Mike Ohata – Leadership and Building a Resilient Workforce
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Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources.

Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data, and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data, technology, and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now, here are your hosts, David Teretsky and Dwight Brown. Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Teretsky, alongside my co-host, best friend, comedian...

And salary.com employee, Dwight Brown. Dwight Brown, how are you? I'm great because we're having as much fun as we are at each other's expense. Yes, and the dog is in the background enjoying himself too. If you guys only had a picture. Was that a snore? Did you do a snore?

And the reason why we're having such a great time is we have a very special guest with us, Mike Ohata. Mike, how are you? I'm doing fantastic and getting a chuckle watching you guys laugh as you work through this. Well, when you work with people who you love, like I love Dwight. Exactly. We laugh most of the day. I mean, we try and get revenue as well from people.

you know, for our jobs, but every once in a while we've got to be serious, but yes, every once in a while. Yeah. So Mike, how are you? I'm doing fantastic. Thank, thank you so much for having me on the podcast here. We, we love having here. And so why don't you explain to people who you are and how you got to this moment in time? Sure. Yeah. Thanks so much. So currently I'm a leadership coach and I, and I also do board advisory work.

I have a long history working in big four and Fortune 15 companies. And my latest role is before I transitioned into being a leadership coach. I was really a talent leader and chief learning officer. And so one of the things that has given me a lot of passion is just really thinking about the development of professionals over time. And one of my past experiences, there was such great calibration around

the workforce. And I carry that forward around like just that expectation and that desire with people. And so, so one of the things I've done is I've really spent a lot of time thinking about this, thinking about talent, what the implications are. And, and I also like, for example, I, I, I'm a, a talent strategist and advisor to St. Charles Consulting. And, and that's where we did some work on putting together a book that I'm called the Talent Field Enterprise.

And we'll put a link to the book in the show notes. So if any of the people listening want to take a look at your work, they'll have it directly to Amazon. Thank you. If Amazon is your path of choice for selling your book. Absolutely. And there's an audio version for sure. And there's so you can absolutely. Thank you.

I was thinking about having my book narrated by Morgan Freeman as an audiobook. There you go. But it's a graphic novel, so it might be very difficult. So, Mike, what we try and do for every...

guest on our podcast is, we ask one fun thing that no one knows about you. Yeah, the one sort of, I would say, nerdy kind of things that I really enjoy learning about and reading about paleoanthropology and really what it means to be human. So, for example, one of the ones that I looked at recently, I've been reading stuff and I watched some updated documentaries on Homo naledi, which was found in South Africa. And it's just, you know, what they showed us around

you know, the species that live, you know, 330,000 years ago actually buried their dead. They took it, took their deceased down into this really long, complicated tunnel.

And as they were finding these bones, they were kind of curled up in a fetal position in these little kind of little ditches. And so it's just really fascinating and just raises all kinds of questions around what it means to be human. And so I love it because it takes us back to kind of just thinking about who we are as, you know, as humans, for sure. It's definitely fascinating.

You know, some people, when they get to the one fun thing, some of them make us laugh, some make us cry, and some make us think. That was definitely one of the deeper ones. I know. I'm picturing the whole thing in my head. It is fascinating.

Yeah, maybe we'll get another podcast together on the paleoanthropology thingy. I think it was what you said. I think you didn't say thingy in there. No, he didn't say thingy. Because I'm an idiot, Dwight, I'm going to go back to it and say the paleoanthropology thingy. Thingy. There you go. Maybe it sounded like a rubber band or something.

So our topic for today is going to be one that's kind of fascinating, especially for people in the talent management world where we are dealing with a lot of very complex issues on skilling, reskilling, and keeping our workforces modern. Today, our topic is leadership, building a resilient workforce. ♪

Our first question, Mike, is in the Talent Fueled Enterprise, your book, you emphasize that traditional talent management frameworks are really no longer sufficient in today's crazy, you didn't say that, I did, changing business environment. Can you elaborate on what you see as the primary shortcomings of the traditional approaches?

