hi my name is Dan Coons I'm the mission account manager for servicenow's Army business I'm here with a good friend of mine Lieutenant Colonel Chris sailing to talk about a topic that is near and dear to both of our hearts which is recruiting retention in our United States Army um the the conversation that we're about to have or what we want to have discusses what we've learned where we've come from some of the problems that we've seen across the forest and then what we're doing to correct some of those problems and the and the gaps that are in these places so without further Ado I want to introduce or let Chris introduce yourself uh Chris where are you from and who you are yeah all right we'll do the shark version so I'm I'm currently the um director of innovation for Army Human Resources commander work for the Commanding General looking at a lot of these same problems that we're going to talk about today I came from the Army talent management task force where I ran their data and analytics program for three years and before that I had another three years and uh the g1's uh personal forecasting division so I've had a lot of experience with the HR Enterprise in the army with data and with a lot of the talent problems that we're trying to overcome thanks Chris so let's talk about let's create ourselves a foundation start from a place of foundation uh the Army's done done great work over the last several years putting themselves in a certain place would you would you describe the work that's already foundationally been done for the Army the things that you've learned along that process and then I'll get into the next set of questions which is that's great what do we do next and how does that look at the future Force yeah so let me kind of set the stage for some of the problems that we're looking at currently because I think a lot of people have seen one flavor problem in the news but it's it's very nuanced from there so I think to start with I'll go back to where we were going originally when we started looking at talent management a lot of it was we had a lot of the problems that we were looking at then had to do with the amount of data we had in dispersed systems didn't have it together couldn't use it to see a whole picture of our of our Force we had two data points basically that we used to categorize talent and that was grade and career fields we were assigning people different places based on just those two characteristics and we weren't really taking into account the nuances of their abilities their preferences agency autonomy career progression all the different things that make a full picture of an individual since that time we've been trying to get our forecasts our talent management our assignments all of our functions underneath the army people strategy which roughly bends it under acquire develop employee routine not just looking at how many but who so while that has been a good um well there's been a good effort in terms of getting people to assignments getting them developed uh figuring out how to capitalize on skills and Shore up gaps it adds another layer of complexity to what we talk about uh when we're talking about our recruiting and retention right now um in recruiting you've seen all the news about whether or not the Army is going to have to adjust hand strength if we're going to meet end strength what other kind of problems they are but that's still just a question of how many if we look at just recruiting for how many then we lose all of those nuances that we're talking about in terms of the right type of talent increasing skills and especially as we are looking to modernize the workforce and get a more technical Workforce so we have different types of problems we have to address with each of those incoming skills different types of training we have to invest in and it just really adds to the complexity right and when we talk about people we're really talking about readiness and how does the army show up and when and how do we show up and do the things we need to do from the foundation that we've talked about can you describe what what could or what does a digitally modernized army look like and why does that impact Readiness and why is that impact efficiency because I think it's really important I think it's really important for us to to Center or anchor on what we've done and why it's so important moving forward so if you could just expand upon that'd be really helpful yeah Dan I think you're going to appreciate all the connections in this because of the number of conversations we've had about workflows and decision spaces yeah so we are using our technical tools and our technical Workforce to get information to the point of decision quickly and accurately that's kind of a very uh Bland summation of it because there's a lot of there's a lot of details in there but pretty much everything we do in that digital space contributes to decision science we're getting we're getting data turning it into information and getting it to a point where someone is going to digest it and do something with it and if shortening that action if shortening that chain from data to decision with our digital capabilities and our technical Workforce doesn't sound like it contributes to Readiness I really don't know what does all right that's a fair point so so given given what we've talked about and given what the impact on readiness and given the sheer scale of a 1.4 million member Force talk to me about how do you how do you even think about fulfilling or starting that sort of conversation beyond what we've already done it's just this the massive scale of your Enterprise the massive need to recruit retain the loss that you feel every year from folks that nationally rotate out of the forest like talk to me a bit a little bit about how do you get your mind right around how do you actually fulfill the strategy for organization that's as large as the army so scoping a problem like this is always tricky I mean we've had to look at it a number of different ways and we kind of started with how we're doing the current valued employee employment for our folks you know how are we taking that talent and actually using it um we've done a lot of studies on retention and the number one way you lose The Talented technical person is by putting them in a place where they can't use their skills where they don't have access to data where you know just need a number of uh popular social media posts our computers need fixing um we gotta invest in our infrastructure there but as we start talking about that you'll see it's like for the um individual employment we really need to get a holistic picture of it because it's the people the processes and policies around them that enable them to get the information they need to get into the decision space to do what they need to do the platforms they have access to because they have to have access to the digital platform in order to receive and analyze data or you know any of the number of different functions that they're going to do in that space and there has to be a permissible culture where we actually value this capability we need to and this is going to sound so boxy but I've I've given this speech to senior leaders a lot we have to banish the days where we have exiled our I.T folks and our digital folks to the basement and we just kind of call them when we need something fixed we have to integrate all levels of technical Talent into the decision space so they can actually bring the most important kind of technical competency to the table and that's not necessarily their Hands-On technical competency but it's the understanding of how the Army uses information again coming back to that decision chain how the Army uses that information so that they can identify and feel the best possible tools so kind of coming back to the the people processes platforms and culture aspect of it we start looking at that in immediate employment and then we kind of start to start looking at how does that progress how do we give a person valued employment in their current assignment but then also how do we offer opportunities to develop to grow to build skills that they'll be able to capitalize on both in later assignments and then as an army alum yeah it's great one of the things that I heard you say or that was integrated into every every thought you had was the culture of the organization and what is the culture of the army look like to allow for us to have the forces the force has to be and I think the question then that is how do you start to synthesize the experiences and the training for folks that have to be able to implement this transition and organization in a bureaucracy that isn't always interested or you know what interest is the wrong word isn't thinking about reimagining the way the Army's gonna look how do you start to inculcate the the experiences and the training which allow for us to be able to go out and do this at that scale like what what are the skills that are required what are the systems thinking that's required like what are those sorts of critical capabilities that are required for it so I would start with that just the systems thinking because if you're able to get in there and decompose a problem and show value very quickly where we have reduction of ban hours where we have a benefit to the organization one of the most powerful things we've been able to do so far is take our army evaluations we've been able to parse through those got a just a hot shot natural language processing programmer on my team who was able to automate the scoring of those evaluations and is in the process of automating a order of Merit list for strength of files that we can take instead of convening a board of I don't know how many General officers to go through and review these files over the course of three weeks we pulled them in for about three days and have them do quality control on that selection process so that is what we're doing for the command selection list in the coming couple of years we're doing a pilot on it this year and we're going to put it you know cross your fingers you know everything goes well in the production we're going to put it into production next year and that's what's going to generate your strength of file metric and your invite list for the command Assessment program rather than a whole separate board that you could also make the argument you could also make the argument that improves culture because it's going to remove some bias out of the selection process is that is that a fair is it a fair statement so I don't know that it necessarily removes bias but it does remove uh it does reduce errors it does reduce oversight because people no matter how good their concentration is people start to drone after they've reviewed a certain number of files we have some parameters on the board with a calibrate them but still you're going to sit there you won't necessarily catch a Nuance yeah that makes sense yeah machine doesn't get bored doesn't need a body break that's right especially especially for 1.4 million soldiers that you're going to have to get through over time right is Guard Reserve active duty there's just a tremendous amount of volume that you've got to go through that I guess people can't be expected to have to do that well and this has applications too later again kind of continuing with that value proposition we get that in front of enough leaders and they start thinking oh I could do this for other selection boards I could do this as a strength file metric to look at who is applying or not applying to nominative positions yes so I guess to that I guess an extension that is um what technologies or what's let's let's let's remove the word technology and just say systems uh our army leaders using uh you in particular were thinking about maybe not using that specific but like what are you thinking about to improve and deliver both better experienced more consistent experience and more at scale consistent experience across the Army what how are you looking and thinking about that too at the end of the day treat a soldier as a soldier had a one-on-one individual level which is what we all year in for so we're we're starting with kind of the simple thing with dashboards to be able to see who's who and we can query easily we've put some of those in the Vantage program we put some of those into ipsa but we're definitely not intending for those to be the be all end-all um one of my personal kind of passion projects is career mapping and succession planning tool which is Intel essentially it's a intelligent individual development plan that helps us um is previously to that we had AR 600-3 and all the associated pamphlets that outlined progression in an individual's career at least on the officer side what we want to do especially as we're introducing more data into the mix we want to have people have an interactive version of that where they can see you know where they best fit make them aware of opportunities they might not have known about previously or they can use some of the skills and exercise some of their preferences and also if somebody thinks that their goal is to be a certain type of Commander or to fill a certain position we can show them the gaps between their current attributes and where they need to go eventually I want to set this up so there are links in this tool to um to tuition assistance to um training scheduling to self-initiated assessments gamified assessments to other things online training certificates things that individuals can use to gain additional gain additional skills and close those gaps between them and their desired career progression andron where I really love this to go is one of one of my passion projects also is figuring out how to help more Army members successfully transition and become to take their skill sets and use them effectively in life after Army so I would love for that to tie into how they can convert everything that's in this career map into potential resumes and look for career options for when they're ready to for when they're ready to leave the service and retire as a as a wise person once you follow me we all leave the Army one day or another so you gotta prepare for it from the beginning we only have a couple minutes left and I want to kind of get a catch-all question and uh of all the things that you've experienced at all the different posts you've been in what is the key piece of advice or takeaway that the audience here can can glean from your experience and how we apply that to our our army for all the programs I've worked in whether it's talent management or data literacy or everything that we're doing to kind of upskill and shape the skills of our course it has to be a holistic uh view you have to take the person into account the person is the centerpiece and you build an ecosystem around them again kind of coming back to the people is the center point process is platforms culture because the worst thing we can do is just hire a person or buy a piece of software and not figure out if they're the right match not figure out if they're the right system because then not only do you still have the problems that you were trying to solve originally but you spent a whole bunch of money too so you're probably a lot less happy than you were with just the original problems in the first place I appreciate that answer it uh it it anchors back on the first concept which is a human Center people-centered Army that improves the overall Readiness of a 1.4 million person Force so I really appreciate the time you spent with us Chris I thank you so so much and uh I look forward to talking to everyone soon awesome Dan I really appreciate it this is always fun thanks for being here