Rebecca Warren 00:00
We have two fabulous guests today: Nehal from The Josh Bersin Company and Colin from the Huntsman’s Corporation. I’m going to have them introduce themselves, and then we’ll dive into the question of the month. Nehal, we’re going to go to you first. Tell you a little bit about yourself.
Nehal Nangia 00:35
Hello, hello. I am Nehal, I am based in India. I lead talent research here at the Josh Bersin Company. I’ve been in the HR research and consulting space for about 18 years now, and I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.
Colin Mitchell 00:56
And hello, everyone. I’m Colin Mitchell. I’m the talent acquisition leader for the Americas for Huntsman Corporation. We’re a global chemical manufacturing company. We make specialty chemicals, the automotive, aerospace, and 1000s and 1000s of other different products of our chemicals go into so excited to be here. My background is in manufacturing. HR, so I probably bring a little bit different perspective. I’m very happy to be here and looking forward to the discussion.
Rebecca Warren 01:28
Love it, and that is why we bring different guests here, because we want those different perspectives. Rebecca Warren, I’ve been here at Eightfold for a little over four years now. Started out in customer success, moved on over to our talent transformation and strategy team. Prior to my roles here at Eightfold, I was in talent acquisition and HR in leadership roles for a long time in lots of different spaces. I think we’re going to have a fun chat. What I like to do is ask a question that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about, but kind of loosens us up and lets us have a little fun. My question of the month today is punctuation in text essay, passive, aggressive or polite? I don’t know your texting habits and who you’re texting or not. I know I have millennial children, and so I text them very differently than I do friends, coworkers, etc. Would love to hear what to you is the right way to text punctuation, not emojis.
Colin Mitchell 02:43
I think it’s all about who you are texting. When I text candidates, it’s in full sentences, and it feels weird, and I think it feels very email, yeah. I think it texted something short. I don’t think the question marks are right, the 10 exclamation points is just odd when people do it. I think it’s lost. It’s the emojis, they’re okay. I’m not all up to the acronyms.
Rebecca Warren 03:29
Okay, all right, Nehal, what do you think?
Nehal Nangia 03:31
I’d expected this to be a very skills AI, intense question, so I had to think a little hard. I had to punctuate in my head to think of my answer, but I have to say, punctuation is it’s very profound, like it’s really, really profound. You need to understand your punctuation really well. Because let me give you a case in point. If my husband, let’s say, texts me that, you know, honey, I’m going to hang out with my friends after work tonight. And if I say okay with an exclamation, trust me, it’s okay. But if I say okay with a period, it’s like, okay, and yeah, you don’t just watch it’s so it’s very profound. I just say that if there’s a master class on understanding your punctuation, you should sign up for it.
Rebecca Warren 04:21
I love that. That is very true, right? The punctuation does make a difference, right? We all know that if it’s all in caps yelling at somebody, but there is a lot of other little things that you can put in there. I tend to use a lot of abbreviations. I tend to use the ellipses a lot, right? Like, the dot, dot, dot, like, and then, just like, have a whole bunch of random things all connected, because that just makes me feel like, you know, I’m having an actual thought. But I do tend to use a lot of punctuation, depending on who I’m talking to, but with my friends, it’s lots of abbreviations, lots of emojis, all of that buck who is joining us as an opinion. Clarity is good. No emojis, very polite. okay, and Julia is polite as well. I think it’s interesting, because when there’s so there was a study that was out, which is what made me think of this, is that Gen Z feels like punctuation is rude and it feels passive aggressive. It feels like you’re trying to make that extra point, right? It’s like the 10 exclamation points. And I love a good exclamation point. I love throwing in a couple extra just in case I need them in sentences down the road, right? I use lots of exclamation points. But a lot of folks think that punctuation tends to make the text passive aggressive, like, you have to decode it, right? Like, the period means we’re fighting, and the smiley face means we’re okay, and no punctuation at all means, like, I don’t care, right? Like, there’s a lot of things that go into it, so there’s some art and science and texting as well. But Thanks for Thanks for adding into that. I will make sure when I text you in the future, I am using the things that that means something to you, and I won’t yell at any of you. Okay, all right. Well, thanks for that. I always think it’s just to ask a little kind of what’s happening in your world, and how are you thinking about things. okay, so let me kick us off here. Now. We’ve been talking about skills for a while now, and our conversation is moving past the why into the how, and a lot of folks are asking, what’s next? AI evolving so quickly, right? AI is the slowest that it’s ever been today, and it will never be this low again. Business needs are shifting just as fast. Those of us in the talent space really have an opportunity to rethink how we work. today’s session is about breaking down silos, building stronger connections and applying that same skills first mindset that we’re thinking externally to ourselves and to our own growth. we ready to kick this off. Y’all right, let’s do it. Okay, so I’m going to throw a question out there, and this isn’t directed to anybody in particular, so let’s just have a conversation. I want to talk about how you all have seen functional silos affect your ability to get work done, and also does it affect your ability to respond to what’s happening in the business? let’s just talk about functional silos and how you’ve seen them. I don’t know that I could ever say that I was I’ve seen them be like, super awesome. We love functional silos. I’m not trying to, you know, lead the witness here, but let’s talk about your opinion on functional silos and what you’ve seen them do to work in your organizations.
