Cultivating a Culture of Continuous Learning at Work With Sam Reilley

Casino Night, Disney World, and custom jackets. Must be a fun, laid-back job.

Actually, this is a remote-first team of about 80 people, and three-quarters of them are high-performing engineers in tightly regulated spaces. Sam Reilley, VP of People and Culture at BSC Analytics, calls them the best of the best. Reilley’s done the research, and the most reliable way to build culture in this industry is continuous learning at work. In addition to certifications, her team is given every opportunity to become bona fide subject matter experts.

“People have to have that space to continue to grow, especially when you're in tech, and it is changing overnight. Creating a space where they have tools and resources to continue to do that is huge.”

–      Sam Reilley, BSC Analytics

Key Takeaways

• Tangible certifications are great, but learning and development should enhance overall expertise.
• Giving employees access to resources that further their careers inspires them to excel at the job they already have.
• Traditional team-building methods like trips, events, and swag help make growth milestones part of the company culture.
• Frequent check-ins and informal conversations alike are invaluable forms of workplace communication.

Timestamps

1:48 Meet Sam Reilley: From a Nonprofit in Ghana to BSC Analytics

7:38 Certs, Celebrations, & Lighting Talks: L&D for Engineers

11:59 Looking Beyond Certifications

15:13 Sam’s Shark Tank & a Very Vegas TacoCon

20:54 The All Five Club

23:41 Thought Leadership & Expanding Membership

32:21 Five Tacos to Share

Topics

Amazing Teams, Una Japundza, BSC Analytics, HeyTaco, Sam Reilley, company culture, learning and development, workplace communication

Mentions

Website: https://bscanalytics.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samreilley

Transcript

Want to position every member of your team as an expert? This week on Amazing Teams, Una Japundza speaks with Sam Reilley, longtime VP of People and Culture at BSC Analytics. Sam opened up about how she cultivates a culture of continuous learning at work, as well as the benefits of open communication, frequent check-ins, and maybe a trip to Disney.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Una Japundza: Sam, tell me more about how you went from living and working in Ghana in international development to running people and culture at a very high-tech company?

Sam Reilley: If you would have told me while I was sitting in a meeting with a bunch of village chiefs and elders that [I] would one day be working for a tech company, I would have been like, no way. I probably would have laughed.

But now, zooming out, knowing where I am, so much of what I've connected to and all of my work is figuring out how you build a culture that speaks to the people. How do you build a business that is made with the intention of the people that it is serving? How do we build a place that people want to come to work at every day? They feel supported, they feel empowered, have the ownership to do what they want, and really push their career. 

I think for me, in my career, so much of what I've wanted to do was just do cool stuff with amazing people, and the “stuff” really was fluid. Maybe it was building businesses in rural Ghana, West Africa, or maybe it was sitting in a room full of engineers working in some of the most highly regulated spaces with companies and some of the smartest people that I've worked with. Those are the connections across my career.

Japundza: Tell us more about BSC Analytics and what you guys do there.

 Reilley: We are a cloud and AI consulting firm. We work with companies that come to us with their problems. We truly have the best of the best. We put the best of the best in the room to solve their problems and then carry it through completion. The majority of our clients are in highly regulated spaces, and so there is a lot to be cognizant of. They hand us their big bowl of spaghetti to help figure it out, and we execute.

 Japundza: You started [at BSC] in people and culture, right?

 Reilley: One of the board members of the nonprofit I worked for was starting a recruiting firm. I joined that recruiting firm very skeptical of how I would like it. I actually loved it, and through that, met Kenneth Johnson, the CEO here at BSC Analytics, then pivoted into this role. I've been here for five years and have always been on the people and culture side.

Japundza: How big is your team now?

 Reilley: When I first joined, it was just a team of 20, and what I really liked about Kenneth, in my conversations previously, is how real he kept it on how he understood the importance of culture and what it really looked like out on the ground. It wasn't just something you talked about; it was something that the people actually lived every day. I think that can be a really big disconnect in some companies.

I saw that disconnect all the time. You were sitting with high-level executives saying what their culture was, and then they passed you off to the next person. They're like, well, not really, you know. So that was always a really interesting piece.

Yeah, so when I first came on board, it was a team of twenty. They knew they [wanted] to pivot from working the small-to-medium to the highly regulated space. Now we're even building products, which is super exciting, and it's meant a lot of growth for our team. We grew from a team of 20 to a team of 40 within the first year and then doubled in size from there, and now there are around 80 people on this team.

