Recorded Webinar

Transcript

[00:00:00] Azure Rooths: Hello, everyone. Thank you so very much for being here today for our session. My name is Azure Roots and I will serve as your host for today's session. Before we get started, I'd like to share a little bit with you about our speakers. Jen Fox is a seasoned HR and business professional with over 25 years of leadership experience. Her entrepreneurial background and career growth in a real time learning environment has shaped her ability to build inclusive, high performing teams and support others in doing the same.

[00:00:41] Azure Rooths: Endorsed as one of the most no nonsense L&D professionals on the planet, she brings a mix of vulnerability and pragmatic solutions to her work and relationships. Having assumed leadership roles at renowned companies like Nordstrom's, [00:01:00] Starbucks, Getty's, Inc., and Jess Works, Jen has recently returned to her entrepreneurial roots, reigniting her independent coaching, consulting, and public speaking practice.

[00:01:13] Azure Rooths: When she's not speaking out about the myths and challenges of working motherhood on LinkedIn, she can be found walking, listening to podcasts and spending time with her friends and family in Princeton. Will you please go in the chat and welcome Jen. Jen. Hey Jen, how are you feeling today?

[00:01:37] Jen Fox: I feel vibrant. That's going to be my new word because I want to be part of the PILOT crew today. So I'm going to bring all the vibrancy.

[00:01:44] Azure Rooths: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Next I want to introduce you to our second panelist, Ben Brooks. Ben is a former SVP of HR at a Fortune 500 company. He's an executive coach. An HR [00:02:00] executive, top 100 HR tech influencer. Now, Ben is not your ordinary leader. Ben served on the board of directors for OutServe, SLDN, the organization that spearheaded the successful efforts to end the Department of Defense's discriminatory Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. 10 years ago. Ben unexpectedly let go of his long held aspirations to climb the corporate ladder and instead has chosen to fly his own plane. And just to let you know, I recently saw in chat, in Slack, that Ben was flying an actual plane. Please welcome Ben Brooks.

[00:02:50] Ben Brooks: Glad to be here.

[00:02:51] Azure Rooths: I want to introduce you to a little bit more about PILOT. Ben is now the sole founder and CEO of PILOT, which was created to [00:03:00] help everyone feel powerful at work. Inspired by his successful business and executive coaching practice, Ben saw an opportunity to democratize executive coaching and founded PILOT.

[00:03:12] Azure Rooths: Ben worked to take his experience as an executive coach and make it accessible to early and mid career employees where he could have the biggest impact on people's career and on the companies that they work for. PILOT takes the best part of an executive coaching relationship and makes it available to employees in a live virtual group coaching setting.

[00:03:37] Azure Rooths: PILOT works with companies of all sizes and is a lifetime partner of many that you see on the screen. We are so happy to have you join us today. So with that, as we move forward, let's jump into our very first poll. This will be a very engaging webinar. [00:04:00] And now we want to hear from you, our participants.

[00:04:02] Azure Rooths: Julian is going to launch a poll. We would like to know how satisfied are you with the budget you received for 2023? Would you say that you are very satisfied? Somewhat satisfied? Did it fall below your expectations? Or do you feel they set you up to fail? We're going to give you about 30 seconds to chime in.

[00:04:28] Azure Rooths: Ben and Jen, where do you think we'll land today, in your opinion?

[00:04:35] Jen Fox: Oh, this is tough. This is tough. I'm thinking I'm feeling a little optimism on the crowd. I think we're going to go with a somewhat satisfied. Okay, Ben,

[00:04:44] Ben Brooks: I think the same. I think that people got some more budget this year, but we'll find out, we'll see if it's part of why we get the real time feedback.

[00:04:50] Ben Brooks: Every audience is different. Every community we work with is different.

[00:04:52] Jen Fox: Can I just say what I think though might be contributing to that? And I think this is something that we are all gonna face going into 2024 [00:05:00] is, coming I gotta, we gotta stop saying, coming out of the pandemic, but it's such an anchor. That I think so many companies, swung the pendulum.

[00:05:07] Jen Fox: We're going to reinvest in all the learning, all the employee engagement. And so those budgets, I think, really saw a climb over the last two years. And now, as we're seeing in so many headlines I think we're going to start to face the opposite challenges. So the topic today, I think is going to be really relevant, but I'm not surprised to see that, more or less this year people were more satisfied.

[00:05:25] Jen Fox: I don't know if you felt the same way then.

[00:05:28] Ben Brooks: Yeah. And if you look though, the only 14 percent of folks on that poll said they got everything they wanted, right? Very satisfied. So that means that the vast majority of folks, not even 50 percent were somewhat satisfied, right? So we got almost, 43 percent there that was below expectations or set up to fail, right?

[00:05:43] Ben Brooks: So that's just, a thing as we talk about today's conversation, part of the budgets that we get are the budgets that we negotiate. Right? It's the strategy that we set, and organizations in general, CFOs, have an incentive to not have big budgets because it makes the profit better [00:06:00] or balances the budget better or they put in other things, and so this is a part of what we'll talk about today, so it's a perfect tee up.

[00:06:06] Azure Rooths: Perfect, so as we keep moving forward, Jen, I would like to start with you. Can you tell us about this framework? Why is this an important way to begin?

[00:06:18] Jen Fox: Well, this feels pretty simple, but, we're gonna start basic here, and I think that, as you heard from from my intro, I've been in L&D and HR for about 25 years, seasoned, as you say but I think what often happens, I'd love to hear if this resonates with any of you we hear about a program, we find a new vendor, we hear about the next fancy thing, like your Instagram feed, your whatever, you're getting all this stuff, and we often go, oh, that looks cool, I want to do that, and we start with a program in mind, we start with a solution, and sometimes we back our way into it.

[00:06:53] Jen Fox: In times especially of potentially downsizing or restrictive budgets, we want to be able to start with a strategy, which is what we're going to focus on at [00:07:00] the first part of our conversation today, and look at how we can build the strategy into informing the budget, and then the budget dictate the program.

[00:07:07] Jen Fox: So this seems very simple, and I think we often start with that. from the other direction, because as L&D people, I think we get really excited by the programs and the things that are out there.

