Episode 251: How to Take Ownership of Critical Change Part 2 With Dr. David Rodgers

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromsol.

Greetings. Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Prophet podcast. We're going to dive into part two with Dr. Dave Rogers. And the feedback from part one has been absolutely phenomenal. Dave, I'm not sure if I effectively communicated this to you, but people really grasp onto what you shared in part one. And if you haven't seen part one, please possibly stop this right now. Go back and watch or listen to part one and then come back to part two, because this will help you grow your business, create wealth, and have more freedom. And Dave, if we dive back to part one and correct me if, or update me on anything. You know, we talked about ownership.

Of a critical change within business versus buy in because buy in might be something of the past, right? We want to get ownership.

Of.

Absolutely. Initiative, kind of this, this old concept that you have to go for buy in first, right? And we're saying, hey, go for engagement and get your people owning and actually creating the change so that it's. You're not pushing the string up the hill. You're actually, you're actually walking up the.

Hill with your people a hundred percent. And we talked about three steps in that is create crafting the story, which ultimately engages your team. The second step, and the third step is the highest leverage action for change of the critical change initiatives. So in part two, Dave, what we want to do, we want to help people with the steps that they need to actually install and anchor critical change in their businesses. Getting your team to own this critical change initiative, great stuff. Because I mean, there's three things certain in life, Dave, right? There are death, taxes, and our add on is the third one is change. We've got to be comfortable with change. Change is good, right, Dave?

Oh, it's excellent. I mean, to me it's.

I don't like change and I know a lot of people that don't. But what I've had to learn, and I'm still learning that if I get, if I get so that I get comfortable with change, life gets much more exciting and rewarding. It just does. Right. And, and, and the. In times I've decided I want to slow down and just be comfortable. Things fall apart.

So off, off the cuff, out of left field. Question for you. What do you do for your own mindset to keep yourself, if you will, open minded or your mindset to be able to continually change?

Oh boy, that is off the cuff. What do I do? You know, what I do is.

And this is an interesting thing and I was taught it by someone else, I really allow myself to dream of what I want and then I fix that as something I'm moving toward and I don't let go of that. I did that with, you know me, Mike. I, I've always been in shape, but my shape used to be round.

You know, and I was about 65 pounds heavier than I am now. And I fixed a goal in my mind that I wanted to be at my ideal body weight. But I didn't know exactly how I was going to get there. So what people do is they get a goal, they go after it with a strategy and the first strategy or two doesn't work. So they get closed and they decide, well, maybe that was the wrong goal and I'm going to let it go. So what I do is I've started to learn to fix the goal, like let myself dream and go for it and, and then realize that the first strategy or two that comes out of my head is not going to do it right. So I have to be looking to what is the strategy. And a lot of times, and that's why I love our bike rides together that we do is we play off of each other and I get ideas from you that I wouldn't have thought of and it's like, boom, that's it. Well, you call it a nugget and like we'll, we'll be, we'll have to stop and record it before it disappears. So that's how I keep open, right?

Absolutely. The famous gold nuggets.

The gold nuggets, yeah.

Let's give them some gold nuggets. Thank you for joining us. We're going to talk about installing and anchoring critical change in your business to get your team to grasp ownership of these critical changes and move them forward in your business. So, Dave, take it away.

Yeah. So in part one, we talked about a real simple three steps for them to actually take the ownership. But what happens is that's just conceptual. Like they've got the idea, they've got that picture, they've got that dream that you just brought up that we talked about. But now you got to understand what the big momentum killer for Any big dream like that is. Is you got the dream, you got the inspiration. Then you go back to your office, right. Or you get out of the meeting and what are you left with? All the pressures you were under before to things that are piled up that you got to do, and you've got this new idea of how you're going to do them. But under pressure, Mike, I mean, just think of it yourself. Under pressure. What do people typically go back to when they. When they get pressurized?

What they know or what they're comfortable.

