Leading Transformational Change with Nick DeSalvo

Welcome to the Rethink Sales Podcast. I'm Michelle Seeger, and today I'm very excited to talk about leading transformational change. And with me here today is a special guest, colleague, and friend, Nick DiSalvo from HP Inc. Where he is leading transformational change every day. Welcome, Nick.

Thanks, Michelle.

Well, it's going to be a great conversation today, Sam. All right, so, Nick, today we're going to have a really great discussion around what it takes to lead transformational change. And one of the things that we know is that, well, it takes more than one podcast to talk about it. So we decided to focus on one key area.

Yes. Specifically on our model and what we use to get success out of our project.

So it's really how you define success at HP Inc.

Yes, definitely. And something that we've started using a bit more as well, and still molding it, of course. So always room for change.

Ah. So the one thing we know about change is that it's constant. So the model's good, but you're always refining it as you learn things along the way.

Exactly.

All right, so let's get kicked off with that. So why don't you start describing to people when you're looking at a change effort? And it could be transformational, it could be any really change that's going on. It could be shorter in duration. But let's talk about how you start defining success and why that's so critical at the very onset of any initiative.

Yeah, definitely. Really where we start is with our executive vision. I mean, that's really the trigger of everything that we do. And in probably most projects, it's. There's something new, there's something exciting, and, you know, we're doing something that really, we want to move the ship. Right. We want to change directions. And, you know, that's all that's great. But it's really getting it more formal, getting it on paper, and then getting that visionary alignment across the board. It's what. What's been key for us.

So when I think about an executive vision, a lot of times it's just not really tangible. Right. So it's your executive. They talk sometimes a little bit different level. What they want to do is extremely aspirational. And a lot of times I find just making it more relatable can be a little bit of a challenge. How do you do that? What are some of the things you do? Because as we've discussed, that is one of the keys to success.

Yeah, definitely. It's really bringing that down. It's kind of we're actually asking the question, what is the organizational voice? When we actually get to that level, when we're, you know, we're taking the executive vision that we got out of workshops and we're taking the organizational voice and we can talk about a little bit more about what actually, actually that is, that's where we get in the middle and where we're bridging that gap so the 100,000ft to the, to the sea level and then we're getting somewhere in the middle and what we can actually execute on.

All right, so let's get right into that. What we know is we've got an executive vision and we know that that's been refined and it's ready to communicate or at least to start to socialize or talk to me. Maybe, maybe you're not there yet. Talk more about this voice of the organization that you touched on, the intent of that and then how that will tie into that executive vision.

And it won't necessarily in the beginning even tie directly into that executive vision. Because here, I mean, it could be whatever change you want to make, but it's more just understanding for the voice of the organization how much change can they tolerate. It may be in A, maybe in B, it could be in Z, it doesn't really matter each way, but it's understanding. Aside from their tolerance for change, how do they want to experience it? How do they want to experience the communications and what is just the best way for them to absorb what they need to absorb to understand what's expected of them and then to also bring them along the journey.

So I want you to get into, because this is a really important point that you're making before you're actually working on buy into the executive vision or communicating it out. What you just said, I don't want to be missed, which is you're getting a voice of the organization to understand how they want to consume, even what it is that's being translated out and what the executive vision is, as well as getting their feedback on some of the concepts or what it is that the executive vision is setting out to achieve.

Exactly. And I also say that it's not necessarily even tied to a project as well. I mean, even just for your normal day to day, you should be understanding what is your voice of the organization and their reaction to what your current state is. So it may not even necessarily be change triggered too.

So how do you do that?

Well, the way we did it is we went a little bit aggressive and it wasn't definitely the easiest thing to accomplish. But we started by surveying all, all the organization and really what we focused on were ICs, so our individual contributors. And, you know, we kept it short, sweet, to the point. We worked with our partners also on the questions and how we ask them. Because it's not just what you ask, of course, it's how you ask it. So we don't have any loaded questions because we know there are some answers that we want to hear, but we want to make sure that we're not leading the witness. And we really structured that out and sent it out. And then really, once we got back all of the results, and we actually had a pretty good uptake as well. I mean, when you ask people for their opinion, a lot of times they do want to give it. So it's about giving that opportunity.

So you're getting people's input and giving them the opportunity whether they agree or not. And then you went through a process of. I'd like you to delve into what it looked like. So you did a large scale organizational survey, like a digital survey, and you culled through those results, and I recall you spent a significant amount of time calling through those results.

Yeah, it was, you know, thousands of surveys, which turned into thousands of responses, which turned into also thousands of comments.

Wow.

