The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

Design Roles, Not Tasks: AI’s Edge in HR and L&D with Scott Morris

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 62

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Jobs don’t fail because people don’t work hard; they fail because the work isn’t designed to move the numbers that matter. That’s the uncomfortable truth we dig into with Scott Morris—longtime Chief People Officer, HR transformer, and founder of Propulsion AI—who makes a compelling case for designing roles around outcomes, not task lists. 

Scott shares a fast history lesson on technological disruption—from calculators to spreadsheets to AI—and shows why the safest path is embracing new tools to change where we add value. Rather than fearing replacement, we can use AI to clarify expectations and accelerate the slowest parts of talent work. His framework helps managers define business outcomes first, then layer in key results, success measures, competencies, and skills. The payoff is visible across the talent lifecycle: recruiters source to impact, candidates self-select with eyes open, and trainers build programs that correlate to movement in KPIs like DSO, eNPS, conversion, and churn. Even “entry-level” roles transform when reframed from “push buttons” to “create experiences that drive loyalty,” unlocking better interviews, stronger motivation, and clearer coaching moments.

If you’re ready to make work more human and more effective, subscribe, share this with your HR and L&D peers, and leave a review with the one outcome you’ll measure differently this quarter.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development. Today, my special guest is Scott Morris. Welcome to the show, Scott. Hey Jay, how are you? Thank you so much for the invite.

Scott:

It's great to be here with you.

Jay:

Glad to have you. And uh I think this is going to be a really interesting topic, mixing a little bit of AI with the concepts of training, retention, onboarding, and getting the right people in the right seats. So why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and how you got into this space?

Scott:

So I've been in the profession of people operations HR for about 25 years, about 20 of those in a C-level role, organizations as large as 15,000, organizations as small as about 250. I actually came out of learning and development. That was my first sort of foray uh into it. And my first HR job, funny enough, was as a head of HR. Um, so a little bit of a sort of weird path, but I've been an entrepreneur a couple of times over. I've been a partner in a consulting firm where we worked on HR transformation and uh technical transformation for large governmental organizations. Um sort of a sort of a weird and different path, but uh but a good one in terms of the experience it's provided.

Jay:

Well, I was gonna say, you know, we don't often hear somebody from the learning and development world getting into the more HR or the technical focused HR. How is that transition for you?

Scott:

Well, you know, it it was a while ago, but um, but good. And I actually think more learning and development people um should be at higher levels in HR organizations. Because when you think about it, I mean, there's there's two different ways that you can think about the practice of people ops. And and you know, both of them are necessary. I certainly have a bent toward one rather than the other, but one of them is a compliance lens. And, you know, and that's necessary. Risk management is necessary. Not my bent, but uh, but I recognize its purpose. The other is workforce development and productivity. And, you know, learning and development folks and coaches, they think about that naturally. And so I think that's why I make the comment that I wish more learning and development people had more senior roles in in HR. I love that, Scott.

Jay:

And I'm I'm actually going to dig in on that because one of the things that we're hearing, and you know, there's this sort of shift, this mentality shift inside of HR, bringing the human back to human resources. But one of the issues is, and this seems to be a little bit of a stumbling block or a barrier, is that HR's function, at least one of the HR functions, is something like compliance, risk, and protecting the organization. How can we balance that and be a balanced product where yes, we are protecting the organization, but also that we're there to protect the human resources, the actual people that are working? Because it seems to be that sometimes those might be at odds with each other. And when somebody gets called down to HR's office, generally they're not like, yes, I'm getting called down because they have my back. Usually it's like, oh God, I'm screwed up. And, you know, they become the executioner's wing. So how do we balance something like that sort of pro-learning, that pro-development, that pro-employee, but also still maintain that balance of protecting the organization?

Scott:

I mean, it's it's an easy thing to say and a hard thing to execute, but it all comes down to leadership, just like anything else. Think about any other aspect of an organization where a balance is necessary. Well, who would we look to to provide that balance? And the answer is it's the person that's at the head of that organization. And so I think as more chief people officers, more CHROs are recognizing that, you know, they need smart compliance people around them, but that should not be the aspect that's driving the ship. The the actual aspect has nothing to do with HR. It it, you know, I chief people officers need to have a business mentality, and they need to be thinking about what levers are moving in the business. And of course, if you were a CFO, you would be thinking about moving those levers from a finance perspective. We should be thinking about moving those same levers, but with human assets rather than physical and financial assets. So I think the balance comes from the mentality of the person who is steering that ship. And and and period, I think full stop on that.

