Stefanie Krievins – The Art of Upskilling and Reskilling Employees

Connect with Stefanie:

• 

Connect with David:

• • 

• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

• • 

• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• The Change Architects
• Salary.com Consulting practice
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 10
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 8

• “[Leaders] have to spend some intentional time painting the future vision of the organization.”
• “There’s always going to be bias built into skilling inventory . . . it’s not inherently bad, we just have to know how to leverage it for good.”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my friend, co host, partner, buddy and colleague from Salary.com Dwight Brown. How are you, Dwight Brown?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:48

Great. How you doing, David?

 

David Turetsky: 0:51

I'm okay. Um, have I told you lately you look pixelated?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:56

Like I said, I gotta tell my doctor that he's

 

David Turetsky: 0:59

Yes.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:00

He's been asking, what weird symptoms I have. I

 

David Turetsky: 1:03

Yeah.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:03

What symptom have you had? Well, I'm feeling pretty pixelated right now.

 

David Turetsky: 1:06

Yeah, that's a weird zoom thing that we probably need to tell our doctors every once in a while, we're feeling a little pixelated. With us we have Stefanie Krievins. Stefanie, how are you?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 1:19

I am super duper. Thanks for having me, guys! I am not pixelated.

 

David Turetsky: 1:23

You are not pixelated. You're coming in loud and clear, but Stefanie, no, actually not loud, but you're coming in clear. Stefanie, tell us a little bit about your background.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 1:32

Yes. So 10 years ago, I started a coaching firm, and over the years, we have grown and transitioned and pivoted, like so many companies have been doing over the past several years, into really designing programs to leverage change, architect change and create cultures where continuous learning and upskilling truly, truly happen. You know, upskilling is, is is the way of the future in our workforces, given where technology is evolving, we can't hire and fire our way out of what we need our people to be able to deliver for our companies in the future. And so upskilling is the answer. And so we combine upskilling with change management programming to basically create the future of work, to create organizations that know what in the heck they're doing and can deliver on it in 10 years.

 

David Turetsky: 2:28

It's not easy doing change management well, especially when it comes to really emotional things. So

 

Stefanie Krievins: 2:34

Agreed.

 

David Turetsky: 2:35

I give you lots of kudos for that. It's a really tough skill.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 2:39

You know, it feels tough when you don't know the right process to use. And I think so many companies focus on if we just have the right processes, sorry, just the right processes, just the right project management methodology, or project management if we just communicate it three or four times, if we do a training, then we will address what we can and address the change management needs of our people in our organizations. And that's just not how humans change. Humans change because they can see themselves in the change. Humans change because they can understand the context within which they're working, and they can they can understand how they can contribute and how they can have autonomy in this new system. And so that's really what we want to equip leaders with. Is yes, you need great process, yes, you need training, yes you need communication. Chances are you've got to beef up more of that to be even more effective inside of your organization, depending on how large and complex it is, and you have to help people see themselves in the future of the company to drive change.

 

David Turetsky: 3:45

So they can adopt it.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 3:46

Yes!

 

David Turetsky: 3:46

It can become part of them.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 3:48

Yes. Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 3:49

Cool, yeah. Well, Stefanie, what we do with all of our guests? Not to all of our guests, but with all of our guests. We ask them one fun thing that no one knows about Stefanie Krievins.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 4:02

Oh, man, can I have two?

 

David Turetsky: 4:05

Just for you, we'll let you have two.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:07

We're running a special. We're running a special on this, two for one day.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 4:11

A twofer? Excellent.

 

David Turetsky: 4:13

I didn't advertise that.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:16

Oh, exactly. Only special people.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 4:20

Coupon code. So my favorite one right now is that we had to postpone the recording of this podcast because the finalization of my, of the adoption of my little boy, Lincoln, happened very quickly and unexpectedly. So he is now officially, legally a Krievins, which is magic and amazingness. Yes. I mean, we knew from the moment we met him that he was a Krievins, and to have it be legal and finalized is just just another level of

 

David Turetsky: 4:54

Wonderful.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 4:55

of comfort, I will say, which is a lesson in change management, y'all!

 

David Turetsky: 5:02

Did you do a communication sending out the card to all of your friends and family?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 5:06

Of course! Of course.