Colin Mitchell 08:00
Yeah. I’ll start. When we look at functional silos for us, right, I think we all are going towards one goal, right? And that’s to help the business, whatever piece play in that. And so we all have a role that, that we that our teams have in that. I think when you think about your functional silos, you’re thinking about, how are we going to achieve that goal and ultimately achieve the overall goals? But I don’t know of any function that doesn’t work with another function too, right? Every function is going to play a piece in your overall achievement as well as you’re going to play a piece in someone else’s achievement, right? We’re thinking about talent acquisition. We’re thinking about the business. Ultimately, we have to fill the roles with the right people to make them successful. If we’re thinking about talent management and their overall goals, talent acquisition has to give them the right data and feed the right data for them to make the right decisions and skill base. between those two, that’s just one example of how we each play into each other’s silos. I don’t think operationally, I’ve not seen a company be very successful when you are working in silos, or a function be that. I think you have to break those down and work cross-functionally.
Rebecca Warren 09:18
Yeah, because what you’re saying, when you think about silos, and what you said is, right? I mean, that’s aspirational, right, that we should all work together and join hands and cross the bridge and, you know, you know, go into into happy dances. I think, though, it’s the work gets done sometimes in an informal way, but those silos sometimes still stay at the top of each department. I think what you’re saying is, right. I wonder if everybody is looking at it the same way as you are. Neil, I don’t know what your what are your thoughts?
Nehal Nangia 09:55
I think Colin hits, you know, hits the nail on his head. Every function plays a part in each function success. But the unfortunate truth is every organization, is stuck in these functional barriers and silos. It happens in most organizations. That happens across functions. It happens within HR functions. And you know, to double click on what Colin said, I love using the orchestra analogy. You know, imagine a world-class orchestra. You have these super talented violinists, percussionists, brass players, but if they don’t play in harmony, they play without coordination. The result is not music, it’s noise, and that is exactly what happens when business functions or HR functions, operate in silos, which is, you know, without coordination, business performance suffers. And you know, when they talk to each other, when they operate in coordination, they build the promise of creating extraordinary impact. And it is indeed important for organizations to break past these silos, because not doing so, it comes with a huge cost. I’ll give you some specific examples in our world of work. It’s not unheard of. We do come across organizations where, you know, within the same organization, one part of the business is laying off people aggressively, and another part of the same organization is struggling to hire talent, whereas you could probably tap into adjacent skills and re skill, some of the talent you’re laying off, and move them into the roles where you’re struggling to hire. It’s painful. We hear people say that, you know, it’s easier to find a job outside an organization than inside an organization. People find it easier to quit an organization and join back an organization, because functions just don’t talk to each other. these functional silos create barriers that come in the way of everything, rescaling, redeploying and even recruiting talent effectively.
Rebecca Warren 11:52
Okay, so let’s dig into that a little bit. If we think about as Colin said, right, work happens in a lot of ways, in departments, right? We’re structured in departments that’s for good, bad or worse. That’s how it is, right? We have departments and we have reporting structures, and so work needs to happen and kind of be organized that way. And we also know that work doesn’t happen in silos, right, where it goes across. , so I want to here’s a two-part question. we think about that. Like, what do you think are the biggest barriers to cross-functional collaboration, right? Like, is it talent hoarding? Is it people not feeling confident in their job and they don’t want or is it they don’t want people to think they don’t know what they’re doing? they want to keep it like, I’m just making stuff up. I don’t know if any of those are right, but first of all, what, what do you think is causing some of that, those barriers to cross-functional collaboration? And then what do we do to knock those down? And like, how can we practically in HR, TA, in the people space. What can we do to help those conversations? First of all, what do you think is causing the barrier? And then what do you think we can do to knock that down?
Nehal Nangia 13:13
There are just lots and lots and lots of barriers, which is why, when we talk about, you know, all these silos, I think even within an organization, there are so many different things and variables that need to act together to create that unified system. And, you know, I’m sure there are lots of things we can talk about, but one that immediately comes to mind is reward systems and incentives. They’re, you know, often misaligned. Do they reward individual performance, or do they reward team performance? Do they incentivize retaining talent within your organization, or you know, you know, holding talent within your function? Do they penalize? They penalize you for it, or do they incentivize, you know, you for supporting career mobility, moving people around across the organization? That is one. And again, you know, the way to mitigate that is to create that enterprise, thinking it’s always a double-edged sword. People want to give their team the opportunity to move around in the organization, but every time someone leaves your team, you’re doing it. that’s one very, very big block. And you know, to name a couple more. And then, you know, I’m sure Colin has a lot to add. There are just many more. Culture is a very big piece. Does your culture encourage teamwork? And if it doesn’t, it will definitely stifle innovation. If systems and processes are not integrated, it’s impossible to identify intersection points where employees and leaders can benefit from working together. Those are a few. I’m sure there are lots we can add to that.
