Leslie Neitzel - SuccessFactors University: Implementing talent management technology

Steve

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. This week we spoke with Leslie Neitzel, who is with SF University, or SuccessFactors University, which is a part of SuccessFactors that focuses on the training and helping companies with their change management communication deployment, and overall training on how to use our talent management technology, and we spoke with Leslie about what's required beyond the technology to have a successful deployment of a talent management system, not just a SuccessFactors' system, but any technology system in general, and Leslie shared some really interesting observations around the importance of really critically looking at why are you doing this, what is the real goal? - how's it supposed to affect different stakeholders, how new is this process? - and shared some great insights about, just because something seems familiar to you, it may not be familiar to your end users when you're using things like goals and performance assessments, and the last one is, what should it be integrated into to make it more meaningful, so you're not just really implemented a standalone program? So a lot of very interesting ideas, observations, and great tips from a person who has done hundreds of deployments in companies using these sorts of systems, so let's listen to Leslie Neitzel this week on People Performance Radio.

Hi, this is Steve Hunt with People Performance Radio. Today I'm talking with Leslie Neitzel, who is a director for SF University here at SuccessFactors. Leslie, welcome to the show.

Leslie

Thank you, happy to be here.

Steve

So Leslie, SF University focuses very much on helping clients implement our technology, but making sure people know how to use it effectively - can you tell us a little bit about what is it that makes a successful deployment of performance management technology different from a perhaps less successful deployment?

Leslie

Absolutely, and I think that's a challenge a lot of organizations face, and what we often see is that organizations fail because they tend to get wrapped up in just the software piece of the implementation, so they underestimate what it really takes to institute the change within the organization, they don't have a full plan to ensure that that user adoption takes place, so things like training and communication and a broader focus on the change management is generally what makes organizations successful.

Steve

So what are some of the kinds of training that you provide?

Leslie

We absolutely provide a training on the system element, but as they relate to the behaviors of what the organization is ultimately trying to achieve, so what is it that the user, what are the benefits that the user's going to get out of this? So when we talk about training, it's not just which button to click, but it's about how that particular button or that particular step in the process impacts that user, so when we deliver training, it's incorporating the technical aspects into the process aspects, as well as the behavioral aspects of performance and talent management.

Steve

So can you give an example of maybe grab something that most people are familiar with, like with SuccessFactors has systems for evaluating performance and giving performance feedback - what is it, when you look at companies that deploy that technology, when they struggle with deploying it, what is it that makes it difficult for managers to employees just to sit down and start using the technology?

Leslie

It's a great question, and from that a perspective of using a live example, I think we're all familiar with performance evaluations, and what we see out there is that, when customers do get started with this, again their focus is so much on which buttons, and how they should configure a system, that they forget about the actual behaviors they're hoping to change, so when thinking about that, it's really about, what's the type of dialog that you want to get out of your performance process? Do you want to change behaviors in your managers in terms of how they give feedback, and the frequency of the dialog that they're having with their employees? Is it how they're fairly evaluating their direct reports in terms of performance management? So the focus really is around the behaviors that are taking place as part of that process, and the tools should be a sidebar that actually enables that process or that change to happen.

Steve

So when you have people struggling with performance management - so you're really saying, they really need to understand the process and how it's going to be used? When you've looked at companies, and you've seen that, with the difference between you go into an organization - you've worked with, I imagine, probably hundreds of different organizations - and you go into one, and they say, "We're going to roll out this performance technology", and you're going through and doing your sort of training needs analysis, what are some of the questions you ask if they're going to differentiate between, look, we can just tell you guys how to use the technology, and you'll be good to go, as opposed to, you're really introducing a new concept to this company, and you need to do some more extensive change management - what are some of the diagnostics maybe clients could look at to say, how ready are we just to roll out this technology?

Leslie

Well, the first and foremost, one of the most and quite important questions we ask is, why are they doing this? So what are the real drivers behind this type of implementation, or this particular initiative? That generally leads us, and several organizations, to further hone in on how that's going to impact their stakeholders, which leads to another key question around, who are those stakeholders? When you're thinking about a technology implementation, again it's about getting caught up in the buttons, but you need to remember who is going to be impacted by this, whether it's an employee, a manager, an executive. So the drivers and the stakeholders are two key questions that we ask, and we also like to find out about the process itself - is this new? Is the system the only thing that's new, or are there expectations around the process that are new? And that generally helps organizations really start to think about, OK, we are changing specific behaviors or looking to change specific behaviors, or we're doing something very different, and we want to think about how that impacts the user, as well as the time commitment that's required. So another kind of question that's worth asking, and important to ask is, are there other initiatives that might be going on, or things that actually link to this or are impacted by this? So there's a few core questions that really frame out what's going on in the organization - why this is important, both from the organization level all the way down to an individual perspective or stakeholder level. Those are some of the most important questions, I think, that helps us drive to our recommendations from a training perspective.

