LM Ep 89
[00:00:00] Ah, summertime popsicles, road trips, family time. But before you know it, it's September back to school. Back to back to back meetings and the realization that there's only one quarter left before 2024 rings in and you still have so much to do. [00:01:00] Did your heart rate just quicken even thinking about it? If so, I have a couple of questions for you.
What if you could tackle that full plate without the breathlessness and stress? What if you had support to help you not just survive, but thrive with elevated results and some energy despair? It's possible. Very possible. The talent trust, my peer-based coaching program exclusively for HR and talent management leaders is now open for enrollment.
Within the trust, you work on your own projects, not on some generic training curriculum. You get timely feedback and input, and it ensures that you actually make the time to get your big rock thinking and strategizing done. But here's the catch, summertime. That means now is the time to line up your budget approvals and make the business case for the program to your leader, not when fall is already here and you're racing to keep up.
And I can help I'm really good at business casing. So book a free call with me today to work on your business case [00:02:00] and just to explore if the program's a fit for you. Don't wait until it's too late and you have no time or budget left. Go to the talent trust.ca to book. I can't wait to help write your case.
Do you have a clear set of competencies in your organization? Many do. And many have older competency models that may no longer be providing all the benefits they could. Today's guest shares his experience using a competency model in his manufacturing environment and practical examples of how to build it correctly.
My guest is Joe Dunlap. He has spent 20 years in continuous learning and performance improvement and has worked for the US Air Force Department of Defense, Nassau Finance, insurance, technology, healthcare and Manufacturing industries. He enjoys addressing performance improvement problems for frontline operators and executive leadership development both nationally and globally.
It was really fun connecting [00:03:00] with Joe and together extolling the virtues of competency models and clear expectations and joy.
Hello and welcome back to the Talent Management Therese program. I'm your host, Elisa Mitchell, and today I'm joined by Joe Dunlap. Joe is the global Director of training and development. for c j K group. Joe, welcome to the show, Lisa. Thank you so much for having me on. My pleasure.
So let's start out by having you share a bit about your background, your journey, and what you do at C J K. Certainly. So I've been in learning development for over 20 years. Started off as a standup facilitator using PowerPoints and overheads and things like that. And then as e-learning, learning management systems, authoring tools came along I helped lead the transition from, again, that standup instructor led into the e-learning world for the organization that I was working with, and stayed kind of in that domain, probably for the better part of a decade plus of doing [00:04:00] that for.
The original organization I started with as well, some other organizations, had a great opportunity to kind of transition away from the e-learning focus when I joined nasa for a couple of years. And then coming back from NASA where when I was in Mississippi back to Wisconsin, started moving much more into the performance improvement, talent development, talent management space.
So while learning was still part of that focus, I. We were now much more focused on recruitment and retention and overall competency and performance improvement, and that's really where I've been for about the past decade plus now is in that space, a little bit of learning still there. Still facilitate every now and then, but just much broader in terms of the scope of our work, my work.
And I, I think it's really neat that you, that you kind of snuck NASA in there along with that must've been intriguing. What? You know, it was one of those opportunities that a friend of mine from my days in the military said, Hey, we have this opportunity. You wanna come? I'm like, oh yeah, of course I wanna come.
It's like, if Disney called, yeah, I [00:05:00] absolutely wanna try something like that on. So, Yes. Interesting. Well, and the military, since, since you have the background in the military, I remember years ago doing my adult adult education diploma and you know, learning how sort of modern day t and d is predicated on practices in the US Army.
Absolutely. Early on that they were kind of pioneers for a large part of it. Did you, did you experience that firsthand? Was that something you were conscious of while, while there. I was not conscious while I was being put through those practices. But then becoming a practitioner, I was able to turn back and look at that basic training and the various trainings that we went through, and then saw the use of adding and I S D and models like that t w I, that were in place for the training that I went through.
Yeah, very interesting. I love that. Okay, so. You know, you talked about a bit of a, a range of, of things under the umbrella of, of L and D or t and D, so performance improvement, there's a talent acquisition, talent management competencies and so on. You know, [00:06:00] something you mentioned when we first got acquainted was this idea of, of talking about performance versus learning, and I was hoping you could expound on that a little.
Absolutely. So, you know, the end of the road of every journey. Is usually some type of performance improvement. That is generally what most organizations, I've never met a C E O, who has told me that they really cared as much about learning as they do about performance, performance of the organization, performance of the individuals that are in the organization, but very often from a learning and development perspective, and, and I'm guilty of this, we focus on the learning outcome, which.
May or may not have something to do with performance improvement. So performance improvement could incorporate learning, but it doesn't have to. But learning generally will lead to some type of performance improvement. So you start to see, there's a little bit of a disconnect there is we may be producing learning outcomes, you know, saying that people can pass the test and they can do certain practices and they know certain things, but that may have no [00:07:00] relation whatsoever to actual performance improvement.
So, What I try to convince my peers, what I've been doing for the better part of decade is if we focus on performance improvement, then we understand what those outcomes are, and you can design much better learning experiences to get to those actual outcomes. It's interesting. Well, what it makes me think of is, is you know properly done evaluation strategy, right?
Mm-hmm. So planning this, the strategy adjacent to the needs assessment before you even get going on the design and delivery so that you know your level 1, 2, 3, 4, and five. Yes, Yeah, so because the one is your learning outcomes, your basic, well, sort of reaction, learning reaction. Two is the learning, and then three, you're starting to look at impact on performance.
And four, certainly impact on the overall organization. so I think, I think you just kind of made the case for it. Let's, talk about those levels, because I think stakeholders, right? The people that will come to us with a need, they, yes. They wanna [00:08:00] know I need, like how many times have you had a stakeholder, you know, an internal client say, can you, can you fix this group of people?
Yes. Once you know this whole department of supervisors that none of them have a sense of urgency. Teach them to have one. Yes. And in the end, what was going on, right? And it's a delicate dance sometimes, is that the leaders were not, Articulating clear expectations. They were muddling the, the waters and make it very difficult for people to understand what was priority.
Hence they didn't show the, the sense of urgency. So, so I think when we're, when we help our clients think about and our articulate what will be different at the end of a class or learning intervention and what will be different once people go back to their jobs exactly. Exactly, and it's, I can't tell you the number of times where I've had that type of interference in what would be probably a good, successful program because the leader had not bought into the methodology or what it is that we were learning.
If that was, especially if that was a [00:09:00] practice within their team or their, and the roles that reported to that individual. If they didn't buy into that, then yeah, the, the whole program was not gonna be a success. Well, you know, in your interest in sustainment, you know, how do we pull the thread on learning?
I mean, right there that's, it's fundamental that we help the internal clients and involve them in how that sustainment is going to take place. Cuz often l and d or the performance consulting group, you know, we're onto the next thing. They enact me. Yes. We have to help the clients bake it in. how does that work in your current environment?
You know? Yeah. So, for instance, and, and especially with the C J K group and the group, the, the focus that I've been on now is how are we constantly repeating the practices that we're asking them to learn? So it takes a much different focuses that we're now focusing on the job training instead of pulling them off into the classroom.
And it, of course, it's a manufacturing environment, so we, we don't have much liberty to do in the type. And classroom training. So we wanna focus on the job and we want them to experience [00:10:00] what it's like being a part of that workflow while things are actually moving and learning in that workflow. Because truly that's how their work is going to proceed in the first place.
So better that they can learn to think while moving and standing and doing whatever they're doing in that process and understanding that workflow. So we kind of break down that learning into smaller chunks as they look. Look at that workflow. So, If I were to describe, you know, some typical introductory training, it might be an introduction to the machine and the various components, what they all do, what are the safety points of that?
