Rebecca Warren 00:10
We are excited for another edition of the Talent Table. So I am super excited to be able to talk to two fabulous leaders in the space. I am going to have them introduce themselves. So first I’m going to throw it to Jan, and then we will go over to Jivko. So Jan, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a thing or two about who you are and why you’re here.
Jan Tichy 01:27
Thank you, Rebecca, welcome everybody, and it’s really nice to be part of this discussion. My name is Jan. I am based out of Switzerland, working for Amgen since about 15 years now, responsible for global talent management. I’ve always been in the HR function, kind of on the interface between technology and kind of talent processes, and so this topic today is really interesting, so I’m happy to have this discussion.
Rebecca Warren 01:53
All right. Welcome over to you, Jivko.
Jivko Kirov 01:55
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon, good evening. I’m Jivko, and I lead the HP sales and partner training, and I’ve been with the company for about 25 years. I’m based in Houston, Texas. Most of my career has actually been in sales, and sales strategy learning is kind of a late addition to my career, but, yeah, it’s a super exciting topic. So happy to be here.
Rebecca Warren 02:31
Amazing, amazing. So Okay, before we get started, you all know that I do silly question of the day, and I know just going on are so excited for this question, so I’m going to ask the two of them this question, and then we will hopefully get some of your feedback, either in the chat or when I post a recap of this of this session. So all right, would you rather I know it’s silly. Would you rather have hands for feet or feet for hands? Sure? Okay.
Jivko Kirov 03:11
I mean, you know, honestly, the visual is kind of robes, but I would say probably hands for feet. I don’t know why. Maybe there is some deep psychological explanation for my answer, but I don’t know. It’s just just doing things, I guess. So that’s what comes to mind. Yeah, all right, what do you think I have?
Jan Tichy 03:38
The same question, same answer. So like Jivko. For me, I think so hands for feet, because there’s more stuff, more hands to carry snacks. So I think that that’s difficult to find shoes, I guess, but but easier to grab different things.
Rebecca Warren 03:52
Yes, yes, I would say the same. I think being able to do more right, a little easier to do grabby. Grabby. So I agree. So all right, well, thanks for participating in that question of the day. So all right, let’s set up what we’re going to talk about here. And it’s not about speak for hands, but maybe it’s about having more hands to do things, because we are talking about AI and enabling a lot of a lot of new things. So whether you’re leading HR, running enablement, building L&D programs in TA, or just trying to keep your team future-ready. You probably heard that skills are the new currency at work. But here’s the thing, and we’ve heard this a lot, right? Buzz words are easy. Now. What’s not as easy figuring out what focusing on skills looks like when you’re juggling systems, stakeholders, spreadsheets, teams and maybe a little chaos. So today we’re going to get rid of that theoretical chat, and we’re going to get real. So we’re talking about how skills may be showing up in your workflows, in your programs, even in your career path, or maybe not, right? So how should you be thinking about skills in the context of your work? And yes, we, of course, will talk about the role that AI is playing in all of it. So when we set this up, you know, we spent some time thinking about, what is that structure of of teams look like? What do organizations look like? And just go you and I actually met when we were at another conference. We were grabbing dinner, and we had just this organic conversation, which I thought was really fascinating. And we were talking about, where do people’s roles live? How did they get there? What does that look like? So traditionally, HR and maybe L&D teams have led the way thinking about job design, career ladders or competency models, but the shift to that skills based approach is expanding beyond those functions and also affecting how we think about talent across the business. So let’s start with you. I’m curious about your org structure. So where does your role fit in your organization? Right? We talked about sometimes it seems to land in HR and L&D, but there’s lots of different ways that people can actually focus on skills and get the word out. So where does where do you fit in your organization? And also, then, does that reporting line influence how you approach you?
Jivko Kirov 06:24
Yeah, great question. We sit in what we call the commercial organization, which is essentially our sales organization. And you know, this has been a strategic decision that the company made quite a few years back, actually, to move a portion of the of the learning team in the sales organization. Why, you know the thinking and the rationale was that we need the learning professionals who support the sales organization to be very close to to the markets, to the to the people who you know, the feet on the street you know, to basically understand better what they do be you know, closely related to the business challenges and priorities that emerge, and be able to react faster. So that doesn’t mean we don’t cooperate and collaborate very closely with with our HR, L&D colleagues. We are in lock step, you know, we work very closely with them, but, you know, it’s, I would say, kind of a strategic decision. So we do sit in the in the in the commercial, in the sales organization. To expand the second part of your question, I guess, Rebecca, what does that? You know, how skills important for us, then, you know, I really look at, you know, sell skills as the like the motor oil in the engine of any company. You know, that’s, that’s where the the rubber meets the road. You know, this is where, you know, people need to deliver the results. This is what pays the salaries for everybody else, right? We need to have stronger revenue, stronger margin, all of us. Right? This as organizations, as companies, and so enabling that sales organization, you know, skills become urgent, right? There is more urgency. There is more kind of, you know, concreteness of, you know, in what we do. So that’s how I see it, right? It’s, there is no fluff, right? You have to, you have to get things done, and you have to, we have to be very clear, you know, what skills fit, what personas and the way of selling.