With and what I would call their habits that they've ingrained over time or they're sick. The way they've been successful in the past, the old ways, that's the biggest. As soon as you get a new idea, that's the biggest thing that's going to kill you. So what you have to do is actually build a support system to anchor this new change or habit. And there are some things that. That you have to do and not do to do that. And what I want to do, if it's okay, is just go over. What I found is three. We're on the steps of three. I think the, you know, the three things. Because that's enough for me to remember.

That power of three. Absolutely. Yeah.

To actually anchor it. So now, if you haven't seen the other part, we ended the other part where the team picked the high leverage item. So they owned it. It's their idea. This is the thing that we need to do differently to be successful. Now this is interesting because now that they've done that, it's still a concept, it's still a one or two liner. It doesn't tell us what we need to do differently. So step one is really expand that into behavioral expectations that are going to be different. And here's the first problem point. We've been taught that what we want to do is get individual habits or individual behaviors from individuals and hold them accountable for that. When you're talking about a change in a group, you need team habits and behaviors. So because it isn't an individual thing, it's how we create an environment together. So that's the biggest mistake is, is making it individual. And then it becomes punishing, and then I feel like a failure, and I don't have a support system or team. So we start with what do we need to do as a team and as individuals within the team to actually implement this change? What do the behaviors look like?

You know, there's one. I get one team recently picked one. They said, you Know, one of the things we do is they were actually very accountable groups. You know, they really took pride and do it themselves. But a strength overused can be your weakness. So what they did was, you know, I took on this job, you know, like Mike gave me this job. I feel like it's mine. I take it on, but I'm failing at it for some reason. But I'm going to work it until the 11th hour without asking for help because I feel accountable. It's not him, it's not other people's, it's me. And that's where we're not taking advantage of our resources in teams. So they, the team said, hey, what we need to do is quit doing that. When we're in trouble, we need to raise our hands quickly and say, I need some help. I don't know what's happening, but I'm not, you know, if I don't get help, I'm going to miss the date. And that's going to impact everyone. That's scary for people. That could mean I'm not a good person. What's he going to think of me? What are other people going to think of me? So we need to, as a team, we need to just develop those type of things, get together, say, here's the things that the new behaviors we're expecting of ourselves and write it down. That's step one. And you can do that either in a meeting as a team where we just kind of brainstorm it together, or if you're kind of busy and team meetings are pretty precious, you can give it to a couple people that can maybe put together a draft and then bring it to the team for input. Super easy way to do. Just start it. The second part of it is once you've got those basic behaviors like surface things early, ask for help, things like that. Now you have to look at how do we. How do we. How do we do what I call proactive recovery plans? So what if somebody's having trouble with that? How do we make it safe for them to do that? And you actually ask three questions to fill in the extra behaviors. Question number one is, is there anything we need to do to make it safe for people to do this? So take the one where I'm going to surface an issue early in this group, they said, well, you know, they always say if you surface an issue early, you should come with a solution. And by the way, I agree with that. But that keeps people from surfacing it early because maybe they don't have the solution. So what they Made as a little answer to that question is, well, come with the solutions you have, but if you don't have any, come anyway.

Right.

No harm, no foul, or let us.

Know what you think. There's no right or wrong answer. Right.

There's no right or wrong answer with this, but they agree on it as a team, that that's what we're doing together. So again, it makes it safe to do it. Then you have to look at the second question is, is there any time that what we're saying we need to do here is not practical? And, and what you'll get is sometimes like, well, yeah, like end of the month when we're trying to close everything. And I don't know about this business, but like in finance groups, those last three days. No, don't bring anything up. We can't handle anything. It's okay not to during that time.

Well, high achieving organizations are in pursuit of their goals. Yeah. And if they've got to, you know, retain X number of accounts or sell X number of new accounts by the end of the month. Same thing.

