Leading Change | Rose Hollister, Managing Director, Hollister Associates

Alright, nice to see everyone trickling in. We'll give it about another one more minute and then we'll, we'll get started.

Okay.

Great, so welcome everybody. If you don't know me, we'll start there. I'm Christopher Parsons, I'm the founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture, and I'm happy to welcome you to this deep dive on leading change featuring Rose Hollister. So many of you on this call have been to a KA Connect conference in the past, which is our knowledge management conference for the AEC industry. And we've had 10 of them starting in 2010. And as we switched to virtual this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, we wanted to make sure that we kept pursuing the same things virtually that we pursued, that we pursued in our live events, which is helping to connect, you know, this industry and this network and help you learn from and with your peers and build your network and share ideas that are useful. And that's our goal with this series that we started in May of deep dives. And so we try and interview really interesting people on a topic that matters and then we provide this optional Hangout afterwards to let you connect in small groups and talk about your experiences. So our structure today, we'll have about 35 minutes of discussion with Rose and I, and then we're going to have a dedicated Q&A time at the end, and we try and leave a lot of time for questions. And if you're new to Zoom webinars, there's a Q&A box down at the very bottom of your screen, and in the Q&A box you can add in your questions, and then if you see a question that somebody else asked that you'd really like us to address, you can upvote it by clicking a like button. And so what's going to happen is we'll ask you guys, as you're hearing things or wanting questions, log them throughout, you know, the webinar. And then at the end, we're going to go through them in order of which ones have the many most votes from top to bottom. So get in there, ask your questions, vote for other people, and then we're going to take questions at the end. If you signed up for the 60-minute Hangout afterwards, we'll be leaving this webinar and heading over to a Zoom meeting so we can use that breakout feature. If that sounds intriguing to you and you want to stick around and keep talking in a small group and then also with Rose and I again, you can join us even if you didn't sign up. I'll just share a link at the end. Okay, so this portion, the deep dive portion, is being recorded and will be available later on today. I'll send around the video. We are taking collaborative notes in this session, so Susan Strom, our Director of Client Success, who many of you know, is taking notes during this session in a Google Doc. You can feel free to jump in and take notes alongside her. I'm going to put that in the chat right now and send it to everybody. So feel free to add notes, questions, quotes, links, resources, books, etc. And once the webinar is over, we'll kind of tidy that up and then send around a final version to everybody. Okay, that's enough for me and logistics. Let's get on to our featured guest, who is Rose Hollister. Um, and so some of you on this call actually know who Rose is because she gave a keynote presentation at our Synthesis workshop in Chicago last October, and it was a big hit with this community. And what I think is great about Rose is she provides this really great balance between kind of theoretical frameworks and then practical tools for leading change. Um, so prior to founding her consulting firm Hollister Associates, Rose directed the Leadership Institute for McDonald's Corporation. She served as the Vice President of Organizational Learning and Development and Equity Office, and she also taught global change and global leadership at Northwestern University. So at the beginning of this pandemic, I reached out to Rose, hi Rose, to ask her how she observed it kind of affecting leadership and change management, and in the course of that discussion, it just became like very obvious that I wanted to bring her slash you here to join us. So I'm happy to welcome you, Rose, to K Connect. Thanks for Thanks for coming.

Thank you.

So I think I'd like to start kind of with you. Could you tell us just kind of at a high level how both kind of like how you got into teaching about change, but then also consulting with organizations about change?

Well, you just mentioned Equity Office, Chris, and when I was at Equity, we did a massive business transformation. So we did a reduction in force, but we really restructured the entire organization. So I already was over the organization development part and the training part, but we were going through so much change that I literally staffed up an entire team of change agents that were from the outside, and we crafted a change program to roll the change through all our regions. Well, um, one of these external consultants taught at Northwestern, and she kept asking me to come do guest spots at Northwestern, and I loved it and had great fun. And then they called and said, We have a course on change. Would you come teach this? And so that began. I started teaching there in 2006 and have taught there off and on since. And it's just been great to get your thoughts challenged and to have students say, well, here's what I'm doing. What about this? And so I've just really enjoyed how it's a sharing of what I know, but also fine-tuning it as you help people navigate it.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, let's just start there. And we got some really good questions in from people that registered for the session. So Josh Anderson. At AAHUS asked, you know, if you could boil it down, what's the single most important factor of change management in your view?

Well, I think that's a hard question. I'm gonna say that first. That's a hard question. But it's also that what is it that— what's the change that you are trying to make happen? And so the most important factor of change management is really being crystal clear clear on what are we moving from and what are we moving to, and then why does this make sense for our business? Because if I can't give you the facts, if I can't explain it, if it doesn't make business sense, people aren't going to get behind me. And so I'd say the most important fact is being crystal clear on where we're going and then how does this make sense for the organization overall.

And why do you think that organizations struggle? Like, where— so yes, that's great advice. So why is that hard?

