Fit for Role: Redefining Performance and Potential in HR: Norbert Modla (VP of HR at BD)

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Norbert Modla: If you're not involved in HR, you're just interfering. And if the business doesn't feel that you're deeply involved as an HR business partner, as an HR person, then they just gonna look at you and this is just a guy shouting in ideas from the side.

It's easy for him. He doesn't know my business enough. So I think that deep involvement that they feel that you're one of them. Well, that's really important, which requires the business understanding and the relationships.

There is a great term, called going to GEMBA, which is where the things happen, where the actions happen. You can translate this to market visits. You can translate this to spending time in the factory. The point is as an HR person, are you spending enough time in GEMBA? meaning understanding where the action happens.

gs. Because that's where you [: 00:01:00

Dorothy Yiu: Welcome to the HR Impact Show, where we have honest conversations with people leaders about their journeys in building great workplaces. I'm Dorothy Yiu, your host, CEO, and co-founder of EngageRocket. EngageRocket is a HR technology and advisory company that leverages on data to enhance employee experience from hire to retire.

Today, we're joined by Norbert Modla. He's the VP of HR for Greater Asia at Becton Dickinson, BD. BD is leading medical device company in the world, and Norbert has also many years of experience leading change and transformation within HR for many organizations. Norbert has also lived in many countries, including the U. S., Europe, and Asia, and we're excited to dive into his insights in change management as well as talent development today. Welcome to the show, Norbert. Very excited to have you here.

Norbert Modla: Thank you for inviting me.

h you, I understand that you [: 00:02:00

You started out in consulting. So tell us more about your journey.

Norbert Modla: So I started my studies as an economist and I'm very much was into numbers and analysis and business. And from that on, it was a natural transition to management consulting. And then one of my clients that I used to work for, there was a gentleman who became the director of an area, and he called me one day and he said, you've been this crazy consultant all your life. Do you want to actually have a real job? And that's how the conversation started to go into business. And then after a while through some opportunities and interesting career choices, I moved into HR and then and I was asked to be an HR director that was related closely to the transformation of a project. And ever since then, I stayed in HR, but I never thought initially my career that I will be.

in HR? What keeps that fire [: 00:03:00

Norbert Modla: I like to see well functioning organizations, and I always had this itch about how do we make this organization work better. I'm a very big admirer. For example, I like football, American friends, some of the coaches and how they are playing this role of putting a good team together, which we know is way more than just buying the most expensive, best players.

So this whole idea of how do you make a well functioning organization is something that I find really fascinating.

Dorothy Yiu: You know when I was looking through your background, you have a very clear track record of, leading companies through change, through restructuring, M&A. Was there a memorable transformation project that you can share with us?

ere's a lot of talk about HR [: 00:04:00

Because you have to keep the function running. And I've learned a lot from our own mistakes about how much effort it takes for organizations to do things actually differently from just relabeling it and pretending to do differently. So I guess biggest learning from any change management and transformation is getting down to the details and those daily habits, the way we do things around here.

That's usually the hardest part to do. Changing systems is costly, but fairly easy to do.

Dorothy Yiu: Okay, I'm glad you said that because in an interview that you've done before, you mentioned Peter Drucker's famous quote, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." And here at EngageRocket, we are very passionate about culture building using people analytics.

it's really getting down to [: 00:05:00

So there's always a lot of macro reasons for change. So how do we bridge the gap between the two?

Norbert Modla: Challenging question. And then you quoted something that I really like. I give you another quote that I also have up on my office. I like to cook and I have a famous chef called British chef called Marco Pierre White who said this, that quality or excellence is a lot of small things done right. it's never one big thing. And if you want to run a Michelin star restaurant, you have to do a million small things. Starting from how do you peel the onion and how you slice it. And I think that goes back a little bit to change management. And that's what I sometimes see as a risk with companies, senior management, steering committees.

ook at the big picture. They [: 00:06:00

ple. Because for me, if that [: 00:07:00

Dorothy Yiu: But how do you do that at scale? This is you, and your team. And right now you're a HR director at BD. BD oversees 70,000 employees globally. So how do you scale that? That kind of detail orientation.

