The Importance of Talent Development When Building a High-Performance Organization

Dr. Jim: [: 00:00:00

You can't expect to build a high performance organization. If your entire people strategy is focused only on the hiring side of the equation, we'll just find more people is not a solution that's sustainable over time. Unfortunately, we tend to find out about the importance of a development and coaching mindset. When it's often too late, people often leave organizations because they don't see a growth path internally. In addition, they'll often complain that their managers don't really care about their growth or development .

percent of an [: 00:01:00

The future of work requires a fundamental rethinking of where we allocate effort when it comes to talent. For organizations to become elite, a shift from emphasizing talent attraction to emphasizing talent development needs to take place. And that's why we have Evan Shai, CEO of Coding Temple, on the show today to help map out a new vision for the future of work.

What's Evan's story? Let me tell you a little bit about Evan. So he's a multi time founder with a decade of experience starting, growing, and investing in organizations and taking them from zero to 10 million ARR. And those companies have primarily been in the health space, the future workspace, ed tech.

He's developed skills up and [: 00:02:00

He's been deeply involved in product sales, leadership, and he's a big fan of fostering growth mindsets within organizations. That's just scratching the surface of Evan's story. Evan, welcome to the show.

Evan Shy: My man. Thank you so much for having me and the generous introduction. I appreciate it.

Dr. Jim: Happy to have you on. And I think we're going to cover a lot of ground in this conversation. It's really tough to capture who you are and what you're about in four sentences in a bio. So I'd like you to share with the listeners some of the key things that you feel are important for them to know and understand about you that's going to inform this conversation that we're going to have.

Evan Shy: My journey has really come full circle. You touched on a number of things. It'd been a lifelong entrepreneur, but. I was actually on the other side of the table to where I now am at Coding Temple, where I was hiring Coding Temple graduates coming out of the program, as I was trying to build.

n these, fast moving startup [: 00:03:00

But all I remember thinking at the time, and I think it's something that a lot of employers obviously think about is How can I jump the line to secure top talent coming out of this particular program in our case? And a lot of emphasis and focus was placed on that acquisition part of the journey And we're able to capture a lot of value there, but learned very quickly how important it was to develop and nurture and cultivate that talent on the other side of the acquisition or hiring part of the journey.

ng temple in the beginning of: 2023

Dr. Jim: There's a few things that come to mind when you described that little piece of your journey. Obviously from the talent acquisition side, there's an almost ever present gap in the marketplace where there's not enough technical talent for organizations to.

That organizations are able to find. I think that's pretty obvious. So it makes sense that coding temple was able to fill that niche. The thing that I'm wondering about is you've had a track record throughout your career of helping. High growth startups get to that 10 million mark. And when you go from zero to 10 million, that's your first major milestone. What are some of the common mistakes that you see in organizations of that size that offer broader lessons when it comes to development and retention that listeners need to be paying attention to?

and then more [: 00:05:00

And oftentimes. Growing from zero to whatever size in varying velocities. I think what a lot of organizations, get wrong and understandably particularly in that early part of the journey is not focusing on developing and creating a development culture early on. I think there still are a lot of learnings that come from the smaller teams that are applicable to the larger organizations. What I see consistently particularly within smaller teams that are growing at high velocity is building a culture of talent development is something that easily gets.

g customer value and finding [: 00:06:00

However, it's a lot easier to start implementing that culture. And way of operating that muscle, if you will of valuing and investing in development post hire early on versus trying to do it, when it's a larger team and organization.

en when it's time for you to [: 00:07:00

You can just rotate out talent whenever you need it based on what the business needs are, what the business growth development needs are. And that's not exactly smart in my book. So what's your take on it?

Evan Shy: Yeah, I think that's a insightful point. And I think the reality is, although we've been able to do it, we built a, maybe a bad habit or muscle over the past couple of decades. I think there are three critical factors that are converging that underscore, the urgency of needing to establish both.

gs, one of which you already [: 00:08:00

There are millions of unfilled tech jobs in the U S. It's something we obviously interface with on a regular basis and work hard to address, but also with advances in technologies like AI, there are going to be more and more new jobs and not necessarily certainly not proportional number of people with the experience and training in AI.