Because if you have a senior team and somebody's over HR, they have their change initiatives they're trying to get through, and the IT department has theirs, and the operation department has theirs, and the sales department has theirs. And so if you're sitting there as a leader, you're getting bombarded with changes that everybody's trying to do. And which of these is most important? Am I resourced to do this? How do I make time to do everything you're asking to? Because I still have my day job. And, and so many times all these changes are coming, but too many times the organization hasn't stepped back and said, What does it take from time and resources to make this happen? And have we set people up for success? And have we thought through the true impact of this? And so many times there's this understanding at a top level, but the impact of what we're asking people to do or what it would take for this to be successful might not have gotten the attention that it needs to have. And the other thing to build on that, Chris, is that a lot of times it's like, okay, you're in charge, Chris, you're the change agent, go make this happen. Well, maybe as a senior leader, I need to be sending that message. Maybe I need to be out there at the front. Maybe I can't delegate the role of change agent as much as maybe I'd like to.

Mm-hmm. You said something interesting about, you know, facts. And communicating. So one of the things that I think I, you know, you and I've talked about several times over the last several months, um, is this idea of speaking to business in their language, not in yours. And so you mentioned IT and HR, knowledge management, whatever it is. Um, can you speak to that a little bit about like about how to make a business case and why that's so important for making a change?

So Yes, I'd be happy to, because I think what happens is people say, this makes sense, I want to— I'm a senior leader, this makes sense, I want to do it, here we go. And they jump over the why does this make sense to the organization, why, what will this help us do, will it help us on quality issues, will it help us save money, will it help us get better customer service, will it help us on employee engagement. People have good intentions, I'm not saying that they don't, And if I can't put the positive impact on the organization into a way where it makes sense to others, when people are bombarded with all these changes, they're going to go to the one that makes the most sense for them. And people want to do things and people feel stretched so— people are stretched so thin that we're going to pick the one that either has our boss's biggest attention, or that we get rewarded for, or that is going to help my area. And if there's an overall change that we need the organization to make, we've got to make sure we've helped everybody in that organization understand what that means they, they need to start doing and stop doing. And a lot of times I don't think there's enough time spent on let's set it up for success, not let's just say we're going to do this and go for it.

And so you, the word that you've been dancing around but not saying is resistance to change, right? And when you and I, for those people on the webinar, Rose and I went through every question that got asked in your kind of registration forms, and that was one of those things that kept coming up over and over again. You know, and Katie at DPS phrased it this way, it's like, what's the number one cause of resistance to a change effort. And so what say you to that, Rose?

Well, I'd say that the number one, um, reason for resistance is, I'm not really sure where you're taking me. I might not be ready to let go of what I know, and I don't really know. So, so we're moving from something into something, and, and actually, I encourage everybody just make a chart. What are we moving from? What are we moving to? And we all kind of naturally resist things. We want to go with what's comfortable. We want to go with what we know. So you've got to paint the picture of why the change is something that I want to support you on. And you've got to paint the picture over and over and over. You or a senior leader coming out and saying, here's the change, we want you to support it, and it's out on a town hall or something else, That's not enough. I need to be included. I need to be asked. If you're asking me to change processes, don't assume you understand it to the level you might think you do. So, so I'd say the number one reason for resistance is that as the change filters through the organization, it hasn't had enough time for people to ask questions, be heard, weigh in. And, and one of, um, Dori Bleshoff, who taught at Northwestern with me for years, has always said, people want change done with them, not to them. And so if I feel like you've done this with me, if you've asked me what's important, if you've given me a space for my questions, if you've given me time to understand it, I am much more likely to come with you. Where if you tell me to do something, and you tell me there's a change, and there's not enough detail, and I don't get a safe place to ask my questions, I need time to get myself on board, but the organization has to give me enough information for me to feel like I know enough to get on board.

Right. I mean, what I'm hearing from you, and maybe I'm making this up in my own mind, is kind of that resisting a change that is ill-defined, not explained, not collaborative seems somewhat rational.

Yes, it does.

Right?

And so resisting change is maybe a strength unless it's been— I've been involved in it and I can understand it and I can see where things are going and understand why it makes sense.

Well, and let's say you're paying me as a leader or as an employer. Here are my incentives. And this change is going to take lots of my time. It's going to take me away from what you're asking me to do. You haven't taken anything off my plate. You've asked for all these extra things. So it's also that a lot of times we send very conflicting messages. And then I think all of us have had the experience where there's a change that comes and then another one comes and another one comes. So sometimes you have to know— people, like you said, they, they're rational. They step back, they wait. Because they want to know if this one's really going to happen. And right, we are all smart enough to say, okay, the person who's the sponsor of this is the weakest leader on the senior team. Oh, should I get behind that? Oh, this one over here, this person has the most clout in the entire system. I'm going here, I'm following that. So we're also smart enough to know that all changes don't have the same amount of support organization.

Would you say it's— I don't know, I'm just playing this out— like, if you encounter— if you're trying to make a change and you start encountering resistance, it feels to me like one of the responses would be meeting that with curiosity and not with writing a story about how these people are just resistant, if that makes sense. Like, maybe it's telling me I haven't done I haven't done enough of my due diligence in terms of communication or engagement or whatever it might be.