Rebecca Warren 08:41
Yeah, I like how you talk about that, where it’s the oil in the engine, right? You can have all kinds of great parts, but if you don’t have the connector, right, if you don’t have the stuff flowing through it, it doesn’t actually work. So Jan, I don’t think you sit in the sales organization, do you?
Jan Tichy 08:57
No, I am part of the traditional HR organization, so as part of the what we call centers of excellence. So the talent organization, we are responsible or taking care of setting up the rent and growth for our people, but also evaluate performance, prepare the talent for the future of the organization. And so in that way, for us, sort of the need has always been, what is the way that we describe, what’s the profile? What is the what is the kind of capability, what is the experience set that our people need to have in order to be able to be effective candidates, effective in their role, effective candidates for their future roles. And what do we need as an organization as we go going forward? So for that, we are not looking at sort of skills as a holy grail. We are looking at it very pragmatically as a helpful tool to describe what, what sort of our roles, and what are, you know, projects require in the organization, what they will require in the future, and what people need to what people need to have and or work on developing in order to continue to be successful.
Rebecca Warren 10:07
Okay, great. Now, I know we were chatting earlier as we were prepping, and I thought it was a really good point. There’s a lot of different ways that folks look at skills, and I think that words matter, right? Are you a skills based organization? Are you a skills first organization? Are you looking at skills? Do you have skills right? There’s, there’s a lot of different ways that we can look at it. So are you seeing a shift towards skills based thinking? Maybe we’ll just say it that way, right? Because the words are different for each organization. But are you seeing a shift towards skills based thinking in your organization? And then we can talk about, if yes this, if no that. So are you? Are either of you seeing a shift towards skills based thinking in your org?
Jan Tichy 10:59
Yeah, so in our experience, sort of the concept of scale is useful in that it’s very intuitive, right? So if you talk about it, talk about skills, people get what you mean, right? And so it’s easy to use it for communicating and sort of using the connection. We’ve in the past used the concept of capabilities. We’ve used the concept of experiences. They are all relevant, right? But the concept of skill seems to translate really nicely, and sort of recently, has been really nicely supported, sort of through different platforms that we use. And so in that way, it’s a it’s a very useful it’s a very useful concept that has traction, sort of in the audience. So for us, if we look for a way for how to connect our talent with the with the opportunities and our and the opportunities to develop and grow and contribute with our talent, then the concept of scale is a very useful kind of concept for a group behind the scenes, okay?
Rebecca Warren 11:55
And it sounds like, then it’s showing up in regular conversations. When you say that, people don’t feel like, oh my gosh, we’re having a development conversation, right? It feels like it’s in and around your conversations.
Jan Tichy 12:08
Then, yeah. So we use it as a good way to describe what am I what do I want to work on? What do I need to prepare for? What makes me more effective in my current role? What do I need to do to prepare for a desired role that I have on my development plan. It’s a useful concept, okay, yeah, I would say a couple of things here.
Jivko Kirov 12:28
One, I think the focus on skills has always been there. I think for everybody in a way, right, one way or the other, it’s more, you know, when I think about how we look at this, it’s the focus is shifting a little bit more towards application, application measurement practice, rather than just passive, you know, sort of developing the skills, you know, by traditional learning and training. You know, how do we actually enable safe spaces for people to practice and to be mentored and and, you know, to engage in some coaching conversations and so on? The second point I wanted to mention is that, you know, skills by themselves. Can people can get lost, right? You can, you can assess, like a vast array of skills, language skills, for example. But is that really, you know, a lot of the time relevant? And this is where I come back to the to the you know, to the concept of role based or persona based skill sets, where you know you have to, we have to be, you have to drive with a clearly defined skill set per role or per type of Persona. In my case, sales. In other cases, you know no sales, different roles, functional roles within the organization, and that that makes that skill set really relevant and pertinent for the person otherwise, too growth, right? And people can get lost. That’s that’s how I’m thinking about it.
Rebecca Warren 14:06
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Now just go a question that I was just curious about. So you have, you said under in the sales organization, do you have other than enablement leads that fit in other functions. Or are you one of a kind?
Jivko Kirov 14:32
Yes, yes and no, it’s not. It’s not as developed as what we have for the sales organization, but we do have some some learning leads in like finance, some of the product management functions, most of the time when it comes to like business acumen and kind of more business related skills that would work with us when it comes to very specific soft skills, like emotional intelligence, for example, design thinking and so on. You know, then a lot of the content would come from the hrl and the organization, but we have kind of a Learning Alliance within, within the organization. We meet regularly, and we coordinate between, between the different learning leads.
Rebecca Warren 15:10
Oh, I love that. A learning alliance. I’m taking notes here. I love it so that Jan let me ask you that question. It just in general as well, not about where things sit. But, you know, for eight fold, we look at when we say skills, when folks are building out a taxonomy or an ontology with us, we look at soft skills and tech skills together, right? Because sometimes it’s hard to separate the capabilities or the competencies from the tech skills. So for us, the way that we work with folks to do it there together. Do you look at it the same way? Do you how are you looking at soft skills or competencies or power skills as well as those tech skills? Do you separate them out? Are they all together? How do you how do you define those so there are two answers to that, right?
