKER_04: And a lot of those are really good people because I've talked to people who are sick and tired.
32:31
SPEAKER_04: I mean, I already know people who are leaving Colorado because of how how much it's changed.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: And you it's so interesting that you phrase it like that because it ties actually back to a to a theme that is uh that is mentioned in your book.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: You kind of describe talent um acquisition as almost being like a like a matchmaking activity.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: It is.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: I think that's really, really important um for leaders, particularly of smaller organizations, to think about it in those terms.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: We hear so much from employers, just as you do, right, about how hard it is to find great people and to recruit, you know, to recruit good people.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: And the and the reason in many cases is because they're not doing any of the work that you're talking about, right?
33:18
SPEAKER_01: They are literally just like throwing something out on a job board, yeah, spray and pray, right?
33:23
SPEAKER_01: And and just throwing something out on five different job boards and just thinking, okay, well, that's it.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: But what you're describing here is a really interesting thing, which is like the matchmaking process is about finding a fit between the organization and the people in the organization.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: And just like there's somebody for pretty much everybody in the world when it comes to relationships, there's there's there are people in most cases, unless you were a terrible organization to work for, there are people for whom the fact that you are located here and you do work in this way and so on would be a good fit.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: But they're not going to know that unless you do the work to let people know what you are as an organization, what you are as a group, what the role is as a job, what a position is.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: I love how you frame it differently in terms of like a position description versus a job description.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: So it's an it's it's almost a mindset thing, isn't it?
34:20
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, it's interesting when when, like I said earlier, you know, people somebody said to me once, well, what is when CEOs call you, what do they think their problem is?
34:29
SPEAKER_04: Usually they think they have a recruiting problem.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:32
SPEAKER_04: And I start asking the questions like, why do you think you have a recruiting problem?
34:38
SPEAKER_04: Right?
34:39
SPEAKER_04: Why, why, you know, why can't you get talent?
34:42
SPEAKER_04: Tell me about your process.
34:43
SPEAKER_04: How are you finding talent?
34:45
SPEAKER_04: You know, and then they, you know, the next thing I find out is they've got some, you know, 20-something HR person who's doing recruiting.
34:52
SPEAKER_04: I'm like, that's not a recruit, they're not a recruiter.
34:54
SPEAKER_04: They're in human resources.
34:55
SPEAKER_04: Those are distinctly different jobs.
34:58
SPEAKER_04: You can't, I mean, you know, matchmaking, as you put it, as I as I put it, um, it's sales.
35:06
SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of sales in it.
35:07
SPEAKER_04: Recruiting, great recruiting is sales.
35:09
SPEAKER_04: Would you, would you even remotely think of putting your sales organization underneath human resources?
35:14
SPEAKER_04: Not in a million years.
35:17
SPEAKER_04: So why in the world is they well, because they both have to do with people?
35:20
SPEAKER_04: Well, sales has to do with people.
35:22
SPEAKER_04: They all have to do with people.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:25
SPEAKER_04: You know, people have got to start looking at it a different way.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to finish up with a very quick discussion on skills because I know that's important to you, and and obviously it's very uh very important to us as well.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: And you make a couple of important points on this.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: So the first thing um that struck me is you're connecting a lack of professional engagement of professional development with disengagement.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: Um this is something we've seen absolutely, uh, absolutely as well.
35:54
SPEAKER_01: Um and it's you know, it is true that people quit their bosses, but in a broader sense, what we found is that people quit an experience and and an experience that you want is one where you what most people want is one where they can continue to grow and develop as a human being.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: And what role does your organization uh uh organization play within that is extremely important.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: So we've seen that too, and I just want to kind of call that out.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that you point out, which I think is fascinating and it's a stat that I've seen before, but I'm not sure a lot of people have, which is that 40% of internal moves, even high potential employees, result in failure.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: So classic example of that could be like an individual contributor inside an organization that um that becomes a manager and then fails.
36:40
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think a lot of organizations tend to think about this as being very black and white, um, i.e., there are just like great people.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: And if you put great people in any position, they will thrive.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: Um but in reality, of course, what we see is something quite different.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: You can have really top performers and you move them from one place to another, and then they don't.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just gonna I'm I'm curious as to what you think that means um that we need uh that we need to do.
37:08
SPEAKER_04: Well, I I mean, we need to, when we move people into new roles, we need to train them and develop them.