Jay:

Yeah, I really like that. And I think that kind of goes into some of our other discussions that we've had on this show about having sort of a more business mindset from that talent development side of things, right? Like when we think about training, we often think like, oh, I'm doing a service for the employees. And but what's the business objective? What's the return on investment? Because talent development can be expensive for an organization. And when we're putting that money into it, it's got to be achieving some level of business objective for it to be sustainable, for it to not be a luxury, or for it to be taken seriously. So I really love your approach on that.

Scott:

You know, I think anybody who's serious about the work needs to go back, if they haven't in a while, and read Donald Kirkpatrick's The Four Levels, because that, you know, he so long ago, and I actually had the honor of meeting him and talking with him about the book, but you think about what level four is, it's the business impact. And that should be the thing that's driving all of us, whether we're talking about role design or whether we're talking about, you know, a training intervention, it's all in service of did the numbers actually move?

Jay:

Yep. Yep. I love that. And if you are one of our ATD followers, you definitely know who Kirkpatrick is. If you don't know who that is, look it up because it is a powerful, powerful methodology to be thinking about business uh impact. So, Scott, I want to dig in because you are somebody that has experience in the AI world. And I know that that's terrifying and also exciting for a lot of our trainers, coaches, HR practitioners that are on here. And when we think about it, it's you know, that that that fear is, oh, AI is gonna replace us. And the excitement part of it is, okay, well, it can actually augment us or supplement us or improve us. So uh let's start with sort of a general concept of AI in the world of human resources, talent development, et cetera. What are your thoughts? What are the trends that you're seeing? And how might we think about this maybe a little differently, or how might we shape this for our future?

Scott:

Let's break this down, this question, Jay, down into a couple of different pieces. First, let me do just a quick history lesson because when radical change happens, and we're in a period of radical change right now, when that happens, it's easy to become fearful and to try and lock down into the things that we've known. It's a it's a human trait. If if you know members of the audience are feeling that right now, I think that's completely normal. But if you go back, look at go back to 1967, believe it or not, right? The uh the introduction of the calculator by Texas Instruments that seems today like such a like calculator is like it's on my phone, right? But if you went back to 1967, this was a big radical change. And at the time, there was this fear that bookkeepers would be put out of business by the introduction of this calculator. And it didn't happen. Now, fast forward to 1983 when the Lotus Lotus 123 came out, the a precursor to what most of us know today as Microsoft Excel, made by a different company, spreadsheet concept. And again, there was this huge fear that now financial professionals were going to be replaced. But what actually happened was they started to add value differently. And those that were embracing that technology first were the safest because they stopped delivering value through calculations, but they started delivering value through analysis and strategy. And I think we're seeing the same thing today, where there are aspects that artificial intelligence and its various subsets, machine learning and vision and other things. There are aspects of what we do today that are simply done better by technology. But there are aspects that technology can't do. I personally don't think that AI or any technology is going to take anyone's job. But I do believe that people who embrace technology are going to take the jobs of those who don't. That's the transformation that we're going to see. And I think that's an important grounding for the question that you're asking.

Jay:

Well, and I think that's so important. If you look at any of like Daniel Coyle's research on organizational culture, connection is one of the biggest things that people are looking for. And no matter what level of AI is doing tasks, it's not going to create. I guess maybe I have seen some of the articles of how somebody fell in love with AI, but that seems few and far between. Let's hope that that's not the norm in the future. But that connective piece and being able to actually spend energy and time really building relationships. Imagine if you were able to take all those tasks, kind of set them aside, they were done really well with AI. How much time would you have to be able to invest in just sitting and having a conversation to make somebody feel valued, psychologically safe, wanted, and needed within their organization, or even guiding them in a way? So I love that you bring that up. I think the same way. I'm in I've I've embraced AI. I'm still learning. So let's learn a little bit more. One of the things, one of the big spaces that you are uh an expert in is obviously the acquisition, the talent acquisition side. So we we do focus more on the talent development, but I think it's so important that you get the right people. And one of the things that you do is utilize AI to help with, say, creating a job description or rethinking the job description. Let's start there. Give us a quick overview, and then we're gonna dig in deeper.