I would say one of the— Ron Heifetz is a gentleman out of Harvard, and he writes well around change. And he says, have coffee with your enemies. And he talks about that in the context of go listen to the people who aren't supporting you and understand why they're not supporting you. And so I remember years ago, I was working with the CEO of an organization. He says, these people, they don't want the change. They're not on the bus. You know, should we just change it out? And I really had to encourage him, and we had a great conversation about, you know what, wait a second, these people need time to understand it. This is a radical change. You've been thinking about this for months. Let's make sure that they have time to get their questions answered. And a lot of the questions they were asking were valid because the change had been architected at a, at a very senior level, and these people were the people doing day-to-day work, and that level of detail hadn't been—

Right.

Paid attention at that level of detail. And so I'd say embrace resistance, go find out what it's about, go dig underneath it, because it usually points to the fact that there are valid concerns. People resist because they don't understand something.

Mm-hmm. That's great. So we've kind of hit on a couple of these, but are there other, you know, as you kind of work with organizations or you work with students and see their kind of live business cases, what are other mistakes that people make when they're trying to lead a change effort? Like flipped on its head, what are the strong things they do? But like, where do people miss the boat here?

I think that sponsorship is absolutely essential. And so I think a lot of times, because everybody's busy and everybody has a lot on their plate, they think, OK, here's a change I want. Now you team, go make that happen. You go communicate it. You go roll this out. And go forth. Well, as people within organizations, if I am— let's say there was an example. Somebody called me and they said, OK, I want our HR business partners to be strategic business partners now, and they're going to stop doing these 3 things that they've been doing to help our executives. But we're going to have those HR business partners tell those executives, no, I don't do this anymore. Well, you were setting the HR business partners up in a very uncomfortable situation versus the CHRO saying, here's what we're not doing, here's why, It's gonna start. Here's how we're going to help you with those things. We're not helping you, or someone's going to help you with these, right? And, and, and so by sponsorship, sometimes we expect people to be sending the message when the leader needs to send the message. The leader needs to help others get on board. You can't delegate your sponsorship down. And so if you want it to happen, you as the leader have to be involved in a significant way to help the organization understand where it's going. And, and so I'd say one of the big misses is the amount of time it takes as a sponsor to help the organization get on board and support, and that if I don't do that, the pushback at lower levels, it's going to take me a lot longer in the long run.

So that's—

yeah, yeah, is sponsorship.

Yeah.

I think the other is that we don't necessarily realize how much time it takes to do well. So I have somebody I'm working with and there's this merger and they, they budgeted tens of thousands of dollars for the merger and all that piece, but the how do we merge two cultures they under-resourced that. They didn't understand the amount of time and energy and focus that needed. And so they spent so much money bringing these organizations together, but there were so many bumps later on because there weren't— there was not enough focus and resources to say, here's all the bumps we're going to hit afterwards, and here's how we're going to help the organization. So I'd say sponsorship, time, as far as it's going to take a long time.

Mm-hmm.

And then making sure we've given the right resources to the continuous support of getting that change through the system. Because if I do the first but not the second, I'm not going to get the result I want.

Why do you think organizations under-resource their change efforts?

Because usually whatever that change is takes so much money that it's hard to ask for that much money, let alone the integration money. And I think people think that, okay, we'll just do it. It'll make sense. We're here. People will figure it out. Yes, they will. And it'll take a lot longer and have a lot more bumps. And, and, um, people who aren't happy with it, some of your best talent leaves. And so I think that people don't realize the underlying cost that it really has. And Because most of us in our degrees, we didn't learn anything about change. So we're figuring it out. And we're doing the best we can. But we don't realize how hard it is.

You wrote an HBR article called "Too Many Projects." Yes. Co-authored an article. Yes.

How—

what's that article— like, what's the argument of that article? How does it relate to this conversation that we're having here?

Well, and I co-wrote it with Michael Watkins. So I want to give him credit.

Yeah.

But, but Michael and I wrote the article because we both are consulting. We've both been consulting for years. And what we really find is that there are so many different initiatives going on in an organization that people want to do a good job. They want to support their leaders. They want to do a good job. And let's just say that my day job is already full-time. And then you say, and this year we're going to have this IT piece, and this year we're going to have this training and development piece, and this year we're going to have this process change. Well, I am trying to do my day job and there are more and more things put on top of it, and I can't do them well. Right. And so years ago, I was working somewhere where all the budgets came in— and I was talking with the CEO and the CFO, and there were all these requests. And we just said, before we approve any of the dollars, let's look at what this takes in time for people to do this. And it was like, oh, if we as an organization do all this, this is 20% of people's time for a year. Do people have 20% available to give us, and do we want to ask them to take 20% of their time away from their focus? And so even though the organization had the dollars, to afford it. The time request, the impact of all those projects, they really said we can't do this because we are demanding too much of people. So, so the impetus was we see people bombarded all the time because there's not— the true cost of change often isn't recognized. And people say, oh, my change will only take this. Well, what about the change you're asking and someone else's asking and someone else asking.

