The Profiles in Leadership series features conversations with organizational leadership experts to discuss important lessons they have learned and what “Hiring for Good” means to them. This series helps us better understand how leadership drives positive transformations and growth for people, organizations, and the world around us.
This episode features a conversation with Jeff Oltmann. Jeff shows clients how to accelerate results by creating thriving projects and teams. He specializes in strategy deployment, operational and project excellence, and project portfolio management. As a trusted advisor, he brings more than 30 years of experience empowering clients, managing successful global programs, and developing innovative technology. His work spans many sectors, showing leaders in healthcare, public service, research, bioscience, and technology how to implement practical systems that drive success.
Jeff is principal consultant at Synergy Professional Services and is on the graduate faculty of the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University. He was previously on executive staff at IBM and is the founder of the Portfolio and Project Leaders Forum for senior managers of project-based organizations (pplforum.org). Jeff teaches and consults about project and portfolio management systems in both business and graduate settings. He holds an M.Eng. degree and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®).
Jeff’s Contact Information: je**@****ro.com | 503-644-6433 | https://spspro.com/
Recording at: https://youtu.be/fgdOMTWrYrg
Profiles in Leadership Transcript:
Tannis Morris: So, I met Jeff when I had the pleasure of taking one of his project management courses through Oregon Bioscience Association. It was a real eye-opener for me because I do not have that background. I was taking the class to kind of understand the complexities and different levels of not just that job but the extensive support that Oregon Bioscience offers its members. Jeff provides this course on an annual basis — correct?
Jeff Oltmann: Sometimes several times a year, depends on what membership needs.
Tannis Morris: Yes. I’m not surprised to hear it because it’s an excellent course. I learned several things. One, that Jeff is an exceptionally talented teacher. He knows everything about project management, and finally, I have no desire to do that job ever. But that said, I developed a ton of respect for you, Jeff.
Then, I actually, as we moved forward and got to know each other a little bit, I learned that not only does Jeff teach these courses and offer resources to various clients that he supports kind of on that educational front, but he also works as a consultant for a number of different businesses and has a very impressive and extensive work history as an organizational leader in his own right. So I thought that he would be an ideal guest to have join us on Profiles in Leadership. Here we are — so good morning and thank you.
Jeff Oltmann: Thank you, Tanis. I really appreciate this.
Tanis Morris: Yeah! I’m actually very excited to have this conversation with you, Jeff. So just to help our audience kida understand — before we get into kinda all of your thoughts and ideas on leadership and success and learnings — would you mind just sharing a little bit about what you currently do for your career and for the clients that you support, and then maybe just give us an overview in as much depth as you wish of your professional background, which is really fun to hear about?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, sure. So what I’ve been doing for about the last 20 years is management consulting. And what I specialize in is showing clients how to build thriving projects and teams that get important work done. I’m also on faculty in the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University, and there I teach mostly mid-career adults in the healthcare professions how to use projects to achieve their organizational objectives.
As we were discussing before this session started, my background is engineering. My degrees are in engineering, and I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool engineer just like your youngest. Your youngest child. I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool engineer since I was a little kid, loving to build things and figure out how things work. So for the first 20 or so years of my career, I led teams that designed high-end, high-performance computers — large, complex systems — and then, like I said, about 20 years ago, at that point, I left IBM. I’d been working for IBM, running their portfolio of R&D projects in a certain segment of their business and started doing the consulting work and started doing the teaching work. So, to a lot of the questions that you have for our discussion today, a lot of those answers of mind are informed by that background — that engineering background and the teaching aspects of things.
Tanis Morris: Well, I think it brings a very valuable level of insight and kind of synopsis or just—just a different kind of understanding of how things work and what fosters success organizationally. When you’ve taught and lived it—you know, like on both levels, you kinda have this academic knowledge, you have the knowledge of your experience, and then you have all these different companies and people that you’ve supported over the years.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, I’m still a hardcore geek. I love engineering. I have not done active engineering for years, but I still love working with clients who have engineering teams on their staff. It’s a language and a way of thinking that you never forget. Your comment about being able to teach and do is funny because when I graduated from college — back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth — one of the things I said was, “I will never be a professor. I don’t want to go into academia. I don’t want to teach. I want to do. I want to make things.” So, what have I been doing? I’m on faculty. You know, it’s just funny the turns that life takes.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, but in my opinion, the world needs more teachers who’ve actually done it. So I think there’s some really good stuff there. Thank you — that’s very helpful.
I’m going to pivot just a little bit. You kinda, you know, spoke to how your early career experiences really informed your vantage point even today. What formative leadership experiences, or what experiences have you gone through that really shaped your thoughts on leadership — on organizational leadership and then leadership on a personal level as well?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, so there’s some general experiences I’ve gone through. I can’t point to a ton of really specific instances, but a lot of general things. I’ll go back first to that engineering background. That has really influenced the way I approach leadership. It’s approached the way I work with clients, and the reason is because engineers are taught to think as systems thinkers. So, you think of things — systems work together instead of things in isolation. So I’m a very process-oriented person. I’m a very systems-oriented person, and I bring that to my work is I help my teams look at things as a whole and how they all integrate and work together. Engineers also learn how to solve complex problems — that’s a whole part of their training, that’s a whole part of what they do in their work. And so being able and willing to dive into complex problems and help your teams tackle those problems, get them solved successfully, and not be scared off or overwhelmed by them — engineering also teaches you pragmatism. You learn the theory, you learn all the elegant math and all the conceptually elegant solutions, but then you actually have to build stuff that works and you have to get it to your users, your consumers, whoever, quickly. And you have to get it in a good enough state.
And I think that’s important in working with business because it’s easy to go one direction or the other — make things too perfect and you never get it out there, uh don’t make them good enough and you have very unhappy users, or you spend forever maintaining and fixing them. So, bringing that whole idea of pragmatism to my teams and to my clients and saying, “Okay, let’s actually make this work in your situation for what you need right now.”
And I don’t know if you maybe remember Larry the Cable Guy back from quite a few years ago — he was popular — so engineers are generally get-’er-done people. Remember Larry the Cable Guy’s motto was “Let’s just get ’er done”? So, engineers like to build things. They’re get-’er-done people. So, I really encourage and guide my teams — “okay, let’s get stuff done here.”
So I think engineering has really kind of influenced how I lead and how I work with clients.
Another thing that’s really important to me — I can’t point to a specific instance that really drilled this in my head — but throughout my whole career, as a leader it’s not about you. It’s about your people.
Tanis Morris: Mmm.
Jeff Oltmann: Your job typically as a leader is to enable others to do their best — to help them work together effectively as a team, to bring out their skills, to bring out their interests in order to get complex things done. So there’s a term that’s been really popular for a while called “servant leadership,” and I think “servant leadership” is largely overused. That term has come to mean so many different things, but I think there’s a ton of value in it.
Tanis Morris: Can I ask you a question on that — do you mind?
I’m curious about something because I think it’s — you know, you said it yourself, engineers generally are get-’er-done-type of people.
Jeff Oltmann: Mmhm, right.
Tanis Morris: So as a leader, as an early leader in engineering, I think there might sometimes be a trend towards focusing more on the project at hand or the results of the project than the people on the team.
Jeff Oltmann: Mmhm.
