From Vision to Reality: Driving Large Scale Transformation with Change Experts

All right, welcome, everybody. Welcome. Please come on in. We'll get started after we give the attendees a little bit of time to get in the deluge. Right now, there's just hundreds of people pouring in.

That's right. That's right.

Let me make sure the chat is enabled while we're doing this, and everybody can write where they're chime. Chime in. Where they. Where are they calling in from? I'm in D.C. i'll start us off.

San Diego.

Very nice.

Chicago.

Detroit.

Cool. Kristen, Misty, Liz, any of you want to take a stab at answering this question while we wait for everybody to. To join? What's one thing that nobody here who's listening might know about you that's really interesting?

Oh, wow. Oh, well, I can. I can take a stab at that and go first. I would say probably something that no one here knows about me is that when I was younger, I was part of a competitive clogging dance team, and we traveled around a little clogging shoes, a little outfit, and, yeah, I just clogged my heart out to some really great, great songs. So fun fact about Liz. I used to. I used to clog dance.

What is that? A clogger? Is that what you call clogging? People are clogging.

Clogging. Yeah. It's like. Yeah. Where I was a clogger. That's for sure. For sure. I still am. Every once in a while, I'll just do a little clog, you know.

That's cool. Is that like the Swedish shoe? Like the.

It's not the word that It's. It's actually like a double tap shoe. So it's like a tap shoe that has a loose double tap on it. It's more like a country western type of dancing with a fancy double tap shoe on there. So, yeah, maybe. Maybe I'll have to find a picture from. From those days and share it with you guys so you can see.

Yes, please.

All right, everybody, you've come to the right place. We'll get the webinar started in just a second. We're almost at Quorum, but I'm going to give Kristen one chance. She had something that she was going to share that you guys might not know about her.

So mine's. I've done a fair bit of traveling in my life, and one of my bucket list items was to climb one of the seven seven summits. So I did Mount Kilimanjaro about four years ago. Took about four or five days, and it was extraordinary. It was absolutely extraordinary. I would Never do it again. And I recommend it to everybody.

Super cool. All right, last one before we go. Misty, do you want to take a stab at this one before we go?

Yeah, I, I am a bit of a traveler too. So little known fact about me is I have traveled cross country from Southern California to upstate New York on a four month trip in a Jeep where we walked the Narrows, tried barbecue in just about every state and saw some music concerts along the way and really delved into the, to the cultures of, of our country here state by state because we lived out of a Jeep. So that was interesting.

Totally awesome. All right, well, I think we should probably get started and, and cover what everybody came here for. Everybody who's listening right now. If you've come to really learn from some operators that are expert in change management, the title is From Vision to Reality Driving Large Scale Transformation with Change Experts. And we've got three really fantastic change experts. And then me, I don't know why. Just me. I'm the moderator. So I'm Richard Greaser, VP of Marketing at truv and I'm going to hand it off to Liz to give her introduction.

Absolutely. Thanks so much Richard and thanks so much for having us here today. My name is Liz Short. I'm CEO and founder of Short Solutions. We are a consulting company that helps businesses scale by optimizing their people processes and technology. My background is mortgage and technology with 20 plus plus years in both of those. And I have expertise in all types of lending, all types of institutions, banks, broker shops and IMBs. Most recently, before I launched my consulting company, I set up the technology team for the TPO line of business at Fairway Independent Mortgage. So happy to be here today and discussing things with you guys. Also, I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. Hang out there a lot. That's where I met these two wonderful women that are on the panel with me today. One of those is Misty. Misty, would you like to introduce yourself to the group next?

Hey everyone, thanks for being here with us. My name is Misty Snow and I am the founder and fractional COO of Grit. I have spent the last 30 years in fulfillment and tech operations in every channel possible from consumer direct high volume platforms to retail platforms and most recently in the wholesale space where I scaled and built Loan Depot wholesale. One of my mottos that I want to bring out in this conversation is, you know, as our industry goes through so much change, change. And change is complex and change is hard for all of us, even for those of us who love change. But My motto for my teams was always, you know, let's take the think out of the complexity of change. So hopefully today as we join in a month's conversation together, we can take some of the think out of the complexity of what we are calling change management. So thanks for being here today. I'm also on LinkedIn a lot. I'm here with Kristen as well and I will have her introduce herself next.

Thank you. Thank you Richard.

Thank you.

True. Thank you Liz. Thank you Misty. Thank you, Gabby. Happy to be here. So my name is Kristen Broadley. I am the founder of Assurance Solutions, also a consultant group and my expertise is in risk innovation, policy compliance. I have been in the industry for 20 plus years. I spent the bulk of my career at Rocket Mortgage. I started there, there were 800 folks. When I left there were 21,000. So I had an extraordinary opportunity to grow with and grow that organization. A lot of that being tech forward, change focus, transformational processes for the industry from retail to wholesale to correspondent to homes to cars to just about anything that you can think about, I think they dipped their toes in. So it was extraordinary opportunity there. And I've since spun off into consultant to help the larger industry. So happy to be, happy to talk about transformation, change management, the things that we've learned, you know, collectively in our 60 plus years. And I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Very cool. Well, you know what they say, you want to tell them what you're going to do, tell them and then tell them what you told them. Right? That's kind of usually what we how it's supposed to go. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to go through a bunch of polls, a bunch of questions all related to change management. We all these experts, the three of our experts here have also created a takeaway, a PDF for you to take away on change management, which is really awesome. It's a great checklist. You're going to get that in a follow up post webinar with the recording. So without further ado, we've got a lot to cover, everybody. So let's kick it off with a poll. It's our very first thing is a poll on change management. And that question should be popping up on your screen right now. Sorry panelists, you're not allowed to vote. But every but what you can do is, is the question here is how would you rate your organization at change management? 10 being the best, one being the absolute worst, dumpster fire that's out there. And so what I'D ask right now for the, for the, our esteemed panelists is, you know, at the companies that you are at, you know, some of the consulting with some of the lenders that, that you work with, you know, how are they at change management? Take a step.