Colin Mitchell 14:47
Each department has such pressure on them to hit their certain KPIs and hit their achievement goals. And sometimes those aren’t always aligned with the other departments or the businesses goals, right? there’s such a pressure for me to hit my goals, and I’ve got my team maxed out. I don’t have any availability with my team to help other teams, right? I basically pressured my team to hit my goals. And I think one of the things we can break down there is really celebrating success with other teams. As you know, finance hits their goals, but who all played a part in that? Right? It hits their goals. The business hits their goals. How are we celebrating everyone that took part in that, not just the business, right? And I think that’s one of the pieces I see missing a lot in a lot of organizations, is that celebration of success. I think also it’s the communication. metimes there’s breakdowns. I know what’s happening in my department. I know generally what’s happening in HR. I don’t know what finances goals are for the year, right? And I don’t need to know every specific one, but I need to know the high level and how we play a piece in that too, right? How are you know our businesses goals? How do we play a part? How do we help? And I think breaking that down and understanding what my role is and what each department role is in the overall success of the organization really is going to help you understand that and help your teams understand that, and probably break down some of that frustration.
Rebecca Warren 16:14
I think all of the things you’re saying are right. I wonder if we were to think about, how do we take our egos out of a situation, right? We may have an answer, and we may think, like 100% this is the right answer. But what if we were to just say, Hey, I’m going to throw this out to finance, sales, legal, wherever, whatever we’re trying to solve for and say, Hey, here’s what I’m thinking. What do you think of that? I would love just to get your opinion. I appreciate your perspective. Am I thinking about this the right way? When I say we have to take our egos out, because if they say, No, that’s the worst answer ever. We have to be okay to have that conversation right like, oh my gosh, tell me where I went wrong, or tell me where you’re thinking that we’re misaligned, and then you can have those open conversations, right? I think sometimes if we take our ego out, I will tell you honestly, like I have been in some roles where I have felt like it has been 100% my job to be the expert. There honestly was nobody else in the company who knew what I did or how I did it, and I took that pressure too much internally and said, I’ve got to do this myself. Right? I don’t want to let anybody know that I may have some questions, and I want them to look at me as the expert. sometimes it’s hard to open up that door and say, I’m looking for your feedback. It’s not that I’m not that I’m not confident. It’s not that I don’t think I have the right answer, but it’s always good to get other perspectives. sometimes just taking that ego out and asking different departments, like, hey, what do you think about this, or if we were to move forward with this, how could this help your organization, right, or help your department to that?
Nehal Nangia 17:57
I really, really, love that point, and it takes me back to a conversation we recently had. You know, ego stems out of vulnerability or the need to prove yourself, but when there is a solid connection, the need to do that kind of gets diluted. Anyway, I was talking to this organization very recently who actually moved from this 30-year-old, you know, tier service delivery model to, you know, a systemic talent model. And we were talking about how they started with just making a mandate of all these functional talent leaders having to come into the office the same day. they said that, you know, we talk about the functions needing to talk to each other, but the few humans at the top of each function, you have to first stop talking to each other. They need to build that connection where they’re comfortable communicating and opening up and being in each other’s space and not feeling intimidated. I absolutely love that, and I think it totally aligns with this conversation I recently had, and some organizations are using that route to start working on it.
Colin Mitchell 19:02
I think a big piece of that, too, is bringing the people in early in the conversation, right, not at the end. At the end was I really brought in to consult and bring in and try to help come to the decision before it’s already made. I think I’ve found that, you know, over the years, is that’s a big piece of that as well.
Rebecca Warren 19:22
Yeah, I love what you said about consulting and Neil, we had mentioned this earlier as well. If you look at it from a consultant perspective, right? Like I need to get all of these different opinions and ideas together, it makes it less and less contentious, or maybe it feels like less about somebody’s calling my baby ugly and more about I just need to get more opinions right. Like, how do we, how do we ask for opinions in a good way, and maybe sometimes saying, you know, like, Hey, I appreciate that. I’m going to keep that for the future. I’m not going to make my change now. Thank you for that input, but that’s given me something to think about. I appreciate that. I love this because I think what, what’s really important for us as we think about, especially in our in our webinar today, is not just talking in theoreticals, but what have we seen? What do we think can work? How are we going to help other folks think differently, maybe about the roles, or if they’re frustrated or kind of in a space where, like, I don’t know how to get past this, some practical ideas on how they can do that. And I’m going to throw one more thing out here, and then I want to move on. One of the things that I did in my previous roles in talent acquisition was it sometimes it’s weird to get to know people, like, I don’t know how to do it right. Like, I’m not just going to call up some random person in marketing and say, Hey, can we have a chat? Like, maybe I should. I don’t know. I just normally don’t do that, but one of the things I did that actually worked really well. join external clubs or groups that your company has, because you get to see people from different areas that you wouldn’t normally. I’ve ended up in leadership of some of these clubs, and it gives you a chance to open up the door like, hey. When I was at General Mills, we had a newcomers club, and so it was for folks who had either recently joined the company or had moved to Minneapolis to be able to get connected, because they’re like, We don’t know anybody in renew. And it was a great way for me to get to know people in different departments, different ways to help people connect. And another thing that I did too, and I know it’s a little different now, but I started a softball team in two different companies that I worked with and pulled people in from the entire organization. When you play sports together, it’s a whole different world value, and you get to know a lot about people, but you also get to see leadership styles and maybe, you know, have conversations that put it normally, and I have from internally, from folks that I played ball with were able to say, I think you’d be a great fit in this job overkeeper. some other ways, if your organization has clubs or groups or things that you can join, whether it’s in person or virtual, that might be another way to connect those dots and get to know other people in an informal way, and then you can have maybe some of those formal conversations that might help break down those barriers. All right, any thoughts before we move on to our next question? All right, here we go. I want to talk about that skills. First piece, right? We spent a lot of time talking about what organizations need, what individuals need, what skills or talents to folks have building those skills. But how often do we apply that skills-first lens to our own careers? I would love to hear how you both think about developing your skills and thinking about moving inside of your organization, or about the skills that you want to learn or things that you want to do. How are you applying that skills first lens that we talk about organizationally, into your own lives? Colin, tell me about your skills.
