Ep. 313: A Method for the Madness - What Transformation Actually Looks Like Phase by Phase

Speaker A: It's happening again. Welcome to work Cookie, A, uh, CBOT podcast as we broadcast around the world. Get bite sized morsels and tidbits from our industrial organizational psychologists, other experts, and the latest research on the workplace to boost your organization's effectiveness. Sign up now@cbok.com that's s e b o c.com to engage with our community, gain a sense of belonging, access our other media and get rapid advice. Our experts@cboc.com welcome.

Speaker B: I'm Dr. Jeremy Lookabaugh, Industrial organizational psychology consultant and workplace communication and negotiation coach. Also we have Tom Bradshaw with us, a voice and speech coach and a damn good actor too.

Speaker C: He is the official voice and speech coach for the industrial organizational psychology community. Welcome to our fourth and final session together. My name is Megan Bond. I'm the founder and CEO of the Human Method, which is a culture transformation consultancy. And over the past three weeks we've covered a lot of ground together. So we started with culture as uh, infrastructure, which is the idea that culture is not merely decoration but it is the load bearing structure underneath everything that an organization is built upon. In our second week we went deep into the corporate hamster wheel. We talked about motion without momentum, um, and the forces that keep organizations running in place. And last week we talked about AI, why 88% of organizations are using it, yet only 6% are seeing any real impact, and why that gap is cultural and not technical. So today is where we bring it all together and we're going to walk through what transformation actually looks like phase by phase, from the inside when done properly. So this is a great room to have that conversation in. And before I even get started, started and what I would like to share, I want to open up the conversation to everybody here and, and just kind of do a pulse check and see how everyone's feeling about where we've gone so far, where we're at today or, or any thoughts on culture transformation? And you know, what are some characteristics of culture transformation done well? And um, and what are some characteristics of culture transformation when it's not done well, but things that we can often get said stuck in.

Speaker D: Okay, jump in.

Speaker E: So I think that a couple of aspects of culture is people really put their focus on kind of the fun stuff about culture, you know, how are we doing, you know, happy hours together, are we eating lunch together, are we doing, you know, whatever it is, the play, the softball team and all those kinds of things where culture is, I think, very tied to the value system of the organization. And that is how often do you Come back and reiterate to your teams something that reflects the culture. You know, whether it's every decision making process, how we deliver, how we conduct our meetings with our clients, how do we, uh, speak to each other, how do we communicate within the organization, all of those kinds of things if those are not reiterated on a regular basis. And part of that onboarding process. Right, because every time somebody comes into an organization, they bring a new piece of flavor to that organization. And so have they been educated and, and do they understand the, the, um, impact and how much of a backbone the culture is to an organization? Uh, because a lot of times, whether it's the CEO or the founder or whatever, they just believe that they've done that once and that should remain forever. And it has to happen on a daily, weekly basis as you integrate it. And it's your job as the leadership team to do that.

Speaker C: Thank you, Linda Ann. Nick, we'll go to you.

Speaker D: I think, to kind of echo what Linda Ann is saying that, you know, it's, you look at financial advice, physical fitness advice, the stuff that works is really kind of boring. It is show up daily, do a little bit, have more good days than bad days. And I think that's where transformation also kind of has to happen. It's, it's stacking up more good days, more getting in line with where you want to be than this big, massive explosion that's going to happen. Those are fun, those are exciting, there's crisis and everybody's moving, but that's not sustainable. You can't live at that high rev for too, um, because then it's a reaction and not a culture. Uh, so I think when it is that daily we step in, we know what we want to do, we know where we're going. That's when it takes and sustains the trend.

Speaker C: I agree. It's a small, seemingly insignificant choices we make each day that compound over time. Ian, we'll come to you, I think,

Speaker F: in equal measure to the kind of minutiae, those small decisions. It is also the less fun part of going, where are we now? First, it's very fun to think about the ideal future and to talk about, oh, here's this cool change, here's what it will be. And if you're like, I'm going to be ripped, I'm going to work out, I'm going to be so fit, it's going to be awesome. You go, okay. But first I need to take a real full look at where I am right now to know how much that has to Happen. What's got to go on, what has to be my meaningful understanding of my current state has to come first. And it's uh, all of those menial little things. Where am I right now? What are all the daily tasks I got to do to get to this aspirational future or change? So I'm strong in the support of starting at that origin point of where am I right now? In a realistic and accurate sense.

Speaker C: Absolutely. A healthy.

