136 - Change Mastery: Outcomes, Alignment, Overcoming Resistance with Peritius' Laura Dribin

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Laurie Driven, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO and founder of Paridius Consulting, which is involved in outcome management, and, uh, quite I guess we could, I guess we could describe it as very highly strategic project management, but really not project management. We'll get into that. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Doug. Thanks so much for having me today. I really appreciate it.

So you have a, a long background with a lot of different experiences. Um, what, let's start with your backstory a little bit. It's so interesting.

Sure, sure. Um, I don't know how far back to go, but I, uh I, long story around it, I'll make it real short. I ended up being a math major in college, even though I had pushback from a math professor saying, what are you gonna do with it besides teach? Didn't wanna teach, but still fell into that. And I started out in consulting when I came out of school, Arthur Andersen Consulting, which ages me because that's now Accenture, right? And was there for a while, loved consulting, but I wanted to try corporate America and Realized after 1 year that was not for me, not directly. And so then I moved to Microsoft. And it was still early on in Microsoft's tenure, and I was 1 of 8 to go out and be an evangelist. Sure, talking about OS/2, which eventually we switched to Windows and talked about that instead. And loved it, but I was a road warrior up until then, and I loved travel. So that didn't bother me at the time. But then I got pregnant and my first child and realized I don't want to be on the road anymore. I missed consulting and I wanted to get back to it. So if I went back to it, I would be a road warrior again. So I decided to start my own firm. And that's, that is sort of the predecessor, you know, to how I became a consultant, how Perdias came about. But we, I've just celebrated 34 years.

Wow, good for you.

Yeah, and we became, uh, um, you know, shortly after I started, I fell into what is, what is now known as project management. Back then was not a buzzword. It was like, we have something to go to make happen, go figure out how to do it and get it done. That was usually the language around it. Construction engineering used project management but not business. And so fell into it, realized, oh my gosh, this is my calling. I'm good at it. And no one's talking about it. You know, consultants tend to love strategy because it's, you know, it's—

You don't have to take any responsibility for the outcome.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm going to tell you what time it is. Let me see your wristwatch.

Exactly. And so I thought, okay, well, I'm going to do the messy hard work and try and make their strategy actually come to be a a reality. And that was the, uh, precipice of, of Paradies Consulting.

So you, you talk about outcome management as opposed to project management. Tell us, tell us a little bit about that.

Sure. So when I started out and it was new, I taught— I, I was a program and project management consulting firm. And just for the listeners who may not know, programs are just a compilation of lots of projects that all fold into the same objective. But over time, I got very frustrated. And, you know, my clients talk about just get it done on time, on budget, within scope. Well, those are tactics and obviously important. I understand that. But why are you spending millions of dollars on a large transformation? What are you trying to achieve? Just to complete it? Well, we all know from who've been around for a long time that things just because they're completed doesn't mean they are done right. So I shared with you earlier, I had seen a cartoon that sort of made me start to think about this, about business. And it was a one-panel description of two doctors standing over a body, and one doctor says, "That surgery was perfect." And the other surgeon says, yes, too bad the patient died. And I started thinking about that's exactly what business does. They get it done. They check it off, but they didn't necessarily get to what they, what the desired outcome was in the first place. So I create, we created a process around outcome management and that uses program and project management tenants, but it adds onto it. It is, you know, at the beginning we talk about What does success look like for you when you're all done? It gets the executive team aligned. We bring adoption in to make sure that people are actually using it because we're going to measure, did you get the value? And the only way to do that is to make sure people are using it in the manner that you expected. So that was the birth of outcome management for us. A little bit more strategic view of what your desired outcomes are. And we still do the time budget and scope, but that is a technical measure.

One of the things that caught my eye, because I'm somebody that deals in conflict a lot, was that you are very conscious about finding out where the resistance points are in an organization and figuring out how do I take the, the people who don't want change and get them in the bus.

Yes.

How do you go, how do you go about doing that?

Uh, um, that is the hardest part of the job.

I can imagine.

And, um, love to say that we have avid partners along the way, but that is typically not the case. People are afraid of change. So one of the things that we do in our outcome management is what we call adoption, but adoption doesn't happen at the end. Adoption happens on day one. It is It is constant and frequent communication to all of the users, not just like the project team, which people focus on, but here's what's coming. I don't have all the answers for you yet because we don't know yet, but I wanted to open up a channel of communication with you. So if you have concerns or questions, here's who you reach out to. And as we progress, we're going to keep you informed. We find that that tends to get people to be more comfortable with change. You know, in other situations that I have seen, change comes at the end. It's okay, well, we just installed this new software package, removing your old one, and we're going to train you and you're going to start using it next week. And people are like, wait, no, no, no, no, I don't want this. So by telling them early and often, they feel like they're more part of it. They have a little bit more skin in the game.

This podcast is called Listening with Leaders, and I can imagine that listening in your business is probably the primary, primary skill that you and your colleagues have to have. Tell us about that.

It is. I think I— I'll be honest, listening is something that I always work on, and I'll get to that. But, but I learned my listening in two manners. One is because I'm the baby of the family. And so early on, you learn your opinion is not always going to be listened to. And there are other people who have different opinions. And sometimes you have to do something you may not want to do because you are not the one who is actively You're not the stakeholder in that.

And you don't have the power.

You don't have the power and you're not the stakeholder that has a vested interest in it. So that was my first lesson. The second lesson though, which is probably more relevant is, you know, when I was at Arthur Andersen, they spent a lot of time teaching you about listening skills because a good consultant listens. And I think that a lot— I've seen a lot of consulting out there that does the opposite. We have the best practices. We know we've done this 100 times. We'll come in and do it for you. Well, but every company has a different culture. They may have different requirements, a different way of doing things, and, and creating a system based on experience from others not taking away the experience, it's important, but you've got to listen first. What is, what is the nuance? What are, what are your needs? And that's the only way to get you to a desired outcome, because if you don't know what the desired outcome is to begin with, you're probably not going to reach it.

And how do you— I'm— I would imagine there are many situations where your clients can't even articulate what their desired outcome is.

Um, in a lot of time— a lot of that—

well, part of our time, but many times. So how do you help? As you're listening to them, you have to be listening for what's not being said, right? You have to listen to what, what are their emotions around all of this, and then you have to slowly help guide them into a place where they can figure out, well, what is it exactly that we want? And sometimes I can imagine that they articulate one outcome when really they want something different, but they don't know that.

Right. Well, um, that, that happens often. But, um, here's what we try to do with outcome management. The very first stage is what we call a strategic alignment. And the idea is bring in your executive team, your key stakeholders, your sponsor into the same room, because it's not just that they may not be able to articulate it. It is even if they can, they may be articulating it different.

There you go.

Think about, think about this. If you don't align the people that are asking for this outcome to happen, someone's going to be unhappy in the end. Doesn't make a difference what you do. But if, if stakeholder A has a different idea of stakeholder B of what needs to be done and you don't align them, If you pick A or B, but one or the other, the other one is not going to be happy with the outcome.

And worse, if it's really politically bad, somebody's going to sabotage the whole deal.

Oh, that's a whole other topic.

I know.

But one of the things that we try to do, and I'm going to be honest, not all our clients like it in theory, and sometimes they then refuse to do it, but it's a strategic alignment. When we first come in, it is to get that team in place and sit in front of them and say, okay, tell me what's going wrong. Tell me how we're gonna fix it. What is the one or two sentence objective and how are we gonna measure success? So if the end result is we're gonna increase revenue, great. By how much? Is a half a percent enough? Is 300% enough? So we will, so We sit down and we get them to all come together with a common statement, common objective, set of objectives, common set of metrics. And by doing that, and it's not easy, by doing that, then we can take that to the team and say, okay, at the next level down of management and the project team, here's what we're going after. Here's what we're trying to achieve. Not just getting it done. Again, people want to focus on time and budget and get that, but here's what we're— the value proposition that we are shooting for. And that changes how we develop a plan, that changes the involvement of the team. So it, it really refocuses everyone, including management, onto a common objective. And we actually started doing this with a company where they had 3 people on the executive team and all 3 had different ideas and they had been working on this for 6 months before, was never getting anywhere. We came in, we did the strategic alignment, got them on a common footing and finished the project.

And from that point on, you, uh, the work that you do sounds a lot like the work that I do as a mediator. Where I'm working with—

I'd like to learn from you though as a mediator.

I am, of course, I'm working in over high-conflict cases where people would rather shoot each other than talk. But it's the same process.

I've been through those too in business, but—

Yeah, it's the same process. It's getting that alignment. What I found is if I can get people to listen to each other, when they're in disagreement, I mean, really deeply listen to each other through a process that I teach. Then all of it, once they start listening to each other and they feel heard, I call it listening another person into existence. Once we feel listened into existence, then you're relaxed and you're willing to listen to yourself. But until you feel listened and heard, you're just gonna go like this and put up barriers and not do anything. And I would imagine you see exactly the same thing in your business.

Doug, I think that is spot on. I think that often when people are disruptive, it's because they don't feel heard.

That's right.

I don't think anyone's listening.

That's right. And it's not just being listened to, the words, where people's, their emotional experience has to be validated. Um, and I teach, I teach a process known as affect labeling that does that, and it's profound how it changes the conversation.

I'm sure, I'm sure. I have no doubt.

What is it? You've been doing this for a long time now. What is it that gets you excited in the morning, gets you out of bed and say, all right, yeah, another day, here we go?

Um, I'm an— I am an extreme problem solver. Oh, so my mind is constantly going. And when someone says— I don't know if you, um, my— one of my favorite holiday movies is A Christmas Story. The triple dog dare you. I don't know if you remember A Christmas Story. But that is, that's sort of what motivates me. So when someone says, oh, this project can't, we're not, it can't be done. I love just the opportunity to disprove that and get it done successfully. So, you know, my, there's a project managers are out there a dime a dozen, but one, but we're, that industry still does not have a great track record of successful implementations across the board. Lots of statistics, lots of companies, research companies do, you know, do surveys on this and it's anywhere from only a third succeed and down. And they're not always even counting the value. That's just time, budget, and scope. So I think there's so much room for improvement and there's better ways to do it. And But it's ingrained. And I think a lot of businesses accept, oh yes, this is a big project. It probably will slip or probably won't, will miss the mark in one way or another.

And I've got to pause just for a second. I got to, unfortunately, I got to run to the bathroom. So what I would imagine that when you get a problem solved, you have an immense sense of satisfaction?

Um, yes and no. Ah, one of the things that I have found is that, um, I don't necessarily always celebrate the wins, so I'm trying to work on that. So I'm on to the next one. And, and when I— so as a, a problem solver, what I mean by that is I'm just, um, that's what, that's what gets me going. Give me something to solve. And I am all in. The downside is, and I'll share because I was thinking about it, knowing that you're all, that you focus on listening skills, is sometimes that gets in my way because I, my mind is like solving as someone is talking to me. So I have to like, you know, stop and make sure that I'm listening to it in entirety. And that's an effort for me.

That's a problem that a lot of people have, is that, especially really smart people, it's a problem that I used to have until I figured out how not to do that. But you get, you start hearing the problem and you start immediately thinking of processing, okay, what, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, you start, you know, you're just going off.

Exactly.

And it doesn't leave a lot of room to really listen to what the other person is saying.

Right.

And the key, the secret—

not, maybe not so good in other areas.

The secret is learning at the, at appropriate times, do not listen to the words, especially if you have, if you, if you're hearing something that you've seen before, you got a general idea what's going on, so you don't, the words are not going to be that important in the moment. The way to really focus on somebody else is to listen to their feelings and emotions, not their words, right? And that allows you to be laser focused. And what's really amazing is that when you do that, even though you're not listening to the words, you still are hearing what they're saying, and you'll remember it because all memory is associated with emotions. Learning is associated with emotions. So if you are listening for the emotions, whatever they're telling you, you can you can, you'll be able to repeat back. Um, it's a, it's a, it's an amazingly powerful skill.

Interesting. I'm gonna have to start practicing that.

So, so what is it, what is it that's unique about you that, that you bring to the business?

Um, a couple of things. I am, um, when I started the business, and I, I didn't really talk about that at the beginning, I did it on three 3 important aspects in my life. I wanted to get back to consulting, and then I narrowed that focus to just program management, outcome management. I wanted flexibility in my life because I had children, and I wanted to be the room parent if I felt like it, or go to their holiday party. And I just, and I didn't, I didn't want to travel for work anymore. I love travel. Number one hobby, but for fun, not for work. And so that built my, you know, how I built the business in the first place. So what I bring to this is a couple of things. One is I have great focus. So every decision I made, if it fell out of one of those three things, I didn't do it, which is partly why we're not some huge, you know, North American known company because I didn't do networking when my kids were around in the evening. I did it during the day, but evening events I didn't feel like doing. I, and now I've changed that to, I travel for work now. So meaning not travel for work. Let me, I'm a digital nomad. I will go to a new place enjoy it and work while I'm there. So the biggest thing that I think I bring to the table is that I'm a risk taker. I'm not afraid of failing. I built that into my model, to be perfectly honest. I always gave myself 3 months. If I was miserable 3 months straight, I'd be out. At the very beginning, it was if I couldn't find a client within 3 months, I'd be, I'd go get a job. Corporate America. So I'm not afraid of failing, and I think that's probably the biggest strength of the business. Um, I, I haven't always known what to do, so I, I'll try it. It doesn't work, I'll reverse and try something different. Um, yes, maybe that made my business go up and down a little bit, but the reality is it helped us get to where we are with Outcome Management because it was an evolution. And even that at the time, that could be a big flop. But I, I'm a risk taker. That's my strength.

It's, I find it, and I, in your, in our Authority Magazine interview that we did together, you said this also that the, you never had an aspiration to being, having a huge consulting firm and being nationally or internationally known. And I find that so interesting because that's kind of the same. Same thing I have. I mean, I'm internationally known in my field, but I've never aspired to having a big organization. I'm a sole practitioner. And it's just so interesting to hear that. You rarely hear people articulate saying, I've made the choice to stay reasonably small because it meets all of my needs.

Well, I will tell you, though, that I won't say that I didn't attain that at some point. So probably about 5, 6 years ago, my kids are out of the house, I'm divorced. So I moved into the city proper and I said, how come I'm not bigger? I don't understand. We do phenomenal work. We've been with companies that bring us back in again. Why am I not bigger? And I realized because of the 3 focused areas that I stayed with. You know, I, and the fact that even after my kids are out of the house, I'm still enjoying the things that I want to do outside of work. And I realized that what I had created was exactly what I had set out to do with the flexibility in mind and with the non-travel. You know, I said to my people, I'm ready to do, you know, travel for work now. And they're like, well, why do you think we came with you? Because we don't want to travel. I'm like, oh yeah, that makes sense. So this is a product of my own creation, right? And so I'm good with it now. And, you know, it was just a little brief moment in time because I think we do phenomenal work. I would hope that that would build our reputation alone, you know, but we're small, so that doesn't always always do, right?

How do you get, how do you get your work? Is it referral-based mostly, or are you out there doing some active marketing?

Both. It's a combination. So I'm still out there meeting people and networking, um, and I, um, I've joined some new groups now at the stage of my things that I never didn't want to do at the beginning. I'm, I'm in, um, I'm in a lot of, uh, the Chicago business community now. So I'm meeting new people, which, you know, they always say when you get older, it's harder to make friends. And I'm, I'm not, I'm disproving that as well.

Good for you.

So, so that, and just the fact that I've been doing this for 34 years, it's just a Chicago-based company. So people move around, they bring us back in. So there's a combination.

Good. And it sounds like you're a virtual company too.

We weren't. We were, we were, then we weren't. I had an office pre-COVID. Now our consultants would go into the client, so they rarely came in anyhow. It was a smaller office, but then COVID hit and now we are back to being virtual and some of our clients are having us come back in sometimes. I'm starting to see a little bit of a pull-in.

Interesting.

Right, right.

So where do you, where do you go from here?

That's a good question.

You're going to keep doing the same thing or—

I'm going to do the same thing for a while yet, but I don't know how long. And I am someone who is sort of a jack of all trades, master of none in some ways. I like doing different things. So it's in the back of my mind. What should I do next? I don't ever picture being idle. I don't. I'm not.

I can't see you that way. I don't see you retiring.

Pick that up quickly, huh? Yeah, I'm, um, I think, uh, if I had, um, been raised more recently, I might have been, um, you know, ADHD or whatever. Um, yeah, but, um, but yeah, it's all good. I, I'm making things happen the way I want. I'm traveling now, so every year I pick up place I haven't been, and I will sit myself down and work remote from there.

Oh, fun.

Yeah, so that, that's my newer thing, and that keeps me going too.

Good for you.

As long as I can do that.

So one more question, and I'll let you get back to work. What, what is— what's one thing about you, Laura, that we wouldn't know about unless you revealed it to us?

Um, well, that's really hard to, to say because I'm a talker, so I pretty much share everything with anyone. I really, at times, have no filters. Shouldn't say that out loud, but I'm pretty much an open book. Family means everything to me, but anyone who knows me would know that. Love travel. I'm, my, I had recently someone who I really didn't know come up and say, hey, do you want to, uh, go to Bhutan with me? I'm like, sure. I didn't really know this woman that well, and I'm like, yeah, uh, sure, I'll go. So I'm, I'm pretty open. I'm not quite sure. That's a hard one for me to answer, right?

You wouldn't know it. You wouldn't know unless I told you, but I play jazz violin.

That is so cool. That is so cool. Well, I'm a biker. Would that count?

But most definitely count. Get out on your bike.

Well, I'm a fair weather biker.

Oh, okay.

So as long as it's not cold, which I live in Chicago, so it's cold. It's cold. As long as it's not cold, I will, I'll be out there riding my bike. Well, great. I can share.

Well, Laura, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for spending time with me. And I know all my listeners will love listening to this. Thank you so much, Doug.

I really appreciate the time, and it was very nice being on today. Thank you so much for the pleasure.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnoell.com. DougNoll.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly weekly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.