Unlocking Innovation & Maximizing Value w/Matthew Daniel
Episode Overview
Welcome back to another episode of Making Better! Today, we have a special guest joining us, Matthew Daniel. Matthew is the Senior Principal of Talent Strategy at Guild and has had an impressive career working with Fortune 500 companies and startups. In this episode, we dive into Matthew's experiences at the Department of Defense (DoD) and the lessons that can be learned from their talent development strategies. We'll also explore the importance of investing in employees, integrating talent development into business strategies, and the impact it can have on both individual and organizational success. Get ready for an insightful conversation packed with valuable insights. Let's dive in!
About Matthew Daniel
Matthew Daniel has consulted on talent development, talent management, and HR technology strategies for Fortune 500s, including companies like Nike, Boston Consulting Group, Chipotle, Allstate, Cigna Healthcare, Microsoft, Walmart, and General Motors. Matthew currently serves as Sr. Principal of Talent Strategy at Guild, where he crafts solutions at the intersection of skills, career pathways, mobility, and equity in the workforce. He also serves as a member of the Talent Management, Culture, and Diversity Subcommittee of the Defense Business Board, where he advises the Secretary of Defense and Deputy Secretary of Defense on the latest in Talent Practices.
Full Transcript
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Matthew Daniel [00:00:00]:
If you invest in people in deep and meaningful ways, they are highly valuable to you in the future. Very fungible and flexible to meet the needs of the organization. So it's honestly not the most innovative thing that's come around in the past few years that makes me excited and see the DoD as a model. It is its intentional talent development efforts, year after year after year after year that raises up in a high turnover workforce the skills that are needed not just to operationalize or to operate at a positive format, but to be the best in the world.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:33]:
Hello and welcome to the Making Better podcast where we talk about making individuals, teams and organizations better. My name is Matt Gjertsen, the founder of Better Everyday Studios and today we have the pleasure of talking with Matthew Daniel. Now, I've been following Matthew for quite a while on LinkedIn and various podcast appearances and I'm really excited to talk to him today because he has had an incredibly varied career. He started out in consulting and worked internally at some major companies. He started his own consulting company and now he is the Senior Principal of Talent Strategy at Guild. So he's gotten to work with everything from Fortune 500 companies to extremely small startups. And now he's actually also doing some work for the DoD, which is, after all, one of the largest organizations on the planet. That's what we spent a good deal of time talking about today.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:27]:
So I think we really get a lot out of the discussion. I'm sure you will too. So let's dive in talking to Matthew Daniel. Matthew. Welcome to the Making better podcast. How are you doing today?
Matthew Daniel [00:01:40]:
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be on.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:44]:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I can't tell you how excited I am to have you on that we finally connected. I think I had been the lurker on LinkedIn watching you and you on other podcasts and your postings for so long and then we finally got connected. So I'm really glad to have you on today. I did kind of a brief intro of you going into it, but you've had such a varied career, you've seen so many things. I'd love if you could give the audience just kind of a quick rundown of the experiences that you've had or maybe even just like if there is a particular experience that stands out to you, I'd love to hear it.
Matthew Daniel [00:02:24]:
Yeah, I mean, I'll just give this quick synopsis of seven or eight years growing up in the learning and talent space with GP strategies, which gave me the chance to go all over. I mean, Homeland Security, DoD, GlaxoSmithKline, like big industry, smaller companies that I got to work with growing up in the field of talent development from learning ops through facilitation, instructional design, all of that's been fun. Like a couple of years in house at Capital One, which was I love consulting, but to have to live with your own recommendations, which was part of the reason that I went into Capital One. And then the past three and a half years at Guild have been so formational. I guess it feels like a cherry on top. I haven't had enough of a career to feel like it's a pinnacle, and yet I still feel like it feels the pinnacle. I'll say a couple. When you think about impactful experiences, I'll do like a fast forward version, which is as I was exiting GP Strategies.