Speaker G: Oh, I thought Lee was up. Okay, so, um. All right, I'm going to, I'm going to throw out two models, right. First one from Proci, right. Says that the success, right, is, is uh, where we have the sponsorship, we have project, uh, have change management working in harmony to be able to bring something together. When those are out of alignment, how can you have change that is effectively going to take place? Right? I mean the nuts and bolts part about the, you know, the, from the PMO or you know, from your project management, uh, center, if uh, that's out of alignment with sponsorship or you know, any, any one of those folks are not going to work, you're going to have a problem. But when I've, you know, when I've been working with organizations on change, any kind of transformation, whether it's tech or process or whatever, when we have a solid vision for where we're going to go. I think every change model talks about vision and that begetting desire. If you want to talk about Adkar or um, uh, have that sense of urgency, if you want to talk about Cotter, any of that stuff, it stems from having some vision of where we need to be and then we have to have the sponsorship needs to um, you know, if we look at the full range leadership model, right, where you know, I idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration, those are all of those, uh, uh, those, those behaviors that leaders need to exhibit for transformation to occur. Right? Um, if we are stiffly going and literally heard this in several conversations of we have to bring them over kicking and screaming and you know, make them do what we want them to do, right? We are looking at uh, active management by exception, passive management by exception, contingent rewards, but distributing negative rewards, which none of that is motivational. It'll get somebody to do something until, until what they do is done. And then, and then, you know, it could. This is where resistance builds. This is where people slide back into the old way of things. So uh, I think there's evidence there to show that um, we need to have that set vision and we need to have leaders that are on that transformational side of things and really, um, leading the way through example and by also enabling others, that enablement part is a huge part to the transformation.

Speaker C: Rich, this was a great foundation for what we're about to talk about in, in a few moments, so thank you for, for kicking us off with that, Lee. Uh, we'll come over to you next.

Speaker B: Well, yeah, a lot of times when we talk about transformation, we like to. To think, you know, grandiose thoughts. You know, transformation, just, just the word itself invokes this big thing and we forget that. You know, it's really. It's. It's the minutia, it's the. It's the incremental things that really make it what it is. You know, I mean, even when you look at agile, I mean, what do we do? We, we take the big thing, we take the, the initiative, the milestone, and we break it down. We go down to epics, and then we go down to tasks, and then we go down to stories, and we break it down into the component pieces that are achievable. And that's where people fail. Because, you know, what do we do? You know, New Year's. Think about New Year's. If you go to the gym, uh, on New Year's, what do you see? The place is packed. And then by February, it's not to Ian's point, you know, with kid, I'm going to be buff. I'm going to be great. People go in and they, they think they're going to do this great thing and they're going to work out and they're going to be this, you know, you know, buff, uh, person, but they don't understand that it is the incremental things. You know, you have to start off with where you are before you can get to where you want to be. And there is. There's a path between here and there, and there are intermittent incremental gains that have to be made between there and. You have to be realistic with where, you know, with how long that road is and how much effort that takes and, you know, and how hard that is really depends on you. You know, using the exercise as an example, you know, that can be a short road. That could be a, uh, long road. I mean, you can still get there. Just depends on how hard you want to work. If you want to go to the gym, you know, four or five times a week and work out really, really, really, really hard, be really, really, really sore all the time, you can be buff and, you know, pretty quick, it's going to be a lot of work. Most people are not going to do that. But if you're willing to take the time and do it and be there next New Year's and work, put a little bit more effort into it and do a little bit longer and be a little more intentional, well, uh, then you can do that. But you got to be, be able to do the delayed gratification on that. It takes more discipline, it takes more planning, it takes more intentionality and it is infinitely more doable. But you have to understand that you're not going to see the results as fast. You're also going to experience a whole lot less pain in the process. But we don't understand a lot of times that you have to have those incremental pieces. We have to break it down into actual accomplishable goals and people, you know, the whole proverbial biting off more than you can chew up. Uh, you know, humans want, we want big, we want now. And uh, when we don't get it, we give up often. And uh, and we're disappointed. And then it's the sour grapes thing, well, I don't want that anyway. And we go on to the next day so it doesn't stick.

Speaker C: I have a follow up question to Bentley. This is a really good point and I think you're kind of building off of what everyone else, uh, has already shared. I'm curious. When we think about, you know, somebody who's leading a big organization, you know, our CEOs and senior leaders clearly have discipline. They clearly have, you know, what it takes to show up for work each day and get promoted and move through the corporate environment. What do you think are the things that really get in the way of uh, the majority of companies being able to effectively like, commit to these small daily routines? Why is it so hard for us?