And why they fail to meet today's organizational needs? Yeah, you know, this is something that I do feel like it's really important for all of us, you know, as HR leaders, as business leaders to think about is, you know, the current model around talent really is about 25 years old now.

And it's based on this notion around that we're going to feed and kind of promote, as it were, in terms of development, high potentials. Right. And there's a view around that managers have a key role and so forth. But what, you know, we've all studied this, right? You folks know probably better than me, right? When you're looking at data, is this around what the generations of employees and the workforce is actually looking for? And it really has changed quite a bit. You know, first of all, we start talking about with millennials and experience, right?

Right. And this is current focus around skills and kind of relevant work experience. And then people move on. Right. Wind back just a few years and the pandemic punctuated this whole sort of sensibility around, you know, where people want to work, how they want to spend their time. And if you even think around some of the really current things that are going on with employers, right.

who are asserting their control over the workforce. It's really kind of fascinating because aside from kind of the mandate piece of it, it's really around to me kind of a gesture around what they understand. And it's completely sort of understandable sort of model that says, hey, we typically work with you in person. So we need you to be in person, right? This is how we directed work and so forth. And really the change up in our mindset has to be is like, how do we partner with people? How do we collaborate? How do we engage the workforce?

And I would pause there because if you think about it, what's fascinating about this is we use those terms all the time today to talk about what we want to do with employees. And I would actually say it has a very different sensibility. They're the right words, but I think in kind of this newer model, what we need to really think about is how am I going to work with you to figure out what's the balance around what I need you to get done versus what you would like to get done?

And if we can figure that piece out, then we're going to actually have this totally different relationship with the workforce. It's really more around partnership. Are we 100% focused on business results? Absolutely. Just like some of your comments earlier, like that's how we make money. That's how people get paid. That's how variable cost gets paid off. We absolutely have a workforce that understands that.

and they want something more. Yeah, I think what you're hearkening back to is the old contract we used to have where we worked for an employer, the employer had employees that wanted to work for that employer. And the model was the employer would employ you for a period of time and there would be a very, very close, trusted relationship where the employee would invest their time, they'd invest their future,

They would go on trainings for the employer. They would learn, they would grow, they would promise that they would perform at a certain level. And then the employer would reward them for short term and long term through compensation, right? As well as, as well as rewards and as well, intrinsic training and extrinsic training. And, and then the company would be, you know, would benefit through the productivity as well as that growth.

And that kind of stopped. I mean, that trust relationship has stopped. Thank you, Jamie Dimon, as well as, you know, a lot of other business leaders saying, I don't trust people anymore. As to your point, Mike, I want to see them. I want to command and control them. And so I guess where I'm going with this is.

That model is definitely old and it's broken and it's getting, I mean, the pandemic didn't break it. I think business leaders are now breaking it by saying, look, we're going to lay you off eventually anyways. Yeah. I think the pandemic was an inflection point, wasn't it? Absolutely. On something that was already taking place.

And you're right. And so it's understandable that business leaders want to go back to what they've known operationally because they grew up in this operational kind of scheme, right, or system. They worked for them. And that's not wrong, but I would just say that it's not matched to what's going on with employees in the workforce today. Especially generationally. Generationally, yeah. You know, the pandemic and...

The the period after with the great resignation and what that did to the contract that you're talking about, you know, how much was leading up to this versus how much was sort of the big bang with this, would you say? Well, you know, I don't know if I have any.

Kind of the perfect answer. I do just, I feel like the pandemic was a punctuation point and it had to do with sort of this kind of broadly experienced sort of life and death kind of contemplation. Right. And so, you know, when we're talking about humans and what it means to be human, what's really fascinating is watching come to the foreground, this whole consideration, I think on some level, right.

Right. That felt like a long time when we're going through it, like what's important to me? Like, what do I really want to get out of my day job? What do I want to get out of my gig? And for, I think for most of, I would say corporations and business leaders, et cetera, it probably felt like this huge punch.