Norbert Modla: I would say it's two things. Obviously, individually, I can't read the thousands and I'm sure. First of all, that's what you have a team for, and you have to install certain priorities and certain ways of thinking, I would say that's one thing. And the other one is random samples you do, and you have to provide that feedback and coaching, but there's a third one recently related to this, you can use AI.

e think you can improve your [: 00:08:00

Dorothy Yiu: And to circle back to my question around change. You've led a lot of HR transformation projects as well. What have you seen as the most important, say ingredients to really cascade the company vision down operationally to the ground?

Norbert Modla: These are not my ideas, but I'm just referring to, if you read change management rule books, I think we tend to focus very much on what is not moving and people who don't want to change. And I think at one stage we have to address that, but I think it's super important that you're able to build that momentum initially and just focus on and run with the ones who are willing to and create that, you can call it success story.

ometimes in the organization [: 00:09:00

It doesn't just look right on a corporate presentation.

Dorothy Yiu: So really spotlighting on champion change makers. For example.

Norbert Modla: Yes. And being involved. That's what I'm saying. And if you look at it, I think with HR. And I think being involved that deeply in the business is very important. Starting to talk about quotes.

My other favorite quote, which I have no idea where it comes from, but I often say is that if you're not involved, in HR, you're just interfering. And if the business doesn't feel that you're deeply involved as an HR business partner, as an HR person, then they just gonna look at you and this is just a guy shouting in ideas from the side.

mportant, which requires the [: 00:10:00

Dorothy Yiu: I'm going to double click on that because I think that's very important for HR professionals to be able to speak the business language. For our audience listening to this podcast, who may be new to HR, what advice would you give to them for them to really learn the language of the business?

Norbert Modla: I think what's important being involved is really understanding and knowing the business.

There is a great term, called going to Gemba or Gemba. Some people say, which is where the things happen, where the actions happen. You can translate this to market visits. You can translate this to spending time in the factory. The point is. As an HR person, are you spending enough time in GEMBA, meaning understanding where the action happens.

is, because that's where you [: 00:11:00

I also often say these days, I don't want us to develop anything anymore that doesn't run very well on a cell phone. Because a lot of our sales organization is out in the field in various healthcare facilities or hospitals, and they're spending time there, sometimes they can take their laptops out, sometimes not.

So certainly anything we do, for example, DocuSign or signing something electronically document a couple of years ago was a big thing and we converted wherever legally it was possible, everything, so every document can be signed. Why? Because I don't want them to come to the office just to print something.

about the mindset and being [: 00:12:00

Dorothy Yiu: We touched on a few desired behaviors detail orientation. This, I think, innately requires curiosity as well, right? So what are some of the top traits you look for in the talent acquisition? I mean, it can be general across the board, or it can be specifically to people you bring on board to your HR team.

Norbert Modla: You answered it already. It's curiosity. And it's funny because just yesterday I was in a regional meeting and somebody asked me exactly that question. And I said, it is that curiosity that drives a lot of things, wanting to understand how things work. And we can translate it, something that's very close to it is growth mindset.

ery important. If you ask me [: 00:13:00

The way I like to say it is that I remember a couple of years from now that you were there. Because if you were just another sort of wheel in the machine, and I will not remember, I don't think that's the kind of person. I like to have people with a conviction who obviously do whatever the organization needs, but they also there to drive influence, impact and people will remember that they were there.

Dorothy Yiu: I know at BD there's a strong focus in really developing internal talent to support longer term vision. What strategies have you put in place to really build this kind of traits or characteristics or learning agility within the BD environment?

numbers and KPIs. I'm a big [: 00:14:00

We can see it's like managing a sales funnel. In sales, you need to know that if I want to sell something three years from now, depending on your cycle, this is how many leads I need to have. It's the same thing I can forecast from our turnover, from our numbers to say how many people we will need in various places in leadership positions.

ent management or succession [: 00:15:00

That goes back to those individual development plans that I mentioned. What is it we need to do? So all those little small actions add up to that. So I think the rest is a lot of other ingredients and people would know, but for me, this is two key elements that I find if you do well, they move the system forward.

lly actually helps you shape [: 00:16:00

Norbert Modla: So I think of two. For example, one that we using in BD in the region is a KPI that we're using "fit for role". And that is the way I would describe it is somewhere in between performance ratings for companies use it, but some sort of performance understanding about the people, but that's looks at the past. A lot of companies use different ways to tag performance rating, whatever you want to call it, but that's a possibility.

