(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Growth Hacking Culture Podcast. I'm your host, Ivan Palomino. This podcast is about thought provoking ideas to scale up and growth hack performing and human centric work cultures. My guests are experts on mindset, skills and science behind work cultures. I hope you enjoy this episode. - Change is the only constant, especially in the corporate world. Yet studies show that there is a 70% of change initiatives failing due to employee resistance and lack of management support. You will ask why? It is because beneath these Polish presentation and strategic plans, there is a hidden world of challenges and scientists and spoken truth that we are kind of ashamed of talking about it because we want to show that our change was different and it was successful. Today, we are pulling back the curtain of the change management secrets nobody talks about. We are going to discuss about the messy human side of transformation, explore gaps between the theory and reality and uncover the strategies that truly make change happen. Joining us today is Karen Ball, a seasoned change management practitioner and ad care expert. Karen Ball is a senior fellow of ProSci. Well known, by the way, we were just discussing about Karen that it happened that I had to use also the ad care method approach, sorry, back in my corporate days. So previously, she's Karen served as a ProSci executive by president of research, product and marketing. And for over four years, she has helped people and organizations implement effective changes and achieve the desired benefit as a result. Karen is also the author and kind of have to say a reference book called the ad care advantage, your new lens for successful change. And she is the most appropriate person to discuss the topic today, which is about the change management secrets that nobody talks about. Let's gossip about it, Karen. - Sounds good, thank you. - It is, I'm so excited about our conversation because when I was thinking about the type of questions that I would be interested to ask you, it only came to the questions where I was facing these moments of dilemmas on change management that I couldn't solve and nobody could answer to me inside of my corporate life. Karen, before that, I just wanted to get to know a little bit more about you. So how did you end up working, let's call it as a consultant for change in organization? What was the reason that made you move to that world? - Yeah, thanks, great question. It's interesting as we reflect on the discipline of change management and I have to tell you, if you ask just about anyone who considers themselves to be a change practitioner or a change professional, how they found their way into this discipline, you're gonna find lots of different stories. For me myself, I spent while I graduated from university and I went into the work in the space of information technology and was working with organizations for many, many years who were implementing large scale technology changes and in many cases investing millions of dollars into those changes. And I just continuously had this sinking feeling as I was working with customers and clients that they were missing something really critical. And of course, my work was focused on information technology strategy and design and development and delivering solutions into the space of change that were focused on what we would consider this technical side of the change, not just technology, but what was changing? And I just always had this gnawing feeling that we were missing something significant. And I always called it end user adoption because I really just didn't know what to call it other than the fact that our investments in technology are not going to deliver the benefits that are intended if we don't help people who are going to be embracing these changes to use them effectively and to apply them as they were designed and to know how to do what we were asking them to do. And in 2006, I was at a client in Boise, Idaho. And I still, even I remember the day and the room and the everything that was going on because it was one of those professional moments that really anchored for me. But the client said to me, we've got a training class this afternoon for all of our managers. And so the people you're working with are not going to be available. Do you want to just sit in with us and join the session? And of course, me, I'm like, well, of course I do, right? Any opportunity for some professional development. And the program that they were sitting in and being introduced to was being delivered by ProSci. And it was about change management and it introduced the ad car model and the individual transitions that every single person goes through to realize the successful outcomes of change, both individually and organizationally. And I had a moment where I thought, oh my, there's the piece. There's the piece I've known in my gut and in my professional ability to see what's missing. It has a name, it's called change management. And there are models and methodologies and practices and organizations that support equipment and able people through change. So I just did a deep dive on change management as a discipline, what ProSci was doing, what others were doing in the marketplace. And just a few years later, I was asked to launch a change management practice for the same company that I was working for. So I had an opportunity to shore up a professional aligned method to focus on not just the technology and what we were delivering in change, but also to help people go through the change process so that the technologies are successfully adopted and benefits are realized. So it was that moment in 2006 and then just doing my hard work of learning the discipline and studying and reading and watching every podcast and learning about what it means to help people through change to come to the point where I felt like I