Jan Tichy 16:01
If you look at things from the perspective of a manager or from the perspective of an employee or a candidate, right? They are all together. They need to have all of them right, that are relevant to the roles and the concept that you’ve co describes is really, really important, right? So figuring out what’s relevant what’s not relevant helping people navigate. Let’s say that’s a very important part of it. So you know, it comes together when you describe at all, when you describe the person, when you see what a candidate is interested in. For us, we are sort of similarly like what what you’ve got was describing. We have kind of a core learning organization and functionally focused, technical skills, focused organization in our in our different parts of the business, whether it’s manufacturing or sales or research, and we collaborate in a learning council together to make sure that we complement each other well, and that we sort of put together the whole with the best, with The best sort of contributions from each side.
Jivko Kirov 17:03
To build on what Jan just said, I think it has to be seamless for the for the person who consumes that, that learning on that portfolio of skills, right? But, but yes, you know, we do. We do differentiate Rebecca between, you know, skills on that enable you how to sell. For example, you know, I call it like soft you know, soft skills, sell skills. There’s nothing soft about selling, by the way. So, you know, I call it sales skills, right? But our skills right? Like negotiation, you know, hunting, whatever, right, whatever that is. So there is an element of, you know, how to sell. Then there is an element of what to sell. And this is where the product technical knowledge comes in, right? You need to know the products. You need to know the, you know, the competitive differentiators. You need to know the bottle cards and all that, right? That’s kind of, you know, kind of functional product solutions. Knowledge. There is a third element, you know. The third element is, you know, tools and processes that enable you to sell, right? So it’s like a look at it as a three legged stool. Really, you have to address each of those legs of the stool, otherwise the stool is wobbly, and the salesperson sits on a wobbly stool, right? And we don’t want that, right? So, yeah, we’re trying to address those elements. But as Jan said, you know, in a seamless way for the learner, right? That’s the key, right? Because otherwise, if you start differentiating, or Do this, do that, it’s obviously not going to be effective.
Rebecca Warren 18:32
It gets confusing. And so one, one quick thing before we move on, I want to talk about what success looks like with using skills. But I know a lot of organizations do this. I know my background in TA, we had put together the concept of that marketing started with personas, right? Building out what, what does this person look like? What is it? What is a role look like? So when you talk about personas, that I’m assuming what you’re doing, just go is for your sales organization. What does someone need to be able to have a solid stool? Is that, would you say it that way with your process, your what, your how?
Jivko Kirov 19:10
I mean persona based learning is clearly you have some foundation that is probably the same for everybody in sales. Everybody needs to be able to have a business and financial acumen, for example, everybody needs to have some basic negotiation skills. Everybody needs to have the fundamentals of selling, what they call sales hygiene, right? That’s kind of applicable, you know, it’s a basic layer. But then, you know, let’s say you sell in a corporate environment, versus you sell to a, you know, federal or sled employees in the organizations in the US or public sector in Europe, right? There’s different things that you need to do. There’s different skill sets as a result of that. That’s why we we define those personas, you know, in the sales process, and we look at it exactly from that standpoint, persona, based on what you do, how you interact with the customers, and then what are the skills that you need in order to be successful in your role?
Jan Tichy 20:08
Love it. I think it’s a really good concept. And sort of what I would add to that is you’ve got the kind of application area and the content area, and then you have the user persona from the standpoint of what their preferences are, right, or what their needs are. So you know, a candidate who’s coming in very early in the career carrier will have a different view or different needs. Somebody who’s coming very experienced sort of has a different profile, things, different set of perspectives as well, and that we find useful to reflect as well.
Rebecca Warren 20:38
Love it. Love it. Okay, so, so clearly, you all have the understanding of skills in your organization. You’re talking about them. You’re using them. Folks in your organization are familiar with the idea of being skills based. So what does success look like? And I’m not saying you’re there, but what does success look like when skills not just job titles or word charts, become the lens for growth, development and opportunity, and I heard both of you talk about these allow us to have better coaching and development conversations because we’re speaking the same language. So what does success look like when skills are driving the growth of the organization, as opposed to a job title.
Jan Tichy 21:28
I think, you know, the key point is, is definitely around, supports the content, right? So this is the success to us, is we can use the right way to help describe what people need to focus on, what how people need to show up, what different roles are requiring in order to be able to both deliver and prepare for the future, right? And so in that way, kind of the success is you’ve got a essentially seamless system in the background, ideally also one that doesn’t take a huge amount of workload to maintain. So skills taxonomy, skills catalogs, they can sort of take a while to set up and to manage, and sort of technology these days can help quite a bit. But I would say that’s one of the areas that we haven’t quite cracked. What’s the right balance on that. But it is a, it is a sort of helpful tool. It exists in the background. We can. We have a good information about candidates, individuals, about themselves, about where they want to go, and we have good information about what the organization needs, either based on direction for the future or the or the work that’s going on today.
Jivko Kirov 22:43
Okay, success. What does success look like?
Rebecca Warren 22:47
That’s a big question, I know, I know, and we can’t answer it in even an hour. So give me a snippet.
