A Discussion About Managing Your Career with Evidence-Based Management
In this unique episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, Patricia Kong and PSTs Ryan Ripley, Todd Miller and Will Seele discuss the application of the Evidence-Based Management (EBM) framework to career management. They highlight that intentional career management can improve retention rates by 30-50% and that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company investing in their career development. They share personal experiences with using EBM tools like empathy mapping and a career canvas to align career aspirations with organizational goals. They emphasize the importance of co-creation and non-surprising data presentations to foster productive conversations. The conversation also touches on the relevance of EBM for independent consultants and small business owners.
Transcript
Lindsay Velecina 0:02
Music, welcome to the scrum.org. Community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast, we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Patricia Kong 0:20
Hello everyone, and welcome to the scrum.org community podcast. My name is Patricia Kong, and today we have will seel, Ryan, Ripley, Todd Miller, three best friends, Three Amigos, working at the evidence based company, also professional scrum trainers. Hello.
Unknown Speaker 0:40
Hey. How's it going? Hello.
Patricia Kong 0:44
So we are picking up off of a webinar that actually the four of us participated in earlier in October, which was a different topic than I think scrum.org or even the three of you would would normally talk about, but it was about career management, and it was about career management that was inspired from the evidence based management framework. So can you quickly, Ryan, give us a quick spiel about how EBM applied to this canvas, so then we can start diving into all the questions we want to get back into.
Ryan Ripley 1:21
Well, we started thinking about, you know, I don't think it's any secret on LinkedIn, it's, it's now the end of october 2024 there's a lot of discussions around return to office and career changes, and unfortunately, there's layoffs going on and people looking for work. And I think we started thinking about, how could a framework like EBM have utility outside of managing software projects and products. And so we started thinking about, could you use a framework like this to empirically manage your career? Look for a job, have conversations with your boss, have better one on ones have better performance reviews. And as it turns out, it looks like you can. And so we kind of started there with that hypothesis, could the framework be used in like a truly HR type of application? And it looks like it can. In fact, we've used pieces of this throughout our management and leadership careers, but never holistically like this. But then, as we did a little more research, it turns out, you know, 30 to 50% retention rates improvements for employers who actually do intentional career management. You know, 94% of employees have said that they would stay longer at a company if it invested in their career development. 50% of employees say that they don't believe their managers are prepared for these discussions, like when I can go on and on and on with job satisfaction skill development. But what we found after that hypothesis is that there's a ton of great data out there, at SHRM, at LinkedIn, at all sorts of other sources that say intentional career management, bi directionally, manager and employee has a ton of benefits for the company has a ton of benefits for the employee. There's not a lot of great solutions out there. And we thought cool, this might be a good solution fit within this space, since we started working through it. And as it turns out, people really liked it.
Patricia Kong 3:21
And I think it's super timely in terms of developing and thinking about how we can work within an organization. I think it's also at least what we were seeing from the webinar, a helpful conversation, just because of, well, frankly, the blowout of, hey, agile is dead. A lot of Scrum Masters are being laid off. Capital One got rid of their whole agile department. The future of jobs report actually from the World Economic Forum, they said, you know, in the next in the next several years, 69 million new jobs will be created, but 83 million are going to go away. So I think it's a timely conversation. And so when you were seeing this, this applied, you know, you saw this, the three of you, across your own careers, have you been able to have guided conversations using a canvas with any of your customers or other people that you, you mentor?