Matthew Daniel [00:03:26]:
GP Strategies is kind of an engine behind so much of the learning and development world that folks don't know if you're stateside GP has had a phenomenal impact. And so as I was leaving, I was writing my exit email and it dawned on me of like, in your normal day, and this goes to the field of talent development, all the places that we touch and work and have an impact. And so as I was reflecting on my time there, I was writing and I just said, when you turned on your light switch this morning, the power came on because of a power plant that GP Strategies brought online. And when you sleep in your bed tonight, peacefully, it will be under the blanket of DoD contracts that GP Strategies has done a lot of training on. When you take medicine, your pharma, when you put your shoes on with Nike shoes, through the course of your day, there's so many pieces. And I just saw the impact. And so that was a really formational moment for me. Formational moment at Capital One was this moment of the CEO or CEO Rich Fairbank coming and saying, look, we've got to go through a digital transformation.
Matthew Daniel [00:04:45]:
And everybody kind of said, I'm not sure what that means, and I don't know, I want to be in the middle of it. And I think that moment where I raised my hand, I went to our CLO at the time and said, I think we should define what digital literacy means, digital fluency means, and we should drive that in the enterprise. And she kind of said, no thanks, that seems really political and nobody here knows what it means. Like, let's not step off in the middle of it. And I thought that was a moment that we could drive meaning and change the business. And I was just young enough to be so energized by the chaos that that was going to create that I decided to lean into it. That was a really impactful experience, I think most of all, if I bottom line, it is the most impactful part of this entire journey has been my time at Guilt. And I think it's because if you had asked 21 year old Matthew right out of college, why do you work in training? At that point in time, I wasn't in learning, I wasn't talent development.
Matthew Daniel [00:05:52]:
It was training front of room training. And so why do you work in training? And the thought that I had, we were training first responders on WMD detection. And what I thought was as these firefighters earned more credentials, more certifications, it could make a difference in their pay. It was literally something you would get paid more for. And so what I thought to myself is when we do an excellent job at delivering this learning, people make more money. And when people make more money, they can invest in their kids to go to better schools. Most of us that are parents are thinking how do we make the world better for our kids? And so what I thought then is like LND this field of learning and talent development can have a legacy of impacts. It's not even just the person in the room or taking the training, the learning the person that you're developing talent development for.
Matthew Daniel [00:06:51]
It's actually this really big, systemic creator of value in the world to the business, to society, to individuals, and to their families. And the idea that I could always have that impact was something I always wanted. And I feel like I did throughout so much of my early learning career. Guild has let me put such a fine point on that because what we do is think about specifically education and credentials. And I don't have to suppose that people make more money than that. There's a lot of data around it. And so what I see is like the economic mobility that comes out of access to credentials and talent development that really makes me say, you know, for the rest of my life I want to be in a space where I am both building businesses and executing on strategy. But I'm doing it in a way that leaves the world better
Matthew Daniel [00:07:48]:
And for me, I think finding Guild at this intersection of equity, talent development, economic mobility, really made me excited and kind of changed the trajectory of where I imagine I'll be from this point forward.
Matt Gjertsen [00:08:06]:
That's awesome. It's so great because I do unfortunately think a lot of learning people since it is kind of a thing that you just fall into very often or show up in. There's not always opportunities to think about the impact that we can have in that way. And kind of the follow on impact. We talk a lot about impact to the business and that's definitely something that we drive and focus on. But that real impact on people. I was so lucky. Since I started in the military and flying, I'll never forget a day when I was I bring this up a lot in speeches where the day that Soli Solenberger landed on the you know, saved all those people.
Matt Gjertsen [00:08:47]:
I was at the Air Education and Training Command annual symposium in San Antonio. So that was happening same weekend. And of course, so that happens. And the whole rest of the conference, every pilot's saying like, oh, I could have done, like but then at the end of the conference, when the commander of Air Education training command gave his keynote speech, he just stood up there and said he's like, this is amazing. It saved all these lives. I just want you all to remember that his journey started with us because Soli had been a pilot in the US.
Matthew Daniel [00:09:24]:
Air Force.
Matt Gjertsen [00:09:24]:
So literally, you trace it back 30, 35 years, he had been one of our students, and it was just such an impactful. Like, oh, that's what we're doing. That's right. And it's not just that. Yes, people are getting skilled today, and they can do their job better and they get paid, but man, like, drawing that line to they can have families that are flourishing and invested in their kids, that's a true impact.
Matthew Daniel [00:09:55]:
Well, and I think if I go back in my career, the moment that everything changed for me is I was in a learning ops role, which is a fancy way of saying we made copies of training materials. That was my real first job, like a homeland security contract. And my supervisor at the time came over and tapped me. I had driven a lot of efficiency into the team, and we had some slack capacity. And she came over and she said, hey, we're doing this 40 hours train the trainer on instructional systems and tools. Would you want to be a part of that? Sure. And I think what happened in that moment is I didn't just go to a 40 hours boot camp on instructional tools and technology. It absolutely changed the trajectory of my life, because what I started to unpack was the science behind learning.
