Managing Change in Your Agency

Hello and welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode. I'm glad that you're with me. And today we're going to be addressing something that most people don't like. Most people resist. In fact, you and I resist. And bigger than that, in fact, most people don't just resist this, they actually sometimes get angry. They get angry about this. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about change, making changes. Now, hopefully these are positive changes, right? I'm not going to talk about making any negative changes. But if you want to make a change in yourself on an apartment, throughout the entire agency, when you try to change something people are accustomed to, they're normalized to, they're comfortable with, it can often cause friction and you may have already experienced that before. And today I'm going to talk about some different areas. Why is change so hard? Why do people resist change? Just understanding that basic nature, the why behind it. And then I'm going to share some problems that I see agencies have when they try to manage change or implement change. And then lastly, I'm going to share with you a three phase approach, a way of thinking a little differently that may help you and your agency get greater, buy in, get greater results and reduce some of the friction. Right? You're always going to have that with any change and we'll talk about that today. But how do you minimize it? Right? How do you minimize that? So before I dive into the content today of change, this crazy word that we're going to talk about, I always want to share the purpose of the Agent Leader podcast. If you're a newer listener, the purpose is pretty simple. I want to help you as an agency leader gain clarity, build consistency and to make a commitment to become your best version possible. And as always, the agent leader isn't just the agency principal or sales leader. It can be, but anybody who has influence. If you have influence in your agency, and by the way, the answer is yes, you do. Why? Well, because you have influence with your team and your clients and your community and anybody else, certainly your colleagues, then you are an agent leader. And so today again, we're going to talk about this leadership perspective of change. So let's get into the episode. Well, why is change so hard for insurance agencies? Why do people resist change? Well, I'm going to first kind of go against my own words here is I don't believe that people resist change. I think people resist being changed. I'll say that again. That People don't just resist change, they resist being changed. I actually heard that years ago at a John Maxwell event. And it really has been true in so many areas. And, you know, a very easy example is this. If I were to say to you, the listener, hey, by the way, we're going to make a change in your life. I'm going to give you a million bucks. Okay? You good with that? Are you going to resist that change? Of course not. Right. Well, why? Well, because it's a million bucks. And hey, that sounds pretty good to me. And secondly, it's because you didn't have to do anything. You didn't have to change any behaviors, you didn't have to change any habits. It's just the idea of, yeah, I'll take change as long as I don't have to do anything and evolve and develop to become a better human being or whatever it may be to get this change that I want. It's like taking the magic pill and winning the lottery. Whatever it is, people don't really resist change. We want the outcome. Most cases we want the outcome. We just don't like the process and what goes into that change. So why do agencies struggle so much with change? Well, besides the fact that I just mentioned, most people resisted because they have to change things. I think there's a few different factors I see with agencies that I talk to and meet with and coach of where they struggle with changes. The first is this. Most agency leaders, not all, but many agency leaders are quick start in nature. What do I mean by that? They think of an idea and in their minds, it's already happened. It's already occurred. Yeah. I was thinking this morning, and it's like, boom, it's already happened. So I heard something today. I listened to a podcast, I read an article, whatever, I watched a video. And so I got this new idea. I got this new idea that I want to share with you. So let's make this change. And what this does is that it minimizes the effect of any real change we want to make. It's kind of like the boy who Cried wolf to a degree, right? It's like, here's an idea, here's another idea. Here's shiny object. Here's a new thing we should try. I read this, I saw this. And what does your agency team usually say? Oh, here he goes again. Here she goes again. Another idea. A flavor of the week, right? And so what happens is, is that the agency team or department says, don't worry, this too shall pass. Right? If we just Ignore them for long enough. Maybe it's a day, maybe it's a week, maybe we have to wait out a month, they'll forget about it and we can go back to doing the same stuff we've always done. And we don't have to get uncomfortable. We don't have to learn something new. We don't have to develop a school, a skill, or change an attitude or whatever it may be, right? So this too shall pass. I think the other thing that I see that agency struggle with changes is that we try to change the part versus the whole. Now, this may vary by agency and what specific issue and thing you're trying to change, but what often happens. The best example I can give is this. We run producer sales training classes. We've done them, obviously in live, face to face, and now we've done our third one. We just started our third one virtually, and we've had great success with it. I mean, producers love coming to it. They get a lot of information, they grow, they learn new skills, they