 

David Turetsky: 5:07

Yeah, of course.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 5:09

And the one before Mr. Lincoln came into my life is that I'm afraid of heights, so I went skydiving, and that tells you everything you need to know about my personality.

 

David Turetsky: 5:19

Well, I am too. I like being in the damn plane, as opposed to my friend Dwight Brown, who likes being out of the damn plane, right?

 

Dwight Brown: 5:28

Yeah, free flight. Free flight!

 

David Turetsky: 5:36

I'm a hockey player Stefanie, the only time I take flight is when I fall off my skates.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 5:41

Ooh.

 

David Turetsky: 5:41

That's the only time I'll take flight. Well, I got a lot of equipment on, so it's okay.

 

Dwight Brown: 5:45

Yeah, but see there's, look at the disconnect in that. You worry about me jumping off a mountains and flying, or Stefanie skydiving, but yet you willingly stand in front of a puck that's going, what 150 160 miles an hour straight at your head?

 

David Turetsky: 6:02

Slight exaggeration, but okay, I'll take it. Yeah, and what's your point?

 

Dwight Brown: 6:07

Oh god.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 6:10

You at least wear a mouth guard? like

 

David Turetsky: 6:12

I'm a goalie, so I have a nice mask on, so the puck hopefully will never go through my cage. If it does, I've got other problems!

 

Dwight Brown: 6:20

Hopefully! He's like. Please don't let it go

 

David Turetsky: 6:24

Please don't let it go there. You can see my my through the cage. old helmet right there behind me, and yeah, there are no holes in the mask while. I mean, they're holes, but none caused by a puck. But why don't we transition to our topic for today? So our topic for today is all about being able to upskill and reskill our employees. We're trying to find practical ways in the world of work to not only be able to upskill but also to understand, how do you capture the data and how do you inventory your teams? Which is just up the alley of the HR Data Labs podcast.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 7:03

Woohoo!

 

David Turetsky: 7:12

So our first question for you, Stefanie is, what are some of the biggest challenges that organizations face when it comes to upskilling their employees?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 7:20

Yeah. So the two that I hear the most frequently are we don't know where to start, and that's because they don't know where they're going. Where you're going dictates everything about your upskilling plan. And the second is in or so many organizations that are flying through every two week sprint, just operating quarter by quarter by quarter, upskilling is never going to fit into a current priority, because it's so future oriented. So I think when it comes to the long term nature of the solution to the upskilling problem, I think that's what is probably one of the biggest roadblocks that leaders face, and what that means is that we have to spend some intentional time painting the future vision of the organization. 10 years is actually the time frame to anchor it to. It sounds so far out, but the reason 10 years is important is that it's so so big that allows us to actually dream about possibilities versus keeping us in the confines of the current state, which makes us more imaginative, more creative. And leadership teams have to put together some story of what the future of their organization is going to be to then say these are the type of capabilities we need to pull that off. And of course, this isn't the fortune teller's, you know, crystal ball story. This is an idea of what the future could hold, just enough to give give us something to anchor skills to and then design the levels of the skills that we're going to need. AI is the big topic right now, by the way, I contend we should all be doing AI drinking games, right? Like every time we say AI, we do a shot, because it's just the word, it's the word du jour. There we go. There you go,

 

Dwight Brown: 9:11

I'd be hammered in five minutes,

 

Stefanie Krievins: 9:13

Exactly! That's the point. That's the point.

 

Dwight Brown: 9:15

Just give me the bottle!

 

Stefanie Krievins: 9:17

Then we get super creative about it, right? But what we think our AI engineering skills are today is great. That's really, this is really we're at middle school level with a with AI with what's going to be possible in 10 years. You know, this is what the everyday worker is going to be able to leverage with AI is going to be beyond our imaginations in 10 years. No one knows what that really means, but we can envision, okay, what do AI engineering skills, then need to be in 2024 2034 let's back that up as a way just to anchor us around some common principles that we think the possibilities of the future are. And I know that sounds really really esoteric, but the reality of upskilling is it's all just, it's just like walking up a ladder. It's all that it is, and it takes a lot of thought and articulation. But it's not, it's not out of the realm of possibility for for anchoring skills to job categories for 10 years out, and then tying that to today.

