Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
17 Managing Change with Sayre Darling
230 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of "Dial It In," hosts Dave and Trygve discuss their ability to deal with change and bring on an expert to prove their point. They interview Sayre Darling, a change management expert, who shares insights on how businesses can successfully navigate change. The hosts and guest discuss the fear of change, how to communicate change to employees, and the importance of having a change management plan in place. Tune in to learn how to "dial it in" when it comes to change in your organization.
…
Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
Links:
Website: dialitinpodcast.com
BizzyWeb site: bizzyweb.com
Connect with Dave Meyer
Connect with Trygve Olsen
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Dial It In
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with interesting people about the process improvements and tricks they use to grow their businesses. I'm Dave Meyer, president of BusyWeb, and every week, Trigby Olsen and I are bringing you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations.
Handling Change at BusyWeb
00:00:24
Speaker
So normally Dave and I do these podcasts, and we're really excited about it, and we're happy to be here, but not today.
00:00:32
Speaker
Oh, I'm a little excited. Well, I'm a little excited too, but something happened at Busy Web this week that, yeah, so Dave and I were in a meeting together and somebody said to us that we don't deal well with change. And Dave and I looked at each other and said, well, sure, we do. And then we kind of got laughed out of the room, right?
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, I was. Exactly.
Expert Insights on Change Management
00:01:00
Speaker
But we have thick skins and we decided to regroup and bring on an expert to prove that we know what we're doing when it comes to change. Right. And as two middle aged men, we love nothing more than change, right? We don't fear it at all. Sure. It's not like snakes or clowns or clown snakes or anything. Do you fear clown snakes?
00:01:22
Speaker
No, it's mostly falling from high heights and that's only the abrupt stop at the bottom.
00:01:29
Speaker
It's funny you say that because when I go see my therapist, he's on the fourth floor of his building and it's a glass elevator and I'm terrified to get the elevator. I feel like I'm falling. Today, we're going to talk about change. We're going to talk about change in business and change in what you do and how you do it. We do have a longtime friend of the show who's here. We are delighted to have, say, our darling change management expert. Hello, darling. Hello, sweetie. How are you?
00:01:59
Speaker
Well, I'm here under protest, but I will work it out. So you are a change management expert. Your entire consultancy is based on how to help organizations change for the better.
Change as a Systemic Force
00:02:13
Speaker
That is correct. Today, we're going to talk about what's new about change, especially what's new in 2023.
00:02:22
Speaker
That's fantastic because as we're recording this, we're looking 2023 right down the barrel of 2023. Let's rewind a couple of years. Organizationally speaking, how did COVID change the landscape? See, I use change. We should make a drinking game out of this. Everybody drink when we say change. What happened to organizations when everything had to go sideways?
00:02:50
Speaker
COVID was really an accelerant of change in the world. And while the speed of life certainly increased during the past three years, change changed as well. And so now, when we look at change,
00:03:06
Speaker
from the past. We looked at change as an episode. I'm going to implement this particular technology. I'm going to change this particular part of the business process. And now there isn't enough time to solve all of our problems one after another. And frankly, it doesn't work because we are so much more interconnected these days.
00:03:29
Speaker
And things are moving so much faster and they're so much more complex So instead of change being episodic being i'm solving this one problem The rest of my life is working
Resistance to Change and Inefficiencies
00:03:42
Speaker
just fine. I'm just going to change this one thing or change this one process in my business it is much better to look at change as
00:03:52
Speaker
The force that drives your business changes how business improves. It is not an episode. It is not looked at as a foreign object landing on your plate. It is how you cultivate new practices, procedures, and reinvent yourselves and your business. So change is systemic and we need to change the way we change and change the way we lead it.
00:04:20
Speaker
OK, so first of all, we're going to completely abandon the idea of the drinking game because I think we're going to kill somebody if we keep it up just after the first answer. So the second question is, why is it so hard?
00:04:32
Speaker
Well, humans are wired for certainty. We feel more in control. We have more certainty that things will work out the way we want them. And so that's why we're willing to pay a very high price for doing everything the same way, even if it means going out of our way, not being as efficient as possible or falling short of our goals. It's the, yes, this might not be perfect, but I know how to make it work.
00:05:01
Speaker
I just can't take the risk kind of thinking.
Leading Change Through Involvement
00:05:06
Speaker
So certainty certainly equals safety, which makes us feel good. Life is not certain and life is a process of continual change. Is the difference between risk management and change management just two sides of the same coin?
00:05:26
Speaker
I don't think so. Risk management is a part of how you manage change and how you need to approach the change that you are wanting to make. In the past, we have looked at change as, oh, it's complicated. It's going to be hard. It's going to mess with my life. And so that's the mindset we bring into the change process.