[00:07:19] Azure Rooths: Seems fundamental, but why are you outlining these specific steps?

[00:07:27] Jen Fox: Yeah, I think that's just it. I think it's a, we want to start with the basics.

[00:07:30] Jen Fox: And I think what we're going to cover, we're going to get into how can we build a strategy that makes sense? So that we don't just have an ask. I think a lot of times when we formulate a budget, a lot of times it can be informed by what we had last year which is often insufficient. And it just, it doesn't, we don't connect the dots with the people who are ultimately approving the budget.

[00:07:51] Jen Fox: Yeah, let's, Do we want to just get into that and talk about how we want to build the strategy? Ben, do you want to start?

[00:07:56] Ben Brooks: Yeah, I'll just mention, I think, actually, to your point there that I think that, [00:08:00] Jen, you said, the programs get all this attention, right? There's a lot of energy.

[00:08:02] Ben Brooks: The program, what's the name of the program? Who's the vendor? How many people are in it? How big is it? What's it include? Do we travel somewhere for it? Which is very sexy, tantalizing content, but absent that, it can look like a shiny object, especially to a skeptical, curmudgeonly. business executive who's trying to cut costs.

[00:08:20] Ben Brooks: And so I think always, this is not just an L&D thing, but I, when I remember I first got into HR and I went to this Human Capital Institute, Human Capital Strategist Certification Program. And they, the big thing, I learned a lot there, but they said the big thing is you always start with the organization strategy, and then you link and form an HR strategy that supports their, you don't have an HR strategy that's not linked.

[00:08:40] Ben Brooks: Because then it's just Oh, we're doing HR. Cause this is what you did at your last company. Here's what good HR looks like in this industry. No, no. It's Hey, we're going to be trying to expand globally. Okay. The HR strategy has expressions of how we help expand globally. Oh, we're trying to digitize.

[00:08:52] Ben Brooks: Oh, we're trying to do that. Oh, we're trying to improve customer service and quality. Oh, okay, great. We're trying to do that. And so we're trying to get into different emerging markets. So [00:09:00] that's where I think. The programs, if you start with, and I've been guilty of this, I did a lot of social learning programs early in my career in HR, and I get so freaking excited about what we're doing, because it was actually awesome, and it was really compelling.

[00:09:13] Ben Brooks: But if I started with that, then I don't know, we don't want to do that, or I don't like social, but when I talked about the, three words, organic revenue growth. My company was really not good at that. They were really good at acquisitions, but the stock market wanted us to have organic revenue growth.

[00:09:29] Ben Brooks: So when I finally would ask like division presidents to talk about my programs, I would never call it the program or learning or social, I'd say, I'd like to talk to you about organic. And then they're like, well, come right in. And then it was just, I could get a meeting immediately and all this stuff. And it started with speaking into the listening of what was important to the organization.

[00:09:48] Ben Brooks: And so I think that's where then the programs, they're like, of course we have to fund this. Cause it's going to help with organic revenue growth. And so I think finding those sort of keywords and linking it back to a much bigger picture. make some of these [00:10:00] things enduring and it ties to the middle part of budget for me.

[00:10:05] Azure Rooths: Ben, what a great perspective when you talk about the framework using the buzzwords that are grounding organic revenue growth. I want to transition to the hierarchy that appears. So there appears to be a hierarchy with a top down approach that can be a little restrictive. Jen, can you tell us Why we need to start here.

[00:10:29] Azure Rooths: What are they asking for? That's not needed. Can you peel back some of the layers of the onion for us?

[00:10:36] Jen Fox: Yeah, so we're gonna walk through in our conversation today a top down, bottom up, outside in approach. So spoiler alert, that's where we're going. Starting with top down, and I think that the top down we can often think of top down, hierarchical, orders from on high, Sometimes we can feel like the leadership is potentially out of touch with what's actually going on in the business.

[00:10:57] Jen Fox: We were talking the other day, that sort of proverbial [00:11:00] CEO takes a flight and they read the latest copy of Forbes and they get off the plane and they're like, we need to do a thing. And then everybody rushes to do the thing. So I'd like to reframe, top down in terms of how to use top down input.

[00:11:15] Jen Fox: To inform a leadership strategy that then will lead to a budget request. And reframe that a little bit. So first of all, understanding what are the strategic goals of the business, right? Ben? Just just address that, and I would say that when you talk about business strategy, this is one of the things, my sort of panacea wish list is that within a corporate strategy team, I just wish there was a people person embedded actually in that team. So that as the business strategy is created, the people perspective is part of it in real time, as opposed to here's the business strategy and then go create. The people, the marketing, the sales.

[00:11:51] Jen Fox: I don't think a lot of places are there yet, maybe someday. But nonetheless, as a people team, HR function, we need to understand what are those strategic [00:12:00] goals, expansion, downsizing, new verticals, new technology, whatever it is we have to really understand, and again, speaking the language that they.

[00:12:10] Jen Fox: What are the leaders asking for or complaining about? And this is closely tied to the second one, which is what are the, or the third one, sorry, what are the problems that they're experiencing? even if they're not linking learning or development to the issue. So I'll give you one example. Working with a leader who wanted to really shift to drive a culture of accountability, right?

[00:12:33] Jen Fox: We've got to start, really focus on accountability, get productivity up. And all of the emphasis was around like performance reviews and feedback. And, just driving that's where the accountability is going to come from. Now, being in the development space for as long as I have, I said, I think we need to take an alternate view that we need to start at the beginning of this cycle, performance review cycle around, role clarity and goal setting and [00:13:00] expectations because how do we drive accountability at the end of the year if people don't even know what they're there to achieve?

[00:13:08] Jen Fox: And it was a really interesting sort of pushback because they're like, no, we just want to drive accountability. They're not thinking, I don't need to train people on goal setting. So sometimes when, you reference, I use that metaphor of the onion a lot. Sometimes it's really listening to that.

[00:13:21] Jen Fox: What is the problem? Okay. Accountability. Okay, great. Yes. On board. We need to drive accountability. But the solution may be something that requires peeling back a little bit. In this case, it was, all the way back to the beginning of the cycle. So I think there's the understanding the business strategy, and then there's a deciphering the information we get from the top, to then to start to mesh it with the other things that We know, Ben, you've got so much experience, yourself as being an executive, but also working with the executive team.