And of course, the hardest are comments because you can't just say how many A's, B's, trues, falses, and how many number ones did you get? You actually have to read them. And I myself personally read through every single comment because it was very important to us to understand, you know, not just how they answered, but why they answered what they answered. And it's a, it's a big key. And it would actually also, of course, wasn't just me, quite a few members on our team read through those. And it was used in multiple ways too. Not even just for a project.

So worth the effort?

100%, yes.

Now, let's talk about once you did that electronic survey, you did something that was even a little bit closer in. And I'd love for you to talk about the roundtables that evolved from that survey.

Yeah, definitely. So when we sent out the survey, the last question on it was, would you be interested in taking part in a roundtable of a selected topic?

Wow.

So just ask them, do you want to be, do you want to share more opinions? Or maybe we're not touching on something that's important to you. We had four different topics that we did, and we had multiple sessions of each. And we had, you know, the Full signup process around that. And we had 10 to 15 reps in each one of these roundtables. It was about 45 minutes apiece. And we had. It was 42 sessions.

Wow, that's a lot. Lot. Again, worth the effort.

Definitely worth the effort. It wasn't. It wasn't easy. And of course, you get. You get the good, the bad, the ugly, too. But one common theme across the surveys and everyone that we talked to in the round tables was, thank you for doing this. And quite a few said, you know, we've never really been asked our opinion about these things.

Yep. Any comments that I got? A funny story about a comment I've been part of large surveys that stands out in your mind. I had a couple of funny ones. I remember it was also an international survey that we rolled out. And I remember this response from an individual contributor, a salesperson in London who actually said, the man that paints my house makes more money than I do. That thing went viral inside of the company. And then I recall another one that was pretty funny, too, that was very recently. And this particular sales organization, they do a lot of conferences and events. And the one person's comment was, you know, I do spend a significant amount of time on events. In fact, sometimes I really feel like a party planner. It came out just like that anyway, so you get all kinds of feedback, don't you?

Oh, yeah. We had some funny ones, too, that stuck with us as well. There was one when we were talking about how fast you're getting data, and one of the responses was, I have to paraphrase because I can't say exactly what they said, but they're gonna be complaining a lot, but it's not gonna kill em. And so it was. Those aren't the exact words. The exact words are much more funny, but you can use your imagination there.

Yeah, we just can't say it on the podcast. I hear you, but they're pretty candid.

So it'll be entertaining as well for you if. If anyone in the audience chooses to actually run them yourselves.

So definitely worth the effort. And what we found is that getting that voice of the organization, Great when you're leading any type of change effort, transformational change, great when you've grown by M and A or you've integrated a new company. But just hearing the voice doesn't mean that they have to completely get along or.

No, there's definitely going to be. I mean, there's going to be conflict, of course, and especially with how we ran them as well, because we didn't limit it to say, a specific business unit or a specific role or, you know, there was no limiting criteria except just the topic of what we're talking about. Of course they were all sales employees, but aside from that, and it was also, I think something that was positive for us too was to see also how they interacted with each other as well. Because it wasn't just, you know, like what we're doing here, just, you know, me talking to you, them talking to me kind of one on one and taking turns. They were also really having a dialogue within with their own peers.

That's very interesting. So let me ask you something. Do you guys have a cadence for this? Will you do this annually or what do you think?

Annually.

Okay, that's excellent.

Yeah. It's not something we can definitely to do every quarter. It's. It's definitely a lot of work.

Oh, I think people would get a little fatigued too. Anyway, okay, so two pieces in defining success for your project. The one is getting that executive vision right and relatable down to the front line. But you also need to get that two way street going early on, which is getting the voice of the organization understanding how they want to consume information, but also starting to socialize what it is that you're going to do. Now let's talk about what we'll call the third leg of our stool around operational feasibility.

Yeah, definitely. So it's really about not starting at step one. So, you know, there are plenty of times where I'm sure everyone here has seen a project that hasn't really done their homework all the way and they have the vision, they have the plan, everything is perfect on paper. But then when you actually go to execute it, oh, I don't have this functionality, oh, I need to do specific it changes here or oh, I need a dashboard there. And a lot of times that can end up in a lot of delays. And it's something that we talked about in our presentation world of work is, you know, just like you had with those three, those three weeks where you didn't have the right stakeholders. It's the same kind of delays that can happen with this. It's, you know, not taking those things for granted.

Yeah. So what Nick's referring to, and this has to do with your stakeholders. And clearly we've got stakeholders here in operations as well as within the organization and even your executive level. They're all stakeholders in this. And we were discussing something around getting stakeholders. Right. And we discussed that when you don't and you don't have the inclusion of all the right stakeholders at the same time, that can add untimely delays. Not only that, though, it can create a lot of conflict throughout the process itself.