And I would just say, no, it just accelerated. Something was already happening. And so to me, what I appreciate about this really unfortunate and traumatic kind of time is it gives us the opportunity to kind of rethink how we want to deal with people or employees. Unfortunately, though, what a lot of employees are seeing right now is not skill building. It's not retraining. It's

When the economy is shifting and we see retrenchment in certain sectors, that the first knee-jerk reaction of every business leader is, I'm going to cut a 10% across the board rate.

I'm not even talking about what's going on in the government right now. I'm talking apolitically that the first knee-jerk reaction, instead of skill building, instead of reskilling, and instead of being able to use a resource that you are familiar with and are known quantity, you're just going to chop them off.

Yeah, that's a really great point. And, you know, there's sort of two aspects to that comment. One is that we kind of get, we all get, it's uncomfortable, it's disruptive, it can, you know, some, it may be more disruptive for others, but we get that, like, there's this short-term, right, business results focus. And so we're going to cleave off

you know, say 10% of the workforce to use your example. And then later on, we scratch our head and go like, well, where did all the talent go? Exactly. Right. And it'd be really interesting, but this requires an investment. So I'm not trying to be naive here, but it says, well, okay, we got to cut some expense. And can we also invest in our people?

for tomorrow because it's, you know, business doesn't exist just in this point in time of cost cutting. There's kind of a long-term lifespan to it. And so that's where I wouldn't call it short-sighted. I would just say that we're probably optimized around the short-term results versus the long-term capability development of the organization. And if we can figure out ways to do both of those, that'd be really good. So let me give you an example. Like, could you do this, but also kind of say, okay, when we come out of this,

30 days from now, 90 days from now, what are the kind of the set of skills that we need in our people? What are the kind of the core attributes that we need? Because they're going to actually need to be the workforce that actually carries us for the next three to five years, whatever the timeframe is. We're not asking those questions while we're doing the cost cutting. And what I would ask or kind of advise is, are there ways that we can do this, do both, right? Maybe not in every department or every function, right?

Maybe not in every segment of the business, but the long-term bet is actually the capability that's actually going to get us to sustainable growth and so forth.

You know, it's interesting how the pendulum has flown. I was optimistic that when the pandemic hit and we had the great resignation, we had a lot of remote work and there was, you know, the contract was changing. And I was optimistic that it was going to change for the long term. What's gone back?

And, you know, frankly, I call it lazy leadership when the first thing that you do is say, all right, we're going to cut headcount. It's total lazy leadership as opposed to what you're talking about with, hey, how can we have a plus and with this? You know, because we've got to cut costs. You've got to do something to save the company. It's, you know, but it's a matter of being creative, figuring out as you're talking about where are you going to invest in your people?

realizing that that's going to benefit your business so much better when the pendulum swings again and it's tough it's tough you know to interject a little bit of like what i would say um kind of an empathetic view right to the business leader and the hr leaders is that there's just a hundred things going on every day right during the pandemic and coming out of it and it's um

It's, you know, on one level, like I kind of hear like, or have sensed and watched and experienced like just people being exhausted with kind of making all these changes. So there is a sort of this real desire to get back to whatever, you know, new normal is. And we went through all those terms, right? And so forth. But it's really, I think it's the focus, the things that focus on, Dwight, are like what you're saying is like, how do you...

how do you get some creativity in there? How do you get some courage in there? How do you think about a new equation for people, right? And the tendency is to kind of go with what we know. Now, that might be interpreted as kind of like, well, you could do better. But what I would try to say, it's not wrong. It's just that it's kind of an obvious answer. What else could we do, right? To give a little bit of space for folks to kind of

like growing to like, like we got a real, so a real kind of opportunity with talent. So here's kind of the thing that's going on, right? That there's this whole discussion that's coming and you're starting to hear it more and more, right? This, all this talk about talent. I'm going like,

In everybody's guts, they kind of know this people problem is one that they got to figure out. Right. And we, in the past, we kind of went through the cultured conversations and all that. And I was actually listening to a podcast this morning and someone was talking about all the culture work. And I said, and I was kind of thinking like, can we stop talking about culture and just get at the vibe?

