Stewarding Transformational Change | Leaders in the Arena Podcast

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to Leaders in the Arena. My name is Jenny Whitener and I'm the executive director for the Brock Barnes center for Leadership at Covenant College. Leaders in the arena is about real stories, hard earned insights, and practical guidance from leaders doing the work of leadership in the Arena. Leaders in the arena is brought to you by the Brock Barnes center for Leadership where our focus, our mission is to equip servant leaders to faithfully build institutions and communities and Christ's work of making all things new. We equip leaders through four different capabilities at the center, our student leadership UM Institute, the Institute for Innovation and Impact, our executive education center, and our Wisdom and insight series. Which brings me to today's program and our very special guest, Corey Holsteadge. Corey, it's so great to have you here. A business transformation leader from Shaw Industries. Thank you for joining us today to talk about stewarding transformational change.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker A: Great. Well, you know, one of the first things that I do when we have guests on is ask them to introduce themselves in a bit more detail and to talk a little bit about your personal leadership journey before we get into our content today. Do you do that for me?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So in terms of Lookout Mountain, were recent, um, arrivals. We moved here pre Covid, um, every time my wife and I went on vacation, we ended up in the mountains somewhere. And it was always, when we retire, we'll retire in the mountains somewhere. And then we realized people live on mountains. We don't have to wait till we retire to move to a mountain. Uh, long story short, we ended up in Lookout Mountain. We absolutely love it here, being part of the community and all that. Uh, from a professional point of view, I started my career at Accenture, um, helping them with large system implementation. So very big IT systems, implementing those, configuring, testing the system, all that good kind of fun stuff. Uh, from there moved over to Home Depot. I was there for 10 years, almost 11 years doing similar. I really love operating in that space between the business and the IT or the engineering teams. You'll hear me use those words interchangeably. To me, that's where all the fun stuff happens. Um, that's where you really think you really get to take what does the business need the system to do, or what are their processes need to do? And in translate, I spent a large part of that time between accounting and it. I don't know if you know anything about accountants or IT people, but they do not speak the same language. So a lot of translating between them. And that, for me, is where a lot of the fun happens. Getting the light to see the light bulbs go off on both sides and figuring out what the best solution is to solve the challenge.

Speaker A: Well, it sounds like your entire career has been about making all things new, so I'm glad that you're here today to share some wisdom with us on stewarding transformational change. Um, I also want to say to our guest, who may be joining us live today, that Corey and I have talked and he's up to taking questions. So when we get close to the end today's session, if you do have questions for him live, please post those in the chat and we'll come to them. But without further ado, let's get into our content for today. You know, when we think about, I think about transformational change, I think big, right? A big scale change. And so when you think about leading enterprise transformational change course, um, what does it actually mean in terms of working in large, complex organizations? What does transformation actually require?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good question. And to lay a little bit of the foundation, let's take a step back and let's talk about the words, right? And maybe this is the millennial of me looking things up in the dictionary. Um, but change, I think we all understand change, right, Is to make something different. We get that one. But what does stewarding change mean? Stewarding, it's a word we don't use a lot. Um, kind of has a bit of an old holdover. A steward was a person responsible for the affairs of a house, right? So if we kind of bring it current, it's someone who has careful and responsible, um, management entrusted to their care, right? And so I think the key words, they are careful and responsible. So anybody can, we can all implement change. Anybody can change. We can all make things different, right? But are we doing it carefully? Are we doing it responsibly? Are we doing it to make it better, Right? Are we doing it just to take some dollars off of the balance sheet? You know, why are we doing it? How are we doing it? So to do it in a large organization, right, there's, there's many different group, there's tons of departments. All those departments have teams, and you roll up to, uh, various executives, and everybody's got too much on their plate and hair's on fire all the time. That's just corporate, right? Like, that's just a business. And so it requires a lot of things to implement these changes. And some of them, you know, it requires courage. It Requires discipline, grit and perseverance. Right. I think where a lot of it can come off the rails a little bit is the vision. And then from a Christian perspective, it requires faith, it requires a lot of prayer. You're going to be doing hard things, you're going to be making hard decisions. Right. Are, uh, you really praying through those on what's the best path forward? But to come back to the vision, the vision is not we're going to save X millions of dollars. That's a what and that's a goal. But that's not the vision. Right? So if you go in saying we're going to implement this new system, we're going to save $10 million, people are going to help because their boss tells them they have to help and they're implement the change versus you go in and say you spend 50% of your day downloading this data, transforming it, uploading it into another system to do some more stuff, to download it again, to get to your analysis. And I want to take all of that away so you can spend more of your time doing the analysis, the part of your job that you really love. That's a vision, right? Yes. You're going to save some money, which is always good in a business. But that's not really a vision. Right. The vision is what rallies people. It's really easy to go to the what and the how, especially working with it. That's a lot of how our brains work. The vision is the why. That's the other side of the brain that, uh, some of us engineers aren't quite as attuned to. But the why is what you come back to when the change gets hard. Right? When you have to make the tough decisions. And you come back to that why. You come back to that vision. Um, why are we, why do we do this in the first place? Like why did we start down this path? We had a vision, we had a place we wanted to go to to make these processes better, to make our associates work easier, to allow them to do more of the meaningful work and less of the drudgery.