Speaker B: Well, you know, I think part of it is, part of it is we forget. You've been, you're there, you've done the work and you're, you're, you are at a level that you are dealing with bigger things. You are at a strategic level and you don't have the time or the bandwidth to deal with a lot of the technical things that need to be dealt with on a daily basis. And so if you don't have the proper striation, if you don't have the proper middle management who are properly dealing with those things, um, they don't get done. And you know, My organization has 50,000 employees. Do you think my CEO knows what I do day to day? My CEO doesn't know my name. So you have to. The people between me and him have to do the job that they're supposed to be doing. And so if there is a weak link in there, then things aren't being done correctly. And so you have to have the proper planning at every level. And each level has to be accountable in both directions. And that is where I think a lot of times we fail is that we are not accountable in both directions. Because like for my team, I am accountable to the people who work for me as well as I am accountable to the people above me. And I think that that is often where we fail is we don't understand. And remember we are accountable downstream as well as upstream. And if I fail them, then, then it doesn't work. And a lot of times as we get promoted, we forget where we came from. You know, I like to say when people get promoted to their highest level of incompetency, mhm. You know, you get promoted up and you forget and all of a sudden it's, well, you know, I don't have to worry about that anymore. No, no, you have to worry about it more now because the people who are doing what you used to do, you, you have to be even more concerned about it because you have to make sure they are doing it correctly. Because just because you knew how to do it doesn't mean they do. And we forget that accountability a lot of times. And so, you know, those little nitinoid little minutiae, if you don't pay attention to that, things get, you know, things get dropped. You have to keep the checks on the checkbox because, and I think that as we get further up the chain, people assume things get done and they don't verify, they don't check. And uh, quite honestly, a lot of times mental management is that they form a wall and, and a lot of really important information gets stopped. And so the people at the top, they think things are going great and they're not. And so they're surprised. All of a sudden they get up and they find their name in the paper and they go, why is my name in the paper? Because they're, they're, you know, things blew up that they didn't know anything about. They should, they should know. You know, you ever watch the show Undercover Boss? You ever see how surprised they are when they go into their businesses and they find out what's really going on? That's more common than you think, more common than it ought to be. You know, maybe more bosses should do that, but it's also kind of sad how many people don't know what their boss looks like. But that's a whole other story.

Speaker C: Thank you, Nick and Linda, and we'll come to you.

Speaker E: So, um, I think that we need to look at a couple of different things and to build on what Lee and Ian were talking about. You know, in that fitness analogy, you know, if you go to the gym every day and work out hard, but you're still eating McDonald's every night, that's going to undermine the process, right? And so I think that that's kind of what happens a lot of times in organizations. They don't have the systems in place that allow them to deliver on their culture and their, and their dreams, right? So if you have a say, you have a culture of, you know, customers first, do we give them the quality, all those kinds of things. But you don't have the systems in place that allow for you to do that so that you can check on the work, that you can follow up on them. You can can, um, go to the next level. Then it's not going to work and it's going to actually erode your culture because of the frustration and the feeling of imposter and all those kinds of things that, that take over when employees can't do what they think they're expected to do. So I think that's really important to look at the systems. Do you have the systems in place that allow you to deliver on the culture that you want to create? And people underestimate, you know, culture is not just, you know, having a pep rally and telling people how wonderful the company is. And, and we do this and we do that, but you can't deliver on, on that because you don't have the mechanisms, um, in, in place. I think it's important also to remember that 80% of all companies are small companies. And to Lee's point, when you're talking about the leadership, um, up and down, it's important to, for leaders to remember that regardless that what of what level they're at, they are the daily trainers, leadership trainers of everyone who reports to them, because that's the example being set. And so it's important for those leaders that you currently have to understand that so that the future of your leadership is trained well through example. And let's see, I think that's, that's probably it for the moment.

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Speaker C: thank you Linda, Ann and Nick. We'll come to you last.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think that there's, you know my argument against fast conspiracy theories is try to get five people to agree where to go, um, and see what happens. Um, so you've got to get everybody on the same page size and the station. That might be easier leasing, you know, might be difficult to pick a restaurant with a spouse even. Um, so you know you've got to get everybody on the thing and that's why this, this is hard because there's a lot of well intentioned people and there are many paths to the goal of change. You know somebody might say well we need to be customer centric. That looks like, you know, smiling and opening doors and going above and beyond, um, things like that. Whereas somebody else might say well to be, take hospitality because that's where I'm at. To be the best restaurant in the neighborhood, you have to have the best food. That's a great focus to have. But if you're not taking care of your employees and you're letting customers run rough shot over their safety, that's not going to build a lot of the safety in as well. So there's multiple, there's always multifaceted angles to everything in the conversation and it's not just one voice saying here I am, I'm the leader, you're going to follow me. It could work, it has worked. It might work again. More often than not you need to build consensus and have A common purpose, common vision is that will make the big, exciting things big and exciting, but we'll also have more and more people committed to daily grind of it. Um, and to Linda's point, we're dealing with a lot of small organizations. Um, yeah, some people are just trying to keep their head above water and survive. They don't have the bandwidth to think about what these things might mean as well. So I think there's always a bigger fish, there's always the next crisis. And to really dig in, excuse me, and think about culture and where you want it to be. Um, you have to do that initially, quarterly, annually, at all, at all checkpoints. Culture is important and culture is going to get where you want to go for your organizational goals. You have to check in on it all the time.