And I'm not trying to be sort of like simplistic about overly simplistic, but vibe actually is much harder work than culture is what I argue. Cause it's actually has, it's going to get down to intentionality. Right. But think about all the things like, what do we really, what's our real intentions with our people to create talent?

Like that. And like, and that's not, it's not just how much we pay them. It's like, how do we work with them? Right. We're back to how do we partner with them? Because we tend to think right. And kind of this, this notion of compensation is that, well, people just want compensation. It's like, well, compensation is a form of recognition. Yes. But people really want something more. So let's focus on what that something more is. And then compensation is a great compliment to that. But if you're only doing compensation, well, there's no set of dollars that are actually going to ever,

fulfill what everybody's going to want if you only focus on money. Well, the state of Colorado is actually trying to step a little bit forward in that thinking, forward thinking in that, which is that they're trying to take on

The the career aspect of rewards. And so if if you're familiar with the pay transparency in Colorado, they are requiring companies to have a career framework where an employee can see where can my career go? Where is my next step? What skills and training do I need to get to that?

There you go. That is very forward looking. And I have heard about that. And that's absolutely what people want. And it's like, that's what I want to do. Well, I don't want to do that.

Well, and you know what's funny, Mike, is I don't hear any resistance from Colorado companies saying this is a dumb idea. It's a wonderful idea. It's a phenomenal thing that Colorado is actually requiring companies to have this. We should have every company required to have this, but it's not. And when we start working with Colorado clients, they're like, all right, so what do we do to have to be transparent and to be transparent?

compliant with this? And the answer is, well, even if you have operations outside of Colorado, use the same frameworks. Just build a framework that works for your organization. Care about the fact that employees now need to be able to chart their path. There you go. Now you're creating an opportunity for people to get rewarded for

for their longevity, as well as for their skill building and be able to see a path forward. Yeah. And transparency does all kinds of de-risking, right? It de-risks the folks leave.

Right. Because now, for example, in a de-risk litigation saying, well, you didn't give me what I was going to get out of my job or so forth, or you put me in a role that I didn't sign up for, you know, and all those kinds of things, because now it's all kind of out there. And then I believe over time, it starts to solve this macroeconomic thing around how people move around in the marketplace. Right. So like you're saying, well, I'm

I have these skills, but I want to go into these other skills and I want to go learn these skills. And you can kind of pursue it. Like, so now the market's starting to sort out this,

This basic like onboarding training problem that we've been dealing with for decades. Right. Because now you like systematically saying like, no, these are all the things that we expect you to have. These are the things we're going to work with you and develop. Right. And if that's not what you want to do, you can go do something else. But at least the system now of your organization can kind of deal with people coming in.

Isn't it fascinating when you're giving people the tools they need to make decisions about their career and their future? Yeah. They're going to make great decisions.

Well, at least they're going to make informed decisions. They may still make dumb decisions, but at least those dumb decisions are informed by real information that, you know, enables them to make, people don't make mature decisions. They make decisions. You know, they, they kind of knee jerk sometimes. Like I just had a crappy discussion with my boss. And so I'm going to quit forgetting about the fact that I've got long-term incentives that are going to vest next month. And you know,

potentially make me rich. Yeah. People make stupid mistakes all the time. Yeah. I would say it's a great decision because it's informed, like you said, but it's one that the person owns. Yes. Right. And if you can get that ownership in there, like that's huge, right? Because one of the things, right, we've all experienced in the workforce is a sense of sort of helplessness or like kind of being disempowered, right? Or being disengaged. And if that provides agency, right?

for the workforce and employees, that's a good thing. Then they can make, it may not be the perfect decision, but it's good and at least the starting point that they own it.