Matthew Daniel [00:10:48]
Not just I had been doing leadership development for many years through church, and then when I realized there was actually a science behind it, my mind just opened up. There weren't many people in instructional systems, instructional technologies programs at that point in time, especially not in rural Arkansas where I grew up. And so that 40 hours boot camp changed everything for me about the entire trajectory of the rest of my career. And I'm so grateful for moments like that that are so unsuspecting and yet are so formational in who you become in time, because it just leapfrogs one place to another, to another, to another. Anyway, it's been a fun journey, and I am keenly aware of how grateful I should be for the people who have given me opportunities to go places, see things, be a part of things that have really formed little bits of how I think about our field and the opportunities we have to make an impact.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:47]:
Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Well, thank you for that. And I know you kind of referred to guild as the cherry on top with your career, but I know for me, there's one specific thing that you're working on right now that I am really interested in, that I wanted to talk to you about because as I mentioned, I spent my early career in the military. I was an executive officer for a while, and so I spent a lot of time looking at performance reports. I went to promotion boards, gave presentations to folks on how to get promoted and how to advance your career. And now you find yourself doing some work with the DoD, kind of talking about performance management and talent development. How did that come about?
Matthew Daniel [00:12:31]:
Yeah, I will say I am still shocked to be there and be a part of it. Like, I would love to show up with such confidence and swagger that I always knew that's the kind of opportunity I'd have, but I did not think that. Yeah. So I do. I get to serve on the Talent Management, Diversity and Culture subcommittee of the Defense Business Board. And for those who don't know what that is, it's an advisory group that outside experts in our field who serve as advisors to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. And I'm just going to do the caveat now because this is important. I go through my own ethics training as part of participating in the DoD.
Matthew Daniel [00:13:16]:
I am not speaking on behalf of the DoD or the DBB. I'm just Matthew speaking on behalf of Matthew. That journey to become a member of that subcommittee has been just astounding essentially part of my role at Guild is Thought leadership. It's to do deep research on topics and write a lot about those, speak about those. And so when I joined Guild back in 2020, I had already written a couple of things for publications like Chief Learning Officer or Chief Talent Development Officer TD. And so I had started generating a lot on the field of career mobility, of folks being able to consume learning and build new skills and then internally transfer to bigger jobs and opportunities. And so I've recorded a number of podcasts and have written a number of things. The DoD, the members of the Defense Business Board had actually started a study on talent management philosophies and specifically on mobility, and they uncovered a couple of my articles.
Matthew Daniel [00:14:24]:
I got an email that purported to be from the Pentagon. Literally it said, I think it was like, from the office of the Secretary of Defense.
Matt Gjertsen [00:14:32]:
Is this spam?
Matthew Daniel [00:14:33]:
I need to check 100%. Like I forwarded onto infosec and was like, hey, somebody's spamming me. And they came back, no, that's legit. So anyway, I ended up sitting down with them for an interview as a part of one of their studies. And after that study was over, I got a phone call from the kind of director that leads all of that work and asked if I wanted to join. They were blowing out, adding a number of additional members to that subcommittee and asked if I would join. I promptly responded, did you mean to call Josh burson like, who else were you trying to call? I don't think you meant to call me. And yet she insisted
Matthew Daniel [00:15:13]
And I said, look, if you're going to give me the opportunity, I don't know that I have enough value to add, but look, if you're going to call me, I'm going to take the opportunity. I get to go to the Pentagon once a quarter and sit down with a number of leaders, almost always the deputy secretary, sometimes the Secretary of Defense. There are probably about 25 of us across the three subcommittees, and we get to hear about the latest and greatest of what's happening in the DoD. And then we are asked to take on studies. We're tasked to take on studies in certain areas that the secretary, often the deputy secretary, are wanting to go much deeper into. And we set about doing benchmark researching of what's happening in the industry, what's happening inside the DoD. We're governed by a series of pretty incredible laws that exist about sunshine and government, which I think is phenomenal, where we get to ask questions, but maintain the privacy of the people who are responding to us. And we write up these summaries and get to take them around to different members, sometimes of the media, but definitely to members, to employees at the Pentagon, both on the civilian and military side, and provide advice from what we see in the industry.