Jivko Kirov 22:51
I mean, in a very basic level, you know, in a sales enablement role, you know, success is higher win rates, you know, new logo wins. You know, higher conversion rate of the funnel. That’s, that’s what you know we need to correlate to the business outcomes. But this is where the challenge comes in as you as you very, very well know right measuring and proving that correlation between learning and business outcomes is like the Holy Grail of learning, right? So, you know, how do we do that? I mean, we we have developed a methodology where we look at the the amount and the type of learning, so both quantity and quality of learning and revenue growth over a period of time, because, you know, we don’t want to look at it in a very short period of time. And we have, we have shown a very clear correlation between people who are considered what we call consistent learners. And we have a specific metrics that we look at how many hours of learning they consume per year, but consistent, you know, just over one year, and are they successful in growing their revenue? The correlation is pretty, pretty clear that you know, you know, consistent learners outperform or over perform their peers who are not consistent learners. But you know, having that business conversation, we are very careful to talk about the correlation, not the causation, because it will be simplistic. It will be over simplifying things really, to to claim that just because somebody took training or learning, you know, they somehow become a better salesperson. There’s so many other factors involved, you know, we have the right products. What’s the macro economic environment, you know, and so on, right?
Rebecca Warren 24:55
So, so I’m talking always about correlation, not causation, and I love what you talk about consistent learning. There’s a lot of work that’s been done in the space that talks about, if you build learning into your day to day, that shifts you from being a reactive learn what you need to know after the reasons been surfaced, as opposed to proactively learning And continuing to learn and having that curious mindset. There’s lots of data around the proactive learners develop more and build stronger teams. So I love that you’re focusing on that, and you’ve been able to tie that together on where that learning happens and how it happens.
Jan Tichy 25:41
And so to state the obvious, sort of, it’s not just classroom learning, right, or virtual learning that that very developed sort of skills, right? It’s, it’s goes as well, or even more importantly, when you get a chance to sort of be part of a project that sort of gets you exposed to a different type of work than what you’ve used before, connecting and then the idea of networking or mentoring with with with others, so that you can learn from others what they are doing. Those are all ways that kind of can both energize and make sure that you actually develop the track record that you need both today and tomorrow.
Rebecca Warren 26:16
Yeah. So when we think about transitioning towards towards skills. In some organizations, maybe it’s very formal. There’s an announcement we are becoming a skills based organization. We want to be an SBO by, you know, in the next three years, or whatever. In other organizations, it feels more organic. It’s shifting to a new framework. And it’s not just operational or tactical, but it really is a cultural shift to get folks to think differently and be more open about what they bring to the table. So what do you think organizations should be thinking about when it comes to to shifting towards skills? I’ll throw you one.
Jan Tichy 27:04
I think, sort of started with this, right? The starting point is the relevance, right? And there are certain parts. So in our business, there are certain places where we have sort of clear process, clear set of tools. We have clear behaviors that are needed for the success. And there it’s really, you know, natural and easy to introduce the concept of skills or capabilities to kind of help you deliver and be effective for that. And those are places where we have gone and sort of worked with kind of announcement around focus on formal skills assessment, formal kind of introduction of skills that allow you to do your work and the future work at the best. And that’s where, sort of it really connects in the kind of more common part of the organization, where there’s different aspects in support functions, for example, where there isn’t a kind of clear, single, clear, single process, and we are dependent on the local setting to say, Okay, what actually is it roll on for your role? What do you need to do? That’s where a more sort of soft approach has been effective for us, where sort of, we make skills available, we make them visible. We talk about how we talk. We talk about, sort of how people can use, just to use the concept of skills to say, how do I drive my development discussion with my manager, but we don’t do a big sort of announcement of we are now a skills based sort of team, because the skills are there. They are intuitively understood, and they help people get get done what they need to get done, which is to, you know, have a good conversation, either with their peers or with their managers, either around their job…
Rebecca Warren 28:42
I like that. One of the things I was going to ask you, too, is, when I’ve been talking to folks, what I hear is when it’s woven in that way, and it’s part of conversation, it turns your development conversations from maybe adversarial or folks are nervous about it, because it just opens up the door. Here are the things that I do well, here are the things that I want to learn. And it becomes more of a proactive conversation, as opposed to, oh, I’m afraid to tell my manager that I may want to do something else, because then, you know they’re they’re going to eliminate my role and replace me. So it sounds to me like the way you’re talking about it is that healthy way of saying we want to understand. It’s it’s great to to be visible with what you do, what you do well, and areas that you want to learn. So I like that you’re weaving it into the conversation. So just go talk to me a little bit about how it works, because they know in a you’re in a different space a little bit. So how are you thinking about that shift towards skills and incorporating that into the day to day?
Jivko Kirov 29:50
In the way? I think there is few components that you need to think about, you know, essential in that transition towards a skills based approach. If I think about journey, you know, the probably one of the very first thing is, you know, define very clear profiles. What are the coming back to that point, you know, skills, profiles per person. And you know, for that, you probably need a couple of things. I would recommend that you take an industry based approach, where you, you know, you there’s some great, you know, work done in the industry about best practices. You know, best, best in class skills associated with, you know, different types of role, sales roles, or other professional roles within, within an organization. But then you validate it internally, within, you know, within the markets, right? And you continue to validate, because it’s not a one off, right? One and done. And so that’s probably, you know, kind of, one of the first things you need, you need to do. The second one is to create the process you haven’t talked about this, you know, to really embed this in the window way of working. So the managers follow up with their, you know, with their teams, they, you know, this type of, you know, skills conversations happen on a quarterly basis. They’re ongoing. You know, it doesn’t feel like, oh, let’s have a skills discussion, and then we forget about it, right? And the third thing I would say is you have to measure right? You have to find a way to measure progress, you know, competency, or skills improvement, to create some kind of a heat map per row, per market, per country and so on, and how things are changing as a result of certain actions. That’s that’s not necessarily easy, but, but there is ways to do that. There is good, good tools, good systems out there that can be used. And, you know, assessment is a big one, right? How do you do skills assessment? Do you I’m opening, you know, it’s an open question to everyone you know, because I think, you know, we all struggle a little bit with this. The traditional approaches, you do self assessment and maybe some kind of a Manager Assessment, and you combine the two and come up with a score, right? And that creates kind of spider web. You have a heat map. But is there a better way to do it where we actually there is some validation of what people think of themselves and the manager think of their teams. I think there’s some great tools out there now using AI to do that. Unfortunately, they’re very expensive, right? So, you know that poses challenge to us as learning professionals, but I think there is ways to do that, you know, in a better way, rather than just kind of sentiment analysis, which is self assessment and manager assessment.