I'll take it. Go ahead, Kristen.

So I think overarchingly, the experiences I've had in a variety of different organizations, either, you know, within my history or with organizations I've assisted, it's hit or miss. It can be localized to a single person who doesn't know how to facilitate and run change management, who's been assigned a project. It can be something that's systemic within a whole group. But overarchingly, organizations are probably mid to best. People are making their best efforts every day, and they're learning and growing.

Yeah, I, I agree with what you're saying, Kristen. I think people are trying their best, but I think that a lot of organizations just really struggle with this, whether it's lack of resourcing, lack of too much to do, not knowing where to start. I mean, there is a lot to consider. So I would agree. I think overall as a whole, it's definitely below where it needs to be significantly, especially in our industry.

Yeah, I love what you said there, Liz, about maybe underestimating. And I think that ties into culture and people as well. You know, we've got so many different audiences in our change groups, and I've led teams as big as six or seven hundred people, and there are lots of personalities in that group all trying to drive towards the same change. So I think, you know, as we bring in new skill sets and we evolve as an industry, we're having to learn who those audiences are and how they learn and how they adapt to change. And I think that's the next phase for our industry is really putting a close focus on who's our audience and how can they best adapt to the change that we're looking to implement as change leaders.

Awesome. So I'm going to end that poll and share the results with the group. I don't think it's a huge surprise to this, this, this group of panelists here because we talked about this beforehand and we guessed that it would come right around five, you know, and I think part of the reason was that I think a lot of folks don't have the perspective that, that these panelists do. Right. They, they're working with lots of different lenders. They've worked at a few different lenders. And, you know, I guess if you're in your own lane and you don't get exposure to other companies, how do you know whether you're doing well or not? Did the results surprise any of you? No, not really, No.

I don't think so. I think there's some context for the poll, too, and whether we're looking through the lens of cost or how well organizations are collaborating, how well they're adopting change, I think depending on whether or not we can unpack that, we can really know how well that organization is adapting to change. But I think the poll is right on. You know, I think there's still a lot of work to do, but I think we've also made great strides in how. How well we adapt and roll out change in our industry from, you know, looking back 10 or 15 years ago. So I think the poll's right on.

Cool. So I am going to kick off our first question, and my first question is to Kristen and Liz, and it's a simple question related to what we just did a poll on. You know, why do you think organizations struggle so much with change? So.

I think that when it comes to transformational change, I think they're, you know, across the industry, there's inertia. When you think about all of the vendors that have come into the space, all of the technology that's starting to lead into this space, the conversations that are being, that are happening all over the place saying, you know, either you're, you know, you're going to do the work, you're going to adapt to the tech, or you're going to get left behind.

There's.

There's an inertia in the industry. And I think that is in no small part due to the fact that folks don't know how to actually enact transformational change. And, you know, a big piece of that is the work that happens before the work. And that is. It's not enough to say, I have a vision that I am going to automate all of my income, you know, data interactions and calculations, and do things like that. You can have a vision, but you have to have goals and you have to have objectives. And is it singularly focused or are there multiple iterations to achieve that goal?

You.

You have to do the math. The devil is. Is in the data. When it comes down to it, what does that plan entail? How many resources? What does the priority look like? What's the Runway for completion? If it's singular focused, it can be very clear. If it's iterative, it's not. Is it 6 months? Is it 12 months? Is it 18, 24 months? How honest are you being with your folks in leadership? How honest is leadership being with the folks that are going to be doing the work as far as how long this is going to take in order to achieve success? What is. What's the roi? You have to do that in depth analysis. The budget, the cost, the resources, the prioritization, the. What are you not going to do so that you can get this done? And from, like, an ROI perspective, are you driving revenue? Are you driving resource allocation, capital retention? Is it a market share play? Like, there are a variety of different ways to look at how is this going to drive and enhance your business? And then when it comes down to it, do you have that executive buy in once you've done all of that work and you have those numbers and those budgets and the expectation and it's set, and you know that this is going to take X, you know, period of time? Are you having those courageous conversations with your executives so that you know that they're behind you for the long haul? So that as you're transforming, as you're hitting some of those. Those timelines and those roadmaps, as you're getting into the belly of the beast and you're just having to muscle through in the middle, how are folks continuing to support you through that program and process? We are dopamine centric. We're on social media. It's 90 second hits. It is a long, arduous process for transformational change. And so we've got to make sure that everybody's along for that sometime. One to two year ride.

Absolutely. Kristen, I love what you just said about the work before the work. Right. I think we all get excited and we want to jump right in, and that's really important. I would add three things. I think, number one, people are really bad at articulating what the big change actually is. And I think that you hit the nail on the head a little bit there, Kristen, but even deeper. Like, can you succinctly and clearly articulate to your leadership team, to the organization, to your customers why this is important in a way that really resonates with them? I think, second, we try to do too much at once. There's so much fragmented attention. If you're trying to do big, large, transformational change, you really have to get good at saying no to other things. And sometimes that's not fun, and sometimes that's not easy. But the more you can focus on the year, two years, whatever that Runway is and achieving those goals, the more successful you're going to be, and the quicker you're going to get that done. And I think the third thing is people struggle with understanding that successful implementation happens after go live. We all are super excited when the thing rolls out. The new technology is turned on, people are using it. That's like the beginning of where we really need to be now looking at how do we drive successful adoption of that technology. And so I think we need to invest more time post implementation and have that plan not only include that work before the work, but work after implementation to make sure that we've accounted for everything and have that full cycle of feedback and success.

