Talent Infrastructure That Actually Works

In this episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast, Allison Wyatt, founder and CEO of Edgility Talent Partners, shares practical strategies for constructing sustainable talent infrastructure around compensation, performance management, and career progression. Together, they unpack how establishing clear compensation philosophies and transparent salary scales can reduce distrust, reduce churn, and protect equity across an entire organization.

The conversation explores practical ways to navigate organizational growth, from using FAST goals as a lightweight starting point for small teams to rebuilding roles from a clean-slate view. Wyatt explains how to avoid the trap of "we’re a family" culture by setting healthy workplace boundaries and applying an 80/20 approach to role clarity. Leaders will also gain actionable advice on approaching performance management through coaching, using the Situation, Behavior, Impact framework for constructive feedback, and utilizing tools to keep both their mission and their people strong.

Transcript

Sponsor Message From Feather

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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Meet Alison And Her Story

SPEAKER_00 0:23

back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer, joined today by Alison Wyatt, who's the founder and CEO at Agility Talent Partners. We're gonna dig into kind of the maybe the more operational side than we have been talking about on the fun on the podcast lately. I feel like we've been very fundraising heavy. So I'm excited to branch out and really dig in on that operation side and get Allison's expertise. Welcome in. Thanks so much for being here. I'm excited to be here, Megan. Thanks for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. So tell us a little bit about your background and kind of the work that you've been doing that brought us to the conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, would love to. Yeah, I am a people systems nerd. I've really spent most of my career asking a really simple question. What would it look like if the workplaces that we work in actually treated people the way our missions say they deserve to be treated? And for me, I think every organization aspires to do that. But where the rubber doesn't meet the road is in the operalization of that. So it's kind of like anybody who's like been excited to be a parent and then the baby arrives and you're like, whoa, where's the playbook? Right. Yeah. I feel like that's what we do. We give organizations the playbook to on how do you live up to those values that you aspire to. So we're designing compensation, performance management, career growth pathways, all the infrastructure that you need to do that well. And I think that how I got here is a little bit personal and a little bit professional. You know, I grew up in an economically disadvantaged community. My family weathered very real financial instability, including a period of homelessness. And so that I attribute that to really the resourcefulness I gained and that DIY creativity that you need to be an entrepreneur. And then I got a scholarship to Northfield Mount Herman, which was this very elite independent private school. And that just cracked my world wide open because all of a sudden I was really seeing the gap in opportunity in this country. And it really planted a seed around how systems can exclude, but they can also be redesigned to include. And I ended up in HR because that's what I was passionate about. I started out in the private sector at Time Warner. That's where I really kind of learned the guts of HR benefits, compensation, performance management. And then I transitioned while I was getting my MBA into the mission-driven sector almost 25 years ago. And I've never looked back. I love it. So I served as a head of talent at a national nonprofit and then later started my own practice, which eventually now has grown into, you know, a firm doing work with nonprofits across the country.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

That's so cool. And I, man, what a what a passion that your background has brought you to. I think that's such an interesting perspective. Especially to find maybe so young, right? Certainly no one would want to experience the things that you have, I'm sure. But to have that passion so early and be able to see the kind of the arc of that career has to be pretty rewarding. So that's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah. Yeah. It's made it extremely extremely fulfilling and a lot of fun. I love your idea.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