And it's a good long-term play from two angles. Number one, from the angle of business, because you're investing in your people and you're going to have these natural ebbs and flows. And when it is time to make the decision to do a reduction in force, then people are better positioned and better cushioned to be able to move into business

jobs at other companies, you know, as opposed to, you know, all of a sudden my job is gone and I'm going, oh no, no,

what am I going to do? Yeah. And this takes us right back to that kind of early part of the conversation that if you have this discipline as an organization and you have like an enterprise skills, either mindset and framework in place, so to speak, then when you're doing like this reduction, you're actually having this whole conversation like, what are the ones, what are the skills I absolutely need to retain, right? Exactly. And they have to go beyond the technical and the superficial things, but what are those longer term ones, right? They

They're going to make us sustainable, capable, right? And so forth. So like, who are the people that have the best kind of ability to learn, right? Who are the people that have the best sort of sense of adaptability? You know, I use, I often use kind of that, that the attributes by, by Divini, like he talks about, like in the seals, like the person has to swim across the pool, holding their breath, right?

And there's a person that a candidate that drags himself on the bottom of the pool because they don't know that they don't know how to swim. It's like, I can't teach you that level of tenacity, but I can teach you to swim like we can teach you to swim. And we're like, but that kind of core sort of characteristic, that's like, what do you need there?

for tomorrow, right? While you're taking out costs over here. And it might be tough, right? On those people that may like, maybe not be showing up a hundred percent, but that could also be a good message too. Like as you go transparently, right? To Colorado, state of Colorado, we're looking for this in our workforce. Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast.

a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com forward slash H R D L consulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. Let's transition to our next question, which is we've talked about some of the interesting things that we've seen happen. Why are some companies sticking with outdated strategies?

that really are causing problems for their employees and really are going to set them back probably a ways? You know, I think it's kind of on the theme of like people focus on and organizations focus on what they know, right? And what's sort of worked over time. And get that things like the focus on high potentials and mostly where investment goes to high potentials

you know, is built into the performance management systems, right? So then it's built into the tools. And so like systemically, it's actually sort of kind of brittle, right? It's built in. So it's hard. It's really hard for organizations to step away from some of this. Now, I think the...

There's sort of this retort that would say, hey, we're not only focused on high potentials, we're going to make a differentiated investment. And I think that the concept of differentiated investment is the same. We're going to focus on high potentials. They get leadership development and everybody else gets training. And I'm like, how does that work? And so one of the things I would ask leaders to do is go back and talk to your talent and learning teams.

And take a really hard look at your leadership development programs. How much of that is remediation? And that's actually one of the things when I was a chief learning officer is the leadership development team came to me and said, like, we've done this whole analysis. Like, and these programs are all about

you know, the recognition. There's not a lot of development going on here. These things are all like remediating kind of like go-to-market skills that our leaders should have. And, you know, and so their point was like,

the system's kind of busted, right? So this is one thing. And so you're constantly, you know, leaders are kind of stuck in this remediation program with leadership development because they haven't actually spent the time to go and build in this leadership development that actually works across the organization. Now, the people who are more conservative fiscally will say, well, that's a huge investment. I go like, no, it's a trade-off decision. Yeah. That's really what it is. Like, are you going to spend millions and millions of dollars

with this small group or are you going to try to spread some of that across? So actually by the time they get to these leadership roles, they're a much better place. And that's mindset. I mean, that's really a mindset piece of it. And it's, it's, and here's where I would say is one of the things that keep people stuck in this model is that we think that high potentials deserve more. Right. And I, and I think in a merit based sort of mind frame, right.

That's, you know, that's kind of where we go to. And again, I would say, and what can we do to develop all people? Right. And so instead of kind of excluding folks, it's like, what can we do to kind of actually create this framework that actually does more for the development of our people so that they can kind of come up and actually be better leaders? And over time, you know, the theory would be is that, you know, the workforce is actually stronger, more capable. Right.