What do you need to understand, what's happening with the machine with regards to the manufacturing process at that time, and what are you supposed to be doing? And then you just keep building on that skillset over time, over time, over time, till they get to a point where they're satisfied with, and this being now their supervisor or their manager as an example.
With their overall competency with regards to being not only to understand, but can demonstrate that understanding what actual performance, and then you [00:11:00] reinforce that in the period post training, however long that may be. Leading up to them cross-training into a new role or advancing into a higher level role within that particular machine that they're working on, that they're constantly doing the same stuff and they're evaluating them on a frequent basis.
And if they start to see a slip, then we recognize that very quickly and we get back to refocusing on some of those areas that maybe the learner has forgotten, or I should say the trainee has forgotten to actually continue performance in. I appreciate the emphasis on, on the job training, cuz I think that it's, it's critical, right?
You know, there's a place for classroom, whether it's virtual or, or in real life, and there needs to be that actual application. Let's, you know, you said help them experience that workflow. Yes. On the job. So now something I know you're really proud of that you've been working on is, is, you know, competency models and, and really yes.
Focused on that in the last year or so. So, so [00:12:00] could you tell us a bit about that project and what prompted it in the first place? So, you know, what are you, what are you looking to achieve as a result? Absolutely. So I've been working with competency models for about seven years now. Give or take, and going into a manufacturing environment.
One of the things that I knew from previous experience was, is that we have to define what good looks like on the back end of all this, and very often, especially in the manufacturing world, good. Looks like those measurements typically center around their productivity in terms of timeliness and efficiency and the quality output.
But what they're missing now is that person, their behavior, their actual, you know, the work that they're doing at different parts of that machine as part of a team. The work that they're delivering to the next people who are part of the assembly line, so to speak, who are now ex, you know, getting the end product of their work and now have to do something with it.
So, But when we talk about competency now, I'm asking those supervisors, those managers to define what does this ideal person [00:13:00] look like to you in this role? What can they do? And what was very interesting is that a lot of the supervisors that I interacted with really had never defined that part of it. So they had to kinda, kinda start thinking through it.
They knew what the quality output should be, they knew what that individual should look like, but they had never defined what their expectations of an individual in that role as part of a team needed to do. Because, you know, again, if there was four or five people on a machine, you know what the quality looks like at the end.
But how do you know if somebody. And that team of five, for an example, is not doing their part. So you have to define what those expectations are. So therefore, if somebody's not doing the kind of work that they need to be doing in their role, you can identify that. And so that's how we went about that process was what does good look like for this role?
And how would you know? And for them, a lot of it had been subjective. They grew up in the business. They'd been here for 25, 30 years. So in their head they knew it was record, but they had never put it on paper. And so now we are putting it on paper. And what it did is it led to this moment where now that we were [00:14:00] truly defining what somebody in a particular role had to be able to do to prove competency, that changed the job description.
It changed the job hazard analysis for that, and it allowed us now to be much clearer in our recruitment efforts as well as our retention efforts internally. To describe what it is that role should be doing and what good looks like, so that way, that individual, that individual supervisor and everybody in the plant knew if that person was a top performer and was now ready to be cross-trained or move up into a different role.
Yes. So let's kind of, dig into some of this because there's so, there's so much goodness here. So I appreciate competency models myself. I like a good competency model though I remember in my last corporate role at Chartwell. So this is, I left six years ago, so this is going back about 10 years.
Really. And you know, this is, I don't know how you collected the data. I'd love to understand that, but I used a group of senior leaders. Mm-hmm. we did a full day thing and we did. A series of gallery walks. So it started with, [00:15:00] brainstorming. What do your ideal performers bring to the job?
So what is it, what are their behaviors and how do they go about the work? Yes. Right? And then also, what do the stragglers. That isn't working. Like so what doesn't work, what works and what doesn't work. That was equally important. And actually, I think I even started with that cuz it's easier for leaders to identify right off the bat what isn't working.
If, as you say with the, in your case, they've never had to articulate this before. So starting with the, oh, this isn't, you know, what Joe's doing over here doesn't work for me. Okay. Let's talk about why, and what do you value in other people? And then also what do you need within the team?
Moving forward, knowing your, this is assumes you, assumes you have a, a vision in place, right? Of Forward moving vision of where you wanna wanna go with things, but like, is what you have now what you need Yes. To grow? Yes. So, yeah, I think it's really important because I had si similar [00:16:00] experience where then it helped us really refine.
Job descriptions. My talent acquisition team was much more successful in finding best fit and, and, you know, in terms of retention and so on over time, how did you collect the data in this stage? Especially since you've got people in a plant environments? Mm-hmm. And. You know, you're one person and, and how did you gather this from so many people?
Yeah, no, it's a great question. So typically I would start off with the supervisor or the plant manager at, at one of the locations, and we would talk about a role, whatever that role may be. And for lack of a better word, I would ask them to do what I call a brain vomit of what are the various components of this role?
You know, what are those topics that somebody needs to be able to understand and do in this role? And then once we've kind of scoped out what we think those topics are, And maybe put a little meat to those topics. Then a little design thinking where now we start to bring in some of the [00:17:00] senior operators as well as some of the senior leaders or supervisor into that conversation to say, okay, here's kind of where we started, what we thought were probably the topics with this particular role, what somebody needs to understand and do, and kind of define them a little bit.
Now we need your input into that and what it help to do and, and you just hit on a great point. Was it helped to enlighten that leader, that there was more to that role very often than what it is they understood mm-hmm. With regards to that particular role. But what it also did is it eliminated a lot of bias.
That might have come from one individual giving you their feedback because that one individual defines, here's what's important to me as, as a leader, as what have you with regards to this person in that role. But then when you start hearing from other people, some of those. Those thoughts, those biases of what's important, start to get challenged of, Hey, that's really not as important in this role as it is over in this role.
And you start to truly define what are the most important characteristics and performance [00:18:00] of someone in that role. That then kind of opens it all up to a much more objective evaluation of that individual and their performance so they can continue their growth. Oh, so important because we all bring our own unique perspective.
We can't see everything from 360 degrees. Like, it's just impossible. I remember, this is partly why I'm so passionate about in recruiting models that mm-hmm. You know, where possible you've got more than one person who is Yes. Interviewing and, and that there's a, a calibration that occurs because you're going to see and pick up on different things depending on who you are.
Yes. Who you've worked with, your own experiences. And so forth. So yeah, really, really, really important. so as you're having all these conversations, Joe, I'm just curious, so from a practical perspective for our listeners mm-hmm. How did you. co like, so there's the data collection. How did you document it?
Like was this you kind of taking the brain bombing results and then, writing it up for people to be able to parse through it or what did that [00:19:00] look like? Yeah, and it's, it's, it's very interesting especially cuz in a manufacturing environment, my time with them grows very limited in terms of me, I'm taking people out of production Yes.
To have these conversations. So I changed my focus to meeting two or three times a week for half an hour. And so we would focus on a role on a particular topic. And we would, again, that using that brain vomit terminology, we would define those topics and define what those topics actually meant. And then what it allowed them to do was step away for a day or two and think about that before our next meeting.
And very often what happens is they come back and they say, Hey, can I have this aha moment? We need to include this, or we forgot about this. Mm-hmm. And so, As we continue to develop those topics and those competencies going out, they always have the opportunity to say, can we go back and look at this and stuff?
The stuff that we did earlier, because I've had some ideas around that. So they can always go back and reflect as we build forward, and it keeps them kind of thinking of. Again, along that idea of [00:20:00] sustainability and learning, it now helps them to now structure what that training will actually look like based on what is an appropriate progress for that individual.
So now they've built out that training with, I've gotta teach you to crawl before you walk, before you run. So keeping them thinking that way helps them to now think about. What do they really need to learn first so that I can judge whether or not this training really has what it takes to succeed in this role.