[00:13:50] Jen Fox: So I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[00:13:52] Ben Brooks: Yeah. It's a little like, designing a product like PILOT and people will say, you should build this, or you should do this, or we need this. And you've got to say, okay, slow down. Tell me what you [00:14:00] think that would help you do. Or some people will say, oh my gosh, we need to have happiness, right?

[00:14:04] Ben Brooks: So let's just drive happiness. And you're like happiness is an outcome, right? Accountability might be an outcome. But what are we, what's getting in the way? What are the restraining or propelling forces in the way? And one of the executives that let me in his door, once I said organic revenue growth, after literally not talking for three months, I have had to finally learn that he wanted people to have better financial acumen at the company.

[00:14:26] Ben Brooks: Our customer used to be a risk manager, and it became a CFO, yet our sales reps didn't know how to read balance sheets and P& Ls and things like that, but there was an incentive to pretend that they did, so no one wanted to fess up 20 years into the industry that they didn't know financial statements, so everyone's oh, we know financial statements, oh, everyone's oh yeah, but then they wouldn't, they'd CFO when we would lose business, right?

[00:14:48] Ben Brooks: When we got into, oh, financial acumen really got back to like confidence and a learner's mindset. So we had to have more accessible ways to do it. And then we actually put him in charge of teaching his own [00:15:00] curriculum internally. And he became our like lead trainer on financial acumen as a president of a 2 billion dollar division of a guy that spent 19 years of his life on a submarine for the Navy.

[00:15:11] Ben Brooks: Like a real intense guy. But we, to your point about deciphering, we had to say, okay, I know you want to get there. Why? And what's getting in the way? And that people felt like losers if they went to some learning exercise around financial statements. But if the president was doing something, they were just attending a meeting with the president.

[00:15:30] Ben Brooks: And so he created a safer space. from the perspective of their egos didn't get in the way.

[00:15:35] Jen Fox: I gotta tell you I was in that situation where nobody wanted to admit it and they offered a course. This was when I was working at the Starbucks head office and we did finance for non-financial managers game changing because it was like.

[00:15:47] Jen Fox: Safe space. We all admit that wasn't what we were trained to, but let's come and, level the playing field. I wanted to add one thing. I know this crowd. I know you, your L and D people, your HR people, and we love our resources. So we're going to drop a few of those throughout the session [00:16:00] today.

[00:16:00] Jen Fox: One of the things that I put a plus one or an emoji or something, if you have this book, cause I know you, Oh, It's the FYI. Where's my blur? There we go. Got it. It's the Corn Fairy FYI. I don't know. This is, I'm on version, I don't know, reprint. I know some of you have it. The reason why I use that as, it's a go to reference for for decades.

[00:16:21] Jen Fox: One of the things that it breaks down is it's, it's really a competency book. But it talks about like overused and underused ways that these competencies show up. So I think it's really good. So you can break that down and you can go through there.

[00:16:34] Jen Fox: Like I said, if we're deciphering this information that we're getting these asks or these complaints, it's a really good way to go in there and say, okay execution or communication, what does it look like when it's overused or underused? And it can give you just a lot of things to think about how you might approach like tackling the.

[00:16:51] Jen Fox: So just wanted to drop that in. It's a really helpful resource I've used over the years.

[00:16:56] Azure Rooths: So Laura, so Jen, you did an amazing job and been [00:17:00] talking about laying the foundation for the top down and to your point of the bottom up. saying what's missing, and asking people that may not normally have an opportunity to speak into things.

[00:17:13] Azure Rooths: So when considering how much to include employee input in a learning strategy, how do we avoid falling into the trap of trying to please everyone. Why is considering a bottom up approach worth exploring? So often they ask for learning, but then when it's rolled out, it's like pulling teeth to get it out of them.

[00:17:39] Azure Rooths: How do we avoid this? Oh,

[00:17:41] Jen Fox: I, I know this crowd can relate to this one, right? You're like, you ask for it. Where are you? And they're like, I don't have the time. Okay. So I think bottom up is essential for so many different reasons. First of all, so just break down the bullets that I have here.

[00:17:58] Jen Fox: I like to think of [00:18:00] no learner left behind that when we're starting to formulate our strategy, we want to slice and dice our business in a lot of different ways. We want to have a sort of something or a solution, or at least be able to address the challenges based on different levels, because certainly there's going to be different needs there based on the level of the organization.

[00:18:17] Jen Fox: A hundred percent by function, right? What's your engineering team needs is very different from your customer support team, from your marketing team, et cetera. And then tenure I think is a hidden gem of information from a learning development perspective. And I'll tell you why. And this kind of goes into depending on the amount of data you have, whether it's exit data, employee engagement data, when you can look at tenure and you can marry up your employee engagement data against tenure, and you can start to say, okay, where is our drop?

[00:18:49] Jen Fox: A lot of times it's around 18 months, 18 to 20 months. A lot of companies see it there, right? And it makes sense. In that honeymoon phase for kind of the first year. And then people are [00:19:00] comfortable. And then I think especially as now, with later millennials, Gen Zs entering the workforce, they're, if you, if they're not getting what they're looking for, they're going to start to open up their eyes and say is this a place I want to give another, year or two of my life?

[00:19:12] Jen Fox: So if we can identify that tenure point and think about what interventions could we design to get in with those people before they tip. Right before they start to explore those other things. And I think it's really critical for a learning development strategy because obviously retention and employee turnover, again, goes back to, right to the bottom line in terms of the cost that is.

[00:19:32] Jen Fox: So starting that's I wanted to drop that first. I'll check in with Ben and see their level function tenure. Thoughts on bottom up before I get into the other things there.

[00:19:40] Ben Brooks: So put a plus one in the chat if DEI is something your organization is working on, prioritizing, has made a commitment to.

[00:19:48] Ben Brooks: So put a plus one in the chat if you've gotten because we're finding it many organizations DEI is becoming a kind of corporate, board, CEO level commitment. [00:20:00] Part of balancing top down, which is good from clear direction, top down is not bad, as we said, it's functional, but bottoms up is also inclusive, right?