Japundza: I'm so curious, from your experience working with village chiefs in Ghana to engineers mostly in the US, what are some similarities between people? Do you feel like people are similar in terms of what they want? Or are they different based on their geographies and their walks of life?

Reilley: That’s an interesting question. I think it really comes down to people feeling like they are heard. I am not sitting in my role saying that I can solve every problem that you see every day. But I'm going to listen; I'm going to take it into consideration. If I hear it from one person and then I notice it's something that is a problem every day, that feels different. 

But what's really important to me and across my entire team at BSC Analytics is that we can have the conversations. When people feel like they can't have that, that is a really big culture shift. I can't solve everyone's problems, and like any job, there are pros and cons, but the fact that people, I hope, feel heard is a really big piece of it.

Japundza: What percentage of your team is engineering? Every time you and I have spoken, you always mention your certifications. Tell me more, why are those important for your company and your objectives? 

Reilley: Yes, like 75% of the team is made up of engineers.

I think learning and development is huge. If you look at historical data and just data across different companies and what really speaks true to a company and what makes a culture great, it really goes back to learning and development. What are you doing to help your team continue to grow on a large scale and on an individual basis?

For us, because of the caliber of engineers that we have on our team, that takes even more importance. People have to have that space to continue to grow, especially when you're in tech, and it is changing overnight. Creating the space where people can continue to do that, creating a space where they have tools and resources to continue to do that, is huge. 

When people come on our team initially, we fully reimburse for any certifications and a lot of different learning initiatives. A lot of people are like, is there like a budget yearly, monthly? And I'm like, No, go to town, do it. We have a Slack channel where people share the different certifications that they have knocked out just to celebrate them as a team. HeyTaco tacos are being slung back and forth for different certifications. 

We put a lot of different initiatives into play and incentives to help continue and drive that learning. But I think just the existence of that learning channel is a really big one where we're celebrating that on an individual basis. 

We also have a lightning talk. This is just a space where our engineers meet on a regular cadence to share the cool shit that they're doing. We had someone on there playing guitar and how he connected it to coding and all of that. Other people are sharing apps that they have worked on on the side, things that they have done and implemented in their systems to just help in their everyday. 

Again, that is cultivating a culture of continuous learning, and it's not just in certifications. I really think it's how your brain is wired. For us, technical aptitude is of utmost importance. It's not, what have you done, and what can I put you in tomorrow? If I put you in a space that you have never touched before, how quickly do you find your feet under you? I think if you're going to put people in those positions, you have to also put levers into play where they can continue to learn, and resources that they can utilize to upskill. 

Japundza: I presume that when you have a conversation with a prospective customer, and you say, This is Joe, and Joe has 10 certifications from AWS and whatever else, it probably helps build trust with your clients, right? 

Reilley: Yes, our average engineer has six certifications. That's insane. Certifications certainly don't tell the whole story, but they help. The stamps of approval to say, I'm an AWS expert, I'm an Azure expert, I have this many certifications in Kubernetes, and I'm a Kubestronaut. 

Japundza: Is there an automation that gives people tacos when they submit something to say, “I got a cert?” How does it work? Who is responsible for maintaining it? 

Reilley: When you get a certification, you get a badge usually issued through Credly or something like that. So you get that, and you go in there, and you just post, “Hey, knocked out this cert,” and then the tacos start slinging for celebrating. “Hey, congrats, that's awesome!” Not automated, just a natural cadence. The learning channels, a lot of it is certs [but] others are like, “Hey, I just saw this cool new course,” or “Hey, I saw AWS is doing a new initiative for recertification.” So it also just cultivates the conversation around learning.

Japundza: The lightning talks, how often do those happen? 

Reilley: We were doing them once a month, and we got so many submissions from engineers wanting to share the cool things that they were doing, so we've upped it to twice a month. They're just an hour. Engineers get five minutes to share what they're doing, and then it cultivates conversations outside of that as well, of course.

Todd Bernson, he's our CAIO, [hosts them.] He leads the charge from a technical perspective, and he is top-notch. He is heavily certified. Anyone can attend.

Japundza: I know you have a couple of open roles on your website right now. Are you looking for people who are already certified? Or do you want people who want to, who have an interest in getting certified, and then you can help them get there? What do you look for in new hires? 

Reilley: What is most important is a high sense of ownership. I don't really care if you're certified. I do want to make sure people understand why we think it's important, and we do tie it to our career paths as well. 

