Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your Modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help leaders activate performance without burning out their teams or themselves. If your team could use a boost of inspiration and action, I'd love to support you with a workshop, a keynote, or a manager lab program. You can find more about me and my work@leadabovenoise.com. So today we're back with the third in our four part summer short interview series, and today's guest is Brett Underhill.
Brett heads up talent acquisition and learning and development at Taboola. And in this quick hit conversation, we talk about some of the workplace trends that Brett is seeing, and we cover some bits of advice that you won't wanna miss. So enjoy my conversation with Brett Underhill. Brett Underhill, it is such a pleasure to have you on the Modern Mentor Podcast today. Thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me.
Oh, I've been looking forward to this. So Brett, you are over at a company called Tabula and you head up both talent acquisition and learning and development. So you bring the people in and then you help educate them and, and build up their skills. It's a really nice blend of areas you're playing in, and I'm excited to tap into some of your wisdom today. Great,
Thank Absolutely. Let's go. So as you know, we are experimenting with these short form interviews. We've got these three key questions that we're focusing on. And so the first one that I would love to ask you is to tell us about something that you have done or tried or implemented in your organization that you feel has been successful and that has something to teach us.
Something that we can all, whoever we are, whatever altitude we're at in a company, we can kind of pick up and take some insight and action on. Sure. And what I'm gonna share is something that I've brought to or leveraged, utilized in almost every company that I've worked at. So hopefully people will find the application helpful to wherever they're at.
What I have found really helpful when trying to implement a change, a large scale initiative, whether you're in HR or the business, I have found that a key to my success with these initiatives is taking a, what I call a pilot approach. So yeah.
Okay. So I love that I'm a big fan of the pilot. I think it makes sense in many contexts and in at many altitudes. But tell us a little more what's something that you've piloted and, and how did you go about sort of setting that up or structuring it?
Yeah, you know, um, I think that, um, you know, I first started playing around with this approach when I worked in highly regulated companies where there was a lot of risk, a lot of regulation. And so, you know, whether it was sort of initiating something that was considered really risky or non BroadStream, but something that we wanted to try out, I would say, well, you know what, let's take a pilot approach.
And really the way I would position it is by making sure that, you know, you have sort of a succinct, you know, sort of time timeline, uh, a beginning and end with project objectives that align to a business goal, key performing indicators, things that you know, you can make sure that you're measuring and showing impact. And, um, yeah, I can think of three times off the top of my head that I've implemented this approach.
And it's a great way to get buy-in a great way to secure budget and a great way to get something over the finish line without saying, Hey, we're doing this big thing and we're doing it forever. We're, you know, it's more of the approach of like, let's try it and see how it goes. And I think if you, um, build a really solid, uh, tiger team as I like to call them, and sort of known in the industry where you take sort of a, a discipline project approach that's really helpful.
And I would say obviously, well, maybe not so obviously, but having a executive sponsor to kind of help you, um, you know, support the initiative and, um, and then getting like great employees on board and actually doing the work creates a win-win situation because, um, in my experience, most of these initiatives are successful. And if they're not, that's okay too, because you're still able to produce tangible results and it's great exposure, it's great development.
So I've always found whether you decide to move forward, forward with an initiative or not, there's benefits to both.
That's awesome. Can you tell us about something that you use the approach on and, and kind of how you structured it, what you learned, and then what was the next step?
Sure. Let's see. So I'll take an example from my learning development side of the house job. We were in the throes of building an l and d uh, learning and development infrastructure for the company. And we wanted to instill e-learning or self-led learning. And so we approached two very mainstream e-learning platforms that many of your listeners are probably, uh, familiar with. And, um, we decided to approach them with a 30 day free trial or a pilot.
And we enrolled over a hundred employees worldwide in every region. So apac, Israel, the Americas, amea, and we sorta, you know, um, had these kickoff meetings with like, this is what we're doing, these are the requirements to participate in this pilot. And then we, um, you know, were able to create learning paths for that that would actually help us in the long term.
So we implemented the 30 day pilot, got some feedback over, communicated on what we were doing, um, and emphasizing the fact that it was free learning and investment on our people. And then, um, from the survey results, we were able to really hone in and select the vendor that we were gonna go with in the long term. And, you know, what was interesting about this is that one key decision I had to make was, do we tell the vendors that we're doing this?