[00:20:07] Ben Brooks: Because you're, sometimes people at the top, they haven't been out on the trucks selling in 20 years and a lot's changed in 20 years. So you often have old data at the top. Right? Often the people with all the resource and the power are the furthest from the people with all the information and the current status.

[00:20:26] Ben Brooks: And that's the paradox you have to address in that regard. And so this is not necessarily a referendum of just Oh, what's the enrichment activity? Oh, you want to do basket weaving. Great. That's not what we're talking about. It's what's getting in the way of you doing great work. What's frustrating you?

[00:20:40] Ben Brooks: What are the things that stress you out? What do you wish you were able to do? And really creating, again, the right conversation to have that. And again, I think that this can vary. I will caution getting too complex because sometimes I feel like some L&D folks go, well, we'll slice it and we'll do leadership competencies in eight different levels of leadership, and we'll do 17 competencies times eight.

[00:20:59] Ben Brooks: And I'm just like, [00:21:00] nobody wants that, right? It's, implied precision bias is what it's called. So you want to think about things that can affect a lot of people, right? That they can come together You know, because I think if you get too precise or you slice it too fine, typically it feels good because you've got a plan for everyone, but then even the fine slice doesn't resonate with everyone, so I really have a bias for some commonality, and it doesn't mean it's for the whole org, but, don't slice, the tomato too thin, because it's hard to serve.

[00:21:29] Jen Fox: Yeah, that's a good, I hate really thinly sliced tomatoes because they are impossible and they get all juicy. They're all like watery. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good,

[00:21:38] Ben Brooks: that thick beef steak and

[00:21:39] Jen Fox: a good thick slice of tomato. I like that. Well, and I think that, when you think about getting I'm using employee engagement surveys as an input, being a lot of companies do that.

[00:21:50] Jen Fox: You want to take that data and look for two or three overarching themes, right? And again, it's like peeling away what they're saying. So they may say it's like, Oh, we need, we need more [00:22:00] manager training. After you dig in a little bit more, what you discover is the systems and tools that managers are using.

[00:22:07] Jen Fox: There's so many of them that they just don't even have the, it's too complex. So all of a sudden, instead of a manager training from like a company, Competency perspective becomes a systems focus. How do we simplify the lives of our managers so they can spend more time with their teams, right?

[00:22:22] Jen Fox: People talk about, we need better meeting management. Do we? Or do we need some company standards around stop the meeting madness, right? So it's like taking the employee, the bottom up data, I think it's like taking that at like face value. What do we see? What are we hearing? And then digging what's actually going on beneath those things that may not be, quite as obvious.

[00:22:43] Jen Fox: And I think exit data. It's something that I think as HR as a profession, we're terrible about leveraging our exit data. Most companies will do either a one to one, interview, maybe they have a written anonymous survey or attributed survey. And I think what we often do, because, [00:23:00] sometimes people are leaving, we're like, oh, they left and now we're trying to figure out how we're going to cover their work, or maybe it was a an involuntary separation, and it's really easy to discount that feedback.

[00:23:09] Jen Fox: Oh, they're gone anyway, or oh, they were disgruntled, or they're, we don't, we just let it go. And certainly there's a part of that, but I really think we owe it to ourselves to check in on that data and say what is going on? What are they telling us? Because I think oftentimes, once people have stepped away and they're on their way to their next opportunity, they have the most objective view that could help us, formulate our strategy for that, for the next people. Exit data is just a hidden gem of of information if we choose to use it.

[00:23:38] Azure Rooths: So Jen, really quickly two big themes ring out to me, simplifying the needs and checking in on the data.

[00:23:46] Azure Rooths: But Ben, my question to you is how do we help employees identify those unmet needs? If we're going to simplify the needs. Most employees may have a hard time saying what their actual needs are. Can you speak to that?

[00:23:59] Ben Brooks: [00:24:00] Yeah, I think sometimes people are like, Oh, my unmet need is I need a promotion, right?

[00:24:05] Ben Brooks: And you're like, Oh, my unmet need is I need a raise. I need this. Versus I think you have to have methods. And, we do this with PILOT to help people tease out specifics. Imagine telling your spouse, your friend at a happy hour, I'm just not satisfied. I'm not sure if I want to stay there anymore.

[00:24:20] Ben Brooks: Well. A good friend or spouse will say well, why? What's the specific thing? Because if you're working at IBM and then you're going to leave to go work at the IRS because the bureaucracy at IBM is too much, you're probably going in the wrong direction, right? So you want to get specific into what those things are, but that often requires some facilitation.

[00:24:40] Ben Brooks: I'll get agitated with a friendship I have, and I work it out with my therapist. We're like what's the specific, I'm like, they're just a knucklehead, right? And it's no, no, no. What about them is making you frustrated and we get really specific. So, action and breakthroughs exist in specificity, right?

[00:24:56] Ben Brooks: We can't address vague problems, [00:25:00] right? Azure to your question, I think really helping employees get specific, but requires typically facilitation or assessment or feedback or structure to do that, because often our emotions can cloud some of the root causes that we actually need to address.

[00:25:15] Azure Rooths: So when we think about, thanks so much for that Jen and Ben. Now I want to hear from our our members who are showing up today. Let's do a really quick poll. How confident are you when you make budget requests? Julian, can we launch our poll now? We're going to give you about 30 seconds. Are you very comfortable?

[00:25:35] Azure Rooths: Somewhat confident? Very confident? Somewhat confident? Low? Not confident at all? Ben and Jen, you've been in this world for a million years. Let's take a stab. Where do you think our participants are landing?

[00:25:50] Jen Fox: You go first this time.

[00:25:52] Ben Brooks: My guess is people probably have an incentive to grade inflate on that, so probably people will say somewhat confident.

[00:25:58] Ben Brooks: But then if we balance that [00:26:00] with did you get the money you want, right, your confidence linked to the result that you want, right? So that'd be what I think, Jen.