Speaker A: Right? Very, very insightful. And I want to step back for a second and go to the point that you called out and helped define the word steward. And then also this concept about when you're moving through large scale change, this vision, right? So pulling out for a moment this role of the steward of the large scale change, and then the importance of that individual helping to guide or create this inspiring vision of why. Your point? Why are we going there? What is the benefit what is the outcome? What's the value to our customers or whatever that might be? And I think oftentimes I've seen executives just mobilize change and not step back and start where you did, which is what does it mean to steward it, to carefully own it and to shepherd it, to nurture it, to really have a, uh, great care around it. I think oftentimes it's just the part of work that nobody wants to do because it's always sticky and there's a lot of resistance and you're not necessarily the most popular when you lead a big scale change. But um, I really like how you called that out and that if we could think about that more often as Christian leaders, especially when we're accountable for leading change, think of that stewardship, responsibility, that's really natural for us as Christians. And then this importance of uh, starting with why

Speaker B: it goes along with are you implementing change to people or are you bringing them along with you on that change? And from a leadership and a management perspective, it's a lot easier. The path of least resistance is some implement change, implement it to them. This is what we're doing. We need to get on board. Let's go. Taking people along with you, that's the much harder path, right? That's the much more challenging path. Requires a lot more meetings, a lot more one on one conversations. It's just, it's a lot stickier. The word you use is a really great word. It's a lot stickier. It requires a lot more intentionality.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: But it's the change sticks, the change stays when you take people along with you. Because the worst thing that you can do is you can implement all of this change and you can disrupt everybody's work life and then we move on to the project and you come back and none of it stuck. They went, they went back to their old ways. You know, did you really implement anything positively for the good of your associate if it doesn't stick?

Speaker A: Right. So I mean, this something I was hoping that we could get into a little bit in this section is around how do leaders bring clarity and direction around the change? And I think you're starting to unpack that for us. Whether it's uh, the component of the why, the vision, and then your concept here around taking people with you, engaging them, not doing the change to them, but with them and engaging them in the process. Are there other tips that you would identify, um, here in terms of bringing the organization with you.

Speaker B: You're going to talk about it until you are tired of talking about it. And you're going to talk about it so much that you're having dreams about these conversations and your spouse is tired of hearing you talk about it. But when you get to that point, you have engaged enough, uh, in the process. Right. And there's a different things you can do. I've used red and green list a lot. What are we doing? What are we not doing?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because a lot of times everybody gets on, why are we doing this? Are we doing that? Does it mean this? You have to acknowledge those, you have to talk about those. We're not doing that. It's on the red list. We are doing that. That's on the green list. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. I remember doing some research for a client on, um, why transformational change initiatives typically fail. And sometimes people just get tired and they stop talking about it. And your point where you like to talk about it, share it, share it again, talk about it again, bring it up to the group. This is where we're going. This is why we're going. And it has to stay current. It has to stay, you know, front of mind. And I think, um, sometimes these big scale change initiatives, they just take time because they're so large that people get tired.