It's

What Talent Infrastructure Really Means

SPEAKER_00 3:50

all so you used a phrase, and I want to, because it's kind of the basis of this conversation. And so I want to kind of maybe level set so that we're all working from the same definition before we move on. And you used the phrase talent infrastructure. Yeah. And I think most folks who are listening, we have a lot of executive directors, a lot of, you know, C level and and director level folks. Most people are like, we have an HR department, is that the same thing? Or like, we have an HR lady a couple hours a week. Is that the same? Yeah. Talk to us about, let's from the jump, let's just define talent infrastructure, what it is and what it's not, so that we can then dig dig deeper into how to do it well.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah. I will tell you, talent infrastructure is not a group of people. It is not a single person. It is the scaffolding, the programs, processes, policies, systems your organization has in place so that every single manager can do right by their direct reports. And there's real clarity and transparency for every person in the organization on how they succeed, how they grow, how they earn more over time. So what does that look like in practice? That looks like a compensation philosophy that's clear, a salary scale that's clear and transparent, a real understanding of how you place people on that salary scale that's consistently applied. So it's not just like in somebody's brain and somebody's kind of making decisions, which you would be shocked by how often that is the case, right? And then organizations end up landing at my desk saying, hey, I have no idea why anybody has paid the amount they're paid. It's been the Wild West here. Can you help me figure this out? And we have to now untangle that ball of yarn. So it's having those guidelines and parameters when it comes to compensation, when it comes to performance management. This is another one where let's just be really clear on what success looks like. What are the goals that everybody needs to achieve? What are the competencies that we're looking for them to demonstrate? How do they get promoted? Is there an opportunity to be promoted in this organization? If not, let's not lie to people, right? Like so just being really clear on what that architecture looks like and how you move up, and then having all of your talent work support that, having really targeted strategic, professional development investments that are aligned. So it has to work like this very holistic machine. Otherwise, what you get are these kind of disparate parts that are working against each other, and it can cause really big problems. It can lead to a lot of staff morale issues, turnover. It can stifle your impact as an organization. It can just lead to overall frustration, bottlenecks where people just can't grow past a certain level. So it's such an important thing. And it's interesting to me because, particularly in the nonprofit space, most organizations aren't building a technology or creating a product. Their people are their service. That is how they make change. And by the way, they're also the biggest line item in the budget. So to me, it seems like every organization should be taking this really seriously and making sure that they're doing this in the most strategic, fair,

The Three Questions Every Employee Needs

SPEAKER_01 7:20

and forward-thinking way possible.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

So good. Okay, so I want to I want to have this same conversation two ways. Okay. Because because I know our audience, right? And I know there are folks who are listening who are maybe kind of the founder in that startup. Yeah. They're scaling, they're growing. And so I'd love to for you to speak to them in terms of like how do we start well? How do we make sure that we're doing all that the clear roles and pathways and accountability and financial structure from the jump so that they don't have an issue down the road? But then I also know that we've got a lot of folks in established organizations that have been around for decades who might be listening going, oh yeah, that sounds like something we should have been doing for a while now and are not. Yeah. So I'd love I'd love to kind of dig into both ways of like what suggestions would you have for someone to start well with building this versus what are those suggestions to course correct if maybe everything that you just explained is not happening within your organization.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

And I love that you asked that question, Megan, because it looks different depending on what stuff is. I would assume. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because if you're a startup, if you're a new organization, small organization, you probably have a lot of people wearing a lot of different hats. So I mentioned that I was the head of talent at a national nonprofit early on in my career. And when I describe what I did in that job, it's actually almost comical. So I was the, I was building the infrastructure of their national recruitment team to create go from recruiting 60 people a year to 500. That was my first job. We were a six-person org. So my second job was to grow our team, right? Like be the head of talent to help us grow from 60 to over or sorry, six to over 50 employees. And then if that wasn't enough, my third job was to lay the foundations for our alumni programming, all of the LD programming. So, as you know, when you're a small organization, everybody is wearing different hats. You don't have very clear job descriptions. And so you want to choose infrastructure that that fits where you're at. So I often recommend organ, I think there's three questions every single one of your employees needs to be able to answer to be successful. What's expected of me? How will I know if I'm succeeding? And what is the future that I have here? So, startup org, you're not going to have a job architecture with lots of competencies and all of that mapped out. What I would recommend is you start with fast goals. It's a wonderful framework that clarifies those three questions and you review it quarterly because small orgs, you, as you know, you have to be very agile because you might set goals for the end of the year and a quarter in, you have to pivot because you're entrepreneurial and you're learning as you go and you realize, oh my gosh, we have to shift our focus, right? So fast goals are great for organizations in that situation, right? And really that's where I would start. Can everyone in my organization answer those three questions? And if not, start with fast goals.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

And give us give us those questions one more time because that was so good.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

What's expected of me? How will I know if I'm succeeding? And what future do I have here? And so here's the other thing if you're an if you're an early stage organization because you don't have a lot of infrastructure, you need people managers who are really good at relationally answering those questions on the fly. They need to be able to do that. They need to be pretty seasoned and they need to be able to do that without a lot of support. Because you don't have an HR team, you're not going to give them a lot of training, you don't have a lot of frameworks scaffolding, right? So so that's I think I would focus on really high-quality people managers that can build the culture and making sure that you have tools in place to answer those three questions.