So I can move them onto maybe a second phase or a third phase or a fourth phase and see their progress and evaluate them. Yes. I really appreciate that approach because I, I think you know, it's modeling mm-hmm. For your leaders, how good learning occurs, how, how, how learning is integrated, right.
It's through a process of, you know, action, reflection, learning. Yes. It's, it's, you know, that ongoing loop. So having space in between really, really important. So, listeners, I'm just really underscoring this because, you know, in, in the folks I work with, I often find that, That [00:21:00] there's reluctance to allow for space, particularly when it's around process development.
Yes. Like we're developing competencies. We know about it intrinsically for when we're putting in a leadership development program. But when it comes to other talent related work and processes, I think that sense of space that yes, allowing for reflection is, is equally important. Absolutely. Because it, what has been amazing to me in these processes is they all go back out to work.
And they thinking, they're thinking about that while they're looking at that work. Or they may go and talk to a senior leader on machine, say, Hey, I just thought about this. What are your thoughts? And they'll come back very often with some additional thoughts of, Hey, we forgot to conclude this, or we forgot to talk about that.
So again, it just allows them continually to engage with other operators on the floor to kind of fact check themselves, to make sure that we're getting the right components in that training for development purposes. You know what's neat too is it's really engaging people in collaboration and absolutely helping people kinda [00:22:00] lean in, right?
Yes. And, and see, see things from each other's vantage points. So, there's so much value to this exercise. So tell us a bit about. You know, I mean there's some, clearly some intangible value, right? Just, bringing people to work collectively and Oh, broadening their, their mindset around what jobs and entail and so forth.
Yeah. What were the direct impacts? So you mentioned recruitment retention. Could you tell us a little bit more? Absolutely. So I kind of start at the back end with the development of the program, cuz you were just hinting on that. So, by the time that we actually implemented a roles training plan, Most of the people in that particular area, that function of that, of that plant, knew about it and were engaged in it because they had probably some type of role with the actual development of the content.
So they may have only seen small pieces, they may have only had conversation. But the time that we actually en and you know, basically launched that particular program, most people in the plant already knew about. At that point. So now they were really [00:23:00] looking forward to seeing what was happening and we had volunteers, senior operators who were volunteering their time to go through that training plan so that they could again, kind of refresh themselves back in the day, but also to validate that what we had kind of put together actually worked.
So it was great for us in the test sense because we knew that there were gonna be gaps. We knew there were things that we probably forgot or didn't cover, that we were able to kind of work through some of those kinks before bringing in a training. What it also allowed is our safety components. So our safety team here to look at that j that that training and evaluate the job hazard analysis that they had on that role against that plant's training and re and then basically reevaluate that job hazard analysis to develop a more comprehensive job.
Ha hazard analysis. For that role in light of what that person was actually responsible for doing. So he's been able to do that. But probably the most important part has been on the front end, the recruiting end is now these plant managers, these [00:24:00] general managers, could take the various roles that we had developed and show career development paths.
Two prospective recruits. Mm-hmm. So I'll give you a great example. Happened at one of our plants in the Michigan area, and this was a pencil drawing with me and that general manager. We hadn't really developed anything with the marketing team to make that look particularly pretty, but we had kind of drawn it up and he took it to a high school recruiting event.
I think there was five, seven high schools that were coming together in this job fair for individuals who were getting ready to graduate. And he was able to lure over 12 candidates away from higher paying jobs because he could actually show these candidates what their career P path would look like as long as they showed competency over a two year time of span where they would actually have a higher salary at the end of that two years, then they would've gotten in the role that they were being offered a higher salary to begin with at another organization.
Oh, Bravo. Big clap there. That's so great, right? Because I think That gets missed by a [00:25:00] lot of employers, a lot of leaders, right? Data. Like there's, there's what the job is now and let's paint the picture of what's possible. Because I think that candidates are wanting to know that there's potential to grow, you know, even if they're super excited about the job as is that they might be coming into.
So I think that's really an underutilized strategy. So. Fantastic. Yeah. So the other thing that you mentioned to me that's linked to. You know, having accurate job descriptions, clear career pathing. Right. That that becomes an actual value proposition in recruitment. Yeah. You know, something you, you mentioned earlier was that you've done some, some sort of informal research around, you know, typical l and d job descriptions.
Mm-hmm. And you noticed an interesting trend. Yeah. Yeah. So for the past year, I've just been picking up on job jobs that I see posted on LinkedIn. And I'm not very picky about what I'm looking at, but maybe one or two jobs a day. I just kind of look at the job description to see [00:26:00] what are they looking for in people in those roles.
And it's just more out of curiosity, but one of the things that I started noting, because again, my role is much bigger than just that on D perspective. Was that about 75% of the jobs that I looked at had. Something else in the job responsibilities beyond what a typical learning and development position might have.
So that might be in relationship to performance improvement or talent development or talent management level responsibilities. And some of those jobs, and I'm talking individual contributor, all the way up to leader roles, learning development was one about a small fraction of what it is they were asking that person to do, coming to work for that organization.
And so, It struck me very strange because you know, a lot of the conversation in this space centers around digital technology, but I'm not noticing a lot of conversation about what organizations are expecting of us in l and d to expand our scope of work into areas that we may not even be familiar with.
You know, when we talk about [00:27:00] talent development, recruitment, retention, employee engagement, and stuff like that. So, It's getting much. I think in organizations when we talk about, you know, everybody here says skills, skills, skills, then we should have an expectation as l and d professionals that the organization is gonna expect us to grow our skills in other areas as well.
And I think, again, non-scientific research, but this, the job description seemed to be showing that. Yeah, it's interesting cause I'm really trying to wrap my head around it because, because in my experience, you know, a couple decades ago when I was hired as I, the title was specifically training and development or learning and development business partner, I can't remember.
Yes. Which one? And it was all performance consulting. And I, you know, if I look back, I bet the job description really reflected that I had a boss who was very visionary at the time, so she was ahead of, ahead of the game. And it was, it was a large, quite mature organization as well. So I think that may have had, had something to do with it.
So I got into that od space out of more, you know, traditional t n d very early on. Yeah. And, and so I, I think what's most [00:28:00] intriguing to me is that these. These responsibilities are showing up under the umbrella l and d instead of under OD or performance consultant titles. Yes. So there's broadening to your point of expectations?
Perhaps. And I wonder if that's because. more organizations are realizing the value and the, and the, the, the need for that kind of skill. Mm-hmm. And so, in their mind it is learning and development. Like, I don't, I don't think that, you know, a lot of CEOs and ops leaders distinguish these things the same way you and I do, cuz we're Yes.
This space, right. What do, what do you think about that? I would agree with you. I would agree with you that, you know, certainly over my experience, you know, back when I started we were all under the same umbrella, you know? Yeah. We were doing od L and d, all that stuff, and then it kind of started segregating itself.
And I do agree that, you know, most of the leaders I've ever met with when. That work was presented, you know, that I want training request. There was always other components to it. For me, really about seven or eight years ago as I [00:29:00] really started to make that transition was I was working with human resource business partners and quality and everything else.
And it made me start thinking about the impacts of the type of learning that we were going to build, the type of training that we were gonna build was going to have a direct impact on that role. For future recruitment effort was going to have an impact on that role in terms of a compensation review because you're now asking that individual to do work that they were not hired to do some new work.
How are you gonna compensate 'em for it? And on the back end like I talked about with job hazard analysis, there's a quality aspect to that. So now you're, you're having them do something else. What are the quality outputs that's being expected? What are the performance outputs that are being expected?