Yeah, yeah. So again, this is similar to. We didn't say it, I didn't say at the beginning. But the way you craft this, either if somebody brings an example or you're doing it as a group, is you want to get a visual record of it so people can see it as you're starting to speak it. Because what happens is if they put their concern and their solution up there and you write it up there, they're acknowledged. You don't have to say, you don't have to acknowledge them. The fact that God on the board acknowledges them and it acknowledged their fear or their need or whatever, you capture it and bam, you've got it. Makes it easy. So the two, the two things so far is, is there anything that we need to do to make it safe for people to do this? Is there anything that, you know that it's not practical to do and how do we handle it in that case? The third thing is the final one. It's the icing on. It's the, it's the essential one. What happens if we see someone not doing this behavior?

How are we going to handle that? And the way I frame it a lot of times is we all want to do it, but what if somebody doesn't see me doing it the right way? And me, Mike, you know, if like you're the owner, that includes you. If you're not doing the behavior, how would you like people to approach you so that you just Might have a blind spot. How do you want them to call it out? Because we're here to support each other. So you get a safe way to call it out that's non attacking. And so now you've got the accountability in there. In other words, what I'm, what, what this does is when you've got this whole thing, it becomes like an agreement of what we're going to go for. You ask people if they'll do it. So they're agreeing to really three things. One, can I do this the best I can? Not perfectly the best I can. Two, if somebody isn't doing it, am I willing to go to them and talk to them about that? And three, if someone comes to me to talk to about it, am I not going to get defensive? Am I going to listen and realize they've got my best interest at heart and we're going to have a dialogue.

So that's the setup.

Wow. Can I bring a real world situation to the table here? This would be perfect. Hang on a second. I just received this note this morning and this is from a real agency, a super high performing agency. And back to the accountability. What happens if we see someone not doing it?

Which is the third, you know, item or question that you just mentioned. So the owner of this organization threw a curveball.

Okay, about, you know, their online presence, all right, Took it upon themselves.

To take on a new initiative all by themselves without collaborating with the leadership team. And now this other leadership person.

Is trying to figure out why.

They think they need to do that on their own without collaborating with the rest of the leadership team or what he's looking for and doing that. So is that making sense and how.

To approach that with him, huh?

Exactly. This person is trying to figure out, you know, that was way out of left field, went off and did it on their own without collaborating with us, now is trying to push this initiative on us high performing, larger organization. What would you say to that, Dave?

Well, it's harder to do it in retrospect. Like you can imagine if you have this set up, you've set up permission and the methodology for doing it. But without that, what I'm hearing it is, in it is there's some expectation or some precedence that the, the leader has. That leader that went and did it independently says, I want to engage you guys, you know, and I, I don't want to do this stuff. I want to be this kind of leader. So what you do is, what I do is I go back to them and said, hey, you know, I Go back to what their original intention is in their leadership and say, I know you're the kind of person, and you've said it before, you want to engage the team in new things and get their input. But, you know, I noticed in this one, and I could be off that you did that without doing that. Am I off track with that? You know, and then what I'm wanting to understand is what caused you to want to do that on your own? And, you know, and, and is there a way you can get us engaged, you know, so that. Because it's going to have implications and impacts and we can talk about the implementation of it. So it's always going back to what the original intent of that top leader was and what they've been saying or an agreement you've had before.

And I'm pretty sure we brought this up on part one, and we'll just restate it again here on part two, because you said it early on in part one, which I 100% agree with. The better the question, the better the result. And so, Dave, thank you for solving that issue. I just wrote it down and I'm going to be talking to this agent because I received this information for preparation for an upcoming coaching session. What caused you to take action solo? And back to setting the table. Statement number one, what was, what is or was the original intention, number one? Number two, what caused you to take action solo? Really get to that, if you will, brass tacks. And then move it from there. Right?

Yeah, move it from there, absolutely. So back to part one. We were talking about what are the external drivers? And there was some driver. Internal. Internal to the person or external. And when you think about it, most leaders, their intention is good.

Right.

But their impact is not always good.

So there's a different. There's a difference between intention and impact. And so if you can separate those, like what was your intent? And their intent is probably good. And now say, well, here's kind of the impact. How do. How can we deal with that effectively? So what, what leaders do in that. I see a lot of them. And by, by the way, one or two people that are leaders of big organizations that do this stuff all the time popped into my head.

Right.