For us in between, what we have is what we call "fit for the role", which means that after we do our strategic plans, which we do every year on a rolling basis for the next three years, with the leadership teams, we look at the different leadership teams and say, if that's what the game we want to play, do we have the team that's capable of delivering that?

ral manager who is very good [: 00:17:00

But I think that perspective of looking ahead for the next 12, 18 months, do I have the right player on the field is a very important metrics on an individual level. And if you aggregate it, it gives us a very good indication of how much our teams or our work structure is in line with what we want to achieve.

Dorothy Yiu: This is very interesting. So it's exercise where you just ignore who you have currently and think about..

t's take a moment back. Do I [: 00:18:00

It may be related sometimes it is for performance, but most of the time is this the type of person, is this the type of leader that we need? And then if it's not. Or not fully, then the conversation is how can we help to ensure, because the mission of this exercise, we do it in our strategic work plan, is to ensure we have the team who can deliver.

And it's not about, this part is not about growing people. This part is not about coaching. This part is to make sure that we win the game. We also need to have what I call the football academy to grow the people, but this one is to make sure that we have the people who's going to score the goals.

Dorothy Yiu: Once a year?

er we do have that review to [: 00:19:00

Dorothy Yiu: This is basically assessing whether the people that is doing the role is still a fit for the role. So where do you draw the line between, oh, if you identify someone who is not a fit, then is it a developmental conversation or is it a..

ess and then so on. It's the [: 00:20:00

So then the conversation starts, we flag this. What do we do about it? And a simple solution is let's make sure we have somebody in the team who's there. Maybe it is sometimes it's helping the person coaching. Extreme case, we could say this is really not going to work. We have to find another more suitable role for the person, but it's not a performance discussion.

And let me use my football analogy again. If I am playing in X football team. I want to play very offensive. I'm going to send 11 people on the field. If I am playing Liverpool, I'll probably play a bit more defensive. So I'm going to have different 11 people on the field. Doesn't mean my other players are not good.

team, it changes every week [: 00:21:00

And what do we do now? Because most of the plans that I've seen in the business start now. So we need to act on it. This is not a succession planning exercise. Usually the question we ask is for the next 12 to 18 month, how confident you are that this is the right person to put that strategy in place. So we need to act on it.

Dorothy Yiu: Oh, I love it. I love it. Because the whole premise is really around enable organization to experiment with people too. Because knowing that you've built in place a checkpoint and this is not a triggered base, you will do it regardless every single year to reassess whether the people you have in a team are still the right people for the team.

Norbert Modla: Yes.

tion very agile, because you [: 00:22:00

Norbert Modla: Yes. And obviously, as I said it's not as simple in that sense, in a football team that the coach just decide that next weekend you're playing or you're not playing.

There's labor laws, there's ambitions, there's commitments. But the whole conversation of this something is missing there and it puts our strategy plan at risk. That usually is a very healthy conversation.

Dorothy Yiu: I'm curious, you've lived in so many different countries, has your experience adapting to different environments helped shape your thinking, you know, to HR transformation?

Norbert Modla: Yes, certainly. And you also find it's different countries do it very differently. China is one example where I usually say by the time you blink, it's done. And then you're more trying to keep up with the place, you take another extreme, like Japan, who is until everybody's on board and we always want to look at it one more time, naturally catches.

So I [: 00:23:00

But yes, you're right. It's different companies, different organization, different cultures approach change very positively. At least in Asia, I find that generally speaking, there is a higher level of enthusiasm or curiosity about new. Whereas, I also work a lot in Europe, there is a little bit more skepticism and resistance to anything new.

It's a big stereotype, obviously, individuals, organizations differ, but I certainly see a little bit of a pattern there.

ust between these three, how [: 00:24:00

Norbert Modla: It goes back to the it really depends. And I think the company situation, the culture, the industry, all those play a big role. I think in Asia, Japan and Europe, I would say is a much more consultative approach whereas probably in the US and in Asia, you can just move faster again.

Always true. This is not totally true but if I have to simplify it to one point, that's what I would say.