37:13
SPEAKER_04: I mean, this is the whole this is the whole reason why that's one of the four points that's so important in what it in what a town centric organization is.
37:21
SPEAKER_04: And I mean, like you said, we've both seen it.
37:23
SPEAKER_04: I've seen it countless times over my career.
37:27
SPEAKER_04: Oh, great, you know, great individual contributors, one of our top sales guys.
37:32
SPEAKER_04: We move him into management and he's a complete failure.
37:35
SPEAKER_04: You know, or or or even uh forgetting a story.
37:39
SPEAKER_04: I think this story is, I think this story's in the book.
37:42
SPEAKER_04: Um, somebody that I knew very well.
37:44
SPEAKER_04: He was, he was, had just moved into uh from second line management to the head of North American Sales at his company.
37:51
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, he moved, he moved five people into second line management.
37:57
SPEAKER_04: And he said, you know, Carol, I got lucky because four of them succeeded.
38:02
SPEAKER_04: He said, because first and second line management is very different.
38:06
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
38:06
SPEAKER_04: Right.
38:07
SPEAKER_04: Because in first line management, you're managing individual contributors, or in this case, salespeople, right?
38:14
SPEAKER_04: And as a second line manager, you're managing managers.
38:18
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
38:19
SPEAKER_04: So that's very different.
38:21
SPEAKER_04: Managing managers is very different than managing individual contributors.
38:25
SPEAKER_04: And, you know, they they, you know, each of these guys, I think, had a$60 million quota, or maybe it was, I can't remember how much it maybe it was 250, something like that.
38:34
SPEAKER_04: It was, I don't the figures, I think, are in the book.
38:36
SPEAKER_04: And you know, this guy failed, and it was a, you know, I think it was a$60 million loss, is what it was.
38:41
SPEAKER_04: Wow.
38:42
SPEAKER_04: Right.
38:43
SPEAKER_04: So the the development piece is so important.
38:47
SPEAKER_04: Um, and and you know, you may have somebody inside the company who can do that, and you may need to bring in, you know, a third-party consultant or coach to do that kind of work.
38:59
SPEAKER_01: Because it's just, it's different.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'll just I'll just mention one thing to to back it up in terms of what we've seen in uh in our research as well.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: So we have we have a term for it actually inside our organization.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: We just call it we call it the fish out of water effect.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that we use that, uh we use that term is pretty simple, which is that fishes are generally pretty good fishes.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: And so what you're effectively doing when you move somebody from one environment to another is you're you're measuring them based on how good a fish they are, and then you're putting them into you're basically pulling them out and putting them onto land and then expecting them to, and then expecting them to thrive.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: We use that imagery because it's just so like when you start to think about it that like that, it is so illogical to do, right?
39:46
SPEAKER_01: It is so illogical to think about it in that way.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: And where we're seeing exactly the same thing is interesting is when you take people, for example, that were managers in a traditional organization that was not hybrid or not remote, and they've spent 15, 20 years building up a set of skills that allows them to be an in-office manager.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: And then you make the entire team remote.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: Now those, now they are the proverbial fish out of water.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: They are now doing trying to use the same skills that they built that have been super successful for them, and they're flapping away like crazy trying to trying to swim, and they can't because they've been put into an entirely different environment.
40:26
SPEAKER_01: And so we just urge people inside organizations to actively look for that.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: If you're seeing people fail inside your organization and you don't know why, many, many times it is related to that.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: And especially in this current climate where people are trying to cut costs and they'll say, okay, we'll fire a bunch of people, then we'll move a bunch of people around, but we won't spend any money on training them because we can't afford to uh because we can't afford to do that, right?
40:51
SPEAKER_01: And then the bottom line starts to suffer.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: Many times it's related to those things.
40:57
SPEAKER_04: Well, and and when the economy starts to turn around, guess what?
40:59
SPEAKER_04: Everybody's gonna do.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:01
SPEAKER_04: Go find a new job.
41:02
SPEAKER_01: Precisely.
41:03
SPEAKER_04: If they're not already looking.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: If they're not already looking, exactly right.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: All right.
41:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that seems that's a that's a fantastic uh uh place to leave it, Carol.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: Again, uh the book is called Powered by People Listen Out for the Audible version.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: If you're more of an auditory, uh auditory type person, that should be out by the time the uh by the time the podcast comes out.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: It was really great to uh to speak with you today, Carol.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: My pleasure, Paul.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Music is by Dolo Records.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: It helps us reach more people.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.