How To Rebuild Roles As You Grow

unknown 11:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Then as you grow. Yeah. If we've got a course correct. Yes. Yeah. So then you're going to get to this stage, and maybe your organization is in this stage where you're you've grown to the point where now all of a sudden you're codifying roles and responsibilities. And this is where things get tricky because you kind of hired a team and built a bunch of stuff without really knowing how you were going to evolve over time, right? And that can be tricky because now maybe what you thought you were going to be doing now has shifted. And so you have to take a really honest look at roles and responsibilities. How are you structuring things? Play games with yourself. Like if I were to build this organization from scratch, right? Like imagine everyone in the organization won the lottery and left tomorrow. How, what would I do differently, right? And then you need to try to get a sense of are do you need to get a sense of how do you migrate people in that direction to help them get to where you need them to be? Can you migrate everybody in that direction? Do you need to make changes? Do you need to bring in some new people? Like you just, you need to kind of do a regroup, right? Now that you have a little bit more clarity directionally on how the organization is settling. And that's when you start to do things like making sure you have really clear job descriptions with clear roles and responsibilities, where you've organized the work in a logical and efficient framework, not just based on kind of the people you have on the bus and the six jobs that they've done in the past. You know, like you got to again think about this from a clean slate perspective. Um, and then I think you need to start to, this is where people are going to start to get hungry to grow. They're not here anymore because it's small and it's like a family and it's really exciting, and there's so much excitement on the horizon, right? Now they want to understand, okay, so what does my future look like? So that's when you start to have some pressure to build out more of that infrastructure. And I do think that the hardest time to do that is the first time because there's so many, a lot of it may feel very ambiguous to you as a leader. And a lot of it may feel it's hard to see the forest through the trees. So there's ways to do that. And there are a lot of resources actually on the Agility Talent website that will lead you through some like DIY models for that. And then there's also firms like us that specialize in helping you do that if you feel like you need some more like objective guidance, right? Um, if you're much larger, hopefully you're not doing this for the first time, right? Like hopefully your job as a much larger organization is to now make sure that your tools and scaffolding have matured to meet you where you are in this moment. And then anything, any anytime anything big changes, you need to refresh it. So that means strategic direction shifts, reorganization, big growth spurt, merger, you know, like big stuff happens. Okay, now we got to kind of do that that big review. I always tell people that your talent infrastructure is just like going to the dentist. If you take a look at it once or twice a year, you're probably gonna be okay. If you don't, you might end up with a root canal and now you have a tooth that you just can't save. So I think best practice is to look at this once a year. I'm actually putting together a calendar that I'm going to release soon on our site that gives leaders a playbook of what should you do each year and helps you make sure you're checking all of those boxes. Not like a compliance checklist, but like a are we gonna keep our people, are we gonna grow them, are we going to leverage them well, type of a checklist. So that'll be coming soon. Um but that's it's just it's if you stay on top of it, then you never end up, you know, having to make major shifts and changes.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

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When The Family Mindset Causes Burnout

SPEAKER_00 16:05

you said something in the the piece of like on the maybe we need to rethink this for organizations that are larger, that I feel like is such a a hot button or maybe a touchy subject around this whole idea. And that is that within the nonprofit sector, it is almost become, or not even become, it has been for years, this badge of honor, right? That we are like a family. Everybody pitches in to do everything. And when you have maybe two or three people on staff, uh that's a certain mindset, right? Is it is still very entrepreneurial. But I I think unfortunately we're still stuck in that. Yeah. Oh, this is just because we're a nonprofit and we maybe don't have the financial resources to pay everybody the way that that we could if we were a for-profit, or there's some sort of badge of honor that we're still clinging to that says, you know, if everybody's doing everything and we're all pitching in and doing it together, then we are more committed to the mission. Or we're you know committed to it. And I wonder if that I don't wonder. I think that's what leads to a lot of nonprofit burnout. I was just going to say something that we've been talking about in the industry for so long is we're we are burning through and churning through really great people who are really passionate about the work so quickly. So talk to us about that, right? About because I I'm sure that there are people listening who are like, no, it's really great that we're this family environment and we all pitch in together and we all, you know, everybody does everything. Yeah. In the long run, what is that? What do you see that do to organizations?