Awesome. Hey. Just so everybody understands who's listening. We're watching the chat. So if you have questions, you've got three really great professionals here, and I'm going to make sure they answer your question. So just throw it in the chat if you've got a comment or a thought. And if you want to add some color to why you voted the way you voted just now and change management or on any of the polls, we'd love to see some of that. Otherwise, we're just kind of guessing. But feel free to write in the chat. We're going to kick off another poll here, and this poll is, are the inmates running the asylum? And while you're answering, Kristen, I'm going to ask you to explain what that means.

So are the inmates running the asylum? So ultimately, when it comes down to it, when it comes to change management and transformational changes, everybody running at once, change management by committee. If you think about it, another way to think about it is everybody remembers, or most folks remembers group projects in college. Nobody wanted to be in the group project in college because how many people, and I imagine I'll ask the panelists, how many people were ultimately the ones responsible for all the research, all the writing and turning it in? It always went down to like one or two folks. You had four folks. So if, if you are, if you are running a project by committee, the inmates are running the asylum.

I love it. All right, let's hear some results here, because that was pretty quick. Yes or no? And the answer is yes, the inmates are running the asylum. I think for a lender. What do you guys think? Does that mean that the, the loan officers, does that mean that just kind of, kind of like what inmates do we think we're talking about when we're thinking about an organization? Is it the processors, underwriters? I don't know.

So I think I. Good, Kristen. Okay. I think, you know, I'VE seen a, I've seen it a multitude of ways in a multitude of different organizations, right. There's definitely sales centric organizations where the sales team are whatever they say goes, right. And we're chasing after that. But, but I think another way lens to look at it is you can't have a leadership team that is agreement on every decision as well too. And so not having ownership amongst different projects. And I know we're going to get into this here in a little bit or you know, having different groups of people who have this group ownership in making decisions is I think any time where we can get into a case of the inmates running the asylum that we need to, that we need to stay away from 100%.

Liz, I was thinking the same thing and to take that even a step further and peel one more layer off and we'll talk a little bit about unpacking the data and data driven decisions because I think what ends up happening is when our organizations aren't quite practiced at being able to use their data to make decisions, it ends up being maybe one or two agendas which are maybe opinion driven or anecdotally driven. And a lot of times the front line has the data at their fingertips because they work transactionally and without even running an analysis, they sort of know, you know, one out of ten loans hits this or one out of, you know, five out of ten loans is successful. Yet those at the top aren't necessarily analyzing that data at that, at that degree. And so what ends up happening is, you know, for those who actually know transactionally what's going on in the organization and what needs to happen to fix it, there's a mismatch between the actual agenda at the top. And so the inmates could actually be either, either party in that example. But from that point on, that's really where the data should drive what's best for the organization, not necessarily for any one particular group. To Liz's point.

I have heard so many times in my career, and I bet you all have to, if you do this one thing, my business will increase 50%.

Right?

This one product, one product.

If you do this one thing, rural development, it's going to increase my, it's going to increase my, you know, my, my revenue by 50%. And you know what? And it's. Is it possible?

Sure.

But again, Devil data, you, if Misty, you said it really, really well. You have to do the work, you have to look at the data. The data will inform what's best for your organization and what your opportunity is and so instead of relying on those anecdotal. I feel, I think if someone says I feel or I think it means they don't know. And you need to know, Kristen.

I feel, I think in that competitors doing X.

Yes, yes.

It's the third too.

It's the fomo.

It's the FOMO of our industry.

Yeah.

Right. So if you feel or you think you don't know and you need to know.

I like it. I like it. People are emotional. Michael makes a really good point here. He says people hear and interpret things differently and it's really important that you define, you know, define integration, define terms essentially to make sure there's no misinterpretation. Jen has a question for the group here. How long or how many touches are typically involved in the work after the work as far as ensuring success, adoption, successful adoption success and adoption a year, about how long.

So I. Go ahead Kristen.

I'll, I'll, I'll, I look at it because I've got a, got a strong risk background and I've you know, done these types of transformative especially around income and assets and other things, new, innovative stuff into the market. It never ends. So there is, there is, there are controls that you put in place. One you have to make sure as you continue to evolve your organization once the transformation is done, is it successful, is it meeting the ROI that you thought you'd establish at the outset and then also you have to keep iterating. It's not set it and forget it. I don't know if everyone remembers Ron Popeil said it, I love it.

Yes.

So it's not set it and forget it. Throughout your organization you're building controls, you're building change management, you're consistently measuring is it continuing to meet the needs of the organization and then you are readjusting as necessary. So running the trains is something that's going to happen for after change management is done until you make another change.

Love it, Kristin. And for those who are overseeing and managing maybe more production oriented teams and Kristin, she comes from a lens of risk. So every regulatory change may change the dynamics of that change and has to be reassessed. And then from a production lens your pipeline dynamics change through. It could be seasonality, you know, whether it's whether you stress tested in a refi market now in spring you may be in a purchase market and your fallout and pull through may change and that could change the entire pipeline dynamics. Your consumer might be changing in their profile. That could change the pipeline dynamics and how that change is now affected by whatever is happening in our economy, which is then also leading through to your pipeline dynamics. So I don't think you could ever set it and forget it. But I do think there are cues that allow you to keep it set for that particular time in our business and then be queued to know when our business changes. And maybe we have an uptick in purchases to stick with My example, going back to that change and reassessing to see if that's going to make any different kinds of decisions on, you know, what the decisions were prior made and maybe a refi market.

I love it. Okay, so I want to get on to the rest of the content here, but I'm going to ask one final question. I'm going to ask just one panelist to answer this question. Raymond asks a great question. You know, there's a lot of shiny objects and attention span is really short with, with respect to change management. How do you deal with that when you have, you know, different things that are, people are bringing up that they want implemented, they want to change the organization. Anybody want to take a stab at this?