Tanis Morris: What point do you — does it kind of like click for you, like, “Oh, hang on, this is — this is about the people,” or, you know — of course you’re getting your project done — but there’s some—at some point the people supersede the pro — you know, like your mission becomes clear to empower others.
Jeff Oltmann: So, there’s something called the Agile Manifesto — which agile particular agile software developers use kind of as a set of high-level principles for doing effective development — and one of the principles in there speaks exactly to what you’re saying is that, you know, processes methodology are important, but people and teams are more important.
Tanis Morris: Right.
Jeff Oltmann: And you are absolutely correct there, Tanis in that getting things done, having successful projects, having good working environments — it’s all about the people. And it’s all about your ability as a leader to help those people work together effectively.
I don’t know that I could point to a specific time in my career — a specific event where that really hit home to me — I do have one very early memory on my first job which is that I came out of engineering school thinking, you know, the most elegant engineering solution wins — the best design, the best approach to solving the problem. And I learned fairly quickly that in the highly evolving computer market of that time — so this was in the ’80s back when personal computers were first just coming into use — I worked in mini-supercomputers, which were inexpensive, high-performance Cray-type systems. And I learned pretty quickly in that whole developing field it wasn’t the technically best solution that won; it was the solution that met the market needs, that fit in with the prevailing political winds, that people had a huge impact on how the project went and what happened to the product.
So I guess that kind of started me on that line of thinking, but it’s just been reinforced. You know, I worked in engineering projects that required large numbers of people to solve very complex problems, and you learn very quickly in that environment that a great technical idea or a brilliant solo engineer is very limited in what they can achieve compared to that whole team effort necessary to get the job done.
So it just permeates the whole ethos.
Tanis Morris: Hm. That’s wonderful. Well, I interrupted you because I think maybe you were moving on to one more point or something.
I just — kind of expanding on that — I was really curious because it seems like there’s a level of maturity or wisdom or the ability — I mean, you know, my husband works in engineering — and I think like I’ve heard stories about, you know, nightmare managers and amazing — you know, it’s like —
Jeff Oltmann: Well, so not all engineers learn this —
Tanis Morris: Yeah
Jeff Oltmann: And I would say not from any discipline — not just engineering — but not everybody in the workforce learns about the importance of teamwork and people.
But I think the most successful engineers — whether they move into leadership and management positions or whether they become senior engineers and are influenced that—influential that way — they learn about the importance of people and the importance of teams to actually taking brilliant ideas and getting stuff actually done.
Tanis Morris: Okay — well thank you — and then we can go back to whatever your points were that you were ready — and how to prepare — thank you.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, yeah, so you mentioned teaching. And I told you the story about how I never thought I would be a teacher — but there was a pivotal point in my career. I’ve always liked helping people and showing them how to do things and teaching things, but as far as formal teaching goes, there was a pivotal point in my career shortly after I left IBM and decided I wanted to strike out on my own and do some of my own things.
The person who, at that time, was running the Management—Department of Management of Science and Technology at Oregon Graduate Institute — a gentleman named Jim Huntzinger — grabbed me and had me start teaching in that graduate institute. That’s where I really started getting into teaching as a formal discipline and a formal career. That’s really heavily formed the last 20 years of what I’ve been doing — teaching in a structured environment and matriculated mostly graduate students — and it’s turned out to be very important because at some point in your career you switch into “How do I help others? How do I teach others? Help them learn what I’ve learned. Help them avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made and some of the scars that I’ve got.”
So, as you were mentioning earlier, teaching becomes pretty important, and it becomes really an important way to give back and to help people who have less experience than you do become effective and grow in their careers. So, that—that experience — and that slowly moving onto the teaching track — has, I think, really affected the way I approach things in the last 20 years. And I also approach that with my clients.
I don’t just parachute into my clients with a solution and say, “This is what I think you need to do.” I want to teach them what I know. I want to show them and help them discover ways that they can be effective on their own, without me. And that’s the mind of a teacher.
Tanis Morris: That’s beautiful, and it actually lends itself very nicely to my next question, which is: what are your own kind of closely held values, and then how do you kind of infuse those values into the work that you do?
So I was thinking, to bridge these two questions, when you’re describing your desire to work with your clients and your desires for them — that also is dependent upon the type of client who is receptive to learning, who wants to be collaboratively working with you and learn from you. And so, I would say immediately, just thinking about it, that probably one of your closely held values would be that sort of wealth of knowledge or the sharing of the knowledge.
Jeff Oltmann: Absolutely. I look for clients who are willing to have a partnership and willing to — it’s another overused word — but willing to co-create. So I believe that—what I want to do is I want to work with my clients together to bring my knowledge and my experience together with their knowledge and their experience, which is different than mine, and together we’re going to create something that’s more than either of us could create.
And I do approach my consulting work with a teaching mindset. I want to leave my clients knowing more and capable of more on their own when I leave than when I got there. So there are some clients who are looking for that kind of thing, and that’s a great candidate to working together. Other clients — that’s not what they’re interested in, so they’re probably not the right person to work with me.
Tanis Morris: Right, right — that’s really interesting. Do you have other values that are kind of inherent to who you are as a human that you really seek to — or I don’t even know if you have to seek — probably you just naturally embed them into your work?
Jeff Oltmann: It’s a funny experience to sit there and try to think about these things, because as you’ve alluded to, they’re such a built-in part of you that you almost just don’t think about them.
But yeah — the importance of people. People are due deserve. Everybody is — whether they have a perspective that’s like yours or not, whether they see the problem or the situation the way they do, with the way you do — they deserve to be—how do I say this? Coached and taught. They deserve your time and attention working with them and helping them move along their career path.
So, people and teams are very important. That also comes from that engineering background of working in very large, complex engineering projects. You can’t get those things done unless you have a structured approach and a way to have many people with very different disciplinary or subject-matter expertise working together in an effective way. So, the ability for people to work together effectively is very important.
I think on a more professional point of view — sort of telling you some of my personal values on a more professional point of view — like I mentioned to you, I’m a really process guy, process and systems. You can get it from my language and from talking to me. And so, I think methodologies and tools are important, but I think people and relationships are even more important.
So constantly building up those relationships and your ability to work with people. As I’ve alluded to before , I also think the best solutions are created together instead of in silos. So, co-creating those solutions, building teams that can work together effectively to pull their knowledge and their different perspectives. I have a phrase I like called “Simper Gumby,” and I developed that, I don’t know, somewhere along the years.
And because of my process and my engineering orientation, I put a lot of value on planning. But you can over-plan — you know, “analysis paralysis” is a popular phrase — so Simper Gumby means plan enough, plan just enough, but be flexible — a lot.
Simper Gumby — always be flexible.
Tanis Morris: Yeah — I love that. That’s great.
Jeff Oltmann: And I bring a lot of pragmatism to what I do — whether it’s leading an engineering organization or teaching a class on project management. That’s the engineering background coming through. So, let’s be pragmatic. Let’s get things done. Engineering is an applied science — it’s not a theoretical academic science — well, it is academical, it is theoretical — but it’s about getting things done.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, Got it. I mean, you can have all this stuff out in the ethos, and at the end of the day you are working on a goal that’s real and timely and everything else.