was equipped to be a change leader and a change practitioner and to carry that forward in terms of the services that we offered as an organization. So that was my path from IT and to change management. - You know what, it's almost like you and me, we have been facing this moment of I understand what the current model is, but we had a different ways of getting it. I was mentioning to you before that back in my days, it was like you're responsible for innovation, read this book and try to imagine what it is. While you had the real experience of going through a practitioner who can explain you beyond the concepts of what that care means, how to implement it. And that makes a big difference because I can tell you a lot of mistakes happen because I just read the book and I didn't fully understand the depth of what I had to do. And also the other thing that I have to highlight is that when you were talking about your first moment, I was thinking about this famous SAP implementation back in 2002 and the story that we created about this adoption by users, which was basically, we trained them and it is in their interest to digest and take it. And that was the plan for change management. Wow, what a difference. Back then, things were done completely, completely different, Karen. Karen, I won't-- - You know, the early thinking around change management was, well, we've got communications in training. Isn't that change management? And certainly communications in training are critical components of effective change management, but it's not the entirety, right? There is so much more in the depth. And it was interesting, you were just talking about, just read a book and do it, right? You know, why can't we just read a book and do it? And, you know, gosh, I read lots of books and it didn't mean that I was still able to do it, right? The knowledge to ability, which by the way is captured, you know, right in the middle of the ad car model, right? From awareness through desire, through knowledge, to ability and then reinforcement. And knowing how and being able are two very different things. And you'll see that perfectly as an example if you put me on the golf course. So knowing how to hold a golf club and swing a golf club does not mean that I am able to play golf. And, you know, I just read an interesting article that just comes to mind as we're sitting here chatting and it's really probably something your listeners would explore too, it's the idea of simplicity that sits on the other side of complexity. So when you first learn something about a discipline or an organization or something that's going on in your life, you're sitting over on the simplicity of, I just know a little bit. And sometimes the assessments that we make or the way we communicate is simplistic and reductive. But it's when you dive in and you get into the complexity of things and you understand the nuances and the connections and you synthesize your thinking and models to the point where it almost becomes intuitive. And then you get on the other side again, but that doesn't mean you're able to communicate simply, right? So there's lots of people who know lots of things who get caught up in the complexity and they're not able to communicate effectively. But then you get to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. And now when you speak, you speak from the point of knowing and understanding, but you can get back to simplicity and articulating. And that's really, models like Adcar is simplicity that sits on the other side of complexity. - That's totally, it looks complex on the way that you can divide these steps. But at the end, you are fully right. And in fact, it all evolves to the point of the human being. How can we have enough knowledge in order to transmit to the other part in a way that the person can understand? How can we understand what is going through in the brain of a person that we are communicating change? At that specific moment, how can we empathize enough in order to be able to, as a reflex, communicating the most effective and powerful way so that they really engage with the change? And it's not, very often we do this mistake of trying to convince someone that you need the change. Change is good, more opportunities. No, people do not get it. It cannot be possible that we just buy a change that happens to the organization. If this change doesn't happen for me as an individual or cannot be beneficial for me or that it induces a fear of unknown, then of course I'm going to be like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't want to touch it. - Yeah, now there's a lot of psychology that sits behind change, right? People have studied the psychology of change, neuroscience, sociology, the psychological components of resistance and how do we help people through change naturally? And effective change management incorporates all of those components, right? Understanding that communication is not telling plans, it's engagement, right? It's understanding where people are in the change process. And you and I could be exposed to the exact same change and respond very differently. So if it's a highly complex technology change, I have an information technology background. So I don't naturally have some of the same fears that someone who does not have my background might have. So it's important to understand that communication isn't one directional, right? There's feedback loops and there's engagement stories. And at the end of the day, of course organizations need to implement specific changes to meet business goals and objectives, to accomplish strategy, to respond to competition in the marketplace or to shifts in dynamics that a year ago didn't exist that existed today. And you know, imagine all of the thinking that's going on and the challenges that exist around AI adoption. And you know, it's another technological shift, but it's also a behavioral shift. So there's