Sure. So I think we're really talking about two different types of things, right. I think this, our industry has short term changes that always have to be made. Right. We need a new product, a guideline change. We need to tweak this, we need to tweak that. Those constant things that need to be done in order to keep your business going. We're good at that in this industry. Right. Because we have to do them in order to keep the lights on. I think what we're really talking about are the larger scale projects and we haven't had that as industry historically. I think the secret is really figuring out how you can keep the lights on with those smaller scale changes that need to be done and again really collapse your focus into what that one large initiative is that you are looking at taking on outside of that change. And so telling the story, telling the why, telling the vision helps keep people in line on that big change as you're moving through those smaller changes that have to be done to keep up with just how our industry changes on a daily basis, honestly.

Love it, love it. Great answer, Liz. Kristen, next question is for you, who are the major stakeholders to consider when taking on a project that requires organizational change?

It's a, it's a great question and you know, it depends on the size of your organization. But there are a couple of truths and again, someone, someone else said a little earlier about words, words matter. And this is Something that when we did prep for this, we had a conversation about where we actually had disparate, not necessarily opinions, but understanding of what certain things were. And so it goes to tell you taxonomy, when it comes to transformation, change within your organization and in the greater industry is super important. Executive sponsors and owners are two very different things. When it comes to a transformational project, project or change management, you need a singular owner. One hand to shake and the other one that not is not so nice is one throat to choke. That was fun from, I don't know, 20 years ago or whatever it was when I first heard that. But the owner is the one who is responsible for the communication. They're responsible for checking in with all the SMEs, getting everybody together, keeping everyone on task, updating roadmaps, updating completion. An executive sponsor is someone who has political power within the organization, who has the opportunity and the resources to reprioritize if you're being deprioritized, who has the opportunity to be the cheerleader for that project, to talk about it because it's their vision that they bought into. You're the executor. You need to have a singular owner. You cannot run transformational projects by committee. Like we talked about a little earlier. It's like the, you know, it's like the, the folks are running. The asylum committee doesn't work because everybody pushes off the work and it becomes someone else's responsibility. It is one hand to shake. And so it is super important to both have that owner and then have someone that can have your back and help drive change within your organization and use their political power in order to make sure that you can continue to have the right resources that you need and that your particular tech and task is not deprioritized.

I love that answer. And I'll just chime in one thing. As a vendor, we look from, with the lenders for, for champions. Who's going to be the champion in the organization? Because we create a project plan afterwards and that person is going to own the lender side of the milestones for getting completed. Right. And we do the same thing with vendors that we use. Right. For our CRMs and stuff. They ask me, who's going to be your champion? So this is, this is how enterprises do it, do it well, right? You have a champion who really pushes this change. We're going to jump into two quick polls right now, back to back polls. I hope everybody's really ready for this. This is, they're very related. You guys are going to Enjoy this first poll. Are there large scale changes happening right now at your organization? So please give it, give that an answer right now. Just let us know. Are there, in the audience right now, are there large scale changes happening in your organization? How would, how would, just, just real quick, how, Liz, Misty, Kristen, how would you define a large scale change? Just an example I think would help the group.

Yeah, I mean, a large scale change could look like a true. I mean, since we're, since we're talking about, you know, change through the lens of like, like a true. With you today, Richard, that may seem like just one document in a loan file, right? It's, it's one line on a documentation checklist somewhere. When the reality is is that's a large scale change. If we can really look at that to optimize verification of income and employment, which affects every single loan in the pipeline. And now we're looking at it and analyzing how to actually implement that. Optimally, that's a large scale change. It affects everything from your point of sale all the way to your processing and underwriting right down to your closing and how you manage your verifications of employment. That is a large scale change. And I think anytime you're impacting multiple parties and cross functional areas, it can be considered a large scale change.

Thank you, Misty. I did not ask you to, to say that. Just so everybody knows.

No, he did not. But it's a good example.

Yeah, true will be your guinea pig for today. So look, everybody is, it looks like the majority. Not everybody, excuse me, 75 of the audience is in the midst of a large scale change. I want to see the next poll that is related to that. One of those of you who said yes, here we go. How are these changes going? Like, how's it going? You got large scale change happening. 75% of the group that that answered said they have a large scale change happening. 1 to 10, 10. It's amazing. You know, we know what we're doing. We're experts. One, it's a complete dumpster fire. This is, I gotta abandon ship right now and maybe, you know, take a loss on this ROI for this project. Looks like I'm gonna give it just a second to get some answers and we'll call it in. We'll call it looks like, looks like middle of the road. What do you do these answers surprise you? I mean, we're talking about large scale change, like implementing a true or a new CRM or something like that. And people are kind of middle of the road with the how successful, how Successful. It's going to.

I think this is relatively optimistic and realistic, depending. Not optimistic, but realistic. It makes me feel that, you know, organizations are in a good, a good spot. I would be honest in saying that if it was much higher, I wouldn't know how truthful it was maybe about some of these things because I just think it is hard. Right. Even if it's successful, it's still hard to do. You know, I, I've never gone through a large scale change that has been a 10 all the way through the whole time, if you know what I mean. Right. There's going to be some roadblocks along the way.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I, Michael made a really good point. You know, how the widespread staffing level changes since 2022 affected these projects and how do you get them back on track? Anybody want to take a stab answering that? I love that question.

That's a great question. I think it's about, you know, I'm going to talk a little bit about identifying your audiences. I've mentioned it a couple of times, but I think there are ways able to identify your, your advocates. Even when you've got maybe a new team or a fresh mix of a team because you know, you've, you've maybe pared down some of your team or had to make changes to your skill sets over the past couple of years, there's been a lot of that. And so when you're finally settled from that and you're ready to roll something big, I think it's time to have, you know, a few different ways to identify like maybe your focus groups, who is speaking up in your focus focus groups, who are your advocates, who are your change resistors. I also think there's tons of great assessments out there that can point out the strengths on your team and those who might be innovators and be able to help you lead change. And sometimes you've got to take stock and inventory of your core competencies on your team, especially when you've had some either turnover or had to make major changes to your headcount. I think in order to do that, you've got to know what your inventory of strengths and weaknesses are on your team. So you know, you can have everybody play to those you know and pull those up to be able to add their strengths to the table. Like advocates, innovators, they can help in peer to peer management and help run the project and have it be successful. And they can actually help you pull up those who might be laggards or change resistors in order to have them build trust in the change, you know, and everybody works together. That's what true collaboration looks, looks like. And in today's market you've got to have utility players, you've got to have folks that know how to do a couple of things and most people out there want to help on projects. You know, we've, in my past I've had closers in the room, underwriters in the room, load set up in the room. Anybody that, that was doing the job was helping with the project as a subject matter expert. But also they were learning the project side of the business and I think learning who is right for that table is, is the only key to that matter.