Now have to all come in alignment. So to only think of learning, you're forgetting about all the other things that you're impacting with regards to when you finish that program. Yeah, it's really interesting. Now I feel like I wanna go look at Indeed, I don't know if you ever seen in the States, but it's, it's a big job board thing in the aggregator and just to, to look through it and see, you know, if I'm [00:30:00] seeing some of the same thing.
Cuz it is, it is interesting and I think, I'd be interested to know from, from listeners, drop me a line, you know, what, what have you noticed? Pretty intriguing. Okay. Well, let's change directions just, just a little bit. Okay. Because the other thing that I really am excited to have you share is how you've created a very impressive partner network across, I think you had said more than a hundred different plant locations.
A hundred different partners over a, over 15 different plant locations. Yes. Got it. Okay. Okay, so this is, so this is a partner network that allows you to distribute learning and programs or support, like how does it, what, what is it all about? Yeah, so, the partner network really consists of two roles.
You're either a sponsor or a mentor. And so it's this idea that you as an experienced operator are taking on a role with that new trainee to either be their mentor and you're coaching and helping them to improve, or you're their [00:31:00] sponsor to make sure that they're being recognized for what they're doing and you want to see them be successful.
So there's two different viewpoints. I know some people would probably merge those two together, but the sponsor's role really is to check in with both the mentor and the trainee to say, How are you progressing? Are things moving along appropriately? Do you have any feedback for the team? So they get to be a neutral third party.
They get to be Switzerland in this case and be that neutral third party to make sure that the training is happy with the training that they're receiving, and that they feel like they're progressing at a good pace. And that trainee can speak openly because that's not the person who's actually training them or evaluating them.
They're the, they're speaking on that training's behalf. So it's allowing people to have somebody else who they, if, especially if they might not be so inclined to wanna speak about something that wasn't working for them. Now they have somebody on their behalf who will speak up. And so Exactly. So that's the collaborative network and basically, The way I kind of approached it is, is that, you know, one of the things that we've learned, [00:32:00] especially about gen X and Gen Z is they like a lot of touchpoint with another person.
They want feedback and they want it immediately kind of thing. And so we built that measure in of. If we want to attract and retain today's talent, for the continued success of our organization, we've gotta make sure we're meeting them with where they are asking us to meet them at, and we're doing those things for them.
And so that really was that approach. And so there were plenty of. Seasoned, experienced operators out there who wanted to take people under their wing and help them be succeed and share their knowledge with them. And so there was, it was actually very easy to get those people to come on board. The harder part for me was now training them around the scope of what would be their responsibility, which I had to kind of frame up once we had all those people who had agreed, yeah, they would like to participate.
So, so what did the training look like? Well, for me, it was truly clearly defining what that role meant. So if you were a mentor or sponsor, we defined what it meant to be that person. We defined what it meant to be in terms of checking in. We developed [00:33:00] checklists for them, you know, so, obviously this is for the sponsor and not for the mentor, cause the mentor's training them, but for the sponsor, what does it mean when you're now checking in with this individual?
What type of questions are you asking? How are you now framing that feedback to that individual's Plant manager or to their supervisor, or even to their operator trainer, so that they have to think through the type of questions that they want to ask. Of that trainee and then be able to frame that story appropriately so that people understand that, you know, the supervisor, the trainer the plant manager understand what it is that that trainee's actually saying and what they can do to help continue their improvement so that we can retain that individual and help them be successful.
Yeah, I really love how you split out the mentor and the sponsor role, because I do agree. I think a lot of people would tend to just slap 'em together, just see it as the same thing. And to, to really create that neutral Switzerland role that your sole job is to advocate, celebrate, encourage, versus train, you know, cause, cause so many places, particularly in [00:34:00] manufacturing, they're, they go with a buddy system for training, right.
Is on the job training. Buddies assigned. They're not always well trained. They're not always invested in it. Did you run into any, Issues around people saying, well, how am I, you know, getting compensated for this? Or, you know, this is extra work or any, so I hear this come up. That was certainly a question.
As we started developing the training, there was this question of, as we get people who after they've trained in the role that they were originally hired for, and they start cross-training into new roles or they start training up into the roles, what does that compensation program look like for them?
And so certainly there was a conversation with the CEO of the presidents of the company the executive team around. On what that actually looked like. And a lot of that, of course, was based on. That particular role that that individual was cross-training or training up to. And what was the, the, the scale of the compensation for that?
So it was all basically, it, it wasn't going to be defined in terms of, oh, you're getting 25 cents more an hour, as an example like that. It was what role did you train into? [00:35:00] Are you performing in competently? Is once we have proof that you are performing competently, then there would've been something, there would be something based on the role that you trained into and.
The reason I kind of want to emphasize that is that, for instance, if I hired somebody on one side of the plant, there's three sides, there's three different divisions of the plant. They may have cross trained into a completely new division. Well, that's a whole different ballgame than what you were hired to do on one side, and now you're learning another side of the business, which makes you a much more valuable player because again, using that assembly line thought process, once the work's done here, it all shifts over here.
If you can move with that work to help that team out, meet our production quotas. All the more value you are at that particular point in terms of being able to move where the work is and help out when need. So that's looking at you know, how do we compensate people differently as they move expand in scope and knowledge and experience and, and.
You know, value really exactly what I'm, what I meant was for the folks that are, [00:36:00] that are putting up their hand and say, I do wanna mentor. I do wanna sponsor. Yes. Yeah. Are they somehow recognized or compensated? Was, you know, was there, how was that managed? Oh yeah, absolutely. For both. So, I maintain a monthly newsletter.
And so each month I'll recognize the plant and all the, the, the sponsors, the mentors and the trainers at that particular plant. They also kind of get a t-shirt that has their role as well. So they get to wear that proudly around the plant, especially when they're in that role. And yes, there is additional compensation for them for volunteering to be that role for that person as well.
Okay. Yes. So listeners, some of you I know work in, you know, more of a, a manufacturing or frontline environment where people are being expected to do buddy type training, mentor training, so, And are rightfully asking, well, what do you, you know, what's in it for me? Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of companies say, well, you get to grow, you get to say that you did it.
And, and I think it's, it's really a beautiful thing that C j [00:37:00] K is actually recognizing them. But it doesn't have to be huge, but there does need to be some kind of acknowledgement that's, that's a bit material. So, it's refreshing to hear that. Yeah. All Well, we're, we're coming to the close of our together and I was love to know if there's a particular.
Resource that you've enjoyed, that you've found useful for the work that you do, that you'd like to share with us? Oh there's a lot of resources, but I think that the, probably the resource that I would recommend to my peers is a book from Dr. Adam Grant, who's an organizational psychologist, and it's called Think Again.
Yeah. And what it really is, it's about unlearning and relearning. And I think in the world that we live in today with the constant change that's taking place, whether that be from digital technology or any other facet of line of business now moving faster we can't get settled in our typical weights.
We need to always be ready to challenge ourselves and break down the thought process that we had of how things actually work or [00:38:00] should work. To, okay, something new is happening, what does that mean to what we've normally done, and how do we now change that, embrace that. And it's, it's very hard. I'm an old timer.
I got a lot of gray on my beard, but. We have to recognize also, especially in our field, we've got four generations in the of, in the workforce right now. And not everybody can be trained the same way. Not everybody has the same level of expectations or the same behaviors in some regards, and we've got to now embrace a much broader scope of thinking and really just stop staying, staying in a place that we were and open up to all these different things.
Yeah, you're appealing to my coach brain here, you know, cuz I really see unlearning is so powerful. It's, it's, you know, in terms of checking your assumptions, like what, you know, what are some, what are some assumptions we're making? And what if we challenge those? What, you know, what's another way to look at this?
So, absolutely beautiful place to, to land. And I'll put the book referenced in the show notes for listeners in case you're driving or walking. Joe, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a, a real pleasure. [00:39:00] Thank you, Lisa. It's been a pleasure for as well.