 

David Turetsky: 10:26

Well, let me push back a little bit though.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 10:28

Please do!

 

David Turetsky: 10:30

On the you were talking about the leadership's need for seeing what capabilities may need to exist by asking them to kind of look a little bit into into the future. I think a lot of leadership teams today struggle with today,

 

Stefanie Krievins: 10:48

Yes,

 

David Turetsky: 10:48

and dealing with the current issues of meeting the revenue requirements, meeting cost requirements and whatnot. They're also, if they're involved in strategic workforce planning, it's much more short term. It's much more one year two, year three, year and trying to figure out those particular things that you're talking about around skills that they're they're not experts in yet, and they don't have those job descriptions written yet,

 

Stefanie Krievins: 11:16

Right.

 

David Turetsky: 11:16

I think to me, those set up the challenges that prevent some of this upskilling from happening today, because of that lack of vision, because of that lack of foresight, because you're not giving your leadership a lot of time to go and sit in a room together and kind of sorry for the pun, ruminate about this, but you're basically asking them to think a little bit ahead when today is killing them.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 11:44

Yes. So what that articulates is it's not an upskilling problem, it's a leadership problem and it's an operations problem. So how do we create capacity? The higher you are in the organization, the more your feet need to be in the future. So how do we create capacity, capacity to shift obligations and management to other levels then? So that's a whole other that's a whole other problem to solve for before you can get to upskilling.

 

David Turetsky: 12:14

Or maybe that'll be a topic for another conversation then, we'll just put that to the side. But then so, so let's say that we do have leaders who are rooted in the future, and they have seen what needs to happen 3, 4, 5 years down the road, down the line, and what you were talking about is being able to set up a plan for giving that training and those skills or skill gaps, or closing those skill gaps.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 12:40

So first and foremost, they have to anchor the skills in something that's meaningful to their business. Let's use ITIL as an example, because it's a solid framework some organizations use ISO, I learned of several more last week that I didn't even know existed in the IT world. Use a tried and true framework that makes sense to the business, and think about those capabilities, capacities, competencies, whatever C word makes sense, blow those out 10 years, and then say, if this is what we need 10 years. In 10 years, okay, then inventory based on that framework today. And then so I did this with a client. So they're, they're an ITIL shop, right? And so we went, we took their service portfolio, this is an IT client. We took their service portfolio, which articulates their services, their technologies and their SLAs, and we inventoried their competency level from one to five for every employee based on the service portfolio. So we broke it down by services as well as technology, and asked them to rate their level of competency in each of those and so then we had an inventory and a rating of competency level from one to five for every employee, for what they did hold. And so we were able to have a numerical, not unbiased. Obviously it's not objective, but it's just a way of rating competency, a numerical rating of where the organization sat by way of its services and its technology. We also did that for its leadership skills, around teamwork, innovation, problem solving and a few other values that matter to them.

 

David Turetsky: 14:32

Sure.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 14:33

Um, and so then we're able to say, Okay, where do we need it to be in three years? So we're not, we're not truly creating a plan for 10 years out. We're daydreaming for 10 years out to give us some kind of North Star in business speak to kind of guide towards, or I prefer the road trip methodology, the road trip metaphor, right? Like, do we know if we're going to Chicago or California? The vision tells us if we're going to Chicago or California. So then we come back to the competencies of today and say, in three years, we need this service to have an average competency rating of four, not two. How do we get from two to four? Who are the people involved? What skills specifically do they need to be trained on who we go to to make that happen? That is that, to me, is a very simple plan to then implement.

 

Dwight Brown: 15:29

Do you feel like organizations have career pathing documented, defined, or do you find that the majority of the organizations you work with with this really don't have much for career pathing?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 15:47

I find... so we're a lot in the mid market space, and I find that they have, I would say there's two groups, they have, them well documented, but probably not well utilized. And then the other group, they don't have

 

Dwight Brown: 16:02

There's nothing.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 16:03

They don't have anything documented, no.