Colin Mitchell 23:05
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s always a moving target, because the outside and external world is always changing, right? it’s good to understand a career path, but sometimes those career paths change, and that really kind of edits what your skill base and what you need to have it are. I think a lot of that is the projects that work on, going into things that may be uncomfortable, and then going in and understanding what successful people in those different roles are and what skills they have, right and try to learn those different ones. Just being good at talent acquisition is great, but just so having just those skills really don’t help me work cross functionally, right? And I think that’s kind of a theme we’re working on here. But if I’m able to work cross functionally and understand a bit of finance, a bit of it, a bit of the business, and have that business acumen and all those sorts of things, maybe I’m not an expert in any of those pieces, right? I bring the expert into talent acquisition, but I can at least speak their language and understand those sorts of things. I think it’s understanding all those sorts of skills and not just having a skill set that’s defined of what your what your job is, or what your career path is, but being able to expand on that and have a big talent or a big skills based pool, that way you can maneuver different areas.
Rebecca Warren 24:22
And let me ask you a question before we go over to Nehal. Did you come out of the womb saying I want to be in TA? That is my goal. I know exactly what I need to know I am going down the TA path.
Colin Mitchell 24:36
I don’t think anyone does that. If they do that. I’ve never met that person yet, right? You kind of find yourself in this job. I don’t know anyone that comes out of the room saying they’re going to be in HR, maybe there’s, maybe there’s a few of those people. I certainly wasn’t one of those. I think the skill base and the career has kind of led me towards that. And, you know, being open, right? I think that’s the biggest thing, is not having the blinders and being open to what’s out there for me, right? I think one of the great things is that Eightfold brings it. I know other pieces do too, is going out and seeing what jobs are out there, right? That job pops up and the AI says, I’m linked to it. I would have never thought maybe I’m going to be in compensation or sale marketing. And that’s a piece that brings you to open your mind up a little bit, versus click, click, HR, what jobs are open, nothing for me, okay, I’ve got to look external. And I think that’s how we can get some of that internal movement within the organization.
Rebecca Warren 25:42
Yeah, and Nehal, I want to go to you next, but I love what you said, being open about your career path, not having I mean, you can have an aspiration of saying, I think I want to be a CHRO, or maybe I want to be in this role, but being open to what comes. I love that. And one of the other things that you said was doing things that are hard or uncomfortable, taking yourself out of your comfort zone, because you never know what you’re going to learn until you come out on the other side. You’re like, oh my gosh, that was really hard, but I learned so much, and now I’m in a different space. I love those two things. Nehal, what do you think?
Nehal Nangia 26:19
I think you know, just echoing the keeping yourself open please, what interests you, what excites you. The parallel thing to that is to me, personally, a skills first lens, means prioritizing my skills over my experiences, always reminding myself that my experiences, or the lack of those can limit my career possibilities, but skills can be learned and developed. And what I mean here is, you know, let’s say, if I have a math degree, I could think that, you know, I couldn’t pursue this role in business because I don’t have a business degree. But knowing that skills can be learned, skills can be transferable. Maybe there are these very unique skills that my you know, my skills in math can you know can apply to business. I can identify patterns easily. I can see trends easily. I can have a more strategic or critical mindset, so knowing that my experiences don’t limit me. just because I’ve not done something before doesn’t mean that I couldn’t do it in the future. knowing that, again, going back to Poland’s point on being open like you know, if this is something that excites me, let me not think about okay, what degrees or experiences did they have to get into this role where they are today, but just focusing on, oh, this person does something that really inspires me, or this is a role that really inspires me. And these are the skills that this individual has, and knowing that I can develop those skills, we can learn those skills.
Rebecca Warren 27:58
I love that idea of skills over experience. Like, I think we talk about it, but I don’t know that I’ve heard it explained quite that way. And I love that, because, like, I talk about my resume is a list of things I never want to do again, right? Like, I’ve done that. I don’t, you know, come when you talk about, what else can I do? Right? Like, not just say, Oh, well, I’m in HR, so I guess my next role as an HR, right? Like, I’m case in point. I was in talent acquisition, and somebody had seen my skills. It was a former account representative that had I worked with when I was in TA and she came over to Eightfold, and she’s like, Hey, I think you should come over here and work from Customer Success. I’m like, Have you been drinking? Like, what are you talking about? Like, I don’t know customer success. I don’t know tech. Because she was able to see those transferable skills, as you said, calling like, uploading my information, like, yes, you would fit in TA and also a customer success. I mean, I started this whole journey being incredibly uncomfortable because I had no idea what I was doing, and I had that conversation saying, hey, if after six months I suck at this, you can just say, hey, it’s time for you to go, no harm, no foul. And I may come after six months and saying, I suck at this, and I need to do something different, right? I think when you can look at what the skills are, as opposed to saying my experience, you have a different conversation, right? And now my role, I was in customer success for a little over three years, I’m now in marketing under talent transformation and strategy. I did not come out of the womb saying, Hey, I think I want to be in a tech company doing, you know, marketing transformation and strategy, but leaving yourself open to those opportunities and thinking about the skills that you have and the things that you want to grow towards, instead of saying, Oh, well, my background is in finance. I guess I’m going to always be in finance. I love that. Be open. Make yourself uncomfortable, because that helps you learn and putting skills over experience.