[00:00:00] Ah, summertime popsicles, road trips, family time. But before you know it, it's September back to school. Back to back to back meetings and the realization that there's only one quarter left before 2024 rings in and you still have so much to do. [00:01:00] Did your heart rate just quicken even thinking about it? If so, I have a couple of questions for you.
What if you could tackle that full plate without the breathlessness and stress? What if you had support to help you not just survive, but thrive with elevated results and some energy despair? It's possible. Very possible. The talent trust, my peer-based coaching program exclusively for HR and talent management leaders is now open for enrollment.
Within the trust, you work on your own projects, not on some generic training curriculum. You get timely feedback and input, and it ensures that you actually make the time to get your big rock thinking and strategizing done. But here's the catch, summertime. That means now is the time to line up your budget approvals and make the business case for the program to your leader, not when fall is already here and you're racing to keep up.
And I can help I'm really good at business casing. So book a free call with me today to work on your business case [00:02:00] and just to explore if the program's a fit for you. Don't wait until it's too late and you have no time or budget left. Go to the talent trust.ca to book. I can't wait to help write your case.
Do you have a clear set of competencies in your organization? Many do. And many have older competency models that may no longer be providing all the benefits they could. Today's guest shares his experience using a competency model in his manufacturing environment and practical examples of how to build it correctly.
My guest is Joe Dunlap. He has spent 20 years in continuous learning and performance improvement and has worked for the US Air Force Department of Defense, Nassau Finance, insurance, technology, healthcare and Manufacturing industries. He enjoys addressing performance improvement problems for frontline operators and executive leadership development both nationally and globally.
It was really fun connecting [00:03:00] with Joe and together extolling the virtues of competency models and clear expectations and joy.
Hello and welcome back to the Talent Management Therese program. I'm your host, Elisa Mitchell, and today I'm joined by Joe Dunlap. Joe is the global Director of training and development. for c j K group. Joe, welcome to the show, Lisa. Thank you so much for having me on. My pleasure.
So let's start out by having you share a bit about your background, your journey, and what you do at C J K. Certainly. So I've been in learning development for over 20 years. Started off as a standup facilitator using PowerPoints and overheads and things like that. And then as e-learning, learning management systems, authoring tools came along I helped lead the transition from, again, that standup instructor led into the e-learning world for the organization that I was working with, and stayed kind of in that domain, probably for the better part of a decade plus of doing [00:04:00] that for.
The original organization I started with as well, some other organizations, had a great opportunity to kind of transition away from the e-learning focus when I joined nasa for a couple of years. And then coming back from NASA where when I was in Mississippi back to Wisconsin, started moving much more into the performance improvement, talent development, talent management space.
So while learning was still part of that focus, I. We were now much more focused on recruitment and retention and overall competency and performance improvement, and that's really where I've been for about the past decade plus now is in that space, a little bit of learning still there. Still facilitate every now and then, but just much broader in terms of the scope of our work, my work.
And I, I think it's really neat that you, that you kind of snuck NASA in there along with that must've been intriguing. What? You know, it was one of those opportunities that a friend of mine from my days in the military said, Hey, we have this opportunity. You wanna come? I'm like, oh yeah, of course I wanna come.
It's like, if Disney called, yeah, I [00:05:00] absolutely wanna try something like that on. So, Yes. Interesting. Well, and the military, since, since you have the background in the military, I remember years ago doing my adult adult education diploma and you know, learning how sort of modern day t and d is predicated on practices in the US Army.
Absolutely. Early on that they were kind of pioneers for a large part of it. Did you, did you experience that firsthand? Was that something you were conscious of while, while there. I was not conscious while I was being put through those practices. But then becoming a practitioner, I was able to turn back and look at that basic training and the various trainings that we went through, and then saw the use of adding and I S D and models like that t w I, that were in place for the training that I went through.
Yeah, very interesting. I love that. Okay, so. You know, you talked about a bit of a, a range of, of things under the umbrella of, of L and D or t and D, so performance improvement, there's a talent acquisition, talent management competencies and so on. You know, [00:06:00] something you mentioned when we first got acquainted was this idea of, of talking about performance versus learning, and I was hoping you could expound on that a little.
Absolutely. So, you know, the end of the road of every journey. Is usually some type of performance improvement. That is generally what most organizations, I've never met a C E O, who has told me that they really cared as much about learning as they do about performance, performance of the organization, performance of the individuals that are in the organization, but very often from a learning and development perspective, and, and I'm guilty of this, we focus on the learning outcome, which.
May or may not have something to do with performance improvement. So performance improvement could incorporate learning, but it doesn't have to. But learning generally will lead to some type of performance improvement. So you start to see, there's a little bit of a disconnect there is we may be producing learning outcomes, you know, saying that people can pass the test and they can do certain practices and they know certain things, but that may have no [00:07:00] relation whatsoever to actual performance improvement.
So, What I try to convince my peers, what I've been doing for the better part of decade is if we focus on performance improvement, then we understand what those outcomes are, and you can design much better learning experiences to get to those actual outcomes. It's interesting. Well, what it makes me think of is, is you know properly done evaluation strategy, right?
Mm-hmm. So planning this, the strategy adjacent to the needs assessment before you even get going on the design and delivery so that you know your level 1, 2, 3, 4, and five. Yes, Yeah, so because the one is your learning outcomes, your basic, well, sort of reaction, learning reaction. Two is the learning, and then three, you're starting to look at impact on performance.
And four, certainly impact on the overall organization. so I think, I think you just kind of made the case for it. Let's, talk about those levels, because I think stakeholders, right? The people that will come to us with a need, they, yes. They wanna [00:08:00] know I need, like how many times have you had a stakeholder, you know, an internal client say, can you, can you fix this group of people?
Yes. Once you know this whole department of supervisors that none of them have a sense of urgency. Teach them to have one. Yes. And in the end, what was going on, right? And it's a delicate dance sometimes, is that the leaders were not, Articulating clear expectations. They were muddling the, the waters and make it very difficult for people to understand what was priority.
Hence they didn't show the, the sense of urgency. So, so I think when we're, when we help our clients think about and our articulate what will be different at the end of a class or learning intervention and what will be different once people go back to their jobs exactly. Exactly, and it's, I can't tell you the number of times where I've had that type of interference in what would be probably a good, successful program because the leader had not bought into the methodology or what it is that we were learning.
If that was, especially if that was a [00:09:00] practice within their team or their, and the roles that reported to that individual. If they didn't buy into that, then yeah, the, the whole program was not gonna be a success. Well, you know, in your interest in sustainment, you know, how do we pull the thread on learning?
I mean, right there that's, it's fundamental that we help the internal clients and involve them in how that sustainment is going to take place. Cuz often l and d or the performance consulting group, you know, we're onto the next thing. They enact me. Yes. We have to help the clients bake it in. how does that work in your current environment?
You know? Yeah. So, for instance, and, and especially with the C J K group and the group, the, the focus that I've been on now is how are we constantly repeating the practices that we're asking them to learn? So it takes a much different focuses that we're now focusing on the job training instead of pulling them off into the classroom.
And it, of course, it's a manufacturing environment, so we, we don't have much liberty to do in the type. And classroom training. So we wanna focus on the job and we want them to experience [00:10:00] what it's like being a part of that workflow while things are actually moving and learning in that workflow. Because truly that's how their work is going to proceed in the first place.
So better that they can learn to think while moving and standing and doing whatever they're doing in that process and understanding that workflow. So we kind of break down that learning into smaller chunks as they look. Look at that workflow. So, If I were to describe, you know, some typical introductory training, it might be an introduction to the machine and the various components, what they all do, what are the safety points of that?