 

Dwight Brown: 16:05

Okay, because it seems like that would be a building block. You know, to first, you have to convince them that they need a strategy, yeah, if I'm, if I'm hearing you correctly. And then with that really kind of break, helping them break it down and say, All right, what skills do we currently have? How are we assessing those? Those skills lay the groundwork so that you can then get to this step of being able to guide them through the process you were talking about with the scoring of the competencies, definition of the competencies that they need, you know, organizationally, departmentally, on down the line.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 16:49

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 16:50

Let me also follow it up by saying it's, I love the framework you were describing Stefanie of, you know, New York versus Chicago versus LA. Let's just say that,

 

Stefanie Krievins: 17:00

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 17:00

We're using locations and trying to guide your GPS of where do I need to go. The problem I see it's simple to do that for a PMP or ISO standards, or, sorry, I'm probably butchering this from a standards perspective so I apologize to the people, to our listeners. But something as ephemeral as or as wide and rainbow ish, Rainbow ish as AI. I mean, we could be talking about generatives all the time, yeah, Rainbow ish, well, we can make up words. It's okay, but it's so ephemeral. I mean, there's so many different things when you say the words artificial intelligence, that you could mean that it's it's really not very well bounded, and unless you have those skills specifically articulated in your job descriptions. I think this is where Dwight was going. If you don't have a career framework, then you don't know what to shoot for. You don't know where you need to go in order to be able to get there. So setting up that career firmware gives you the Chicago or LA in order to be able to say from, to, right?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 18:09

And this is the burden of leadership. Leadership has to decide, what does AI mean to us? Not, not, what is AI going to tell our company to be? This, so many of my leadership conversations have come back to this very nugget probably seven times in the past six weeks. It is leadership has to decide who we're going to be, what we're going to mean to the world, what difference we're going to make because we showed up and work every single day. Something has fundamentally shifted in our world where leaders are not creating the capacity to do that. And understandably right? The pressures of and the constraints of leadership right now are extremely high. So this is not, you know, saying, hey, CEO, you need you need to do one more super important thing. Something has fundamentally shifted in the world where leaders are unable to spend the time to do that, and their team is looking at them saying, Where are we going? What are we doing? What does AI mean to us? And they're not able to answer that question, and so we turn it into, well, let's wait and have the world tell us what we mean.

 

David Turetsky: 19:26

But it's, it's got to be more collaborative than that. The the leaders have to go and ask the people, what does AI mean to our company? You know, where could we use it? What ideas do you have? Because we can't blame the leaders necessarily, because they're not coming up with all the ideas. It's usually the rank and file that have the great ideas.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 19:43

I think that's a step in the process, for sure, but it doesn't come together until the leaders decide that it's going to come together and get articulated.

 

David Turetsky: 19:51

Yeah.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 19:51

Yeah. I don't disagree at all, at all, but someone has to close the loop and make the final decision.

 

David Turetsky: 19:58

Yep, of course.

 

Announcer: 20:01

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com, now back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 20:12

So let's talk about how do organizations know that there is a skill gap? Because I think you started talking about that, they can go and then query based on these definitions that we're talking about. And, I mean, are we saying that they actually have to go to every employee to do that, or is there a job description? Are they? Are they keeping the skills up to date in job descriptions and saying, Do people fit what jobs that they're doing today, or what's the what's the format? How to I mean, I guess we're getting a little tactical here, but, but how do we realize that we have a skill gap that needs to be addressed?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 20:46

Yeah, so a couple of things that I see in in my teams, very simply. I think it is this notion that people don't know what they don't know. And so part of it is, is you see a lot of a lot of projects being started and stopped. You see cycling through vendors every year, maybe 18 months, or even talking about firing a vendor after six months because you chose the wrong one because you didn't really know how to shop for an appropriate vendor. You see projects going way out of scope, because people don't know where to start and they don't know where to stop, because they don't have the skills to address that issue and those symptoms, I think could look like a million other problems inside of the business, and they maybe do, but when you layer in, then you've got teams blaming other teams or blaming leadership for why something isn't happening, it's because someone doesn't know what they're supposed to be doing, because they don't have the skill to figure it out.