Scott:

Yeah, you've, Jay, you've said it really, really well. I want to add one layer of nuance to that, and that is that talent acquisition and talent management at learning and development writ large have their feet in kind of the same pond, right? And it's not the job description per se. The document is important, but it's what underlies that document that is massively important, and that is the design of the job. So I run a company called, as you know, Propulsion AI. And one of the things that we've done is utilized artificial intelligence to create a guided process for managers that effectively interviews them about a role that they want on their team. That could be a role that they're hiring from the outside or a role that they're pivoting that's already on their team, or maybe somebody's coming in from a different division and they're going to be in this new group. That manager needs to think through the design of that role. Now, here's a starting point. Salary is an investment. And you, as the investor, and you're not just investing when you when you're talking about people, we're not just investing salary, we're investing learning and development time, personal growth time, right? There are a bunch of investments that were were are being made. But that those investments are just that. And as the investor, we should be expecting a return. And so our mindset when we start out, and whether you are a learning and development person or a coach or a talent acquisition professional, the mindset should be the same. What is the outcome that we need accomplished? Not what is the task? This is what's most tangible and most easy for most of us is well, I need you to do this. And I'll give you a practical example. If we were gonna hire an accountant, and a totally reasonable duty that most people would write in is follow up on delinquent accounts. But you have to ask yourself why? What's the point of that? Is it that we want to see people come in every day and sit at a desk and write emails and make phone calls and have a lot of activity? If they do all of that stuff and nothing happens, has that activity really created right? What's the value of it? So following up on Delink and the other.

Jay:

And to that point, Scott, in reality, if I just want somebody to harass any outstanding things, I don't need an accountant, I need an admin. And that's probably a lot less expensive than, say, an accountant who has a particular set of skills or anything else. Am I on the right track with that thinking?

Scott:

I I think you are. I would take it one step beyond that for the audience, and that is that what you really want, the the following up on the delinquencies, that is a means to an end. And in accounting, the end is a number called days outstanding. It is a measure of efficiency about how fast the organization can collect. That's the number that you want moved. Now, most of us can touch the tangible activity of follow-up. And it's just a little bit harder to think through what does that follow-up produce? That's the outcome. But once I understand that that's the outcome, now I say to that person in the role, hey, your job is to move days outstanding from this number where it is today to this number where we need it to be tomorrow. And that is massively important to our business. Now think about what I've done for them. I have given them accountability for something that is really critical to the functioning of the organization. That is a different proposition than giving them a task. I am trusting them to become an owner. This is where our product helps draw this out of the manager's head, this harder-to-touch sort of outcomes-focused stuff. And then around that builds key performance indicators, key results, the actual measurements that need to happen, competencies that are necessary to deliver on that, skills that underlie the whole thing. And this is where talent acquisition and talent management share. Because now that I have all of this out of my head, and by the way, the platform does all of the writing for you as well: performance-based job description, SEO-optimized job posting, social media content, interviewer guides. But once I have the design of that role, now not only are my recruiters better equipped to go find the right person to put into that job, but my learning and development people are in a better spot to say, here are the competencies and skills you have today, here are the ones that we're going to build, and develop learning plans that take that person on a growth path. And we know that from work that LinkedIn did that 94% of employees say they will stay longer in an organization if that organization has a definitive plan for their growth.

Jay:

Not only that, I'm I'm the thing you you hooked me on is you have created sort of a concept here of helping a manager identify how this person creates value for the organization? Because we all want to feel valued at work, we want to be seen, we want our work to be important. Nobody wants to be the person just sitting there hacking away at a button and not know that at the other end it's actually doing something. So uh even by doing that and kind of linking that key performance indicator to business outcomes or to value proposition for the organization, it seems to me that you're gonna get some candidates highly motivated right from the very beginning, which is one of the things that LND does try to do is try to keep people motivated and set the expectations and so on and so forth. So it's almost like you're shorts short-circuiting that whole process right up front. What does that look like? Uh what does that look like, I guess, say for give me an example of this, if if you can, Scott.

