Welcome to my first Substack! This will be a twice-monthly, long-form newsletter post where I’ll write about all things HR and L&D, the business world, world events, and/or other interesting topics.
While I will offer opinions and observations on topics I have experience with, I will also include opinions about things I may not have much experience in or know much about. I learn from listening to the experience and opinions of others, doing my own research, reading voraciously, and just trying new things. In other words, most anything could end up as a topic here. I do not pretend that everything I will write about is an original idea of mine. I may have an opinion about something else I have read, watched, listened to, been told, or seen elsewhere, and then include my thoughts about it.
First things first though, when I start working on a project, or helped others start working on a project, I usually spend a long time in the initial stages gathering as much information as possible and planning for many variables. Occasionally though, I like to just start the fire and watch it burn. I don’t typically pay any thought to changing direction if the situation calls for it – I just move on. In short, sometimes you just need to start going down the track and figure it out as you go. Starting this Substack is a good example of exactly that.
Secondly, this Substack is modeled after the king of observations, insights and reporting on the state of the NFL, Peter King. For those who do not know, Peter King penned Sports Illustrated’s Monday Morning Quarterback (MMQB) for many years, and later Football Morning in America (FMIA) for NBC Sports. Peter retired earlier this year after covering the NFL for over 30 years. Peter King’s articles, broadcast time, and later, videos, were always a must for me as an avid NFL fan. The way he spoke truthfully and earnestly about the NFL, as well as observations about other things in life, made him so grounded and real to me as a fan. I enjoyed seeing how he could flip in one part of the column about how sad the Raiders offense was the night before, to talking about how good the beer was at a particular pub in Boston. He was not usually satisfied with hearing or writing in coachspeak, the staid, boring corporate lines he could be fed from head coaches, coordinators or positional coaches. He wanted to know the truth because he knew the fans wanted that also. He had great relationships across the NFL and his in-depth reporting was a reflection of that. Peter King also made mistakes, like all of us do, and he never shied away from learning from his mistakes and how to be better in the future. For that, he always had my admiration. So, for other fans of Peter King, this Substack may look a little familiar as it is modeled a bit like the “10 Things I Think” portion of his columns. Here’s to you, Peter. Enjoy your retirement.
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1. The HR industry may be undergoing a seismic shift in real-time.
Years ago, when I was first starting out in my career, I was given a Fast Company article called, “Why We Hate HR.” You can guess the gist of the article by its title. More recently, I was sent this Reddit thread, “HR are the landlords of LinkedIn”. Nearly 20 years apart, and with an infinite number of other examples with a quick Google search, there is a message that is painfully obvious: HR has to do things differently.
While there are always bad actors in any profession that perpetuate stereotypes, sometimes things can happen which collectively give an example of “see, that’s what I am talking about.” The HR industry had an example of this very thing this week when the largest group in the industry decided to continue business as usual. This group, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), announced they are shifting the message on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) to just inclusion and diversity (I&D), removing the equity piece.
I am not going to comment on the shift itself by SHRM. I get what they may have been trying to do, but the execution…..whew. While I don’t agree with all the comments and reactions that have been made about SHRM’s shift, I was not surprised by the reaction. What I am surprised about is how SHRM was seemingly caught offguard by the reaction. As the #1 lobbying arm of the HR industry (and yes, they are a lobbying group, period), they should have known this shift would have caused the groundswell of reaction from HR practitioners. And maybe they did know.
At the end of the day, non-leadership employees want to know they have a voice in the company to advocate for them when change is needed or there is something happening they perceive as wrong. Leadership wants to know they have an advocate in the company to help them mediate or resolve issues with non-leadership employees to advance the goals of the company. I am here to say both things can happen simultaneously, they are not mutually exclusive. But it does require some give on both sides, or in other words, finding the middle ground, the age-old practice of compromise.
Finding that middle ground requires HR people to step up and change how they behave. This will likely come in many forms. For one, there is a new generation stepping in to HR leadership. There are side-effects from the Great Resignation of the COVID era. For another, current HR leaders need to consider changing their approach. Episode 50 of HR Besties by Leigh Elena Henderson Jamie Jackson and Ashley Herd offers a small piece of this (the importance of bringing your true self to work), but their overall podcast peels back the curtain on the realness needed in HR.