a lot of things that have to come to play too, to look at it from, you know, communication isn't a telling plan, it's an engagement strategy that includes the right people at the right time with the right messages. But somebody has to craft all of that. Somebody has to craft the strategy and the plan in the context of each organization and in the context of each change. And that's really the role of a change practitioner. It's not just to check off the list of the right assessments at the right time, but it's the intuitiveness that comes from being in this space of thinking, right? I can walk into an organization and have two or three conversations and very quickly start determining some of the characteristics of the challenges that they're having. And a lot of times that's leadership, right? If we don't have leadership knowing how to be effective leaders of change, just saying it doesn't make it happen. - That's right, Karen. I wanted to go a little bit into this area of what we don't talk about in terms of change and organizations very often claim that to value innovation and adaptability, we know that the story. But at the end, they may struggle with the change. What are some of the unspoken contradictions or hypercrisis that you have observed in organizations when it comes to change? Let's talk hard about the realities of change in organizations. - Yeah, I think the one that I just mentioned is what comes to mind is saying it and doing it are two different things. So one of the contradictions might be, we're innovative, we are fast and dynamic and iterative and we learn quickly and we fail and we go on. That is an interesting model of business. And I have lots of certifications in design thinking. We at ProSci leverage design thinking for product design. So we do our empathy exercises and we prototype and we test and we learn and we gain feedback and we try to bring research-informed products to market very quickly. But at the end of the day, do the leaders in the organization understand what it means to lead iterative change. It means that they really have to step into their role of being role models for change, of articulating why one change is related to another, the clear communications, not just on a specific initiative, but how everything connects. Because if there's something happening quickly, inside of an organization, it's probably part of the culture and it's probably represented in the way that change gets brought to life. So maybe there's agile methods for product and project delivery that are in execution. But the question becomes, are people actually building structure inside of the organization to support innovation and rapid iterations of change? Or do they just think that by declaring it happens? So I want to challenge people to think about change as a capability. And of course, if I want to get really strong, if I want that muscle to be really strong, to come alongside of innovation and rapid cycles and all of the things we talk about in terms of agile method and approaches, we have to build the muscle itself. So we have to isolate it, we have to exercise it and we have to support and sustain it. So leaders need to know how to be effective leaders of rapid change, we need to have structures and methods and mechanisms that support rapid and effective change. We have to have methodology and process. We have to have metrics and performance that articulates that as a desired outcome. So a lot of that is very cultural, but just speaking it into existence requires all the actions that sit behind it. - Indeed, this part of resistance is always one of the biggest challenges. And I want to ask you a couple of questions about resistance. But before that, in fact, you made me think that when you were mentioning the iterative changes, it's one of the concepts that is very hard to understand for people. I still remember that coming back to my example of SAP implementations in the 2000s, I still remember that when there was an error, these bloody consultants from SAP, they were expensive. So if you do an error and the acceptance is low of all of the changes that you have implemented, you have spent close to one million dollars on any implementation that nobody's using. But then when you, I still remember that when we had to talk about using the agile methodology in order to reduce the risk of non-acceptance of the implementation, it was difficult for people to understand that, to forecast, oh, but how much is going to cost if you are continuously improving doing iteration? Our brain, it's almost like it has been modeled in such a way that we don't like us the uncertainty when are we finished. - Yeah, but what's the cost if we don't? - Exactly, exactly, and that, even when you have the examples, we have lost ex-millions because of this implementation that was completely wrong and you're talking about iteration, it was still very, very difficult. - Yeah, and here's a hidden cost that a lot of times people don't think about, right? There's costs and risks and doing it incorrectly, right? To force a technical solution that doesn't meet need or to, let's just say we have a perfect technical solution, but we don't do anything to support and equip and enable people through the adoption strategy from their current state through transition into their new future state. But let's just say we do all of those things, to the best of our ability and we still create a pretty bumpy implementation. Maybe we get there, right? Maybe over several iterations, we get to where we want to be with successful implementation. But in the process, you're teaching the people in your organization, we're not good at this. And when they start holding that belief, when the next big change comes along, they're going to be much more skeptical and they're gonna go, don't you remember that one SAP implementation? Oh my gosh, that was so painful, it took so long. I don't think