 

David Turetsky: 21:56

That never happens! We never see people blaming leaders.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 22:00

No, no, no, no, no, my favorite one. So we did this skills assessment, and the staff by and large, 650 IT professionals by and large, rated themselves on innovation competency on a scale of one to five as four. Meanwhile, yeah, meanwhile, they couldn't advance any project in their strategic roadmap, nothing. I mean, I'm exaggerating here, but very little was actually moving forward. There was no innovating happening, right? But by being able to put a number on it, we could see the huge gap in expectations between senior leadership team and the rest of the organization. That's how you can tell, yeah, but there's that a skill is not up to snuff. Same with project management. We had the exact same thing with project management, and that's because the staff thought they were offering project management as a service, when really they had eight PMOS. They weren't offering project management as a service. Their level of knowledge about project management was so low that they thought they were offering the service of project management when, again, very little work was being shipped out the door, and they're like, our execution is 80% No, no, it's not. It's not. You might be executing something.

 

Dwight Brown: 23:29

It is a reality check.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 23:30

Yes. So by putting a number to it, you can identify the gap in expectations and then train around it. So now we can go back in and say, This is what innovation means here, here are the competencies. Here's how you display those. Here are the results that you get because you're innovating. So intuitively, you know it because you can tell people aren't asking and answering the right questions data Wise, you know it when you ask them to rate themselves and they return overly inflated numbers based on actual business work product.

 

David Turetsky: 24:08

But then do we have the supervisors of the managers rating them as well to be able to get that gap?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 24:13

Yes, you do.

 

David Turetsky: 24:14

Okay, yes. So the assessment's a top down as well as a self assessment. And then you also, you have the job numbers is too, so you know what the job gap is, and then you know what the manager employee gap is.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 24:26

Yes.

 

Dwight Brown: 24:27

Well, and I would imagine it's interesting and helpful as you look at that. So let's take this scenario where the employees are inflating their rating of themselves. Their supervisors are rating them highly, but yet upper level leadership is looking at it. I suppose that tells a very different story. Number one, you've got the skills gap with the staff, yes, but number two, you've got the managerial skills gap there, if the supervisors think they're doing a great job of it, that you've got a, you got a big gap there that needs to be filled. So it's yeah.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 25:05

Yeah. It's all of that. While it's kind of disappointing to know that you have all of those gaps in perception and understanding, it gives you something to train to, which gives you something to upskill around.

 

David Turetsky: 25:19

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/hrdlconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. So let's get to question three. What are the best practices in being able to develop and implement an upskilling program to close those gaps?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 25:53

Yeah, so from my perspective, I'm going to articulate it in this way. Number one is understanding that there's always going to be bias built into skilling inventory. I had this question one time in front of a group of leaders, and they asked me, you know, how do you do an upskilling plan? How do you assess competencies to then figure out where you need to go? And I described the process that we just talked through, and then he said, Well, isn't there bias in there? I was like, Well, of course there is. There's humans involved! Like.

 

David Turetsky: 26:22

Of course.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 26:23

So we have to be willing to let that go. Now, there are lots of great technologies out there for, I call them the typing test because I'm a Gen Xer, and I did lots of typing tests for my temp work over a summer break sometimes. There are, there are typing tests that you can take for your skill level, and companies can purchase those, and I have no doubt that they have done everything possible to reduce bias in those systems as much as they can. But one we have to know that there's bias baked in. But that's the beauty of then understanding that bias is also built into our companies. And what I mean by that is our companies choose to do something in this world that, in theory, no other companies do, also a form of bias, also a form of competitive advantage, right? So it's not inherently bad. We just have to know how to leverage it for for good. So manage it, don't try to get rid of it. The leaders of today, connecting to our earlier point, one of your key responsibilities has to be designing the org of the future. So I need our leaders to accept that responsibility again and say, in order to understand where we need to upskill employees to we have to design the future of the organization for them. Four is creating competencies that work for your organization now and in the future. There was a trend in HR, and it depends on who you talk to, what perspective they take. Some some folks say a competency is a competency is a competency, right? Like leadership, the definition of leadership is X, Y and Z. And I believe more a more modern take on competency development is, I think you should develop the leadership competency that makes sense for your organization. And so it needs to have a level of customization to it, and that is a-okay. So as an organization, you have to know which stance you want to take there. My stance is, customize the competency for your organization. Know what the definition of innovation at ABC Company means, and that's okay.