00:05:51
Speaker
However, if you lead change rather than manage it, you can look at all of the advantages of making the change, involve people in a way that helps them understand what the opportunities are that everyone is trying to create rather than to create a period of misery during the transition and getting accustomed to the change.
00:06:19
Speaker
So if I understand you correctly, people fear change because they know they have a problem, but it's the devil they know. Yes, it is the devil they know. And they don't want to go through all of the angst, all of the new thinking that is involved in going to a large scale change.
00:06:44
Speaker
And that's one of the things that we really battle though in marketing for BusyWeb, for example, where we're dealing with folks that are afraid of change and they say, well, we've been doing this stuff for this long and our business is running. And so why can't we just keep doing that? And there's a fallacy involved in not changing. I mean, there's simply no way to maintain status quo without doing something, right?
Proactive Change in 2023
00:07:13
Speaker
Absolutely. And we're not talking about maintaining status quo anymore in 2023.
00:07:22
Speaker
Change has accelerated so much over the past three years, moving into the fourth industrial revolution. If you don't change, you will be out of business. You will be left behind. And it isn't just the change you are making to a particular marketing practice and the way you work with people. It's how you look at your business in the new landscape.
00:07:47
Speaker
We have been getting ready to get ready for 2023 for several years. At first, we thought it was going to come in 2021. Oh, COVID is over with. And here we are in 2023 are getting ready. And we are now faced with, okay, people are back to work. We've got to work through a recession. We've got to rebuild. We want to come out of this recession doing what?
00:08:17
Speaker
If you're not doing something new, you don't have people's attentions. The risk for not doing change in 2023 is exponentially greater than what it has been in the past. So you need to be proactive in embracing change in order to even stand out or get noticed.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yes, and the great word you use there, Dave, was being proactive. You can do change. This seems like a very subtle point, but doing change is doing what everyone else is doing and doing it the way they're doing it, not even thinking about it, okay?
00:08:57
Speaker
And being proactive about change means being strategic and being decisive. We are going to make a particular change because it makes sense for our new strategic plan. It helps us to increase our business, find different customers, do a completely different type of business. And only when you are proactive can you own the change.
00:09:23
Speaker
meaning know what you're doing and why you're doing it and what kind of mindset it takes to be successful at it. When you're just going through the motions and following the owner's manual of saying, okay, this is the next step we have to do, a lot of those advantages are never realized.
00:09:44
Speaker
When you come into a company, Sarah, because people bring you in to help facilitate change, right? Yes. What are some of the things that if a CEO brings you in, he says, I want to make this change, but I know it's hard and I don't know what to do. Where do you take it from there as an outside consultant?
Opportunities and Involvement in Change
00:10:00
Speaker
Well, I have an approach that I call change leadership. And as I've said, you do not manage change, you lead it or you get out of the way. And what is missing in change management, there's nothing wrong with it, first of all, but it is just a process for the work project. It does not include a leader
00:10:23
Speaker
finding their reason for why we are going to change beyond we need to keep up with the industry, we need to have this technology, etc. They can't often give a reason other than we're doing the change because.
00:10:39
Speaker
So change leadership is about understanding the granularity of the change, understanding what the opportunities are for using this change to address other issues. So let me give you an example. If you are using a new marketing process as you are pitching for your clients, how can that new marketing process engage your client's employees a bit more?
00:11:08
Speaker
Tap into their creativity, give them a leadership development opportunity, show them a little bit of love and recognition. How can you use the change as a way to create a systemic solution for the organization that gives everyone a little bit more of what they really want because of how you approach the change?
00:11:34
Speaker
What are some of the things that organizations are struggling with in 2023 in terms of the status quo versus evolving into something new?
00:11:44
Speaker
Because everything is changing so fast, they don't know where to start. What's the trigger? Where do I want to go? What else is changing? How do I connect with those things? What has really changed in 2023 is there is no familiarity and you cannot base next year's plans on best practices because we don't do that anymore. You need new best practices.
00:12:15
Speaker
Well, that all sounds terrifying. Pretty much. So if I can't rest my laurels on my existing best practices because I know they're going to have to change, how do I do that? It requires a new way of thinking and a new conversation inside of organizations. So when you implement change right now, you assign a project manager who may or may know, pause,
00:12:45
Speaker
You assign a change manager who may or may not know anything about your business or that particular technology. They just know how to manage change. And then you may hire someone like myself to come in and help with the people side of change, the change management. And I don't know anything about the politics of the organization, who the influential leaders are.