we're gonna be good at this, right? We start building evidence inside of our organizations that we're not good at change. And we've got to flip that script because the investments that are being made, not only are they very costly, but in some cases, right, you're gonna chase the most capable people out of your organization because they're not being supported through the change process. So there's a lot more costs and risks that sit behind, even reputational risk. I mean, I've seen organizations implementing customer facing technology solutions. And again, I'm talking about technology, but it could be the way the process is designed or the policies that drive organizational behaviors. And next thing you know, you've got reputational risk. So you're not only impacting the people inside your organization and teaching them, you're not good at change, but you're teaching your customers that you're not good at change, right? How many of us have opened an app on our phones and it's completely different? Nobody told me this was going to happen. Nobody helped me get through the learning cycle. And I'm the one as a customer who has to figure it out. And boy, I'll tell you what, I might just well look and see what somebody else is doing. - What else have you observed in terms of typical resistance forms that in an organization? And I think it's good to have it in two parts. One, the resistance coming from leaders because it's a different type of resistance and the difference between the resistance coming from the staff, the people who are not yet leaders. - Yeah, resistance is interesting, right? We've used the word resistance and the change management discipline for many, many years. And you know, we are also likely to say resistance is a natural response to change. You know, at pros I, one of the things we want to do is reshape resistance is readiness, right? That resistance is a lack of readiness. And so it's incumbent upon us to get the organization ready so that we don't have demonstrated resistance. Now, some of the resistance you just, you can't anticipate, but I love sitting down with a group of people who are going to be impacted by a change and asking them, what are you concerned about? What do you feel like the gaps are? What are you not understanding that you feel like you need to understand in order to be ready? Because we know that resistance can show up as being, you know, very, you know, passive, right? People don't go to training or they don't turn their cameras on and a conversation with, you know, a person who's leading a workshop, for example, or, you know, they just kind of step away from it and sometimes it's just, they're just exhausted, you know, from all the changes that are happening and they get to the point of apathy. But resistance are the way that we describe, you know, it can also be exhibited as very active. There are people who act out and express vocally. And here's an interesting thing, right? The reframing from resistance to readiness is very powerful and the ad-car model, you know, certainly comes alongside that because, you know, readiness can show up in, you know, awareness. And what we know from pro-sci research is the number one reason for resistance to change or lack of readiness is that it's just awareness. They don't understand why a change is happening, why it's happening now, what would be the risk if it doesn't. So the ad-car model gives us five placeholders, again, awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement to ensure readiness. So we communicate why, why now, what if we don't, what it looks like with, what is changing, what isn't changing, some of those awareness messages that get people past and ready for, I understand why to make a choice to participate. And desire is all about, I'm choosing to support the change. So our readiness, if we flip the script from resistance to readiness, means we have to support people in readiness with awareness and desire and then knowledge and then ability and then reinforcement. So each of those gives us a place to activate the right people, the right in interventions, you know, feedback mechanisms and Q&A sessions and town halls and all of those places. So that's really, you know, not just at the user level or the impacted person, but our leaders also have an ad-car journey to be effective leaders of change. So I understand why a particular change is happening. I've sat in workshops with a table full of executive leaders to help them move a must-win change forward, something that's strategic, it's heavily invested, it's something that they've articulated is necessary for forward movement and health of the organization. And asking six or eight or 10 senior leaders, are you all aligned on why this change is happening? And you just sit back and watch the conversations because in many cases they are not. So how can you ask them? And again, if they're uncomfortable communicating the why, maybe the change doesn't originate from they are part of the organization but they're part of the sponsor coalition and they should be positively advocating for the change. And they're afraid somebody's going to ask them a question that they don't know the answer to. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing it now? Why is this a priority over another significant change in the organization? So we really need to think about our leadership teams as individuals first who have to go through their own ad-car journeys, both in the context of change or changes and in the context of role fulfillment. I am aware of why I need to be an active and visible sponsor of change. I've decided to do that. I know how I am able and the reinforcement. So there's a lot of layers in that, making sure that our roles are actively being fulfilled and we know effective leadership as the number one indicator of change success is leadership. Do our leaders know how to do that? Do they know how and do they have alignment across their coalition to be able to articulate the key messages consistently across the organization? So the cascades of messages are successful. And then down at the individual level, what are we doing to get people ready for change? And if we focus on that, the resistance naturally drops. I was working on a really large scale IT change for a major, an international oil and gas company. And we were doing an IT change that required adoption on a single day. This particular change was a big bang change. It had to happen globally because we were implementing some new tools and software behind the scenes. And we were ready for those hand holding calls and what could possibly go wrong? How are we going to mitigate? And we like to say, you know, there were crickets. I mean, the day of go live, there were crickets. There was no sounds of concern. It was more the technology. So we had our help desks and our, you know, our aids and all of those things, but people were ready. And we certainly didn't get the pushback that we had planned for because we spent so much time on readiness to avoid resistance. - One of the major assumptions in order that resistance is, or to be more clear, the fear of the change disappears of the souls is the transparency. Now, in some cases, some leaders may think that it is better that certain information about the change is not known by the whole organization. Like for instance, if there is an organizational impact and there is this change also implies a reduction of stuff, what's your take on that? Should we, should leaders be fully transparent talking about the risk or should there be a way in between? - Yeah, there's so many nuances in that. You know, certainly there are some organizations that are not able to share the details because of SEC filings in the United States or other concerns that might cause market implications if more people know about some of the details of the change. It happens a lot in mergers and acquisitions or divestitures or significant org structure changes. But I think that the biggest advice I can get again, you have to, senior leaders have to rely on the laws, first of all, and guidance by legal counsel and individuals who will tell them what they can and cannot say. But I'm more inclined to, you know, if we're building a culture of trust that the more open and authentic you can be the better. And when you build that trust, it becomes an economy inside of your organization, the trust economy. You know, you put something into, you know, it's a ledger, right? I put things in one side and I get them on the other side. But there's also the possibility of in that open and authentic communication to be able to say to a group of people, I cannot at this time share all of the details with you, but please know that when I can, I will. And to treat people with the level of courtesy and trust that we would expect for ourselves. You know, there's a little bit of the golden rule inside of that. And if there are cases where you need to put people into nondisclosure agreements or to reinforce corporate ethics around communication, then activate those if you need to. But I believe that, you know, our best, and you know, the kind of leaders I want to have are the people that say I trust you. And I'm gonna share some information with you. Now you mentioned reduction in force. You know, that is certainly never an easy implication of changes, but sometimes it's a necessary implication of change and maybe the business driver that caused us to re-imagine a new process or a new system or a new tool or new compensation structures or new locations. You know, maybe part of the drivers was cost and the way we were articulating, you know, cost reduction was through reductions in force, through identification of redundancies and so forth. Now, as a person who becomes redundant, you know, that is certainly never, you know, an easy transition. But again, I've worked with organizations who, you know, I went with one organization who was going through a divestiture and the divestiture included a whole line of business. And it was quite obvious to people who were in that line of business that they were going to be divested, right? That that part of the business and that not everyone would have a place in the future state. And that's where, again, it's so critical to be partners with so many other areas of the organization, whether it's OD or HR or, you know, again, the support that you might need from your legal counsel. But in that case, the organization sat down with the employees and said it's probably quite obvious to you that there's going to be an impact to a particular work group. And we are going to do our best to find other places for you in our organization, in the new organization, or if there isn't a place for you, we're going to help you transition. And here are the ways we're going to support you. So there are ways to be human in the middle of all of those changes. But, you know, sometimes, you know, mandates are mandates and requirements are requirements and we can't avoid the messy part of the changes that we're implementing. But we do need to have the structure and the process and build that economy of trust through feedback and open communication and, you know, treat people the way we would want to be treated. - Absolutely. In some cases, even with the necessary knowledge and skills, individuals may struggle to break the old habits and adopt new behaviors. So a change that requires that I change the way I do things. How can leaders create this supportive environment that encourages experimentation and helps people overcome inertia? - Yeah. And I think we have to recognize that, you know, status quo has an amazing staying power. We know that in our personal lives as well, right? We may know that there's something not working in a relationship or in our housing situation or in any other number of situations. And we know something's not working and we're working our way through what the future state might look like differently. But boy, I'll tell you, status quo is powerful, right? I'm comfortable here and I'm good at it. Even if it's not the most comfortable situation, I'm still good at the mechanisms, you know, the mechanisms I've created for myself to be able to be successful. So we have to recognize that unseating status quo, you know, can take some work and, you know, people have to unlearn sometimes to relearn. And experimentation is an amazing concept, right? 