[00:26:07] Jen Fox: Yeah, I think for me, when I think about my own experience just being vulnerable for a minute, it's completely situational. I've been in companies where I had no budget whatsoever.

[00:26:16] Jen Fox: And so I had, it was like this flywheel of no confidence. I'm not getting the money. Therefore, I'm not asking for it in an effective way. And the inverse as well in environments that are. super willing to invest and that, again, that creates this confidence. Oh, they must trust me because they're giving me the money.

[00:26:31] Jen Fox: And I think it can really, it's like a flywheel in either direction in my experience. Right. Let's see what we have. Julian.

[00:26:41] Ben Brooks: Okay. Great. And I'll tell you the number one thing that I did to increase my confidence, the number one thing. And I became really, I became, I went from low confidence to very confident.

[00:26:58] Ben Brooks: And it was because I was on a non [00:27:00] profit board and I had to ask people for money solely for a good cause. All they got was maybe a tax write off or a feel good to support me, but if I could go do that and I started raising 10 or 100 or I remember 1, 000, I remember I got a 5, 000 check and I was like, are you kidding me?

[00:27:18] Ben Brooks: And I just became really good. And that's one of the areas. that part of it is we have a lot, you know, money is never about money for us. We have a lot of emotional relationships to money and based on our family or our feelings about money. And it's extra fraught when it's our own money. But even within an organization, we still get a little bit weird about money.

[00:27:37] Ben Brooks: And this is where you get into the very confident. You're not going to get what you ask for, but if you don't get what you ask for, you're in a strong position to then bargain around what you're not going to do. Right? And the boundaries and trading on the scope. And so part of the confidence is not having a hundred percent batting average.

[00:27:54] Ben Brooks: It's having the mental fortitude when the CFOs, Oh, our budgets are flat to last year. And you're like, huh. [00:28:00] I'm working with the CEO who wants to do X, Y, and Z, and we're not going to be flat the next year if they want to do that. And it looks like they're in charge, and you have this sort of, mindset around it.

[00:28:08] Ben Brooks: And so I think that's where if you're not comfortable or you've got money, hangups or baggage, which is every one of us on this call, myself included that's an area that you may not work at in the budgeting process, you may work in other areas of your life, and then it'll make you feel more powerful at work when you do start to make these asks.

[00:28:28] Azure Rooths: Jen, every business feels special and unique, and it can be easy to feel like learning needs should be fully customized. As we move forward, when you look at the outside in, how can getting outside perspectives help? Can you speak to that?

[00:28:50] Jen Fox: Yeah, so I think, so we've gotten the sort of the asks and the complaints and the direction from, from the top.

[00:28:58] Jen Fox: We are in touch with what our employees are [00:29:00] asking for and again trying to find that balance between not being, everything to everybody, that's impossible. I think the outside in perspective is really important for the L&D professional because it's what we know so often, right? This is the time, and I think, HR in general, this is a, profession.

[00:29:19] Jen Fox: There is a fountain of knowledge here. This is where we can lean in with our expertise. We know things and I think we sell ourselves short a lot of times here. I don't know how many of you feel the way, when you think about some of the stuff that you do in the learning space, you think, doesn't everybody know this already?

[00:29:36] Jen Fox: But it's truly, I have to always remind myself, just because this is the water that I swim in, it's not like the water out there that everybody Swims in. So I think getting that outside in perspective. So I think about trends, what are the trends that you're reading about, right? And there's I think we're going to drop a couple of resources in just places that I love to see what are industry trends in terms of HR and learning technology, what are those cool things that are out [00:30:00] there?

[00:30:00] Jen Fox: What are those outside factors that are going to impact the way that the employees of your company are going to work in the next couple of years? So thinking about that, technology, right? Remote work or distributed workforces, all five, what, five generations in the workplace right now.

[00:30:15] Jen Fox: So there's some things that are going on right now that are so important to understand. It doesn't mean they're within our control, but we have to acknowledge them so that we're not blind sided. And then, what are the cool kids doing here? This is the stuff that gets into the Forbes and into the fortune and all the things.

[00:30:31] Jen Fox: So these are the things that are going to get the attention, Oh, Google doing this or Meta's doing that. And then you're going to come back and go, yeah, well, I don't have the budget of that or whatever. But if you want, if you can take the ideas and the inspiration from some of the whatever companies you're modeling yourself after, if you want to, learning forward type of culture, go and find those companies and say, maybe I can't do what they're doing at that scale, but what inspiration can I get from that?

[00:30:57] Jen Fox: And again, because those are the things that are [00:31:00] newsworthy, other people are going to be Hearing them, they're also going to be comparing in your candidate pool, right? When people, candidates are out there looking and comparing companies, they want to see that you've got cutting edge and that you're investing in your employees.

[00:31:12] Jen Fox: So those are types of things that need to go into your employer brand as well. So I think the outside in perspective is really important.

[00:31:19] Ben Brooks: And I see Ted put a question in the chat. How do we deal with

[00:31:29] Azure Rooths: Hey Ben, your sound is a little chalky. Can you start all over again? Ted's point.

[00:31:38] Julian St-Hilaire: Let me just reach out to Ben.

[00:31:42] Jen Fox: Ted, thanks for your question. I'll I'll see what I can do here. And then Ben re chimes in here. So how do we deal with situations where buying from outside services beats what an employee team to do? I think that, I think how I would look at this is I wouldn't compare it as an either or, because I think there's a place for internal things.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Jen Fox: There's a place for external as well. One of the things that I've had to learn the hard way, and it goes to how you kicked off this section as you were, is we often think we're super special, right? Everything needs to be customized. And so that really comes from the perspective, like our internal team should build it.

[00:32:15] Jen Fox: Okay? But at the end of the day, let's take. Manager training, just as one thing that's out there, right? Developing great managers. Is your company really that unique? Now there could be the particular things about how do managers use our tools or what are the, industry specific things that our managers need to know.

[00:32:35] Jen Fox: But at the end of the day, what are great managers need to do? They need to coach and develop their people. They need to be inclusive. They need to know how to motivate their people. They need to, understand the whole world of wellbeing and mental health. That exists across every single company.