Scott:

Well, I I beyond the sort of accountant example. I mean, I can repeat that example for you, but here's I think what we want to happen in the organization. We want to say, look, you are, and I'll go back to the accountant for just one second. You're accountable for days outstanding. Your job is to move the number from here to here. Now, I'm gonna have a one-on-one with that person, and maybe the number hasn't moved. And so they're gonna say, Well, I'm following up on all the counts. And I'm gonna say, okay, great, what else? Now, immediately what I'm doing is I'm not solving the problem for them. What I, as the as the boss, what I'm saying is, here's the outcome, here's the end point that we have to get here to. And I want to help you to be creative about how you're gonna solve that. In the ideal case, I want that person coming back to me and saying, Scott, hold up. You're asking me to do these things. But if this is really what you want, if this is the outcome you want, shouldn't I be doing these? And as the boss, I want to slap my head and go, yeah, oh, of course, I hadn't even thought about that, right? You're on the front lines every day. Yes, do that. Move the number though. We want to put people in a position where they are creative about solving the problem. What's non-negotiable for me as a boss is that's the outcome. What's totally negotiable and should be open to experimentation and invention is the path we take to get there. And I want the person on the front line to come back to me and say, well, how about if I tried this? How about if I do this? And I want to be able to say, yes, let's try that. And we'll know it if that number moves.

Jay:

And that's exactly what I was looking for. You're helping to establish the what and the why, and then allowing the space for the person being hired to do the how. And I think that that's really a critical aspect because when we think about expectations or setting, you know, setting the goals or markers, uh, it really does come back to what is the end result? I can send out 25 sales emails every single day, but if I never get a sale, it doesn't mean anything. It really doesn't have any impact. So, from a training perspective, and let's get let's go to that for a minute, because you mentioned it just briefly with the L and D side. All right, we know what the outcomes are. How can we, as maybe an LD department or a training department, you know, sort of look at that and say, these are the KPIs, these are what we're going for. How might an L and D department make the determination of this is the competencies? Is there any way that we should be thinking about that as trainers or LD people?

Scott:

I that's a hard question for me to answer, Jay, as an abstract, because I think the nuance of the individual situation is going to matter hugely. However, if you look at the dynamic that I just set up between that boss and that that direct report, where the direct report is trying things. And when when you when you said, you know, I send 25 sales emails every day, but nothing's happening, right? Einstein said the defend the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right? So, what do we want people to do? We want them to recognize that tactic isn't working. My job is not that tactic. My job is the outcome. The tactic is a means to getting there, and it might be one of many. So now what do I have to do? I have to engage in a creative process. And I think that's in part an answer to your question about LD. L and D should be looking at that and saying, okay, so this new mindset says the outcome is the job, the tactics are experimental. What do people need in order to do a better job of experimenting? Well, they need creativity, they need resilience, they need X, Y, Z, whatever. That's thinking. Right. That becomes now information that should fund the LD enterprise rather than just looking at technical skill, which is important. We need to look at all of the things that surround, you know, we got to take that hill, and the way that we're doing it isn't working. So what do we have to do? And I think you can take that to just about everything. And I'll give you another example here, and I think it's important because people like it's easy to write this off as this works for more senior white-collar work, and it doesn't work for anything else. But we, as a part of what we did at Propulsion AI, I went to Burger King's website and I grabbed a job description, which if you go to their website, they have the job descriptions for their team members on their website. And I pulled one for a team member off, and not surprisingly, it read like an obituary. Don't steal, get the food out, hot, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. But what is the purpose of all of that? So we ran it through our system and we came out with a completely different outcomes-focused job description for a person standing at the counter at Burger King. You know what responsibility number one was? Create an experience for customers that drives repeat business and loyalty to this restaurant. Now, if I say your job is stand at the counter, cash register, don't steal and push the buttons, how excited are you to come to work? But if I say you are in the customer service, you're in the customer experience business, not just service, but the experience, right? Not only do I open myself, because it's really hard to interview for don't steal right, objectively, right? But if the job is create an experience for people, now I can apply behavior-based interviewing to look at people's past experiences and try to match them to what I'm doing in the restaurant. So the entire situation changes, and all I had to do was shift my perspective away from a task and on to an outcome that matters to my business.