Matthew Daniel [00:16:32]:
A lot of times they take up those issues that we throw out there. We literally have scorecards where we look at over the past couple of studies, how are those things being adopted? What is, what isn't? What did we learn through it? So that's a whole lot of fun and something that I really enjoy doing and learning about. I said it like my second contract right out of college. That first and second contract, one was Homeland Security, one was DoD. It was on a DoD installation in rural Arkansas where I lived, which was like it is the major employer in the area. And so starting my career there, I told you a little bit of the story. It wasn't a great start for me. I wasn't a good match for the pace.
Matthew Daniel [00:17:15]:
I wanted to run at a quicker pace than my Cohort at the DoD. And so it didn't feel like a good fit then. And now I get to advise at a completely different level. It's a whole lot of fun to get to be a part of it is an honor as an American citizen to be able to use my experiences and bring that to DoD, and then, frankly, to learn a lot from what's happening in the DoD and bring that back out to private.
Matt Gjertsen [00:17:42]:
And I think for people who aren't aware, there really are a lot of the military as a whole. From my experience, I'm still in the reserves. They're very keen on getting outside input right now. It might not always be the easiest. It might be a little bit tedious to try to work with some work in different programs, but they are definitely trying to bring in that outside information, get new points of view. I'm interested. You mentioned you're kind of tasked through these different studies. What does that mean? Are you conducting surveys or interviews or are you just doing research and summarizing it? What is that?
Matthew Daniel [00:18:20]:
Yeah, all of the above, actually. So the study that we're working on now, it's actually published to the website. It is focused on culture, culture of efficiency, culture in the DoD, and culture of innovation in particular. The one we just wrapped up was on talent acquisition, was on recruiting. And so for these, what we tend to do is go do sometimes we'll do focus groups. This most recent study, we did focus groups with a number of service members and civilians working in the different components. Sometimes we'll do big surveys where we'll send out a set of a couple of dozen questions and ask the services to respond. We always do interviews, so we always do one on one interviews with a number of folks.
Matthew Daniel [00:19:07]:
And there are a handful of us from the committee who will join the different calls. Even the subcommittees themselves are made up of both those of us who come from never having served civilians. And then I'm on a subcommittee with someone like General Larry Spencer and others who have military experience and private sector experience. And so we'll ask questions. We tend to also, whenever you do have an email coming from the Pentagon, you can reach out to big names. And so we interview CEOs CHROs Clos from the country's biggest employers. And so we get this leadership and brass of DoD frontline, employee of DoD industry leaders, and then usually quite a bit of lit review or kind of desk research on those topics and really pull together. In every one of these studies, what we're asked to do is outline essentially our findings.
Matthew Daniel [00:20:06]:
What do we find both inside the department, outside the department, and then what are our recommendations and a roadmap of how we think those things need to evolve over coming months and years.
Matt Gjertsen [00:20:17]:
That's awesome. In this capacity, as you've been doing this, and whether these are things that you've been researching or things that you've been seeing other people bring in, what are kind of the biggest surprises? As somebody that's been outside of the military for your entire life and now you're getting a little bit of a peek behind the curtain, kind of, yeah. What surprised you about talent development in the DoD?
Matthew Daniel [00:20:39]:
Yeah, I think it's as good and as bad as you imagine. That's what is surprising. I think because of my time working near the DoD, my perception of the pace of innovation and some of those things was not I didn't have the most positive of views. And I think the deeper I get into it, the greater my respect grows for the level of innovation that I see inside the DoD. I think one of the things that is so interesting about the DoD, it is the largest workforce in the world and it is massively complicated. It has the biggest footprint of any workforce in the world. It has the most jobs and occupations of any workforce in the world. There is literally you want the job
Matthew Daniel [00:21:36]:
It exists inside the DoD, if you can think of a job. So, ultimately, I think what is interesting for as big and hairy and complicated as that can be, there are also these pockets of innovation that are inspiring and energizing and make you appreciate deeply the work of the men and women, both in uniform and civilians, who work so hard to make sure that we don't go to war again. Right? That is ultimately what they're trying to accomplish and that we are ready in case we have to. And so when I think about this workforce, I am just constantly amazed at some of these pockets of ingenuity and innovation that I see happening. On the negative side, I'm surprised at how little that gets around. I think whenever you see so many good things inside the department, the fact that those aren't always connected throughout the department is disappointing, but also not surprising. If you worked in a Fortune 100, you'll find some of those same things happening where you have a lot of innovation. But in a decentralized organization, which the DoD is heavily decentralized, when you think about a decentralized organization, part of the reason you take a decentralized approach is to drive innovation, to make sure you don't have single points of failure.