If you are going to be in HR, be honest with yourself. Every leader wants to be right, every time. But you’re not. I’m certainly not. It really comes down to finding that middle ground. You don’t (and should not) “take a side” in HR.
That said, HR has always been the political arm of a company, its HR leaders politicians. But while decisions can be difficult, they should be based on truth, data and what is right. It should not be about strong-arming, lobbying or distorting reality to get the goal that you want, i.e. picking a side. People in a company, no matter the role, need to hear when they are wrong or when they are right, and try to find a compromise. Leaders should not steadfastly stick to a decision just because. Sometimes, leadership needs a reminder that the best ideas can often come from those not in leadership.
Look, SHRM has been good to my career. I have used its vast resources more times than I can count and I count on their news channels to keep tabs on what is happening in the HR world. But I’ve never been reliant on them as the only way things should be done. No one else should either. SHRM seems to be taking a side on this particular topic, which is what the antithesis of the HR profession itself should be about. And that could cause further damage to the HR profession, but it could also be a catalyst for change.
2. Like SHRM, companies may need to back off appearing to pick sides on politically fraught topics.
Tractor Supply found itself in a bit of controversy last week. The company reversed course on many of their diversity initiatives, ending a battle with one group and creating issues with others. While I’m a Tractor Supply fan, I don’t think companies need to broadcast everything they do to support different causes because invariably, they are going to make someone upset. Tractor Supply could still provide data to the Human Rights Campaign, for instance, without making it an issue. Corporations are not people, despite what Citizens United said, so I think it is past time for them to just stick to their bread and butter, so to speak.
3. The AI hype is causing an investment bubble but it will also fundamentally reshape careers, companies and the world. Eventually.
Let’s face it: you have not been able to go anywhere in the last two years without hearing something about AI. There are constant memes on LinkedIn and Reddit about the words/phrases “AI”, “AI-backed”, or “AI-enabled” (among many others) being added to seemingly every ad, post, video or commercial about a product or service out there. In some cases, it is almost like a product that was normal last week had a “Powered by AI” sticker slapped to its box, had the price hiked by 15% and rolled out hurriedly to the market! On the opposite end, there are legitimate companies like Nvidia, Anthropic, Midjourney and OpenAI who are legitimately offering AI products (or products to support AI) that are likely to change the world.
Relatedly, Josh Bersin had some interesting inside insight to the recent layoffs at UKG and Intuit on his podcast episode last week. For Intuit, this comes less than a month after announcing product-wide price increases. Bersin’s commentary states, in part, that UKG and Intuit did large layoffs to reallocate capital spending from certain areas of their company to greater usage and capabilities for and from AI. I personally think this shift is premature but sometimes you need to make a move before it is necessary.
As Mr. Bersin noted, HR and L&D employees need to think about how they will reskill themselves as AI becomes more prevalent (especially at larger organizations). If you are in either of these career trajectories, or any really, you should have already been thinking about how AI can both disrupt your skillset and make it better at the same time.
Frankly, while most AI programs have a ways to go to completely shift the world, we should be embracing the possibilities. I’ve written about this a few times on LinkedIn here, here and here, for example. Bersin himself gave the likely example of an instructional designer (ID) shifting from spending the multiple amount of hours creating a training course on a particular topic, to instead focusing on feeding an AI tool with the source data to create the training course.
Whereas before AI the ID’s job was to analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate a training course (using the ADDIE model of instructional design), maybe now it will be AQIE (analyze, quality control, implement, evaluate). In other words, the ID’s job may get a bit simpler, freeing them up to move faster, create more training content, etc.
But, honestly, who doesn’t want to make that shift? If someone offered me a magic wand to eliminate even 10% of the manual, non-value add tasks from my job or from anyone’s job in my company, I would say an immediate ‘yes.’ Not only do I not want to spend my time answering how many vacation days someone is eligible for or what they have available to them, I do not want anyone from my HR Team doing it either. I would rather take the data (or content) that is necessary to answer that type of question, pair it to the data for an individual employee, and feed it to an AI program to answer that question for the employee. Without giving anything away personally, there are so many organizations across the world testing and beginning to employ this type of thing that you should be spending some time brainstorming how AI could positively impact your company, and your job.