'Cause in experimentation, and we know that in design thinking, right? When you create experiments and say, well, let's give it a try, let's run it and see what the outcomes are. So people need to feel comfortable that if there's experimentation, they don't have to be perfect the first time. And I think that's one of the places, even that the ad card language, the knowledge to ability gap really has to be called out, right? That can be a small gap, a medium gap, a large gap, an extra large gap. So knowing how and being able, and being able means we have to have coaching. Sometimes we have to have significance amount of practice to get really good at something. But here's the challenge that organizations run into is that they say that they have an experimenting and an adapting culture, but they don't give people time to do that. So do I have the resources and time that I need? I worked with one organization that they articulated this through a celebration event that they call the failure museum. And the failure museum was an elaborate display of exhibits of things that didn't go well. And it allowed people a space to see and experience learning unlearning and relearning and articulating things that didn't go quite so well. So it's a fun way to put a spin on it that says, not only are we going to speak to experimentation and adaptation and giving pace, space and time and resources to unlearn, relearn and reseed or seed those new behaviors, but we're going to acknowledge the fact that it doesn't always go the way that we anticipated. But that kind of an environment, again, you're creating a culture of change. And a culture of change means that we know how to do it, our leaders know how to lead it. We have methods and process and structure and tools and mechanisms. And we have the checkpoints along the way to make sure we're doing what we want to be doing. So it really does require thinking deeper inside of it, right? When you go through that curve of complexity, you sit in the complexity for a bit so that you can get out the other side. So there's a lot of organizations that speak the words and don't act the way they want to create. So, and here's another trick, right? Another hack is let's say we have an intent to create a culture of change, right? The change is welcomed. We know we're good at it. People immediately know which questions to ask if they're not getting the information they need. I think the organizations where an employee feels comfortable saying, hey, I heard about this particular change. I'm really not connecting with why we're doing this. Can you help me understand, right? So that's an example of the culture of change all the way down to the individuals who are being asked to change is they have the empowerment to ask the questions that they need answered. And I'll tell you a story about that in just a moment. But this culture of change, it's like, what are the behaviors that you would see? What do people think and say and feel and do, right? That's an empathy map, right? What do people think and see and feel and do differently in a culture that welcomes change? So, I was collecting stories for the Adcar book. So, there's over 50 storytellers that I collected personal and professional, individual and organizational change stories from around the world. There's, you know, 20 countries and six continents that are covered. And one of the participants in Japan, and again, it's cultural, right? There are very cultural differences inside of organizations in various places. But in Japan, of course, most of us have some awareness of some of the cultural markers of organizations in Japan. And the individuals in the organization that were in the impacted groups, the frontline workers, the people, the associates and employees who were heavily impacted by change, did not feel there were lots of changes going on and they didn't feel like they were equipped with what they needed to know and do. So, they created their own solution. They created a digital hub and started crowdsourcing communications and synthesizing themselves and posing questions that others of their peers were answering, not the management team. So, again, that culture of change, what are the behavioral markers that we're implementing in designing and creating a culture that's positive towards change? And that's when you'll start to see leaders who know how to lead change and people who know how to receive change. And you start to get this sentiment that bring it on, we're good at this, right? We know that in our industry, in any industry, right, we've got it to adopt change quickly in order to succeed and survive and thrive. - I know-- - So, just some examples, yeah. So, we've got to understand what does it look like. So, stand in the future. We love to do an exercise called standing in the future. You know, three years from now, five years from now, what are people seeing, thinking, feeling, doing at the enterprise level, at the project level, at the individual level and leadership teams. And when you start creating that future state, you've just created a change management challenge, right? You've just now said, I've got a future state of change capability. I have a current state. Now, change management takes change management. How do we get from where we are to where we want to be? - Something that we don't talk that often is about the mental health impact of change. Do you have any tips about how can organizations acknowledge and mitigate these challenges regarding employee stress, burnout, or decrease morale because of the change? Because it may happen. Even if we have the economical impacts are positive, working in a moment of change is very, very tiring intense and intense. - Yeah, it's exhausting. You know, we know, you know, brain science, neuroscience tells us, right, that forming new habits is exhausting, right? We use more energy in our bodies. So it's not just the mental aspects of that, but there's a physiological response as well. And you know, a lot of that has to do with, you know, are we articulating clearly, you know, again, our good, strong awareness messages from the right people? Does my manager or supervisor, right? So sometimes stress or concern for wellness and wellbeing comes from, you know, am I going to be measured correctly? Because I'm going through a learning cycle and my performance metrics may fall off before they come back up again. So I may see some dips in my performance and is that welcome and expected? And do I feel like I'm getting the support and resources to get up the curve on the other side? So again, some of this is structural, right? The measurements and mechanisms inside of our organizations. Just a simple conversation with my people manager who might look at me and say, "Karen, I know this is a little bit stressful for you. You were the subject matter expert in the system that we're decommissioning. And now, you know, you spent years taking on that subject matter expert role and I can see for you, you might be feeling a little bit concerned about how you look and feel in the new, 'cause you're not the subject matter expert. You're coming along the learning curve, just like everyone else. And if you'd like to continue that role, can I send you some to some outside training? Would you be willing to lead a change agent group inside of our team, right? So all of a sudden, my people leader sees me differently than somebody who just looks at me and says, I don't know why Karen's not adopting this change, right? What is her problem, right? She was so good before, you know, we need this change. But again, it's that sitting inside. So our people leaders play a really critical role, the people who are coaching. And I'm gonna keep coming back to AgCar because there's so many powerful components, but you can coach and employee, if you're like, I don't know what to say. You know, just give me some guidance here. I don't know what to say for somebody who might be struggling or exhibiting signs of fatigue or apathy or they're checking out or, you know, do you just feel there's something that's not quite right? But you can sit down and say, do you know why this change is happening? Do you know why it's happening now? Have you chosen to participate, to support in this change? Are there any barriers that you're experiencing? You know, the example of a subject matter expert role, that is a way to reinforce my movement. Cause I might go, you know what? I couldn't put words to that, but I was feeling less important. I am feeling not seen or neglected because I had such an important me role, right? It was to me, it may be even ego driven, but it was something that was important to me. So desire gets into those individual and organizational motivators. And some people just don't think they can make the transition, right? The knowledge, you know, is just so different than what their background in the history. You know, I'm 40 years into my career. And what I was trained up in early as a young professional is so different today, right? The generations that are coming into the workforce today are so very different. So I still hold on to, you know, just because of the nature of human learning, the way I did things when I was early in my career. So, you know, Ecker gives us the language for the conversations and the coaching. I think the other thing that's important to understand is changes don't happen in isolation. So if you were to take, and again, this is an interesting exercise for those of you who are listening, can you make a list of all of the changes that are happening inside of your organization? You might bucket them by strategic initiatives or the IT initiatives or operational initiatives or continuous improvement or just the BAU business as usual, you know, tweaks and changes that we make on a day-to-day basis. So if you think about it, you know, people, you know, especially as a change practitioner, if I'm leading or engaged in a certain change, I may be doing everything perfectly. The way I'm engaging my leaders and my people managers and my effective communications and the way I'm focused on knowledge to ability and reinforcement and sustainment and all of the things around ensuring change sticks. But I am now sitting there with one change against 10 or hundreds or I've seen thousands of lists of things that are happening inside of organizations. So sometimes it's fatigue, just associate with so much change and that requires a different set of interventions and we can talk about that. But I think it's just the acknowledgement and recognition of what's actually happening inside of our organizations. - Another problem that I challenge that I remember back in my days in corporate is the fact that whenever the change is not giving the expected results, there is like getting a moment where management or the staff may consider to get back to the old way of doing things, especially, yeah, because of the challenges and setbacks that they have caught. Sometimes they might be right, but very often it's almost like throwing the water of the bath and the baby at the same time. Is there a way to validate correctly if this change should stop, you should pivot completely or that there is something to mitigate or in fact the risk of going back to the old ways? - Yeah, sustainment is critical and it's interesting, right? We talk about project management and change management being complementary disciplines with a common objective. So we would hope that our friends and colleagues on the project management side, the technical side of the change have a success metric for what success looks like. And so do we on the change management side, they engage, adopt, and use. But what oftentimes happens is that go live or the minute that we instantiate the change is when the project management team cycles off, right? Their go live date is their completion date. And what we know from a change perspective is that's the beginning of the change. That's when the change is actually real, when people can say, oh, ah, so that's what it really is. So all of the sustainment mechanisms, right? Need to happen after go live, to ensure people are reinforced and sustained and celebrated and all of the ways that we sustain change. But it means also that we have to be open to listening to feedback, to understanding why people might be reverting to previous behaviors. And sometimes, I'll tell you what, underneath of it, there's a very logical explanation, right? Somebody might say, there was a feature in the new system that didn't meet a need that I have, right? I've been running this Excel spreadsheet for 10 years. And I tried to produce a report that articulated that same information and I wasn't able to do it. So here's my Excel spreadsheet. So again, you get underneath of it. So I think sustainment is, you know, a post go live challenge. It is not a go live challenge, right? That's the launch challenge, not the sustainment challenge. So again, sustainment is a phase in and of itself. And we need to figure out when we're going to measure our benefits and outcomes. And oftentimes, it's not the day after go live. It's several days, weeks or even months or years later. So again, it's the understanding that, you know, the simplicity that's on the other side of complexity that change isn't in itself complex, but their structure and process and resources and tools and ways to break it down into smaller pieces and to get through the process successfully. - You made me think about a mini gossip that I remember that a project was not sustained because the sponsor of the project left only one week after the go live of the project. So when the sponsor of the project disappeared, move everything got done and that change didn't happen. - Yeah, and that's a place, again, you know, you can plan for things to go wrong, you know? We like to call it in our household. We call it breakdown avoidance, right? We're taking this big trip and there's a lot of complexities. What are the breakdowns that could occur and what can we do to avoid them? Now, pros I research has lots of guidances, right? What if you lose your sponsor? What if your sponsor is not at the right level? What if your sponsor is not actively engaging? You know, again, you know, there's thousands and thousands of, you know, over 25 years of data points around doing that. But I think at the end of the day, you know, you have to have a mitigation. So if you lose your sponsor, can you activate a sponsor coalition proxy for that particular sponsor? Can you make sure that the words and phrases and actions that they've used get re-articulated, even though they may not be there to send them themselves? So again, what can you do to ensure? And then, you know, just be, you know, be able to respond, you know, with guidance and trust and belief that there are positive ways to get through change and building change capability is worth it, right? At the end of the day, let's all be able to say, you know what, change is difficult or it can be. Not all changes are. Some are very welcome and we're very ready and we roll into them very quickly, right? So, you know, I don't want to put all change into the same bucket. So there are factors that make some changes riskier than others. And there are people and cultures that make some changes riskier than others. But to just, you know, take it on as, you know, a focus and a discipline. There's a body of work and there are people that are experts at this and I just recommend you find them and make them part of your team. - You know what? I recognize that we need it a little bit more of time in order to expand all of the questions that I still have because it is, there is so much wealth of information on what you are saying regarding change management, what happens behind the scenes that I find it quite insightful. Karen, if people want to reach out to you to ask you questions about change management, about how to make it happen, about some tricks and tips, how can they reach you out, Karen? - Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, you know, I always recommend that you, you know, can go to prosci.com, P-R-O-S-C-I.com. Feel free to reach out to me personally on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect with you, Karen Ball 26 on LinkedIn. And of course, you know, if you're interested or I piqued any ideas or thoughts that you might be interested in taking a look at the Adcar book, it was just published in 2024 and it's an update of the 2006 version of the book and I incorporated lots more stories. It demonstrates the promise, the proof and the practice of applying Adcar to deliver successful change outcomes. I will definitely put the links of prosci.com, your LinkedIn profile and directly into the book. - Yep, it's available on Amazon as well as all the audio listening platforms. - That would be great. Karen, thank you very much for making the time. I really enjoyed the conversation and I think that there is so much value that my audience is going to find through all of the, the wealth of experience that you have been mentioning during this episode. Thank you very much, Karen. - Thank you for having me.