Speaker B: They do. And you got to talk about it in your one on ones. You got to talk about it in your staff meetings. You got to talk about it in your all hands. You know, you get that vision slide and it's in every PowerPoint that you do going forward. Right. Like you put it in the tagline of your email. This is our vision. But you brought up another good point, is that people get tired of change. I think we're in a unique era right now where more change is happening faster than has ever happened. And it's just, it's nonstop. Like it's change after change, after change and after change. And so a very relevant part of large scale transformation is how are your people feeling? Are they changed out? Because they could be, you know, can you take a little bit of a break? Can you, can you dial it down for a little bit? Can you focus on some other things? We can't not change, Right? I mean, there's two things we can say about change. It's always going to happen. And the person who loves it the most is the person who had the idea.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: So, but you do have to keep a pulse on, on your people, um, on your associates and how they're dealing with all of this change. Because it's not, not just their professional lives, their personal lives. Also with everything going on in the world and around them, we're all experiencing more change personally on top of professionally, and we're all tired, you know. And so, like, that's a very real thing to keep a pulse on is can your people accept more change right now? And sometimes the answer might be no. And then you're going to need to navigate through that.

Speaker A: Right, right. Um, anything that you would share about, um, making sure that transformation is sustainable. Because I think this concept of, you know, monitoring their capacity for change, like, are they, are they, do they have the capacity to stay engaged and to m. Mobilize the change? And so I, uh, hear you talking about the leader has to keep a pulse on kind of that capacity for their people to sustain the change transformation. Is there anything else that you would talk about there that we haven't so far?

Speaker B: Yeah, keeping. We want the change to be sustainable, keeping the change sustainable, keeping it implemented. That really comes several steps back in your process. Did you tackle the right challenge? Are you solving the right problem? Problem? Right. Are you implementing the correct solution for that problem? And did you really take the time at the front to really understand the challenge and what you're trying to achieve with this change? The worst thing that you can do is misunderstand the problem, spend a bunch of money and a bunch of time and a bunch of people's capacity and brain power and then your change doesn't, doesn't, doesn't stick. And I have a story for this from and implementation. We thought we had it nailed. We're going to implement a new interface web browser, shiny, nice buttons, clean ui, all this stuff. We came back, came back to a post implementation. Hey, how's it going? Do you love the ui? We don't use it.

Speaker A: We don't.

Speaker B: What do you mean we don't use it? Like, we spent a year designing requirements implement. What do we mean we don't use it? What do you mean you use the desktop version? The desktop version has keyboard shortcuts and we get between. We have to process all the entries that we get in a day. Could be 10, could be 100. So for us, speed is paramount. The desktop version has keyboard shortcuts. The web UI does not. You have to use a mouse and it's slower. We completely missed it. Completely missed it, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. But you know, the interesting part that you just described there is that as a leader of the change initiative, you're constantly checking, right. How is the change going? Are we getting the uptick that we're expecting? Are we getting the Usage, what are customers saying? What can we monitor from the data in terms of clicks or non clicks or whatever? And then saying, so why that question that you said? So, uh, why are you using the web version? And I think that with any change, if we think that we're going to get a large scale change, perfectly designed, perfectly implemented, without any iterative learning or generative change along the way, we're really fooling ourselves.

Speaker B: Uh, absolutely. We're not, we're not going to get it right the first time. Right. One, we're not perfect. The systems we exist in aren't perfect. And the whole market and all these factors around us are constantly changing and as we've mentioned, changing faster than others, getting faster than ever. So kind of just the scale of the uh, concept of large scale transformations is starting to be pulled back to what can we do in two quarters and then get some feedback? Or what can we do in a quarter and then get some feedback and then build on that for the next change. So the timelines are starting to shrink. I think it's to our benefit. One, from an associate perspective, you're implementing smaller change so it's easier to take, it's easier to understand, it's easier to train, it's easier to manage, it's easier to get feedback. Cause Maybe you're tracking 10 things that you do in a release of two quarters versus you're tracking 500 things that you released in a project of a year and a half. So you're able to get those feedback loops a lot quicker. So it's a very real and I think a prudent strategy to how can you break down your change, your transformation, how can you scale it down a little bit to what can you do in a quarter, get some learning. What can you do in two quarters? Not everything is possible. You have some, some big transformations, they have to go big bang, they have to be all encompassing. They have to take, you know, a year and a half. You're always going to have those. But where you can wait, where, how can you scale it back?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Because I can. Like it's much easier to accept from the, the individuals who have to go through that change. Also.