What do you need to understand, what's happening with the machine with regards to the manufacturing process at that time, and what are you supposed to be doing? And then you just keep building on that skillset over time, over time, over time, till they get to a point where they're satisfied with, and this being now their supervisor or their manager as an example.
With their overall competency with regards to being not only to understand, but can demonstrate that understanding what actual performance, and then you [00:11:00] reinforce that in the period post training, however long that may be. Leading up to them cross-training into a new role or advancing into a higher level role within that particular machine that they're working on, that they're constantly doing the same stuff and they're evaluating them on a frequent basis.
And if they start to see a slip, then we recognize that very quickly and we get back to refocusing on some of those areas that maybe the learner has forgotten, or I should say the trainee has forgotten to actually continue performance in. I appreciate the emphasis on, on the job training, cuz I think that it's, it's critical, right?
You know, there's a place for classroom, whether it's virtual or, or in real life, and there needs to be that actual application. Let's, you know, you said help them experience that workflow. Yes. On the job. So now something I know you're really proud of that you've been working on is, is, you know, competency models and, and really yes.
Focused on that in the last year or so. So, so [00:12:00] could you tell us a bit about that project and what prompted it in the first place? So, you know, what are you, what are you looking to achieve as a result? Absolutely. So I've been working with competency models for about seven years now. Give or take, and going into a manufacturing environment.
One of the things that I knew from previous experience was, is that we have to define what good looks like on the back end of all this, and very often, especially in the manufacturing world, good. Looks like those measurements typically center around their productivity in terms of timeliness and efficiency and the quality output.
But what they're missing now is that person, their behavior, their actual, you know, the work that they're doing at different parts of that machine as part of a team. The work that they're delivering to the next people who are part of the assembly line, so to speak, who are now ex, you know, getting the end product of their work and now have to do something with it.
So, But when we talk about competency now, I'm asking those supervisors, those managers to define what does this ideal person [00:13:00] look like to you in this role? What can they do? And what was very interesting is that a lot of the supervisors that I interacted with really had never defined that part of it. So they had to kinda, kinda start thinking through it.
They knew what the quality output should be, they knew what that individual should look like, but they had never defined what their expectations of an individual in that role as part of a team needed to do. Because, you know, again, if there was four or five people on a machine, you know what the quality looks like at the end.
But how do you know if somebody. And that team of five, for an example, is not doing their part. So you have to define what those expectations are. So therefore, if somebody's not doing the kind of work that they need to be doing in their role, you can identify that. And so that's how we went about that process was what does good look like for this role?
And how would you know? And for them, a lot of it had been subjective. They grew up in the business. They'd been here for 25, 30 years. So in their head they knew it was record, but they had never put it on paper. And so now we are putting it on paper. And what it did is it led to this moment where now that we were [00:14:00] truly defining what somebody in a particular role had to be able to do to prove competency, that changed the job description.
It changed the job hazard analysis for that, and it allowed us now to be much clearer in our recruitment efforts as well as our retention efforts internally. To describe what it is that role should be doing and what good looks like, so that way, that individual, that individual supervisor and everybody in the plant knew if that person was a top performer and was now ready to be cross-trained or move up into a different role.
Yes. So let's kind of, dig into some of this because there's so, there's so much goodness here. So I appreciate competency models myself. I like a good competency model though I remember in my last corporate role at Chartwell. So this is, I left six years ago, so this is going back about 10 years.
Really. And you know, this is, I don't know how you collected the data. I'd love to understand that, but I used a group of senior leaders. Mm-hmm. we did a full day thing and we did. A series of gallery walks. So it started with, [00:15:00] brainstorming. What do your ideal performers bring to the job?
So what is it, what are their behaviors and how do they go about the work? Yes. Right? And then also, what do the stragglers. That isn't working. Like so what doesn't work, what works and what doesn't work. That was equally important. And actually, I think I even started with that cuz it's easier for leaders to identify right off the bat what isn't working.
If, as you say with the, in your case, they've never had to articulate this before. So starting with the, oh, this isn't, you know, what Joe's doing over here doesn't work for me. Okay. Let's talk about why, and what do you value in other people? And then also what do you need within the team?
Moving forward, knowing your, this is assumes you, assumes you have a, a vision in place, right? Of Forward moving vision of where you wanna wanna go with things, but like, is what you have now what you need Yes. To grow? Yes. So, yeah, I think it's really important because I had si similar [00:16:00] experience where then it helped us really refine.
Job descriptions. My talent acquisition team was much more successful in finding best fit and, and, you know, in terms of retention and so on over time, how did you collect the data in this stage? Especially since you've got people in a plant environments? Mm-hmm. And. You know, you're one person and, and how did you gather this from so many people?
Yeah, no, it's a great question. So typically I would start off with the supervisor or the plant manager at, at one of the locations, and we would talk about a role, whatever that role may be. And for lack of a better word, I would ask them to do what I call a brain vomit of what are the various components of this role?
You know, what are those topics that somebody needs to be able to understand and do in this role? And then once we've kind of scoped out what we think those topics are, And maybe put a little meat to those topics. Then a little design thinking where now we start to bring in some of the [00:17:00] senior operators as well as some of the senior leaders or supervisor into that conversation to say, okay, here's kind of where we started, what we thought were probably the topics with this particular role, what somebody needs to understand and do, and kind of define them a little bit.
Now we need your input into that and what it help to do and, and you just hit on a great point. Was it helped to enlighten that leader, that there was more to that role very often than what it is they understood mm-hmm. With regards to that particular role. But what it also did is it eliminated a lot of bias.
That might have come from one individual giving you their feedback because that one individual defines, here's what's important to me as, as a leader, as what have you with regards to this person in that role. But then when you start hearing from other people, some of those. Those thoughts, those biases of what's important, start to get challenged of, Hey, that's really not as important in this role as it is over in this role.
And you start to truly define what are the most important characteristics and performance [00:18:00] of someone in that role. That then kind of opens it all up to a much more objective evaluation of that individual and their performance so they can continue their growth. Oh, so important because we all bring our own unique perspective.
We can't see everything from 360 degrees. Like, it's just impossible. I remember, this is partly why I'm so passionate about in recruiting models that mm-hmm. You know, where possible you've got more than one person who is Yes. Interviewing and, and that there's a, a calibration that occurs because you're going to see and pick up on different things depending on who you are.
Yes. Who you've worked with, your own experiences. And so forth. So yeah, really, really, really important. so as you're having all these conversations, Joe, I'm just curious, so from a practical perspective for our listeners mm-hmm. How did you. co like, so there's the data collection. How did you document it?
Like was this you kind of taking the brain bombing results and then, writing it up for people to be able to parse through it or what did that [00:19:00] look like? Yeah, and it's, it's, it's very interesting especially cuz in a manufacturing environment, my time with them grows very limited in terms of me, I'm taking people out of production Yes.
To have these conversations. So I changed my focus to meeting two or three times a week for half an hour. And so we would focus on a role on a particular topic. And we would, again, that using that brain vomit terminology, we would define those topics and define what those topics actually meant. And then what it allowed them to do was step away for a day or two and think about that before our next meeting.
And very often what happens is they come back and they say, Hey, can I have this aha moment? We need to include this, or we forgot about this. Mm-hmm. And so, As we continue to develop those topics and those competencies going out, they always have the opportunity to say, can we go back and look at this and stuff?
The stuff that we did earlier, because I've had some ideas around that. So they can always go back and reflect as we build forward, and it keeps them kind of thinking of. Again, along that idea of [00:20:00] sustainability and learning, it now helps them to now structure what that training will actually look like based on what is an appropriate progress for that individual.
So now they've built out that training with, I've gotta teach you to crawl before you walk, before you run. So keeping them thinking that way helps them to now think about. What do they really need to learn first so that I can judge whether or not this training really has what it takes to succeed in this role.