Speaker C: And I think there's so many good points raised here. So, Nick, kind of to wrap yours, uh, up, we're talking about, you know, everyone being on the same page, but there are conflicting priorities. There are different things that we need to focus on. There are different intentionalities. And so how do we bring everyone together? Uh, Lee, to your earlier point of culture transformation being kind of deemed this grandiose thing when really the small, daily incremental decisions we make, and it's that accountability as we get promoted upward and downward. Um, and then, Ian, to what you were saying earlier about, you know, simply, where are we now? Like, what's our objective current state, and where do we go from there? Um, and so I want to tie this into kind of this vision of building a house. Um, we're building a house and we have the architectural plans, we have the materials, we have the builders, we have the timeline. Um, but we're pouring foundation on soil that has not been prepared. And all of the things that we've just discussed, all of these unprepared raw materials that we haven't really had of threaded through and buttoned up. Um, and we build on top of this and the house goes up and it looks all right, but then over time the cracks start to appear. And I think there's. That's. The other piece to transformation is we don't see the broken bits right away. We see the cool, sexy strategy being executed. We're talking about it. There's a lot of hype and a lot of energy and that is often a great distraction, uh, again, from the broken bits that aren't being fixed. But eventually, when we move out of short termist thinking and we're looking at more of a long term structure, we can start to see the structure isn't sound. Nation was not ready for what we've built. And this is what happens when a vast majority of organizational transformations take place. Place. Uh, the foundation, the human and the psychological conditions required to hold the change were never properly prepared. Okay, so I'm going to open up the discussion in a moment. I am going to say some things that might be a little bit controversial, so bear with me. Um, but most change methodology was designed to be followed, and I believe therein lies the problem. So when we look at frameworks like Adkar, they are not wrong per se, but they are incomplete because they give practitioners a sequence of steps, a checklist of conditions, and a process to move through. And in the hands of someone who treats them as a map rather than a mandate, they can be genuinely useful. Absolutely. But what I often observed is practitioners that act, uh, like project managers. And so across decades within the organizations I've worked for running transformations is that the framework of the methodology becomes the work. The process gets followed, the communication plan is beautiful, um, the milestones get hit, but the transformation does not hold. And this is because a checklist cannot read a room, a milestone cannot feel the resistance underneath compliance. And a process cannot recognize the moment when the official conversation and the real conversation have quietly diverged. And so what I believe separates practitioners from who produce lasting change and let's call them strategists from the ones who produce completed projects, isn't the framework they use, but, uh, it's whether they are willing to put the framework down when the human situation in front of them requires something that framework did not anticipate. And it is whether they are functioning as strategic advisors, reading the culture, influencing without authority, speaking truth to power, naming, uh, what others will not, and connecting the organizational system to the humans inside of it, or if they're acting as project managers with a, let's call it a sophisticated to do list. So I am m seeing a lot of hands going up. So I want to, I want to pause for a moment and get a reaction to this and have a conversation in this space. So, um, I didn't see who put their hand up first, but, Rich, we're going to come to you because I'm looking at you, Ian. You'll be next.

Speaker G: Oh, boy, you just made a lot of people, a lot of pro site people going, I know, I'm happy.

Speaker C: I will cause the controversy. I'm.

Speaker G: That's right, that's right. But, but I mean, look, yeah, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not prosize certified, but I, I have um, a certification OD and Change Leadership from the Drucker School. And one of the things I liked about that one is that we do talk about Adkar and we talk about Cotter and we talk about Bridges and we talk about um, all these, all the other ones. And then literally within that program we made our own. Right? So it was, it's, it's taking um. And that's the thing like, like you said, uh, Megan, it's like we're. You can make your own, but when you get into an organization it. That may not, that framework may not even fit with that organization. So you need to be adaptable, right? So I think that's, that's the key to successful change and transformation in today's environment is being able to be adaptable and to provide um, the ability for people to be resilient, um, and to adapt to uh, the new way of being um. Getting out of the bridges neutral zone into that new beginning. Um, but the way that. So Alan Landers from the Drucker School actually has a pretty interesting model um where it's actually a systems uh, approach. So it's taking uh, it's taking inputs of um. What's currently happening to you know, I think. Was it Ian, that that's what you were talking about before, was that. Yeah. Where you know. So you're taking you know, a snapshot of your, of, of what's happening now. Um, then you have your uh, you have your formal learning, you have your informal learning, right? And that is the, that's how enculturation happens, right? So when we're, when we're taking the, the, the social aspects of how people are working together and the water cooler talk and the, you know, all of, all of the, the um, the again the non formal things that form culture, um, along with that, that knowledge transfer that we have from our training from you know, the, the way the systems are supposed to be working. Supposed to be. Right. Working. Right. And it's that enculturation that starts to beget, um, uh, something that can actually be retained and fit but it has to be reinforced through feedback loops. And it's that feedback loop that I think so many models omit because it's just like, it's very step wise until you get to the end. Uh, like a Kanban chart, right? And then you get to the end which is how project management looks.

Speaker D: Right?

Speaker G: Project management looks. It begins here, it ends here. Literally. You know, um, you know the. From pmi, we've got, you know, five different, um, uh, phases. Right. And closing means it's done. But, but change is all about, uh, making what. What that change was operational. And that is the part where we need to be adapting and continually, um, you know, reinforcing, you know, the, the, the OCBs. Right. The, the organizational citizenship behaviors that will keep this system running.