So the other kind of interesting aspect of this particular question for—in—in profiles—in this series, which is our Profiles in Leadership, where we talk to consultative leaders — is you know, getting things done, operationalizing your values. And even my next question is going to be kind of building teams—about building teams. Sometimes you are not the decision-maker; you’re just a voice giving guidance or lending oversight or wisdom to the process.
So, how can you take that — it’s — I wouldn’t say, how do you take a leadership role, because you’re coming in as a consultative leader — but how are you able to kind of lend your voice and your insight or weave it into the cultures of these companies? Or, you know, do you have any tricks or tools for operationalizing in organizations that are not your own?
And I’m going a little long here — I’m just kind of curious because it’s complicated.
Jeff Oltmann: No, that’s fine. There are a couple ways to look at that question. One is as an employee — so look at it from the point of view of you’re an employee of a large large organization or any organization, and you are trying to provide input or provide influence to that organization as it makes a decision or pursues a course of action.
And there are a number of things there. One, I think, is you have to have credibility. You are using influence rather than formal authority. You have to have the credibility to have that input. In fact, that’s something that I teach project managers — and it’s very important for project managers — is you’re influencing without authority. Project managers rarely have formal authority. So how do you build that influence, and how do you build that credibility?
That kind of goes back to the people and teams aspect of things too — so you have to think about, “How am I going to build credibility so that people hear what I have to say?” You can’t say anything if you don’t even have the opportunity to say it — so that would be one thing.
I think another thing that’s important is learning how to facilitate discussions and influence discussions. So, you’ve got a point of view, you maybe have the credibility to bring that point of view into the discussion — what skills do you have to influence those discussions in a productive direction? Or if you’re a leader, how do you encourage those kinds of discussions to happen around you? How do you encourage the people on your team or the people that your team is working with to bring those ideas into the discussion — rather than just saying, “Well, as a leader here’s my idea, here’s what I think we ought to do, let’s go execute.”
That — you’re going to get a much better solution, much better conversation going on if you have the skills to be able to—to allow others that space to have that input and participate in the conversation.
And now — in the point of view as a consultant coming into an outside organization — it’s still many of the same types of considerations but maybe a little tougher because your sources of credibility come from a different spot. Instead of building up internal credibility, hopefully you’re bringing credibility from your outside expertise and from your consulting track record.
But the relationship between you and the client is still somewhat different in that point of view.
Tanis Morris: It’s so interesting — and it’s kind of a very special skill, honestly — you know, to be able to do that well.
So, in your consultative career — I have a — you know, what do you think constitutes a successful team? What are the qualities of a successful team? And then that’ll lead to my next question is — how do you, when you are hiring, how do you build teams? You know, how do you identify the qualities of folks that you want and all that stuff?
But I would ask first — like, what do you think are the characteristics of a successful team?
Jeff Oltmann: Well, I think going back to some of the things we said earlier — a successful team is productive. So, they create things that meet the need, that solve the problem, that are spot-on, if you will. They have a good culture. So, they like working together. They build each other up personally as well as professionally. It’s a good place — a good group of people to work with.
They support each other — both organizationally, so they support the organization they’re working for and their organizational objective — but they support each other personally and help each other build up their personal growth.
If I can go geeky on you for a minute?
Tanis Morris: Yeah, absolutely!
Jeff Oltmann: Well, actually this is going academic on you — you may have heard of Tuckman’s model.
Tanis Morris: I did in your class.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah. Right. You got that in the class, didn’t you? So, first put forth by an organizational psychologist in the 1960s — a guy named Bruce Tuckman — and most of your listeners or most of your readers will probably know it by form—storm. Was it — now I’m not going to get it right — form, storm, norm, and perform.
Tanis Morris: Okay.
Jeff Oltmann: And so, Tuckman’s talking about the different stages that a team goes through — a group of people go through — and on their journey to becoming a high-performing team. And teams that are not effective tend to get stuck in the forming and storming stages, where the forming stage is kind of the honeymoon stage and the storming stage is the conflict stage.
Tanis Morris: Yeah.
Jeff Oltmann: So those are the stages that the first two stages in the model, where the team is not highly productive, they’re not highly effective — they’re trying to work through their group dynamics. An effective team has a constructive, productive group dynamic — so that’s more the norming stage.
And so, to your question — what makes an effective team — one thing that makes an effective team is they’ve gotten through the first two stages of Tuckman’s model and they’re into the more productive phase where the group dynamics are positive.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, thank you, that’s great. And then, so when it comes to you hiring folks and building teams, what characteristics or qualities are you looking for in your team members?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, so let me tackle that first by saying what the hire—what my hiring philosophy is, and then I can tell you about some of the specific things I look at.
So, I did quite a bit of hiring for engineering teams as an engineering manager, and hiring the right person is an investment. Now, realize I’m coming from the point of view of highly skilled engineering teams doing cutting-edge work — these are highly trained people. And typically, even when you take a highly trained engineer and bring them into a new company on a new team, it takes a significant amount of time to bring them up to speed to the point where they’re really productive.
We’re talking months or even over a year. So, you are putting a lot of organizational time and energy into the whole situation before this person becomes a productive part of your team — it’s a very expensive thing. Therefore, it’s really an investment, and the cost of replacing one of those people is very high.
So, you really have to watch out for attrition that’s too high, and you really have to watch how retention is going. So, paying a lot of attention — investing a lot in retention.
So, you need to look at the whole thing as a long-term investment because it’s an expensive investment. You really want to hire a person who’s a good fit for your team and then want them to be with you for a long time. You don’t want to hire somebody who leaves after six months. Of course, you don’t want to be thinking, “Well, after a year it doesn’t really matter.” You want to be thinking, “How is this person going to fit into my team, my company, my organization five years from now?”
So, it’s not just an investment; it’s a long-term investment.
So, the hiring and recruiting are just the first steps in what you’re going to be doing as a hiring manager. You’ve got a whole set of responsibilities for professional development, for helping that team work effectively together in the future, for bringing on people who can be flexible and who can be learners so that they can adapt with the company as it changes over the next five years.
So, you really need to be thinking long-term about how you’re going to deal with this position as a manager — you need to be thinking of it as an investment.
And as I mentioned before, retention is also really important to be thinking about at this time.
So with that kind of philosophical framework to how you—how you hire, then some specific things I look for when I’m recruiting or when I’m interviewing.
First, of course, is subject-matter expertise. If I hire an engineer, I’m looking for technical expertise. If I’m hiring for a different discipline, I’m looking for some form of expertise in that area — but that’s not nearly enough.
So, I’m also looking for eagerness to learn — somebody who loves to learn professionally, who is going to be constantly learning throughout their career, throughout their time on the job, and has the ability to learn quickly.
I’m also looking for fit with company culture and values — and so that means you have to understand your company’s culture.
And then you have to understand how the people that you are trying to hire might or might not fit with those values — that company culture.
And there was a specific company I worked for that really drove this home for me. I worked for Sequent Computer Systems here in the Portland area, which was formed by a bunch of people primarily out of Intel in the ’80s, I think. They had — Sequent had — a very clear set of company values that permeated the entire company.
And later, if you want to, I can tell you what those values were.
So, knowing what those values were and where Sequent wanted its organizational culture to be really strongly informed the kinds of things you were looking for when you were hiring people. And none of those values was technical expertise — they were all softer things.
