Rob Stevenson 0:52
I’m your host, Rob Stevenson. And you’re about to hear the best in the biz. talk talent to me. Hello, again, all of you. Wonderful recruiting, hiring HR and talent acquiring darlings out there in podcast land. It is me Rob Stevenson here with another classic installment of your favorite HR tech podcast. And I have an awesome guest for you today. Let’s bring him in. And then we’ll learn more about him. Dr. Keith Keating. Welcome to the show. How are you today?
Dr. Keith Keating 1:19
Hello, hello, hello, I’m doing good. Great to be here.
Rob Stevenson 1:22
Glad to have you. You are the chief learning officer over at arch well holdings. And while you don’t have the traditional sort of recruiting town acquisition background that a lot of my guests do have, you face a lot of the same kinds of problems in the role that you are in over there. So that’s why I’m excited to have you on because you’re attacking some of these problems from perhaps a different point of view. I’m looking forward to getting into all that with you. Before we do, would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and your background and how you wound up in this role?
Dr. Keith Keating 1:55
Sure. So to your point here, talent is talent is talent, whether we’re recruiting it, whether we’re onboarding it, whether we’re managing the talent. For me, I started on the journey to this role by first being born. That was the beginning, then I grew up all over the world. So there is a point to this. My father was in the military, we lived in multiple countries, I didn’t move to the US until I was much later probably in my teens at some point. 13 When I did, my education was quite different than those in the US. Because I came from Europe, and by teachers would give my parents different feedback on me. So one teacher would say Keith is above average, he should probably skip a grade. And then my parents would go next door. And they would say, we think Keith has a learning disability. And we want to hold him back or we want to put him into the special education program. So I struggled a lot with the traditional idea of school. And eventually I dropped out when I was 15. So I am what’s known as a high school dropout. My father, and teachers all told me I was going to be destined to a life of fast food, which first of all, there’s nothing wrong with working in fast food. But I listened to them. And I did join and got a job at Wendy’s for a couple of years. And I just knew that I wanted to be something else. But I had no idea what opportunities were available to me are really what I could be. And I’m old enough where you looked in the newspaper on Sunday for jobs. And I found this job for Microsoft Office trainer. And I thought, well, how hard could that be? It’s just training Microsoft Office. I know how to use it. So damn teachers, I don’t like them anyway, this is going to be easy. I go when I apply and I was terrible interview. They asked me to do a test teach. I had no idea what a test teach was. And they sent me back home a few minutes later, they called and offered me the job about a week later. And so I said yes, absolutely. And my job was to travel around the country teaching social security administration offices, how to use Microsoft Office, mind you, I’m 17 at that time, and I walk into my first class, and they are my parents age, they’re 40 to 60. I’m their kids age, I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no business stand in front of them. And it was the worst training class that ever existed. But I went back and I studied really, really hard and I got point 000 1% better the next day point 000 1% Better until eventually, I saw the light start to go on, rather than their eyes filled with tears when I didn’t know what I was doing. But the light eventually went on for someone and I remember that first time thinking, maybe I have something here maybe. Maybe I can do this. And I kept studying kept getting better at it. And about a year into it. When I had my first review. I said to my boss, why did you hire me? I had to have been the worst person that you interviewed and she said you were you absolutely were the worst. But you also were the only person that had a clean driving Record, no criminal history and car insurance. And that was really what we needed.
Rob Stevenson 5:05
Fantastic.
Dr. Keith Keating 5:06
So sometimes it’s just about showing up. So anyway, long story short, that was the beginning of my journey into this field, I unfortunately, it’s not any altruistic ideology behind it, it was I looked into it, and for the first 10 years or so it was just a job until it became a passion and a calling. And we’ll get into a little bit of that later.