Speaker C: Thank you. All right, Ian, over to you.

Speaker F: I really liked when you said the human situation, because that's, that's psychology, baby. That's the human situation. But also, to Rich's point, this idea of models frequently looking at present to future. And even I was kind of, I played, uh, a part in this as saying, we need to know our current state. I think that frequently underestimates and overlooks the power of history. And when you talk about things like trust, it's great for a leader to say, here's where we are right now. Here's where we want to go. But even to use either the workout analogy or the building a house analogy, if your foreman shows up and says, we're going to build this great house, you go, hey, man, you've said that like eight different times, and every house you've tried to build has fallen down. To expect everyone else to just go along as the model would say they should, is, I think, perhaps overlooking the history that is in place. A leader doing great things now, doing all the right actions, making all the right decisions, doing all the little things, it does not immediately beget trust. People aren't going to immediately jump on board and say, oh, yeah, you're doing all the right things. We see this vision, and you say, yeah, you've said this vision. You've said versions of this vision. You've picked up different behaviors. But there's a history of knowledge that we have either of the leader, of our interactions with one another, of, say, an organization that has not seen a raise in five, six, seven years, and you're now saying, we're going to do all these cool changes. You're fighting against a very strong backcurrent of a history that people have this knowledge of. And to ignore that and try to implement a model that's like, we're aware we're doing all the right things. We have the right structures. Mrs. That human situation, that people have a memory of the past and that that will color how long it takes them to even be ready to engage in one of those models, whether it be Adgar or Lewin or McKinsey, whatever it might be. We need to first get them to the point where they're even ready to believe that you actually can follow through this time. Whether that be you, the royal you of the company, a leader, their co workers, the economic situation in which they're involved. There is that latent human piece of they have knowledge of history, they have some level of trust that may need to be rebuilt and then these models can shine. Then following the pathway works really well. But you got to deal with that squishy human situation first. Which is perhaps the least fun for someone who's like, no, we just want to do this next thing. But it's also, you know, the gold standard. And what we love as IO psychologists is knowing the human situation and being able to bring it around to be able to change moving forward.

Speaker C: I think that's such an astute point. And Alex in the chat said, leading at the speed of trust to what you were saying. Ean, I'm curious, I have a follow up question for you. Um, how do we, like, where would we even start, start to build that trust if not in moving through a model to kind of close the gap between current and future state, how do we, how would we begin to show up and improve ourselves to our people at risk of.

Speaker F: I know Lee's probably already sighing for me talking about trust again, there's a simple model I love. It's called the ABI model. Ability, benevolence, integrity. It's the three things that underlie trustworthiness. Do you have the ability to do the thing I'm trusting you to do? Do you have benevolence in that you have my best interest in mind and do you have integrity that I know your values and I can trust? If I see those three things, I will view you as trustworthy. So in an organization, how, what is the default? Right. The first thing might be figuring out which of those is lacking. Because it could be that you have the ability you've shown as a leader or as a company that you can shift and change and do new things. That's not the problem. But no one believes that you have their best interest in mind. They're like, we're confident you can make this change, but for your own benefit or for the company's benefit. That doesn't trickle down to us. So you're not going to get that engagement into the change process. Or they go, we know you have our best interest in mind and it's wonderful. But we've seen attempts at this change before and haven't seen that you necessarily have the skill to do it. And so that's a very different edict to then say now we need to show as leaders or as a company that we have the capabilities to do these things or to hire someone who has the capability so that we can go, no, you can trust in us. I'm not the one leading at this time. We have an expert coming in to advise or integrity.

Speaker G: Right.

Speaker F: If you're making this change, communication, it's the piece of advice for every relationship. It's the piece of advice for every organization. Are you communicating why this is happening with an understanding of how it impacts the people it will impact? To say we want this great future is lovely. To say, here's why and here's how you all play a role in that. Not just as tools, but what is your future in this idealized future state, in this change, what does it look like for you? We recognize this is going to be difficult, right? It's the Nobel Prize winning research on prospect theory, gain and loss framing, saying, we know this might be challenging. Here are the ways that we're going to be here to support you. So whichever one of those is currently shaky, that shaky foundation you shore up first, if it's, we need to show that we have the ability. That's what we focus on. If it's, people aren't convinced that we're really doing this for their benefit, let's communicate strategically about that. If it's, hey, we don't know why you're actually doing this, and we think it's just so you can make a bunch of money, but there's no actual, uh, value underlying it that goes beyond greed. There needs to be communication before anything else to articulate why this is happening, why now, why people should be involved, and how this is going to look for them. If you do those even before the change process starts, or as the kind Of First Level 0, you build enough of that trust to then move forward to a change process, which often will be shaky. Change is not clean and beautiful and happy all the times. There's ups, there's downs, things never go as planned. But you've already built up the goodwill and trust that you can move forward with that, knowing that people will stick by you during that shakiness. So to me, building that trust has to come first. And asking people, talking to and surveying employees so that, you know, do they trust you, do they not, is an important first step before diving, you know, full force into the processes and methods of change.