I like getting the different perspectives. Go ahead, Liz.

I know, I love everything that she said and absolutely you have to know your resources. I think we would also be remiss, not to mention an opportunity in fractional help. Right. That's a lot of what Misty, Kristen and I do and bring to the table. So I think for an organization that might have had to reduce their staff significantly and they're looking to come in and figure out how to now really kickstart a large project, considering bringing in fractional resources is a way to not only do it for maybe a lower long term overhead cost, but really bring in experts that can help you get this stuff moving very quickly as well too. So I think a combination of being creative with your own internal resources and looking outside for the right folks that can come in and kind of help make magic happen is, is right now what a lot of institutions that are doing it successfully are leaning on.

Love it. Misty, I'm going to ask you to share the PDF that that this group has created for the folks that are, are listening right now and do a quick, quick brief walkthrough of it. And if you don't mind touching on roi, because we had that question in the, in the comments and they really wanted to know how important ROI and ROI calculators are before the project, during the project, after the project, that kind of thing you can tell me and I'll move it.

Yeah, yeah. If you want to move to. Obviously those are our friendly, friendly faces on the front. But I think, you know, first of all, just to take a quick overview of what we're, we'll share with you after this. This is really the three of our sort of, of we call ourselves the three headed monster, right? The three heads put together on how we've all implemented change. And you know, interestingly enough they weren't that different. We all come from category one organizations. And we know how to gather the resources, do the work before the work, and do all of the planning in between the what I believe is concepts. So right here you're looking at what Richard's showing here is setting the foundation. So that's really understanding the concept of the change. What is, what does future state look like? And, and why is that our optimal future state? And then what are the gaps in order to get there? Why is, why is that future state important to us? And then it moves into what I call sort of the messy middle of it, which is all of the planning of. Okay, what's the business impact of it, who's impacted and who are we going to need to sponsor this? Which Kristen had so many great notes on sponsoring. This is I think a four or five page document. If you want to maybe flip through a couple of the pages. I could touch on a couple of other things, Richard, if that's what you want to do. But I think to Richard's point as well, on roi, you've got to look at, I've always looked at ROI from a few different lenses because not every lens is going to be the right lens for your change that you're looking at. So it could be that it's important to make a cultural shift for future change. And, and the ROI on that is probably going to look like headcount and skill set or for like bringing true back in or like a verification application in. You really want to look at cost. I mean the whole reason you're looking at that is consumer experience, user experience and cost effectiveness and using that as your anchor to your ROI as you pull in your calculations. And I think maybe a chapter two of this checklist could be an ROI calculator where we put in some plug in values and show you where to plug in what the target ROI is. And whatever metric you're deciding to use that lens you're looking in from and then being able to back into that through the resources you need to get it done, the time it's going to take to ramp that change and then, you know, what does true adoption actually look like? And then continuing to improve on that and check back into that to see is it doing what we actually thought it would do. And that really is the full cycle of an ROI calculation. And if it pulls in, it should be pulling in those who are in finance, those who are in production, those who are in projects and tech. All of those parties should be considered. And like I mentioned before, some of your, even some of your quality defects on and losses on the post closing side. The whole full 360 of ROI is really what should be considered when you're implementing something new.

Love it. I'm going to stop sharing this. We're going to share this, this toolkit with you afterwards. This PDF that they've worked hard to create. I love it. And now I'm going to ask you a question, Misty. Where do you even start? I mean this is a lot that your checklist is four pages of checklists that people need to do to really drive this. Right. But they're all important. So where does somebody even start? It feels overwhelming as someone in the audience just watching.

Yeah, I mean it is a lot. And I think it's the truth. Right. I think if we can, if we can come at this with, you know, really what the work is, we can be disciplined and responsible about the change with our teams. But back to your question, Richard, about, you know, where do we even start? I've always, I've always started with the statement of begin with the end in mind. And really the irony of that statement is we're beginning with truly understanding what our current state is. And so many of us know what our current process is. It could be published in a PMP document or a training document. It could just be tribal knowledge on the floor, a checklist floating around. But it is a process that's, that's known for this element that's under the microscope of change. But to understand the process is different than understanding the current state. So the current process is the documented steps you take to complete the process and the responsible parties that do that. The current state is the impact of that process. And I do that through looking at data and understanding how many of this as this is, this process that I've implemented, how many of my transactions that run through this process are following the happy path that I thought would be a happy path. How many are falling into maybe an exception bucket? How often does data change mid process that causes me to go back and rework that, that transaction and maybe cause a duplicate touch? Do I have duplicate touches where maybe we have some checking the checker situation going on? Really being able to dig into the data that is set behind that process will tell you where there is a opportunity for change and that will then tell you where is the change the most optimal. So where am I maybe running up cost in duplicate touches? That's a problem that we need to solve. Let's prioritize that problem in the change. Are we looking to improve profitability at the same time. And what do we need in order to do that? That do we maybe have a customer service component and a consumer experience component to this where we want to look at cycle times. And of course all of this rolls into ROI like we just talked about. But the data keeps the vision objective and it keeps the vision objective to, to what the whole organization needs rather than that kind of anecdotal, emotional decision making that we started this conversation about. And what I, how I'll wrap this up is looking at your, your current state in a deep way and then laying over what you want your end state to be. You'll be able to identify the gaps in between those two states and that is where the change should begin. And that's where you start to map and back into what you need for each one of those gaps to solve for them.