As a consumer, I want the same thing. Please don’t make me email or call or log-in to my account to create a ticket for an issue with my streaming service to wait 4 business days only to find out if I just did this one little settings change, my problem would have been solved. Use AI to put the data at the fingertips of the end user and let’s all collectively move on to more important things.
While AI is a tool that will enable efficiencies for many jobs by reducing or eliminating non-value add activities, it will also add new issues to contend with. We don’t know what we don’t know yet with AI, and that in lies the issue as of now: everyone seems to be saying AI can solve all of our problems, but we don’t know how it will. Yet. And we collectively are not thinking of the unintended side effects. As I started with on this segment, it seems “everyone” is in a rush to make an announcement of some type about AI about their company. When that has happened in the past, generally that is the behavior that causes an investment bubble.
4. The skills-based learning “trend” is not just a trend.
A lot of hype? Probably. But the results of employing an actual skills-based learning, training and eventually, hiring plan for a company are based on data and history.
Skills-based learning has been around a long time. Depending on what L&D historical resource you reference, it’s really not new. The United States Army has been employing versions of skills-based learning for many years. In fact, their leadership training program “bible” references skills-based training 470 times per this resource from Penn State University. For longer reads about the US Army’s history of skills-based learning, you can go here, here, here, here, here, and here.
I’ve been privileged enough to lead the shift at two companies towards a skills-based learning HR foundation. This shift requires a lot of research, trial and error, willingness to change tactics, resistance of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, overcoming change resistance in the organization, and surrounding myself with awesome people. I had people way smarter than me helping the process along. I recently had the opportunity to discuss this at length with David James at 360Learning on an episode of The Learning & Development Podcast.
That said, skills-based learning may not be for everyone. Every company’s needs are different. If you choose to embark on this mission, accept that your plan will require great customization/flexibility, and you should source mentors to help you. Here are some great resources as a starting point if you are considering a shift to a skills-based approach at your company:
· Skills-based organizations | Deloitte Insights
· Skills Gaps: How to Identify Them in Your Organization (360learning.com)
· SkillsGPT: Build Your Skills Library Quickly with AI (360learning.com)
· Taking a skills-based approach to building the future workforce | McKinsey
· Building A Company Skills Strategy: Harder (and More Important) Than It Looks – JOSH BERSIN
· Redefining a Skills-Based Organization (kornferry.com)
· Building the foundations of a lasting skill-based organisation (techwolf.com)
· How To Build a Skills-Based Organization: 10 Steps for HR - AIHR
· Making the shift to a skills-first talent management strategy (pluralsight.com)
· How to Build a Successful Upskilling Program (hbr.org)
5. The national economy is showing signs of concern.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) in June 2024 showed the first drop since May 2020 (falling 0.1%), with annual growth slowing to 3.0%. June job growth was an estimated 206,000 jobs added to the US economy for the 42nd month in a row of jobs growth.
But all is not what it seems. Amid excellent examples of companies controlling costs effectively and Americans still traveling in large numbers per TSA, companies like Frito-Lay are acknowledging prices need to start coming down after years of increases. Sticker shock for some parts of the CPI continues, putting more pressure on the overall wallet of the average American.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.1% in June, the first time the rate has crossed 4% since November 2021 when the economy was crawling out of the COVID era. Previous April and May estimates on jobs growth were revised downward, and if you subtract the 70,000 government jobs added in June 2024, non-government job growth was only 136,000. For comparison, the State of Texas added 41,800 jobs in May alone.
Current job postings are approximately at the same level as March 2021 per the Federal Reserve Bank, and the measurement of Level of Activity Indicator of the KC Fed Labor Market Conditions Index is at its lowest point since January 2018. Wage growth has slowed to its lowest 3 month moving average since October 2020 per Indeed’s Wage Tracker. We continue to average over 200,000 unemployment filings per week in the US, which while concerning, is essentially flat year-over-year; however, there have been nearly 200,000 jobs lost in 2024 via WARN layoff notices (large scale layoffs) per the WARN Database.
In short, the Fed may have to act sooner than anticipated to prevent a large-scale recession. Fed Chief Powell so much as acknowledged this week about the Fed’s inflationary targets. What will be interesting to see is how the Fed adjusts balancing the inflationary targets, while also keeping an eye on the effects of the AI transformation mentioned earlier. If companies continue to shed jobs to redistribute capital to their AI efforts, the Fed may have to adjust course.