SPEAKER_01 17:47

So I think you need to unpack what you mean by family, right? When you're talking about that, right? Because I love my family. I care about my family, right? I and even in my family household, my 15-year-old is way better at solving technical challenges than any of us. Anytime there's a technical issue in this household, he's the one I'm I'm asking. Can you come help us? Like the printer won't work or the TV, right? Like, so even in our household, there's a fair amount of delegation that happens based on our unique gifts and what and everything that needs to get done. So I think it is very possible to have clear roles and responsibilities and still care for each other. My first job, actually, the subsidiary I worked at at Time Warner, I think that's what made that organization so special. It was 300 people, part of this much larger organization, but it still had a family feel and an entrepreneurial vibe. And that was really because of the CEO, Michael Loeb. That was who he was. He really cared about all of his employees. So you can be that organization, but I'm gonna tell you right now, I knew exactly what was expected of me. I knew exactly what my job was. I wasn't running around frantically putting out fires all the time. I actually do a training on this with managers. It's often my first step because I'll talk to managers and find out. I just did a year-long program with an organization. They wanted me to do discovery to figure out how do we get our managers to be better leaders and be more strategic. And so I did a bunch of discovery work with a bunch of managers, like 70 people. Okay. And the biggest barrier that they said they had was that they were constantly running around putting out fires. They didn't have time to delegate and train their staff. It was just they didn't have time to give feedback. It was just faster and easier to do it themselves, right? This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And what you get is you get everybody frantic, burnt out, and running around. I start the training by showing a clip from a video game. Anyone who's a parent here with kids in my kids' generation will know it's called Overcooked. And it's a very simple game. It's a bunch of chefs that are basically just trying to cook orders in a restaurant. And inevitably, what happens is that you're doing okay. You get the first couple of orders in, but nobody has clear roles and responsibilities. And all of a sudden the magic stops, and you're not just like happening to do the right thing by chance, and the kitchen's on fire, and the little emojis are running around with their hands in the air, and it's just complete chaos, right? And what we talk about in this training is how do you get to a point where you don't have to do everything, where you're not, there aren't fires to fight, and it all starts with organizing the work and making sure that people are clear on what what their sort of key roles and responsibilities are. Now, this doesn't mean that there can't be collaboration, right? Like absolutely there should be collaboration. There should be opportunities for people to take on stretch assignments, to be a part of task forces, but that should be like 10 to 20% of their job, right? 80% of their job cannot be a mystery. That's just not a recipe for a successful organization, for an engaged and satisfied workforce, right? So let's help people feel successful at 80% of their job and then give them 10 to 20% of their job where they're getting to be creative and flex some new skills and operate in that collaborative environment where they're getting exposure to new things. So you can you have to live in the middle.

Delegation And The 80 20 Rule

SPEAKER_01 21:30

As with most things in life, right? Anything that is not easy, anything that is complex is not all or nothing. You have to find a way to live in the middle in a way that works for your organization. And if we think about founders and startups to really established orgs, it's kind of like a trajectory where that percentage starts to shift over time. And it'll be a little different for every culture, too. Like some orgs will want to retain more of that entrepreneurial vibe, and others will not, right? So you just have You have to be intentional about it because culture happens. And the question is, is it happening intentionally the way you want it to, or has it just gotten out of your control and it's like a freight train?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah. So I would think, and we all have a couple minutes, so but I want to get this in here. Because I think as we talk about this, there are a lot of leaders who would say, you know, yes, I am on board with figuring out the career trajectory and defining those roles and helping people figure that part out. The part that I shy away from is accountability and performance management because that's awkward and hard and but it also they all have to go together, right? They all have to be a part of the puzzle. So do you have some words of wisdom for the folks who find the performance management piece to be a challenge because hard conversations are hard?

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Like every organization in the world struggles with that.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

I'm gonna try to write it. That's you, it's not it, it's not new.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

So I'm gonna ask you, Megan. I'm gonna ask you if you go, let's imagine you you liked yoga, you go to a yoga class, you're the yoga instructor demonstrates the pose, you now do the pros, the yoga instructor comes over and adjusts you and gives you some tips, and then you do it again, and then the yoga instructor says, That's it, right there. That's it, that's what I want, right? Wouldn't you go back to that class? Wouldn't you say, Wow, that was like a really great yoga teacher, right? Now imagine you went into a yoga class and the yoga teacher said, Hey, do this pose and then gave you nothing. Is that somebody you would return to as a teacher, right?