[00:32:49] Jen Fox: So I say those sort of common things are a great place to look for outside solutions. I take PILOT as a great example, making people powerful at work. I have my own [00:33:00] experience. I didn't include that up front, but I'm implementing PILOT for every managers and every manager and organization. Well, why would I go and reinvent the wheel as an under resourced L&D team?

[00:33:11] Jen Fox: Right? To, like, create all the assets and all the thing when I can go and partner with someone who has the credibility, the structure, and the framework to actually do that already. So, I would say, For things that are not really unique to you, go outside where you can, and then focus your internal talent on where you really need to like harness that company or that industry knowledge because your internal teams, I'm guaranteeing everyone on this call are not as big as you want them to be.

[00:33:39] Jen Fox: Keep those people focused on the stuff that's actually really particular to your company.

[00:33:43] Azure Rooths: What a great perspective. So Jen, I want to walk us through a little bit of all that we've been talking about today. So you set the framework the framework and the foundation with strategy, budgets, and programs.

[00:33:56] Azure Rooths: We explored the concept of budgeting from [00:34:00] a top down, from a bottom up, then we just looked at the outside in. Now I want to see if we can pivot a little bit. And turn it to the inside out. Right? Simon Sinek says, start with why. So help us start with that why. Tell us a story that will make it all make sense.

[00:34:24] Azure Rooths: So now that we have the data, what do we do with it?

[00:34:28] Jen Fox: Yeah, I think this is everything. If we have all the data, right? And we have all the ideas. We might even have a a number in mind of what we need to do, but we can't tell the story in a way that connects for the people who are ultimately going to make your budget decision.

[00:34:45] Jen Fox: It'll just, it'll fall flat every day of the week. So thinking about what information do leaders need in order to actually buy in, right? They're going to need the numbers and sense of it. They're going to want you to speak their language, right? Go back to Ben, right? Organic, revenue growth, right? Whatever the [00:35:00] terminology is that they're using, they want to know that you've heard it and you understand it and you're using that to inform your strategy.

[00:35:07] Jen Fox: So the telling the story to them is going to look different from telling the story to employees or other stakeholders. What do they need to hear? Like your functional leaders who are going to be your stakeholders. They need to see that you recognize that they're unique. That you're not just taking like a one size fits all that you're accounting for what they need for their engineering team or whatever in your strategy So this is the stories where people need to feel seen and heard and understood and the more memorable you can make it The better.

[00:35:35] Jen Fox: So I've got my next slide here, which is my little visual. So I want to tell you a story about telling the story. So this was a company who had multiple manufacturing plants around the company or the country and they wanted they saw a lot of inefficiencies and they were really pushing for a centralized procurement function because they could just see how everybody, every plant was doing their own procurement.

[00:35:58] Jen Fox: And they could never get it done. [00:36:00] There wasn't buy in, they were going to need more, resources. It just, everything was just easier to keep it as it was status quo. This one sort of enterprising leader took it upon himself and went and ordered one of the work gloves that were used at every single location.

[00:36:15] Jen Fox: Around the country and came into that meeting where they had the time on the agenda and dumped them all on the conference room table. You can't unsee that. Right? So that's how he kicks off that, that conversation of this is what this looks like right now when we don't have a centralized approach.

[00:36:34] Jen Fox: I guess I would challenge this group to say, what is your work glove centralized procurement version? How do you make these learning and development ideas, competencies, these things that are sometimes really hard to make tangible? How do you tell the story? How do you make them tangible? How do you make that lasting impression so that they're like, aha.

[00:36:54] Jen Fox: I can't not do this. It just makes sense. So Ben, you're one of the best storytellers I know. So I know you [00:37:00] have a lot of experience in telling the story here.

[00:37:02] Ben Brooks: And I think you have to read the culture, right? Every organization is different. Some organizations, everyone will say that the real data driven numbers people, right?

[00:37:10] Ben Brooks: And some organizations are way more than that. If you're engineering or financial services, right? Things like that. can be much more that way, but all humans are affected by emotion in stories. And so I think balancing the story, the numbers, and the narrative. And some, we worked with an organization recently and they were getting into story and they're like, Hey, we need to see these numbers.

[00:37:30] Ben Brooks: We need to see numbers. And we started with story first. So I think we've then showed them numbers and they're like, okay. And then once the numbers had to check something for them to say, okay, this seems, then we told them the story. Then the story is what sticks or like the gloves, you're drawing all them in.

[00:37:43] Ben Brooks: And that's what you remember. And, and we would tell stories. I used to be in operations management and consulting for airlines and we talk about, the average crew person had to walk 10 miles a day in an aircraft hangar and I'd walk around with this little wheel and follow them and they would only be working on one plane [00:38:00] that was 200 feet long, but they walked 10 miles in a day and they weren't getting their steps in. They were wasting a lot of time and exhausted in back injuries. And so it just became really clear when we did that and made something. But often your story, it can't be a hundred stories and it can't be a gazillion details.

[00:38:17] Ben Brooks: It's got to be this narrow focused thing. And to your point around I put it in the comments earlier about Ted's question around kind of outside services versus the team. This is where stories can tie into this. It's a division of labor. Is your team better at gathering and polishing and telling stories, or is it an outside provider?

[00:38:34] Ben Brooks: Outside providers can help you with that. Sometimes it's communications firms or other things. So think about what you're good at internally versus what you need help with, and it's not either or, it can be both. Leverage outside services is the scaffolding for the capacity or the skills or the technology you don't have.

[00:38:51] Ben Brooks: Leverage your inside team for the company specific strategy, culture, people, relationships, industry, geographic [00:39:00] stuff. And you put those two things together, that's a one two punch with your gloves on.

[00:39:06] Azure Rooths: Love that perspective, Ben. Nice tie back, nice tie

[00:39:08] Jen Fox: back to the glove.

[00:39:09] Azure Rooths: Yes, always, Ben, bringing us right back around.

[00:39:13] Azure Rooths: For members to walk away with the importance of balancing the numbers and the narrative, the story is the thing that sticks. And why do we need a story that sticks? Because we want to ensure that your budget gets approved. So as we move forward, it looks like you have some tips for us in terms of asking for budgets.