Right.

And then we usually don't stop anything. We are really good at starting things. What we're not good about is stopping things.

Yeah, and I think so maybe one— just to connect the dots, like for me, that maybe that means so if we're— if we want to do more, we know that it takes a lot of time to do it well, so we kind of make a risk calculation of, well, if we kind of do it but don't do all the steps that we're supposed to do to do it well, like, is it better than not doing anything at all? And I think part of your argument was, but the hidden costs of doing change poorly can be very high.

Well, I totally agree with everything you're saying, and that if we don't resource it well, the ones we really need to do, they don't happen well either. And so And if we really need to get that one done, are we willing to say these other 3 don't happen this year? Yeah. Or are we willing to say, okay, we're going to back up this so that we can make that happen? Years ago, one of the, one of the organizations I— everywhere, uh, President CEO had his top priority, and you— too many. Everything fit into that or it didn't happen. And I think most organizations, it's like We've got all these quality, you know, priorities. We've got sales priorities. We have customer service priorities. We have HR priorities. We have operations priorities. And if you really look at what big organizations are trying to do, people are confused because there's so many things coming at them.

Mm-hmm. Well, you kind of got into this area around communication being engagement, involving people in the process of understanding the change, being part of it, giving their voice. And Liza Vass from Barr wrote in a question for our forum that said, how do teams get beyond the swamp of consensus and into nimble collaboration? So what's the relationship between— yeah, how does that— I'm curious to see how you respond to that.

Well, I love the question and I love the terminology, the swamp of consensus. Because some of us have worked in organizations where the expectation is that everyone agrees, and if we talk about it long enough, we'll agree.

Right.

And, and the reason I would say that's a swamp of, of consensus is that, you know what, we need to be really clear on who has decision rights to make some decisions, and you get input But then it is very unlikely— let's say you have 10 people on a committee, it is very unlikely they're all going to agree. So I think you have to differentiate between getting input and getting consensus. Because if I wait for consensus, it might be impossible to get. You know, if you ask everybody on this phone, okay, what do you want on a pizza? You're getting lots of different decisions. If you wait and try to get everybody on the same page. It's not a good use of time. The question is, who gets to decide? And who has to align with that? Trying to move towards consensus can take far too long. And so what I'd say is, I want to sidestep the need for consensus. I want input. I want engagement. I want involvement. But at some point, it has to be clear who gets to make that call, right? And if I know the decision rights, then I can get the input. And I, and I might need to come back and say, you know what, these are some concerns, here's how we've addressed them, this is what I've heard, here's why, right? Don't just make the decision and plow forward.

Explain it.

If you try to get everybody on the same page, it takes far too long, and I don't think it's healthy.

Right.

And that's exacerbated. I mean, one of the reasons, the impetus for us to get together was, you know, the beginning of the pandemic and, you know, how this kind of like pace of change was picking up in the crisis. And multiple people asked some version of, you know, how do we manage change well in a time of crisis? And I'm— and I'd love to explore that with you a little bit.

I think it's this balance of How—

what—

so there's two kinds of change that I would really say. There's the change where we know the answer. Like, let's say it's a merger and acquisition. There are playbooks for kinds of things like that. Let's say you want to grow quickly. Let's say you do a reduction. There are playbooks for things like that. Managing COVID is what some of the change leaders would say is an adaptive change. There isn't a playbook. There wasn't anything we could go pull up and say, how do you manage a pandemic? We were all figuring it out. And so part of it is, let me back up. Let me get what some leaders say, let me get on the balcony and figure out what's going on here. What are the impacts for our group? And then what's our intent here? What are we trying to do? Let's be really clear about what we can do, and, and let's be really aligned on how we go and do that together. And so I think it's saying, I first have to realize that I may not know the answer, then I have to get aligned on what is needed most, and then how do we hear what's needed most to make sure that's the right answer, and then how do we forge a path forward through it.

The word that's coming to mind listening to you is vulnerability, a little bit, from leaders, right? Is being willing to show that they don't have— like, we are in an unprecedented situation, we don't have all the answers. We're going to work with you to get them, but we might make mistakes. We don't have all the, you know, we don't have a clear roadmap for everything going forward.

And things— yes, to all that, Chris, and things have changed so fast. That we may be going one direction and then we might need to add to that, we might need to change it, we might figure it out. I mean, just as you think about what's it mean to, you know, lead a team remotely. Okay, that's a piece of what we're trying to do. Okay, there are pieces that I have to do to just keep the regular business going, but you know what? This is stressful for everybody. So how, as a leader, do I also make more time to take care of my team? How do I make more time to connect my team because we're not all in the same place?

Right.

I do a lot of executive coaching, and one of my leaders right now, they have a check-in call. And back in April, they were doing it every single day. Now, I'm not sure whether that's still their cadence, but they were making time to say, We're not able to walk by each other's desks, so we're going to come together, not in a formal meeting, right, our formal meetings, but let's do some check-in and just pay attention to how people are doing here.

Yeah. And, and I think the change there is you're having to become intentional about that, whereas before maybe it was just a form of proximity or architecture or whatever that is, and a recognition that everybody's in different places.