Speaker C: Yes, I think that's fantastic, Ian. And I think it does tie back to what we said and I do think that in a current state assessment, we can absolutely use that as part of understanding what the history has been to get us to the current state. Um, Nick, I'm going to come to you next, and I'm curious. I want to talk a little bit about. I'm going to pitch this up for you. I want to talk a little bit about resistance, because we talked about that, uh, a couple of weeks ago. And I think that ties in nicely to the conversation around looking at resistance through change work as data points and not as, uh, something that's negative. And so when we're kind of inspecting these data points and we're looking at resistance in an organization as we try to work through culture, uh, what are some thoughts that you have around that resistance piece and some tools that you've seen work or tools that you have seen not work in that space?

Speaker D: I think the biggest challenge to change is we can't see the future. Um, we don't know what's going to happen. And so the models that we've built, whether they have all sorts of research behind them, whether they've got that kernel of truth, uh, or whether they're just, you know, snake oil and really fancy packaging, you know, all these models seek out to kind of provide that clarity. Let's. Let's drill down just that one thing, or make the main thing the main thing. And so I think that's why the models have so much power, is that they do try to simplify, and oftentimes they oversimplify and they, you know, quote from Mike Tyson, everybody's got a plan until you get punched. Um, and resistance is that punch in the face. And oftentimes, you know, isn't necessarily like, well, I like the way things are, and I'm not gonna go, you know, I'm pout in the corner. That's not often how adults it can be. Um, and at that point, you may have to have a conversation about, well, you're not on board with where we're going, we don't need you. That's an ugly truth. But there is the burden of leadership to say, this is where we going, and have, uh, built the trust. We've seen the tea leaves, and we know what we're doing, why we're doing it, which is a lot to ask out of anybody for themselves, let alone fertilization, if you're so resistant. Maybe, maybe we do need to do some addition by subtraction. However, most of the time I think people are like, but you didn't think about this Thing that's going to impact my job. And so it does come down to getting that undercover boss, street level, frontline view of, uh, okay, this great change. Um, we're going to be more environmentally conscious. Okay. We're not going to use anything plastic products or anything like this. Well, you didn't check with the inventory guys who've got, you know, 5,000 cases that you still need to use. You know, there's a lot that, you know the change will be good, but how do we get there from where we are? And so I think those resistance points are often blind spots. Um, and you senior leaders have to, you know, push the culture and the m mission and all that. Um, so you almost have to have some trusted advisor sitting there going, this is my whole focus. Like, I am looking at the cultural transformation. This is all I have bandwidth for. I'm trying to look at it at every level and all of that. And it's a lot to look at because you don't know what you don't know. Um, if you bring the evidence to the leader, they might go, well, that's not important. Um, so I think having dedicated attention, um, and viewing confrontation not as an insult to you personally, um, takes a ton of humility and takes good, strong leadership. And also, I think one thing that can get, uh, kind of screwy in the conversation is what is culture and what is brand? And how do you tie the two together? How do you separate them when necessary? Because what's good for the brand isn't always good for the.

Speaker C: Nick, you said a lot there. And first of all, I love the resistance as blind spots. I think I'm going to, I'm going to use that because I say data points, but it's the same thing. It's blind spots that we, in healthy current state assessment, we need to know our blind spots. But I also am listening to you talk, I'm listening to all of you talk. And just the layers, um, of what it requires to stand in this role, uh, as, uh, a leader of change and transformation and again, influence without authority and have these conversations and read the room and assess what's not being said but being felt. It takes someone who is really skilled at that. Ah, it's an art form, I believe. And if we bring in people that are just blindly following a process, uh, maybe that's the reason why 88% of all transformations fail. Uh, but just my humble opinion, Lee, I'm going to kick it over to you.