Ryan Ripley 4:17
I mean, I don't mind jumping in here again. I I've used canvases in the past with my bosses, right? So there's an a thing called the empathy map. And I was having a very difficult time connecting to my boss. I was having a very difficult time understanding the alignment of my my work and my job. And at the time, I was a director in a fortune 200 finance company, or financial company, I was having a hard time connecting the work I was doing to organizational goals, to my HR set goals, to my managers expectations. And so I worked through the empathy map and just here's what I see, here's what I think, here's what I hear. And and I brought this to our to our one on one. And. At first, I thought this would be contentious, right? And as it turned out, he looked at it and said, Well, I don't agree with this. And he put a new post it in a spot. And he's like, but this is right, and this is right. And he's like, you're really good at this, but you're not great at that. And we ended up having what was, you know, is it supposed to be a 30 minute one on one, it's a three hour meeting. We ended up leaving the office at around seven. We were both like, and I think we actually ended up grabbing a beer afterwards, like we were actually very happy with the outcome. There was good alignment. I understood where he thought my weaknesses were and where my strengths were, and I may it gave me an opportunity to actually look at, well, maybe he's got a point. Maybe I'm doing something here that I think is right, but he thinks is wrong, and his opinion is important, so I need to adjust to that, but it also gave me that sense of alignment with, you know, what I wanted to do with my career, his expectations, HR, expectations, organizational goals. And I ended up having, you know, one of the best years I've ever had in my career. Ended up getting promoted right a few years later, but it was the idea that, you know, when we were talking about these canvases, and the thing that the experience that sparked in my mind was it was twofold. First was that experience with the with that VP, which was just one of the it was a pivotal moment in my career. But then I've never actually felt comfortable in one on ones. What do I talk about? What do I, you know, what does the employee need for me? And it's, I don't think managers get trained on this. You know, I did a lot of research and read a lot of books, and, you know, Todd can tell you, I spent a lot of money at Amazon plowing through, you know, materials and books. You know, we get a new topic, and I've got it. And so I prepared, but I still never felt like I actually used those, those meetings well, and so it just always kind of bugged me. And so when Will and Todd start talking about a possible Canvas for for these interactions and using EBM to power it, like tons of light bulbs start going off. Like, wait a minute, this I had this problem in the past. I've had good experiences with canvases in the past. This has got this. This has legs. This is something that could be really good. Yeah,
Patricia Kong 7:06
the canvas for the conversation, okay, powered by EBM, I love it will So October 8, for people who are listening 2024 is you can see the webcast. You can see the canvas. Can you walk us quickly through this canvas that you guys thought about? Like, what are, what is the, what are the major points of it?
Will Seele 7:23
Yeah, so I think it really starts from a goals perspective. And this is, this is one of the things that I mean the three of us are very passionate about every time we talk about EBM in that it's primarily goal oriented framework. So we took kind of that same approach of looking at, what are the goals that you're actually trying to, trying to reach. And so that's where that conversation starts, right in the middle of that canvas of, you know, where do you want to be three to five years from now, in some way, and then if, if that's the case, where do you need to be a few months from now? And if that's the case, where do you need to be, kind of a month from now, or potentially even, even shorter. And that then naturally leads into the question of, okay, if this is where you want to be, what are the things that you have to be doing right now, and what are some of the things that you should be looking at doing next? So that's kind of forcing you to look at your tasks or your project, right, depending on the context, and only when you've done all of all of that and you have a clear idea of where you want to go and what you're doing, do you start looking into Okay, so given that's the case, what are some of the measures I need To be aware of right in terms of what is, what is influencing my, my ability to to progress, what is my what is influencing my, my frequency of experimentation, my frequency of learning, what is some of the value that I'm chasing, and most importantly, What, what have I done so far? And you can, you can use that in total isolation, right? And I know, I know Todd, for example, has used it to help in some of his some of his fitness goals, but it is something that you can use with your direct report or or if you're working with a client, just to kind of show where you are on the journey, and what you're what you're aiming at, it's, it's, it's a single source of truth, essentially, for where you're going and what you've done in order to get there.
Patricia Kong 9:35
I think that's helpful, because I would say that a lot of us would not know where we're going. So I think it's a great way to help drive that conversation, as campuses should right. The metrics are important, and I love that you're talking about outcomes, so that when you know these things are happening, where there's changes in career, or you know, whatever the reason is, or. Somebody's, you know, unfortunately, been laid off, and they're looking to see what they've done. They have something to show beyond process. So Todd, I wanted to ask you, and I know that you're expecting me to ask you a fitness question. I've changed my mind,
Unknown Speaker 10:13
maybe not expecting
Patricia Kong 10:16
bring. I wanted to ask you, bring. Bring us back to maybe a one on one that you've experienced that wasn't going well, right? And I think all of us would say, hey, even Ryan was saying we used to go in and could be contentious. Do you have an example of a one on one where you wish that you had something like this to kind of communicate your career path?