Dorothy Yiu: So Norbert, BD is a medical device manufacturing company. It's quite a specialized field. So how do you actually make it relatable to employees?

Norbert Modla: In some ways it's very easy, in other ways it's very hard. It's very easy because I always say we got a pretty cool mission statements advancing the world of health and our products literally save lives. And everybody in their family had situations.

ou can relate very easily to [: 00:25:00

We want to make it a mission for people to relate and to understand really what our different products do. So our day one, we're now transforming our onboarding program. And the objective is that when you go home at the end of the day, you can go home to your friends and family, learning about all the cool stuff that this company that you have just joined.

am where we show many of our [: 00:26:00

Dorothy Yiu: Now, that's a amazing use case on VR to actually really help new hires relate to the products that a company sells. That's amazing.

Norbert Modla: And the credit goes to our colleagues in China, they started this and I was there on a visit. I said, we have to implement this everywhere.

g program, which now we have [: 00:27:00

Dorothy Yiu: Okay. So now I'm going to switch gear a little bit and talk about the future. What would you say the ideal workplace of the future would look like?

hat's what history has shown [: 00:28:00

Anything beyond that, you may be doing it for the community. You may be doing it for somebody else to create profit. But that's this five, six hours was the amount of time that you need for stuff. And obviously it's very different hundreds of years ago, as it is now. So that really made me think about the ideal workplace to say that how much freedom you have to do with your life, whatever you want beyond this, let's say five, six hours a day. That would certainly be an aspect for me. Now, if I take it to what happens in the workplace, I would say definitely if I look at outside of my company or our industry, there is still a lot of places where people don't feel safe at work, whether it's physically.

me from there. And certainly [: 00:29:00

I don't want to be too idealistic because I think there's always going to be very difficult jobs. There's always going to be emergencies. I think sometimes when we think of these questions, we think about the comfy environment, office environment that many of us seem to, but if we are real about it, the big part of the world is not working in that kind of environment.

So I guess my answer more relates to that, that I think we should be working on that, that is available for everybody.

Dorothy Yiu: What's an advice you would give to a HR professional to work towards that?

Norbert Modla: This is what I'm saying, this is make your mark. It goes back a little bit to, you have to have some convictions and to believe what is right or wrong.

doesn't fully resonate with [: 00:30:00

And you're not afraid to share your convictions and provide advice. And I would say if you're 70 percent of the time, if you're right, that's pretty good.

Dorothy Yiu: I want to talk about psychological safety, something that you brought up as well.

eRocket to also collect data [: 00:31:00

Norbert Modla: First of all, I'm not a trained psychologist, so I'm also building on advice that I'm getting for others.

I think the first challenge is, it's a very subjective question, because I may feel perfectly comfortable and safe on a ship that is sailing through a storm because I know, and you may feel incredibly uncomfortable. So if I translate that logic to an office environment, and I think culturally as well, it is, some people may say this is incredibly uncomfortable for me here every day, where others may say this is perfect.

kay to say that I don't feel [: 00:32:00

It is, and also to equip managers to be able to pick up some of the signs. And very honestly, if you got those two, I think you're already pretty far. The rest, I'm just going to go with the, it depends on the country, the place, the time, what you need to do. But I would say those two normalizing that conversation and being able to pick up some signs or equipment, training, highlighting to managers to think about that is already a great step forward.

Dorothy Yiu: I would imagine those conversation you had with the, are you still fit for the role, what we have just discussed, that also needs to be normalized within BD.

Norbert Modla: Yes. Now that's what I mean. It took a couple of years of cycle, because not surprisingly, initially, everybody thought, Oh, I just want to do another performance rating. And we already have that. And people were also looking at a little bit skeptical. How does it impact her?

text, in a conversation then [: 00:33:00

There is all sorts of agenda. There's all sorts of concerns. There's all sorts of relationship and saying, so why you don't think that versus it may not be the right start. So you have to bite off as much you can chew. And for the first two years, almost exclusively, those conversations were just with the proper leader.

And let's say the president and me or some person to say what it is, because it wasn't ready yet for public consumption. And once people understood the concept and they feel so, then we could expand. And now we're having team level or leadership level discussions about how we can improve it in certain places.

ow I'm going to ask you some [: 00:34:00

Norbert Modla: Yes.