Tanis Morris: Right.Go ahead and say what they were — I think it’s really interesting if you don’t mind.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, I’d be happy to. So, the one that I always remember is “easy to do business with.”
As an organization, you know, it’s going to be easy to do business with — whether that’s with our customers externally or whether that’s internally with other teams.
Profitability — you know, if you’re not profitable you’re not going to be around long enough to have a culture that makes any difference.
Teamwork was the third value.
Quality — so always building a quality product and the processes that support it.
And people. Now, see your question earlier about when do engineers learn the value of people and teams. Notice, of those five values, how many of them directly relate to people?
Tanis Morris: Yeah.Almost all of them. Really interesting.
Jeff Oltmann: So, that really strongly influences what you’re looking for when you’re hiring — what’s your company culture and what values do you want to be hiring for.
But you have to be careful because if you push that too far you create a monoculture. You say, “I’m only going to hire people who think like me,” right? So, in your hiring process you have to think about what kind of diversity you’re looking for. What different skills, what different ways of looking at the world, what different approaches will come in and spark us to do things differently and think a little bit differently.
And then finally — the fifth thing I look for when I’m hiring — is what kind of teamwork and group work skills does this person have? Not just are they a star soloist, but do they have the skills to help teams work together and produce results effectively.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, that—that’s really interesting. I—as someone who works in executive search, it’s interesting to hear even from this highly technical kind of background and in that industry.
And we actually typically don’t do a ton of work in high-tech — we’ve done lots of—technical leadership roles in you know healthcare and—manufacturing and stuff but in high-tech we don’t typically recruit in that space but so much of what you just spoke to—is very complimentary to our own process and i think it’s just kind of a universal thing. Interesting
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah
Tanis Morris: Yeah. Yeah the the other interesting thing is like for us when we’re kind of—if you would ask any member of Acumen what is a metric of success—we would also refer to longevity. The investment in, you know, an organization makes in a new leader, how long, you know, how long they’re there, is one of the metrics we use to figure out if we’re successful at our work.
And some time ago I interviewed a C-suite leader at a nonprofit who was doing really vital community work. But it was so interesting—many of the people that she was leading didn’t stay for a long time. And one of her metrics—when she was asked, like, what—you know, how do you define success, or what, you know, I think it was like what—what would you—how do you define a successful team or successful leader—she was saying that one of her metrics was: people don’t stay long, but they’re better when they leave.
And it was kind of, you know, she was like, “I would know I was a good leader if, when they’re moving on, if they’re moving on to better things when they leave.” But it kind of alluded to the a little bit like the people in her—under her leadership had a much less length of time that they were typically staying with the organization. And she kind of leaned into that and was like, “I’m here to build future leaders up and send them on their way.” And I just thought it was kind of worth thinking about.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, I have a yes-and-no reaction to that. I think the philosophy there is correct—that as a leader, you’re there to build your people up and you’re there to help them build those skills that help them move on. But you don’t want your organization, whether it’s a nonprofit or a for-profit, you don’t want people to be losing what you’ve just built up. You want them to be moving elsewhere in the organization.
So, if you can say, “People don’t work for me all that long because they’ve gone on to other roles in the company,” that’s great. If you say, “I’m building up people just so I can kick them out the door and they can find a job with a competitor,” that’s a little—that doesn’t really fit with the profitability value if you….
Tanis Morris: Spoken like a true operational and systems engineer, you know? But honestly, I agree with you. It was interesting hearing her take. And it’s my belief, you know, after kind of doing this work now for a number of years, I think that the work that we do informs the way that we think. And I just thought it was interesting. I tend, I—I agree with you. I think that you are right. But she had sort of made this accommodation. It was just—it’s a way of thinking about how her work.
Jeff Oltmann: As a leader or a manager, you should not be disappointed when somebody you’ve been nurturing and building up moves on to bigger and better things. You should celebrate that as a victory. And hopefully it’s a bigger and better thing within your own organization. If not, you should still celebrate it.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, it’s interesting. Well, okay, so I think that my last question for you is the one that I always am so interested to hear because it’s a little bit iterative. So, what, you know, our primary podcast is called Hiring for Good and we chose that title because it can mean so many different things. So, I’m curious to know: what does Hiring for Good mean to you?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. So, you can take it a number of levels. One is, hopefully you’re in your job or in your leadership role to make some kind of an impact—to make the world a better place, to advance the technology that you’re passionate about, to make better burgers for your customers—whatever it is. So, bringing people on to join you in that effort is an important part of you being able to get it done. You can’t do it all yourself. You have to build up a team. You have to build up other people. If you’re going to build up an effective team, you need to be bringing great people onto that team, or people who have the potential to be great.
So in that sense, Hiring for Good is hiring in ways that help you build up teams of people that will be able to accomplish those good things you want to accomplish in the world.
You can take Hiring for Good a number of other ways. You can take it as good for your company or your organization—“I’m making my company or my organization better.” You can think of it in terms of the people you’re hiring—you’re making their lives better. You’re enabling their careers. You’re enabling them to support their families and to thrive.
We may not think of that approach, or that interpretation, much when times are good and the economy is hot. But when times are tough, being able to provide productive, gainful, fulfilling employment to people is an important thing that leadership can provide—a leader can provide—to his or her community.
The way you hire people—also, if you take the long-term investment point of view we’ve been talking about—hiring that helps you build a stronger organization with a better culture. And In that sense, hiring the right people builds a better company, which just does a better company, a better nonprofit, which just does so much more for the people who work for it and for the community that it’s part of.
And I guess one thought I kind of like to leave that Hiring for Good question with is: when you’re hiring somebody, remember you’re not hiring an individual—you’re hiring a member of a team. Think about it in those terms. How can I hire the right person to complement my team, to complement my organization, to be part of something larger?
Tanis Morris: That’s beautiful. Well, Geoff, I respected and liked you before this conversation—and we’ve gotten to talk fairly extensively over the course of our many conversations—but this was really delightful. I feel like I’m getting a front-row seat to someone who not only can really speak to effective process and systems management and project management, all that stuff, but like a really generous and wise human.
Thank you. It’s been a real pleasure having you be my guest today.
Jeff Oltmann: Well, well, thank you so much, Tanis. This was kind of fun preparing for this. I wanted to be able to give some thoughtful answers. So, you sent me some of the questions in advance and I sat down and thought through them. And these are not the kind of questions you think about every day. So, the opportunity to sit down and think about: What does really drive me? What are my values? What are the important things I’d like to tell other people? That was a nice opportunity. So thank you.
Tanis Morris: Well, I think you just knocked it out of the park. Thank you so much.
Jeff Oltmann: Sure.
Tanis Morris: You know, I look forward to sharing this with our audience—w
Hiring for Good: Profiles in Leadership
Episode: 22
Guest: Jeff Oltmann
Introduction:
The Profiles in Leadership series features conversations with organizational leadership experts to discuss important lessons they have learned and what “Hiring for Good” means to them. This series helps us better understand how leadership drives positive transformations and growth for people, organizations, and the world around us.
This episode features a conversation with Jeff Oltmann. Jeff shows clients how to accelerate results by creating thriving projects and teams. He specializes in strategy deployment, operational and project excellence, and project portfolio management. As a trusted advisor, he brings more than 30 years of experience empowering clients, managing successful global programs, and developing innovative technology. His work spans many sectors, showing leaders in healthcare, public service, research, bioscience, and technology how to implement practical systems that drive success.