Speaker 1 10:39
Yeah, you know, that's, that's a, that's a good question. And absolutely I have, and I think it was when I realized, like, the direction that I wanted to take my career was not in alignment with the expectations of a company, and I hadn't seen that. I had just kind of suffered through a particular job for quite some time, and really it wasn't a good benefit to the company that I really wasn't interested in doing what they wanted and expected me to do. And it wasn't a benefit to me. It just kind of made me miserable. So if I had been very clear about the purpose and where I wanted to go with my career in that company, they would either have the flexibility to help get me there or not, and that would lend itself to me having left sooner, because once I figured it out, and I mean, I had been working at this company for quite some time, but once I figured out that where I wanted to go was different than what they wanted, it was like an aha moment and time to start looking for a job. So I think that a lot. I think how could have I had that indicator a little bit earlier and really saved a lot of misery by identifying that? But it was just this blind path that sometimes we follow through our careers, which I've done quite a bit, like I'm just doing this now. I don't have any idea where I'm going, you know. And I always used to hate the question, where do you see yourself in five years? Todd, it was like, I don't know. Like, I have no idea where I see myself in five years. I'm really interested in these couple of things right now, but five years, I'm really I have no idea. So I think that's happened to me twice. Patricia, that just feeling of I am out of alignment with corporate expectations, and that's okay. Let's just stop the misery and move on.
Patricia Kong 12:31
That's I think, that that's really mature of you actually, to say, Hey, I'm this isn't helpful for me, nor is it helpful for you company. So let's say people are using these canvases. You're having those conversations with your manager, or maybe your report. Ryan, what would you say for people who might be using a canvas or trying to have those conversation but it's not being received as it's intended? Right? About growth, about communication? What if you have somebody that is using it as that little, you know,
Unknown Speaker 13:06
stick? Yeah, I
Ryan Ripley 13:08
think this is one of those where you don't, you can't surprise people with EBM and have good results, right? I think Todd and I recently did a video actually called Don't surprise people over on the Agile for humans YouTube channel. And it was actually people were kind of surprised. It was well received. I perhaps this isn't a well understood idea, but you know, when you're when you're building an EBM dashboard, let's say you're doing this for a project or a product or a product, and you have data on there that could make someone look bad, or that could be embarrassing, or that could put someone in a tough spot, and you just shotgun that out into a wide audience. You're asking for trouble. You're asking the the natural human response is defensiveness. People are going to defend their actions. There's going to be argument. There's going to be conflict. You've escalated this well past solving a problem up to crusade or war. I mean, you've turned this into something terrible. If you step back a second and take a Blake template into your manager, your Leader's office, and say, I don't feel aligned with what I'm supposed to be doing. Would you please help me? And I think this could be a cool vehicle to help us have that conversation. Show me a manager who's going to say no. Like, if someone would actually bring something interesting, like that to a one on one, I would have been ecstatic. Like, cool. Let's all right, let's work through this. Like, let's see if we can find some alignment. And I think so. Co creation, I think, is huge. And this idea of not surprising people, right? But as an employee, if I walk in with this and I treat it like it's a weapon, like, Hey, you haven't given me what I've All right, get out of my office. I'm not, I'm not having that conversation with you, or if you really want to have that conversation, all. Bring HR in and actually have a real cut, like, then let's have a cut that escalates, right? Because now I've been attacked, and I can't have the Yeah, and it just that I think is risky. So co creation, don't surprise people, it's not a weapon. It's a vehicle for a conversation.
Patricia Kong 15:18
Cool, all right, so we've talked about having these conversations and the cautions to take in big companies. Will I'm interested, as we're winding, winding down on time, the three of you, you know, used to work corporate consulting big companies, and then you, you made the jump to be independent. Will you work with some of the biggest companies in the Netherlands, some of the biggest consulting companies and in in Europe, how would you advise somebody as they think about using something like this, or they need a tool when they're thinking about that whole you know, should they be freelance? Kind of taking a different direction on how you manage your skills, frankly.
Unknown Speaker 16:09
Well,
Will Seele 16:09
it depends on what your what you're trying to do as in terms of where you want your career to go and what do you want to be hired for?