Rebecca Warren 30:14
Let’s talk about those pieces. In order for that to happen, like we can do that for ourselves. We can think about how maybe we want to grow our career, how we want to be different. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the organization is thinking the same way, right? We talked a little bit before about silos, about talent hoarding, about people maybe not feeling comfortable with change, or opening up that uncomfortable door. I want to think about, how can talent leaders create that culture of it’s okay to ask questions, it’s good to be a continuous learner, to break out of our silos, out of our boxes. I want to I want to hear your opinions on what should talent leaders be doing to create that culture where it is comfortable to have those conversations cross functionally, as well as say, Hey, I might want to do something really different the next time and getting that support.
Colin Mitchell 31:14
Yeah, so, I mean, I think from a talent management standpoint, it’s all about, how do we function those one-on-ones and drive those sort of conversations, right? I think the one-on-ones today, whether you’re having with your manager or manager plus one, maybe they happen for some people once a year. They need to happen more often, and they don’t need to be so much. There’s a part of that that has to be strategic, and what’s going on in your world today, but it’s also a question of, hey, what’s going? What’s going on, where do you want to go? What are you seeing out there? And that changes right as the organization changes, as you see different areas in your organization. What are you learning today? What are you seeing out there? And then have a manager that’s open, and teach managers to be open to helping that employee grow and know what’s out there, right? Normally, the managers or directors are going to know what’s coming down the pipeline, hopefully, and thinking about what the people are that I have in my organization? Where do they fit into this? And hey, who’s the first person in mind where I can stick them into this role, not so much I’ve got to go out and buy the talent right. Who do I have today that I can develop, and I think we also have today where we have systems in place, or systems you can get that help those managers or those leaders do that. It used to be so much. You got to know your organization, and maybe you know one or two levels down, or who are my high potentials. But other than that, you didn’t know what else you had out there, right? We have big organizations, and that’s hard to deal and now we have systems that enable our leaders to think more skill-based and know more levels down of what they’ve got and how that those people are developing. I think it’s kind of a combination of those things.
Rebecca Warren 32:59
It sounds like what you’re saying too is shifting away from, again, looking at a job description or looking at a resume, and instead focusing on ability and interest and things that have been observed we’ve seen you excel like we had no idea when you joined this project that you were going to be able to do XYZ. This is amazing. how do we look at the skills, what people bring to the table, what they exhibit, as opposed to saying, Oh, well, the job description says this and you have this, and it doesn’t look like a match. I like that.
Colin Mitchell 33:31
I think that’s one of the big things we do in TA, is we get a job description. Everyone says, Okay, go find me the person. Right? We have to have an intake call. And they say, Well, you have a job description. That’s the job tell me about who you want, right? And that’s that conversation that has to happen.
Rebecca Warren 33:46
Yes, agree, because the job description is just a laundry list of things that somebody somewhere put together, usually income. Like, I’m not, I’m not giving come hard time, but, you know, it’s their job to put it together, but then we have to create what that actually means and what that person is going to be able to do and also allow them to be able to succeed in the organization. We can’t put so many roles and guidelines and expectations right? Purple squirrel, you know, multicolored unicorn, whatever you want to call column and then set them up for failure because we’ve created such a narrow role for them. What are your thoughts?
Nehal Nangia 34:19
One, I love that you said that. You know it’s the person you want, but it’s what that person does. Because what happens oftentimes is you just try to prototype that same person who left, and fill that person in, versus focusing on what were the unique skills that that person I’m going to zoom out a little and again, you know, go back to your question, because absolutely loved that question on, you know, what is the role of leaders in creating that culture? I think the biggest piece is anything. Culture is always, you know, a role model from the top. You set the tone. If you want to set a culture of, you know, development, continuous learning, self-reflection, you need to model it. You need to share. His colleague, you made a point of, you know, how these one-on-ones again set the tone, very nicely for it. I was just recently leading this book dear to me by brine Brown, and she was talking about how this very important leadership trait is not to and leaders often have this innate thing to, you know, come across as people who have a lot of knowledge, and they know everything, and you know they can always be your go to source of truth. But I love the point she made that, you know, to be a good leader, you don’t have to be a know it all. You have to be a learn at all, like you have. That hit me really hard. you may never know it all, but you know to be a good leader, you need to be that learn it all, and that’s the tone you need to set with your team. Maybe I don’t have all the answers. Maybe this is as new for me. If things are changing for you, things are changing for everyone in this world, and we can always learn and we can learn it together. The other thing that I feel is really, really important is creating capacity. A lot of times we are just moving at like 300 miles an hour. You may give people access to everything, like for the university LinkedIn learnings and the free certifications and, you know, tuition benefits, but if they don’t have the capacity. It’s not going to help with development anyway. how do you create that downtime for people to really pause and do something different? And I think the gold standard, the gold standard example there is Google, right? some of Google’s biggest innovations theme when they gave that 20% project downtime. Gmail was invented when they gave, you know, their people, 20% downtime to just do whatever they wanted to do with their time. Gmail was one of them. When you create capacity, people can reflect, they can develop, and sometimes they can just create these amazing, amazing, innovative solutions for the team, for the organization.