Always. But one of the intentions they have is, well, this needs to happen, but my people are so busy, I don't want to load them with it.

Oh, a preconceived notion.

Yeah. So they take action, trying to. Trying to make it easier for their people, but they don't consider the impact which is causing more problems than if they would have involved them up front.

We're going to go down a trail here and I'm not going to go too far down the trail. But if you think about team members, right.

Any of those team members, if they are a players, what I classify as a players, the best, not the best available. Right. They will accept more load upon themselves and they will feel comfortable responding with I can't take anymore or whatever else. Right, right. But the other thing that, you know, and it took me a lot of years to learn this in my own mind and my own experience, when you don't include them, you're preventing them from growing as well. Would you agree?

I'd agree. Yeah.

That's what you're doing. By not. By not pushing it to them and including them, you're prohibiting them from growing themselves, which is not what you want in the ownership realm. Right?

Yeah.

How can you get them to own anything if you won't allow them to grow?

Absolutely. And it gets the owner out of their role as a leader, because an owner should be inspirational, should be looking at that kind of stuff. But as soon as they become the implementer, they're out of role and they're out of the most powerful thing they can be doing. I look at the three things of a, of a, of an, you know, a founder or an owner or somebody that does that is one, you're responsible for the direction and communicating that direction. Two, you're responsible for making sure the systems and the team and is in place. You're not defining what, what needs to be in place, not implementing what needs to be in place.

Difference.

Right.

And number three, you're there to build the asset of the organization for everybody. But as soon as you become the executor of those things and you don't go to your people that are a players to do the execution, you're not in your zone of genius anymore.

Wow.

You're not going to do it as well as they do it. And sometimes they need to put the brakes on you a little bit. Not in terms of that needs to be done, but the timing and approach so that the whole organization can respond effectively to it.

Zone of genius. Yeah, I just wrote that one down and I hope everybody else did too. But you know, the other thing that you just said, which was a gold nugget for me as well, the owner is, or, you know, maybe the top leader in the organization who has the ability to really do whatever they want. Right. But they're out of role and I love that term they're out of role if they step out of their lane is what I wrote down. Because, you know, we all have our lanes. Right. Things that we. Initiatives and contributions that we need to bring to the table to get to the common goal. And I love what you said to protect the asset.

Yeah.

Of the organization. Great stuff.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean that your A players can't come to you and say, I need you to come into our role a little bit because you are so good at it. Like, like this one leader I'm thinking about, he, he was the inspiration. He got the thing rolling. He really could develop assets. That was his zone of genius. He also was their best salesperson.

So every once in a while the team would come to him and say, we've got a big deal. We want to, we want you to come in and help us close. Well, yeah, that's out of his role, but he's being asked to augment and support. And sure, you go in and do that. It's like you don't make a rigid boundary, but you just don't go colliding in there without letting anybody know or creating a whole new priority without engaging the people that are responsible for running your operation together.

Everybody achieves more team. There is no I in team. Right.

Absolutely.

Dave, fantastic stuff. You've given us all the tools to implement in businesses. Ownership of critical change needed, not just buy in. Because buy in in many ways is a thing of the past. And you've taught us actually how to install and anchor critical change for the good of the asset of the organization and a lot of other side workings as well. Dr. Dave Rogers, thank you so much. Anything else you'd like to add as we wrap it up? Wrap it up today. Yeah.

I said there were three steps and this is the third and final one. So first one was create the basic new expectations. The second one was ask those three questions and fill them out using the team. The third one is I said get agreement, but there's the accountability part of it. So this is really easy. It's like about every month or so or every two weeks, whatever you think is, bring out this new habit to reinforce it and actually ask the team to brainstorm which one of these things are we doing well at, doing better at and which ones that aren't we doing so well at and pick one of those out of there that you're not doing so well at and say, what are we going to do in the next two or three weeks to pump this one up. And that makes it safe. Because here's the thing about installing a new behavior. You want to realize that people are going to fail at it, and you want them to fail. Because what they need to know is it's okay to not do it perfectly and that we have a way to support each other, to get back on track as soon as they realize that they become unstoppable in this new behavior.