Patricia Kong 16:23
And did you feel that you knew that you wanted to be hired for being you,
Will Seele 16:31
honestly, at the start, at the very start, of my career, I would, I would say, I just looked to get hired. But I think, I think after a while, you kind of become aware of your own identity and also what differentiates you from others. I mean, there are We are three, for example, that all three of us are professional scrum trainers. We were capable of teaching the same classes. And yet, if you were to take a class from me, you would get something different from if you were to take a class from Todd, or if you were to take a class from Ryan. And if you combine any of us in some way, it turns into something else entirely. And so I think, as you're establishing yourself kind of in that field, you want to differentiate yourself. Now it's very easy to talk about how you're different, because everyone talks about how they're different. I think where EBM comes in is that it can show you how you're different in terms of the kind of results that you achieve and the kind of outcomes that you achieve. So one thing, for example, that that I really focused on in my consulting is this idea of using behavioral design, based on based on Taylor and sunstein's work and a bunch of others, and I can make that visible in terms of metrics by showing that I can achieve real change in organizations, while also raising employee morale without at one point going through any big organizational transformational steps, which is, I mean, I say it now, and if you believe me, that's great, but I have numbers that can show that. And so I think if you are going to be an independent and you are going to be on the market, well, show me that you can do what you say you can do. Show me that your what your difference actually looks like in in terms that are relevant to your clients. And then this has been good answer to your question, but,
Patricia Kong 18:51
I mean, it was, it works for you, right? That's what's important, but it might be helpful for someone else, but that was making me think back to Todd, how, how you and Ryan have used EBM and something really similar to this for your business in general, right? So we're talking about the concepts of saying, Hey, this is, this is what's special about me. This is the value that I can bring to my clients. Now we actually have to run a business. So you guys have used this, both for agile for humans, but Todd, you and I'm asking you specifically, because you've worked with other people who are basically starting their own small businesses, completely out of our industry, right? And you've used the same sort of language or the same ideas for them, can you talk a little bit about that, how you framed it for them?
Speaker 1 19:36
Yeah. So I think it's, I think I kind of draws back to how we how we framed the canvas. A little bit is some of the language that is in the EVM guide isn't necessarily personal. It is you could use it for product development, and it really makes sense there. So just things like, how do you think that you know, what services are you giving your customer today? Or anything in that you could offer them. In addition, I think of like a gym, right? Because I'm drawn back to fitness. You didn't ask me, but I'm going to talk about it, Patricia like so right now, we offer group fitness sessions, but we don't offer one on one training. Is that a satisfaction gap that we want to fill? Because some of our competitors are doing that, things like that. And just, I think being able to navigate and walk through asking questions based off of evidence based management concepts is some of the most powerful things that you can do. Like, are people getting injured here, right? Are you able to give a person a purpose for why they're showing up every day, and then stack that with smaller goals that help them to remain healthy the rest of their lives. Or some people you know might have come in with a medical problem that they think that they can resolve through that, let's, let's talk about that, and let's kind of chunk that up and see how we're making progress. So I would say that the biggest factor in all of it is the ability to ask better questions, and then look at the validity of those. Yeah,
Patricia Kong 21:04
I think that that's that's great, and bringing it back to even a career, it's, you know, our good friend who we we worked with on the the EBM book, Kurt Bittner, he fully retired. And I think these kind of questions and conversations. So it's not just about, how am I moving ahead in my career. But what am I interested in exploring, and how can I still participate, and, you know, be really satisfied. All right, so Ryan, if people want to learn more about this canvas, where would they go? How would they use it? How would they get started?
Ryan Ripley 21:39
Yeah, so evidencebased company.com has a blog post with the canvas that's provided out there for free, so you can check it out and look at the canvas. We're also running workshops on this canvas. In fact, one is running. This podcast won't be out, but tomorrow, and so we will have a the initial workshop out there to help people work through these ideas and to get more familiar with the canvas. But evidencebased company.com is the place to go, and you'll get a lot of great info from
Patricia Kong 22:12
there. Awesome. Any last words about the canvas EBM career, where people can find you next. What are you guys doing besides this,
Ryan Ripley 22:24
I think hitting us up on the socials, right? We're all on LinkedIn, we're all on x, we're all on the interwebs. I think that's probably gonna be the best way to find out more.
Will Seele 22:35
Yeah, I'll be talking a bit about evidence based management and the stuff we do with the evidence based company at scrum de Europe and Amsterdam later this year. So if you're in the area,
Speaker 1 22:46
swing by. Yeah, and just one last ad there is check out our YouTube content. We have a free playlist out there that gives some pretty deep insights into evidence based management, not particularly this career canvas, yet that will be coming, maybe by the time you're listening to this. But EBM, as described by the evidence based management guide just recently updated this year. All right. Well, thank
Patricia Kong 23:11
you everyone. Thank you will Ryan Todd and everyone for listening. Scrum on you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai