Training Blend, Episode 001 The Official Podcast of the State of Nebraska Training and Development Team

This episode marks the official launch of this new podcast and features our first special guest; DAS Director, Jason Jackson. Produced by the State of Nebraska Training and Development team for our Nebraska teammates across the state. Copyright 2019, State of Nebraska Department of Administrative Services

Text Transcript of this Episode

Training Blend Episode 001, Recorded April 4, 2019. Released May 31, 2019

Hello Nebraska! My name's Lisa Menke [LM], welcome to episode number one of Training Blend - the official podcast of the State of Nebraska Training and Development team. Let's get a quick hello from the rest of the team that's here with me today.

Hi, this is Dovi [Mueller, DM].

Mary Beth [Pinckney, MBP].

Renae [Prieto, RP].

[LM] We're joined for today's episode by our very special guest, Jason Jackson, Director of the Department of Administrative Services.

[Jason Jackson, JJ] Thanks for having me.

[LM] You're very welcome, thanks for being here. Alright, we're going to spend the next few minutes talking with Jason about his vision for DAS and the role that our state training team plays in that vision and so before we get started we’ve got some hot seat questions for you.

[JJ] I was not prepped for this.

[LM] Alright. Country or city?

[JJ] Oh, that's so tough. I'll say this; I grew up in the city, from California, and we love Nebraska because it has that kind of smaller more accessible feel. Lincoln, for me, is perfect like you know, moderate-sized. It has a lot of amenities, but just kind of still small-town feel and accessible. So I guess I'll take the middle ground on that one.

[DM] Okay, here's a tough one. Cats or dogs?

[JJ] Oh that's an easy one. Dogs.

[MBP] Alright, how about chicken or steak?

[JJ] Steak. Is there anyone who would answer chicken to that question?

[LM] Dovi raised her hand.

[RP] Not in Nebraska.

[DM] I'm from California as well.

[RP] Coffee, or tea?

[JJ] Hot coffee, iced tea.

[LM] Coke or Pepsi?

[JJ] Pepsi and the can, Coke in the glass.

[LM] You are complicated individual.

[DM] Okay, here's a tough one cake or pie?

[JJ] It's a lot easier to put chocolate on cake. So I'll go cake.

[DM] OK.

[JJ] But I like pie too.

[MBP] Beatles or Rolling Stones?

[JJ] I couldn't name a song by either of those bands so I couldn't tell you.

[MBP] And the podcast is officially done!

[RP] Based on the answer to cake or pie, I think I know the answer to this one. Chocolate, or vanilla?

[JJ] Chocolate. It's not even a dessert if it doesn't have chocolate.

(Everyone agrees audibly)

[LM] Thank you for participating in that. We like to have fun with our guests. Well, you're first one but, you know.

[JJ] It's aspirational

[LM] Let's dive in a little bit deeper here. Jason, can you tell us a little bit about the path that brought you here to Nebraska?

[JJ] Sure! It was in some ways not in a particular design of my own. I'd been a Naval officer and was stationed in San Diego. My wife and I, Gina, kind of grew our family and our young adult life there. I got into human resources and the tech industry after being in the service, and did that for about nine years but was craving getting back into public service and was interested in moving to the Midwest. I had an opportunity coming here into the Ricketts administration and really kind of bring both of those together. An opportunity in the Midwest where, you know, my family could settle in a family-friendly environment and I could get back into public service and still apply my trade in HR. So, it's really wonderful fit.

[LM]What is it about public service that you love working with?

[JJ] You know for me is I really enjoyed my time in the private sector and all that I learned from that experience and the people that I was working with and it was really a wonderful experience that in many ways helped me make me the leader that I am today. But there's just something about being in the public sector where I think it's a little easier to see the benefit of the work that you do for your neighbors in your community and for your state. Whereas, in the private sector that just seems a little more distant, more attenuated, and I think particularly in a state like Nebraska it's just very easy to see the difference that you're making on behalf of Nebraskans. And that's something that to me is really rewarding.

[LM] Mm-hmm, I would agree. That's something that's kind of crept up on me. My first experience in public service was when I joined the State of Nebraska and I didn't expect to sort of fall in love of being able to to use my passions to help people. Yet, here we are.

[DM] Okay, up to me.

[JJ] Alright.

[DM] Since you've been here at DAS there have been a number of positive changes, and we appreciate that.

[JJ] Ok, good. I'm glad that's been your experience.

[DM] If you could wave your magic wand today, what does DAS look like in the future?

[JJ] Oh, wow, you know, I think for me right now it's very much just focused on the basic blocking and tackling of serving our customers. And really developing empathy for what our customers need and usually that's internal customers, and that's our pure agencies, and really just in developing a high degree of empathy for the problems that they're trying to solve, so that they can better serve our community. And so to that end what's right in front of us is just better problem-solving, more empathy. And really a sense of customer-focus. And I think aspirationally in terms of what does that look like in the future? It's that DAS has really established a high degree of confidence and trust with their customers such that they trust us with solving even bigger and bigger problems. Really DAS is very well positioned if we're executing well and we're partnering well to solve a lot of the problems that the state experiences. Because we can do a lot of things better than these agencies can do for themselves. We can solve their HR problems better than they can do it themselves. We can do their contracting, building management, vehicle leasing, risk management. All of those functions. We have core subject matter expertise in and we can deliver things more consistently with a better quality and at a lower cost than if each of these agencies were doing them themselves. And so for me, it's really just about establishing trust and credibility and proving ourselves able to problem-solve on their behalf, and that mission and capability can just continue to grow.

[DM] Sounds promising.

[JJ] I hope so.

[RP] Thinking about what you've just said, what are your thoughts about how the state training team can help make that vision a reality?

[JJ] So for me a lot of it comes back to in any field of endeavor; public sector, private, in any particular domain expertise those that distinguish themselves that are really successful or those that seem to have learning mindset and the growth mindset and prove themselves to be adaptable to change. I think, you know, as we think about what the future is for state government and what success looks like it's going to require a lot of intellectual curiosity, a lot of experimentation, a lot of problem-solving, a lot of adaptability, a lot of change management. And I think that, you know, to be successful that requires a learning mindset and people approaching their work with kind of an entrepreneurial spirit. And so to that end I think you know as trainers, and I lumped myself into this category as a career HR practitioner and I hope a good coach to my team, a lot of it is just kind of imbuing our team with those skills; helping them become willing learners. Helping them become both providers and healthy recipients of feedback and really building those muscle groups around adaptability to change and change leadership. You know, to me those are kind of the differentiators and a really healthy organization over a long time horizon.

[MBP] How do you instill that sort of change mindset over a whole agency?

[JJ] Well, so I think I think a couple of things. One, you have to role-model it, right? You have to be as somebody who both gives frequent feedback in a spirit of helping people be successful and not the spirit of being punitive or disciplinary. You also, I think, have to be a willing recipient to feedback and solicit it frequently. And so I think in that respect it kind of starts from the top like if we have leaders that are role modeling the types of behaviors that we expect to see is a lot easier to influence that change across the organization. The other piece I think is you have to create kind of a safe space for that type of learning where we to create a cultural expectation around feedback and learning and make it okay to make mistakes so long as those mistakes are well-intentioned and are learned from so that we're getting better. Because mistakes will happen. You know, it's interesting, I was also having a conversation about this just today because Department of Transportation is doing kind of a pilot around a mentor-mentee relationship and we were talking a little bit about some of this. And one of the comments that came out there too was around how do you make an organization, you know, where we we seem to sometimes struggle with risk, and how we you think about taking risk. And I think one of the follow-ups and that is relevant to this question as well, which is, helping the organization get better experimentation. It isn't always about taking home-run swings with every project. It's about okay, you know, we have a hypothesis that we have a solution that will be applicable. Let's build a minimum viable product that works for just one person and test it with them. It works for one person. Great. Let's make it work for a cohort of people. It works for a cohort of people. Great. Let's make it apply it to an agency. Okay, it works for an agency. Great. Now maybe we have a solution that we can apply to the state as a whole. So that's kind of a learning organization. I think, to me, that's what learning [organization looks like] and you really mitigate risk and you make it more comfortable to make mistakes if it's in the context of experimentation and building towards learning then it might otherwise be if we have an expectation of perfection on every home-run swing with big projects and big initiatives. So, I don't know, those are just a couple of things that come to mind.

[RP] from what you know of our statewide teammates and there's conversations that you had out in different agencies, what would you say are some pressing needs relating to training and development?

[JJ] Well, I think I hit on some of them with the preceding answer which is really just around adaptability, growth mindset, change leadership. If I were to add to that, it would say two things come to mind. One is just general managerial acumen around performance management. So, as a State, I would say generally we have a lot of great leaders that are really adept that we also have a lot of people that are in learning mode around managing performance [in] general. As administration, attempting to kind of slowly build these muscle groups. You know, beginning with, okay in year one of the Ricketts administration for the first time cabinet officers have goals and objectives. And then in year two we had kind of optional goals and objectives across the state. Then in year three goals and objectives were mandatory for everyone. And now we're trying to incentivize performance against goals and objectives with pay for performance and some other things. And all of that is in service to, with kind of a recognition, that if we're not measuring something we're not managing it, right? And what's more as we go into our teammates to help them be successful by making expectations clear and giving them frequent feedback in service to their success. Again, not in a disciplinary way or punitive way, but in a way of hey, how can I possibly get there if I'm not getting feedback about what it could be doing different? You know, I think that's one aspect of it. I think we're also building skills around just constructive conversations, difficult conversations, those types of things that are kind of basic blocking and tackling of management. So that's kind of what immediately comes to mind, is really equipping frontline and middle managers. But even executive leaders. You know, one of the interesting things I've kind of encountered coming into state government that was a bit unexpected is you have executive leaders in positions of really great authority who compared to who you would characterize as their private sector peers haven't had the same types of management experiences along the way as they progressed into their respective roles. And that's just kind of the nature of government, I think. I use, you know, a few examples like Courtney Dentlinger, who was our preceding Director of Department of Economic Development; brilliant strategist, really understands economic development, wonderful connector, and knows the state of Nebraska. When she came into the administration and I think she had been kind of development director for a small town before she came into the administration might have had a staff of two or three and she's coming into the administration and has a staff of 60 and you know a several ten million dollar budget and it's just a higher level of sophistication. And in the private sector, you would expect an executive leader that they have had more successively complicated roles as they build towards that type of thing. So in among our executive leaders in state government, we don't have the same types of experiences. And so that is just to say in all levels of leadership across the organization there's more that we can do to develop leadership capability.

[LM] How do you think our leadership certificate program fits into that?

[JJ] It's filling an otherwise unmet need of providing, you know, consistent holistic, end-to-end training on the basic blocking and tackling of being, you know, a manager and a leader. That being said, just about every offering that DAS has right now I would encourage us to be what I would characterize as constructively dissatisfied and really in learning mode about, you know, what and where can we be doing for our customers. So, with every offering that we have you know, and that it's no different. I would encourage our leaders and our offering owners to be soliciting feedback about hey, how is how is this doing? Is it meeting your needs? What else could we be doing differently? What do we add to it? Are there things that are less important that should be de-emphasized in the curriculum? That goes across the breadth of our learning and development offerings, but really all of our offerings at DAS. It's incumbent upon us to make sure that we're staying relevant to our customers and that we're still meeting their needs and that we're learning from their feedback.

[LM] There's head-bobbing around the table. (Laughter) For our audience, everyone is head-bobbing [in agreement].

[MBP] What's your most memorable learning experience and what did you learn?

[JJ] Oh, wow. The difficulty in answering that question is just how many I have had. Well, I mean, so I'll stay with the theme of a growth mindset a little bit and one of the (some of the folks around the table are listening they have heard this story before so if it's repetitive I hope apologize) but one of the formative professional experiences I had was after transitioning from the Navy and joining Intuit in the tech sector, I would say I didn't really have a growth mindset and I'm embarrassed to even recount this story now.

[MBP] It's all about growth though.

[JJ] Yeah, well it has got some growth I had my first mid-year review. I don't even exactly remember the rating score, but it might have been like, you know unsatisfactory in the low end to excellent on the high end and I would have had maybe the highest score of like very good or whatever. It was like maybe a four out of five.

[MBP] Yeah

[JJ] And yet I was really upset that I was not a five out of five. To the point that I actually took the review and rather than just accepting the feedback I like wrote a dissertation on the back half of the page about why I should have been a five out of five. I think about it in hindsight and it's just so juvenile. I mean, just so passive-aggressive. It's just so juvenile. So my manager's manager has a one-on-one with me after that and, you know, and basically the feedback was yeah, you're executing very well, but you also have a lot to learn and with this type of behavior rather than putting yourself in the learning mindset and embracing the mid-year review as an opportunity to learn how you could get better you're using it as a venue to justify how good you are. And even if that were true all you're doing is creating a professional brand for yourself of somebody who's not willing to learn and there will be a ceiling on how far you can progress in your career if that's your mindset. Not just for the brand that you're creating but also because you're closing the door to potential learning experiences that he would have otherwise had. So that feedback was exactly what I needed to have in the moment and to this day I thank that leader that he gave me that advice when I needed it. But I also I just count my lucky stars that he was my boss at that time. That is was the exact feedback I needed at that moment, and it was totally a catalyst for, I think, taking my career in a completely different path than it might otherwise have.

[MBP] That's good that you can own it and go back to it and learn from it and even be, I mean, embarrassed is not where you want to be, but owning it.

[JJ] Yeah. yeah.

[MBP] Is key.

[DM] We all have those teachable moments.

[LM] Those very important touchstones.

[LM] Jason, tell us something about you that we might be surprised to learn.

[JJ] I think people are surprised to learn that I'm really a pretty extreme introvert. My comfort space is to just be alone by myself. Reading a book, or watching a show indifferent to either (laughter) I can be particularly around people that I'm comfortable with and I know I can be pretty gregarious and outgoing, but in particularly when I'm in a group of new people. You know, I can show up pretty energetically, but it just and really saps my energy in many ways and I absolutely have to go back and reset after that. I think my personal brand might be at odds with that because people generally kind of describe me as pretty gregarious and outgoing, but I'm actually a pretty extreme introvert. Folks might be surprised to learn that.

[LM] That is surprising.

[LM] We talk about that often, especially I talked about it with Renae. Sometimes that she will conduct an all-day training where she's facilitating and leading and then at the end of the day just done.

[RP] And it's an interesting fact to me a lot of trainers, a lot of professional presenters, are introverts.

[JJ] Yeah

[RP] And that surprises people.

[JJ] Well, you guys are a delight to spend a little time with. I really appreciate that you're doing this and it's just a wonderful way for us to tell people what we have going on at DAS and showcase what we can do from a learning and development perspective. So I really appreciate being a guest.

[LM] Yeah. Thank you for joining us, and thanks to everybody for listening. We will be doing this more and more and have more guests as we go along. Until next time...thanks a lot.

[JJ] Thank you.

[LM] So long.

[DM] Thank you.

[LM] Bye.

[DM] Bye! (Laughter)