 

David Turetsky: 28:29

But Stefanie, don't you think that competencies change so quickly? I mean, we're talking about artificial intelligence, you know, let's really kind of think of it as a technology, or econometric models or or mathematical models that are in a very specific format. But you know, 10 years ago, we weren't talking about that.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 28:48

No.

 

David Turetsky: 28:48

Five years ago, we were probably starting to talk about it, but not really. We were basically saying the robots are going to take over. But that was more process automation, more even manufacturing process automation. So how do we stay on top of competencies? Because the moment you finish doing a skill assessment, it's old, right? I mean, the moment that the pen to paper stops, or, god, that's an old, that's an old phrase. The old the moment you you finish your assessment, yeah, the envelope with the ropes. The moment you finish your survey of these people, the assessment, it's already old. So how do you keep all this stuff modern, so that it becomes something that continues to be useful? Because otherwise we're going to be constantly assessing people. And people go to classes all the time, people, you know, read a newspaper and go, Oh, now I know about that. That's not really, it's not really gaining a skill. But you know what I mean, how do we keep this stuff modern relevant?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 29:45

There's an element of you have to bake it into the machine, which means it has to be simple. So you have to have a cadence that you revisit this that makes sense for your team, probably once a year is fine. And so that also means. By way of choice, right? Instead of a library of 17 competencies that are relevant here at ABC company, we get three.

 

David Turetsky: 30:08

Right.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 30:09

Three. Your team, your job function, has three. So we have three ways of working for cultural competencies. We have three competencies for your job function, and we have two competencies for your role, because that's, that's part of you know, one of the things we hear from CEOs is, my company is not nimble because it's so complex, because we've just added and added and added. The true definition of a strategy requires us to say no to something, say no to more, same, no to complexity.

 

David Turetsky: 30:42

Right.

 

Dwight Brown: 30:42

Right. Kind of like managing workload. Out of curiosity, from your experience, who owns this process in the organization.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 30:55

Ideally HR.

 

David Turetsky: 30:57

But is OD? I mean, you think that's an OD function in HR, or do you think that's a ER, do you think it's a HR? HR, who owns that really?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 31:06

Well, great point. I always think of OD as underneath HR. Again, it depends on the level of, I know. It depends on the level of complexity of organization you're working with

 

David Turetsky: 31:17

How dare you, those are fighting words!

 

Stefanie Krievins: 31:20

I know right? This is why I have no friends, David, I say things like this.

 

David Turetsky: 31:26

To all of our OD friends, we don't agree with Stefanie!

 

Dwight Brown: 31:33

I think we just got an explicit rating on this podcast episode!

 

David Turetsky: 31:37

Wait, I didn't use a bad word, did I?

 

Dwight Brown: 31:40

No, we didn't have to! She just used the bad phrase, that's all.

 

David Turetsky: 31:46

No, but, no, but, but to the point, though, the the people who understand it really need to own it, and that's the that's why I mentioned OD, because OD, that's their thing, right? They love being able to use the science of words to break down what people do, whereas the rest of us really don't get it. I mean, except in comp, where we have to use those skills to kind of match to a job description,

 

Stefanie Krievins: 32:09

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 32:09

to match to a survey.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 32:10

Yep.

 

David Turetsky: 32:11

I'm not saying comp should own that. God, no. But really, the people that I've worked with in the past that really kind of own that are OD.

 

Dwight Brown: 32:20

To that point, if OD owns it, but what you're seeing in organizations is, is it's not happening. What's the disconnect there? Why is that?

 

David Turetsky: 32:33

There's no OD!

 

Dwight Brown: 32:34

Yeah, is there no OD? Do they not have a seat at the table? Are they not viewed as being, you know, competent to do this. What? What do you see?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 32:43

Yeah, you know. And so let me back up the reason I said HR versus the CIO for his department. And I work with a lot of here's, here's why I say this. I work with a lot of organizations where the head of the division, let's say the CIO, the CM, CMO is picking up a lot of these responsibilities because OD is not, L&D is not, HR is not, comp is not. They are not creating

 

Dwight Brown: 33:10

So it is falling back on them.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 33:12