Jeff is principal consultant at Synergy Professional Services (spspro.com) and is on the graduate faculty of the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University. He was previously on executive staff at IBM and is the founder of the Portfolio and Project Leaders Forum for senior managers of project-based organizations (pplforum.org). Jeff teaches and consults about project and portfolio management systems in both business and graduate settings. He holds an M.Eng. degree and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®).
Jeff’s Contact Information: je**@****ro.com | 503-644-6433 | https://spspro.com/
Recording at: https://youtu.be/fgdOMTWrYrg
Featured Quote/Video Clip: As a leader it’s not about you. It’s about your people. Your job typically as a leader is to enable others to do their best — to help them work together effectively as a team, to bring out their skills, to bring out their interests in order to get complex things done. So, there’s a term that’s been really popular for a while called “servant leadership,” and I think “servant leadership” is largely overused. That term has come to mean so many different things, but I think there’s a ton of value in it. Effective leaders are people who are there to enable and support others and to bring out the best in them.
Social Posting: Jeff Oltmann joins us as a guest on Profiles in Leadership, sharing his wisdom. “As a leader it’s not about you. It’s about your people. Your job typically as a leader is to enable others to do their best — to help them work together effectively as a team, to bring out their skills, to bring out their interests in order to get complex things done. So, there’s a term that’s been really popular for a while called “servant leadership,” and I think “servant leadership” is largely overused. That term has come to mean so many different things, but I think there’s a ton of value in it. Effective leaders are people who are there to enable and support others and to bring out the best in them.”
Profiles in Leadership Transcript:
Tannis Morris: So, I met Jeff when I had the pleasure of taking one of his project management courses through Oregon Bioscience Association. It was a real eye-opener for me because I do not have that background. I was taking the class to kind of understand the complexities and different levels of not just that job but the extensive support that Oregon Bioscience offers its members. Jeff provides this course on an annual basis — correct?
Jeff Oltmann: Sometimes several times a year, depends on what membership needs.
Tannis Morris: Yes. I’m not surprised to hear it because it’s an excellent course. I learned several things. One, that Jeff is an exceptionally talented teacher. He knows everything about project management, and finally, I have no desire to do that job ever. But that said, I developed a ton of respect for you, Jeff.
Then, I actually, as we moved forward and got to know each other a little bit, I learned that not only does Jeff teach these courses and offer resources to various clients that he supports kind of on that educational front, but he also works as a consultant for a number of different businesses and has a very impressive and extensive work history as an organizational leader in his own right. So I thought that he would be an ideal guest to have join us on Profiles in Leadership. Here we are — so good morning and thank you.
Jeff Oltmann: Thank you, Tanis. I really appreciate this.
Tanis Morris: Yeah! I’m actually very excited to have this conversation with you, Jeff. So just to help our audience kida understand — before we get into kinda all of your thoughts and ideas on leadership and success and learnings — would you mind just sharing a little bit about what you currently do for your career and for the clients that you support, and then maybe just give us an overview in as much depth as you wish of your professional background, which is really fun to hear about?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, sure. So what I’ve been doing for about the last 20 years is management consulting. And what I specialize in is showing clients how to build thriving projects and teams that get important work done. I’m also on faculty in the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University, and there I teach mostly mid-career adults in the healthcare professions how to use projects to achieve their organizational objectives.
As we were discussing before this session started, my background is engineering. My degrees are in engineering, and I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool engineer just like your youngest. Your youngest child. I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool engineer since I was a little kid, loving to build things and figure out how things work. So for the first 20 or so years of my career, I led teams that designed high-end, high-performance computers — large, complex systems — and then, like I said, about 20 years ago, at that point, I left IBM. I’d been working for IBM, running their portfolio of R&D projects in a certain segment of their business and started doing the consulting work and started doing the teaching work. So, to a lot of the questions that you have for our discussion today, a lot of those answers of mind are informed by that background — that engineering background and the teaching aspects of things.
Tanis Morris: Well, I think it brings a very valuable level of insight and kind of synopsis or just—just a different kind of understanding of how things work and what fosters success organizationally. When you’ve taught and lived it—you know, like on both levels, you kinda have this academic knowledge, you have the knowledge of your experience, and then you have all these different companies and people that you’ve supported over the years.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, I’m still a hardcore geek. I love engineering. I have not done active engineering for years, but I still love working with clients who have engineering teams on their staff. It’s a language and a way of thinking that you never forget. Your comment about being able to teach and do is funny because when I graduated from college — back when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth — one of the things I said was, “I will never be a professor. I don’t want to go into academia. I don’t want to teach. I want to do. I want to make things.” So, what have I been doing? I’m on faculty. You know, it’s just funny the turns that life takes.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, but in my opinion, the world needs more teachers who’ve actually done it. So I think there’s some really good stuff there. Thank you — that’s very helpful.
I’m going to pivot just a little bit. You kinda, you know, spoke to how your early career experiences really informed your vantage point even today. What formative leadership experiences, or what experiences have you gone through that really shaped your thoughts on leadership — on organizational leadership and then leadership on a personal level as well?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, so there’s some general experiences I’ve gone through. I can’t point to a ton of really specific instances, but a lot of general things. I’ll go back first to that engineering background. That has really influenced the way I approach leadership. It’s approached the way I work with clients, and the reason is because engineers are taught to think as systems thinkers. So, you think of things — systems work together instead of things in isolation. So I’m a very process-oriented person. I’m a very systems-oriented person, and I bring that to my work is I help my teams look at things as a whole and how they all integrate and work together. Engineers also learn how to solve complex problems — that’s a whole part of their training, that’s a whole part of what they do in their work. And so being able and willing to dive into complex problems and help your teams tackle those problems, get them solved successfully, and not be scared off or overwhelmed by them — engineering also teaches you pragmatism. You learn the theory, you learn all the elegant math and all the conceptually elegant solutions, but then you actually have to build stuff that works and you have to get it to your users, your consumers, whoever, quickly. And you have to get it in a good enough state.
And I think that’s important in working with business because it’s easy to go one direction or the other — make things too perfect and you never get it out there, uh don’t make them good enough and you have very unhappy users, or you spend forever maintaining and fixing them. So, bringing that whole idea of pragmatism to my teams and to my clients and saying, “Okay, let’s actually make this work in your situation for what you need right now.”
And I don’t know if you maybe remember Larry the Cable Guy back from quite a few years ago — he was popular — so engineers are generally get-’er-done people. Remember Larry the Cable Guy’s motto was “Let’s just get ’er done”? So, engineers like to build things. They’re get-’er-done people. So, I really encourage and guide my teams — “okay, let’s get stuff done here.”
So I think engineering has really kind of influenced how I lead and how I work with clients.
Another thing that’s really important to me — I can’t point to a specific instance that really drilled this in my head — but throughout my whole career, as a leader it’s not about you. It’s about your people.
Tanis Morris: Mmm.
Jeff Oltmann: Your job typically as a leader is to enable others to do their best — to help them work together effectively as a team, to bring out their skills, to bring out their interests in order to get complex things done. So there’s a term that’s been really popular for a while called “servant leadership,” and I think “servant leadership” is largely overused. That term has come to mean so many different things, but I think there’s a ton of value in it.