6. That is going to be quite the mess that AT&T has on its hands.
Following the announcement in recent days of a system-wide breach back in April 2024, my immediate question was, “Why did it take them so long to announce that?”. As it turns out, the federal government was so concerned by the breach that it delayed the public disclosure for two months while it reviewed the situation for national security risks.
If a company such as AT&T is so big that its data set causes the federal government to be so concerned it delays the public disclosure of a systemwide breach for two months to review it, is that company too big?
7. Finally, some common-sense reform from Capitol Hill on an unlikely topic.
Members of Congress should not be able to trade individual stocks, and we finally had a bipartisan group of Senators put forth an actual bill to make this law. Simply put, they have access to way too much inside information aka insider trading opportunity. They know things before we do. By being able to time the market, they can make a much larger profit on individual stocks than the typical investor. If you want to be in Congress and buy index or target date funds, sure, knock yourself out. But no one there should be able to freely access individual stock purchases, and I don’t buy the ‘blind trust’ option either. Time will tell if this actually makes it across the finish line.
8. Chili’s parent company being sued by the Beastie Boys should give AI companies additional pause using copyrighted material.
I think the Beasties have every right to go after Chili’s parent company Brinker for using their copyrighted content without their permission (or giving them credit). This seems like, from the outside, a blatant copyright violation. MCA, the Beasties member who died several years ago, actually banned the use of his (and the Beasties) music in ads per CBS News.
How does this relate to AI? It seems the majority of the LLM models out there were trained using copyrighted material. This is new territory for copyright law. Lawsuits are coming everywhere from music labels to the New York Times, for example. And interestingly enough, some are asking whether AI can be an author in Canada and Microsoft’s saying all internet content is “fair game” to use to train their models. Maybe the US Congress can find bipartisan support to put guardrails on this issue? If the AI companies want to use the copyrighted material to train their models, fine, but they should pay for that access and gain permission to do so.
9. I was wrong about the Houston Astros’ season being toast.
A lot can still go wrong with 2 ½ months to play in the season, but the Houston Astros have definitely turned things around from the way their season started.
On May 1st, 2024, they were 10-20, had a run differential of -22 runs, a staff ERA of 4.98 and bullpen ERA of 4.77.
At the All-Star Break, they are 50-46 with a run differential of +49, a staff ERA of 4.25 and a bullpen ERA of 3.70. They are now only 1 game out of first place in the AL West behind the Seattle Mariners.
To say a 40-26 turnaround is remarkable would be an understatement. Combined with the sudden fall of the World Series Champions Texas Rangers and the Mariners now treading water, things are looking up in Houston. I still think the Astros are going to have to slug their way to the postseason, since the rotation continues to have health issues and the bullpen has had moments. Basically, the 2024 Astros are going to have to be their best MLB version of the 2008 Texas Tech Red Raider football team: score at will to overcome their defensive shortcomings.
They will get their chance to do so, as they will come out of the All-Star Break with a 3 game set against the Mariners and then a 3 game set against the Oakland Athletics.
10. College football needs a new Mike Leach.
Speaking of Texas Tech, I read a great book recently about Mike Leach and Hal Mumme called The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. It offers a great history of what would become the Air Raid offense in NCAA football, including excellent stories and anecdotes of the behind-the-scenes rise of Mumme and Leach in the coaching ranks. Following Leach’s regrettable dismissal from Texas Tech, I became a fan of Washington State and Mississippi State by proxy as his head coaching career continued. Leach was a character and I was genuinely sad when I saw ESPN’s announcement of his passing in December 2022.
With college football set to open what may be its strangest season to date, essentially becoming the minor leagues for the NFL, the NCAA now more than ever needs a Mike Leach. It needs a coach to cut through the coachspeak, say things that need to be said, challenge authority, and call a mean offensive air attack. Who will step up?
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That’s a wrap for this newsletter. I’ll be back in two weeks. Let me know what you think!
© July 2024 Brandon Caldwell, all rights reserved. Hyperlinks are used frequently to reference source materials for proper credit to the original authors on their websites, news articles, social media or other sources. While it can be a useful tool, no ChatGPT or other generative AI was used in the production of this newsletter. Opinions are mine and do not reflect the opinion or policy of others including employers past or present.