So I can move them onto maybe a second phase or a third phase or a fourth phase and see their progress and evaluate them. Yes. I really appreciate that approach because I, I think you know, it's modeling mm-hmm. For your leaders, how good learning occurs, how, how, how learning is integrated, right.
It's through a process of, you know, action, reflection, learning. Yes. It's, it's, you know, that ongoing loop. So having space in between really, really important. So, listeners, I'm just really underscoring this because, you know, in, in the folks I work with, I often find that, That [00:21:00] there's reluctance to allow for space, particularly when it's around process development.
Yes. Like we're developing competencies. We know about it intrinsically for when we're putting in a leadership development program. But when it comes to other talent related work and processes, I think that sense of space that yes, allowing for reflection is, is equally important. Absolutely. Because it, what has been amazing to me in these processes is they all go back out to work.
And they thinking, they're thinking about that while they're looking at that work. Or they may go and talk to a senior leader on machine, say, Hey, I just thought about this. What are your thoughts? And they'll come back very often with some additional thoughts of, Hey, we forgot to conclude this, or we forgot to talk about that.
So again, it just allows them continually to engage with other operators on the floor to kind of fact check themselves, to make sure that we're getting the right components in that training for development purposes. You know what's neat too is it's really engaging people in collaboration and absolutely helping people kinda [00:22:00] lean in, right?
Yes. And, and see, see things from each other's vantage points. So, there's so much value to this exercise. So tell us a bit about. You know, I mean there's some, clearly some intangible value, right? Just, bringing people to work collectively and Oh, broadening their, their mindset around what jobs and entail and so forth.
Yeah. What were the direct impacts? So you mentioned recruitment retention. Could you tell us a little bit more? Absolutely. So I kind of start at the back end with the development of the program, cuz you were just hinting on that. So, by the time that we actually implemented a roles training plan, Most of the people in that particular area, that function of that, of that plant, knew about it and were engaged in it because they had probably some type of role with the actual development of the content.
So they may have only seen small pieces, they may have only had conversation. But the time that we actually en and you know, basically launched that particular program, most people in the plant already knew about. At that point. So now they were really [00:23:00] looking forward to seeing what was happening and we had volunteers, senior operators who were volunteering their time to go through that training plan so that they could again, kind of refresh themselves back in the day, but also to validate that what we had kind of put together actually worked.
So it was great for us in the test sense because we knew that there were gonna be gaps. We knew there were things that we probably forgot or didn't cover, that we were able to kind of work through some of those kinks before bringing in a training. What it also allowed is our safety components. So our safety team here to look at that j that that training and evaluate the job hazard analysis that they had on that role against that plant's training and re and then basically reevaluate that job hazard analysis to develop a more comprehensive job.
Ha hazard analysis. For that role in light of what that person was actually responsible for doing. So he's been able to do that. But probably the most important part has been on the front end, the recruiting end is now these plant managers, these [00:24:00] general managers, could take the various roles that we had developed and show career development paths.
Two prospective recruits. Mm-hmm. So I'll give you a great example. Happened at one of our plants in the Michigan area, and this was a pencil drawing with me and that general manager. We hadn't really developed anything with the marketing team to make that look particularly pretty, but we had kind of drawn it up and he took it to a high school recruiting event.
I think there was five, seven high schools that were coming together in this job fair for individuals who were getting ready to graduate. And he was able to lure over 12 candidates away from higher paying jobs because he could actually show these candidates what their career P path would look like as long as they showed competency over a two year time of span where they would actually have a higher salary at the end of that two years, then they would've gotten in the role that they were being offered a higher salary to begin with at another organization.
Oh, Bravo. Big clap there. That's so great, right? Because I think That gets missed by a [00:25:00] lot of employers, a lot of leaders, right? Data. Like there's, there's what the job is now and let's paint the picture of what's possible. Because I think that candidates are wanting to know that there's potential to grow, you know, even if they're super excited about the job as is that they might be coming into.
So I think that's really an underutilized strategy. So. Fantastic. Yeah. So the other thing that you mentioned to me that's linked to. You know, having accurate job descriptions, clear career pathing. Right. That that becomes an actual value proposition in recruitment. Yeah. You know, something you, you mentioned earlier was that you've done some, some sort of informal research around, you know, typical l and d job descriptions.
Mm-hmm. And you noticed an interesting trend. Yeah. Yeah. So for the past year, I've just been picking up on job jobs that I see posted on LinkedIn. And I'm not very picky about what I'm looking at, but maybe one or two jobs a day. I just kind of look at the job description to see [00:26:00] what are they looking for in people in those roles.
And it's just more out of curiosity, but one of the things that I started noting, because again, my role is much bigger than just that on D perspective. Was that about 75% of the jobs that I looked at had. Something else in the job responsibilities beyond what a typical learning and development position might have.
So that might be in relationship to performance improvement or talent development or talent management level responsibilities. And some of those jobs, and I'm talking individual contributor, all the way up to leader roles, learning development was one about a small fraction of what it is they were asking that person to do, coming to work for that organization.
And so, It struck me very strange because you know, a lot of the conversation in this space centers around digital technology, but I'm not noticing a lot of conversation about what organizations are expecting of us in l and d to expand our scope of work into areas that we may not even be familiar with.
You know, when we talk about [00:27:00] talent development, recruitment, retention, employee engagement, and stuff like that. So, It's getting much. I think in organizations when we talk about, you know, everybody here says skills, skills, skills, then we should have an expectation as l and d professionals that the organization is gonna expect us to grow our skills in other areas as well.
And I think, again, non-scientific research, but this, the job description seemed to be showing that. Yeah, it's interesting cause I'm really trying to wrap my head around it because, because in my experience, you know, a couple decades ago when I was hired as I, the title was specifically training and development or learning and development business partner, I can't remember.
Yes. Which one? And it was all performance consulting. And I, you know, if I look back, I bet the job description really reflected that I had a boss who was very visionary at the time, so she was ahead of, ahead of the game. And it was, it was a large, quite mature organization as well. So I think that may have had, had something to do with it.
So I got into that od space out of more, you know, traditional t n d very early on. Yeah. And, and so I, I think what's most [00:28:00] intriguing to me is that these. These responsibilities are showing up under the umbrella l and d instead of under OD or performance consultant titles. Yes. So there's broadening to your point of expectations?
Perhaps. And I wonder if that's because. more organizations are realizing the value and the, and the, the, the need for that kind of skill. Mm-hmm. And so, in their mind it is learning and development. Like, I don't, I don't think that, you know, a lot of CEOs and ops leaders distinguish these things the same way you and I do, cuz we're Yes.
This space, right. What do, what do you think about that? I would agree with you. I would agree with you that, you know, certainly over my experience, you know, back when I started we were all under the same umbrella, you know? Yeah. We were doing od L and d, all that stuff, and then it kind of started segregating itself.
And I do agree that, you know, most of the leaders I've ever met with when. That work was presented, you know, that I want training request. There was always other components to it. For me, really about seven or eight years ago as I [00:29:00] really started to make that transition was I was working with human resource business partners and quality and everything else.
And it made me start thinking about the impacts of the type of learning that we were going to build, the type of training that we were gonna build was going to have a direct impact on that role. For future recruitment effort was going to have an impact on that role in terms of a compensation review because you're now asking that individual to do work that they were not hired to do some new work.
How are you gonna compensate 'em for it? And on the back end like I talked about with job hazard analysis, there's a quality aspect to that. So now you're, you're having them do something else. What are the quality outputs that's being expected? What are the performance outputs that are being expected?
Now have to all come in alignment. So to only think of learning, you're forgetting about all the other things that you're impacting with regards to when you finish that program. Yeah, it's really interesting. Now I feel like I wanna go look at Indeed, I don't know if you ever seen in the States, but it's, it's a big job board thing in the aggregator and just to, to look through it and see, you know, if I'm [00:30:00] seeing some of the same thing.