Goal. Right.

To help them to become unstoppable.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Love that. And, you know, I. I didn't mention this in the beginning because we got right into it, but, you know, Dave has been a contributor to four books published by the organizations that he works within. And, you know, one of them is on organizational change. The second one is on organizational accountability, personal and organizational accountability, and team building and other topics. So he's got lots of experience and expertise. So it's who of everybody to pay close attention to what Dr. Dave Rogers is sharing. Dave, fantastic. So again, the three steps, new behaviors expected and needed by the team and its members. Step two, the three questions that we talked about. Is it safe for people? Is it practical? And then number three, what happens if someone's not doing it? Which is the beginning of the accountability. And then step three is ultimately the ongoing accountability of the critical change initiative.

Yeah. And the thing is, if you do this for any reasonable amount of time, like two, three months, it becomes the habit you pick up under pressure. So what happens is, rather than under pressure, rather than under pressure, people isolate and don't share the need. What happens then is, under pressure, the first thing they do is ask for help. When that happens, you don't have to be reviewing it anymore. That's your automatic response.

Fantastic. Love that. Love that. And ultimately, they've gained ownership.

They've gained ownership. Yeah. It's all about them. I'm sorry. I get so excited about this stuff.

Go for it, man.

Do you notice that the big thing here is the leader isn't the one that holds them accountable.

Everybody holds everybody else accountable. And the leader is equal in that. They're also equal and be. They're also saying, call me on it too, because this is something we share as a team. This isn't a hierarchical thing. This isn't a punishment thing. We've. This is our ownership, and I'm a member of that team and I'm equal in this particular aspect.

That is fantastic. I know there's nothing that turns me on more. When people actually get this, they take action on it and it begins to implement the change. Sometimes the critical changes that are needed to drive organizations forward. That's fantastic. Dr. Dave Rogers, thank you.

Thanks.

Anything else to add?

No, because I'll just keep going for.

Another hour and we will, we will get out there.

We'Ll come up with some more gold nuggets to be able to share with the world, to help people ultimately, as you said, become more unstoppable. Dave Rogers, thank you so much. So grateful for you for sharing the gold nuggets about critical change. An absolute.

Important, and I was going to say critical topic, but critical change is a very, very important topic. Being comfortable with the change because things are changing. It's not, you know, what's going to change today is what's going to change in the next five minutes or sometimes sooner. Okay. It's happening that quickly in business today and it's been going on and it's going to continue to come at us more faster than it's ever come before. So we've got to prepare ourselves, we've got to prepare our teams to be ready for this change that is coming at us. So instinctively we can be ready to shift on a dime, right?

Absolutely. That's the thing. It's, it's the ability to shift and it's not shift as an individual, shift as a team.

Aha.

Flexibility.

Yeah.

Agility.

Alignment.

Alignment. All good stuff. You're right. We could go on for another hour.

We could. Okay. Thanks, Mike.

You're welcome. All right. Hey, everybody. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode. We hope you got great value out of the gold nuggets dropped by Dr. Dave Rogers. And again, if this is your first time on the podcast, thank you. Welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as the leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about what we do @unstoppable profit producer.com if you're interested in attending one of our virtual events to continue to grow, continue to learn, please Visit us at uppfastart.com that's upp fast start.com all of our events are designed to share with you some of our best money making strategies developed over 36 years of research, 100% of the time as a proud independent insurance agent. And we share these with you so you can grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And if you got great value out of today's podcast, please share this podcast or just have somebody that you care about or know go to unstoppable profit podcast.com share that with them and make sure you and they go up to the top and click subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode of the podcast where we continue to drop gold nuggets as often as on every podcast. And often. And.

Our podcast is available out there on all the networks including Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel, Amazon and more. Again, Dr. Dave Rogers, thank you, sir.

Thank you.

You're welcome. All right, everybody, until the next episode, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, leave no regrets and remember, you got this. We believe in you. However, only action is going to get you to the next step. We'll see you in the next episode.

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