Michelle Scaglione

▶0:01HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. So, Michelle, thank you so much for joining us on the Built by People podcast. I'd love to just start off by learning a little bit more about your career path. And what motivated you to focus on talent enablement?

▶1:00GuestYeah, thank you for having me. You know, I think a lot of people in HR especially will say, oh, I never meant for this to happen, or I never meant for this to be my focus. But I would say I didn't originally start out my career with the even concept of a career path. And what I mean by that is I didn't have something specific in mind. I was just really excited to get out into the professional world, you know, really hungry to learn different things and just get my hands on everything. And so when I started, I started my career at Target, and one of the things I loved about the company was that there was an opportunity to continuously learn different things and So I started in operations in a store. I got to run the sales floor, customer service, a lot of different parts of the store, but I also got to learn all the other parts. So things I never even realized were, you know, maybe even professions. And it really kind of just ignited my very strong desire to keep learning things. And as I look back over the 15-plus years, I think the, the core cornerstone of my career. I won't even call it a path, maybe like jungle gym, uh, has just been an interest in understanding how things work and being really attracted to new problems to solve in different ways. And so honestly, I didn't, I didn't have this idea of what talent enablement would be. It was more I wanted to learn, and I really loved delivering results and seeing the direct outcome of working hard and it making a difference.

▶2:55HostAnd talk me through how you got into, you know, talent management, talent enablement. I'm sure there was likely some aha moment or some opportunity that emerged, or a moment where you identified that your skill sets and your interests align with that field. What was that for you?

▶3:18GuestSo believe it or not, I think it was when I left Target, I realized that not every company was as mature or established in terms of what I now understand to be talent practices with resourcing or structure. And what I saw very quickly is that business leaders and employees were spending time either creating these things or really trying to work around the lack of those things. And I was getting in the way of them doing what I would argue is their actual job. And then I started to understand the frustration and the impact to engagement that that had, and ultimately the reliance on an HR business partner, which was the next role that I held to plug that gap. And so instead of this concept of being a strategic advisor or partner, I saw, you know, a lot of leaders learning— excuse me, leaning in and asking HR business partners to create what I would call now enablement tools, such as clear expectations, competencies, operating, you know, values, whatever it is. And I thought, gosh, if people could just understand, if you invested in these basics, these leaders can go spend time actually running the business. We could teach people how to use them well as opposed to having to create them. And I think that's the moment where it clicked when I saw the impact of getting those basics in place and not just the business results that came from it, but the business partnerships with HR that solidified and that credibility that came from, hey, I gave you what you need and now we're gonna work together to actually go after what we wanted to go after in the beginning anyway.

▶5:10HostThat's great. And, you know, for many of us, including myself, like talent enablement as a phrase is relatively new.

▶5:19GuestYeah.

▶5:20HostCan you talk a little bit about this transition that we've made from talent management to talent enablement and some of the, the key differences that, you know, help clarify that movement?

▶5:36GuestYes, this really started weighing on me or being something I thought about a couple years ago when I had a leader who asked me, what do you think about rebranding our teams? And I, you know, I said, what do you mean? And we started having this discussion that there was somewhat of a maybe negative connotation, particularly around things like performance management. And I think most people, when you hear that, you automatically think of corrective action or performance improvement plans. But fundamentally, performance management, for me, I always thought of how do you manage the performance of a company? And I realized that the word manage really just brings to mind a lot of negative things, which is not, I think, the intent. And I had a lot of conversations both with my team, with business leaders, uh, in, in my network. And I just started asking literally, if you could call it something else, what, what would you call it? Like, what, what is the purpose of this function or, you know, of this team? And ultimately, it's not about managing. To me, managing is literally and figuratively, like the past, looking in the rearview. It's the difference between how you manage versus leading people. And I think the word manage also really brings about these thoughts of being overly prescriptive or very process-heavy. You know, comes like annual reviews and mandating different talent processes and I think with the innovation in the technology space, really the investment in the people function in general, people don't want that anymore. When they have to move fast, employees have told us there's so much data around. I want to be given autonomy. I want the tools and resources I need to succeed and then let me do my job. And so I, you know, just having a kind of like a brain trust with different people, I thought really the idea is to enable. How do you give people what they need to look towards the future and really help them understand what's expected of them, giving the resources they need to do that, creating a culture of very clear, ongoing, and consistent feedback, and then rewarding people for doing that. And I've seen the magic that happens from a business results perspective when you get that right.

▶8:16HostYeah, I love that redefinition around it and, and the rebranding of those phrases. And I want to now pivot into some of the practical and tactical measures that you recommend talent leaders take to drive successful outcomes in the field of talent enablement.

