Teach a person to fish...

I have tried to lead IT teams by the adage of 'Give a fish to a person, and they eat for the a day. Teach the person to fish, and they eat for a lifetime'. In terms of creating a win/win for both my shareholders and the people I am entrusted with it has always been a no brainer and a value proposition I am proud of. In fact my favorite notes these days are ones I get from people in the organization both past and present, recalling some achievement or accomplishment of the past, and affirming how much they learned on teams I have had the privilege of leading. This feedback only fuels me even more in my belief that workforce development and design has to be one of the first things any CIO/CTO needs to establish early on following their 'change of command' ceremonies. In the Marines, a change of command ceremony served as the formal closure of past leadership, and introduction of the new leader, who is generally eager to put their stamp on the Unit.

Great workforce development starts with a great partnership between HR and the technology team. Because the change is meant to set the tone and establish a purposeful approach for the development of skills and talents going forward, I think it must be lead by the CIO/CTO themselves. The honing of those skills over time may lead other IT leaders further down in the organization say for software development versus infrastructure management to refine expectations, but that can only occur once a solid foundation has been laid across the whole organization. My experience has been that most HR organizations love this attention on the workforce and are happy to provide guidance and direction on the best process to be used for making changes and improvements. This will ultimately provide a very structured approach by job title and job family for what skills and experiences are required to develop a long and lasting career in your organization.

I have always loved the imagery provided by Denzel Washington in the movie 'Remember the Titans'. There is a scene, when the team goes to training camp, and tells the players that he going to change the way they block, and change the way they tackle. Even though the game of football is still the same, he is setting the expectation that he wants it played a bit differently, he wants it played his way. I would contend that this is similar to good workforce development. However in technology, the tools we use, and approaches we leverage are constantly changing, and how we block and tackle today is nothing like it was even 10 years ago. A great CIO will recognize that fact, and knows that they need great teams to build great solutions. Full stack development, agile methods, cloud designs, artificial intelligence, machine learning and modern container technologies necessitate teams that are constantly educating and practicing on new products. The proverbial end state, is simply a point in time, and like the clock on the wall, it will keep changing.

Five key words get worked into my workforce development efforts; Awareness, Read, Practice, Proficient and Teach. I look at workforce development as a matrix approach to job titles, levels and job families. Every company might have different names for these, but having worked on almost every HR/ERP platform out there I contend to they all deal with a structure very similar. Each keyword then is meant to help define the progression of the skills through the job titles, and it's now my leaderships job to give color and definition to what it means to progress. For example, do you need to be aware of that technology, have read up on it, be able to put it to use in practice, with guidance, or are you proficient and can do it on your own and maybe coach others, and lastly are you able to teach others a course on the subject. In fact, I could make another Denzel movie reference to an even older movie called 'Philadelphia'. Denzel repeatedly makes the request of people to 'explain it to me like I am a 6 year old'. I have learned over the years that if someone cant explain what they want from you, then chances are they aren't clear on it themselves. When you are a leader, its incumbent on you to be able to explain what you need from your team so anyone can understand. Communicating clearly so every one can be aligned is absolutely key.

The argument that generally surfaces after a few weeks of work on this new framework will be what should we do when the people develop these new skills, get proficient and start leaving us for more money? A saying one manager on my team had was, 'you start training, and the talent will start draining'. I had to laugh (internally of course) at his lack of confidence in being able to retain talent and the myopic almost lazy position this suggested. Using my outside voice, I was swift to highlight though that he would get the opportunity then to train the next person in line to take their place. Talent flight is a subject for another article, but for our purposes here I only wish to ensure that the workforce development effort is a repeatable framework that actually should be repeated. Whether someone leaves, moves to a new role or the needs of the business change we should be annually reviewing the expectations of tools and skills needed in the organization. Good workforce development frameworks are meant to assist the IT leadership in developing a culture of training and career progression. Career progression does not always have to be a new job title. My best organizations had people changing roles, job families and gaining experiences they would never be afforded elsewhere, and the managers embraced their roles as the coach ensuring their offensive and defensive lines were ready to play the next game.

An axiom of truth however is that once the workforce plan is completed, everyone will have a different path to get to their destination. There is no 'one single way' to get to the goal line. One person on the team might like to learn by reading and goofing off on their own time, kicking the tires of a new tool. Another person might need formal classroom training. Others might simply need to have small roles on a bigger effort with proper oversight to learn and increase their proficiency. It starts though with intellectual curiosity and a desire to move towards this new goal line by the individual. It is then reinforced and supported by the manager turned coach whose job it is to provide assistance and opportunity to succeed. If the individual is unable to buy in to needing these new skills, which may occur, then over time it might not be a good fit any longer for that person on the team. I have known great COBOL developers who simply did not want to change, and were happy moving to a skill specific type of consulting role with another company when we no longer needed those skills on the team. Those conversations should not be shied away from, it is ultimately a healthy conversation for everyone involved. You need to be flexible, no one size fits all, and at times it may look like chaos moving from your old workforce design to the new. I say that you are designing a map with target destination, each person will plot out their own route and path.

The good news, when done right, you will have an active engaged workforce. You will have instilled and encouraged a culture of learning across the entire organization, and they will all know how to fish for themselves. Your managers gain skills as a coach and develop leadership talents that are essential to well ran teams and they are teaching people to fish. Your task as the CIO/CTO of bringing the best and brightest to bear down on the toughest and most complex problems of the business will be that much easier. Lastly the business will benefit by having a steady supply of top talent knowledgeable about the goals and objectives that are most likely to move the needle in the right direction. The best news of all is that you have the opportunity to tune and adjust annually, so that you can continuously change the way your team blocks and tackles.