00:13:09
Speaker
the executive leadership team isn't really leading the change they're just there for window dressing and to make the opening announcement and so the change itself is already disconnected from the organization. Okay so in the new world. You need to get past.
00:13:29
Speaker
thinking that you can lead change according to the organizational structure. Change created at the executive leadership team level sounds like it was created at the executive leadership team level. And when you roll that change down into the organization in each level, you have to change the language and help them understand the motivations for the change
00:13:57
Speaker
according to the motivations of how, pause. Today, when you make the change, you need to find a way to get the change explained
00:14:13
Speaker
and aligned with the metrics and the motivations of each level of your organization. So when you start at the top of the organization with the executive leadership team, let's say you're rolling out some new technology that collects a lot more data from your customers.
00:14:30
Speaker
Well, frontline employees in a service industry who are wanting to hang on to their ability to have individual conversations with individuals they are making deliveries to or interacting with, they're not exactly going to be motivated for all the reasons you give
00:14:50
Speaker
for this data will help our company to do X, Y, and Z. They want to hold on to that personal contact and connection. They want to be valued in your organization for the knowledge they have about the customers and keeping their role in doing that. So when you decide you want to make a change,
00:15:13
Speaker
It needs to involve people across the organization at every level of the organization and decide, so what kind of company do we want to be? How do we want to serve our customers differently? How do we think the landscape of business has changed over the last three years? Where does that work in our favor and where are we obsolete?
00:15:36
Speaker
Is that partly because people expect to be able to have conversations with people now? And in the age of social media, you can pretty much talk to anyone, right? So is that more the expectation of people that are in your front lines that they feel like they should have a voice?
00:15:59
Speaker
Having a voice and effectively talking about change are two different things. Yes, it's important for everyone to have a voice.
00:16:08
Speaker
and you need to understand how to have a conversation so that you are hearing people at every level. You might be hearing the words, but you're not really hearing the meaning, really digging into what is important. It's really more of a facilitated conversation, Dave, than it is about listening to everybody. We listen to a lot of stuff, but the language I use in coaching
00:16:37
Speaker
isn't the language I need to be slipping into in this conversation here about change because although you would understand the words I'm using, the nuances I'm trying to express are not going to be understood because I just switched languages for you.
00:16:58
Speaker
Got it.
Levels of Involvement for Successful Change
00:17:00
Speaker
You said something really fascinating there, Sarah, that I want to explore a little more and I immediately sort of graded on what you just said when you said everybody needs to have a voice and change.
00:17:16
Speaker
And i'm higher up the company that i work for but i'm not the head of it and i know that a lot of the heads of companies that i work for would create on that too because sometimes as the head you know this is the way it is this is this is what we're gonna do so.
00:17:34
Speaker
I know that there's a tremendous importance in making sure that downstream employees have valued, but you talk a little bit more about what the reasoning behind that is and how... Yeah, let's start with the reasoning behind making sure everyone's heard. Because it's not just doing the change, right? The next step is the adoption, which is what you need people for.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yes, first you have to understand how we're going to make the change and then you can have the adoption. So the way it has worked in the past is that executives will announce, we're going to have a change. There is no conversation about who's going to be involved, where they got the information to decide how they made the change.
00:18:23
Speaker
No input on how they're going to make the change and the project manager rolls out the schedule for here are the implementation steps, here's when the project meetings are, here's when the transition period is, and we go live on this particular date.
00:18:40
Speaker
That is all communicated before people understand how we're going to make the change so if the executive changes their approach to the announcement. By saying we need to make some changes.
00:18:57
Speaker
With this particular goal in mind, we need increased revenues, different customers, whatever it is. And we're going to hold listening sessions about what do you see as the issues and the opportunities in making a change at this time. Get some alignment around a direction
00:19:21
Speaker
and then move along with what the choices are, come back and talk about here's what we looked at. Here's what we learned from inside the organization about what's important in how we make that change, what the advantages are of making that change. Now we're going to get to work on what the change plan is.
00:19:48
Speaker
Again, that just all seems terrifying. But when you come in and help an organization, how do you help CEOs get over their ego? That I have to be that this is my way and we're going to do it because this is what I want to do. Yes, they can go ahead and move toward what they want to do.
00:20:13
Speaker
And what price are you willing to pay to get that done? Are you going to be able to hang on to your key talent? What is it that you need to quit doing so that you can make time for what needs to be done to make the change happen? Making change takes additional time and effort, yet nothing ever comes off people's priority lists when they're asked to be involved in making a change.
00:20:41
Speaker
It's like everything is just as important as everything else. Well, if I don't like doing something, I don't understand how to do it, then why do you think I'm going to show up and give you my best effort? Which explains why 70% of all change does not work. So I do not deny the CEO what they want to accomplish, but I ask questions about at what cost.