Rebecca Warren 32:47
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I was just listening to a podcast yesterday where, where someone was talking about you have to have that validation, but then you that you have to have that that internal assessment, then that validation, and the validation can’t just be a check mark, it’s also what other skills are inferred, what other things that maybe we’re not looking at, right? We all have a perspective and a mindset of this is what it should look like. But what if, what else is out there, right? What other transferable skills, or skills that might be ancillary, that actually could be part of that as well. So what does that validation look like? Are we on the right track? Are those skills rising? Are they waning? Those things as well?
Jivko Kirov 33:29
So potentially link it back to learning, right to tools work like, like, where Cara, for example, can point you to specific elements of the of the learning, of a learning course, not even the entire course, but just take this section in order to to address this gap, you know. So I think there’s some pretty nifty things out there, you know, pretty good, good tooling available now with AI.
Rebecca Warren 33:56
Yeah, I wanted to ask you this too, before we switch off. And this is, I love this rabbit hole that we’re going down, because I think it really is helpful and it makes sense. So when you’re thinking about Jana as well in your organization, talking about that validation, talking about where skills land, that difference between training and validated learning, right? And I know Jivko, you’ve got all kinds of thoughts on that, because that’s, that’s your wheelhouse. So. So how are you thinking about that Jan in your organization, besides just saying, hey, take this training, do you have a way to think about validating that learning, tying it to other things? How are you looking at what people are actually doing and absorbing when you talk about that continuous learner.
Jan Tichy 34:47
So I think the answer is in a blend, right? So there’s definitely parts of the business where you have to be very serious about making sure that you’re clear about you know how certain things are done when you describe describe the product. For example, you know, that that has to be done correctly. It has to be done accurately in a way that’s appropriate, right? And so all of these things are a really good example of an application of, you know, where you describe, sort of, this is what you need to do, and then you test whether that’s actually happening, right? Then you’re doing it not just sort of during the course of the learning, for checking understanding, but you do it in an ongoing way between the manager and the employee, through sort of observation and coaching discussions, so that you have the opportunity to see the desired behaviors applied or not, right, and then you can provide feedback on the spot, right in there, so that this can, this can develop right The concept of sort of validating, validating, sort of characteristics has been well established in HR, so that that is something that you can really easily sort of tap into when it comes down to things that are, I would say, high exposure, right? So things that you say are critical requirements for a role that you want to use in selection. Those are things where you need to have validation when you are trying to advise people how to navigate their career, the requirements are a little bit looser, because you just need to be useful for that, and you need to help the conversation go towards sort of taking or making the right decisions, taking the right actions.
Rebecca Warren 36:16
So yes, all those things, and I’ve been taking notes, because I think what you’re saying, both of what you’re saying is, is, I think, spot on, and folks seem to really we’re getting some questions and some chat coming in saying that we are talking about the right thing. So, so how do you so when we think about this, right what organizations should be thinking about? So, organizational alignment. I want to jump into this because just co you mentioned, right? You’ve got to you had said quantity, quality and revenue growth, and so when you said revenue growth, right, it’s tying it back to those organizational outcomes. What are we trying to achieve? It’s not just about your particular piece of the pie, but it’s about what is the business trying to do, right? So if we’re thinking about that, shift needs to have organization alignment, skills visibility, we need to have some data. We need to understand what we’re trying to measure, looking at tech and infrastructure. You said, Hey, absolutely. An AI tool and AI platform, talent intelligence that makes your job easier. But what we haven’t really talked about yet, and so I want to talk about this is building that that buy in across the functions. And so how do we think about that leadership, that culture shift, that mindset that needs to come. And it can’t just come from one level of the organization, right? You can maybe able to do it really well here, but if we don’t have the buy in on either side, it’s not going to be a global initiative. So how do you build that buy in across the functions, especially if you’ve got different teams, right? JUCO, you’re a great example of that. You’ve got different teams who are at different levels of maturity or understanding of processes of what and the how. So what do you all think we need to do to build that buy in across the function, and does it start at the top? Does it start at the bottom? Is it groundswell? What do you all think?