Love it, Misty. I love it. So for if you have questions by the way, on anything that Misty just said, throw them in the chat. We'll get to them, I promise. And I'm going to address them live. While we're going through this, for this next section, what we're going to do, I volunteer myself myself as tribute. We are going to throw the, I'm going to show what true is, the true dashboard. And then we have three operators here that are going to treat it as an example, right. For implementing large scale change. And this could be anything, it could be a CRM, it could be true, you know, so let me start by just showing everybody what is true. It'll take me two seconds. I'm going to show you the product live. This is a emulator of what the borrower is actually seeing. So true verifies income, employment, assets and insurance. Right. And it is a consumer permission platform. It's different than what lenders are used to be doing for verification of income and employment through the incumbent. Right. The incumbent is just behind the scenes selling data back and forth between lenders. And you know who the incumbent is. Well, true is consumer permissions, meaning the borrower is actually logging into their payroll provider and explicitly giving permission for the lender to pull their W2s, their pay stubs, directly into the LOS and POS, whichever you decide to implement it with. And so here's an example. Someone works at Meta. Just so you know, that's Facebook. Look, we've mapped Meta to their payroll provider. You can see its workplace. The, the borrower signs in and they're done. It takes two seconds, they're done. And then on the back end you can see in the LOS or pos in a JSON file, we deliver everything that you're used to getting the same format that you're used to getting. Just give it a second, it'll load is their identity, it's their income. It will load, I promise. Their identity, their employer information, how long they've been employed. You'll see annual income summary, payroll statements, bank accounts, W2s. And all of that, of course, here is delivered in a JSON package if you want it native directly in a pos if you want it delivered in a, if you want it in your los. And if, let's say you use encompass, it'll be in your E folder. So that's enough. On, on what true is. Now that you have an idea on what true is, let me just hop back. So my question here is for Misty and Kristen, now, how should a lender think about optimizing their waterfall for verifications? And a waterfall is, you know, some, some people optimize for cost, some people optimize for speed, some people want accurate data. There's a lot of variables that come involved. And the waterfall is okay, if you, if, if you put truth at the top and you get a hit, great. If you don't get a hit, then where do you go after that? Is it a manual doc upload? Do you actually, after that pick up the phone and call hr? You know what I mean? There's a waterfall. I think most operators here are familiar with the waterfall. So my question for Misty and Christy is, I'm going to give you two examples, all the pros and cons. And how do you, how would you go about working with a lender to, to have them implement a trove in their waterfall? So the lender one example is a lender could optimize for cost. Excuse me, A lender could be like a direct consumer where, you know, they're buying leads that some of them might not be quality leads and you might not want them automated up front. And then you might have like a retail location where it should be automated. You know, most of them are very high quality. So I'll just, I'll stop talking now and let Misty, Misty and Kristen take a stab at answering.

Raina, I'll start.

Kristen, if you're good with that.

I.

Think, you know, we just talked about end state, and I think this question rolls right cleanly into looking at the end state, whether it be, you know, anchored down between an improvement in cost, an improvement in, in profitability, cycle times, or overall roi. And it does vary by channel. Right. So I think we need to look at like for instance a consumer direct may be a little bit more concerned about pull through and losing some of their, their cost investment if they run through the point of sale wholesale may be even more so concerned about that because they're not owning the origination yet the loan is partially processed. When the loan gets to, that gets to the lender, the wholesale lender. So weighing between whether or not you run the VOI at point of sale versus underwriting is really comes down to what types of data surety do you have at different points in the, in the process. So what I mean by data surety is that's the point that your data is complete and not likely to change. So what I would do is manually test some of your assumptions because some of you, even when I say that have an idea or a thought on, I believe that this is the case in my organization. But I would say is tee up some of your options whether it be a truv or some of the competitors or maybe it is a vendor supported solution. But manually test those waterfall solutions against your, your actual pipeline before investing in automation and after you apply those targets to your vendor, manually track the results and track your reworks as well. And just put together what I call a champion challenger type of platform where you're really looking at the vendor and your current process and also your optimal process that you're going for and compare all three and really track the results maybe for 60 or 90 days to really determine by scorecard which vendor comes out on top based on what you're trying to achieve. So whether that be cost, which vendor is the most cost effective. As we ran these tests for the last 60 to 90 days and then look to implement.

I, I agree with that. And that's, you know, that's very tactical when you look at where it lives in your process and how you're thinking about doing the integration. I'm going to take it a little higher up a little more 40,000 foot view. From the perspective of as you're planning transformational change management, which is where you're looking at things when it comes to vendor solutions, what are you solving for is, is the transformational change income? Because if it's income, you have to think about employed, you have to think about self employed, you have to think about passive, you have to think about a variety of things. And every organization has different percentages of, of employed to self employed to passive to, you know, the, you know, you've got the gig economy, you've got all sorts of different income that you have to contemplate. So when you look at that project plan, when you're looking at transformation, where is the biggest bang for the buck for and I, I'm going to put this out there and for some of the folks you know on the webinar, this may be inaccurate, but employed is usually the number one, you know, income type that I've seen come through organizations. So that's what you're going to look at first. And there are a variety of different ways that you can do that type of verification. So when you're looking at a vendor like True or another vendor out there, what is, what's the hit rate? What's the percent of success? If you are going to have a client engage with a platform and they don't have success, that can inform the client experience. So how are you looking at those vendors? How are you challenger, champion, Misty, to your point? And then how is that solving for solutioning, creating a percentage of success that meaningfully moves the needle on optimizing inefficiency and then how do you go to your next step? Be it self employed, be it passive. At some point there may be an income where the juice isn't worth the squeeze in order to do that type of automation. But doing, you know, working with the data, working with your current process, making sure you're optimizing it and taking out, you know, a good look at the success of the program and product that helps inform your waterfall.