Speaker B: You know, I think that one thing that people often forget and it's one thing that we embrace in the social sciences, psychology, that those without that experience tend to forget is people are messy. There are very few absolutes when you're talking about human behavior. And so that makes us difficult because there is no real reliable predictive model. You know, you know, Ian is, is one of my good friends. And, uh, and I can, with a fairly high degree of reliability in many cases, predict how Ian is going to react. Does that mean I can do it every single time? Absolutely not. And he surprises me sometimes. I've known Ian for years, but there are times when he does something and I go, what the heck just happened? Because he's human. And there are things outside of our experience. And that is going to happen. You know, you will have an employee, maybe long time, you've known them forever, and they're going to do something that is going to throw you for a loop that you never saw coming because they had a bad day. There's, there's, there's trauma you didn't know about. Uh, there's something else going on. There, uh, was a bad experience. Uh, they feel a kind of way about something you just don't know, you know, and, you know, and like they say, you know, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. I mean, you have to be, you know, when I was in the Navy, we called it Semper Gumby. You know, you have to be always flexible because things are going to change. You know, when it comes to change management, the only constant is change, because nothing is going to go the way you expect it to. And if you hold rigidly to a framework or a model, you're going to fail. You know, why, uh, are there so many models? Because no one of them is 100% right. No one of them is going to fit every situation. You know, if you look across the breadth of change management psychology or whatever, what is the constant thing that you see? There's a whole lot of models, there's a whole lot of theories, there's a whole lot of framework, and there's a reason for that. Because no one of them fits every situation. No one of them is 100% right. And that's one thing that we sometimes forget. We grab one, we are certified, and by God, uh, we are going to hold on to this with a death grip. And guess what? That's not always going to work. In fact, it's probably not going to work in 93.758% of the things that you are going to do. So, my friend, you're going to have to be flexible. And so that's where we fail. And so you have to understand that you have to be flexible. You have to understand, you know, what was it Mike Tyson that said, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face? You're going to get punched in the face. You were going to have that person that is not amendable to the change. And like, like Nick said, sometimes you have to, you have to, you know, add by subtraction. There has to be a point where you have to go, this is not a conversation. You have to say that this is happening whether you like it or not. You have to decide if you're going to get on the bus or you're going to go to a different bus stop. Those things have to happen because at some point this is a business. We have a business decision that has been made and at some point you don't get a veto. You know, unfortunately, that's the way it is. We want it to be an organization. We want it to be, uh, collaborative. We want people's buy in. That is ultimately what we're going for. You want your champions, you want your buy in. You want everybody to rowing in the same direction. You absolutely want that to the, to, uh, the utmost extent possible. If somebody absolutely refuses it and they're going to row the other direction, throw them out of the boat, give them a life jacket, pitch them out. Because sometimes that has to happen because at the end of the day, the organization has to move forward and you have to do that for the, you know, in the best way possible. Now of course, you have to, you know, we can go down a hole. There's a whole other podcast for that, you know, about, you know, being compassionate, the right way to do things, proper, you know, proper transitions and offboarding and all. There's a whole other thing about that. And uh, you know, proper off boarding. I'm going to leave that in Belinda Ann's hr, you know, bucket, because she's much better at all that stuff. And uh, and all you HR people

Speaker A: talk to Linda and for proper training

Speaker B: and um, but we have to understand that these things can be messy, they can be ugly. And you have to approach this as a human. You have to understand that these are people, they are humans. They have feelings, they have experiences, they have, they have things, they have trauma, they have, they feel away about this stuff. And you have to have empathy. You know, at the end of the day, the bus has got, the bus has got to leave the station. But. And with everybody who possibly was willing to get on is we got to get them on and we got to move. But you have to do that with empathy. You have to go, okay, look, we're going to, we're going to meet everybody, but the bus schedule says we leave Tuesday at 2. You're going to be on the bus or you're not going to be on the bus at 2 and we're going to leave. And that's, that's, that is our one final point. But we're going to do everything we can to get everybody on before then. Let's talk about this. You know, Bob, you feel, in a way, what are we going to, what can we do? What's going on here? Let's have, let's have some talk. You know, there's always going to be the fly in the ointment, but we got to, we got to remain human. We have to be flexible. And we got to remember that framework is not a cage. And that's unfortunately where so many people fail in this process and why these transformations don't work.

Speaker C: Thank you, Lee. Uh, Linda, and we'll come to you.

Speaker E: Wow. I have a whole list of things to go through really quickly here because we're running out of time. But to Lee's comment about sometimes you don't get a veto, I think that what's important there, because believe it or not, there have been times when I haven't, uh, agreed with an organization's decision. But the key there is if I know the thought process that the organization went through and how they arrived at that decision, I don't have to agree with it as long as, as I know that it was a good decision based on that information. Right. I don't have to agree with everything, but I can support it because you made this decision and it's a really valid decision and way for us to move forward to get where we're going. And I think that that's part of the issue often when you don't get, uh, buy in is because there's been a communication, a lack of communication into this is the how and the why that we got there. And so this is why it's important for you to get on board. So there's that the other thing in as a subsequent piece of that as lead. When leaders see someone is resistant to whatever the idea is, um, they often. It's often more confrontational. Right. It's a problem. All these kinds of things. What I've experienced in both this situation, you know, the consulting situation and in when I was an Employee is. And as a leader is often, if you can work with that person or people, um, and get them to that place where they understand they will often become your greatest advocate because they're like, oh, that makes sense. And they'll get everybody else on board. And that's happened with clients too. If they had a difficult problem and, and you resolve it and you, you go through the process with them and they get to understand, understand they will be sing your praises. And I think it's important to acknowledge, look at resistance as an opportunity and not this thing that's so difficult that you want to push in a closet. Um, and if you look at things, think about families, whether you have siblings of your own or you have multiple children and you're dealing with the sibling relationships, as a leader, it's important to understand that everybody functions in a different way. Right. My stepson was one of those children who, if he did something, whatever, and you sent him to his room to consider what he had done and not come out until he was ready to apologize or whatever for that action. He might not come out till he was 21. And then my daughter was one of those people that if I just went child, she would melt on the floor. Right? So that's. Those are the same people that are in your workforce. And to understand that taking the time to be individually motivating or understand how they function or how you bring them around to what you need them to do is a very. It's time consuming and it's an individual process. And that's why you get paid big bucks as the leader to do that, to do that work and to figure it out. Um, because process. When you're trying to implement a process organizationally, the process needs to be applied evenly, but your leadership style stays unique to you. And so that's where you make it work in those different situations. And, um, what Ian was talking about as far as trust and so forth, and I like the abi, uh, acronym, and it's basically when it breaks down is just do what you say you're going to do. Right? Back it up. Um, and, yeah, I'm done.