00:21:06
Speaker
What are the advantages that we can achieve with this change that you haven't even thought about before so that it's more systemic? And how much time and effort are you going to commit to institutionalizing this change, meaning integrated into the fabric of your organization?
CEOs and Strategic Sacrifices for Change
00:21:27
Speaker
How does it change your customer experience?
00:21:30
Speaker
what is the success stories you can capture how can you take those success stories and bring the value back to your brand how does it improve the customer working experience you know there are a lot of.
00:21:43
Speaker
employees who are doing a lot of work not aligned with anything. It's either work they want to do or they were hired on some cut and paste job description that's totally irrelevant. How many of those individuals do you have whose jobs are going to change significantly or they want their jobs to change significantly because they want to be able to contribute and be part of this change?
00:22:13
Speaker
Does that make sense? Absolutely. I think for us then, Sarah, as we're looking at our audience here is probably revenue managers, folks that are trying to drive probably some pretty significant change into 2023. Where would you recommend that these folks, these change managers
00:22:37
Speaker
starts in identifying a change. So they know they need to make some change. They know what the change sort of is. Where do you start after you've identified the need and the direction for change? I don't really have a formula for that, Dave, but I do a probing conversation about why do you think that's true? What are some of the advantages? No one thinks about
00:23:07
Speaker
what the advantages are to making a change. So what are the advantages of making that change? What do you need to stop doing once you've made that change? What is this something new and different? I was trying to get away from using the change word again. What is this new and different thing going to replace? How do you need to
00:23:33
Speaker
ease it in by getting people's input upfront, socializing it, if you will, and taking input before you decide you're actually going to move somebody's cheese. You know, it's nice to know where the cheese is moving and why.
00:23:49
Speaker
Is that is that is that a reference to the the old book uh, yes move my cheese exactly I think So I let's let's maybe run out of practical exercise here because one of the things that we see at busy web because we work with a company called hubspot that starts with crms and uh, so when we we hit people on their growth spurt really as they've grown to their first level and then now it's like they have to get better one of the things we see is
00:24:17
Speaker
you have to get a better control of your data. And so you should institute a CRM. And then within about 10 minutes after suggesting that and the CEO saying, that's a really good idea, let's definitely talk about that. The sales team is in revolt because they don't want to do it. Too much change. Yeah. And what did the sales people fear the most?
00:24:44
Speaker
that their sales conversation, which they do not only to be successful, but it really makes them feel good. It gets their adrenaline going. It is their hammer. And when you have a hammer, everything is a nail. And all of a sudden a CRM requires they have to have a screwdriver or saw or something else. And that slows them down. And for salespeople, they also have to pay attention to how fast can I get this done?
00:25:14
Speaker
and still hold on to this relationship. So let's say you want to install a CRM, involve the salespeople in terms of what type of information is important for you to have captured in a CRM that helps you and not just the company gather data about how much is purchased and when.
00:25:38
Speaker
That's a great point. So if, and I know I think I've experienced this a couple of times this past in 2022 is sometimes people just shrug and say, well, they won't do it. So if you have a, if they, if you have, so as a follow up to the same scenario, if you want to do it, but you have employee, you revolt over it.
00:26:00
Speaker
What do you do then? Do you just force it through or do you do it gradually or do you wish people best of luck in their future endeavors? Well, change needs to be built into the culture of the organization.
00:26:19
Speaker
now more than ever. What is the role of change in your organization? How do you regard it? If you are a well-established company who has all the assets in the world and in the past, you really didn't have to pay much attention to what everybody else was changing because you had such significant assets that you were well protected. Your sales and marketing were working as a fine-tuned machine.
00:26:50
Speaker
That is not going to get you the certainty that you want in 2023. So how are you going to integrate change in the culture of your organization and help people understand that
00:27:06
Speaker
It's happening to everyone we are not exempt and we need to norm it out a bit and have greater tolerance for it and that is about. Learning in development opportunities and socializing conversations in a luncheon learn or in employee communications.
00:27:28
Speaker
in terms of asking employees to think about a coaching question or ask department heads to pose a question and a staff meeting to say, so how would you react to change in your particular job? Or what if we changed a sacred something in the organization? How would that change your life? And just get people more comfortable, norm out change.
00:27:55
Speaker
I think in the sales revolt that we're talking about, I think some of that is generational too. As you get older, is it harder to change? It depends on the type of change, honestly. Yes, people who are older have different things to think about than people who are younger.