Good stuff.

So you can see in the chat there's some folks in the audience that are actually solving this for real right now, right at their organizations. Joe is working on gig income, right. And verifying as I understand it, through bank statement analysis. That's not easy. And you know, calculating that income correctly is important. Right? Any you guys want to comment on that? Have you seen that before in your project?

Yeah, definitely. And I think, I think we've got some good tech coming up that is, that can support that. But I think up to this point it's been, you know, it's been so product driven as well. Not, not every agency agreed with, with gig income. And I think we're slowly getting to a place where it's, it's commonplace and it's understood on, you know, how operations should deliver on, on calculating gig income. But, but I do think, you know, Richard, I don't mean this isn't a plug for you, but I do think that trove can help with gig income because otherwise you're looking at multiple W2s and multiple calls to HR or multiple waterfalls and maybe hits, hits that are failing, which just causes rework and duplicate touches to my earlier point. So I really do think that you should. I think the bank statements is. Is a good option, but I think there are some other options that might be able to put the consumer in the driving seat a little bit and have them tell you what their situation is more clearly so you can validate exactly what their situation is, rather than maybe us making some assumptions based on what the loan officer put on the application versus what we see on the bank statements. I think that's where the messy middle starts to come up with some of the gig income. And I think we can solve for that through some of the consumer permission data.

Yeah. So I would love to keep going on. True. Trust me, I would as the guinea pig. But we have a lot of questions and polls left and I want to make sure we get through them really quick. So I'm actually going to kick off a poll right now, and it's related to the next question that I'm going to tee up to Liz and Kristen. But the poll is how would you rate your relationship with your vendors? Come on, folks, this is a softball right here. You know, everybody likes to throw their vendors under the bus. Just kidding. Some of them are great partners. That's really what we're supposed to be. You know, Let me ask you, our panelists here, how do you feel about relationships with vendors from the average lender?

Well, I mean, I think it varies across the board. Right. And I think part of it is, is really making sure that on the lender side, they can identify what their needs are and that they're pulling in that Right. Vendor partner to meet those needs. And that's not just product needs, that's relationship needs as well too. Right. Is it a good cultural fit? And I think sometimes that's a piece that could be missing and could lead to maybe some of the strained relationships that we see. There's more than just just product that comes across. I think innovation, customer service, all of those things are important. And you have to understand how your organization is going to fit into that vendor as well, too.

Totally. I'm going to share the poll results and I'm going to actually ask the audience if you put on. On the poor, if you related poorly, I would say the fours and I would even say the fives. The fours and the fives. If you, if you voted that way, there's only a couple folks. Folks who did. If you can share why you put Four and a five. And then, you know, this is sculling, scoring, skewing. Excuse me, I can speak. Skewing towards the higher end compared to our other polls. If you look at the results with seven kind of being that that medium median kind of looks like a 7, which is pretty good. I mean, I guess that means that their relationships are pretty good with their vendors. You know, I think that makes sense given the economy and how lenders have been cutting a lot of tech spend with their vendors and the ones they're keeping, you know, they better work, they better produce. Right. Care to comment?

I, I would love to add to this because I've been on both sides. I was, I was a lender client and I also was a vendor, helped run, you know, a vendor organization. And I think Jen Chapman said she's like, initial setup usually goes well, but ongoing support sometimes lacks. And that's kind of the anecdotal. That's what I've been hearing in the industry. That's what I've seen when it comes down to vendor management, especially as we're moving into a place where you have a lot of vendors that are specializing and creating a buy versus build scenario where lenders can have cutting edge technology, right? Transformationally changing their organizations by leveraging SMEs that are experts in certain spaces. And it creates a much more level playing field. You don't have to compete with a rocket who is building a lot of their stuff, because you have again, some of these smaller organizations that are smart, that are agile, that are accessible to lenders, that, you know, that you know, don't necessarily have the resources to have a fifteen hundred dollar or a fifteen hundred person tech team. So when you look at your vendors, vendor management and oversight is something that historically this industry has not done well. A vendor and a lender, that partnership should be symbiotic and it, it should be communicative. And both sides can be at fault. Lenders don't want to spend the time talking about the health of the program, talking about the, the results, talking about all these things. They're busy, they're running the trains. When you think about a vendor, they're in fact your teammate. They are a team within your organization. They are responsible for delivering both to help run the trains better, faster, more optimized, and also deliver on the client experience. Experience. And so in order for that to be successful, that communication has to happen both ways. A vendor is successful when a lender is. So when you think about the true north of a lender being Successful and trying to serve the client, the vendor's right there with them. If the lender goes out of business, the vendor loses a client, they lose revenue as well. So they are rowing together. But sometimes in this industry, we don't necessarily treat vendors the way they should be treated. We don't engage the way they should be treated. And then vendors, sometimes, once they get the sale, don't engage the lenders in the way that they should as well. So it's something that you can establish within your group. You think about them as an internal team, someone that is, in fact, reporting to you whose results you are responsible for. And if you create those strong communication channels and those strong relationships, your organization and you will be better for it.

Love that.

That, Love that. All right, so we're running short on time here, so we're going to get to these next couple questions. Liz and Kristen, based on the poll we just did, how does a lender's point of view differ from a vendor in terms of successful outcomes?

I think, I think, Richard, we hit on a few of these. At the end of the day, a vendor wants to implement their product and their features. You know, that is their, their core root of being successful. Successful. A lender needs to implement those features and products that make them successful as well, too. And so I think communication and understanding both ways can help both of those things be true. Right. And meet all of those needs in a way that, that helps both of those partnerships. I think one of the most important things that you can do is going into the relationship on the lender side is really define what those needs are for your vendor. Right. A vendor doesn't necessarily understand what problems you have that you're coming to the table to solve in totality. A lot of times they might say, hey, we heard about you. We think you're great. Right? Let's not talk about what technology or what solution. Let's talk about what problem so then we can craft that relationship. I think we just have to understand our needs can be different and we can still have a very, very good, good partnership throughout the, the term of our relationship together.