Speaker A: Right. Earlier today you talked about that the people that love change the most, or whatever, one of the people is the person, the idea. And um, interestingly enough, what you just described, where the market and the leaders that we're working with are saying, look, break it down, put it into smaller chunks, test it, learn, iterate. Right. And I think that important tension there is Whoever came up with the idea has to really take on stewardship, right? They have to say, look, we're going after the why and not the how. We have a point of view about the how, but I'm, um, open to the fact that we're going to learn along the way and what the final outcome is. May not look like the original idea that we started with.

Speaker B: No, it might look better. It may look better.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you have to be open to that. And that's a real tension. You have to keep, you know, training your team and leading them and coaching them, but then also stepping back and letting them go and saying, this is, this is where we're going. You help us chart the path there, you help come up with the ideas. And I guarantee you most of the time you're going to get better stuff than you came up with yourself and you're going to get better answers and more ideas. And then from a change perspective, now they're bought into it because they had input and they had feedback and you're listening to it. And now this becomes a positive self reinforcing cycle on moving the change forward versus just kind of like, now this is what we're doing and this is how we're going to do it. And this is, uh, you know, that's a negative self reinforcing cycle and you want to get out of it, you want to be in the positive self reinforcing cycle. So it's, how can you get those ideas and bring them along with you?

Speaker A: Good. All right, well, let's go there a little bit more deeply because we talk about, you know, stewardship and the seasons of change really around the people component. And you've hinted at a number of tactics for leaders to remind them when they're leading a big scale change around the importance of influencing individuals, whether they're large scale teams or smaller individuals. Right. On the change team, a small intact team. Talk to me a little bit about this component, um, of the people side of uh, where they're charged with carrying responsibility, that they really own it, that they're bringing their best ideas to the change process. How do you do that?

Speaker B: It's, it's all in your approach. It's all in, you know, how are you taking care of your people, how are you, how are you leading them? Right. Because obviously you can't do it on your own or you wouldn't have a team, right. If you could do it all on your own, you wouldn't have a team of people working with it. So you need them and is recognized because you have a team now. How do you, how do you work with them? How do you bring their best out? How do you really use their skills and their talents and what motivates them to move this forward? And sometimes the best way to figure that information out is to have a direct conversation. What motivates you? What are your skills? What are your talents? Where do you want to go? And if they have a growth objective, how can you give them a stretch assignment in this? Or you know, their job is this. But they really have a love for design. How can you get them to help you with some of Those never ending PowerPoints for the steering committee where they can elicit some of that. So you, you, you really have to have this mindset of a steward, of a servant leader to bring them with you.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You can be very, you can be very prescriptive and this is how we're going to do it. And you know, all those things that we talked about and authoritarian and you'll get the change done. But then, so we talked about, are you, are you embedding your associates? Right. Is the change going to stick? Right. Because it's not change for change's sake. Right. We're not doing it for fun. You know, parts of it can be fun for those who are talented in that, but it's for a purpose, it's for a reason. There's an objective. And so how do we get there? And it's all, how do you take care of your people?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And bring the best out of them as we're moving, as we're moving through this process. Um, and sometimes that can come across as we don't make hard decisions, which I think is not accurate. We still have to make the hard decisions. Right. But it means we make the hard decisions in the best possible way that we can. Because not making a decision is a decision. Right. And I, that was a tough learning for me, you know, getting into leadership and starting the lead teams. But not making a decision is a decision. And sometimes, you know, you're just kicking the proverbial can down the road. And let me tell you, it does not get better that the more you wait for that conversation or the more you, the longer you wait to make that decision. Right. So you still have to make the hard decisions, but how can you make them in a way that still leaves people with dignity? That still does, you know, you do. Right. As much as possible by those people that are being affected by the decision.