Matthew Daniel [00:22:56]:
A number of different reasons that you have that, but ultimately that also creates this real innovation. And I love finding that. I also am surprised at moments at how far behind some of it is. So you take the good, you take them bad, you take them all in.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:11]:
There you have yeah, that's absolutely true. And it is amazing just how big it is. I will never forget reading I forget the name of the book. This has been 15 years since I read this book, but it was a book about kind of not exactly getting promoted, but just like the various levels of ranks in the military and the kind of structure that the military has. And this was somebody who was working at the Pentagon who had a very big picture view. They were probably from Air Force Personnel Command or something. And I'll never forget in the book that they were referring to One Star generals. So these are people who they've had a career.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:52]:
Now, they've been in the military for 25 plus years to get to the rank of One Star general. If you're outside the military, you think, oh, they're a general, this must be this massively impactful and important person. And this book referred to one star generals as middle managers just because of the sheer and it's kind of true in the sense that there's still so much above them, right? There is still so much broader stuff above them but still they have to be at general level because there's so much below them. Like it's just such a massive organization that it's hard to comprehend and as you say, it is extremely decentralized. And I think you're right in that it's easy to forget about it's not only this massive organization but it's a no fail organization. If something crazy happened and Google broke mean it would be disruptive but it's different than if the military breaks just it's just a different thing. And so I think that's where there's that give and take. I think you're right in that though there is so much that moves so slowly that's why there is that level of consistency that they just have to maintain that level of structure that they have to maintain because though they want innovation, they can't let it fail either.
Matthew Daniel [00:25:27]:
Yeah, we deal with this all the time on the DVB as we're writing our studies we do need to point out the differences between where the DoD lags behind private industry and you will see that as a consistent theme in the reports that we write. I also think that when we write those things we heavily debate behind closed doors how far to take that language. Because ultimately public industry, like the public sector and private industry are two different things with two different goals. And ultimately in private business we have really clear plans that we're going for. They're like their products, their tools, their platforms. There's a three year business strategy. Every business has to deal know VUCA. Like, we've all got to figure out how to deal with outside influences that are kind of come in things like COVID.
Matthew Daniel [00:26:22]:
That's a very different thing than the Department of Defense, where ultimately this is a large group of people who have to plan for every eventuality. And frankly, people like us on the outside are wanting people stand up and yell and the press rights about things and everybody wants to hold our government accountable, which we should. That's how a democracy works. And also it's not always so comparable because the problems that the military has to solve are so vast. And so I love this field of scenario planning, not strategy planning which we all know, which is like we want to get to this end objective, we take these steps. Here are the building blocks to get there. But the field of scenario planning where you plan for so many different eventualities. When I worked with Homeland Security we would do tabletop exercises where you're trying to handle all of the influences.
Matthew Daniel [00:27:23]:
Those things happen regularly within the DoD as well. I think what it takes to manage all those optionalities and how to respond to those just requires a complexity and then I think you also have it's worth pointing out that the way that funding works for the DoD, it's often not like, here's your strategic budget, work from it. It's more like different players who allocate different money from Congress in different directions towards projects that benefit their state, et cetera. And so the DoD has to manage a lot of moving pieces here that ultimately, I think, still create. Give us the best military in the world, in the United States and much to be proud of in the way that works.
Matt Gjertsen [00:28:08]:
Yeah, absolutely. So with all those caveats being said, are there any particular what's the low hanging fruit that you've seen? Are there things that gaps that you've seen where the DoD is kind of behind? They're just like, oh, this could be an easy one that we could go know, speaking as somebody who knows a lot of people in the DoD who are looking for improvements.