Rob Stevenson 5:27
There’s this theme throughout that story of expecting people to look some way expecting them to perform in a certain way. And that being the criteria, and that was what was happening with your teachers. And that was what was happening for you internally, when you were like, that was the worst interview ever, I’m not going to be good at this job. But you expected you need to do this one thing, but really, what makes someone successful is gonna believe something else. That is really interesting when you fast forward to like performance in an organization. Right? It’s like, if you are measuring someone based on the wrong thing, then they’ll always come up short. I would love it just a little bit of color commentary to satisfy my own curiosity on the transition from like, European education to American education. I had a very similar experience, I was really, really good in some subjects and others, I was terrible. There was no like in between that was either really good or awful. And so I’m curious, like, what was kind of the friction, what was happening in your European education, that meant you weren’t so good in the United States education system,
Dr. Keith Keating 6:26
for example, we didn’t learn about US history. In Europe, of course, if you look at the length of time, the US was around compared to the rest of the world, there was much longevity and the other countries. So that’s where we focus, the US was just a blip. So I get to the US. And they had expected me to know a lot about the US history, which I didn’t know, the way that the teaching occurred. You know, I’ll give you another example. Books, I think, To Kill a Mockingbird. Yeah, just as one example, I hadn’t read it in Europe, and we had focused on other books. And when you got to the US, they had expected you to already read that. So just small examples of the difference. Math, I think some of the sciences were a little bit different. So it’s just a struggle all around. And it wasn’t just Europe. So I had lived in Germany, Korea, Japan, and then the US. So it was a very diverse mix.
Rob Stevenson 7:20
Sure, you were brought up with no American history, and probably reading temperature and Celsius and other metric system things that it’s interesting that the transition was so hard, even though probably you were a perfectly capable student up until that point.
Dr. Keith Keating 7:32
Yes. But I don’t know that I, I guess yes, I felt capable until I got to the US. And then all of a sudden, I didn’t feel capable anymore. And according to them, I wasn’t capable. But on top of that, being a military brat, there’s another aspect is you’re moving every year, and we moved every at least every one to three years, I was always the new person. So I never had any roots. I never had any stability. Now I hated it at the time. Fast forward. I’m so thankful for that upbringing. Because I’m agile, I’m adaptable. And these are before those words became trendy. I you know, it was sort of thrust upon me as part of my upbringing. And now I’m just so thankful that that’s happened because I can be picked up and dropped anywhere in the world. And I can immediately assimilate. And that works for me in the consulting field, it works for me and organizations and works for travel. So it was very, very difficult for time, but I’m extremely thankful for it now.
Rob Stevenson 8:29
So having got slightly better over time instructing people, your parents in that first role, like having had some kind of success over time in that Microsoft Office class, where did you go from there? How did that turn into a career in this field?
Dr. Keith Keating 8:45
After that, I just laughing because I’m not sure how honest I want to be here. So I ended up after that in Silicon Valley. And this was right@the.com, boom, when HTML design was just blooming, and I was able to really jump into that I was one of the first flash instructors, Dreamweaver, instructors, HTML instructors. And so I pivoted to that piece, because that was really easy to pick up. Subsequently, McKinsey ended up being a client of mine. And I was able to then finagle a job with McKinsey in sort of a consulting space trainer space, sort of a web design space from there, and I think that’s probably where my career really took off. So I jumped around to a lot of different roles in the space. But what I would say is, it wasn’t even a career for the first 10 years or so it was just a job. I didn’t see the value it I just saw the paycheck and it and I think that that’s a pivotal moment when you’re able to transition out of that this is just the job mindset. too, I can find passion in it. It wasn’t my passion, it wasn’t my calling. And I think a lot of people, that’s the case for our jobs, and our work. But the secret is really finding the passion, finding the meaning finding the value in what you do. And so once I was able to do, that’s when it really became a love,
Rob Stevenson 10:18
what occasion did that change?