Feedback Frameworks That Reduce Fear

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Why do we teach the workforce any differently? We do this in sports, we do this in our extracurriculars. We expect this, right? We expect good coaching, mentoring, and feedback. And for some reason, and and when we're not sitting at our job, we actually value it. There's no negative connotation. But all of a sudden, when we walk through the office door or the zoom window, we are like allergic to feedback. And so I think that first of all, what you need, what what individuals need to get out of their head is that it's a difficult conversation. It's not. Clarity is kindness if you're doing it in a way to help somebody get better and grow. And we always talk about how do you deliver it? There's great fame frameworks. I like situation behavior and impact. Here's what happened, right? Like here was the situation, here was what you did, and here was the impact of that. Now let's problem solve and let's figure out how we're gonna help you get better in the future, right? It's not personal. You know, you were late to work one day. You're not lazy. We had started the meeting, you came in late, is it was disruptive and it got us off track. So let's figure out how to do this differently in the future, right? We're not making assumptions about like, oh, clearly you don't take this seriously or you're irresponsible. There's no personal judgment, it's just situation, behavior, impact. And now we can talk about solutions. So I think that we need to just I think we have to get better at this as a sector because we all, I believe we all probably do this in other areas of our life. And so what we need to do is we need to figure out how to take those skills and translate them into the professional workforce because nobody wants to work for a leader that does not develop them. And feedback is one of the best ways to do it. And honestly, what is really unfair and awkward and uncomfortable is when you have a staff member who hasn't been performing and then all and you haven't said anything, and all of a sudden you have their performance review at the end of the year, and you're giving them a low rating, and they're thinking, why didn't you tell me this six months ago when I still could have worked on it and fixed it? Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

So you just got to get over the barrier and do it.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

So good. Okay, Allison, tell us a little bit more about Agility Talent Partners. Yeah.

Resources From Agility And Book Pick

SPEAKER_00 26:05

How do how do we find you? How do we connect with you to learn more about the work you're doing or some of the resources that you had mentioned?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yep. So there's two places that I would suggest looking for us. One is our website, www.agility talent.com. And because we are a cutting-edge firm, it's agility, not AGI, EDG. So agility talent.com, or you can also find us on LinkedIn, Agility Talent Partners. And we have a lot of great materials that we share for free on LinkedIn. So I highly recommend following us to get into that pipeline. Our work really is everything we've talked about. So we work with nonprofits to help them build values-aligned compensation programs, performance management programs, think about their career pathways and growth opportunities for staff, build competency models. We also support boards on making sure the org is doing the same for the leader, right? It uh it's so often it gets forgotten, right? We'll do this work with the you know head of the organization and they'll say, wow, I haven't had a performance review in five years, right? Um, so we'll work with the board to help them think about compensation, succession planning, and evaluation for the org leader as well. We just love to geek out about all things people's strategy.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

So good. Okay, as we move to close, I do want to ask you our final question this season has been what is one book that you would recommend everyone put on their to read list?

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Yeah. So I am going to recommend Traction by Gino Wickman. I read this book, I want to say I came across it about three or four years ago, and it really revolutionized how I think about the three questions we talked about, right? What's expected of me? How will I know if I'm succeeding? And what future do I have here? The the frameworks in that book can be relevant for organization, no matter any organization, no matter where you are. They're really helpful. And I think there's a lot of good thought exercises and examples. So if this, if you've come out of this conversation with some questions that are like saying, wow, yeah, we struggle with that, or hmm, I'd like to learn more, first of all, go to our website and our LinkedIn page because our materials are phenomenal. But traction by Geno Wickman is a wonderful crash course in all of this.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

So good. Amy, thank you. I think I think we've addressed some concerns for a lot of folks. Um, but also given both, again, both sides of the audience some really solid takeaways that they can go implement right now, which is always my favorite kind of podcast that we do. If there's like here's the three things you need to do, or through three questions you need to ask. I love when we can give people those really tangible practical takeaways. So thank you so much for sharing that today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

No, it's a fun conversation, Megan. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Absolutely. Again, my guest has been Allison Wyatt, who is the founder and CEO of Agility Talent Partners. Definitely go check them out online and follow them on LinkedIn. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.