Dorothy Yiu: Switzerland.

Norbert Modla: Yes.

Dorothy Yiu: Hungary,

Norbert Modla: US. UK.

Dorothy Yiu: UK.

Norbert Modla: Yes.

Dorothy Yiu: Which one's your favorite?

Norbert Modla: Uh, I I, I don't. I'm really grateful that I had the chance to live all these places and it was different times of my life, different experiences, studying or working. So I think there wasn't a single place that I didn't enjoy. I am really grateful. I can't think one of these places that would be my favorite.

Dorothy Yiu: How about the one that gave you the best memory in your career?

and shifting my career into [: 00:35:00

Dorothy Yiu: You mentioned a couple of quotes in this podcast. Which one is your favorite? And it doesn't have to be the ones that we talked about.

Norbert Modla: Okay. So my absolute favorite, and I actually have that in my office behind my chair on the wall. I saw that at a car repair shop which says that "We do three types of service here: good, cheap, fast. But you can only choose any two." And I find that somewhat funny but very often when we have these conversations with what we as a function HR can do, everybody wants something cheap, fast and done really well. And that's when I usually point at the code, say that's not going to work.

So I think there's some wisdom in there in terms of how you prioritize. So I think if I have to just pick one. That's the one. The second one probably is the "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

Dorothy Yiu: And what is your go to productivity hack?

. Increasingly it's AI. I am [: 00:36:00

I'll give you some examples. We have developed some prompts that help us, for example, write org announcements. I remember a couple of years ago in one of my previous employment, we used to joke that there must be a VP of org announcement somewhere because we spend so much time aligning and now we develop this prompt that basically you upload the resume with it, you upload the job description and it gives you the org announcement in the style of BD, according the way we do it.

And it's 95 percent ready. So that's a hack that instead of writing stuff for hours and going back and forth. So I like recently to do quite a few things that I believe AI helps a lot.

outcome is also how good the [: 00:37:00

Norbert Modla: Correct.

Dorothy Yiu: Yeah. So something I've learned from Dr. Fermin Diez, who also is a guest in this podcast series is his prompts are like sometimes like pages long.

Norbert Modla: Exactly.

Dorothy Yiu: To really get the right output, you have to teach.

Norbert Modla: Yes. So within, for example, for my team training on how to write good prompts because, and also we starting to have now what we call a prompt library.

So somebody develops a good prompt. We try to put it there for others to use. So you can just copy and paste. And the simplest one is for example, this disorganizement. But we're working on quite a few data. The one we're working on now, and it's almost basically ready is for line managers to just upload the resume and they get a couple of competency based interview suggestions based on this resume and the job description.

hese are really value adding [: 00:38:00

Dorothy Yiu: And I'm curious, since you read a lot. Which book would you recommend anyone to read?

Norbert Modla: Well, if I just had to pick one in terms of HR, some of the ones that I really like, for example, is Collins says "Built to last", which I think, the essence of the book is that in any organization you need to have some things which are in the core and never changes values and the rest around it needs to be changing. And I think that's a very smart way of looking at it obviously. But if I had to pick one, I would probably say that.

Dorothy Yiu: And my last question, what is one thing that you wish more employees understood about the HR function?

sometimes we forget in large [: 00:39:00

And sometimes I go like, why are we paying this person 18,472.6 a salary? And it's not common sense. Oh, because of whatever formula, what the policy we gave this much. And I was like, okay that for me is not common sense. You just follow the rules. But very often, I hear that HR and this is marketing is just common sense.

And no, there is management science to it. There is research to it. There's a whole bunch of skills to it. And every time I hear that, I just sort of nod but, but still I have a lot of times managers, especially not in HR saying that it's just common sense.

Dorothy Yiu: Those people maybe just do not understand about, do not understand HR deeply. I absolutely enjoyed this conversation with you Norbert, especially the whole conversation we had also on identifying the fit for roles. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us.

Norbert Modla: My pleasure. Thank you.

ng into this episode. If you [: 00:40:00

You can also learn more about the show and subscribe to our community at engagerocket.co/HRimpact. I'll see you in the next episode.