You know, there might be somebody who's who's working remotely all by themselves and they want more contact. There might be somebody else working remotely with 4 kids that are also doing school.

Yeah.

And they're trying to juggle things they've never had to juggle before. And so also just understanding that whether it's the change of the pandemic or the change that you're trying to get through your organization, the way that hits different people. Everybody has a different reaction, and we can't assume, oh, there is one way everybody's going to react here. That doesn't fit.

One last question, Rose, and this is— and we'll kind of bring the audience in. You shared kind of a thing around the change curve and waves of change at our workshop in Chicago that I wanted to talk through with this audience because it was one of the things that has stuck the most with people. So I'm going to go ahead and actually pull a slide up. I've got a couple slides actually. Let me just get those there. Share screen. And okay, so we should have it up now.

Okay, so first of all, I just want to acknowledge that this comes out of William Bridges, and there's a couple things that happen here. One is that there are three big stages. What's ending. What is not happening anymore? And then there's this, we're not quite sure where we're going. That's the exploration. And then there's a new beginning. So I just want to kind of put that over. Now, I think that this change curve has been around for a number of years. It fits in so many different situations. So the first thing is, and, and I'll just use it from, um, I'll use COVID as an example here. Most of us knew that things were happening in China back in January. And we thought this won't really impact us. We've had SARS, we've had MERS, it's China, it's far away. So most of us were in denial. Then we saw Wuhan get shut down and we're like, what is that about? You know, they just shut down a city. And then all of a sudden it's like, what do you mean? Wait a second, schools are shutting down? Universities are shutting down? So in this beginning, and first of all, it's like, doesn't touch me, won't really mean anything. Then it's like, OK, this might be scary. And then it's shock. And then we start going, oh, no. What does this mean to me? And this could be an organizational change. Oh, no. What does this change you're asking mean to me? It might be anger. I don't want this change. And then it's frustration because maybe I don't have enough detail. Maybe I'm confused. I'm asking questions. Maybe people don't know the questions. And it's stressful. So whether this is an organizational change or COVID, we go through all those different stages. And then we end up in this place where I want to move forward, and then I get pulled back. And I want to be hopeful, and I get frustrated. So it's almost like a ping pong ball going back and forth over all these different stages.

Mm-hmm.

Now we're at this place. Place where we've all been working remotely for some time. Okay, you're not having an in-person conference, you're being creative, you're doing these kind of things. It's a step forward. Okay, is this working? What do I think? Well, I'm going to accept it. I don't really have a choice. So we start moving into this. And we're also— we're all kind of, you know, I was reading something recently about whether you call it change fatigue, which happens in organizations when things happen over and over. Or whether it's COVID social distancing fatigue, we get impatient. And we want to see our way forward. We want to see what's beyond. So whether it's an organizational change or the pandemic, we want to believe and see the future. And so these are the changes, and we bounce all over. So anybody on this call could say, well, you know, today I have lots of energy, but yesterday I was really impatient. And I was really frustrated last week. And so we bounce all over these emotions as we move through this curve. So any questions about the curve, Chris?

Yeah, well, I think one of the applications of this curve was— and maybe this isn't as relevant for COVID as it would be for, you know, a merger or some other kind of, you know, or an organizational change or opening a new office, whatever the thing is. Is that you talked about the fact that these changes pulse through the organizations at different—

Absolutely.

—at different levels. So I wanted to share one other slide with folks from Chicago, and if you could maybe take us through this a little bit.

I would be happy to. So if you— look, if you think about the slide that Chris just had up, on the left axis here are those things that we go through, that denial, that anger, that disruption, into integration. That's the change curve. Now what happens is that executives start to think about this and plan it and spend lots of time. So the example I'm going to use today is the back-to-office plan, because the executives I'm working with for weeks, if not months now, have been making a back-to-office plan. So the plan is ready. But it hasn't gotten rolled out yet. But they've had time to be, we don't really need this, this is frustrating, I don't want this, what'll it do to work? The executives have had time to work through their change curve around going back to the office. Now, they're going— let's say that they're in one of the states that's opening up, and they're saying, OK, now we're going to share it with managers. So then the managers get this. So that next piece on the change curve and they start working through their feelings around it. But they might, you know, maybe the executive group had 2 months to create this plan. Well, now the managers get about 2 weeks to look at it, and then we're rolling it out to employees. So where the executives have had weeks and months going through their change curve, the managers get a couple of weeks, and the employees get Here's your notice. Here's where we're going. And so everybody has a change curve to go through. But the executives get frustrated with the managers, and the managers get frustrated with the employees because we want other people to be as far along in those reactions as we are. But because this happens over a timed sequence— Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ends up usually being that by the time it happens, the executives are off thinking about other things. And so it's—

they're on to the next change.