Tanis Morris: Can I ask you a question on that — do you mind?
I’m curious about something because I think it’s — you know, you said it yourself, engineers generally are get-’er-done-type of people.
Jeff Oltmann: Mmhm, right.
Tanis Morris: So as a leader, as an early leader in engineering, I think there might sometimes be a trend towards focusing more on the project at hand or the results of the project than the people on the team.
Jeff Oltmann: Mmhm.
Tanis Morris: What point do you — does it kind of like click for you, like, “Oh, hang on, this is — this is about the people,” or, you know — of course you’re getting your project done — but there’s some—at some point the people supersede the pro — you know, like your mission becomes clear to empower others.
Jeff Oltmann: So, there’s something called the Agile Manifesto — which agile particular agile software developers use kind of as a set of high-level principles for doing effective development — and one of the principles in there speaks exactly to what you’re saying is that, you know, processes methodology are important, but people and teams are more important.
Tanis Morris: Right.
Jeff Oltmann: And you are absolutely correct there, Tanis in that getting things done, having successful projects, having good working environments — it’s all about the people. And it’s all about your ability as a leader to help those people work together effectively.
I don’t know that I could point to a specific time in my career — a specific event where that really hit home to me — I do have one very early memory on my first job which is that I came out of engineering school thinking, you know, the most elegant engineering solution wins — the best design, the best approach to solving the problem. And I learned fairly quickly that in the highly evolving computer market of that time — so this was in the ’80s back when personal computers were first just coming into use — I worked in mini-supercomputers, which were inexpensive, high-performance Cray-type systems. And I learned pretty quickly in that whole developing field it wasn’t the technically best solution that won; it was the solution that met the market needs, that fit in with the prevailing political winds, that people had a huge impact on how the project went and what happened to the product.
So I guess that kind of started me on that line of thinking, but it’s just been reinforced. You know, I worked in engineering projects that required large numbers of people to solve very complex problems, and you learn very quickly in that environment that a great technical idea or a brilliant solo engineer is very limited in what they can achieve compared to that whole team effort necessary to get the job done.
So it just permeates the whole ethos.
Tanis Morris: Hm. That’s wonderful. Well, I interrupted you because I think maybe you were moving on to one more point or something.
I just — kind of expanding on that — I was really curious because it seems like there’s a level of maturity or wisdom or the ability — I mean, you know, my husband works in engineering — and I think like I’ve heard stories about, you know, nightmare managers and amazing — you know, it’s like —
Jeff Oltmann: Well, so not all engineers learn this —
Tanis Morris: Yeah
Jeff Oltmann: And I would say not from any discipline — not just engineering — but not everybody in the workforce learns about the importance of teamwork and people.
But I think the most successful engineers — whether they move into leadership and management positions or whether they become senior engineers and are influenced that—influential that way — they learn about the importance of people and the importance of teams to actually taking brilliant ideas and getting stuff actually done.
Tanis Morris: Okay — well thank you — and then we can go back to whatever your points were that you were ready — and how to prepare — thank you.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, yeah, so you mentioned teaching. And I told you the story about how I never thought I would be a teacher — but there was a pivotal point in my career. I’ve always liked helping people and showing them how to do things and teaching things, but as far as formal teaching goes, there was a pivotal point in my career shortly after I left IBM and decided I wanted to strike out on my own and do some of my own things.
The person who, at that time, was running the Management—Department of Management of Science and Technology at Oregon Graduate Institute — a gentleman named Jim Huntzinger — grabbed me and had me start teaching in that graduate institute. That’s where I really started getting into teaching as a formal discipline and a formal career. That’s really heavily formed the last 20 years of what I’ve been doing — teaching in a structured environment and matriculated mostly graduate students — and it’s turned out to be very important because at some point in your career you switch into “How do I help others? How do I teach others? Help them learn what I’ve learned. Help them avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made and some of the scars that I’ve got.”
So, as you were mentioning earlier, teaching becomes pretty important, and it becomes really an important way to give back and to help people who have less experience than you do become effective and grow in their careers. So, that—that experience — and that slowly moving onto the teaching track — has, I think, really affected the way I approach things in the last 20 years. And I also approach that with my clients.
I don’t just parachute into my clients with a solution and say, “This is what I think you need to do.” I want to teach them what I know. I want to show them and help them discover ways that they can be effective on their own, without me. And that’s the mind of a teacher.
Tanis Morris: That’s beautiful, and it actually lends itself very nicely to my next question, which is: what are your own kind of closely held values, and then how do you kind of infuse those values into the work that you do?
So I was thinking, to bridge these two questions, when you’re describing your desire to work with your clients and your desires for them — that also is dependent upon the type of client who is receptive to learning, who wants to be collaboratively working with you and learn from you. And so, I would say immediately, just thinking about it, that probably one of your closely held values would be that sort of wealth of knowledge or the sharing of the knowledge.
Jeff Oltmann: Absolutely. I look for clients who are willing to have a partnership and willing to — it’s another overused word — but willing to co-create. So I believe that—what I want to do is I want to work with my clients together to bring my knowledge and my experience together with their knowledge and their experience, which is different than mine, and together we’re going to create something that’s more than either of us could create.
And I do approach my consulting work with a teaching mindset. I want to leave my clients knowing more and capable of more on their own when I leave than when I got there. So there are some clients who are looking for that kind of thing, and that’s a great candidate to working together. Other clients — that’s not what they’re interested in, so they’re probably not the right person to work with me.
Tanis Morris: Right, right — that’s really interesting. Do you have other values that are kind of inherent to who you are as a human that you really seek to — or I don’t even know if you have to seek — probably you just naturally embed them into your work?
Jeff Oltmann: It’s a funny experience to sit there and try to think about these things, because as you’ve alluded to, they’re such a built-in part of you that you almost just don’t think about them.
But yeah — the importance of people. People are due deserve. Everybody is — whether they have a perspective that’s like yours or not, whether they see the problem or the situation the way they do, with the way you do — they deserve to be—how do I say this? Coached and taught. They deserve your time and attention working with them and helping them move along their career path.
So, people and teams are very important. That also comes from that engineering background of working in very large, complex engineering projects. You can’t get those things done unless you have a structured approach and a way to have many people with very different disciplinary or subject-matter expertise working together in an effective way. So, the ability for people to work together effectively is very important.
I think on a more professional point of view — sort of telling you some of my personal values on a more professional point of view — like I mentioned to you, I’m a really process guy, process and systems. You can get it from my language and from talking to me. And so, I think methodologies and tools are important, but I think people and relationships are even more important.
So constantly building up those relationships and your ability to work with people. As I’ve alluded to before , I also think the best solutions are created together instead of in silos. So, co-creating those solutions, building teams that can work together effectively to pull their knowledge and their different perspectives. I have a phrase I like called “Simper Gumby,” and I developed that, I don’t know, somewhere along the years.
And because of my process and my engineering orientation, I put a lot of value on planning. But you can over-plan — you know, “analysis paralysis” is a popular phrase — so Simper Gumby means plan enough, plan just enough, but be flexible — a lot.
Simper Gumby — always be flexible.
Tanis Morris: Yeah — I love that. That’s great.