Speaker A: Right. I really like her calling out, you know, to be A servant leader, um, and to really know your people. I remember there was a, um, change effort that I was helping a client with several years ago, and we had put together, Everybody had a role on the change team. And we had this, you know, kickoff session. Everybody was clarifying. You know, here's. Here's. My. Here's the why, and here's my role, and here's what I'm accountable for, and this is what we're going to be doing. And then the senior executive said, and what superpower will you bring to this change? And they were. They were kind of asking, dig deeper. Like, on the surface, this is the team, and these are the roles that we have, and this is our work plan or whatever. But then what other superpower are you going to bring to this change? You know, like, maybe you're going to pray for it, or maybe you're like, you know, the fun. You're going to bring fun to those tough meetings. Are you great at decisioning, or you do decision matrix for how, uh, you buy groceries? I mean, I don't know, but what is the superpower you can bring? I thought that was really cool about how I hear you saying it's a lean into your people, know your people, um, tap those talents, and I think that's really wise. Um, let's continue on. I know that we've got five to six more minutes left. I want to talk a little bit about how, um, you use transformation and change to build institutions that endure. You talked earlier today about we're seeing the pace and scale of change faster than ever before. For what does it mean for us to build systems and capabilities that we are constantly looking at serving our customers, our communities, in ways that mean that we're constantly renewing? Like, how do you do that?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good. It's a really good question and something I've had to put a lot of intentional thought into as I continue to lean more into leadership roles. And, um, I recently completed Main and Market Fellows, um, from Chattanooga Faith Co Op, which is a wonderful program, by the way. Y' all should go talk to Jonathan Ingram.

Speaker A: It is a wonderful program.

Speaker B: Uh, but one of the concepts that came up in there is we're an image bearer first, we're an image restorer second, and we're our vocation third. And the way that this kind of came to me was if the electricity goes off tomorrow and it doesn't come back on, a lot of our vocations go away. You know, all of my work is on the computer uh, my vocation goes away, but I'm still an image bearer, right? And I'm still an image restorer. I still have a place and a duty and a calling within God's kingdom, right? And so then this is, again, like, bringing it back to the people. And there's a really great article we read by Dorothy Sayer, um, why Work? And in this article, she mentioned that the highest calling of a carpenter is to build the best table that they can build. And so you kind of bringing this into corporate America. What are your skills? What are your talents? And whether that's PowerPoint or that's Excel or that's designing a database or, you know, a client meeting or whatever it is, what are you skilled in? What talents have God given you? And how can you use that to build the best PowerPoint that you can build, to build the best Excel workbook that you can build, you know, to design the best database that you can build? How can you really do that to God's glory, right? Because again, if we're stepping back from this as part of this redemptive vision, we're doing this for God's glory, right? We're doing this to steward, again, there's that word, the talents that he's given us. And I think when we think of these parables, a lot of times it's related to money and finances, and that's all absolutely true. But stewarding isn't just that. It's the time he's given us, it's the relationships, it's the talents that he's given us and, you know, the skills and. And all of these other things. And are we using those to the best of our ability? But also, right, we're taking rest, right? We're honoring the Sabbath and we're recharging and we're developing into those relationships. Because you can go too far with this. You use God's talents to make Excel spreadsheets or design databases, and you're working 100 hours a week, and you're not taking a day off, and we've gone too far to the other end. So it's also finding that balance that God himself modeled and that he gave us, and then taking that into leadership. Are you enabling your direct reports, your people, your associates to engage in Sabbath, uh, to engage in rest? Or are you pushing them so hard, they're working so many hours, and they can't take the weekend off? Right? So just, like, trying to tie it all together, but really coming back to we're image bearers first, right? We're image restorers. Second. And we're our vocation. Third, which is a very challenging concept in corporate America, where it's all about title and your compensation package and what companies you work at. And, you know that LinkedIn trap where you get on like, oh, they're a VP, I should, you know, like. Which is very challenging to reconcile that. But, like, that's what God calls us to. Right. So how can we keep that in mind as we move forward?