Yeah, and that operational portion can definitely be a major, a major, major headache. It's, you know, you can change or hopefully change someone's opinion to get them aligned towards a vision, or you can change the way you communicate in your, you know, based on the voice you hear from your organization, but you can't necessarily change very easily something that you don't have in your operations or in your current system that you're using now.

That's actually a really good point. I want to dig down a little bit into this voice of the organization's tolerance for change. And what we talked about is sometimes the executive vision, it's a lot and could be too much for people to actually consume in the time period or actually execute upon in the time period that is provided or expected at the executive level. Talk to me a little bit about in a challenging situation where you may not have alignment at the leadership level down to that front line, once you've gone through and you've gotten your executive vision alignment, then you've gotten your voice of the organization and you've looked at your operational capabilities and there's some challenges there. So you know that there's going to, you're not going to be able to realize the whole vision, at least in the first timeline. What do you do to get buy in and how do you get the executive stakeholders there engaged and on board with that?

I think it's getting the, I mean, getting the compromise between the two. So there's just gonna have to be compromises both ways. And you know, on the ground you're going to have the challenge of, you know, they have to deliver on what they're doing today. They have their quota, they have their numbers, and you have to be cognizant of that. And at the same time, you're asking them to do a change as well. So it's kind of, you know, how much can you change while still delivering, you know, and making sure that you're not creating any disconnects there. And so like I said, it ends up kind of in compromise between the two. But as long as you're setting the expectations right and you're setting the, you know, that roadmap for the executive vision and saying, you know, this is how much we can do in year one, this is how much we can do in year two, and you can see that progress and you can take Those bite sized steps towards what that envision is, that's what I would call success. And how we were able to do that.

That's great. So I'm going to ask you a couple tough questions. What would you say would be the most difficult part of leading a transformational change effort?

Oh, I think it's the personalities. So because you have everyone who is in sales to executives to finance to it, and everyone is definitely, at least on our side, a lot of the stereotypes are true. You have all the different personality traits and bringing them together, especially when you have project that has, you know, 50 plus stakeholders and you have to get them all aligned and you have people who can also, they can take so much change at one point or they move this fast, or someone who's taking a look at it from different angles and trying to get them to understand the other angles of the other people. And you know, so just that maybe I should call it more stakeholder management.

Because it would be a little bit.

More encompassing of, you know, the personalities, the viewpoints, the different stages of where you're at. Because even within the same role, you may have different markets that are, you know, some are more mature towards that vision than others.

Yeah.

And you're even within the same, same portion and the same role that you're looking at. You have just wildly different starting points.

So what do you do to help get them aligned?

So it definitely takes catering, your approach based on your organizational voice that you heard and it may mean that you need to do some more individualized catering than you thought you were going to need to do. We pivoted pretty quickly towards, you know, we were originally planning on having a video that would explain their plans. And you know, this was really what came out of the results too, and what they would like and you know, and also providing like, you know, manager materials so that they can also cascade that down because they liked hearing information from their managers and still having that human touch point. It went from that to us hosting specific sessions that we're doing, trainings, us making material, us working with hr, for example, on making joint materials and presenting that jointly together, us joining manager sessions so that we're there when they needed support. Plenty of pings late in my night as well. Can you help me with this? And it's really just about being flexible, really and being able to turn on a dime. And I hate to say it, but being agile.

As you think about all the projects that you've done, what would be like three things that you would say I would do each and every time, all the time.

Definitely the, the survey. I'm even taking that in some projects that I'm doing now moving forward. We had never really done anything so extensive, and I think it brought a lot of, A lot, A lot of value back into what we did. So that would definitely be my number one. My number two would be, well, every single time I always say this, my new profound appreciation for good project management and a good project manager. So every single, Every single time I, you know, having an amazing project manager that can wrangle everyone together and, you know, keep them on task, Keep me on task as well. Yeah, that would be my number two because I think it's also a little bit underappreciated too.

Yeah, I would agree with you there.

And then third, the alignment with my other partners in the change. We definitely before this project, we hadn't worked as closely before with, for example, hr. And that was, you know, we have a lot of touch points where we work together, but we really didn't go in necessarily with one voice. We had an HR voice and we had a sales comp. Voice. Voice. And that was, it brought a lot of value. And it was actually something that the reps, they brought up as well. You know, from their ViewPoint, it's not HR and sales comp. It is, you are my benefits. So I essentially need. I want one voice.

Yeah.

And it made, it made a lot of sense. Wasn't necessarily as easy to do, but when we came together, it brought a lot of value back.