I have also talked to people who are certified up and down the block and can't do much of anything or hold much of a conversation [on a] technical level. I would say their technical aptitude is low. When I find someone who is just an innate learner, has that high sense of ownership, that is huge.

Japundza: So you're doing the Slack channel, you're doing the lightning talks. Is there anything else? 

Reilley: I actually just put together a new challenge for our product. It's an AAI product that we have been building, and we have a product team that's really concentrated in that space. I built a challenge to get all of our engineers in that system. Not only because it will help it grow a ton and kind of fine-tune the product even further, but also they're going to be having to use it, so incentivizing them to get in there and learn and understand it is a huge piece. 

Our engineers are put into teams of about four people across the board. What I'm having people do is first tackle it on an individual basis. How can you use this product to solve something annoying you today or that you see could be automated or expedited in some sort of way? 

Then they come together as a team and say, “This is what I'm currently using or what I want to use this product to solve,” and they share that amongst a team. As a team, they decide, “Hmm, which one should we go in on all together?” Then they concentrate on that space; they will take that and fine-tune it, and then we do a Shark Tank-style pitch.

We'll have a panel of judges that will vote, and there's a big pot of cash at hand as well. So that helps to motivate people, too. 

Japundza: When you're strategizing new ideas, you focus them on learning and development. What's your philosophy behind coming up with those? 

Reilley: Our team loves to connect. We're 100% remote. I'm always looking for opportunities to build that connection. When I can build the connection, and it ties into learning and development, let's do the damn thing. Our team is super competitive, so I wave some cash or maybe a trip, and people get pumped. Along with the well-deserved bragging rights, which are huge. 

At our last TacoCon, which is our company retreat, [we had a] casino theme, and the person who won the casino night then got to choose someone to wear a taco costume. So, just keeping it fun, I think our team loves the ability to connect. Fostering that as a team. 

Japundza: One thing that has always resonated with me about your approach is that you just start. You're not planning for three years and hoping that it works out, over-engineering everything. You just start it. Sometimes things flop, right? You launch things and people are like, What's wrong with Sam? Why are we doing this? Have you had those experiences?

Reilley: Yes, I mean analysis paralysis is for all of us, right? I will fine-tune, and we'll pivot as we go. 

When it comes to something that flopped–I can see low engagement sometimes. Each of these engineering teams reports into what we call a delivery owner, which is like a project manager. They're in with those engineers every day. We meet on a weekly basis, and I use them a ton. What's working? What are you hearing back from your engineers? What can we do? Let's have those conversations in your daily stand-ups. 

[If] they're not talking about the next TacoCon, we're doing it wrong. Let's really invigorate that. Just really making it a part of the conversation and constantly having those lines of feedback. Back to the culture piece, what I think is, people feeling heard is big. You know, we kicked off this challenge on Monday, and I talked to my COO, and he was like, It sounds like some people are confused by the phases, so we had two workshops.

One yesterday, one on Friday, and I kicked off the workshop with, “Hey, I'm hearing some confusion. Let me break this down in a very simple way. This is phase one, this is how it's gonna work, this is phase two.” That's just because I heard conversations that he was having, and even some of the conversations that I was having of people trying to understand. Ear to the ground is really big. Not being afraid to pivot, not being afraid to be human. We've never done this before, I want your feedback. 

All Five is one of our clubs that we have that is learning focused, so people have to get certifications. I just did a big pivot this year actually with that because previously it was getting All Five AWS or Azure Cloud certifications, and you're put into this All Five Club. You get this sick jacket. It’s the same jacket that is given to members of [the Five Timers club on] Saturday Night Live. 

If you've been on SNL five times, you get this sick jacket. Well, we found the person who makes that jacket, and now they make them for us, for our All Five club. My RCO, the All Five club is his baby. It has been his idea from day one of doing this.

Japundza: A trip to Disney is part of it. You get a jacket and then do you do an annual trip with people who have been inducted into the All Five club that year? 

Reilley: Yep. Your first year at All Five, there's a jacketing ceremony...every year there are new members that we’re inducting and jacketing. Once you're in the All Five club, you have to keep the All Five status. You get to go every year. We keep it very team focused. It doesn't hurt that our CEO is located in Orlando and is a Disney freak himself. I can say that lovingly.

[The club has] grown over the years. Right now it's around 30 people, if I remember. But I just reinvigorated the All Five, [it] used to be that you got all five AWS, or all five Azure certifications, and then you were entered in this club. I actually broke the All Five down into five separate pillars, one of which still stands as the certificate. Certifications are a part of it. But the other four pillars pull in so many other things. 