Rebecca Warren 37:09
Because what you’re doing there, right is you’re switching from reactive. Here’s a list of tasks I have to do to a proactive I’m going to apply these things that I’ve learned, I’ve spent time, you know, giving my brain space. And I’ll tell you, there are some days when I’m like, my brain just needs a lot of space, like, I just have to walk away from the desk. And so when you give your brain a chance to learn, think differently, read something different, or listen to a podcast, or, you know, watch a webinar or something, and give yourself that space to learn and think differently, that then flows through into your work. I love that where you said, be a learn it all, because then that allows you to be proactive. And as you talked about too about culture, if we don’t set the culture, it’s going to set itself so continually modeling that behavior as well, especially as a leader, saying I’m going to block it on my calendar. This is my learning time, and I’m going to do everything I can to actually make sure I do it. I am guilty a lot of times of saying, Hey, I’m going to block that. And then I’m like, oh, but then I can get seven tasks done, because people think that I’m learning right? You actually have to do it. Not just block it on your calendar, but actually do it. I think that makes a big difference. When people see you as you said, we help modeling that behavior and then also talking about it too, right? Like in your one on ones, or in your team meetings, saying, Hey, I learned this thing, or I did this thing that was really uncomfortable, or even I had a leader who was great about this, where he has in the CHRO role, has, you know, this big scope, but he would come to me and say, Hey, I’m kind of thinking about this. What do you think? And I was like, no opinion. That’s a big deal, right? as a leader, asking for other people’s opinions and sharing maybe something like, Hey, I read this, and I thought this would really apply to the things that you’re thinking about or doing, right, that the interaction modeling the behavior of learning, but then also sharing, saying, hey, I want your input. I want your feedback. That tends to really develop those conversations and maybe, again, take, take those things out of the silos. All right, so I am curious. we’re talking about what leaders can do now we’re talking about, how do we model good behavior? How do we break down those silos? How do we increase communication? I would love to hear from you, and then we’re going to move into some techy talk. I would love to hear what you think HR leaders and HR professionals should be thinking about in the next three to five years, right? what capabilities? And I’ll use that word, I love that word, what capabilities do you think talent professionals need to develop to stay competitive over the next three to five years? What are your thoughts?
Nehal Nangia 40:06
I could talk about the techie stuff that we’re going to get to after this question that you promised, but you know, very intuitively, we could always talk about AI skills, tech skills. We could talk about vocal strengths, analytics, Product Engineering, data science. But it’s also important to know that all these hot skills will constantly keep changing. What I do want to talk about, let’s think about what are the enduring skills that you will always need to stay competitive? Rather, what are the enduring skills that you will need to stay even relevant, three, 510, years down your life and throughout your life, curiosity, learning velocity, which is your willingness to learn new things quickly, the one that I feel is very, very important to me, because I’m big on that skills, first lens, and then, you know, just, just wanting to learn, and again, calling to your point of, you know, finding some peace and being uncomfortable. I don’t know why my husband always says, Why I could put myself through that every now and then. But again, the point I’m coming to is the skill that I feel that we should all develop to stay relevant throughout our lives, especially in an AI intense world is being forgiving and kind yourself. It is a big one, because as technology keeps getting smarter, it can be very easy for us to get bogged down. There will be so many things that technology will be able to do better than us. it’s important to continue and remember and develop the capability to be forgiving and kind to yourself and thinking of AI as an ally and moral enemies that would be really important to you know, just, just keep going.
Rebecca Warren 42:01
I love that. Colin, what do you think?
Colin Mitchell 42:05
Those are great points, I think, for my teams and kind of where I see everything, it’s that business acumen. I push my teams. We read something about our business every morning to learn about the chemical industry or our competitors, or The Wall Street Journal, whatever it is, I leave it open to them, but they have that we watch every earnings call to know exactly what our business is doing. But I push that because I think kind of the rules of the road is you, if you’re in TA, you should know talent acquisition. You should know HR, you should know the law where you’re going to add value is if you can understand the business and how is the support function you’re going to support them. That’s what gets you a seat at the table. Not just be able to speak a lot of TA terms or HR terms or a bunch of walls, but how do you assist the business in what you do? And that’s how you add value. I think it’s also value add to my team. We’re going to talk about a bunch of the tech and those sorts of things and ask this. I tell my team, you won’t impress me with how many tasks you can get done in a day, how many resumes you get done, how many intakes you get done, you’ll impress me with the value that you add to the business, right? And that’s leveraging the tools we’re going to talk about. Ai that’s great tool that helps you with that. But how do you add the value to the business? And for us, that’s getting the right people in the door and the right skill sets for other parts of the organization, that’s going to mean something different. But if you are focusing directly on task, I think we can all understand that those tasks are going away. That’s the future. We’re all seeing that, whether we like it or not, and it’s going to add? How do we add value to the business overall? those are the two points that I would, I would add on there. And I think the kindness is a great point. I think that’s something that gets lost in all the shuffle of everything in the day-to-day. that was a great point.