[00:39:35] Azure Rooths: Can you run us through them? Jen, let's start with you.

[00:39:38] Jen Fox: Yeah, let's run through these, pretty quick, a lot of you, your experienced group here, but just maybe some quick reminders. So exploring multi year contracts. Yes, there's usually a cost saving. The reason why I prefer multi year contracts is because it shows a commitment to the strategy.

[00:39:53] Jen Fox: The one year at a time approach leaves that feeling of well, here's what it is for now. And we're going to reassess the whole damn thing. PILOT, a year [00:40:00] from now, which is also super time intensive versus saying, let's, we're in this for the long game. We want to level up our managers.

[00:40:07] Jen Fox: We're going to, this is what we need to do it. And it's going to be a two to two to three year play. And then you can, find the vendors and align the contracts to support that. Calculating a per learner investment. Okay, here's the deal. I know everybody on this call has probably researched this.

[00:40:20] Jen Fox: What do I ask for? I have this many employees. In general, they say it's one to 3 percent of payroll. So you're going to need to go and Find that out. The numbers are anywhere from 500 to 1500 on average for, a, sort of midsize company. But again, I would say anchor to the company.

[00:40:36] Jen Fox: They used to say dress for the job you want. Anchor, anchor your ask to the company you aspire to be. So yeah, can you go out and find companies who are getting it done for 200 learning stipend per person? Yes. Is that the type of employee that you want to have? Probably not. So take any of these benchmark sort of things as like a grain of salt, a data point for you.

[00:40:57] Jen Fox: Just know that if you see them, [00:41:00] the, your executives may also be seeing them and they may counter your ask by saying, wow, why, this seems to be the industry trend. be ready to do that. And then I think there's this two different approaches, right? Some people have a centralized learning budget.

[00:41:12] Jen Fox: And if you do, great. You just want to make sure that you're allocating that in some way, right? So that the stakeholders, not to be everything to everybody, but people can see that they're going to have something of your budget that they're going to be accounted for in there, right? In your strategy.

[00:41:27] Jen Fox: If you have a decentralized budget, then you really need to have a really clear strategy to make sure you influence how that spend is distributed. Because everybody's out doing their own thing. What's the all boats rise or whatever that saying is. If everybody is out doing their own thing and spending their own money, you're just never going to, as an organization, see that lift that you're going for.

[00:41:48] Jen Fox: Find hidden money. It's there, right? We were talking the other day about, people, there's travel budget, there's events that go, that, that, that don't happen. There's unused development, so go ask for [00:42:00] it. It's shocking to see what's buried out there. The people say, oh yeah, I've got a couple thousand dollars here, I'm not using that, and you can, go that way as well.

[00:42:07] Jen Fox: And then I would say The overall thing here, it goes back to the mindset thing that Ben was talking about here, is you want to set a precedent of investment. Okay, we're all super resourceful, we've been in places before where we've had no budget, and so we're probably pretty good at the DIY approach.

[00:42:24] Jen Fox: The problem is the better we get at DIYing, the more they want us to DIY. So, we want to train our people to understand that learning is an investment, And there's going to be money. I would rather do one thing and put all my budget toward that and knock it out of the park than, do a whole bunch of like small do it yourself like solutions that make no bit of difference whatsoever.

[00:42:48] Jen Fox: And so this requires a little bit of standing your ground. It's no, I can't go and do that. I think we say yes, sometimes because we want to please and we want to show that we're resourceful, but what that can do then is just like lead [00:43:00] to this mindset that we can just do it with no investment, and that's the exact opposite of what we want to create.

[00:43:05] Jen Fox: So set a precedent of investment. Love that. Ben, what is your take?

[00:43:09] Ben Brooks: Yeah, I'll add a couple quick things here, plus one to everything. I think on the multi year contracts, the other thing is organizations can't cut your budget if you spend it. Right, or if it's already committed. And so if you just piecemeal this, that's makes you vulnerable.

[00:43:24] Ben Brooks: Think about use it or lose it dollars. So often in organizations, if you have a budget of 10 million and you only spend nine, the next year, they're like, you know what, it seems like you need nine this year because you only spent nine last year. So if you've got money that you haven't spent, Talk to vendors, you want to spend some money?

[00:43:42] Ben Brooks: Call PILOT, we'll help you spend some money quick. That, that's a use it or lose it and it gives you it also lets you move some of that forward. The other thing I'd say is don't flinch. One of the things I learned in asking for money through the non profits is, I remember I'd ask someone, oh, for 500 dollars to come to an event or a thousand, and they go, oh, I know, it's a lot of money, ah, [00:44:00] and I would negotiate against myself.

[00:44:02] Ben Brooks: And then I got trained by people who are good at this, you say, Jen, I'd like you to come to this gala. It's a thousand dollars. Would you like to go? And then you STFU, you be quiet, okay? And you just see what they say. So that's, and so you have to create the space of not apologizing for your ask because you feel insecure or assuming, because what I found many times is you make the ask and I would have people all the time in the corporate world go, done.

[00:44:31] Ben Brooks: Because if you had the strategy, you defined the budget, you had the program, you linked it all, did all the stuff that Jen's talked about today. You make the ask, you don't flinch, and just assume, like presumptive quotes, it's going to be a yes. Asher?

[00:44:43] Azure Rooths: That is a perfect segue as we start to wrap it up. Jen, we have a quote identified.

[00:44:51] Azure Rooths: Why do you think that this is a great way for us to end our time together?

[00:44:58] Jen Fox: Well, so [00:45:00] we could go on a long time about this, but, I think this quote really sums it up. Values without practices are just meaningless. You know, they're just words on a slide or a piece of paper. And so your budget is a way of operationalizing your values.

[00:45:13] Jen Fox: You cannot say we value growth and then not invest in our people. It just doesn't work. Right. And so I think that again in, in this, you'll need this for the top down and the bottom up as well, to really understand those core values. Sometimes it's challenging them. Sometimes it is. Towing that line to say, listen, this is what I see that we say we're valued.

[00:45:34] Jen Fox: Look at if you have a company and you value connection and all of a sudden you're like cutting your events and sort of gathering budget. Okay, fine. But how are we going to actually connect? So bringing the values back into the conversation, it's a good chance. You may need to test that out and just see where you're willing to do it.