Jay:

So let's let's play with that. Let's go a little bit deeper here because I do think that this is one of the things where if you're in an LD space or if you're a trainer or coach, a lot of times onboarding is your first set of training, or you have to bring somebody into a space and kind of get them. One of the things, and I want you to dig deep on this. You're you're definitely the expert in this in this space. You see a job description out there, you see all the qualifications, you see all the tasks. The person gets hired, they're in there for a week, they start getting onboarded, and there's some disconnect in between that job description and what they're actually doing. And and I had I had shared this with you before, but there's an HBR Harvard Business Review article that talks about reframing the job description. It's been around, it's the same since like whatever, and that causes like padding of resumes and lying in interviews, or at least embellishing in interviews. I'm not going to call it straight up lying, but embellishing in interviews. And then when people get into the position, they're like, okay, this isn't what I expected, and they leave, or that this isn't what I expected, and they're unhappy and they quietly quit. Can you talk about how this process is playing out or what some of the things that you're seeing in between that job description, hiring, and an onboarding space?

Scott:

This is why we created the platform that we created in Propulsion AI. Um, Forbes followed 20,000 new hires. And Jay, you know what? 46% of them failed in their first 18 months. That's almost half. Yep. And in part, it's because managers are not thinking through the roles. And if you're a coach, you're gonna hear this a lot. Oh, I don't have time to do that. It's why we made it really fast. Most of the recruiters and the HR business partners that we talked to as we were developing the Propulsion AI platform told us that it legitimately takes them four to six hours to get the design out of the manager's head, write all of the collateral, get it out on the web. Our platform does this in as little as 15 minutes. But if you don't do that, you're making it up as you go. And this is where like employment processes, hiring processes take months because we're working out what we want the job to do in the interview process. And it's why to the point you just made a second ago, when we get people in, they say the job that I thought I was being hired for isn't the job they're asking me to do. And in the balance of all of this are the results that are important to the organization. So our thought is spend the time of a coffee break up front and create the design of the role that really is going to have impact to your business, and then hand off to your team and let them work confidently. The recruiters and sourcers are gonna be happier and faster and more productive. The learning and development people, I mean, to your point about onboarding, if I'm a learning and development person and I'm thinking about trying to participate in this onboarding process, the most important thing coming out of the employment process are what are the outcomes and what are the measurable results? Because then I have to think about, okay, you may not have come in with all of the competencies and skills that we needed. So let's start to develop that learning plan to help grow what your, you know, your base is right now. But if those are unclear, or if the outcomes that I'm working to are unclear, or for gosh sakes, if the measurements, I need days outstanding move from this number to this number, I need employee net promoter score to move from 50 to 75, right? If those numbers are unclear, onboarding is just social onboarding. There's no business connection to it.

Jay:

Well, and I think that that's, you know, finally an answer to something like other duties as assigned, you know, and and when we think about that, is that's the catch-all that most organizations include. Recognize, okay, I haven't really, as you said, haven't really thought out what are the actual dynamics of this role or dynamics of this job. But it seems to me, Scott, and help me understand this. It seems to me that when we're able to establish sort of that business objective, that connection, that understanding, it seems to me it might even be easier for us to justify salary positions or justify, hey, we need a new person because here's where we're currently at on the net promoter score. This is what we want to hire for, and getting a 50 to a 75 would increase our revenue by X, Y, and Z, right? Like whenever we're asking for something, we've got to be able to show I'm investing, as you said, this is the return on investment. Seems to me that that process would be a little easier if we were able to quantify what the actual business impact is. And that's something that 100%.