Dr. Keith Keating 10:20
When I started to recognize that I had value to add, for the first, I would say 10 years or so I was an order taker in my role. And actually, it wasn’t just 10 years, I was born an order taker. So again, my father was in the military. And so I grew up as an order taker, do not speak unless you’re spoken to type mentality. And so when I transition into the workforce, it was second nature just to take orders. And I also didn’t have the skill set in learning and development. And so I took the orders until I built up enough experience, where I started to be able to consult where I started to have an opinion and experience a perspective, if you will. And I started to share that. But then I realized that the business didn’t necessarily want that. And so I had to work really hard to try and learn how to consult how to be a strategic business partner, and eventually evolve into being a trusted learning advisor, which we can come back and talk about that in a minute. So the answer to your question is once I realized I had value to add, but also that the work that I was doing had meaning because at the end of the day, learning has the power to transform and change lives. And I can say that now as a learning and development practitioner, I certainly didn’t feel that on the other side of the table, as a student didn’t understand it hated school, didn’t really do well in university either. But once I recognized that, once you learn how to learn, your future is unstoppable. That really opened my mind and my eyes and my heart to the power of learning as a transformational tool for everyone. And I feel like once I got it, and that’s kind of the theme for me is, even when I first started as the trainer role, took about six months before that light went off, where somebody learned something from me, and I felt it and it motivated, inspired me, fast forward to then really understanding the power of learning for me. And it transformed my life. And now I’m an advocate for the concept of learning, not necessarily the concept of traditional education systems. That’s a different story, different podcast topic. But once I understood that power and value, I want other people to understand that as well and to be able to leverage it. And part of that goes to this idea of the future of work. And there are a large percent of individuals in the workforce. One point is estimated 40% of the workforce was worried about the future of their jobs. And I’m in such a privileged position, I don’t worry about the future of my job, because I know how to learn. And that is the most important skill that we want any employee any talent to have is they’ve got to be agile, adaptable, resilient, ready to fill the next organizational gap, whatever it is, because we don’t know what it is. But we need a workforce that has that mindset, the growth mindset, that lifelong learning mindset. So when these gaps do happen, when COVID happens when organizations need to pivot on a dime, the workforce can pivot a lot with that. And the underlying asset and skill that they need to have is this idea of being able to learn
Rob Stevenson 13:36
it’s fundamental to any growth, any progress on the development, right? Like if you can’t learn a skill, can you change at all? I don’t know.
Dr. Keith Keating 13:44
That’s a good question. I would say if you can’t learn not necessarily a skill, but if you can’t learn then, no, you really can’t change otherwise, even just something as as introspection and self awareness is about learning. So if you don’t have those, if you don’t have that emotional intelligence, and that ability to learn, can you change? Probably not?
Rob Stevenson 14:09
Yeah, you’re just stagnant, right? You just kind of stuck sedentary. This is where we begin to intersect with the talent acquisition arm of the business a little bit because people have been hired into a role. And then someone like you is like, well, do they know how to change? Do they know how to move beyond this role, perhaps? What is your connection to the talent acquisition arm of the business? And how do you work together? Let’s start there. And we can get more specific.
Dr. Keith Keating 14:32
In theory, l&d and talent development should always be working with recruitment, talent acquisition tightly. Luckily, in my position, I do have a strong relationship with them. And we do partner together to do the things that I just mentioned in terms of the assessment. We also we’ll measure the performance for the first 90 days of individuals when they come out of a university or academic program that we’re offering for them. And we share that feed Back Back with talent acquisition to let them know, almost on a SLA rating how well their recruits are doing.
Rob Stevenson 15:08
So it sounds like you are involved in the onboarding piece, which is interesting, because I guess my conception of like learning officer would be let’s provide resources over time to develop employees, once we know they’re good once we know they’re settled, but you started a little earlier on in the process, why is that?
Dr. Keith Keating 15:27
I think there’s a connection there, there needs to be a connection, we can’t work in silos in the organization. There’s not a chief Talent Acquisition Officer, there’s their chief talent officer, chief HR officer. And so I think it’s a shared responsibility to make sure we’re supporting the acquisition pipeline, with the talent they’re bringing in, because you may go out and find what you think might be the right talent, and onboard them. But if you don’t have the proper mechanisms in place to truly measure what’s needed, once they’re in the business, then it’s a struggle down the road. And so we want to make sure that we’re setting everybody up for success, including talent acquisition, including the individuals that they’re bringing on board. So I like to look at the holistic process end to end from the recruitment piece, even to the off boarding piece and make sure that there’s a learning aspect that’s connected across the system as you will.
Rob Stevenson 16:23
Yeah, that makes sense. So surely, this is not merely about offering resources, right, or offering like a stipend, a learning stipend, something like that. The strategic approach to this would look something like what are the needs of the business over the next few years? Are we situated to fill those talent needs, whether by recruiting or by the people we have currently in our workforce, so are those the kind of conversations you’re having with some of the higher ups on the Talent Team to train, this is kind of future of work stuff more like work planning, succession planning, this kind of thing?