This seems a little, I'm not sure if this would be considered ethical. And I found that by being transparent with the vendors, they were all in and they provided the great greatest service ever. And you know, they obviously, um, well, again, maybe not so obviously, uh, were really interested in what the results would be because they wanted the feedback from employees globally as well. So that's, that's one of my more recent examples that I've implemented the motto.
I, I can share a few more if it would be helpful. That's
Great, Brett, thank you. I appreciate that. And, and as I, so as I listened to the project that you described, which is pretty high level and pretty kind of enterprise impacting, if I think about what insights can we take from that and maybe leverage at a, at a lower altitude within an organization, what I heard was that you were kind of doing an AB test, right? Was it gonna be vendor A or vendor B?
You had a clear kind of population size, you had a short timeline, and it sounds like you knew what you were looking to learn by the end of it, right? And so I think those are some really essential elements that we can probably replicate wherever we sit in an organization.
We may not be building out a global learning platform, but even if you are in customer service, let's say, and you are, you're a frontline representative, but you have an idea about how to better tackle particular inbound requests that you feel like you're getting a lot, right? And you maybe wanna, you wanna change the script or you wanna change the approach, but you feel like you, you don't have the data, you don't have the authority to kind of overhaul the process.
But I would imagine you could take a similar approach here and say, you know what, I'm gonna, if I take 20 calls today, I'm going to, I'm gonna ask my manager if I can try just for today for 10 of the calls, I'm gonna use our regular approach, 10 of the calls, I'm gonna use the alternate approach. I'm looking to see, you know, if I can resolve the issue faster or if I can get a higher survey score at the end of it, um, and I'm just gonna do it for a day or a week, right?
There's almost like a really similar analogy that we can take from that, right? So I think that piloting is a wonderful way to your point, to, to learn how something works to get data to get buy-in. Um, and I think we can use it at, at high and low altitudes in a company. So thank you for sharing that.
Yeah, definitely. And, and I would say that one key thing, in addition to some of the things I spoke about in making something successful, and it could be tricky to navigate as far as where you sit in an organization and whenever you had to bring sort of key stakeholders on board or regulatory parties, you know, I sort of always approached it as, Hey, I want you to review what we're doing and give your input, let's align.
And then once we incorporate your input as appropriate, we're going to move forward. It's important to kind of not position it as giving someone an ultimate decision to, to block you if, if you will. You know? So it's sort of like letting them feel sort of part of the mo the movement. Yes. And it's much easier. And then when you sort of go live, you know, the sky isn't falling, people aren't freaking out. So, um, that's another key, like a more of a nuancey thing I would say. That's helpful.
That is helpful. Thank you. So Brett, my second question to you is more of a space for us to maybe do a little bit of live brainstorming together. And this is where I would love to hear about something that you are kind of challenged with or noodling on or curious about, uh, where we can just have some live dialogue. So hit me with what you've got.
Yeah. You know, one thing that from a, you know, talent perspective, and it doesn't matter whether you sit in HR or the business because, you know, talent is a competitive advantage and everyone is interested in getting the best for their organization. I would say one thing that we're noodling on is we're unpacking the sort of long-term effects of the talent landscape when many companies were on a hiring binge or in growth mode and pairing that with a great resignation, right?
When everyone was sort of, uh, quitting and moving jobs and, you know, leaders were almost panicked to make sure that they had the right talent in place. And now we're reflecting and looking at our, you know, sort of our larger, um, company if you will, or talent base. And we're asking questions such as, you know, in that time of rapid hiring, was there a deterioration or an improvement in the quality of talent that we brought brought on?
Did the quality of hires suffer due due to the dangerous combination of urgency to get the job filled? And smaller talent pools at that? And if so, who is responsible? Is it talent acquisition? Is it hr? Is it what we did for onboarding and training? Or is it, you know, the business leader that ultimately had the decision in bringing that talent on?
And how can we in the future, I guess, learn from this and to avoid any pitfalls or learnings that we've had from sort of that in a way it was almost reactionary, right? I think everyone was sort of in this like hiring blitz. So that's one thing that we're, we're looking at, I would say right now and preparing for in the future when things pick up again.
So the question being is your question around we're trying to assess where our talent is, or is it more we suspect maybe some of our talent isn't hitting the mark and we're trying to figure out what to do with that?
Yeah, it's the second one. It's the talent isn't quite, I mean, we have a larger employment base, so you know, that could be part of it, but it is like, yeah, like the, our quality, um, deteriorate and if so, why?