Executing those jobs. And then you have demographic shifts as well,. Where you have more people leaving the workforce than are entering it. So you have all of these things, happening or creating a reality where it's making it imperative for leaders to look internally. And how can we have a grow your own type of strategy?

value? To the organization, [: 00:09:00

Dr. Jim: You talked about growing your own as a critical tool in the arsenal that leaders need to be leveraging when they're thinking about their talent strategy. I want you to tie that together with. What you believe to be the core responsibilities of a leader in an organization?

Evan Shy: Ultimately my role as an executive, and I think this is true of team leaders of varying sizes at various places in the organization. But it's ultimately to assemble and develop the best possible team. And then ensure that team has the resources, guidance or vision and autonomy to be successful.

And I think in order to do [: 00:10:00

That isn't something that can always just happen top down. You need to be able to empower your team, expose them to different. Skill sets, different technologies and not just expose them to it, but ensure that they are developing a familiarity with it to where they can start to identify where are there opportunities for us to exploit or leverage this technology in a way that creates value for customers or solves problems for colleagues again, creating value for the organization as a whole.

But that implies actually developing them. Those skills and doing it intentionally.

: I want to take that a step [: 00:11:00

What's your thought on that?

Evan Shy: That's a great question. How we have thought about it, there are ultimately what we're trying to arrive at when it comes to skills in any vertical or specialization particularly within the context of this conversation. Is folks have job ready skills that they can actually use on the job at the end of it,.

it to that job ready skills [: 00:12:00

And we want to provide adequate mobility for them to participate and contribute in the value creation for this organization in the future. So how we have thought about that is how do we create it. On ramps to these technical roles in the future and how you think about those on ramps. Of course, it needs to be accessible and holistic and relevant given the population and experiences that population ultimately has.

entify as wanting to go down [: 00:13:00

Job ready capabilities at the end of it. I think there's no shortage of content libraries out there that are really good for the shelf esteem, but aren't necessarily moving people towards skills that they can use effectively on the job, which I think ultimately Hurts both the individual and the company

this thought, which is there [: 00:14:00

So when you're talking about these on ramps into higher value positions within an organization, I think it's a really good thing. I think the headwind that an HR leader might be thinking about that they would face is that when you look at technical organizations, there's an embedded belief at some level that if you don't have the pedigree You don't belong in the room. What I'd like you to do is share with us a little bit about how that thinking isn't going to be serving us well when we think about the future of work, and how members of the future workforce are going to be acquiring their skills to enter the workforce.

n. We see this over and over [: 00:15:00

And really we see the spectrum of that. We see folks that have completed a CS degree and still decide to come to an immersive program like ours because the CS degree wasn't even, applicable enough in particular roles. And we're seeing folks opting instead of going that way into this path.

But more specific to this question is the folks that we are seeing who maybe chose a different career path. Earlier on in their life and but still had the, the baseline technical aptitude and the motivation to excel in whatever role that they ultimately went into. And those are some of the foundational criteria or attributes that help someone be successful in a role.

t's because of interpersonal [: 00:16:00

One of our programs called Tech Residency 360, it really started from us practicing what we preach internally with our own employees. We had a, an obvious gap on the product and programs leadership side of things. And we knew that we needed to bridge it. And we had this untapped talent internally that didn't have the.

Academic pedigree necessarily for that particular role, but did have a deep understanding of our customer and a deep understanding and solid grasp on our operating principles. So we launched an eight week product development sprint where they were working on a real cross functional team, building real products, solving real problems for our customers.

ing to be working in, but it [: 00:17:00

Incredible at leading our product and programs teams. We just had a whole road map review yesterday, and it was just incredible. The transformation and development that has occurred. But you also have this, these really committed individuals to the organization because of the investment that's been made in them ultimately.

yed in a real world scenario [: 00:18:00

So it requires real investment. But it is investment that, again, is going to be required to be competitive in tomorrow's landscape.

Dr. Jim: We spent a lot of time talking about providing on ramps and access to opportunities both from external candidates coming into the organization and more importantly, the candidates that you have in the organization that might be viable for other positions within the organization. How should you be thinking about Your learning and development, your continuous learning habits internally to best prepare for those opportunities. What should people leaders have in mind when they're thinking about, do I have the foundation internally to support this sort of initiative?

gly require organizations to [: 00:19:00

And I'm thinking about advanced technologies because that's the kind of vertical that we. Focus on. So we are operating in a space that is going to require these organizations to continue to be able to leverage these technologies to create enterprise value ultimately. So what that inherently means in terms of how we should be thinking holistically about our development strategy.

Is that we one need to be able to identify what the right skills are as the right skills unfold in front of us, . We have to recognize that this is a road map and a timeline that is truly unfolding in front of us in a lot of ways, so it's going to apply a certain amount of agility that's required.

an environment that supports [: 00:20:00

So meaning the time and the resources to actually dedicate to, the actual learning experience specifically. So again, the identification of the right skills, developing skills that are truly job ready and can be deployed. On a daily basis. And then three is a working environment that's actually supportive of being able to spend the time and resources to learn those skills.

That is the holistic view or the dimensions that we have to optimize for in creating a culture of learning and development culture internally. And how you go about doing that, I think, is there's a couple ways. I think one Need to be willing to leverage external partners who have specialization in any particular skill.

ctly what is needed for that [: 00:21:00

And in three ensuring that those learning experiences are. Adaptable to both the individual learner needs as you've articulated in terms of the diversity of expertise and starting points, if you will, within the organization, but also the evolving skill needs of the organization, which is only increasing.

So those are the holistic view of how I would be thinking about what I'm trying to optimize for. And those are some tactical Things I would be looking for in either partnerships or if I was building, teams internally to service the need for a continuous development culture,

se people that might be fits [: 00:22:00

Internally, that's designed to shepherd them into another silo or in a technical field.

Evan Shy: That's a great question. There's no doubt that, reskilling. Initiatives with all the incredible intent and opportunity can certainly come with some complexity and challenges of moving people around the organization, identifying who that is, ensuring it's a seamless transition what we have always started with, and it's been an effective strategy thus far.

oing through the process and [: 00:23:00

Who is best positioned to to make a transition or to lean into the more intense training. And who is most motivated to do that. And then in, of course, always the direct manager and anyone else involved there influenced by the decision, would be incorporated in that conversation as well.

It can vary significantly in terms of how many people are part of that conversation. And how long it's required. But it's been relatively seamless. So far in organizations that we've worked with upwards of 30, 000 employees where a lot of value comes from. And a lot of that work that we're talking about comes from the kind of self selection, identification process.

And a bidirectional conversation that can be had to start to really identify who the people are.

e of the things that I think [: 00:24:00

And at the line level, they're You're not spending enough time understanding what's important to the person sitting across from you in terms of their vision for themselves. So if we're talking about how do we build a learning culture, how do we. Identify potential talent within our organizations that have the capability, the want to the initiative to be involved in this.

up leaving. And you're going [: 00:25:00

Real good stuff, Evan. And we covered a lot of ground in terms of how you should be thinking about development and retention within the organization, how to build a. Continuous learning culture and what resources and foundational elements need to be established when you think about the entire arc of this conversation that we've had, what are the two or three most important things that listeners need to have in mind when they're looking at making these things real within their organization?

Evan Shy: The obvious places to start, first would be doing a skills analysis with respect to the strategic roadmap of the organization. And that starts to elucidate, a number of things in terms of what the particular skill gaps ultimately are.

ternal resources or external [: 00:26:00

I think a particular emphasis should be on focusing on, teams or experts that have specialization in that particular skill set because it's ultimately going to allow you to ensure that, these skills are Up to industry standards, industry requirements that the learning is practical and up to date and immediately applicable.

Which I think is critically important for the, to ultimately capture the value of the training experience. So those are a couple of things I'd be thinking about.

Dr. Jim: If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Evan?

Evan Shy: Yep. So active on LinkedIn Evan Shy, obviously.

have is that your role as a [: 00:27:00

Part of that exercise needs to include. How you're connecting the vision of the organization, the direction of the organization to the vision and direction of that individual that's sitting across from you. Every employee within your organization has things that they want to accomplish. But if you as the leader, and if you as the manager, Aren't connecting those aspirations to real opportunities and providing on ramps to those opportunities within your organization, you're at high risk of having that employee leave, and they're not going to leave because they're angry with you.

derstand what's important to [: 00:28:00

them closer to the vision that they have for themselves. I appreciate you sharing your input with us and hanging out with us. For those of you who have listened to the conversation, we appreciate you hanging out, make sure you leave us a review. Be sure to join the HR impact community. You can find that at www engage rocket.

co slash HR impact, and then tune in next time where we'll have another leader joining us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performance team.