Dr. Keith Keating 16:56
All of the above. So kind of reiterating my earlier comment, I don’t think that it should be a siloed activity, HR, talent acquisition, learning and development. We’re all in the talent space. And so I think we have a responsibility to be working together to look at trends, both future past trends, industry trends, talent, trends, skill trends, so that we’re sharing that information. And again, making sure that all three of us have that awareness. In my experience, I don’t think talent acquisition has historically, again, based on my experience, been as focused on the trend analysis piece from a future of work aspect. They’re more looking at 3060 90 days out maybe 120 days, and also depends on the country. You know, the talent acquisition for us is large, and India, Philippines and the US and all three markets act differently in terms of how talent acquisition operates. And so that’s also an opportunity for my role, or CHR role to have a bit of that global oversight, that universal thinking in terms of trends needs, skill gaps, and marketplace analysis.
Rob Stevenson 18:16
Yeah, I’ve found that the more strategic town acquisition pros, they understand the need to look further down the road, but they’re incentivized in the shorter term, right? They have all these roles in front of them that they need to fill desperately. And so if you’re like, oh, what’s the company going to need in q2 2025. They’re like, I don’t know, ask me in q4, 2024. Right? Yeah. And so the organization would benefit from having these folks thinking long term, but they’re not incentivized to do so. So they’re in this impossible position where if you really want to become strategic, you need to be thinking along those lines, however, you have these things right in front of you. This, I think, is why a lot of talent pros get stuck in the order taker chair where they get stuck in like they’re less strategic advisors, they’re less to use the cliche, likely to have the seat at the table. Do you think that has something to do with it that talent pros maybe aren’t encouraged to be thinking longer term?
Dr. Keith Keating 19:13
I have a different perspective. I don’t view it as they’re not encouraged to think long term. I don’t think it’s necessarily their role. And what I mean by that is, my role enables me to look long term. So I expect talent leaders, particularly CHR OHS or Clos to be looking long term. So do we also need talent acquisition to be doing the same type of research, when their work largely is what’s right in front of them. And going back to my earlier statement, that’s why the three of us really are the trifecta for a true talent ecosystem. Because I can be doing that research. I can understand the landscape, I can disseminate that information. So talent acquisition is aware of what may be needed. But I personally don’t expect them to know what’s needed in the future. I think that that’s my role.
Rob Stevenson 20:10
They need to be thinking, even though it’s not necessarily their role as is, should they have that mindset if they want to move beyond town acquisition, or at least climb this ladder?
Dr. Keith Keating 20:20
Yes. So, that’s a little bit of a different question. Do I think that they should have that mindset? Yes, I think everybody should have that mindset. And I would call that a futures mindset, or even the skill would be futures literacy. And we could always come back and talk about that. But futures literacy is a core skill that every employee should be focusing on and building right now, including talent acquisition, from my answer, I just meant more of I don’t expect them to have that data and to be doing that in their job, per se, because I think there are a couple of other roles that could do that. Now. Should they be doing that as a curious human? And to look at what does the roles of the future look like? Including there’s absolutely that all of us should be doing that?
Rob Stevenson 21:05
What is futures literacy?
Dr. Keith Keating 21:07
Futures literacy is a new emerging skill that we should all be learning in futures literacy is not about predicting the future, which people often try to do. And the reality is, we can’t do it if we could we all be winning the lottery. Futures literacy is about planning for the possible futures. If you think about it, it’s like horizon scanning. So you look across, you’re looking at potential threats, opportunities, developments, which may not currently exist or may not be widely recognized. And one of the ways that we practice futures literacy is by imagination. It’s imagining taking an event, or a technology or a tool or job or a role. And we apply the four P’s, we imagine what’s possible, what’s plausible, what’s probable, and what’s preferred for that future outcome. And what I personally like with the preferred piece is it’s called back casting. So many people like to forecast again, trying to predict the future think about what’s coming. But when you backcast, you start with that desired future endpoint, ie your preferable future. And then you work backwards to figure out what are the ice steps that you need to take? What are the conditions that need to be met in order for you to achieve that future? These are all concepts that make up the skill set for futures literacy that all of us should be really practicing and getting ourselves familiar with, because none of us can, again, predict what’s happening tomorrow, you know, the future is not yet written and all those fun memes. But in order for us to get involved with it, we can start planning for possible futures.