Jivko Kirov 38:19
I mean, I think without leadership buying and without, you know, without leadership support, this initiatives, you know, fall flat. I’m stating the obvious. But how do we do that? How do we build that, that support, you know, I think it’s showing again, it’s showing a business outcome. And that’s why I’m, you know, I’m coming back to this. You have to link it back to how learning training, you know, everything that we do, how does it connect to what matters to people, to what matters to the organization, to the leaders. And you know, if they’re convinced about that, then it becomes less of a learning activity, rather than a business activity. And you get business leaders getting involved. Some of our most successful programs is, okay, we deliver, you know, a set of trainings. But then there is actual, you know, the business leaders are their actual, you know, managers are conducting a follow up and saying, what did you learn? You know, how did, how are you applying this, this concept that you are learning, you know, and we do that 3060, days kind of follow ups. These are the some of our most successful programs where, you know, this becomes interwoven in the way people work, right? And, you know, in the actual business management is following up, and they can only do that if they’re convinced that, you know, this is actually contributing to their bottom line or to their success, right, whatever they do.
Jan Tichy 40:05
So, yeah, that, you know, making that building, that bridge between learning and business, I think it’s super critical, I would echo that right, starting with a purpose, and making the connections clear. That’s, that’s where you get the that’s, that’s where you get the buy in, right? So if you’re, if you agree on, what are we trying to accomplish, and you show the connection, then you’re sort of automatically have buy in, especially if you spend time to build the connection, so the identification of the key behaviors, key skills in a way that’s co created between you, sort of in our, in my case, in HR or in learning and the business, right? So that it’s not somebody comes in and says, This is how you should do your work. It’s we work together about how should we do what is required to be at our best. And so that’s that purpose sort of gives us the gives us, gives us the sort of acceptance automatically. And then on the on the second part, also just kind of the real is the realization that you don’t have to be at the same level of rigor in every area of the organization, right? So you don’t have to have a big machine, sort of in places where, you know, you’ve got multiple different sort of application areas, but there are places in the business where, again, sort of, if you got regulated, controlled process, you need to make sure that you do the right thing. And therefore you have to go to high level rigor to be able to make sure that you can assure that people are prepared to do things in the right way?
Rebecca Warren 41:23
Yeah, that’s a really good point.
Jivko Kirov 41:26
One thing is, I feel like in the corporate spaces, you know, especially the way we do corporate learning is it’s perceived as something that we do to people, right? It’s a it’s something that you do, you do your job, and then, then you take some training, you take some learning. I think that’s our one of our biggest challenges is, how do we, how do we connect it? How it, how do we make sure that this is done in the flow of work? It feels seamless to people. Then it’s part of their jobs, right? Then, then skills development becomes, you know, no brainer, yeah, you know, right, every day, right? Yeah. Instead of gonna go and do some training now and then, I’ll come back and do my job.
Jan Tichy 42:16
So this is also a way where, sort of today compared to 10 years ago, with platforms that are available today, you can turn the table right. So instead of us going, Hey, we have this training, you have to take it right. We can say, here’s a tool, here’s a platform where you can plan your effectiveness your career. It will advise you what you should do. And suddenly you generate demand, right, as opposed to and you connect people with the learning or with the experiences or with the connections across the organization that that they need in order to achieve the goals that they’ve themselves articulated, right? And so the purpose question is almost automatically, automatically answered.
Rebecca Warren 42:57
I think what, what you all are talking about, is so timely, because what it does, when you look at skills, the way that you both are talking about it, it takes away some of those barriers. I think that it’s easy for folks to to focus on, right? Oh, well, that’s an HR Initiative, or that’s a training initiative, or that lives in L and D, that doesn’t, that doesn’t affect us. But when you broaden that and talk about, how does it tie to the business objectives, what are we trying to accomplish? We’re making folks better in their day to day. So it’s not just about taking a course. It’s not just about, oh, well, only, only the senior level folks get the best training, right? Like you’re looking at this, in every level, in every role, there’s some focus on, where do we need to invest, right? And, yeah, I like what you talked about, that you don’t need the same level of rigor at all levels, right? So, where do we need to invest? Who? Where does that tie into the business? Then it also takes away that reliance of saying, you know, a particular title gets this training. It’s like everybody gets what they need in order to do their job well. And it may shift. It may look different in each department. That doesn’t mean that it’s that it needs to be peanut butter. And then that idea that using tech to validate and to store and and push the push the human thoughts forward. I think those take away a lot of those, those barriers that sometimes folks tend to put up. I’m saying, oh, we can’t do skills because of blah, blah, right? So what you’re talking about when you embed it in the organization, you’re looking at it from a global perspective. Where do we need to invest at what time, based on the business objectives, totally takes that, that sense of distrust or or disengagement away. So I’m watching the time. And what I really want to talk about next is that internal development. So you know, as you all are spending time helping everybody else grow and learn and be better and be amazing. Amazing humans, sometimes we tend to forget about our own development. So I would love to talk about that skills first mindset when it comes to us, no matter where we sit in our functions. And so, how are you making sure? And Jeff CO will throw this at you first. How are you making sure that your own team is keeping pace with what the rest of the organization is doing and those evolving as well by attending Eightfold Talent Table.
Rebecca Warren 45:39
Look at that. I love it. You get extra bonus points. I don’t know what that means.