Yeah, I, I would agree with that. And I probably, I probably went through the whole arc of how to be successful, communicate health and metrics. If, and I'm a data nerd, and data is, is. Is how I live my life. Unfortunately, the. If you have monthly success metrics, if you have, you know, with all of the vendors that I've worked with, you create here the things that are important to me in my organization. Here are the metrics that tell me that you're doing well. So let's monitor those things. Right. And it's only three or four. Right. If you have, if you have 10 key risk indicators, none of them are key risk indicators. So you identify those things that show you that that vendor relationship is, is moving in the correct direction, that the tech is continuing to work. It's just part of governance and monitoring of that relationship. And as you have that communication and as you continue to grow that relationship and you treat them, you know, a vendor treats a lender and a lender treats a vendor as teammates, then you end up in a much better situation. And we are getting more vendor dependent.

Yes.

Than we've ever been and we will continue to be more vendor, vendor dependent as we continue to go on. So knowing how to manage your vendors, learning how to manage your vendors now, how to create those relationships, successful relationships has never been more important.

We're a little over and I want to thank everybody for staying. Please stay. We're going to get through these last couple questions. I'm going to quickly address some of the comments. Jen, I totally understand how you feel. You know what, I was at a conference, the lender was screaming at their POS right in front of me and they were like, what's my number? POS person was like, I don't know what you mean. In priority, priority amongst your clients, what's my number? And the POS rep was like, honestly, like number 50 got a thousand clients. You're about number 50. And the guy was so angry, he was like, what do you mean, number 50? Based on what? And he's like, yeah, it's based on licenses, you know, that we have for our pos and you know, basically revenue at the end of the day. And, and we have to prioritize projects. We have a lot of projects. And the lender actually acquiesced and was like, you know what, we do the same thing with our projects. We have to prioritize work. And they're a small POS. They have like 30 or 40 people. They have to do that. It's kind of the nature of the business at the end of the day. But it's something that I would say to everybody is do your research on the company, maybe talk to some clients that are around your size and see how they feel about it. Right. I think the other comment that Gemma said is you're 100. Right. It's a two way relationship. Right. We rely on you as a vendor and the lenders rely on Us as well. And then finally, Michael, successful outcomes are really important. True. Does that with only charging lenders. Sorry, excuse me, Only. Yeah, only charging lenders. When a successful verification comes back, you know, send out a verification. So I think if you're. As long as your business is built on like the right outcomes. I totally agree with you. Before we end here, Liz, I want to give you a chance to answer this question. What is required from leadership to ensure adoption?

Absolutely three things I think. Number one, they have to have buy in, they have to want the change. If you're at the top and you don't believe that this is necessary, useful or it's going to happen, it's not, you might as well just throw the money away right now. Number two, you got to build in accountability for the change. If you are not holding people accountable for doing the new thing, for holding their new role, for what, for evangelizing it, it's again not going to happen. You have to have that accountability. And number three, you need a hype squad as a leader. You cannot be out there doing it alone. So find your change champions, your hype squad, whoever that is and get them involved, get them out there and get them evangelizing for you. Build that excitement so you can successfully get that change implemented on the other side.

Whatever my title is on my LinkedIn, I'm changing it to hype squad. That's, that's 100%.

I love it. I think you should. I love it.

All right, well, send us off with this question. Misty, Liz, Kristen, this is the last question. I think this is a really a good send off question. How do you change mindsets and workflows that some people might have been using for decades. That's at the crux of the issue.

So I think this starts, this starts with executive leadership. The folks that have political capital, the folks that folks don't engage with all the time. When an email comes through from the them, people pay attention, they read it and those folks have to be involved at the earliest outset. Folks need to know this is coming. There's going to be, there's excitement about it. This executive, you know, individual, this person who is, is the hype squad, right? They start being the hype squad and then they become the accountability champion as it goes through the process. Us. Why, why, why, why, why? What's in it for others? Just a little anecdote. I remember when we went paperless, I hated it. I wanted my file, I wanted my little finger condom so I could go ahead and flip through the paper like it it. But we didn't have anybody doing those things. So once we learned how to market change within our organization, it's a marketing push, then you can help change hearts and minds.

I love it. I would piggyback off of what Kristen said about the why. You have to keep reinforcing the why. Tell the why. Tell the why. Tell the story. Retell the story. You cannot keep explaining this enough. And it's not just at the beginning. It's through the whole change and it's after implementation when people are doing it, when there's things that are wrong in the beginning that you're working through. You've got to keep that message and that that story of the why consistent to help people stay on board.

Yeah. And for me, it would be everything that Kristen and Liz just said, but also creating a culture of safety. I think the more safe that the team and your and your employees feel to raise a hand or feel resistant to change or even feel innovative about change to advocate for change, however they're actually feeling about it is important for them to be able to raise a hand and be vocal. So you as a leader can then adjust your messaging for everything that Liz and Kristin just said and adjust your messaging to the audience in a way where they can hear and understand and be able to adapt at the rate that they need to adapt to to really be able to gain adoption on your change and really be able to realize all of the ROI that you're trying to get get to. So culture of safety.

I love it. Everybody, we're over time. I want to thank Misty, Kristen and Liz. Thank you so much for giving your time to everybody. I want to also thank the audience this really fantastic participation. Great questions, great comments. We're going to be doing this in a couple part series so you can look out for another series of this that's coming in the future. Find Kristen, find Liz, find Misty on LinkedIn. Connect with them. Find me if you to want want and let's and and connect if you're organiz if you feel your organization organization needs help with with your operations and with change management. They're experts. It would love to help you hop on, give, you know, give send them a note and have a conversation. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks guys.

Thanks so much guys.