get challenged. They internally desire more in themselves. It's just. It's a really cool experience. And we see a lot of behavior change which leads to results. However, one of the biggest challenges that we see, in fact, on a recent. Recent class that we just had, one of the producers mentioned this to a degree is, well, wait a second. What if I'm all excited about this and it makes sense to me, but I can't get my team on board, I can't get my service team on board. In fact, I can't even get the leadership who sent me here on board because they don't want to change, right? Or they don't want me to change in these different ways, right? So it's this part versus the whole that we think that we could send one individual or one small department, and if we make this one change, the rest of the agency will work itself out. And, you know, listen, I don't know the size of your agency, but if it's more than a few people, this starts to become a real issue. And that not only can sometimes changing one department cause resentment, right? That happens. But we don't row together. We're doing different things. And so we make one change here, but don't make it here. Another example, just to think about, I mean, this may seem silly, but I was thinking about this as I started recording, is that have you ever had a pain in your body? Like, for example, your knee, right? So your right knee hurts, and so what do you do when your right knee hurts? Well, maybe you try to fix it or go to the doctor, but initially you try to maybe take weight off of it or avoid it or walk a little differently, right? Just to avoid some of the pain. And if you do this long enough, what always happens? Well then your back hurts or your left hip, you know, left side of your hip hurts or whatever it may be because we're not in congruency, right. Our body is off. And this is part of. I see the problem with change in agencies. We try to fix one small area but don't address the larger issue. Now this gets into culture and I've talked about this in different podcasts, but we should be speaking to the entire agency about our common vision and our mission. Now we've got different roles and responsibilities. So certain changes aren't going to apply to everybody. I understand that, but we should be speaking the same type of language. So the part versus the whole is the second mistake that I see. And the third is this is that we talk about the what but we never talk about the why. And you know, the what is, here's what we're going to do. The why is why will this matter to us as an agency? Why will this matter to you? Why will this matter to the clients? Again, whoever it's going to affect? We spend all this time on the what but never really talk about the why. Now I don't know about you, but if someone just tells me what to do, are you inclined just to say okay now if they built up a long years of trust and credibility, you might just say whatever that person says, I'm on board. Well good for you if you've got that. But that takes a long time to earn. So if you don't have that and you just give people the what without the why, they're A not going to do it and B, if they do it, be resistant in doing it, talk about you behind your back. I'm going to do this, but I can't believe how stupid this is. That's what happens in agencies. So it's the what without the why. So I'm going to talk about this specific aspect in a three phase approach, right, A three phase approach. And this is all part of managing change. By the way, one side note, here's just a side tip that you can consider. Just changing our language can go a long way in mindset and action. So real quick example here. If you were going to say we're going to make a change, most people are going to go, kind of gives you unsettling Feeling. But, but if you're going to say, hey, we've got an improvement to make, or we're going to be making some improvements, you may still get some of that. But you know what, it just sounds better, sounds different, sounds more appealing. So again, how you use your words and how you say your words matter quite a bit as a leader. Same thing for, you know, if you're dealing as a producer with a client. Now I've got to make a change. Hey, you know, I've seen some improvements that we can make. Right? That's a different mindset. Very small thing. But I tell you what, it's very, very powerful. So that's just a side note, but let's get into managing change. See, I've already talked about this, but what most agencies and people try to do when they want to have change, and again, hopefully this is positive change, is we talk all about the specific process or the thing that we have to do. The first phase I'm looking at just if you want to, if you're not driving and you could draw a piece of paper or have a piece of paper, draw a rectangular box, a vertical rectangular box, and you can put two vertical lines. So you kind of have three columns. And there's three phases. 1, 2, 3. The first phase is one that we should be spending much more time talking about. Culture, the language, the behaviors. This is the why. And only about 20% of the time talking about the specific process. The process at that point is only being highlighted, addressed by the culture. This is foundation. Now, I don't know how long this phase lasts. It depends what type of change you're doing. If you're changing the phone system, this shouldn't take very long. But if you're changing something big, like the overall entire agency sales process, we need to talk a lot about why we're doing this, the impact that it's going to have, how we speak to people, you know, just those kind of things in overall sense to start to get people to understand the importance behind it versus we dive into. Here's the new sales process and here's exactly how it looks. You're going to get resistance to that because people haven't bought in the second part. So this is phase