Leading Talent Management During Change: An Interview with ABA Member Luna Wang

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Luna Wang, Chief Operating Officer at the Tianjin Juilliard School of Music, about how she has supported staff, faculty and students as they established the school and navigated changing restrictions and lockdowns. Below you can find a summary of our interview with Luna. 

Tell us about yourself…

I’m WANG Min (Luna) with 15 years of HR experience working in the field of international education as well as with foreign financial institutions in China. I first joined the Tianjin Juilliard School as Director of Human Resources in 2019 and most recently, assumed the role of Chief Operating Officer, responsible for building and managing a team to perform a wide range of activities including HR, Facilities and Public Safety, IT, Legal, Procurement and Administration.    

Due to the ongoing restrictions, you have had some employees unable to come into the office regularly. How have you managed to keep employees engaged and motivated?

At Tianjin Juilliard, we value our people. In order to take care of our community, we continue to take steps and roll out more initiatives focusing on wellness, caring for the mental and physical health of our team members. Some of these key offerings include:   

• Growth-focused learning opportunities: We provided a wide range of online learning workshops assessible to all our team members. The workshop themes vary from business English writing skills to public speaking sessions. We hope to empower everyone to learn something new and develop their skills to be future ready.

• Livestream of Tianjin Juilliard Orchestra Concerts and Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble Concerts: During pandemic restrictions, many of our performances have been livestreamed. By sharing these performances online, we hope to provide comfort and inspiration through music to everyone during these challenging times. 

• Micro-communities to foster a sense of belonging: Though we are physically apart, virtual communities can bring us together. Our Tianjin Juilliard family group, faculty group and various task force group chats make people feel connected and supported during times of separation. 

• Fun activities that keep people in good spirit: We created small games / challenges through work apps to complete certain tasks every day. The work task itself could be tedious however, so we identified a fun way to engage everyone to get it done enthusiastically and efficiently. We also launched 10,000 steps challenge, an initiative that got everyone moving every day!       

• Employee Assistance Program (EAP): We are able to provide employee with 24/7 online resources, telehealth services and online video consultations for any stress, grief counselling, depression and relationship conflicts that may develop during this time. We want to make sure if you ever feel like talking to someone, there is professional help available for you – rest assured, it’s all confidential and free of charge.

Since the beginning of 2020, a lot has happened globally. At the school, we are so grateful that despite the challenges, we have managed to go through these ups and downs without leaving anyone behind. The fight is going to continue for a while longer, so we will continue do everything we can to keep our people staying positive and connected to make it through together.

Have you undertaken any specific professional development activities for your staff?

As a school, we have identified ways to increase the availability of training and professional development for our staff. Starting from this July, we have allocated a certain institutional budget such as the Professional Development Fund and every staff are encouraged to apply for the fund. Over the past few months, the Professional Development Committee has approved and supported more than 40 staff (that’s nearly 50% of our staff) across 15 divisions. (The Tianjin Juilliard community is 300+ including faculty, staff and students).

Our school is of a relatively small size with a flat structure. We are mission-driven and passionate about education and the arts. Although we are making all efforts to provide internal opportunities of growth for our staff, we also know that we can’t promise every individual a next level of role progression, but it will not stop our efforts to build a training ground that will set our staff up to success wherever they will go in the future, taking with them the wonderful values and the work ethos that we have spent time cultivating and nurturing in our employees. We understand there is a broader sense of development, that also considers the trajectory of their careers in the long run. Our Professional Development Fund also supports personal development, such as tuition fee for continuing education, etc.

As our young institution evolves, we have been redefining job clarity and accountability for outcomes, managing workload between functions and positions, allocation of headcounts and resources to improve work efficiency & productivity as one team. In this process, we try to match with people’s different strengths and skills, expand their horizons, empower them with bigger challenges to accelerate their career development to certain extent.       

You have recently made some changes to performance reviews, I understand. What changes have you made and how is that going?

We adopted OKR into our last year’s performance review for the first time (our academic year cycle is July to June, so our performance review happens in June every year). It was a little challenging at the beginning, not only because this was new concept to us, but also because we are such a young institution with so many exciting plans ahead.

It took us three months to complete last year’s performance review, but people felt it a rewarding experience because we didn’t just do it to check the boxes - we spent time discussing, reviewing and providing constructive feedbacks to try to make the process meaningful and helpful to support both the development of employees and the institution. From the experience of last year’s review, we also realized that all of us are working together. The OKR is a common mindset – and a public agreement – that gives everyone permission to focus on what matters most. Now, we are in the process of describing organization priorities with OKRs this year, so that it becomes clear to every department and every individual what actions they must take to support the organization. It really has the power to work throughout an organization, by influencing the objectives and actions of every unit. I believe we will do better this year.    

What are you most excited about in the coming year for Tianjin Juilliard School?

With Tianjin Juilliard School entering the fourth year of operation, we are also embarking on the 2.0 phase, a new chapter with new goals and strategies to ensure that our school thrives financially, artistically and educationally. We will work to make sure all divisions are part of an eco-system of working together and benefiting one another (with fewer divisions and a more integrated approach). This is very exciting for all of us. We have started talking about this next stage of development at different occasions and planning to invite different departments to present how their team's work engage with the institutional mission and priorities at all staff meetings more frequently. Through these inspirational dialogues and sessions, we hope to encourage all staff to proactively consider what actions everyone must take to support the organization as well as to benefit from its advancement – a win-win result. There is just so much anticipation for the exciting things at Tianjin Juilliard in the years to come!