Rob Stevenson 22:55
So this is what people I think, in strategic roles do as part of their role anyway, but I’ve not heard parlance attached to it. And I’ve not heard a specific like, framework for trying to consider lots of different possibilities and plan for all of them. It’s just something that anxious people do. Naturally, it’s something that leaders do, just to kind of make a plan. But in order to just like, Okay, let’s cultivate lots of possibilities, let’s plan for all of them. And let’s work our way backwards from a desired outcomes like this, this seems like a more strategic approach to the myriad challenges we all face.
Dr. Keith Keating 23:27
What’s that phrase? Prepare for the worst and expect the best or expect Yes, prepare for the worst. That’s kind of the same thing. You know, by nature. I’ve been practicing, quote, futures literacy for years, because I think about all the potential outcomes of everything. And it can be very exhausting. But it’s also helpful in the sense that I’m not shocked or caught off guard a lot of times because I’ve thought about that possible scenario. So another phrase for futures literacy is almost like scenario planning.
Rob Stevenson 24:01
So, thank you for that deviation, but delightful deviation on futures literacy, I tend to agree with you, I think we should all be cultivating that kind of skill set. But I wanted to ask you a little bit about the future of work stuff specifically, when you actually sit down to try and understand what the needs of the business are going to be and how you might fill those needs via developing talent or hiring different kinds of talent? What does it actually look like when you’re trying to paint that picture to understand what the company is going to need down the road?
Dr. Keith Keating 24:28
So there’s a couple of different approaches. The first is I’m actively scanning the horizon to borrow from the futures literacy point, in the sense that it’s all research based. So McKinsey Global Institute, Forrester, Deloitte World Economic Forum. All of these are credible research institutions that produce free materials that we should all be devouring to understand the current state of the environment and And the projected which not a huge fan of that but the projected environment of what’s coming. That way we can see from their perspective, what they may be predicting or planning for in terms of those multiple futures. So that’s step one is what’s happening in the industry based on these authoritative research institutions. The second is looking at your own industry, what’s been happening for the past couple of years, what’s happening currently, what research is available, that may be happening in the future, I also look at our competitors, including their past trends or current trends. Based on all of that data, I package that really disseminate, try and understand what all that’s telling me so that I have good insight into vocabulary, language, and examples that I can bring to my business partners. My next step is to then bring them in to this discussion, to share what I’ve learned to get their insight on what they’re seeing or predicting or proposing that plausible future may look like in the next 12 to 18 months. typically don’t look further than that. I just don’t think that it’s realistic, you know, just take AI, for example. At this point, it’s changing the way that we think about planning for the future, in the sense that right now, we’re just looking at what’s two or three months out. In terms of AI, we can’t even imagine what six months from now looks like in terms of all the tools that are available. And the reality is technology changes so many aspects of our lives and the way that we think and that disseminates into the way that we look at our business and try and plan for business disruptions or future outcomes. So once I’ve had the conversations with the business partners, then jointly, we will have discussions about where we think the need might be in terms of skill development, skill need any gaps. The other piece that I do is I create a skills advisory board. And on that board, I will have a business partner, I’ll have l&d I’ll have external practitioners. So it could be an external l&d talent practitioner, someone in the industry outside of my voice, because I don’t want to always be voice in the room, I want them to hear from someone else. And then sometimes I’ll even bring in competitors. And we will meet on a biannual basis. And we’ll talk about everything that I just mentioned, from the research to our own findings, what we’re seeing in the industry, and jointly, we will talk about what type of skills and gaps and needs there may be coming. So we can address them together in the skills advisory board or skills Advisory Council, and I don’t want get people to get hung up on the name. This is not something that’s formal, needs a lot of red tape. It’s just a structured facilitated meeting of key business partners, key stakeholders that are both internal and external, where we are having conversations that I’m driving. And I say I particularly mean talent development leaders need to be driving these conversations because it helps get us in the room. And not only helps get us a seat at the table, but when you create activities like this, you are building your own table, and you are inviting people to sit with you. And that’s one of the best pieces of advice or strategies I can offer to talent development, or talent acquisition, HR is look to build your own table don’t constantly be trying to sit with other people. In order to make your table valuable. You have to have concrete, meaningful data, and not be just bringing people to this and asking them questions, you have to have a plan. It has to have a point of view, it has to be value driven, and a good use of their time. So it’s a long story, short examples to really illustrate what I do in terms of the concept of future skills are planning for what’s coming.