They're on to the next change, right? Okay, we've got to think about business next year. Somebody else is handling this back to office, and the managers are going, what about, what about, what about? The employees are going, what do you mean? I'm afraid, I'm scared, what is this? What about— how do we do this? How do we do this? And the executives are off to something else. And, and so what I'd say is that we live this all the time, and, and, and, and we don't realize that we have expectations that other people get on board and they're at the same level we are when we haven't given them the time or the information to go through their own change, to go through their own change curve.

Beautiful. All right. Rachel Steer, I'm going to stop sharing. There. So Rachel has a question that I'm going to— Rachel, I'm going to unmute you so that you can ask it. Okay, you should be good.

Hi, Chris and Rose. Wonderful talk, so thank you. What we found in our organization, we actually— I think we have great leadership that when we have a major initiative, They are always on board with the change management. We, we make mistakes like everybody else, but what I struggle with the most is how to scale change management to fit the size of the initiative, in particular smaller initiatives. We trip up on those things.

Hmm. So what's the question, Rachel?

How do you scale change management to institute change successfully on those smaller things?

One of the things that I— well, I appreciate the question. So just how do you scale it? And I— it's time saying, have we done a good job with the impact? Because do— what's the impact of this? Is it positive? Is it negative? Who needs to be involved? How do we— we need to give it enough support But if it's not a big change, we might not need to give it— we obviously don't need to give it the same amount of change that the big ones do. And so, and who's going to need that support? And so I think the scaling is saying, let me understand the impact to who, let me understand if it's positive or negative, and what's the support that's needed, and can we pilot that with a small enough group that we start to understand, okay, that's, that's not quite enough support, or that's honestly more support than they need, and then we can ration it back a little bit. Rachel, does that answer your question?

Yes, it does. I think it sounds like maybe you might have provided some additional detail in Chicago with regard to a kind of a template or framework for that, possibly.

I think we did not, but, but what I'd say is when you start to think about change impact, I'll send some questions to Chris that he can send out to all of you. So it is something where we spend a lot of time, but I'm happy to just give him some questions for you all to ask to really just look at impact a little bit more and to start there. Do you—

I'm gonna keep— but Rachel brings up an interesting point that came up a little bit in some of the questions we got. Is there a framework that you kind of like love and recommend Do you think that— yeah, like, what are your thoughts on frameworks and change, I guess, and how formal—

Well, it's really funny because when I started teaching at Northwestern, the pack of what I asked people to read was 1,000 pages long in 10 weeks. And we said, okay, this is too much. And then every year that I taught it, the readings went down and the tools went up. And so it was, okay, you have got to do a change impact analysis. Okay, you have got to understand who your stakeholders are. You've got to do a stakeholder analysis. You need to think about what your communication key messages are. So, so as I continued teaching it, I got more and more oriented around what are the tools that need to happen in every one. And so what I'd say is that there's not a framework that I love except start with the business case. Start with doing a change impact analysis. Start by really looking at your stakeholders. Start by figuring out what are the key messages and who needs to deliver these. And then how do we do change with people, not to them, so that people are involved in it. So that's my framework, but it's not written down anywhere that I can send it out to people.

Got it. Well, we'll put it in the notes. Sounds good. Jill Bergman has a question. Jill, you should be able to speak now. If not, I can ask it. All right, I'm going to go ahead and ask it, and Jill, if you're able to unmute yourself, then you can chime in. So the question is, how can I as a leader help teams to separate tools and I'm inferring like technology here, from the real change that's being made and the reason the tools are there. So teams are believing the shiny new tool is the change, but will not change if there's not a specific shiny new tool or software. That was Jill's question.

I think that sometimes, and again, I do a lot of executive coaching and some of the feedback that I'm having to give within this recent time period is quit looking at the tool and start looking at what's the business, the business reason for the tool. Does the tool help the business? And success isn't getting the tool working. Success is, does the business get the impact they want? And did we spend enough time with the business understanding on what they were trying to get out of the tool? So that what we delivered was their ability to leverage the tool, not we got the tool here and it's turned on. And, and so what's the— what's the— what is the business needing us to— what's the business need out of this tool versus we instituted a new tool? Because what's it take to get adoption? What's it take to understand it? What are the new processes? How do we All those things are much more complex than getting a tool to work, right?

And just to build on what you said, I think there's this other part of like paint a vision of like our organization post this thing and what's different about us, like the future state kind of thing.

Well, and also give us enough time to get to that future state. So how much time will it truly take for us to get from instituting the tool, adopting it, using it, fine-tuning it. Also, it's that time allocation again that we have to realize it's going to take us a while to get to this point.

Yeah, and it's the stuff that happens after you launch said tool or said program or all of those kind of things to realize the benefits of the change.

And, well, I would say if I can't— if I don't know the benefits before we launch it, I shouldn't be— I shouldn't be asking for the money. I shouldn't be starting it unless I can make the business case before we start. So, you know, one of the things about my framework is you start with the business impact.

Start with the business impact. Got it. Raina Blair. Hello.