Steve

So just to reiterate - so the three questions that you said are really, one is , why are you doing this in terms of what are the major stakeholders in this? Who's expecting to get something out of this, and what are they expecting to get? The second one is, how new is this? - are you automating something you've already been doing, or are you really introducing a new process that people are going to have to learn? And the third is, how does this link into other things people are doing in terms of the time they spend, the amount of attention they have to it, and how it relates to other things?

I'm curious, if you'd remind me, if we just sort of dive into each of those questions in a little more detail, just to sort of contrast - like, if it was the first one, what is the reason for it? What are some of the reasons that you've heard? People say, "Hey, we're going to implement talent management technology" - what are some of the different reasons people do it, and how does that play out in terms of what you need to focus on when you're deploying the technology?

Leslie

Sure, absolutely, and the reasons why people do things like this varies across the board. One organization that we're recently working with, they're a manufacturing organization based in Europe, and their main focus is to really retain talent and attract new talent, so they want to create a focus on the development of their employees, that they're thinking about their employees or taking their employees' development into consideration, so that particular driver for them is what we remain focused on from a training and change management perspective, and we've engaged with them on a couple of meetings, and just to give you an example, it's again - I keep going back to the same comment, they get easily caught up in how the system should look, what the buttons, like where they go, when in all reality we are trying to remind them to focus on those aspects of, OK, how do you want to retain this talent? Why are you not able to now? And those are the things that should help drive those decisions, they should also be the meat of your communication and your messaging, so what is that case for change that people are going to resonate, or that's going to resonate with people, and that also impacts the training obviously, because as you're developing those communication messages and you're building the system off of this core desire to retain and develop and your talent, how do I want to convey that so the user, when engaging with the system, understands what they're getting out of it, besides just a form or just a performance review template that they're filling out.

Steve

That's great, it's almost sort of, as you talk, it reminds me of how people should buy cars, but often don't, which is, how do you actually want to use it? - do you want to use it for commuting, or do you want to use it to get attention?

Patrick

Yes, you're absolutely right, people always pick things based on color, and look, and how it makes them feel, as opposed to what they're actually trying to achieve.

Steve

Yeah, then they get home and they find that they can't fit their family into it or whatever, and by the way, that's not a personal story, I drive a minivan and I'm very boring and practical!

Leslie

And I thought you were talking about my husband!

Steve

Probably you're talking about a lot of spouses, but that would be another podcast episode!

So, in that example, you said the focus was very much on retention, and in attraction - can you tell us maybe another example of a client who had a different focus, and how that changed maybe some of the messaging and the focusing on training - have you ever been with clients that say, "Look, our goal is really to increase workforce productivity - that's purely what it is, we're not worried about keeping people so much as getting the most out of the people we have"?

Leslie

Yeah, absolutely, and that's a great example, so I'll take that one - we worked within an organization just a few weeks ago, and their key area was how can they increase that workforce productivity, and so what we did was develop the training and communications around that, we really started to look at the behaviors that were currently exhibited within the organization, and those that they wanted to get at, so we did more of a diagnostic around, OK, what are you doing now, and why is it not working around productivity? What does make a person productive? And so looking at that model of productivity within the company, how do we change what's currently happening to reflect that, and to change individual's behavior, so that they're working more effectively, they're working more efficiently, and they're engaged in the work that they're doing. So some of the messaging and communications and training that we've built around that was again trying to model off of what happens successfully within the organization, and honing in on the benefits of the individuals who are involved.

So it often goes back to the same key things, it's just a matter of how you message that, knowing what that business driver is or what you're ultimately trying to accomplish, whether it's productivity, whether it's retention, whether it's even automation - there's different ways in which you convey that, but it's keeping that in mind as you drive your training and communications, and even decisions around your system.

Steve

Well, I think that makes a lot of sense - the reasons you've mentioned probably counts for 90% of talent management implementations, which is either trying to retain and attract talent, it's trying to increase productivity or it's trying to make things more efficient, or maybe some combination of those, but the messages and what you emphasize if you're trying to increase productivity is different from if you're trying to attract talent, one's more about career development and growth, and the other one's more about focus, and it's not either or, but it's definitely a different focus and sort of emphasis.