Jeff Oltmann: And I bring a lot of pragmatism to what I do — whether it’s leading an engineering organization or teaching a class on project management. That’s the engineering background coming through. So, let’s be pragmatic. Let’s get things done. Engineering is an applied science — it’s not a theoretical academic science — well, it is academical, it is theoretical — but it’s about getting things done.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, Got it. I mean, you can have all this stuff out in the ethos, and at the end of the day you are working on a goal that’s real and timely and everything else.
So the other kind of interesting aspect of this particular question for—in—in profiles—in this series, which is our Profiles in Leadership, where we talk to consultative leaders — is you know, getting things done, operationalizing your values. And even my next question is going to be kind of building teams—about building teams. Sometimes you are not the decision-maker; you’re just a voice giving guidance or lending oversight or wisdom to the process.
So, how can you take that — it’s — I wouldn’t say, how do you take a leadership role, because you’re coming in as a consultative leader — but how are you able to kind of lend your voice and your insight or weave it into the cultures of these companies? Or, you know, do you have any tricks or tools for operationalizing in organizations that are not your own?
And I’m going a little long here — I’m just kind of curious because it’s complicated.
Jeff Oltmann: No, that’s fine. There are a couple ways to look at that question. One is as an employee — so look at it from the point of view of you’re an employee of a large large organization or any organization, and you are trying to provide input or provide influence to that organization as it makes a decision or pursues a course of action.
And there are a number of things there. One, I think, is you have to have credibility. You are using influence rather than formal authority. You have to have the credibility to have that input. In fact, that’s something that I teach project managers — and it’s very important for project managers — is you’re influencing without authority. Project managers rarely have formal authority. So how do you build that influence, and how do you build that credibility?
That kind of goes back to the people and teams aspect of things too — so you have to think about, “How am I going to build credibility so that people hear what I have to say?” You can’t say anything if you don’t even have the opportunity to say it — so that would be one thing.
I think another thing that’s important is learning how to facilitate discussions and influence discussions. So, you’ve got a point of view, you maybe have the credibility to bring that point of view into the discussion — what skills do you have to influence those discussions in a productive direction? Or if you’re a leader, how do you encourage those kinds of discussions to happen around you? How do you encourage the people on your team or the people that your team is working with to bring those ideas into the discussion — rather than just saying, “Well, as a leader here’s my idea, here’s what I think we ought to do, let’s go execute.”
That — you’re going to get a much better solution, much better conversation going on if you have the skills to be able to—to allow others that space to have that input and participate in the conversation.
And now — in the point of view as a consultant coming into an outside organization — it’s still many of the same types of considerations but maybe a little tougher because your sources of credibility come from a different spot. Instead of building up internal credibility, hopefully you’re bringing credibility from your outside expertise and from your consulting track record.
But the relationship between you and the client is still somewhat different in that point of view.
Tanis Morris: It’s so interesting — and it’s kind of a very special skill, honestly — you know, to be able to do that well.
So, in your consultative career — I have a — you know, what do you think constitutes a successful team? What are the qualities of a successful team? And then that’ll lead to my next question is — how do you, when you are hiring, how do you build teams? You know, how do you identify the qualities of folks that you want and all that stuff?
But I would ask first — like, what do you think are the characteristics of a successful team?
Jeff Oltmann: Well, I think going back to some of the things we said earlier — a successful team is productive. So, they create things that meet the need, that solve the problem, that are spot-on, if you will. They have a good culture. So, they like working together. They build each other up personally as well as professionally. It’s a good place — a good group of people to work with.
They support each other — both organizationally, so they support the organization they’re working for and their organizational objective — but they support each other personally and help each other build up their personal growth.
If I can go geeky on you for a minute?
Tanis Morris: Yeah, absolutely!
Jeff Oltmann: Well, actually this is going academic on you — you may have heard of Tuckman’s model.
Tanis Morris: I did in your class.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah. Right. You got that in the class, didn’t you? So, first put forth by an organizational psychologist in the 1960s — a guy named Bruce Tuckman — and most of your listeners or most of your readers will probably know it by form—storm. Was it — now I’m not going to get it right — form, storm, norm, and perform.
Tanis Morris: Okay.
Jeff Oltmann: And so, Tuckman’s talking about the different stages that a team goes through — a group of people go through — and on their journey to becoming a high-performing team. And teams that are not effective tend to get stuck in the forming and storming stages, where the forming stage is kind of the honeymoon stage and the storming stage is the conflict stage.
Tanis Morris: Yeah.
Jeff Oltmann: So those are the stages that the first two stages in the model, where the team is not highly productive, they’re not highly effective — they’re trying to work through their group dynamics. An effective team has a constructive, productive group dynamic — so that’s more the norming stage.
And so, to your question — what makes an effective team — one thing that makes an effective team is they’ve gotten through the first two stages of Tuckman’s model and they’re into the more productive phase where the group dynamics are positive.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, thank you, that’s great. And then, so when it comes to you hiring folks and building teams, what characteristics or qualities are you looking for in your team members?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, so let me tackle that first by saying what the hire—what my hiring philosophy is, and then I can tell you about some of the specific things I look at.
So, I did quite a bit of hiring for engineering teams as an engineering manager, and hiring the right person is an investment. Now, realize I’m coming from the point of view of highly skilled engineering teams doing cutting-edge work — these are highly trained people. And typically, even when you take a highly trained engineer and bring them into a new company on a new team, it takes a significant amount of time to bring them up to speed to the point where they’re really productive.
We’re talking months or even over a year. So, you are putting a lot of organizational time and energy into the whole situation before this person becomes a productive part of your team — it’s a very expensive thing. Therefore, it’s really an investment, and the cost of replacing one of those people is very high.
So, you really have to watch out for attrition that’s too high, and you really have to watch how retention is going. So, paying a lot of attention — investing a lot in retention.
So, you need to look at the whole thing as a long-term investment because it’s an expensive investment. You really want to hire a person who’s a good fit for your team and then want them to be with you for a long time. You don’t want to hire somebody who leaves after six months. Of course, you don’t want to be thinking, “Well, after a year it doesn’t really matter.” You want to be thinking, “How is this person going to fit into my team, my company, my organization five years from now?”
So, it’s not just an investment; it’s a long-term investment.
So, the hiring and recruiting are just the first steps in what you’re going to be doing as a hiring manager. You’ve got a whole set of responsibilities for professional development, for helping that team work effectively together in the future, for bringing on people who can be flexible and who can be learners so that they can adapt with the company as it changes over the next five years.
So, you really need to be thinking long-term about how you’re going to deal with this position as a manager — you need to be thinking of it as an investment.
And as I mentioned before, retention is also really important to be thinking about at this time.
So with that kind of philosophical framework to how you—how you hire, then some specific things I look for when I’m recruiting or when I’m interviewing.
First, of course, is subject-matter expertise. If I hire an engineer, I’m looking for technical expertise. If I’m hiring for a different discipline, I’m looking for some form of expertise in that area — but that’s not nearly enough.
So, I’m also looking for eagerness to learn — somebody who loves to learn professionally, who is going to be constantly learning throughout their career, throughout their time on the job, and has the ability to learn quickly.
I’m also looking for fit with company culture and values — and so that means you have to understand your company’s culture.
And then you have to understand how the people that you are trying to hire might or might not fit with those values — that company culture.