Rebecca Warren 44:35
I do. I love that idea of being kind, yourself, being forgiving, and calling what you were saying too, like we need, you need to know your what’s happening in your team. You need to be aware of the business, and that’s how you’re going to bring in better people, right? I’m guessing, because this is how it was when I was leading teams in TA. It was when they said, “Hey, are you part of that business?” It’s like, yes, I’ve done my job. I’ve learned enough to be dangerous to be able to share that, right? When you understand that broader implication, you’re not just putting a butt in the seat, you’re putting somebody who’s going to add value to the organization, so understanding their goals, understanding what those things are important to them, right? that continuous learning about TA, about HR, about the business and about the world, that’s what allows you to be successful, to bring in right people, because you have that broader perspective in your and you’re thinking about what the company needs, as opposed to just, I need to check a box and fill this position. I’m going to throw just two things out there, and then we’ll get to the to the techie stuff. I’ve been doing a lot of reading around the future, back, about future, back planning, and about what’s happening in the future, and as we and this is kind of that lead in, into the tech stuff, is that as things continue to change, and as I said earlier, right, this is the slowest AI has ever been, and that will ever be. And so things are going to continue to accelerate. And as we think about used to be saying hey, and we were, I was on at a leash right now in Vegas, and we were on a panel yesterday, and one of the panelists, you know, we had talked about, somebody had said, like, what’s your 10-year AI plan? And, like, she left historically, and was just like, that’s not a thing. Like, we, there’s nobody has a 10-year AI plan, right? Like, we’re trying to figure out what do we do in the next six months and what’s going to change, but what we do have to do is we have to think about what we want our future to look like and then back into that. And so one of the things is saying we honestly have lost the idea of certainty, right? We can no longer be certain about what’s happening, but what we can do in the moment is bring clarity. I think that’s really important. If we think about the skills that we have to learn, what can we focus on right now? What does that clarity look like? How are we thinking about what we need to do? We need to have an idea of where we want to go. But let’s instead of saying we know exactly what’s going to happen, let’s say we know what’s going to happen right now, and how we want to drive it, and how we want to build it. And one of the other things that we’ve talked about and are thinking about is that, that that dilemma flipping, how do we turn something that feels like a roadblock or a, you know, something in the way? How do we turn that into a positive? How do we turn that into an opportunity? How do we think about that differently, saying, Okay, we’re not going to go that way, but we’ve got to go this way. Right? Like, there’s a certain time in your head when you’re like, Okay, instead of just saying, that’s a roadblock and we’re done, flipping it upside down, turning it sideways, taking a piece out of that. How do you move it forward? thinking differently about things that get in the way, and also about expecting we’re going to know all the answers. We’re never going to have all the answers, and we are going to be uncomfortable probably for the rest of our lives, because things are changing so fast, we need to continue to keep our our head in the game, but we also can’t count on what we think is going to happen. Is actually going to happen? Does that make sense before i Okay, so this has been great. I’m watching the time. I can’t believe it’s gone this fast. I say this every I sound like a record, but Excuse me. Okay, so let’s talk about the techie stuff, the AI opportunity, the strategic role of talent. What are some things we need to be thinking about? I would love to hear from you about how can talent teams, and we’ve alluded to this, I think throughout our conversation, how can talent teams use AI and skills intelligence to drive that business alignment and to increase its strategic influence. How do we use tech? Ai things we’re learning to drive that alignment and to increase how work gets done?
Colin Mitchell 48:59
Yeah, so I think you have to have a north star and know where you’re going with that, and AI doesn’t. And I think it’s some of that communication around from your leaders to have the buy in from AI. You don’t have leadership buy in from AI, it’s not going to happen. And I think that’s a journey as well, and I think you’ve got different variances across organizations on that, but I think it’s understanding how does it fit into my model? Everyone’s model is going to be different, right? it’s great to go out and view how other people are using AI, but that may not be how that fits into your north star and how you’re going to get there, right? it’s great to take those ideas, but you’ve got to make your own plan and how you’re going to get there, and what that means for your organization and your teams. And then also communication around that. I’ve seen a lot of AI rolled out in different organizations, because it’s a great thing, but it was never communicated effectively of how we use this, you know, how, how is it going to aid us? And then I think always the question is, well, if you’re using AI, what is your team going to do, right? And how do you answer that question, right? How, what is your team developing, moving away from those tasks oriented and driving values. I think if you can do all those things, that’s a great start to that, that journey.
Rebecca Warren 50:19
Yeah. Nehal, what do you think?
Nehal Nangia 50:22
I think so. The question is, how do we increase our strategic influence? Why with these skills intelligence systems? I think the starting point is understanding the power of these skills, intelligence systems, knowing what they’re capable of. We’ve been fortunate enough to do a lot of work with Eightfold, and we know how powerful that impact could be. for example, I think the biggest one is focusing on the right skills. you get insights into what are the most important skills, or what are the ascending skills in the market for your industry? What are the declining skills in the market for your industry, where do you need to focus your skill development efforts? it really helps you focus on the skills that really matter. Another one is skill matching. Everyone talks about and you know, call it this would resonate with you. This case, it’s very hard to find the right talent. And skill matching is, again, a very big thing, where, powered by these skills intelligent systems, you can have a lot of strategic impact. they can tell you, who in your organization has the skills you need that are a direct match to fill open positions, who has the adjacent skills that can easily be developed and transferred to fill those gaps internally, rather than having to look outside the talent or help you get that perspective on what are the adjacent skills that you will hire for if the skills you’re looking for are not available in the market. they equip you with a lot of insight into what are the skills that matter, what are the skills you can focus on, and you really need to understand the power to unleash the power and make an impact.