Leslie

Yeah, and from a communication and training perspective, the way you convey that, and employees can ultimately judge for themselves whether or not the organization's goal has succeeded or was successful, so it's really how you begin to articulate those expectations so that they have a clear understanding of what they can get out of this, and that's how the training and the communication link together, so if you're communicating a certain message, then when you start to train them, their behavior based on that training should ultimately reach that objective, or that message that you've communicated.

Steve

I have a question related also to the change in the behaviors, in deploying a system, especially a talent management system, the role of leadership is going to be critical, because people are immediately going to look up and say, well is my boss doing this? - are they taking it seriously? When you look at contrasting successful versus less successful deployments from an executive leadership standpoint, what is it that differentiates the really successful deployments from the unsuccessful ones, in terms of the role that leadership plays in the deployment itself?

Leslie

99.9% of the time, those organizations that are most successful do have that executive sponsorship, and they're actively engaged and involved throughout the process, so what we've seen with like again, an organization, this is sort of a hospitality organization, a global company, they had a lot of involvement from their senior leadership, so their CEO was ultimately the project sponsor, and an active advocate for the program. The training that was developed and delivered started at the very top with the CEO and his direct reports, and it cascaded down, so the message was, kind of that old "walk the talk" thing, they actually got in, engaged their formal training program themselves, and they were able to convey that message down throughout the organization.

When you think about what the role of an executive is, it's really again keeping them involved from the beginning all the way to the execution, so as you're preparing the organization, preparing the system, preparing the communication and training - has that executive, that senior management team, helped define those business objectives and set some of those measures? And then as you build out the plan, involve them - have them participate in the training, and make it a priority for the rest of the organization.

And then finally, as you get to that execution phase, have them reinforce the message, and take an active role in reviewing feedback, or encouraging improvement as part of the process - when you define those metrics early on, you can review where you are and track your success, and if you have that senior management involvement and participating throughout all phases, you're going to get much more traction within the organization, because to your point, Steve, people do look up to the senior leadership, and they tend to mimic what happens at the top on down.

Steve

So, and this may be a hard question to answer, but I'm going to ask it anyhow: if you were talking to a company, and they said, "OK, we have a line leader sponsor, maybe it's a CEO, COO, but some really important line leadership sponsor", and they asked you, "How much time literally should this person put on their calendar during this deployment, how much time should they plan to be involved in reviewing, developing, training - what is a minimum time dedication from a senior leader for one of these deployments to be successful?"

Leslie

That is a tough question, from my personal perspective and what I've seen to work fairly well, I'd like to say that if they could dedicate 20 to 25% of their time, that's really going to have a strong message within the organization, and if you think about it from a senior management perspective, the implementation itself doesn't take forever to do, so if they can dedicate that amount of time early on, then it's going to be much easier down the road. Having said that, however, I think from a minimum perspective, even just giving 15% of their time I think can go a long way, or even 10%, it's just getting them involved and having them stay involved, whether it's one hour a week, one day a week, or, again depending on what that implementation plan looks like, it's just a regular and consistent involvement that makes the most difference.

Steve

So Leslie, you're really saying that this is - it doesn't have to be a massive commitment of time from leadership, but really at least an hour a week during the deployment, or even ideally 25% of their time, so you're very visible and active in developing and contributing as an executive, if it's important, it's worth devoting time on your calendar to. My question is, how long are these deployments?

Leslie

The deployments vary, and that's really where you can engage your senior management or your executive involvement - they vary from four weeks all the way to two years or four months, it really depends on what is the amount of change that you're actually implementing, and how long, how phased that's going to be. I do find (and I'm going to go off on a side note here), I do find that what tends to be most successful is if you do start off small, and not trying to accomplish too much at once. What a lot of organizations do is they can often get very excited about a new initiative like this, or they have a time commitment that they have to have everything done by a certain date, and so they miss some of the elements because they're rushed.

So, to your point, Steve, I don't want to say stretch the length of your implementation or deployment, but think about the impact it has on users, and do it in a calculated way, and if a phased approach makes the most sense, it's generally the most well-received, because it's smaller bites, so from an appetite perspective, people aren't overwhelmed, and that includes leadership all the way down to an employee.

Steve

Well, I think that must, that's probably very suited, the kind of talent management technology, but as you're saying, if you're implementing something like performance management, where suddenly you're asking people to give much more open candid discussions and feedback, where they haven't in the past - that is a pretty significant cultural change for an organization, so thinking of just the technology by itself is going to suddenly get people talking candidly about strengths and weaknesses is probably not the right way to approach it?