And there was a specific company I worked for that really drove this home for me. I worked for Sequent Computer Systems here in the Portland area, which was formed by a bunch of people primarily out of Intel in the ’80s, I think. They had — Sequent had — a very clear set of company values that permeated the entire company.
And later, if you want to, I can tell you what those values were.
So, knowing what those values were and where Sequent wanted its organizational culture to be really strongly informed the kinds of things you were looking for when you were hiring people. And none of those values was technical expertise — they were all softer things.
Tanis Morris: Right.Go ahead and say what they were — I think it’s really interesting if you don’t mind.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, I’d be happy to. So, the one that I always remember is “easy to do business with.”
As an organization, you know, it’s going to be easy to do business with — whether that’s with our customers externally or whether that’s internally with other teams.
Profitability — you know, if you’re not profitable you’re not going to be around long enough to have a culture that makes any difference.
Teamwork was the third value.
Quality — so always building a quality product and the processes that support it.
And people. Now, see your question earlier about when do engineers learn the value of people and teams. Notice, of those five values, how many of them directly relate to people?
Tanis Morris: Yeah.Almost all of them. Really interesting.
Jeff Oltmann: So, that really strongly influences what you’re looking for when you’re hiring — what’s your company culture and what values do you want to be hiring for.
But you have to be careful because if you push that too far you create a monoculture. You say, “I’m only going to hire people who think like me,” right? So, in your hiring process you have to think about what kind of diversity you’re looking for. What different skills, what different ways of looking at the world, what different approaches will come in and spark us to do things differently and think a little bit differently.
And then finally — the fifth thing I look for when I’m hiring — is what kind of teamwork and group work skills does this person have? Not just are they a star soloist, but do they have the skills to help teams work together and produce results effectively.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, that—that’s really interesting. I—as someone who works in executive search, it’s interesting to hear even from this highly technical kind of background and in that industry.
And we actually typically don’t do a ton of work in high-tech — we’ve done lots of—technical leadership roles in you know healthcare and—manufacturing and stuff but in high-tech we don’t typically recruit in that space but so much of what you just spoke to—is very complimentary to our own process and i think it’s just kind of a universal thing. Interesting
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah
Tanis Morris: Yeah. Yeah the the other interesting thing is like for us when we’re kind of—if you would ask any member of Acumen what is a metric of success—we would also refer to longevity. The investment in, you know, an organization makes in a new leader, how long, you know, how long they’re there, is one of the metrics we use to figure out if we’re successful at our work.
And some time ago I interviewed a C-suite leader at a nonprofit who was doing really vital community work. But it was so interesting—many of the people that she was leading didn’t stay for a long time. And one of her metrics—when she was asked, like, what—you know, how do you define success, or what, you know, I think it was like what—what would you—how do you define a successful team or successful leader—she was saying that one of her metrics was: people don’t stay long, but they’re better when they leave.
And it was kind of, you know, she was like, “I would know I was a good leader if, when they’re moving on, if they’re moving on to better things when they leave.” But it kind of alluded to the a little bit like the people in her—under her leadership had a much less length of time that they were typically staying with the organization. And she kind of leaned into that and was like, “I’m here to build future leaders up and send them on their way.” And I just thought it was kind of worth thinking about.
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, I have a yes-and-no reaction to that. I think the philosophy there is correct—that as a leader, you’re there to build your people up and you’re there to help them build those skills that help them move on. But you don’t want your organization, whether it’s a nonprofit or a for-profit, you don’t want people to be losing what you’ve just built up. You want them to be moving elsewhere in the organization.
So, if you can say, “People don’t work for me all that long because they’ve gone on to other roles in the company,” that’s great. If you say, “I’m building up people just so I can kick them out the door and they can find a job with a competitor,” that’s a little—that doesn’t really fit with the profitability value if you….
Tanis Morris: Spoken like a true operational and systems engineer, you know? But honestly, I agree with you. It was interesting hearing her take. And it’s my belief, you know, after kind of doing this work now for a number of years, I think that the work that we do informs the way that we think. And I just thought it was interesting. I tend, I—I agree with you. I think that you are right. But she had sort of made this accommodation. It was just—it’s a way of thinking about how her work.
Jeff Oltmann: As a leader or a manager, you should not be disappointed when somebody you’ve been nurturing and building up moves on to bigger and better things. You should celebrate that as a victory. And hopefully it’s a bigger and better thing within your own organization. If not, you should still celebrate it.
Tanis Morris: Yeah, it’s interesting. Well, okay, so I think that my last question for you is the one that I always am so interested to hear because it’s a little bit iterative. So, what, you know, our primary podcast is called Hiring for Good and we chose that title because it can mean so many different things. So, I’m curious to know: what does Hiring for Good mean to you?
Jeff Oltmann: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. So, you can take it a number of levels. One is, hopefully you’re in your job or in your leadership role to make some kind of an impact—to make the world a better place, to advance the technology that you’re passionate about, to make better burgers for your customers—whatever it is. So, bringing people on to join you in that effort is an important part of you being able to get it done. You can’t do it all yourself. You have to build up a team. You have to build up other people. If you’re going to build up an effective team, you need to be bringing great people onto that team, or people who have the potential to be great.
So in that sense, Hiring for Good is hiring in ways that help you build up teams of people that will be able to accomplish those good things you want to accomplish in the world.
You can take Hiring for Good a number of other ways. You can take it as good for your company or your organization—“I’m making my company or my organization better.” You can think of it in terms of the people you’re hiring—you’re making their lives better. You’re enabling their careers. You’re enabling them to support their families and to thrive.
We may not think of that approach, or that interpretation, much when times are good and the economy is hot. But when times are tough, being able to provide productive, gainful, fulfilling employment to people is an important thing that leadership can provide—a leader can provide—to his or her community.
The way you hire people—also, if you take the long-term investment point of view we’ve been talking about—hiring that helps you build a stronger organization with a better culture. And In that sense, hiring the right people builds a better company, which just does a better company, a better nonprofit, which just does so much more for the people who work for it and for the community that it’s part of.
And I guess one thought I kind of like to leave that Hiring for Good question with is: when you’re hiring somebody, remember you’re not hiring an individual—you’re hiring a member of a team. Think about it in those terms. How can I hire the right person to complement my team, to complement my organization, to be part of something larger?
Tanis Morris: That’s beautiful. Well, Geoff, I respected and liked you before this conversation—and we’ve gotten to talk fairly extensively over the course of our many conversations—but this was really delightful. I feel like I’m getting a front-row seat to someone who not only can really speak to effective process and systems management and project management, all that stuff, but like a really generous and wise human.
Thank you. It’s been a real pleasure having you be my guest today.
Jeff Oltmann: Well, well, thank you so much, Tanis. This was kind of fun preparing for this. I wanted to be able to give some thoughtful answers. So, you sent me some of the questions in advance and I sat down and thought through them. And these are not the kind of questions you think about every day. So, the opportunity to sit down and think about: What does really drive me? What are my values? What are the important things I’d like to tell other people? That was a nice opportunity. So thank you.
Tanis Morris: Well, I think you just knocked it out of the park. Thank you so much.
Jeff Oltmann: Sure.
Tanis Morris: You know, I look forward to sharing this with our audience—which they’ll be seeing now. So….hich they’ll be seeing now. So….