Scott:

100%. That's why we're such big fans of starting with the business outcome, because it anchors everything. If if you know, if my job is to increase month over month revenue by 20% and I'm at a million dollars and I'm successful, well, I'm gonna be at 1.2 million every single month, which means on an annualized basis, uh, you know, I'm gonna be what $2.4 million more revenue for that year than I was before. And so when you think about what are you gonna pay me to do that? $150,000? So you paid me $150, even gross it up, call it $175 with benefits, and I return $2.4 million. That kind of thinking is exactly what we want from every position in the organization. And that's why it's so important to start with what's the business outcome? You know, what's the business result that I need? What are the outcomes that get me to that business result? What are the success measures that are gonna help me to understand whether I'm moving closer to or farther away to from from those outcomes? And then what are the competencies and skills that I need in order to perform that work well? That's a that's complete.

Jay:

And I like that because once we start with that, and I'm gonna, you know, kind of tail this off and let's think about the entire employee life cycle, right? Like, so we we get this person, they know what they they know what highways they're on, they know what impacts they need to create, they're onboarded, our trainers, our coaches, they're able to kind of support them in getting the competencies that they need. Let's talk about what happens when you get to performance evaluation time or when you get to that performance review time. Like, how does this impact that space? It seems pretty intuitive, but I'd love to hear you speak on that as well.

Scott:

I've coached a lot of managers over 25 years, and a lot of it has been on performance management and and you know helping employees to become more productive. And I've gotten asked one question, I think more than anything else. And it usually happens around performance eval time, which is the wrong time, by the way, to ask the question, but it is the time that it gets asked. And that is, Scott, what words can I use to make this performance review go easily?

Jay:

Let me answer is you can't. Okay, so I'm with you on this, and literally, so this is something that I did an analysis of a large organization that was investing into an external, uh, external training program that was like, think like LinkedIn learning. And it was all these courses and everything else like that. And I was like, well, how's that working out for you? And they were like, I don't know. I was like, I'm gonna take one bet here that the proactive nature of what you're asking your people to do with the amount of time and energy, that there's two times in this entire cycle that people are gonna go to this platform and there's one course that they're looking, and it's difficult conversations, and it's gonna happen at performance evaluation and raise consideration time. Sure enough, I mean spot on with that behavioral analysis. So, yes, thank you. You crushed that. Keep going. Sorry, I just had to throw that in there with you.

Scott:

No, I mean, well, I think you and I are aligned in our philosophy about these things. So it actually makes me feel good to hear you say those things. The fact is, like again, back to the concept of investment. If I came to you and I said, Jay, I have an investment, I want you to give me $50,000. What would be the next question that you would ask?

Jay:

Okay, so if I'm giving you $50,000, what is the expectation or what is the outcome that I'm gonna get in return for that?

Scott:

100%. And so I'm gonna say, Jay, I'm gonna 3X your money. What's the next question you're gonna ask me? How fast? 100%, right? And so now, so I tell you it's gonna To happen in a year. And you're going to be able to watch that grow. So we start out in January, we get to the end of January. What's the question that you asked me at the end of January? How are we doing, Scott? Exactly right. And it's the same question you're going to ask at the end of February, March, April, May, et cetera, right? So why is it that that logic, which is so plain to most of us when it comes to investing, is not the mindset that we have when it comes to our employees? This is where propulsion helps, right? We get the design of that role right. And the design of that role says these are the key results that we have you in place to generate. And so now when we sit down for a one-on-one, it becomes a and obviously there are multiple pieces to this, but piece number one is how are you doing on the results that we agreed you would get? Because if we say, look, I'm going to move, I'm a chief people officer, or I was. So ENPS was always a KPI for me, a key performance indicator. And let's say that I, you know, the CEO had said to me, we're at an ENPS employee net promoter score of 50, and I need you to get it to 65. Is it reasonable to believe that that's going to happen all at once? Probably not. But we do quarterly surveys. So if I'm at 50 and I need to get to 65, it's a 15-point move. At the end of the first quarter, I should have 15 divided by four or some semblance of that, right? We should be able to see it tracking in the right direction. So when I sit down for a one-on-one with my boss, the first thing he should say is, or she, how are you doing against the results? And I should have a conversation about what I've done and what kind of results I've seen, and you know, and and and whether those are positive or negative, right? The next aspect of that is how are you showing up? Because it's not enough to get the results. You have to get them and behave in a way that grows the whole, not just accomplishes your per your personal agenda. So it's how are you doing against your results? How are you showing up in terms of behaviors that we need to see and the value, the behaviors that we value in the organization? Next is let's talk about like where you're going from here. How, how are we growing you? Because my boss might say, Scott, you are knocking it out of the park on being results-oriented, but you're not so good on communication. So let's think about how we're going to grow that competency and help you develop the underlying skills to make you a better communicator. And then the last piece, and I think that's on the boss 100%, is as a boss, how do I need to show up differently to help you be accountable and get the results and show up with the behaviors that we've been talking about? And I think that's a complete performance review. And you don't need words to do that.