Now I'm going to flip the switch a little bit and ask you what are a couple of things, I won't hold you to too many here that you would say, do not do this or do not underestimate that.

Do not be afraid to change course. Sometimes there's a time where you hold strong and then there's a time where, you know, you say, yes, you're right, and you go and bring back the numbers or whatever they need to help them get over, get over the change. Because just because you know it and you can say it, it doesn't mean that it's how they understand it, you know, between all the different types of stakeholders you have.

Yeah.

So don't be afraid to change course.

Okay.

Like the same thing we did with our communications as well. We redid the whole plan multiple times, actually.

So just because you say, here's the plan, don't necessarily just stick with the plan because that's what it was supposed to be. But be agile. I heard you use that word too and be.

It should be living. It's a living plan.

Oh, that's a great way of describing it. Right. Anything else that you just would not do.

I mentioned this also before because we talked about this. Never forget to check your mute. Your mute key.

Your mute button. Oh, do tell.

More of a funny one. Yes. So we were in, you know, we of course had our great project manager who is keeping everyone on agenda and we were going through everything and of course we have, you know, I don't mean to derail but we know how that goes. So we're going off topic, of course. And I step in trying bring everyone back and then I'm like, we have an agenda. We've got to make sure that we get through this. We only have 20 minutes left or such. And then you get. Oh definitely you're right. And then one last thing, one last thing. And then was so funny because the person, they went back and said we're supposed to go through the modeling results and we only have 10, 15 minutes left and we've got to make the decisions that we need. Of course I wasn't on mute and my most annoyed tone because also it was very early in my morning as well. I'm not a morning person as you know. It was something to the extent of. Well, that's what I've been trying to do. And of course it got very, very.

Quiet and, and you realize the mute button was.

I realized after that, after everyone. After it got quiet at that point. Yeah, I do. But it was effective. It was effective, yes. We got back on top.

So you're reined them in.

Yeah, well, that mean that being more funny, but.

That's funny.

But yeah, I think the, the next piece that I would say is don't underestimate the time and the effort that goes into preparing the communications. I mean we always say, you know, 40% of the time on communications. But you know, I think in, in our instance, the preparation of those rather than just the delivery. Because the delivery takes a long time. It does in the follow ups.

Yeah.

But the, the preparations, especially when you're working across multiple organizations and you have to agree on the materials.

Yeah. So make sure you build that into the plan. You know, speaking of which, we were discussing some of those intangibles like when you're getting people on board, having unexpected meetings and building something into your plan to account for that to kind of keep you on, keep you on schedule a little bit.

You definitely, I mean, you know, it's, you know it's going to happen. You're going to change course at some points. You know, you're going to need to do fine tuning and it doesn't just happen.

Now something that you and I know is that very common out there. Anybody could Google it. If they Google, you know, how many, what percentage of transformational change efforts fail? It's about 70%. John Cotter, HBR, you know, the man of change has stated this fact and when you really dig into though what he said and the things that we've experienced, it doesn't mean that they completely fail.

Yeah. And I think it's more about at least from what we've talked about and all the different articles, not even just from hbr, but others. It's not setting necessarily the scope correctly of and doing everything that we talked about. So and most really focusing on the operational feasibility as well as the organizational voice voice. And if you don't scope that necessarily right, you know, it can look like a failure because you didn't, you know, you were too ambitious and you set too high of goals and you didn't consider doing incremental change or you know, maybe you weren't within budget or you went over time. So I mean they're not necessarily failures too.

Yeah, you know, that's talking about this incremental change. I often talk about change. The larger the organization, the harder it is to change. And I describe it like, you know, compare when the Titanic, probably not the Titanic, but a cruise ship is trying to make that change versus a skipper. Right.

Hopefully not the Titanic. We don't want to go down.

I didn't mean to say the Titanic. That's why I very quickly went to a large.

Some other large ship.

Some other large ship. Yeah, you got it. Anyway, so Nick, this is a really interesting conversation. I'd like to note before we leave our audience here if there's any other takeaways that you would like to leave with them today.

Well, definitely one of the best is to lead by example. And we talked about organizational change. Yeah, well, organizational voice, excuse me. And we talked about that through surveying and if you're listening to us on YouTube, leave a comment and let us know your thoughts. You know, as we're driving engagements with, with our organizations, we also want to drive engagement with you.

Oh, that's actually great. Thanks so much, Nick and thank you so much for being here. I'm privileged to work with you and really happy to call you also my friend. So everyone, thank you so much for joining us here today. We look forward to you joining us the next time and again, Nick, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, Michelle, and definitely look forward to working together in the future as as.