Jivko Kirov 45:47
Seriously, I you know, I think one of the one of the key ways to do that is to get people out, to get people out of the bubble of what we do, to expose them to, so I was half joking, right, to expose them to, you know, other ways of thinking, the way other people approach things. It can be done by, you know, attending conferences or participating in, you know, in events like like this, or, you know, others, right, where we exchange with people who do similar jobs and who face similar challenges, because we don’t know what we don’t know, right? We you know, we know our challenges. We think we know our challenges, but sometimes that fresh perspective is critical. So, you know, we’re always hungry for outside point of view. I didn’t put it that way, right? So, and I always encourage my team to look outside, to evaluate, you know, new solutions in the market, even if we’re not able to adopt it, you know, just get familiar with other people’s way of thinking. So, so that’s definitely one rotation. Is another one, you know? I’m, you know, I’m encouraging people to rotate within projects. We talked a little bit about this, you know, kind of a, you know, a geek culture is probably a strong term. But, you know, willingness flexibility to, you know, not to have a fixed job description, but to experience different things and get involved in different projects that opens up your you know, your mind, you know, and way of working. So just, you know, you have to encourage people to be intellectually curious all the time, and you know, and reward that. So that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do.
Jan Tichy 47:41
And I think sort of what’s also important to remember is that today, at least from my experience, many people are right, and so they do want to grow. So if I look at our sort of survey, survey results, of the interest in development, interest in helping sort of grow and learn, is there, and it’s one of the sort of strongest themes that comes through, right? And so often, the issue is, sort of, how do you connect the interest with the means, right? And how do you show people, can we have a lot of opportunities when you talk about learning, learning, sort of new things, both internally, externally or from different areas. Being a research based scientific organization these days is a really huge benefit in this, right? And there’s a lot of interesting stuff that’s going on that people I either sort of don’t know about or don’t know how to access. So helping make the connections is, is really useful, right? And in that sort of, you know, technology these days can really help, right, make connections. So help facilitate the point of, if you’re looking for sort of subject matters or even sort of ideas, then this is, this is where you can get good suggestions. What we also then try to do is really focus on learning by doing, and using both work that’s going on in my team sort of as an opportunity for others to contribute, but also encouraging people, sort of from my team to participate in in projects or in other parts of the organization. And so project sharing platforms can help with that quite a lot. And I have a number of sort of examples where, you know, people who are now part of my team have sort of became, become sort of interested and known to us through participating in one of our projects, and then to return that into a kind of switching career, sometimes also into HR, into talent, into development.
Rebecca Warren 49:30
That’s amazing. So what I hear you all saying is using the internal data that you have about where people are, what you know about what skills folks have and where do they need to go? Looking at learning as part of everybody’s job and modeling it as well, not just saying, do it, but actually doing it yourself. So whether that’s carving out time on your calendar, or whether it is connecting with other folks, attending conferences, asking questions, and then bringing in those voices from across the business. So whether it’s a cross functional project, or whether it’s maybe having someone join one of your team meetings, getting those other ways of thinking and learning out there, which is great. I mean, that was one thing I loved coming into this role in the team that I’m on, is that that is part of our day to day. And so we get asked questions, right? Jason will be like, what’d you learn today? Did you watch that webinar? What? Tell us. Tell us what, what’s going on in your head. And it continues to help me think differently, like I as a as an example, right? I kind of came into this conversation a couple months ago thinking, Okay, well, training L&D, you know, lives in HR, and it does it. And I’ve had several different conversations with folks saying, hey, check your bias, because it doesn’t live there. It goes in a bigger, a bigger way, in a lot of organizations. And so that helps me continue to think about, you know, understanding where things are across the board. So okay, so when we look at and we’ve got just a couple of minutes here, this time always goes so fast. So I would love to help our audience understand a little bit more about your thoughts on the balance between tech and human judgment, right? We talk about tools to validate, maybe to help discover skills in first guilt, maybe even leading some of those trainings or conversations. So what do you think is the right balance between AI or automation and human judgment when it comes to talent decisions? So hiring, learning, promotions? Where do you think that line should be between AI and human judgment in how we do things inside the business, Jan, I’ll start.
Jan Tichy 51:44
It’s a really, really good question, right? And there’s kind of two big parts of this, and I’m going to leave the sort of the heavy one to the side a little bit, right? And that, of course, is anytime that you’re making you’re making decisions, and you’re using technology to do that, you have to be really kind of sure and careful to make sure that the decisions are made for the recommendations are made in the right way, that you have all the safeguards in place. This is a space that’s rapidly evolving right so there is a specific fixed guidance. But it’s really important to pay attention to this, because it’s absolutely the case that some tools will give you wrong recommendations unless you watch them really carefully. Now, when it comes back to the sort of gist of the question you asked about, what is the balance? And for me, the answer is, it’s the balance, right? You have to think about this in both ways so you can, you can use technology as helping you, helping potentially discover areas that you haven’t thought of, but you always have to expect that you bring your part right, whether it’s as a individual who’s looking for, you know, next step in their career and developing and getting recommendations. You own your career. You own the decisions. You own the responsibility to take the advice and filter it right, to make sure that it makes sense, so that you don’t sort of follow a GPS, sort of naively, so that it gets you into a sort of broken range, right? And so this is a, this is this. This is kind of part of that. And I think, you know, same thing goes sort of for the organization. Would you think that the tools that are now available, all of the sort of AI based technology is really heavily dependent on having good data to work on. And so, like a good example. So from from our area is, you know, if you want want to have a tool that evaluates an x ray, all of the information to evaluate is in the x ray, and it can do a really good job. If you want a technology to evaluate the patient electronic record, I can provide an advice to a doctor that really depends a lot about what’s in the record. These are not in a very good state in general today, unfortunately. And so that the need is a completely different place, right? And so the same thing applies to care places where we have really got a shared, well understood, long history of kind of jobs, you can get a really good advice from tool, from tools, places where things are in flux, things are evolving, you will always have to bring treatment.