Matthew Daniel [00:28:30]:
Yeah, I think ultimately one of the biggest things that we can do, and these things exist already in DoD. But from where I sit, and again, I'm going to speak as me, this is not me speaking on behalf of the DBB, but I think the need for connective tissue across and I think in military parlance, there's the Joint Force, the idea of how we approach things together. I think it's very easy inside the DoD to get siloed because of the decentralized nature of things, whether it's funding, structure, authority, legislation that guides those decisions. I think if I were going to say what's the one thing that I've seen in my time that would be most beneficial? Lots of caveats. It really is sharing best practices of where that innovation is happening across functions, having stronger functional communities who are empowered to really bring best practices across the entire department. And there are places where that happens again. There are places where different commanders work more proactively or within services, et cetera. We know that the Air Force does a phenomenal job of this inside the confines of the Air Force.
Matthew Daniel [00:29:43]:
I think one of the things that is the lowest hanging fruit is to be able to do a better job about talking about what's working cross services and sharing techniques, tools, titles, processes, flows, relationships with vendors all of these things in a way that allows each service and component to move more quickly based on what's already been learned inside the DoD. That's the thing that jumps out to me as easiest lift.
Matt Gjertsen [00:30:14]:
That's awesome. It really reminds me of have you read the book Team of Teams?
Matthew Daniel [00:30:19]:
Oh, yeah.
Matt Gjertsen [00:30:20]:
So it's for anybody who hasn't. It's by General Stanley McChrystal and kind of traces his time as the head of Joint Special Forces Command in Iraq around 2008. And it really is a micro version of exactly of what you're talking about where he came in. And there's all these individual Special Forces teams. There's Army Rangers, there's Navy Seals. That are all individually excellent and doing amazing things, but they're all stepping on each other and getting each other's way. And it's one of my highest recommended leadership books out there because I think, interestingly enough, I find some of the fastest paced organizations face exactly the same problem for different reasons, in that every team is trying to move. So fast that they can only focus on their objectives.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:10]:
And it can be at the detriment to other objectives if they don't step back. So a completely different reason for that siloing. But it's one of the biggest problems that I run into out in just regular corporate life, I think.
Matthew Daniel [00:31:23]:
Absolutely. I think they're just trade offs, right? This is the trade off between centralization decentralization moving fast, moving slow, risk mitigation, risk aversion. You just see all of that. But ultimately, I think finding the places where they're common ground and sharing proactively the thing is that takes time. That takes time and energy away from the work. And so you also do have to make real trade offs about if that time away is worth it and what the benefits are. So yeah, I appreciate that question. For sure, yeah.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:58]:
So then to look at the other side of it, there's the low hanging fruit, but we've already said there's all these great things that are happening too and good things that are going on. You've seen at the smallest scale as well, working with startups and other organizations like that. What have you seen that you think the DoD does really well or at least some lessons that you're seeing that would be well to transfer from these large organizations that other organizations might be able to learn from?
Matthew Daniel [00:32:28]:
Yeah, here's the thing about the DoD that I think is still fascinating is at the end of the day, they're places of know. If we think about for those who have been in L. D. For a hot minute, I know, you know, in the world of e learning, most folks have moved on to X, API and a number of things. But before xAPI was SCORM and before SCORM was AIC. And AIC is a government protocol, right? It's an air force. I remember correctly. If you talk about the whole field of instructional systems design itself, like the beginning of ISD, it's a military concept
Matthew Daniel [00:33:09]:
So this world of talent development, it was the military who pioneered so much of what adult education and workforce development looked like, essentially, because you have to to facilitate. And I think as much as one might want to look at the military and look at the things that aren't always done so well, if you just reflect on the only other organizations I can think of that work like this are retail organizations where there's high turnover. The DoD is, at least in the military, is high turnover with intentionality. You sign up to serve for three years, four years, six years, maybe you become a lifer in time. But ultimately the amount of time that you sign up for is finite, which means that the whole military has to be able to train new service members to quickly get up to speed on the bulk of how the DoD runs year after year after year after year. And I think what the DoD really does well is the logistics of moving massive bodies of people around. We call them boot camps. Boot camps are all the me.
Matthew Daniel [00:34:25]:
Boot camps are all the rage in the private sector. That whole concept is a military concept. It is about intense, hands on, applied. Get in the dirt, learn what it means, get comfortable with it. It is your life. Do it. I think when I think about what I see in DoD, certainly I see scenarios. I got to see some on my last trip even, where we were looking at some of the ways that people are being trained and getting smarter based on scenario based learning in digital environments.