Jay:

What is the barriers? What is stopping us? Was the 65 that we thought was realistic? Show me or demonstrate to me why that's not possible or what's slowing that down, or how what is a realistic? So all of those things I think can come in. And it's brilliant. I really I love this because I think, you know, I definitely lean into Brene Brown. Clear is kind, unclear is unkind. And when we don't have clear objectives, this is literally why we switch from goals to objectives and key results as a planning and strategy platform. Um, so if you're not familiar with that, check out measure what matters. I love that as kind of a starting point for it. Uh, but that that is our company is literally built on objectives and key results at this point in time because exactly what you're saying. If we're not hitting those key results, then what does it matter that we're putting all this time, energy, effort in?

Scott:

So and and all of that, Jay, it all comes back to the design of the role. If you get that piece right, there's no guarantees in anything, right? You still have to get a bunch of other things right. But if you get that piece right, it opens the door to almost everything else that we've been talking about. But if you get that piece wrong, everything else winds up being hard. And then you come to somebody like me and you say, Scott, what are the words that I can use to get myself out of this pain called a performance review? And everybody's life is horrible, the employees and yours. So I love this.

Jay:

I I think that for our trainers, our coaches, our managers, our HR people out there really thinking about what is the business objectives, which is something it's a reoccurring theme, and this is just another vehicle for us to get there. You've got to be thinking about the business objectives. So I really appreciate everything that you're saying here today because I do think it's so important. And even as a learning, one of the biggest things that I teach trainers, you have to have clear objectives that is measurable by the time that they you hit the end of the training. It seems like if we start with this up front, gives them the opportunity to say, okay, the objective is this. This is the measurement of performance for this person, and this is how we're going to get them there. So it makes that return on investment of L and D even easier when we know what the goal is from the onset.

Scott:

And Jay, if I could just add one friendly amendment, because you know I'm I'm 100% supportive of that mentality that you just described. But there is a trap in that, and we have to be careful. Measuring activity is not as value as valuable as measuring the business outcome, right? What like how like how many accounts did I follow up on is not the right measurement. Did Day's outstanding move is the right measurement?

Jay:

Yeah, no, and I 1000% agree with that. So, and when we're thinking about it from an LD perspective, part of it, part of it is being able to track the appropriate behaviors so we know these behaviors are not leading to the objective result or whatever those results are. So, yeah, I definitely on the same page, but I love the clarification because I agree it is the result, not necessarily the task. So, Scott, if our audience wanted to get in touch with you, how would they connect with you?

Scott:

So, LinkedIn is a great way. You can get me at LinkedIn.com slash in slash m Scott M. That's my profile on LinkedIn. And you can find propulsionai on the web www.getpropulsion.ai. Get propulsion.ai. And you know what, Jay? Our biggest use case right now, the biggest way that we are finding inroads into new organizations is coaches and HR professionals and talent professionals who are trying propulsion AI and then taking it to their leadership and say, look at how much easier our lives would be if we used this platform. You can get on right now without a credit card. You can try the platform for free. We do that intentionally because I strongly believe once people try it, they're gonna want to take it to their leaders and they're gonna adopt it as an organization. And I think this platform changes organizational life.

Jay:

I love it, Scott. Thank you for your insights, for your time. We'll make sure that those links are in the show notes. So, audience, if you want to check that out, again, it's getpropulsion.ai, and we'll make sure that your LinkedIn handle is available as well. So thank you for your time and energy today. I think this has really been enlightening of how we can be thinking about AI in the talent development space. And I really appreciate it, Scott.

Scott:

Jay, I've I've really looked forward to being on with you, and I'm super glad I was here. I'm honored by the invite. Thanks for having me.

Jay:

And uh thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of The Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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