Japundza: So you have the certifications, you have the thought leadership. What are the other three? 

Reilley: The lightning talks, public articles, learning and mastery, which is going to be your certifications, leadership, and then collaboration is the fifth one. Just trying to really push that thought leadership, like I said, to the next level, beyond the certifications, and just ensuring that our team is keeping up with all that is developing in tech.

Japundza: How are you measuring the other four pillars? Obviously the certifications are very objective, right? You complete a cert, you're done. What about the other ones?

Reilley: We have quite a few levers. There's a peer aspect to it. To get a subject matter expert, you're getting a peer recommendation within your team. Outside of your team, you need to have examples of how you showcase that and really push that mentor aspect of it.

But it's team-driven, which I think is a really important piece in that we're all lifting each other up in our careers, and how we're bettering one another is a really big piece to it. I mentioned thought leadership when it comes to lightning talks and publishing articles, but we also have a thought leadership workshop that our leadership drives.

You need to be able to talk the technical and do the technical. What makes BSC the best of the best is the engineers. Yes, they can do it, but they can talk about it and explain it in a different way. We have a series of workshops that our CAIO leads, and it really pushes that kind of methodology in and how you get there.

Japundza: So it's internal training in a sense, a program that you created. You’re asking people to be thought leaders for the All Five, but now you're giving them tools to go through a training program to learn how to do it. You mentioned the subject matter expertise. Is that a workshop as well that you developed?

Reilley: Yes, the SME program is one that I developed, and that is something that just kicked off this year. That's the one where they have to get two peer nominations. They need to be driven by their manager as well. People were going to certain people as the Kubernetes expert, as the Linux expert, as the Terraform guru. So what I was trying to do was just bring some more formality to that.

I have worked with our CAIO, who has been helping build a people portal to help navigate that. We gave them their stamp of approval: Yes, you're a subject matter expert, but what does it look like beyond that so it is company knowledge? [So] that people can really use it as a resource in their everyday? 

Japundza: If someone really wants to start some sort of learning and development initiatives, programs, even just one workshop at their company, what advice would you give them in terms of getting started? 

Reilley: Talk to people. Get your managers who oversee teams in a room. What are you hearing? What are people like? Where are they falling short? I meet with every single person on our team, top-up, top-down, on a regular basis with no agenda at all. It's just a check-in. How are you? What's going on? What's happening? What do you like? What don't you like? You know, all of that.

It's super casual, and it is just a space where people see that I want to know. Maybe that's just a catch-up of what's going on with their family or their next vacation. But I'm opening the door for when there are problems or things that they're concerned about, or exciting things that they want to share. When I have ideas, I put together round tables of people who’ve been the most vocal about wanting this to change.

What's going to work? What hasn't worked? I use that to totally reinvigorate our bonus program and things. I think it really comes down to that. Get in front of people, communicate, ask the right questions, and continue to push so that people continue to come to you with ideas so that you can continue to drive them.

Japundza: As you know, in HeyTaco, you have five tacos to give to someone today to celebrate them and appreciate them. So my question to you is, who are you giving your five tacos to today and why?

Reilley: Brian Dawson. He's the CDO of BSC Analytics, and I think what makes our team and the culture so important is that it is felt across every role at this company. It is not just something we in leadership say and hope is happening on the ground. It's what we're doing. We're stopping, we're listening, we're venting, we're sharing. It doesn't have to be a formal meeting. It is the one-offs.

I just had that conversation with him this morning of like, “What are we gonna do? How are we gonna strategize around this?” I am super thankful to be able to have that for myself in someone that I report directly to, and I think I understand that importance because I feel it in the role that I am in. I want to make sure that that is felt across the entire team.

You know, you can get in the grind every single day, and then you have to zoom out every once in a while to be like, “Wait, no, we're still doing this. We're creating this, one foot in front of the other. We might not have it figured out today, but we're trying.” I think that keeping humble with that is huge. I don't launch a program and say, “This is gonna be the best ever, and we're not gonna have any problems.” I've never done this before. I want your feedback. What's working, what's not. Let's talk about it if it's not. 

And when people come to me with a problem, I turn it to them. How would you solve this? Because I want to know. It's not always that simple. But yes, I think the five tacos go to Brian Dawson because he helps push that, and it helps push me in my role every day.