Do you think your answer changes in a world where Gen AI and AI is more prevalent, where maybe getting individualized assistance for the mass would be easier because we can use models to figure out what the gaps are that each person might have, high potential or not, and actually use assessments to be able to

figure it out and then use the AI to help train those away? Yeah, I would say the short answer would be yes. Like if you take kind of the long history of automation, right, and to AI, it's around...

You're going to displace work that's sort of task-based, right? That's like some of the low-hanging fruit, which kind of frees you up to focus on other kinds of work and so forth, which then drives other skills and so forth. I know there's a lot of focus on, you know, AI using for like sort of routine, sort of like training and coaching, like AI can develop, you know, the content, for example. And a lot of times, you know, organizations get really hyper-focused on like,

the quality of a training, right? That's kind of one of those big learning things. And I just said, like, again, what are you trying to get done here? Like, you know, is good enough good enough to get us through the skills that we need, right? And then kind of move on. And then, again, to your point, like, use AI to kind of, like, up things. Like, yeah, to what point can we review a person's set of work

what's in their CV, what's been in their projects to actually understand, well, hey, we think you have these skills and we're looking for you to do these things. And I think right now we just, we don't have enough people

Of the data, I think, to kind of go after those things. But so then it's like figuring out how kind of organization we begin to sort of instrument ourselves right into kind of operating with AI that way. So this I think the opportunities will continue to grow, but we're just getting started here. It's it's interesting, D.

The footer of my email is something that I saw that really resonates with this. AI won't replace people. People using AI will replace people not using AI. Hmm.

Is that your quote or is that somebody brilliant? No, I stole that from someone. Someone much more brilliant than me. But I liked it so much, I put it on my email. There you go. Because I think it gets to exactly the point that you're talking about. And it really kind of weaves into this topic.

And whether it's AI or other sort of people replacement pieces of things, the theme is always the same. Dwight, go back 20 years and we're having the same conversation about computers in the workforce. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I, you know, I tell the story all the time of how I went to a corporate headquarters of a large automobile manufacturer and they had one computer in the center of the room. And I said, where's mine? And they said, we share that. That's the departmental computer. Right. And I went and I said, what?

I just finished my four years of college using a computer. I'm not going back. And they're like, well, that's the way we work. And I was like, no, it isn't. I'm not going to be there. So, I mean, but Mike, we've kind of gotten spoiled. And to Dwight's point, it's now going to become a new tool in our belt that we have to figure out how. And just like that, it's another skill that,

Right. That we either make use of or, you know. Yeah. Find ourself on the cutting room floor. Absolutely. And I do see like in the discussion, right, is that there is this awareness, right, is around really AI should really begin to highlight what the role of humans are in all of this. And that's been even true of just thinking about how robotics have worked.

Right. Because it's, it's, it's not an elimination of humans. It's around, well, how do robots work? And I, I often think around like Amazon logistics that like, or just they spend so much time and it's actually, people were worried, well, you're going to, you're going to eliminate workers. Actually, there's more employees working in logistics today than there were before. That's right.

And there's many more robots working at the same time. Don't watch Battlestar Galactica, though. I love Battlestar Galactica. The Cylons wanted to eliminate us after a while because we were really mean to them. But, I mean, to your point, though, it starts other industries that other people have to focus on different things. And re-skilling then becomes...

not just one company's problem, it becomes every company's problem, right? And then add your transparency to that. And now the whole market actually starting to work in coordination. And that's, you know, we're all capitalists on some level, so to speak, right? And I said, like, that's good for everybody. That's good for business.

Mike, we could talk about this forever, but unfortunately, we're running out of time. So we're going to have to ask you back and talk about how the Cylons are going to take over. But thank you so much. It's been a pleasure having you on the HR Data Labs podcast. Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And Dwight, thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate you being here. Always, always good talking with you. And like David said, we'll have to have you back. And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe. That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.