Natalie Hudson is a Senior Program Manager at Contentful and has spent the majority of her career in talent and leadership development. Throughout her career, Natalie has devoted her time to designing workplace cultures that maximize the talent and potential of individuals and teams.
In this conversation, Natalie shared her perspectives on why investing in the development of people managers, as they are in roles that connect them to so many parts of the organization, creates impactful outcomes for the entire organization, inclusive of individuals, teams, and leaders. Natalie also shared with us some of her best practices for designing development programs for managers, how she is approaching leadership development in her current role, and her vision for a better world of work.
The Edge of Work: What is your role, and what inspires you to do the work you do each day?
I’m currently a Senior Program Manager, Learning at Contentful. I’m inspired and motivated by thinking about the whole person we bring to our work each day and how we, as talent development practitioners, can optimize the impact of individuals, teams and ultimately the organization.
I love the challenge of figuring out what people and teams need in place to accomplish their goals – it’s always changing at the systems level. To do that, I feel that connection is very inspirational to me and one of the main drivers of how I derive and drive value in my work, as I’m continuously connecting with and listening to the organization and the industry to learn and bring that learning back to my role.
The Edge of Work: Let’s talk about managers. Why are they so important, and what’s holding us back from helping them become more effective?
When I think about the vast networks and interconnectivity at an organization, managers are both a critical lever and connector to how work gets done – the people doing the work, the task at hand and the value to the organization. As organizations and technology, and inherently how work is getting done, become more complex, managers are on the frontline of how change is impacting the business.
We’ve asked a lot of managers over the last several years, and I don’t know if we’ve really taken a step back to look at this population holistically with an empathetic and customer-centric lens to think about both their receptiveness and readiness for change initiatives and how we can effectively enable them to do their best work.
We have a fragile workplace as a whole with all the disruption we’ve faced in the last few years and will continue to face, so being deliberate and considerate in how we define manager effectiveness and enable effectiveness will be increasingly important: we need to wear the shoes of our customer & design solutions that truly empower them.
The Edge of Work: Where do we go wrong with developing managers, and how can we think and work differently to improve how we develop managers?
In terms of how we think differently about manager development, I would like to see a continued and deeper focus on the “critical enablers”, or critical skills, of manager development and how we convert those to the behaviors we want to see. For example, upskilling around change management and project management can be viewed as development that removes the barriers for other managerial responsibilities, ultimately lightening the managerial lift.
To do this, it’s important for organizations to begin to define their skilling strategy so that we’re developing the right talent with the right skills at the right time.
In terms of how we work differently, I’ve recently been loving the focus of several organizations around “habit building” (Tiny Habits is a personal favorite of mine). This is an opportunity to meet managers where they are at with bite-size learning opportunities that focus on actionable behaviors, knowing that our managers have less discretionary time available than ever.
The Edge of Work: You’ve led the development of programs to support managers and leaders at multiple companies. What are some important lessons that you’ve learned that lead to successful outcomes of these programs?
In my experience, one of the most important lessons has been how we continue to bring in key stakeholders early in the project management process to ensure alignment around our defined outcomes. I’ve recently been implementing the concept of “impact mapping” (Centre for Learning Impact) to open up a collaborative mapping process of aligned outcomes with the business on the front end of program development. This simplifies how we communicate with stakeholders to drive program improvement, a critical piece of systemic enablement and buy-in.
I’ve also learned the importance of bringing in the direct manager of the program participant into the learning journey. This not only ensures that any potential barriers to success are removed for the participant but also invites shared accountability around growth & development.
I’ve embedded this into communication planning for programs, where the direct manager is brought along the full end-to-end journey of their participants and provided with tools & tips to support their learner along the way.
Last but not least (and I would argue a dependency for success in the above), as product designers and owners, it is so important that we adhere to the project management principle of “go slow to go fast” as much as we can to ensure that the structure of the problem matches the structure of the solution we are proposing.
It’s definitely not easy to slow down, and often we need to make assumptions to move forward, but the more we can truly understand the personas we’re supporting and the problems they’re facing, the better we can create a product that meets their needs to drive business impact. And we can’t do that if we don’t spend enough time up front.
The Edge of Work: Outside of traditional methods of training and leadership development, what are other important things companies need to do in order to improve the effectiveness/efficacy of their managers?
My mind immediately goes to infrastructure here. What is causing “organizational drag” for managers? It’s often systems, tools and processes that need to be unlocked to drive their best work. We need to improve or remove those things so they can spend more time on what matters. Where can we lighten the lift for what it means to be a great manager or leader at an organization?
The Edge of Work: You’re in the process now of developing a strategy for some of your leadership development programs. What are some key priorities that you’re thinking about for your strategy?
I’m currently exploring bite-size skilling collections that are stackable and scalable over time to adjust to rapidly changing needs, with a focus on habit building! I’m excited to bring in a habit lens – it always reminds me of Peter Drucker’s “Monday Morning List” – what’s one thing you can do differently on Monday Morning? It’s a great way to incorporate the science of how we learn to meet managers where they are at!
I’ve also been thinking deeply about a lot of the recent research & work being done for skills-based organizations. Skills as the common “currency” and language of the business is an opportunity for talent management to think about how we both communicate and package our offerings to the business and has some important change management implications for how we might do things differently or re-shape some of what already exists. Claire Doody has recently been offering workshops to practitioners, and it’s been a great prompt to think about how to start small for future change.
The Edge of Work:What does a better world of work look like to you?
As organizations rapidly shift to meet changing conditions, I hope we can continue to have a greater focus on empathy and human-centered change management. In this, if we can remove some of the organizational debt and blockers that prevent effective ways of working, it opens us up to focus on how we find purpose and value in our work and how we contribute.
Distributed work isn’t new, but we have had a renewed focus on how we define effectiveness in our future of work. By embodying things like trust and a growth mindset, we can build and strengthen the feedback loops to fail, learn and grow together as we all become more effective in distributed environments. We’ve made a lot of progress over the last few years to focus on the whole person at work to enable agency, flexibility and adaptability, and I imagine a world where we continue to grow that capability, meet a diversity of needs and demonstrate how it impacts business performance.
The Edge of Work: How can people engage or work with you, and where can they go to find more information? You can find me on LinkedIn, and check out my website for a little more about me