Matthew Daniel [00:34:58]:
So we know those kinds of things are happening and can come out to private sector. We know that those things are also happening in private sector and being done really well. But ultimately I think the thing that the DoD does so well that the rest of the business world isn't caught up to, doesn't do well, is this sense of when I know I'm going to have turnover, I still invest in those people. Ultimately those former service members have pride about their time in DoD. They also have they see the things that didn't work. I mean, not to talk about anybody on this podcast, but they see the things that don't work about the experience, but they walk out with a lot of pride about what they went through and ultimately become a part of a much larger workforce. Right. When you come out of the military, you are a source of highly skilled labor that comes out into the rest of the field and we get to benefit from in private industry SpaceX, gets to benefit from your skills and background in the Air Force.
Matthew Daniel [00:36:00]:
So ultimately, I think when I think about what can we learn from DoD, it is the importance of investing in talent development. At the end of the day, I think that the brand loyalty that exists between former service members towards their brand of Army, Air Force, whatever it is about the investment that was made in them and the way that they feel affinity towards that brand from their own experiences. I think companies can look at the way that the DoD invests in its service members and recognize that there is a lot of upside and loyalty from people who have had significant investments in them, moved them around for opportunities. Right. This is another basic concept that's existed in the military for eons. It's definitely in the American military that you rotate in and out. You become a deep expert in one area. But if you're going to become a leader, you've got to float around and go to a lot of different places and have exposure to different processes and tools and segments and facilities and those things to become the well rounded leader that you need.
Matthew Daniel [00:37:10]:
We don't always do such a great job of that in private industry. It's a little Darwinian like own your own development. Best case scenario, we're giving you an Elearning library. Hope you do well.
Matt Gjertsen [00:37:22]:
Right.
Matthew Daniel [00:37:23]:
Except for if you're a really extreme, like, then you get this double investment. I think service members, there's certainly the same sense of hypos that exist in the service sector. But I honestly think there's so much basics where the DoD has been consistent for decades about developing good talent that we need to look at and say, man, we have operationalized ourselves out of some of the most impactful ways we can develop people. Like, we have managed to minimize to the smallest variable skill. Like, how do we get to the one thing you need and then give you no more? And I think when you do that, you can't be surprised that there's not a lot of brand affinity and that the people aren't ready to go anywhere that you need. But if you invest in people in deep and meaningful ways, they are highly valuable to you in the future, very fungible and flexible to meet the needs of the organization. So it's honestly not the most innovative thing that's come around in the past few years that makes me excited and see the DoD as a model. It is its intentional talent development efforts, year after year after year after year, that raises up in a high turnover workforce the skills that are needed not just to operationalize or to operate at a positive format, but to be the best in the world.
Matthew Daniel [00:38:41]:
Despite that high turnover, because of the talent development efforts they put in place.
Matt Gjertsen [00:38:46]:
I'm so glad you pointed that out because it wouldn't have been the first thing to come to my mind, but as soon as you started saying, I was like, yes, absolutely. And I think for people who are out there who have only been the corporate world, the thing I always bring up is, imagine you're a hiring manager, you're a manager of a team and you have zero say on who shows up for your team. You don't even know when they're going to show up. Somebody just shows up on a Thursday and said, hey, I'm here, let's get to work. If that was your world, you would spend some time investing in really structured onboarding programs, training programs, because that's the world of the military, where, like you said, people move around, people show up. Commanders have next to no say in who is going to be in their unit. And so as a result, there's a.
Matthew Daniel [00:39:33]
Lot and your life is in their hands. Yes, right. You invest in them because your life is in their hands. How well you train them, depending on the job, how well you train them makes a difference between life and death for you if you are in the field. So, like, don't half acid. Yeah.
Matt Gjertsen [00:39:48]:
What I got to say, I mean, when I was I'm flying the KC Ten getting refueled. Yeah. I don't even know the person who's on the other end of that boom in front of my plane. I've never met them. I'm just assuming that they are competent enough for us to connect our two aircraft going 500 above the ground all on faith of the training system. So yeah, it's true.
Matthew Daniel [00:40:15]:
Wow.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:18]:
Awesome. Well, that's a great way to kind of start to bring this to a close. So a couple of rapid fire questions for you. I know this one is always a tricky one, but what is one book everyone should read and why?