Rebecca Warren 52:09
I’m frantically taking notes here. Y’all are saying just gems, dropping them here. I 100% I think we have to have a North Star. We’ve got to know where the company is going, not just what I want to do. What’s that North Star? How are we driving to it? And then love what you said about understanding the most important skills and then being able to match those to the role in order to make the difference in the organization. Because if you understand them, but you’re not actually tying them to what the business needs. Who cares? Right? Okay, so let’s I want to talk about here. we’re talking about AI and the emphasis on skills and what that brings understanding your talent, not through the lens of, you know, how they tie to a job description or where they sit on an org chart, but what kind of things do people want to do? What do they bring to the table? What skills do they have that the business really needs? in your experience, do you think that AI and the emphasis on skills is changing the way roles are defined or structured in?
Colin Mitchell 53:20
It’s a journey, right? And I think, God, especially in heavy industry, we have managers that have been in the organizations for a long time and have been taught the job description is what the job does, and this is the role, and that is their mindset, right? And they’ve been doing it for a long time, and this is a change, and I’ve not seen a development plan on any manager to date that has learned skill-based performance and skill-based knowledge in anyone. I think that should be in every development plan for every manager, because that’s the way we’re going, right? I think it’s teaching managers to be able to use that whether you have AI or not, and learning what that means today, and not just driving positions off job descriptions that change in three months or probably sooner than that, half the time anyway, right? being able to manage your organizations with skills is something that managers will have to learn, and AI is going to help them develop that and make it easier on them to understand all those things, and can make it easier. But if you have managers that don’t have that buy in, it’s never going to work anyway. It’s all about that buy-in. I think we’re on a journey here at Huntsman to learn those and we are starting that journey, and we’re well on the road to that. AI has been a big piece of that, but it’s also still developing managers to understand that. I don’t know any manufacturing company at least that I’ve seen that has that fully figured out. I think everyone’s on that journey. But I think whoever can get there and lead that pathway for it’ll be very successful in what they do, from a talent perspective.
Rebecca Warren 55:05
I love that. It’s a journey, that’s right.
Nehal Nangia 55:11
I know we’re almost at time. I’ll just chime in very quickly. It is a journey every organization is thinking about it. They feel pressured, they feel they feel fatigued to an extent, but from where we see it in our research, no organizations figured it out yet. Organizations are on the journey where most organizations are at. They’re not at a state where they can redesign work at scale, but they are at a stage where they’re doing it, not at a job level, but at a task level. AI is not ready to take on jobs yet, but AI is ready to take on tasks. most organizations are rethinking and deconstructing so this is a job. These are all the tasks. This is what AI can do. This is what humans can do, and this is the best way that human workers and digital workers invest work together. That’s, I think, my perspective on where organizations are with job redesign.
Rebecca Warren 56:08
Right? And starting at the task level, instead of starting at blowing up all of the things like, what, what is going to change with the task? How does that then tie the skills and then, how does that go into role design? Love it. Okay, as you said, we’re coming up on time here. We’ve got two minutes left, so y’all get a chance to give advice to all of our attendees here. if folks walk away from this webinar only doing one thing, what do you want that one thing to be? What should they do the second that they close their laptops and walk away from this webinar. Nehal, go ahead and start.
Nehal Nangia 56:45
Always, always, always invite AI to the table. AI may or may not be the right solution, but if you don’t invite AI to the table, you will never, always factor in the possibility of AI being a part of the solution no matter what problem you’re trying to solve.
Rebecca Warren 57:05
Oh, I love that. Okay, wrote that down. Colin, wait until your nugget, yeah.
Colin Mitchell 57:12
Explore the art of the possible with AI research, and then take all that research and think about how specifically that’s going to help my organization drive us and what’s my specific plan.
Rebecca Warren 57:26
What you both have said, which I think is amazing, is about not limiting yourself to what you know right now or what your organization does right now, right? You both have said, we didn’t talk about those ahead of time, so I had no idea what y’all were going to say, right? But inviting AI to the table, getting different perspectives, thinking about the art of the possible, what’s coming, what’s next. You both are talking about being that continuous learner, leaving yourself open for different ideas, different ways of doing things, even if you think that you’ve got the best answer ever, inviting other people and inviting tech to the table so we can continue to broaden what we’re bringing to our organization. Colin, you had said something which I think really hits home, like our job isn’t to do our job. Our job is much broader than that, right? Like we need to execute Nehal, as you said on the tasks, but we are in our role because we bring something more than just being able to execute on tasks. how do we continue to bring that value to the company, understand the north star and continue to drive to that not get caught up in the silos or in the minutia of what’s happening, but continue to have our idea on the bigger picture, right? Like, what is that art of the possible? What can AI help us do? What can tech help us do that we couldn’t do yesterday, that we maybe absolutely have to do tomorrow? Thank you both. This was amazing. Love the questions and the comments that are coming in. We are excited to be able to potentially incorporate those into a future webinar or into follow-up after here. Thank you for joining us. Don’t forget to join next month’s talent table, where we’re going to be talking about HR tech, connecting innovation and employees to business strategy. We’d love to give a round of applause to our wonderful guests, Nehal and Colin. Thank you so much for joining us.