Rebecca Warren 54:12
Yeah, I think that’s such a funny thing that you talked about GPS. So I’m planning a trip my husband are going to go to Ireland this summer, and I was chatting with a friend of mine who’s a travel agent, and you know, we’re a little bit more of simple travelers. And so I said, you know, we’ll go ahead and do it, but I’d love to get your advice. And I said, I threw all my requirements into chat GPT, and I’m like, I got a pretty good itinerary. Felt really good about it. She goes, you may want to just check that, because sometimes you get dead end roads sometimes. She said, I threw some stuff in there the other day, and then put it, put Galloway, like, at the very bottom of the map. So she’s like, make sure that you’re asking the questions, and don’t just take that, because all of a sudden you may be driving and, you know, you’re in the middle of a of a farm, right? So I think that that validation, that like, let’s, let’s use it, but let’s make sure that the right data is going in, right? I mean, maybe the model I was using just doesn’t understand Ireland. And maybe if I would have put in a requirement for Texas, it might have given me a completely, you know, really accurate reading. So I think that’s right, the data and the area that you’re looking at, I think, and what you’re using it for, is really smart to look at, Jessica. What do you think about that? And then we’ll wrap up with our last question.
Jivko Kirov 55:24
Just few thoughts. I mean, I think ai, ai, offers such a tremendous opportunity. And, you know, because we’re running out of time, I’ll just say couple of things. I think AI really offers us the opportunity to democratize learning, in my opinion. And what do I mean by that, to democratize content creation, potentially going forward delivery as well, and to help us to move from training to learning. Because there is a big distinction, guys, right? You train an animal, but human beings learn, right? And so I think future is definitely ai plus, sorry, human plus AI assisted, right? But, but, and I would say this pretty strongly in my in my view, is human LED. It’s human led, AI assisted, but it gives us a great opportunity to really move the needle towards that democratization of learning. And you know, we can expand on that another time. Is different ways, you know, that can be done private, LLM, you know, and so on, right, which really, really, you know, democratizes the process of learning.
Rebecca Warren 56:40
Agree? Okay, so it’s funny. I’m going to go to our last question, but we had said initially, like, Hey, do we think that we’ll leave time for questions? And I’m like, I am pretty sure we are not going to get through even half of the questions, and I have skipped like five in the middle here. So we’re going to go right to our last closing question. There are so many more things to discuss, y’all so we may see about doing another webinar with these two rock stars and see if we can pick their brain a little bit more. But we do have a list of the questions that you’ve asked, and we will do our best to to answer those going forward. But as we wrap up here, thinking about if someone could only do one thing after today’s session, what should it be? What’s What’s that call to action? That takeaway, what should someone do? Um, if they only could do one thing after listening to us, John, what do you think?
Jan Tichy 57:29
Well, I think so we’ve been talking about learning, right? And learning with a purpose, and that’s the answer, right? So, so think about, what are you trying to accomplish? And spend some time, you know, maybe using GPT, but refusing other tools, right as well, to kind of get some ideas about how you might get there.
Rebecca Warren 57:48
And that will be a recording, yeah, good, just how I think I would.
Jivko Kirov 57:50
You know, if you’re, if you really want to move towards a skills based approach, you know, start by identifying the, you know, the key personas and roles within the organization, and what are the skills associated with with those roles? And don’t get lost in that artificial dichotomy between roles and skills. You know, they’re they’re related, they’re closely, closely related, right? But you we, I think skills have to be associated with the way you do your job, and that is the role of the person.
Rebecca Warren 58:25
Okay, so I would say no to one piece for you. Somebody had asked, can you just share what your three legged stool was? Again, those 3.0 for sales enablement.
Jivko Kirov 58:33
Yeah, sure, it’s so one, one is, you know how to sell, which is basically sell skills. Two is what to sell, which is basically product solutions. You know, product knowledge, competitive intelligence. And three is tools and processes. You know, how do you actually get things done? You know, how do you create a pricing bit? You know, where do you go to get certain information. How do you answer an RFP? So the third store is that tools and processes.
Rebecca Warren 59:07
Perfect. Okay, so I’m going to wrap it up here. So my if someone could only do one thing after today’s session, what should it be? Take control of your own career. Don’t wait for someone in your organization to tell you. To take this training, to learn this, to watch this webinar, podcast, I encourage you to go out and drive your own career, figure out what you want to do, and then enlist the right resources to help you, whether that’s pulling in somebody from April, watching a talent table, or reaching out to someone on LinkedIn, finding a mentor, asking Questions, continuing to drive your own development. No one ever succeeded in an organization by sitting back and waiting for stuff to come to them. So take control of your own career, ask the questions, continue to get yourself out there, get uncomfortable and continue to learn. Okay, that’s all we have time for today. So thanks for joining us at the Talent Table.