Leslie

And that's a great point, and you have to set realistic expectations; when I said earlier about setting some metrics for measuring success, I think what helps organizations in terms of the long term success is that they don't set the bar too high in the beginning, and it's not that you can't, but just be cognisant, because to your point exactly, Steve, when you're trying to change significant behaviors, it's not going to happen overnight - maybe the first step is to get people in the system and start documenting conversations, and then you start to move on in a trajectory or a bit of a timeline, in terms of where you want to be six months from now, a year from now, 18 months from now and so forth, so it's again being able to measure those successes and celebrate those along the way helps you achieve that long term vision much more quickly.

Steve

Yeah, the analogy that I make to it sometimes is like getting fitness, going and buying much fancy exercise equipment in itself can help people become more fit, but don't think you're going to do it overnight, it's a gradual lifestyle change, and then approach it that way; better to invest in the technology, use it correctly and have a lasting sustainable change than a huge flurry of activity, and then just go back to the old ways of doing things again.

Leslie

You know, that's an interesting analogy, because from the fitness perspective, it does take, it works both ways, so as an organization you can implement a system and provide, in your analogy, provide a gym that people can work out in, but it's also the ownership, or the accountability also has to lie within the employees and the managers, and others within the organization, and that's a key piece of the training that people often forget, is talking about what are the roles and expectations we have of you and that you have of us, from a process perspective or a tool perspective. So that's a key piece to keep in mind is that you want to enable people to be successful and give them the right tools and resources, but also know that they're a big piece of that, the accountability lies on them.

Steve

So sort of bringing it back to we're asking you to change your behavior, but the technology makes it easier, but it's ultimately about you changing your behavior. When you look at that change, we've spent quite a lot of time talking about the first thing, which is recognizing, why are you implementing this, and being realistic about what it'll take to get these changes; the second thing you talked about is, just how new is it? - what's the scope of the change? When you look at clients, what is probably one of the biggest changes overlook in terms of not realizing, wow, that's a bigger change than we realized? Are there any that stand out?

Leslie

Yeah, from a pure process perspective, when we think about performance management, I see a lot of organizations will reintroduce, or introduce for the first time, the idea of a self evaluation, and they forget that employees who have not actually been involved in something like this - that's a big deal for them, it's an opportunity for them to showcase how they've done, people can get scared or intimidated, it's just the behaviors and the reactions that employees have when something like this is often overlooked, and that's getting very detailed in terms of your question, but I do think it's an interesting one that I find with a lot of organizations, people don't take that into consideration, if it's the first time, or if it's been a long time that someone's actually gone in and did an evaluation on themselves, because that's a big piece of what drives the overall ultimate performance review.

Steve

That's a really interesting observation, I think that's a great point, and you see that as often, well we'll start with the self-assessment, like that's no big deal, but if people haven't done that, that could create all kinds of anxiety for employees or confusion.

Are there other ones that you've found too, I think at that same level, things that people think will be simple, and actually when they try to do it, it's much harder?

Leslie

Yeah, the other one that comes to mind is around goals, and the idea of alignment or cascading goals, and tools often give you the ability to do that from a mechanical perspective fairly easily, but it's taking it to the next level and putting it into practice from a perspective of staying on top of our goals and making sure that we are aligned within the organization, and often times customers think, from a tool perspective, "OK great, I have this great new tool, we'll be able to cascade goals across and within the organization", but when it's put into practice, people get extremely confused, they don't understand how their individual goal impacts the broader organization, or from a manager's perspective, how do I take this goal and how do I personalize it, or translate it to make it more relevant to my direct report, or my team? That's another are people struggle with when it comes to actual practicality, or practice of it.

Steve

I think that's a good point, I mean psychologically one of an individual difference is people's just general goal orientation in general, some people think of their life in terms of goals, and other people just think in terms of ongoing responsibilities, and asking people that aren't constantly thinking of their life in terms of what's my next goal, to suddenly think that way is somewhat foreign, and I think you also have the problem that why people say they value goals, no-one likes to be told what to do either.

Leslie

Of course, and so often when we do the cascading, the act of cascading a goal or creating an alignment, it's just pushing something that we might be working on down to our direct reports without taking into consideration how they're going to react to this - is it meaningful for them? Are they going to feel that they're actually contributing and developing in a way that betters them as an individual at the same time?