Matthew Daniel [00:40:30]:
Pat Lyncione's five dysfunctions of a team. And I would say anything by Pat Lynchione read because he understands leadership. It's short, it's got stories. So why do I recommend that? Reason? But the list is long. Good, great. Radical. Candor read it all. Crossing the chasm.
Matthew Daniel [00:40:50]:
Read all the books. Don't stop reading all the books.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:54]:
It's funny because I've been going back and forth because I've been listening to a number of people who are saying how you should read less books because you should take more time to really process them and learn about them. But there's a whole other reason to read books. And you don't have to take every idea from every book. It's just like it becomes the ether that's just around you when you're reading lots of these books, and it's just going to kind of make you better. It's great. Yeah, for sure. Awesome. That is a great book.
Matt Gjertsen [00:41:21]:
Okay, this one might be even. I mean, this one depends a lot on what your background is. But what is the most important skill to be successful in the world today? In the business world today?
Matthew Daniel [00:41:34]:
I feel so like this question is a give me which is the most important skill to be successful in today's world is to learn.
Matt Gjertsen [00:41:42]:
Nice. I love it.
Matthew Daniel [00:41:44]
That's it. That's a layup if you aren't able to learn. The world has changed so much since my few years in this workforce, 20 years. Generative AI. The skills that we're going to need are evolving already. My team is using generative AI. We're writing all the time. We're using generative AI, we're pulling data.
Matthew Daniel [00:42:05]:
It's not the Generative AI. You've got to know as much as it is how to learn quickly, to figure out what you should learn, to find the places you want to go to learn and then learning to learn. That's it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:42:18]:
Yeah. That's a really good one. I highly recommend that as well. Yeah. And just the idea of practicing, getting used to this kind of stuff because I love the phrase. It's like we're at a point where, yes, everything is changing faster than it ever has before, and this is the slowest change will be for the rest of your life. Yes, that's it. It's still crazy.
Matt Gjertsen [00:42:47]:
You've worked with a lot of organizations. What is the most common mistake you see in organizations regarding talent development?
Matthew Daniel [00:42:57]:
See, I don't think this one's fair. I'm going to flip it. I think the biggest thing that talent development folks fail to do is to integrate themselves in the business. To say it simply, I do think organizations undervalue the way that talent development organizations can help them roll out change. And I think they undervalue the way that talent development can help them drive new skills into the business quickly. I think they do that because, frankly, learning and talent development, in my experience across a number of different organizations, is they're more concerned with having a seat at the table than how well they steward that seat once they get it. I think, on the whole, a lot of folks in L D have the luxury of worrying about which learning technology you're using or learning methodology you're using or which philosophy you adhere to or your means of project management. I think all those things are important.
Matthew Daniel [00:43:59]:
And doing those there was a time I was concerned about those two. I had to get better at my craft, and you have to get better at your craft also. If that is where you spend your time and energy and not how you make the business, knowing where the business is and figuring out how you can insert yourself into it, then of course, the business is not going to leverage you the way that it needs to because ultimately, you haven't made yourself indispensable to the business. So the number one tip I give an L and D person is, where is your business going and how can you make yourself essential to that thing? And then it turns out the business isn't going to make many mistakes about how they leverage talent development because they're going to invite you to the right places, invite you into the change, make you the center of their future.
Matt Gjertsen [00:44:41]:
Right?
Matthew Daniel [00:44:41]:
That's it.
Matt Gjertsen [00:44:42]:
Perfect. Awesome. I love it. I think that was great. Thank you. Oh, man. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Matthew, this has been fantastic.
Matt Gjertsen [00:44:52]:
If people want to hear more from you, follow you. Where can they find.
Matthew Daniel [00:44:57]:
Slash? Matthew? Jdaniel. Matthewjdaniel. That's where you can find me. LinkedIn.
Matt Gjertsen [00:45:01]:
Perfect. Easy enough. Thank you so much. And we'll make sure it's an easy URL, but we'll still link to it in the show notes. So Matthew, Daniel, thank you so much for being here today. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you liked the discussion, make sure to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode as a reminder, if your team is struggling keeping up with the training development demands of your organization, we want to help.
Matt Gjertsen [00:45:28]:
Better Everyday Studios is a full service instructional design team that can help you with everything from ideation to actual content creation and delivery. Please reach out to us using the link in the episode notes below. Have a great day.
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