Speaker A: Yeah, great wisdom. Um, great wisdom there. Um, and that makes me kind of begin to open up this window of leadership generally. Um, because what you're talking about there is the importance for us to understand that we are here for God's glory, and we do have a responsibility to steward that, um, gift for his glory and for our vocation. Like the herd. Right. But, um, what lessons, generally, when you think about what we've discussed today, transformation, change, stewarding people, um, the larger redemptive vision. What general lessons for leadership would come to mind or would you want to share with our audience?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll highlight two. And the first one is something I still struggle with. Now. So often we conflate or we tie leadership to a title. Manager, senior manager, director, vp, CEO, whatever. And a lot of times those people are leaders. But just because they have the title itself does not convey leadership. The title conveys authority. I've seen a lot of people with very impressive titles who I would not say are leaders. And on the reverse, I've seen a lot of people who don't have those titles who are very much leaders. Right. When they speak, people listen. Um, they have that calming voice in the room. They're thinking about the people. Um, and so remember to try to separate those. Right. You don't. You don't have to have a certain title to be a leader. We all have the opportunity to be a leader where we are. Yes. With bigger titles, you have more. More of ability to be a force multiplier and affect a larger impact and all that kind of stuff. But it's not. Leadership is not reserved for specific positions or titles. We all have the opportunity to be a leader for God's redemptive vision. The second item I would highlight for me, it really comes back to love your neighbor. That's what it is. And I might be taking too simplistic of a view here, but it's love your neighbor, period. There's not. If they're this. If they have this degree, if they have this title, they live here. It's just love your neighbor. Right? And so really remember that in these times of change, how are you loving your neighbor? Right. And out before that, everybody is our neighbor. Even if we consider them an enemy, God still tells us to love them. So we're called to love everybody. And how do we do that in these times of change where you're upending somebody's workflow that, ah, they've done for maybe 20 years, you know, with this new system, or, you know, how do you love them through all of that? How do you have compassion and empathy through these times of tough change? And how do you really, how do you really see the person?

Speaker A: Very, very wise. And I think something that leaders generally, uh, at times, depending on the pace and pressure that they're under, they may get too focused on the power, the authority, the goal, and not remember that they're there to love their neighbor, to really empower their people, to steward their gifts, to steward their own personal gifts. All the things that you've, um, challenged us to think about today, um, being faithful leaders, um, anything else that you would share before we wrap up?

Speaker B: I think that a lot of times you're going to have small changes and you're going to have big changes. And with big changes you have more complexity. And with big changes, these large transformational changes really look for the connection points. That's where you really got to dig in, those points between teams, between departments. That's where things can get dropped because it's sticky, it's messy, nobody really wants to dive in. But even with those changes, it all comes back to the people, comes back to being a servant leader. It comes back to all this stuff that we've talked about. It doesn't mean you don't make the hard decision, but you make it differently and just kind of wrapping it all up. Are you taking care of your people? It really comes down to, are you taking care of your people? And you know, you know, if you're taking care of your people or not, you know, you may not want to admit it, but like, you know, if you are or if you aren't, and then, so you have to be brutally honest with yourself and then willing to make changes and pray about it and take it, take it to the Lord and that's how you're going to do it. We can't do it on our own. Right.

Speaker A: And ask for feedback right along the way as a gift.

Speaker B: Have those trusted advisors.

Speaker A: That's right. Leadership worthy of, uh, followership. Right. So thank you so much, Corey, for sharing your wisdom today on uh, stewarding transformational change. A lot of really, really great insights here. Thanks so much for being with us today as a guest. May God bless you and your leadership, um, as you go forward. We have a lot more programs and events coming up at Brock Barnes. You can check us out at Brock Barnes, Covenant Edu, and we hope to see all of you again really soon. Thanks, Corey. Bye.