Yes, I mean, CIOs are hiring me to do this work, and they have entire HR systems and OD people and L&D because they're not delivering on the relevant skills and tools that IT leaders need. So and IT is just one example, I just happen to work with a lot of IT leaders, so that's a gap. And oftentimes it's because that, that it leader will come from another, more sophisticated organization where they had that support, and now they can't get it at this other organization. So that's a huge gap. But I agree. I think ideally OD, L&D would would work in collaboration. Now, when we say, Oh, is that because OD doesn't have a seat in the table, I'm going to say this, every function at a company feels like they either have a seat at the table and don't have a voice or don't have a seat at the table. Marketing says that. IT says that I don't work with a lot of finance people, but some finance people will say things like, well, they told me to work this budget, but then they don't listen to me when it comes to financial decisions. I have yet to meet a functional leader that feels like they have a voice at the seat at the table!

 

Dwight Brown: 34:28

Interesting.

 

David Turetsky: 34:28

But is it the kids table, or is it the adults table? That's what I'll ask.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 34:34

At some level, everyone feels like they don't like their voice isn't being heard is what they're saying. So again, that's an influence problem, not another type of problem.

 

David Turetsky: 34:48

But that also comes back down to most organizations are not The Office, right,

 

Stefanie Krievins: 34:53

Correct.

 

David Turetsky: 34:54

Sorry, Michael Scott, I'm gonna throw you under the bus here, like the level of dysfunction that does exist in most companies does hold them back.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 35:02

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 35:02

But, but it's not everybody, and it's usually in pockets. And either that's historical, there's the reason why we've always done this or or whatever, or just people. It's just the people that are in it. But it goes back to skills. They don't have the skills to be able to get the job done, and no one's questioning their competency, because if you go to a leader and you go, you suck at leading, what's going to happen to you? You're not going to be there longer! Especially if you're an OD, and you're looking at the gap and you go, Well, your boss, who's the board, said you don't have this skill, by the way, that's never happening. So that, to me, that's the problem Stefanie, is that there's a lot of the time it's the people at the top level who don't have those competencies, they don't have those skills, who are not getting the assessments because their boss says you don't need to take that shit.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 35:57

Yeah, they're going to be

 

David Turetsky: 35:58

There's the explicit rating. No, but they say it's not worth our time, so don't take it. So how do we get everybody, how do we get 100% compliance with those assessments to be able to to know what, what we need, upskilling on?

 

Stefanie Krievins: 36:13

I mean, if I were running them, I wouldn't allow any exceptions. That doesn't make any sense to me, that doesn't fix anybody's problem?

 

David Turetsky: 36:22

No, I think there are a lot of CEOs who basically say my executive team doesn't need to do that stuff. I'm not pointing fingers. I'm just saying that I know

 

Dwight Brown: 36:32

It's a reality.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 36:33

Yeah, it is, it is.

 

David Turetsky: 36:35

And but that's a question that I think we pose to our audience.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 36:39

Yes.

 

David Turetsky: 36:39

And I'd like to hear back what other people think on that, because you don't have to be an expert in the field, as we see, to know that your organization may have these challenges. So you know, we'll let that. We'll let you guys talk about that amongst yourselves and let us know what you think. Stefanie, we can talk about this forever, and we have, but I think

 

Dwight Brown: 37:10

I lost track of time, actually, yeah, we love these podcasts.

 

David Turetsky: 37:15

Yeah. I mean, we love talking to people who get it and who understand the business problem that's being dealt with and have practical solutions for it. So thank you, Stefanie!

 

Stefanie Krievins: 37:26

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. It's, there's, there's so many of us trying to do really good work, and I just want to be part of fixing it at every level. It's, I do believe, in my heart of hearts there's a solution to every problem and jamming about it is the first first place to start with it. So thank you.

 

David Turetsky: 37:46

My pleasure. So Dwight, thank you.

 

Dwight Brown: 37:49

Thank you. Thanks for being with us, Stefanie!

 

Stefanie Krievins: 37:51

Yeah, thank you and Dwight. I hope you feel better with being pixelated. I hope you become less pixelated.

 

Dwight Brown: 37:58

I wonder what drugs are good for that

 

David Turetsky: 38:00

it's going around.

 

Stefanie Krievins: 38:01

Oh yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 38:04

Thank you all for listening, take care and stay safe!

 

Announcer: 38:08

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe! And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week and stay tuned for our next episode, stay safe.