Hello. Sorry about that. Um, so oftentimes we encounter firms where the leadership is very very soft. They don't want to be seen as dictators or have a totalitarian environment. And often these same leaders have a difficulty impressing upon the team that something must be done. So it's very hard to lead change in those environments where the, the individual who you would look to, to, to be the sponsor just doesn't want to be seen as telling people what to do? How do we help? I totally agree, it really needs to come from a sponsor who has influence. People do choose to do what gains— what causes them to have either more respect or more esteem in the organization. You know, whoever it's important to. How do we help those leaders?

Well, I think sometimes the question is, are we willing to say, here's what it will take for it to be successful? And if we— if our leaders don't want to send the message, sometimes in big complex organizations, there's another level that can take that role. You know, let's say your C-suite says, "I'm busy over here. I don't want to do that." Well, you might have country leadership. You might have area of the world leadership. You might have a level that can really own and lead that change message. But if there's no one who can lead that with a strong voice, part of it is, are we willing to do something when there's not enough commitment to it to be willing to be the one saying we're going to do this. Now, maybe— I don't want to make anybody mad, so maybe I'd build in a lot of listening sessions. Maybe I'd build in a lot of town halls in small groups. One of the changes I was responsible for— not responsible, but I was a part of— the CEO would send a message on an all-employee, all-hands meeting And then there was a cadence within that same morning of then the small groups were in one place and their leaders would do the town hall. So the CEO, president would send the message, then the regional leaders would do the town hall. And what that really gave was a safe place to get questions answered. And so sometimes it's— there is a level, but somebody has to say, we're doing this. And here's why, and here's when, and have the strength of the message that it makes me believe that we're going to do this and this is worth my commitment and support.

Would you go so far, Rose, to say that's a go/no-go thing? Like, it's like, maybe this, if you can't get it, is that a signal that maybe this change shouldn't happen or shouldn't happen now?

I think it's if the leadership isn't willing to send the message I would be very cautious about whether they are truly committed to it. Because if they're not willing to be the strong messengers, that would worry me a lot. So again, in complex organizations and big organizations, there might be a whole level that can take this on and do it well. But if they're not supportive enough to be talking about it, that to me would be worth a second, third, and fourth look.

Understood. Thank you. Thanks for the question.

Charlotte.

Hi, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Um, how does one sponsor help lead the change when all the other leadership ends up being too busy? And it's not like— I'm gonna add to what I wrote, but the The sponsor is influential, which is great. Everybody's on board to make change. However, it's like, oh, okay, they're always expecting somebody else to take care of it. You know, it's like, how do you get the rest of leadership to engage? And can the sponsor that's leading the charge utilize champions to get help from others, even if it's other leadership, to engage So that way they don't become, oh, I'm too busy, and you get the rest of everybody to, you know, share what they've got.

So I really appreciate the question, and I think there are a couple of different things that come to mind, Charlotte, and one is that I have to be the one who's really clear on what is it I'm requesting. Am I requesting that you don't badmouth my change? Am I requesting that you talk about it? Am I requesting that you build this into your speeches that you're giving organizationally? Am I requesting that you ask your teams to give us 10% of your time? So the first thing is, I would say, before I start, I'd be really clear on what are my requests, and then let me go one-on-one. So before I go to this whole team meeting, I'm gonna go to each person on this team and say, here's the request I have for our change to be successful. Is this something you, you can you can do. Is this, is this something that I can get your commitment on? Are you willing to give this? Is this something that I can get from you? And so getting the commitments that I need from people, but being very specific in what I'm asking someone to do. So I need to be specific in the request. I need to go one-on-one and get them. And then if they're not willing to support this, I've got to look at Is their support optional? Or do I need to do something in order to get the support I need from them? And so there are people that will say, you know what, I need the CEO to say this is where we're going. Or I need this leader, you know, I need the COO to say we are doing this, we're not doing this, we're making this change as of this date. You know, maybe people need a different timeframe. So maybe we're all getting there, but maybe you have the next year and you figure out the best time for you. And so part of it is what is keeping them from giving me what I want and how do we collaborate so that I long-term get what I need, but I've also heard what they need here. Mm-hmm.

Charlotte, does that answer the question? Yeah, it was mostly that, you know, in other words, they want to commit to it, and the thing is, is that then they say, okay, I'm too busy. It's a matter of allocating the resources and being very clear about what the resources will be doing to make all of it happen.

And when I ask for support, I'm not just saying, do you support my change? Support would look like, I need this, I need this, I need this. Yeah, give me that kind of support. So I'd be very specific in my requests.

Okay, thanks so much. Of course.

Thanks, Charlotte. Let's see, Sarah. Oh, sorry, I'm gonna say Sarah. Let's see, there we go.

I really could relate to what you said about so many initiatives going on at once, and I think about it the first of the year when all of us start going into each other's offices and saying, well, I need this from you and this from you because we're all trying to do change. So for someone like me who's not in the top layer of leadership, how do we influence or get some traction on having the different— the higher levels of leadership to recognize that maybe less is more, focusing on fewer things?

Well, the, the, the one of the things you come to my office, okay, well, you could share, um, the, the article is called Too Many Projects, and I wrote it with Michael Watkins, and it's an HBR article, and, and Chris can send that out later. There's a little assessment in there, so you could hand the assessment out and ask people to do it. Um, one of the things is also let's get very realistic on how much time we have for new projects. So we all know we're swamped, but we don't exactly know, usually, how much time different things take. I ran the Leadership Institute for McDonald's, and there was one year where I said, OK, we do new to position, we do high potential, we do in position, but we don't truly know what it takes to deliver on what we're doing. So there was a period of time— and I don't remember if it was 6 months or 12 months, where my team and I, we all allocated the time we took. So we knew if we did a new officer program, that took X amount of hours from our team. Director, that took X amount of hours from my team. So then when China said, we want 2 of these next year, that meant we were adding that many hours onto our demands. And so it was one of those moments when we got to planning for the next year, and I said, I want to do this, I want to do this, and I want to do this. And my team said, we have 15 hours 15% open time. What you are proposing would take double to triple that. What are we not going to do? And so because we truly knew what things took in time, then we were able to say, okay, if we are going to do this, this is what we need in resources. And so we got a very strong handle on the demands so that we could know what it made sense to add or not. And it was a very helpful exercise. And somebody like me that always wanted to do new things, my team could say there are capacity issues. Can you get more headcount? Can we hire some outsiders? Can we use consultants? What can we do? Because there's not enough of us to do everything we're doing and all those new things.

Thank you. I'll just build— Sarah, and I'll just build on that a little bit. There was a talk that was supposed to be at K Connect this year from Steph at BWBR, and I checked and she's not here to weigh in on it, but the short version of that is they found themselves in a very similar position where it's like there's a lot of initiatives, there's lots of change, there's lots of projects, technology implementations, etc., and they made a list of all of them. And like, it sounds obvious, but like in a lot of organizations, and I've worked in them, not everybody can see the whole picture. They can see the change initiatives that are in front of them and they're involved with, And when that whole list got brought back together, it became very clear that there was too much going on. And so I don't know, Sarah, if that's helpful or not, but like that simple act of making a list and figuring out budget numbers like Rose did, we don't always, I think I can speak with a global we, budget internally with the same discipline that we do, that we budget when we do client-facing or project work. And I don't know, so I've seen a couple of our clients doing stuff like that.

It's also very helpful. I worked with a client where the first wave was, let's just figure out what the list is. We had to define what an initiative was. Let's make the list. And then I spent days with the senior team saying, okay, how are you going to either scale the things that are working, stop the things that aren't, combine the like things, But they'd not had those kind of conversations before. And so you're right, even making the list, people have no idea how many things are going on. And when they see the list, that number alone in this organization— it wasn't that big an organization— the list alone was over 500 initiatives. Yeah. Thank you.

We have time for one final question from Kate. It's either Democ or Dimoc, I think. So Kate. Yeah, it's Divock.

Can you hear me? Yes. Great. So I think the hard part for me is understanding what enough means. There was a lot of talk about enough, and I think that falls in line with experience level. So, you know, I've given people enough time because I've seen this happen 5, 6 different times. And for people who are just getting started out and don't have that history to pull from, I think it can be challenging to know how to plan a project and understand how much time do I have to give to something, how many— how much resources do I have to give to something.

And so, Kate, is your question how do you estimate what the time takes?

I think so. How do you know when you've done a good job? How do you know that the change will be effective and adopted?

I think I would start, you know, as you're planning it, what does adoption look like? So I would want to, before I planned the what it takes to get there, what's the end result look? Am I really clear on the end result? And how big a change is this? Is this a minor change? Is this a major change? Does it impact 100 people? Does it impact 10,000 people. And so I think that what does adoption look like and how will we know when we're there? What does progress look like? And then it's not— there's no perfection in these numbers. And but it's like, okay, we will have to design training. Okay, training for how many audiences? What will it take to do that? Okay, just in the training piece, I can, I can talk to people who are experts I have experts in training. What will it take to develop the training piece of this? Now I'm going to ask everybody to attend training. OK, that's a piece I'm going to ask everybody in the organization to do. OK, I know that number. OK, they're going to have to learn some new skills. What's that take? So it's much more art than science. But if I break down all the things we are moving from and to and what will it take to get there, I can start building in lots of those different pieces. Kate, does that help the question? Does that answer the question?

Yeah, I think so. Thank you. Sure.

Great. Rose, thank you so much. You know, I always love talking to you about all things change, leadership, business. New stuff comes up every time. So thank you. We're going to have the recording out soon. And now we're going to just start pivoting over toward the Hangout session. So, I have to do one little switch on my end and make Greg a panelist, which he now is. I'm going to drop the link in the chat for the Zoom meeting. And so, when you click on that link in the chat or the one that you got in your registration when you did it, and again, if you didn't register for the Hangout and you'd like to join us, feel free. You're going to be hanging out in a little spot for about 60 to 90 seconds before the meeting starts. So just heads up there. So go ahead and head over, we'll see you in a minute. Yeah, and so Rose, you should do it too, and we'll see you in the meeting.

Thank you. Thank you. Should I leave this one?

Yeah, you should leave this one. Yep.

All right, thank you. I'll be in the Hangout.