two is kind of a 50, 50 split. Again, this doesn't have to be perfect, but I'm just giving you an idea. 50, 50, where it's really culture, 50% process, 50, 50% that processes are being introduced into the culture. We've been talking about this in phase one. Now we're going to begin to introduce some processes or maybe one specific process. And this builds momentum right now. How do you build momentum? Well, first of all, you've done that by talking about, you know, communicating the culture for a period of time. And. But the other thing that typically happens is you're going to have one or two early adopters now just using producers as an example. Let's say we're talking about the sales process to stay on that theme. And you've talked about the importance of changing the conversation and what this is going to do and separate us and all these kind of things. And we talk about this with our clients at Sitkins. And you've got some people, some producers that go, I ain't going to do that. No, no, not going to do that. But then you have a couple producers who go, you know what? This makes sense. This gives me a competitive advantage. I like this. This is different. I have to keep doing the same thing I've always done and sound like every other producer. I'm just giving you one example. And they go out and have some successes, write some nice accounts, have some success out in the marketplace, and all of a sudden the other people go, what are you doing? What are you doing? And this is true with a lot of change in a marketplace, but specifically with an agency. Success breeds success. And so we get some success, it'll bring more success. Which gets us to the final phase. Phase three, which is that is 80% process that's supported 20% by the culture. Right. The culture reinforces the normal language of behaviors and processes for desired results. This is acceleration. And what's interesting about acceleration of this phase, and again, this all takes a while, is that when you get to this phase where the culture has really taken shape and you've been able to spend now more time on the process because the culture is built in and you've reinforced it that others don't fit, that don't do the right process. What do I mean by this? It means that all of a sudden you've got nine people on your team that are doing something a certain way, they're rolling the same direction, they're doing the same type of process. And one person says, eh, not for me. Guess what? Even at leadership, you don't have to step in as much because the people around you go, you don't feel fit here. This isn't the way we do business. This isn't how we do things. Right. The agency culture supports itself. It supports itself. Ultimately. What does this provide? It provides buy in all of this leads to one key word, which is hyphenated. So really it's two words. It's buy in. Right? We need to get buy in. And when your team and members of your team are part of the design now, does this mean they design every part? No, but it means because you have. You have communicated and reinforced the culture, the why behind it. You've had conversations, you've talked about and talked about it and mentioned it and the importance, and then you talked about it some more. Guess what? They now are part of the design. And when they are part of the design, you get greater buy in. See, most agencies won't spend the time to do this. They won't build the foundation they try to drop. They try to go right to the last phase of just a new process. You do it because I said so, and it's to going good for you. Just like as a parent, you know, I say this to my kids, well, dad, why? Why is this important? Why should we do this? Because you should, darn it. And I'm your dad. Right? That works maybe for a while, but at some point, what happens? They resist. They question your motives, they don't buy in, they fight against you. But all those kind of things, same thing we see with an agency. So when we think about change, just to give a. Just to go back and highlight why is it hard? Because people are comfortable, you're comfortable, I'm comfortable, my own habits. So this is something that we are generally going to resist, right? It's something that breaks the norm, and people don't like to break the norm. And so we have to understand that as an agency leader, we can't be fast, we can't have an idea of the day. Right? We can't just address one person or one part and think it's all going to be fixed. And we have to make sure that we're addressing the why, the culture behind it. What is the culture you want? Why is it important to you and everyone around it? Allowing your team to have some design in that and give them more buy in ultimately allow you to make the right changes. So hopefully there's something here that I shared with you that stood out that made sense to you. I love to get your feedback. As always, this podcast I'm delivering to give value to you, the independent insurance agency leader. If you like it, share it, give me a review. Um, also, just as a note, we are going to be accepting new applications for our private client network. If you want to be part of our elite group of insurance agencies. Starting this fourth quarter of 2020. Can you believe it's the fourth quarter of 2020? We are going to be accepting applications for new agencies to come in to be part of our group into 2021. I know it was a crazy year. There's no doubt about it. But this is the time where we can kind of get our feet back under us and say, okay, let's go. Let's check charge. Let's make 2021 incredible. If you're interested in our private client group and how we work really close with agencies being able to affect improvements, not just change in all aspects of the agency, Visit us@sitkins.com TSN that's the Sitkins Network. Sitkins.com TSN and with that, I wish you and your agency all the best in your success. Thanks for listening.