Steve

That's both interesting, the thing that ties both this example to self-assessment and the goal setting is, I think people are thinking this stuff's going to be very empowering, wow, you're going to be able to provide insight into your strengths and weaknesses, or you're going to be able to take ownership for mapping out your jobs, but if it's not done right, it's either threatening or probably likely to make people defensive, or to react negatively to it, in both cases.

Leslie

Absolutely.

Steve

Wow. The last thing of the three questions you had, the first one saying, why are you doing this; the second one, what's the scope of the change; the last one was, having to do with integrating with other things, so people don't just see there's yet another task laid on top of my already busy day. When you look at integration, what are the things that are usually, it's really important to integrate deployment of talent management technology around, when you look at clients and say, "Look - you really need to tie this to (blank) other program" - what are some of those other programs?

Leslie

From a pure HR perspective, I often see a lot in tying it to your rewards, and I think that's a big piece, when you think about the idea of pay for performance, that's a key element, and a lot of times organizations have separate systems for their payroll or their merits, so I think integrating with that, and being cognisant of what's going on on that side is very important. I also think, from a pure performance and talent management system, you can always even get down to the integration of performance against talent, and so when you're looking at succession, how is that performance piece feeding into that, because people again have different systems, different processes for doing things, so when you're making decisions on the performance side, what is that long term impact when you start to think about talent decisions? Or, again as I mentioned earlier, what is the impact when you start to think about what those merit or salary increases or salary decisions look like?

The other element again is around, I think, development - people often do have a separate learning system or learning approach, or training division ultimately, and you want to take into consideration anything like that that might be happening as well, so that people don't feel that they're doing things in different places, but that ultimately there's a broader vision, and the end goal is not the same, but no matter which path or which area they're in, it ultimately gets them to the place that they want to be.

Steve

Yeah, that makes so much sense, because you think about performance and goal management, there's a lot of talking about what are you doing right now, but what you're doing right now, and how well you're executing on it, should definitely be linked to, well what am I going to get for it? - which is rewards; what's it going to lead to in terms of promotion? - which is succession; and how can I do it better? - which is development, so looking beyond just managing what's happening right now and saying, how can we link the performance and goal management to some of these other decisions, of which technology can obviously help with that as well.

Are there any other training - we've talked quite a bit, but is there any other training, a-has, thoughts that you can share with our audience about, you're getting ready to deploy this technology, here's some things you should think about to make sure it goes really well?

Leslie

Some of the things, I think we talked, kind of honed in on the key areas, and some of the things I have found to be interesting is that people think, it is an easy application, or generally the application is very easy, and people, so they try at the same time to minimize that, and that to them an effective training may be one which people don't have any questions, but from the perspective of my experience and what I see with other organizations, I think you really need to pay attention to that training and communication as part of the broader process, so no matter how in depth you get, bring it up in the beginning, and think about it through the life of the implementation and the deployment. It could be that it ends up being as simple as possible, but if you aren't thinking about it in the beginning, you'll forget something, or you'll be surprised at the end when something comes up that you didn't quite surface early on, it will impact your decisions you make around the design of your system as well, so I think the other biggest catches is about bringing the training discussion in up front, so that you don't have any surprises later. And then don't misconstrue the simplicity of something, just because it seems easy, when you're involved from an implementation perspective doesn't mean that everyone else is going to experience the same thing that you do.

Steve

Yeah, and there's some hidden catches I think, as you said, some things are simple, as like a self-assessment that you think is an easy thing to do, could have some pretty big implications, and the other thing I think, when you're just talking and look at different talent management deployments I've seen is, look, if you're implementing this for strategic reasons to drive the business forward, the goal of the training shouldn't be just to teach people how to fill out forms?

Leslie

Right, exactly, and one other thing that comes to mind too is that, when you're thinking about training, and this is something I think a lot of people already know, but we often forget, is you want to have variety in your training, and even variety in your communication and your messaging, because people learn in different ways, people listen in different ways, and I think that's what helps people be most successful is that they're giving people options to learn in a way that best suits them, they'll remember, they'll retain a lot more, and they'll become much more engaged. They can do it in a way, or embrace it in a way that's going to be well received from their experience.

Steve

So it's like, as with any meaningful change, one Powerpoint presentation over a webinar's probably not going to do it, you probably need to communicate more ultimately.

Leslie

Exactly.

Steve

Wow, well Leslie, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and wisdom and knowledge around deployment of technology, it's been a very interesting discussion, and I want to thank you very much for appearing on People Performance Radio.

Leslie

Absolutely, thank you Steve, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker

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