Rob Stevenson 28:59
I’m glad you mentioned and put it that way build your own table, as opposed to trying to sit at someone else’s. This comes up constantly this notion of how can talent pros get a seat at the table? How can they emerge as strategic business partners rather than order takers? So would you mind speaking about that just a little bit more? What is your approach for people who are trying to forge their way as strategic partners to the business?
Dr. Keith Keating 29:21
That’s a fantastic question. It can be summed up in a very easy answer, read my book,
Rob Stevenson 29:28
plug, plug, plug.
Dr. Keith Keating 29:31
Shameless plug alert. I do have a book coming out called the trusted learning advisor. And the original title was actually supposed to be from order taker to strategic business partner and so the book is entirely about how to make that transition. Why we need to be making that transition but I’ll start really with a bit of a definition so a trusted advisor is someone that business is comfortable with intimate with has a trusted relationship with this person is risk acted for their knowledge, their guidance. They provide advice, perspective information. A trusted adviser is skilled in their own business, and the business of their stakeholders, their forward thinking they see ongoing developments, they are proactive, instead of reactive. trusted advisors make their stakeholders feel as if they have a partner, and they are a collaborator. The challenge for a lot of talent development, even talent acquisition HR is that we have historically been treated as order takers. And we’ve almost been beaten into submission in the sense that we’ve accepted that this is our role. And I will say even with my title, with my experience, I still have to constantly advocate for and fight for being treated and respected as a trusted learning adviser rather than an order taker. The issue is, we’re at a crossroads right now. And I say we in the talent development industry because there’s a big looming question that is growing louder and louder. And that question is, are you need it? And that’s a question that we have to constantly be answering ourselves, are we needed, are we providing value, because when you look at tools, like AI and chat GPT, at this point, any of our business partners could go out and create a learning plan, they can go out and create their own content. And it’s not going to follow the science of learning. And it’s not going to be great, but it’s going to be good. And it’s going to be quick. And it’s going to be extremely cost effective. And they’re going to not have to answer all of our annoying questions, and our needs analysis and wanting to talk to the business and interview and do this report in that reporting. They get to bypass all that and they just get to create it themselves. So this means that we have got to prove our value more now than we have before. And so by evolving into trusted learning advisors, we can ensure that we’re not just part of the future, but that we’re actively shaping it. And going back to this idea of getting a seat at the table, versus building your own table. We have to build our own table, because we have to demonstrate that we are the experts in the room. You know, for far too long. We’ve let people who are not talent practitioners who aren’t not learning experts, dictate to us how we find our talent, what type of talent to bring on how we educate, train upskill our talent, but that’s our area of expertise. And so we have got to continue to advocate for again, being trusted learning advisors, having that expertise so that we can ensure that we’re still here, because at this point, it’s back to that old evolution attitude, it’s evolved, or else become extinct.
Rob Stevenson 33:01
The book is called the trusted learning advisor the tools, techniques and skills you need to make l&d a business priority. I believe it’s available for pre order now it comes out on Halloween this year. So we’ll put a link in the show notes for y’all to go pick up a copy. If you have a learning stipend at work. I mean, this is what it’s for. So click that link. If you want to learn more from Keith, here. This has been a fantastic episode. I love learning from you today. And I feel like we just scratched the surface. So I would have you on any time but for now I’ll just say thanks for being here. This has been a delight.
Dr. Keith Keating 33:32
My pleasure. Great questions, great conversations. I appreciate the work that you’re doing.
Rob Stevenson 33:38
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