Cuz it is, it is interesting and I think, I'd be interested to know from, from listeners, drop me a line, you know, what, what have you noticed? Pretty intriguing. Okay. Well, let's change directions just, just a little bit. Okay. Because the other thing that I really am excited to have you share is how you've created a very impressive partner network across, I think you had said more than a hundred different plant locations.
A hundred different partners over a, over 15 different plant locations. Yes. Got it. Okay. Okay, so this is, so this is a partner network that allows you to distribute learning and programs or support, like how does it, what, what is it all about? Yeah, so, the partner network really consists of two roles.
You're either a sponsor or a mentor. And so it's this idea that you as an experienced operator are taking on a role with that new trainee to either be their mentor and you're coaching and helping them to improve, or you're their [00:31:00] sponsor to make sure that they're being recognized for what they're doing and you want to see them be successful.
So there's two different viewpoints. I know some people would probably merge those two together, but the sponsor's role really is to check in with both the mentor and the trainee to say, How are you progressing? Are things moving along appropriately? Do you have any feedback for the team? So they get to be a neutral third party.
They get to be Switzerland in this case and be that neutral third party to make sure that the training is happy with the training that they're receiving, and that they feel like they're progressing at a good pace. And that trainee can speak openly because that's not the person who's actually training them or evaluating them.
They're the, they're speaking on that training's behalf. So it's allowing people to have somebody else who they, if, especially if they might not be so inclined to wanna speak about something that wasn't working for them. Now they have somebody on their behalf who will speak up. And so Exactly. So that's the collaborative network and basically, The way I kind of approached it is, is that, you know, one of the things that we've learned, [00:32:00] especially about gen X and Gen Z is they like a lot of touchpoint with another person.
They want feedback and they want it immediately kind of thing. And so we built that measure in of. If we want to attract and retain today's talent, for the continued success of our organization, we've gotta make sure we're meeting them with where they are asking us to meet them at, and we're doing those things for them.
And so that really was that approach. And so there were plenty of. Seasoned, experienced operators out there who wanted to take people under their wing and help them be succeed and share their knowledge with them. And so there was, it was actually very easy to get those people to come on board. The harder part for me was now training them around the scope of what would be their responsibility, which I had to kind of frame up once we had all those people who had agreed, yeah, they would like to participate.
So, so what did the training look like? Well, for me, it was truly clearly defining what that role meant. So if you were a mentor or sponsor, we defined what it meant to be that person. We defined what it meant to be in terms of checking in. We developed [00:33:00] checklists for them, you know, so, obviously this is for the sponsor and not for the mentor, cause the mentor's training them, but for the sponsor, what does it mean when you're now checking in with this individual?
What type of questions are you asking? How are you now framing that feedback to that individual's Plant manager or to their supervisor, or even to their operator trainer, so that they have to think through the type of questions that they want to ask. Of that trainee and then be able to frame that story appropriately so that people understand that, you know, the supervisor, the trainer the plant manager understand what it is that that trainee's actually saying and what they can do to help continue their improvement so that we can retain that individual and help them be successful.
Yeah, I really love how you split out the mentor and the sponsor role, because I do agree. I think a lot of people would tend to just slap 'em together, just see it as the same thing. And to, to really create that neutral Switzerland role that your sole job is to advocate, celebrate, encourage, versus train, you know, cause, cause so many places, particularly in [00:34:00] manufacturing, they're, they go with a buddy system for training, right.
Is on the job training. Buddies assigned. They're not always well trained. They're not always invested in it. Did you run into any, Issues around people saying, well, how am I, you know, getting compensated for this? Or, you know, this is extra work or any, so I hear this come up. That was certainly a question.
As we started developing the training, there was this question of, as we get people who after they've trained in the role that they were originally hired for, and they start cross-training into new roles or they start training up into the roles, what does that compensation program look like for them?
And so certainly there was a conversation with the CEO of the presidents of the company the executive team around. On what that actually looked like. And a lot of that, of course, was based on. That particular role that that individual was cross-training or training up to. And what was the, the, the scale of the compensation for that?
So it was all basically, it, it wasn't going to be defined in terms of, oh, you're getting 25 cents more an hour, as an example like that. It was what role did you train into? [00:35:00] Are you performing in competently? Is once we have proof that you are performing competently, then there would've been something, there would be something based on the role that you trained into and.
The reason I kind of want to emphasize that is that, for instance, if I hired somebody on one side of the plant, there's three sides, there's three different divisions of the plant. They may have cross trained into a completely new division. Well, that's a whole different ballgame than what you were hired to do on one side, and now you're learning another side of the business, which makes you a much more valuable player because again, using that assembly line thought process, once the work's done here, it all shifts over here.
If you can move with that work to help that team out, meet our production quotas. All the more value you are at that particular point in terms of being able to move where the work is and help out when need. So that's looking at you know, how do we compensate people differently as they move expand in scope and knowledge and experience and, and.
You know, value really exactly what I'm, what I meant was for the folks that are, [00:36:00] that are putting up their hand and say, I do wanna mentor. I do wanna sponsor. Yes. Yeah. Are they somehow recognized or compensated? Was, you know, was there, how was that managed? Oh yeah, absolutely. For both. So, I maintain a monthly newsletter.
And so each month I'll recognize the plant and all the, the, the sponsors, the mentors and the trainers at that particular plant. They also kind of get a t-shirt that has their role as well. So they get to wear that proudly around the plant, especially when they're in that role. And yes, there is additional compensation for them for volunteering to be that role for that person as well.
Okay. Yes. So listeners, some of you I know work in, you know, more of a, a manufacturing or frontline environment where people are being expected to do buddy type training, mentor training, so, And are rightfully asking, well, what do you, you know, what's in it for me? Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of companies say, well, you get to grow, you get to say that you did it.
And, and I think it's, it's really a beautiful thing that C j [00:37:00] K is actually recognizing them. But it doesn't have to be huge, but there does need to be some kind of acknowledgement that's, that's a bit material. So, it's refreshing to hear that. Yeah. All Well, we're, we're coming to the close of our together and I was love to know if there's a particular.
Resource that you've enjoyed, that you've found useful for the work that you do, that you'd like to share with us? Oh there's a lot of resources, but I think that the, probably the resource that I would recommend to my peers is a book from Dr. Adam Grant, who's an organizational psychologist, and it's called Think Again.
Yeah. And what it really is, it's about unlearning and relearning. And I think in the world that we live in today with the constant change that's taking place, whether that be from digital technology or any other facet of line of business now moving faster we can't get settled in our typical weights.
We need to always be ready to challenge ourselves and break down the thought process that we had of how things actually work or [00:38:00] should work. To, okay, something new is happening, what does that mean to what we've normally done, and how do we now change that, embrace that. And it's, it's very hard. I'm an old timer.
I got a lot of gray on my beard, but. We have to recognize also, especially in our field, we've got four generations in the of, in the workforce right now. And not everybody can be trained the same way. Not everybody has the same level of expectations or the same behaviors in some regards, and we've got to now embrace a much broader scope of thinking and really just stop staying, staying in a place that we were and open up to all these different things.
Yeah, you're appealing to my coach brain here, you know, cuz I really see unlearning is so powerful. It's, it's, you know, in terms of checking your assumptions, like what, you know, what are some, what are some assumptions we're making? And what if we challenge those? What, you know, what's another way to look at this?
So, absolutely beautiful place to, to land. And I'll put the book referenced in the show notes for listeners in case you're driving or walking. Joe, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a, a real pleasure. [00:39:00] Thank you, Lisa. It's been a pleasure for as well.