▶8:38GuestI think one of the most basic things that has helped me shift my frame of reference here is being super clear on what problems are you actually trying to solve. And what I mean by that, anybody in, I think in the HR space or even, you know, business leaders have probably worked at a company or led an organization where there's some pretty basic standard talent function processes available. For example, whether it's competencies, performance reviews, like how it might be executed may be different, but conceptually those are usually pretty standard. However, I find that a lot of people will come to the table and say, we need to either implement this process or I really think we should add this program, and they skip the, what problem are we trying to solve and are we aligned that that is actually— problem. So tactically, for an example, um, I was talking to leaders once in my career, and there was a lot of discussion around overhauling the performance management system. So reviews, promotions, calibrations, etc. And there was a lot of leader feedback around a very administratively heavy process, the amount of time that it took, was the feedback even relevant anymore by the time it was actually delivered? Which again, I think is something that a lot of companies have been looking at. And I asked the question, why do we do performance reviews? And of course, I think I got some looks like I had 3 heads, but I said, you know, hold on, stick with me. Why do we act like— why do we do them? And the reason I asked that question is there was almost an assumption that everybody at the table was aligned with the purpose of them. And when you start fostering a conversation, you actually find out pretty quickly you're probably not aligned. And so, for example, some companies use that as the way to distribute compensation or merit based on like, you know, performance differentiators. But if that's the sole driver, there's very likely a much less expensive, time-intensive way to do that, and potentially with far less, you know, bias. And so if you're not clear from the start, any of the decisions you make in terms of, you know, making it faster or less administrative might actually be taking you further away from the purpose of why you're doing it. And so In that example, one of the key themes that came out of all these different conversations was to make sure that leaders were giving clear, actionable performance feedback to their employees. But if you only do it once a year, how impactful is that? How motivating is that? So is the problem that the performance reviews take too much time, or is the problem that you're relying on that process to mandate once-a-year feedback when that is not, you know, probably the most effective way to structure your feedback process.

▶12:05HostOh, it's a great example. You know, last time we had a conversation, we talked about first principles, and I was hoping we could dive back into that topic.

▶12:14GuestYeah.

▶12:14HostBecause what you have to share is, I think, pertinent to the broader HR community. Can you, you know, share with us a time when you executed on first principles to launch, evolve, or improve your work?

▶12:29GuestYeah, and I, I would say that, you know, that performance review example is, is probably one of the biggest scale examples I could think of. But I actually think probably almost a year ago now, I posted a story on LinkedIn, just like a personal experience where For me, I really love it when things are grouped. I know that humans love things in threes anyway. I guess there's some psychology behind that, but I'm pretty well known for having things color-coded or different color notebooks for things. And, you know, my teams have, uh, you know, teased me in the past, but they also know me well enough that I've gotten personalized stationery from my teams or, you know, different highlighters as a surprise gift. So it's all in good fun. Um, but my mind really, I think, just naturally gravitates to that. And so one time I was thinking about, similar to a rebrand, how to structure the talent team. And in the past, again, I've, I've seen the traditional approaches. This person owns performance management, maybe this person owns competencies or succession planning. And I really started to think about the needs of the business are likely going to change probably pretty quickly. And what happens when that thing is done or the priority shifts? What does that person now own? What are they responsible for? Does that cause a lot of churn? And then I also realized that's still not even telling the person on the talent team Why am I doing this? Like, what is my actual purpose? And so we did some brainstorming session as a team, and I, I literally said, like, what problems do you all feel like need to be solved? And like, why does our team exist? And it really led to some interesting conversations. But similar to the theme of talent enablement, we thought about, okay, How do we enable the company and the business? How do we enable managers? And then how do we enable employees? And so we started thinking about what typical programs or processes might fall under those concepts, knowing that they were probably going to switch out as we grow and evolve and change. And so we actually started really aligning from that perspective and calling people on my team, like, owning different things. So whether it was performance enablement, which is so much more than performance improvement plans, like competencies, goal setting, like all the different things that would potentially help somebody do their job. And that's probably gonna change as the company, you know, shifts or the priorities change. And what I found, and I think I'll carry this with me, in, in all my future roles is that it also opened and gave, really gave this permission to not think like, oh, I have to stay in my lane, or I'm only responsible for these specific bodies of work, and really helped give a lot more autonomy and probably commitment to here's how I can use my experience to contribute to the success of the company. And that might mean that people start going to look for problems that haven't been identified yet or for solutions that haven't been thought of in the past. And they really just weren't, you know, kind of boxed into these are the only 3 ways you can solve that problem. And truly, I think that that's when the magic started happening.

▶16:26HostMichelle, what parting advice would you share with your fellow HR executives?

▶16:31GuestUh, yeah. Um, as you hopefully can tell, I think it's a really exciting time, not just to be in talent, but in the HR space in general. I think we're in our own transformation period, as you know, a function or industry. And I think one, that's exciting. That means that's world of opportunity. And no matter, like, where you are in your career, that means you have a chance to really make an impact. And that means it's probably going to be really chaotic for a while. Jobs that existed in the past aren't going to exist in the future. Uh, technology skills, they're all changing. The good thing about that is we're all in that together. So if you are interested in solving problems and making a real impact, you can do that in a non-traditional way. And I think business leaders especially are open to and hungry for that right now. So my advice would be, if that sounds exciting, jump in. You don't have to, you know, have deep expertise in any one particular subfunction, I think leaning in on understanding the business, building great relationships, and being really dedicated to solving very real problems in a pragmatic way can really open the door to opportunities or jobs that you never even considered or maybe don't exist today.

▶18:06HostThank you for joining me today, Michelle. It was great having you on the podcast and We're looking forward to putting this live.

▶18:14GuestAwesome. Thank you so much.