Yeah, I think that that is really interesting. And in fairness, the pandemic was a very particular moment in time, right? Our economy did go a little bit wacky, and so I'm hopeful or cautiously optimistic, we won't quite be in that exact situation again.
But that said, I do think it's important to be rigorous in not just how we assess our talent as we bring them on, but also how we maximize the value that we equip them to deliver in the business, which is actually something I talk a lot about on this show, right? So a lot of what I love talking about is this concept that I call activation, which is really the intersection point of performance and employee engagement.
So the question being, if we have this talent here and they're here to stay for now, how do we make sure that we get the most out of them while also giving them the most of ourselves? Um, and so this is where I love to talk about my activation framework, which is based on the four pillars. How can we help our talent that we have better deliver, develop, connect, and thrive?
And in my experience, when we look at our employees as the experts on their own work and their own experience, there are tremendous volumes that we can learn from them about how to help them, help us get more out of them. So one of the things that I spend a lot of time with clients on is just pulling groups of employees into a room and helping them understand that when we get these four things right, when we better equip you to deliver, right?
You've got the tools and the resources and the processes and the permissions when we help you to develop key critical skills that are engaging to you but also valuable to our business. We help you to connect so that you feel a sense of belonging, but also that you can collaborate effectively and we help you to thrive. We help you set boundaries and manage your wellness so we get your best energy. These are some of the ways that we can start to move in a positive direction.
And I always tell people that it is much more a dial than a switch. So the goal is not to look at our talent pool and say, well, it's off and we need to turn the switch on, but rather how can we make small increments of progress one bit at a time? And in my, in my opinion, and in my experience, we do it by observing our employees and then asking them for their inputs. And going back to your first point, piloting solutions.
Mm-hmm . Right? So we're not looking for massive overhauls, but when we hear an interesting idea from an employee, we hear about, you know, this process takes me eight hours and there's a step in here that is taking up half of that time and it's not really adding value. Can we test taking that step out? Right?
Or just finding new and creative ways to create connection, making sure we're starting each team meeting five minutes, a quick round robin, you know, what did you binge on Netflix this week? Whatever it might be. You know, there are ways to just sort of tweak and learn as we go and hopefully over time and then, and then monitor, right to your point, watch, watch how well the talent is delivering and determine what's working and what we keep and what we tweak.
Yeah. So that is not a broad based solution by any stretch, but I hope it is a little bit of food for thought for you.
Yeah, no, I love it. Yeah, no, it's good. It resonates, you know, and I think another thing when thinking about your four pillars, and again, a learning I've had from taking the pilot approach, once something is successful, how do you maintain it? How do you monitor, how do you improve, how do you make sure you have the resources to continue the momentum as well? So that, that in a way, I also see as a key risk in sort of implementing any sort of large scale initiative,
you know, project or model for sure. Yeah,
I agree. And to that point, I think by engaging our employees in the designing of the solutions and the plans, I think it does help create buy-in and sustain momentum, right? Yeah,
Definitely.
Awesome, thank you. So Brett, one final question, and this is the one that is meant to be as tangible and as tactical as possible, but given all of your experience as an HR leader, you are the person who is the bouncer at the door of Tabula, right? Mm-hmm . Heading up talent acquisition.
And as you think about, you know, how people can, can demonstrate success, how they can grow their careers, what is one tip that you would offer based on what you've done for yourself or what you've seen be successful? What is one tip that you wish every listener would kind of pick up and experiment with tomorrow?
You know, this may sound redundant, maybe because we're on the topic, but I would say to start practicing with taking a pilot approach personally, professionally, uh, can be really helpful and probably in this day and age and, you know, um, we're all inundated by ai, ai, ai, right? So it is a perfect time to sort of take a pilot approach and try some things out. And I would say that that's the, the space that I've been most active in with that.
So I would say whatever initiative or new thing is on the landscape, uh, be out there as, as a leader or leading and try it. And when you do that and you sort of talk about the risks, like, hey, it might fail, guess what? We'll learn from the failings as well. That's
Great. So what I'm hearing is find something that maybe scares you a little, but that feels important. And just think of a, a first step that you can take. Try it, test it, see how it goes, and, and tweak from there. Yeah. Amazing. Well, Brett, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining me today. There was a lot of wisdom in this conversation and I'm looking forward to seeing it go live.
Great. Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity.