How to Get Better at Change with Curtis Bateman

Today, I'm joined by Curtis Bateman, bestselling author and change expert at FranklinCovey. He has spent more than 25 years helping people and organizations navigate change. Whether you're navigating change in your business or in your personal life, there's plenty to take away from this one. Enjoy. Curtis, a huge welcome to the Habits of High Performers Podcast. How are you doing?

I am doing really well, James. Excited to have our conversation today. Thanks.

I'm so excited because we're going to talk about change. And this is something you've been passionate about and in the thick of for many, many years. And for you, obviously, Franklin Covey, one of the most well-known brands and organizations on the planet that has helped transform many people's lives, many organizations' lives.

Yeah.

You would have seen a lot. What I'd love to start with is just, you've obviously authored a book called Change: How to Turn Uncertainty into opportunity. And I really love that idea of the fact that change is here. Change is always going to be here. We've actually got some influence and a say in what we can do with that experience. So, change itself, can we start at a physiological level? What's your understanding of what change is and does to us physiologically?

What a great question because it does a lot to us. And we often don't like it. So that's a great starting point. You know, in my experience, like you said, I've been working on this for a long time, 25 years or so. In my experience, individuals, humans, look for stability, predictability. We like routines and patterns. They simplify our life.

Mm-hmm.

So the moment the idea of change gets introduced, it Disrupts all of that. And so for some, there are a few that really get a buzz out of that, but for most of us, it's an annoyance at the, at the best, and it can be anxiety-triggering at the worst, right? Just a spectrum of physiological reaction triggered by our brains trying to create order and stability in what we experience in our day-to-day lives.

So—

It can be all over the place for us physically and emotionally.

Yeah, and the brain, I imagine that the amygdala, which kind of deals with fear response, I imagine it fires up and must send signals to the nervous system. And probably the cortisol, the stress hormones must get pumping as well.

That whole cycle activates. That whole cycle activates. And if you think about it, if it's a change that I choose, Then there are some positive counterbalancing forces. I can see a better outcome. I can see something of value that I'm looking to get. So as an individual, I can balance that. When somebody else imposes that change on us, maybe by surprise, maybe unexpectedly, we don't, we don't have as much of that or any of that. And so we're dealing with that whole cycle that you described from the amygdala and the Of course, all of that activates and we don't have any of the counterbalancing good points that help us want to navigate it.

That's awesome. I'm often delivering keynotes to corporate and business audiences, and often they're bringing me in to speak during times of change. And they've got new systems coming in, new tech coming in, and they're actually really concerned about their people. And so, I think one of the things that people need to understand is obviously there's a physiological side of it. But From a leadership standpoint, what do you believe that is kind of misunderstood when people are dealing with change? They've got all these people are trying to navigate through change. And for the listener, it could even be your family. You're moving house or a natural disaster has hit or something has changed on your street. What do people or leaders misunderstand most about human behavior during change?

I'm going to pull that apart into 2 things because I think there are 2 things happening. As leaders, What we want is— we spend all this time studying the change, right? We've been planning it, working on the strategy, so we can see here's an outcome or a way to improve the business that we want. And so we're focused on that. And as a result, for years, a lot of change management has been focused on the workflow, the project management, the day-to-day activities, the system that has to be purchased. But in all of that list I'm giving you, what I haven't listed is, what do we do with our people? Our most expensive, most important resource, the ones we need to do all of this. So leaders have, have had to move over the last few years from just the project management, the operational implementation of the strategy of change, to thinking, how do I take my people along? So the first oversight for years has been that people are fundamental to this. And that they need— they're our most expensive resource, and they need the support to help navigate the change.

Mm-hmm.

So then, then when we flip and we talk about the people side of it, my work, my area of focus has been on the people side of it. There are so many great tools for project management, for implementing a change, a transformation, that I chose to narrow our focus down to the people side of it. How are they reacting? What are they experiencing? And what are the skills and capabilities that if we help them develop those, they can then move through that whole change process in a more effective way?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses, to large corporates, to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. caroline@jjlaughlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes. Incredible. And I am imagining again, for the listener, this could be applicable at work. But equally applicable at home navigating change. These same tools would arguably be transferable.

Yeah, they are transferable. We built the tools and the ideas, the methodology to be really easy to use. In fact, I encourage people in workshops or if I'm coaching an executive to take the change model, the root model that underlies all of this, and go home and talk to their teenage kids about it. at a mealtime because it is so easily understood and transferable. And it opens up really nice dialogues. It can depressurize personal situations in a family because you have an appreciation for the emotional journey that people are going on as they're trying to navigate change.

Yeah, it's interesting. Like, I just got a text this morning from a friend and former client in Albuquerque, and just to let me know that his father had passed. And I mean, those changes are going to come into our lives unexpectedly at times. I had another client who was made redundant last month. Big change. I think of my own family. My little boy in the next year and a half will be moving school. That's a change. We might have to move neighborhoods, who knows, to get him into that school.

Yep.

So we're constantly having to navigate it. And we can push away from it. We can try and ignore it. Drink alcohol through it, eat more chocolate through it, whatever avoidance tactics we might use. That doesn't end well. So, this system, this framework that you're talking about, can you please step me through what that looks like?

Yep, yep. I love the examples you gave. I just had one kid get married a month ago and another one next month, right? Massive changes, right? Just new people in the family, transformation. It's constantly around us. And Most of the time our strategy is, if I can just endure it and get through it, then we'll move on to whatever's next. And it's, it's not a very healthy way because of the physiological responses we experience, and it misses out on where is the opportunity, which is the whole, the whole premise of the, the change model and the methodology. So let me talk to you about it. It's really simple. There's, there's 2 axes, the up and down axis. The vertical axis, not everybody knows what vertical is, so up and down.

I appreciate it. Layman's terms for me. I'm Irish. Keep it simple. Yeah.

The up and down is the results or the day-to-day results we get in life. In a family circumstance, it's the predictability or whatever it might be or the availability somebody's around or in work, it's that we can show up and we know if we do this, we get this, that's acceptable. So, there is a result impact from change. And left to right, or horizontal, is time. Change plays out over time. Your friend that got made redundant or laid off, that starts a clock, right? There was a change announced and now we're moving forward in time. So 2 axes, results against time. We come along at a level of predictability on the results. And when that predictability gets disrupted, that's the point where a change is introduced. So from that point up to the change being introduced is called the zone of status quo. Predictable, comfortable, we like it. It fits into the way our brains want us to work. Routine, all of that. Then a change is introduced. It might be an external change, like a— like your friend that got laid off, or passing away of someone, right? Those are changes that are imposed on us. And when change is imposed, as humans, we generally tend to oppose it, right? We put effort and force back against it. Or it could be a change I chose. And in any case, whichever, if it's external or internal that initiates the change, from the moment the change is introduced, instead of coasting along at status quo, what we see is we start to see this dip, this U-shaped dip get introduced into the timeline. And the first part of that U-shaped dip is the zone of disruption. It's a period where the change has been introduced and we're having an emotional reaction to it. So you can tell you're there. Are you feeling anxious, nervous, agitated, concerned, worried? All of those types of emotions. And while that's happening, there is an impact on the predictability or the results that we are used to getting. And we stay in that zone while we're exploring answers to questions like this. So what is the change? What does it really mean for me? What should I be doing? And why is it happening? Why did this happen, right? So we're trying to sift through all of those big questions so we can get to the point where we say, all right, I understand it. And now I'm at a point of decision. I can make a choice to actually engage with the change and start to work towards a new and different outcome. I can continue to resist it. Or I can say, I don't like this circumstance. Let's say it's a work situation. I don't like this. So I'm actually making a different choice and I'm going to initiate my own change away from what work's trying to initiate. So, status quo, disruption, point of decision. Point of decision with any one of the changes that says, I get it. Here's what I choose to do. Here's how I'm going to navigate this. So, we're starting to work our way back up the other side of this U-shaped curve. And the other side is the zone of adoption. We're saying, I get the change. I'm leaning into it. And here's where I see possibility. And that's not easy. I might be asked to implement a new system. I might be asked to report to a new boss. I might have a different family circumstance. And so I'm working to figure out what's the good, how do I operate within the good, and start to create a new version of success or a new level of results. So the point of change is to get to a better outcome. We want something better, otherwise there's no value in going through it, right? Even with the death of a loved one, there's moments to reflect on their life, what they taught us, how what they taught us will influence us to be a different, better person in the future. All of those things are opportunities to grab a hold of and say, this change can mean I'm a different or better person because of this, or I develop new and different skills because So, I work through the zone of adoption. It's hard. I'm learning new skills. There could be setbacks. I eventually get out of that U, back to the place where I started. It might look like I'm getting the same level of results, which again is not the outcome we're looking for because the U is all of the cost of change. The emotional cost, the skills, the relationship, whatever it is. We're looking to get something new and better. We want to keep pushing that curve up and to the right. And that's the zone of innovation where we say, what have we learned and how do we amplify that? How do we leverage that to get new and different and better? And then hopefully we can do that for as long as possible to get as much benefit from that change. Of course, eventually it'll flatten out. We get back into a new status quo. And so there's a set of emotions, a set of skills, and a set of results that can all be measured in that kind of modified U or J-shaped curve in each of those 4 zones. So, there you go. Quick overview. Yeah.

That's incredible. And I can see it. I can picture it. So, in my mind, all of us, whether we're leaders or not, we want that U-curve to be as short as possible. That time between dipping and getting back up, we want to get back up there real quick.

That's right.

Any tips, hints, formulas, tactics for us to actually go, yeah, you've got to go through the U-curve, but you don't need to sit in it for 24 months. You can sit in it for 24 days or 24 hours. How do we get back up?

Yep. I love the question. And some people do linger there and they linger there because they're stuck in the zone of disruption. They're not at a point where they can make a choice. There's real power in getting to the point where you can say, what choices can I make here? What are my options? And the more time you spend in that dip, the more cost there is, right? The more consequence. So, to your point, we want to make it as short and as shallow as possible. And there are some skills that we can use that help us move through that at pace. So, the first set of skills actually originate clear back in the zone of status quo. You remember, if we get to the end of a change, we kind of drift back into a status quo. Most of the time as humans, we think, oh, thank goodness, now I can relax. And, and that's totally understandable, right? We need to rejuvenate. We need to give ourselves time to recover and have energy and all of those good things. But one of the things that we should work on there is preparing for the next change. You said it right at the top of the discussion. Change is always with us. It's just— so what would make us think that when we get to the end of one change, there isn't another one coming? So the idea of preparation is to be looking and scanning and saying, and not from a fear or anxiety point of view, but say, what am I seeing that's indicative of change in the future? My son's shifting school. We might need to move home so that he can be in the right school district area. Great. So in the zone of status quo, long before you have to make the move, there is this space of how do I prepare for the next change? What are the things I can do? Because the more The more prepared I am, the less time I have to spend figuring that out in the dip. So there's an element and a skill there around preparation that we'd love to work on with people, individual or professionally. In the, in the zone of disruption, you know, the change has been introduced, recognizing that it's normal to feel that way. Sometimes people think something's wrong with me. Why do I feel so agitated or—

Overwhelmed.

whatever word you want to use, giving ourselves permission to say, this is normal.

Hmm.

And in this normal space, because a significant change has just been activated, what I really need is information. So, what are all of the things that if I knew them and I could ask questions and get that information would help me feel more stabilized and more prepared to make decisions? So normalize it. Sometimes people like want to say, ah, I don't know what's wrong with me. Well, nothing's wrong with me. You're human. It's normal. And so embrace that and get curious. Ask questions. If you got laid off, ask what other people are doing. Ask what resources the company has. Ask who can help you or who could mentor you. Connect to, right, all of the things we know to do. But instead of waiting and waiting and waiting to get started, just lean into it. Or If it's a change at work, you know, ask your boss, or even in the town hall, the company meetings, ask the questions that are on your mind. So, in that zone, the idea of getting curious and asking those important questions. In the zone of adoption, this is where most change fails. When you, when you hear Harvard or IBM talk about 75% of change initiatives fail, it's in this zone. Because people aren't actually getting to the work where you implement and activate the new change.

Why is that?

Because, well, there's 3 reasons, but let me just walk you through them. Number 1, we're often being challenged to do new and different things. So, we don't have the skills. So, we've got to learn new skills. And that takes time and that can be quite threatening. So, developing new capability. The second one is organizations don't like to have failures. So, when we're in that zone, we're trying new things and they might not always work. And so, there's pressure to keep pushing it to make it work. Do more of it. Work harder. Rather than to say, pause. Why didn't it work? What do we learn? What should we do differently? Rather than saying, let's double down and just keep hitting that nail with that hammer even harder.

Hmm.

And then the third reason is that when we get into this space, it's hard to stay committed to the reasons we're making the change. And so, we often talk about it being a zone where we need to commit and recommit because we're going to have successes and failures. We're going to be learning new skills. We need permission to grow and learn from it. So, what can happen is you can slide backwards and you think, oh, this is the wrong change, right? So, this 3rd point is, well, it's not the wrong change. Recommit to your vision and purpose. What's out there on the horizon that is my reason for going through the dip? So, in each of these zones, there are some skills, and if you do these skills enough, they become a habit or a competency. And we don't think about change that way. We usually think about it as, what do I need to get through so I can get back to what I do? And I would say, well, what can I learn and what can I develop so I become more proficient at change? And instead of it being something I endure, it becomes a capability that I can bring to my life and my work.

What I hear there is adaptability can be learned and we can be adaptable and actually Not get back to where we started, but actually build beyond that and innovate and grow.

That's what we want. That's the outcome. And that's the vision I really work to paint with people is there's opportunity for us to become better, more capable versions of ourselves because of the change, rather than think we can endure it and get back to a status quo.

Yeah, it's brilliant. I was asked about a month or so ago from stages, Q&A at the end, and someone was saying, look, I've got a lot of challenges right now. I'm going through a lot of change and I hate it and I'm pissed off about it. And what do I do? And I says, look, the only solution is WTOH.

What does that mean?

What's the opportunity here? And you mentioned the word opportunity. It's even in the title of your book.

Yeah.

That's a choice to step into asking a question of what's the opportunity here? Because often, let's say you're at the airport, And you're excited for your trip or you're on business, you have to get there for a meeting and the flight gets delayed or worse, canceled. You can lose the plot. You can get angry, pissed off. You can scream, shout, whatever. Or you can say, what's the opportunity here? Go to that bookstore at the airport and the book you've heard about, go buy it and start reading it. That podcast list that you've got that you haven't even bothered listening to, start listening to it.

Pop in the headphones and go.

There's opportunity. So, Do you believe that all of us have the skill set within us to build that mindset of looking for opportunities rather than sitting in the problem?

Yeah. So, this is really important. I do believe, you know, Franklin Covey has a couple of statements that I love. One of them is, we believe the potential for greatness lies within everyone and that if we work on it, we can unleash that potential, right? We can unlock that potential. So, my answer is yes. I believe in the potential of humans. To do that. Now, the one thing I don't want to do is paint a, you know, an artificial picture. There will be changes that come into our life we wish would have never happened. Some of them are really painful. But even in the face of all of that, I still think there's opportunity for us as individuals to grow and learn and become better versions of ourselves because of it. And that's why in the development of the work I've done, I have all these little tools. They're all one-pagers or just, you know, small little one question, because I want to make them easy to use, easy to remember. And if you can do that, you'll use them over and over enough so they become habitual for you. And so I've tried with my colleagues as we've worked on it to build those tools in a way that even if you're in the zone of disruption thinking, I am so angry about this. That if you'll pick up the one tool, ask the 3 questions on it, figure out how to do it, it'll help you. And you'll think, okay, next time I'll come to this a little sooner. And 3 times from now, I'll know them off the top of my head. Right? And so I've, I've built this tool set of 35, 40 tools, and you can use them in any context. And if you just use them over and over enough, then they become part of who you are. And so I believe it's learnable, and I've tried to make it as learnable, as easy as possible so you can get to it, right? One of the tools is— I'll give you a couple examples. In the zone of adoption, I've got a tool called hurdles, quicksand, and brick walls.

Hmm.

And because when you get a change, you can come up with a list of 100 things You can do, and you come up with 1,000 questions. And so if you use the tool to say, what are the hurdles? Those are things I know I can solve on my own, right? They're a hurdle. I have to jump over them. Quicksand. I'm going to get stuck here. I need a little bit of help, but if somebody gives me a hand, I can make it through it. Brick wall. Somebody else is going to have to clear the way on that. So who can I get that can clear the way? My boss, a family member. But the minute you categorize them, The hurdles you can instantly start doing something with. Those are in my circle of influence. I can do something specifically with those. And the minute you start to make progress, some of the stress goes down, the sense of control goes up, and it lets me move on to the other 2 a little bit more complex buckets. So just really easy tools like that to help people along the way.

So good. And they need to be simple because complexity kills execution. We never embrace things that are complex unless we're some kind of genius, and I'm certainly not. But simplify your way to success. And what you just said, I work with athletes and teams often, and those tools would be brilliant for a team, a sports team, a business, a family even. It's awesome. And folks, just as we're listening, please go to the show notes and you'll see a link to the book, which is Change: How to Turn Uncertainty into opportunity. And just know that if you're not going through change right now, you're going to. It's coming your way. It might come in the next 24 hours, but it's coming, right?

That's right.

So, when people pick up the book and they actually read it and implement it, how do you hope their existence might change, their work might change? What might change for them?

Yeah. You know, in writing the book, The first chapter is a parable. It's a story about a ship and a crew. So I'm really trying to give everybody a way to connect to it. Then there's some chapters that feel more like a self-help framework, you know, business, you know, model. And then there's some leadership ideas in there as well, right? Trying to find different ways to connect with people. So I really want them to connect with and get a clear understanding of the underlying model, the change model, that zone of status quo, disruption, adoption, Innovation. And if they can keep that in their mind, that's the first tool in and of itself. Oh, here's where I am. This is normal. And then from there, well, if I'm here, what tools could I use that would help me? And that there's tools in the book, there's questions in the book, there's leadership resources in the book, there's family stories, individual stories. So that there's a way for everybody to connect to it. But really, it's understand the model, share the model with others, make it part of who you are. And then as you need tools, you can just know how to get back into the book to get quick reference access to those tools, and it'll help you wherever you are. Wherever you are. If you're, if you're in the zone of adoption right now and stuck, you know, I had a hospital call me one time. These nurses, we've been working on this change for 18 months. They're in the zone of adoption and they're stuck. Great! We can meet you right where you are with the model and help you with some tools and some mindsets to start moving. So, it's not a you have to get it at the start. Just jump in wherever you are and there's a resource to help you.

It's incredible. And folks, if you are in a position where you're leading others in some fashion and you're going through change or there's change coming up, my challenge to you would be to actually buy all of your leaders in that team a copy of the book. And read it together and talk about it and spend 5 or 6 weeks, get them to go home and read and then come back and talk and then come up with your game plan using this proven method to navigate the change. Whether you're about to have a change, you're in that disruption, or even maybe you're heading towards innovation, there's going to be tools in there that can expedite your forward movement.

That's right.

Now, Curtis, I want to be respectful of your time, but I want you to Maybe think of a leader, a global leader. Maybe they've led a country or a company. Does anybody come to mind that you look to and go, they're a brilliant example of someone who has navigated change and they are kind of a gold standard for what I've written about? Anybody come to mind?

Oh, that's a great question. I operate— here's a terrible paradigm. This is like a confession. I operate from the paradigm of there's always a way to get better. So when I look, I'm usually looking for how could you get better? How could I help you get better? So that's, that's a great question. Um, let me, let me just pause for a moment and think, um, about an example from my career. Um, you know, our, our current CEO at Franklin Covey is a really good example. Um, he, uh, he's of course familiar with the methodology But, but what I love for him is he's— and this is a skill he's developed— one of the things a leader has to do is to paint a picture of why we would go through the dip, why we would go through that U. And so a leader's job is to— there's an art of storytelling and visioning that says we're going someplace and the journey might be a little rough to get there. And you have to keep telling it. And it's really easy to get fatigued with telling the same message over and over again as a leader, right? Because when you To lead a large transformation or a change, it's really helpful to have a framework, change model. It's really helpful for that to be common language because then you're not using accusatory language of James is terrible at change. You say James is in the zone of disruption. How do we help him? What are the tools he needs? So common framework, common language, and that you need a leader that will lead it, and it takes time. And those last 2, the leader that will lead and it takes time. Leaders that try and initiate a change on a town hall and then go back and they're gone from it into their next thing, they miss the part where people need to keep hearing the messaging and the vision because that's what helps you go through the dip. It's the inspiration to come out the other side. And it also means you're engaged to clear the path. And to resolve the unknown, right? When you announce the change, you don't know everything that's going to come up. And so you need the leaders to stay engaged to resolve and address that. And so I think our CEO at Franklin Covey right now does that really well. The part he told me one time, he said, I don't, I don't like saying the same things over and over again. And he's come to the realization in the last few years, I got to say the same things over and over again. I got to keep telling the story and helping people connect to it. And so, I suppose that's why it stands out to me is because he confessed he doesn't like to do it and he's chosen to do it as a leader because he needs people to be connected with the vision. And every time he tells the story, there's a slight improvement. There's a little bit more emphasis on something and it just helps you clarify and see the future of where you're trying to go.

That's incredible.

Anyway, there you go.

That's so cool. No, I love it. And I really appreciate you actually giving me an example like that. And obviously, you've got a great leader there at Franklin Covey doing great work. And for the leader that's, as I say, going through change or about to, grab the book. It's in the show notes. Curtis Bateman, I just want to say a huge thank you for taking the time to connect, to share your wisdom and insights.

Of course.

And I'll put all your socials below as well if anybody wants to follow your journey or connect in with you and follow your work. Thank you.

My pleasure. I appreciate the conversation. Thanks, James.