[00:45:51] Jen Fox: But I think it's really important that the budget, it's just the it's not a set of numbers. It really is the practice behind walking the talk, if you will. [00:46:00]

[00:46:00] Ben Brooks: And I just add that, take this a little personally, and that's usually the opposite of the advice I would give.

[00:46:05] Ben Brooks: But, when you learn this in sales, if someone says, Oh, we don't have budget, what they're saying is we don't have budget for you. Because it's not like all of a sudden there's zero budget for anything at the organization. There's budget for this boondoggle, event, and there's budget for the deadweight person in this department that's not doing much.

[00:46:23] Ben Brooks: And there's budget for this IT system that nobody uses or likes. There's budget for a lot of things. So sometimes you have to find the savings, right? You say, hey, we're going to kill this, contract we had with a content vendor that's outdated now. We're going to reinvest, but also it's to say, hey, like our strategy says these things, but you're saying I have a flat HR budget, but we need to get a lot more out of our talent.

[00:46:45] Ben Brooks: Which do you want? Do you want a flat HR budget or do you want to get a lot more out of our talent? And focus not on the input. But the output, the input may be a million dollars increase in your HR budget, but the output may be a 10 percent growth in [00:47:00] revenue on a billion dollar company. So focus on the kind of return, not the investment, because the return, we get very central centric in HR.

[00:47:10] Ben Brooks: We need the investment. We need the budget. We need the dollars. The organization doesn't care. What they want is the result, right? So focus on the result. And then you say, this is what I need to get you that. And if they're not willing to give you that, then say, well, I can't give you the result. You've got to be in the good, if you ever travel to a developing country, even in a bazaar or a market or on the street, and you learn how to bargain and negotiate, it's a really good skill.

[00:47:33] Ben Brooks: So learning how to do that and yes and no that's the kind of energy you have to bring. Azure?

[00:47:39] Azure Rooths: Love it. As a result of your time with us today, Jen, in closing, has a gift for you on the

[00:47:47] Azure Rooths: slide that you'll see.

[00:47:48] Jen Fox: Yeah, budgets are tight. I am hearing from so many people right now, maybe they're trying to use it or lose it.

[00:47:53] Jen Fox: I don't know. One of the things I love about this switch to distributed work is people are getting so excited. So much more intentional about bringing [00:48:00] their people together. So yeah, just a little offering. I do a lot of disc workshops for sales, for management, just in general, individual teams all the way up to companies.

[00:48:09] Jen Fox: So if you're planning your end of year offsite or kicking off Q1 just a little discount to help you out since we're talking budget. So you can snap the QR code. Don't ask about the dinosaur. It's just what Google uses. I've discovered it's meaningless but I'd love to hear from you and see if I can support you in any way.

[00:48:26] Ben Brooks: No, it's because you're a ferocious facilitator.

[00:48:28] Jen Fox: Yes, exactly.

[00:48:29] Ben Brooks: Is that it? Okay. Yes.

[00:48:32] Azure Rooths: Thanks, Jen, for that gift. Moving forward, Ben we'd love to see you in future webinars that we are hosting. And November 7th, Ben has another session coming up. We'll be talking about building trust in DEI programs.

[00:48:49] Azure Rooths: We'll learn about how to leverage the simple, proven, can, can, can. Can care, do trust model from author Jim Macy and our very [00:49:00] own Ben Brooks and Julian is going to put that link in the chat right now. We want to say thank you so very much for joining us today. If you would like more information about PILOT, you can email us any questions to [email protected] or check out our website at www.pilot.coach. On our website, you'll see a resource tab. We'll show you other upcoming webinars that are scheduled and give you an opportunity to watch on demand webinars. If you want to set up a time to learn more, you can book at the link that is added below.

[00:49:39] Ben and Jen, please share any closing remarks that you have for our participants.

[00:49:46] Jen Fox: I think you're, I think Ben, what you said, Dinosaur Jen I think what you'd say, and you are a good mentor to me in this space, don't negotiate against yourself. I think that's one of the best best takeaways, because we all have money issues and we have to get over them [00:50:00] so that we can advocate for what our employees need.

[00:50:04] Ben Brooks: Yep, and I would just think about, think of your learning development, your HR, your talent, your DOE department, whatever you're running, as outsourced. Think of it as you're completely outsourced and the company is buying your services. And if you outsourced it, You would get a fee and there'd be a statement of work.

[00:50:21] Ben Brooks: And if the client wants to add a bunch of things to the statement of work, merging leaders, training, collaboration, stuff, remote and hybrid work, leadership, feedback, et cetera. And the statement of work gets longer and longer. You don't expect the fee to stay the same. The fee is the budget.

[00:50:38] Ben Brooks: It's the head count. It's the third party programs and services. And so it's all a thing. Oh, you want more? Great. It'll cost more. We wouldn't go to Chipotle and get, three orders and expect it to cost the same. You want more, you pay more. Think of it in those terms, and it's a trade off. And if they're not willing to pay more, or you don't want to pay 30 at Chipotle, fine, you get [00:51:00] one burrito.

[00:51:00] Ben Brooks: You got 10 bucks, one burrito. You want to have three? It's 30 bucks. And it's just, and it's a little bit of a, tough love message, but it's a form of a boundary and it's where HR is desperate for more respect and to feel more pride in their work. We have to start with ourselves in setting the boundaries and advocating for ourselves, which is what the PILOT program is all about, self advocacy.

[00:51:22] Ben Brooks: And with that, we can start to be set up for success to do the meaningful work that got us in these jobs in the first place.

[00:51:29] Azure Rooths: Thank you so very much, Ben Brooks, for being here. Thank you, Jen Fox, for your participation. What an amazing session it has been. We hope that you leave here today not only feeling powerful at work, but more importantly, we wanted to ensure that you are able to get your budget approved.

[00:51:48] Azure Rooths: I am Azure Ruth. It has been a pleasure to serve you. Thank you so much for being here, everyone. Take care.

[00:51:55] Ben Brooks: Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Happy [00:52:00] November.