Speaker C: Thank you, Linda and Nick, we will close with you and then I'll wrap up today's session so we can all end on time.

Speaker D: No pressure there. Um, it's a great conversation. And, um, I think Lee said something that sparked this in my head. We IO psychologists go through so much experimental design and statistics and rigor and make sure that you can draw a line. To do that, you've got to Limit the focus so much on just looking at the one thing you've got, a construct you're trying to really nail down. And you know, I might think leadership is courage and empathy and this, and Megan might think leadership is uh, authority and command. And how do we start having that conversation when definitions don't match? And then you compound that with how many variables are in a workplace, how many variables are in a human being. And you're not going to be able to isolate down to where these models were created based on research. You're not going to be able to create the exact same set of circumstances without creating the same set of circumstances, uh, to some degree. Um, and so it does get hard. And Alexander, who said this in the chat, we do have to remember this conversation is in the bounds of a professional environment. We are not, you know, we're not the social club, we're not the local church, we're not a volunteer organization. This is a business, typically for profit. Um, and so that doesn't mean we don't have to consider people, but we do have to take a step back and remember what is the obligation between employer and employee? What does that social contract look like? And remember to keep that in the bounds of job related, um, and things like that to avoid discriminatory, um, or overstepping, uh, policies and boundaries like that. Uh, to Lee's point about the bus is one thing that always bothers me about the more, more, more now, now, now. Uh, pace of business that we're at is deadlines are often arbitrary. You know, you want to get, if you want to get the product out, that's great. You want to, you want to ship it, you want to have a date so people have something to drive to. But if you say the bus leaves at 2:30, but you own the bus, you can push that back and you can move that around. Um, and so I think sometimes with change it does feel very arbitrary. Well, we could go any way we want. Why are we choosing this way? Um, and so that's where that clarity, that mission, that sort of laser focus, um, in an organization that we're asking for, um, which again we've all described it being tremendously difficult because even as an individual to try and gain internal consistency with what I say and what I do and who I am, that's really hard when I do that. Expanding out to my family, that gets harder when I circle of friends organization. The wider the circle gets, the fewer things you control and you have to kind of dial in on one or two things that you really do, Nick.

Speaker E: Thank you.

Speaker C: Thank you all. Alex just popped into the chat. This was. We need more time. I agree. I think that we need to just have many, many sessions dedicated to this and we need to come up with our own methodology. Uh, but this is really interesting because it clearly articulates that there are a lot of pieces to tease out when we go into a company and we lead them through a culture transformation. I want to close today in this month by coming back to something I said in our very first session together, which we've all discussed thoroughly. It's culture isn't wallpaper. It's not decorative. It is insane infrastructure. And it's that load bearing structure underneath every initiative, every strategy, every new tool that we bring in. And when it is sound, everything that's built on top of it will hold. And when it is not, those cracks will ultimately start to show, usually at the worst possible moment. So what I hope that we can all leave with today is a shift in how we diagnose what we're saying, seeing in the organizations that we support, that we continue to be really thoughtful about. To Ian's point, the history of the organization, where we're at today, objectively, um, and really stepping outside the boundaries and the guardrails of a framework to be in the room and be present and read what's actually happening. Um, I feel that when a transformation stalls, the question isn't what went wrong with the plan. The question is where in the sequence did we miss something and what does, uh, the organization need to do, um, to go back to what was avoided. The organizations that get this right perform better and they sustain performance in a way that organizations who skip this work could never keep up with. And especially in a world where the pace of change is only accelerating and where AI is reshaping, where the markets are shifting faster than strategies can be written, where the demands on people are only increasing. Culture is not a nice thing. It is the only thing that determines whether an organization is sustainable in the long term. So I want to close by saying thank you. Four weeks, four conversations. This community showed up every single time. Great conversation. Um, and it has been a privilege to get to know and chat with all of you. So I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week and I appreciate your time.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of Work cookie, a, uh, CBOC podcast. Don't forget to sign up@cboc.com that's s e b o c.com to engage with our community, gain a sense of belonging, access our other media and get rapid advice from experts. Would it be a bad idea to make your most challenging workplace problems go away@cbok.com.