00:28:19
Speaker
But both groups need to understand what the strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, and threats are of not changing. What are some of the costs associated with making a change? I know
00:28:36
Speaker
And the evaluative process, I know, you know, Dave and I work in sales, it's a money, it's a benefit, but there's other things that go into it. So what are some of the other things when you're talking about making a big institutional change? What are some other considerations? Because people would rather die than change at times.
00:29:00
Speaker
They are going to hold on to their job and doing it the same way they've always done it. So they're going to leave and find a place where they can do it the way they've always done it. The business question about change is always driven by money.
00:29:15
Speaker
Money hits fear. So if I don't change, I have the fear of losing my money. So change in business is driven by usually what's the ROI. What they're not thinking about is what's the time and training involved in the transition? What's the alternative? What's the cost of not changing? And what's the opportunity cost?
00:29:38
Speaker
So the cost of change is both objective and measurable as well as subjective and very difficult to measure. So are you making a change as an early adopter? Then you're thinking about
00:29:54
Speaker
What is the advantage and how long will I have the advantage of being an early adopter? Do I have the key talent to implement that now or do I have to attract it? What are the unknown costs of being an early adopter? I was one of the first on implementing electronic health records in this Twin Cities and did the first communications plan
00:30:24
Speaker
for the implementation of an Epic EHR system. And because the client was an early adopter, they did not know what
00:30:37
Speaker
information was not included by the manufacturer in how you implement the change and how you customize the electronic health records for every single clinic. So many clinics who did not have IT talent or people who naturally have those gifts to help them figure it out, it was a long and painful process. And we had to step in from a company perspective and do additional
00:31:07
Speaker
change management, change transition, facilitate conversations between the manufacturer and the client to get that done. So it's a different conversation for early adopters than if you're in the middle of the pack. There are some similar questions, but different considerations would be FOMO, fear of losing out. You know, the industry is moving in this direction. What's the overall value and benefit of the change?
00:31:37
Speaker
And if you're in the laggard, the cost of change is the fear of what we know we are losing out on because we aren't keeping up with the competition and you're losing customers and you can't attract the best talent. So that decision is made from a deficit position rather than the early adopters and the middle of the road.
00:32:04
Speaker
I think for us, it's probably when we're having conversations with manufacturers saying about CRM, they're probably sort of in the middle of the bell curve toward the end of the bell curve where they're sort of lagging. So the necessity for change is written on the wall.
00:32:24
Speaker
They see it, they know that their competitors are probably using a business system to keep track of everything and they see their sales teams with Post-it notes or running off of a Word doc or a Google doc and they get the need for change. But at the same time, they now have a sense of pride in the fact that they haven't been changing this long and everything's working.
Embracing Change for Sustained Success
00:32:50
Speaker
So how do you kind of unhook ego?
00:32:53
Speaker
from the status quo and get people to change. Well, I want to pick up on a comment you made, Dave. I wonder what the sales of Post-it notes have done since we've begun all of this change. They must have commented. Once again, it is about normalizing
00:33:19
Speaker
change inside the culture of the organization, acknowledging the pride of based on the success of doing things the way they have always been doing them and helping them create a story that works for their employees and their customers of why we're making a change at this time. And one
00:33:41
Speaker
thought i would provide your customers that are in the middle of the road and considering change the worst thing you can do is say well all of our competitors doing this so i guess we have to do it. Right the reason why is because you end up doing what everybody else is doing.
00:34:00
Speaker
Therefore, you are totally unable to make it your own, to customize it, and to find different ways you can take advantage of that change to generate energy and release the pent-up creativity inside of your organization and then taking advantage of it in ways that just doing change doesn't allow you.
00:34:30
Speaker
What are some examples or a real world example that you can give us of somebody who didn't make the change? How did that hurt them? That didn't make a change. Not coming up with anything off the top. We can come back to that. I think one of the things that I ask CEOs in that scenario when they're talking about
00:34:58
Speaker
whether or not they make a change or not, is there's often a considerable difference between being right and being successful. And as I get older, I find that I'm right more often than I'm not, and it couldn't matter less, unless I'm collaborating with other people. With age comes wisdom, and there is no right, as we know.
00:35:27
Speaker
The question I would ask any executive who decides not to change is what are the consequences of not making that change? And even though things are running
00:35:38
Speaker
quite smoothly, all systems are go, everything is working. When you decide not to make a change, there's a lot of energy that your organization loses. You cannot sustain a winning track record for so long on the same playbook to mix all my metaphors. You have to be able to create some new plans, some new strategies,
00:36:03
Speaker
some new ways of doing everything, even if it's just to keep your employees fresh and engaged and bringing all of their effort and imagination and creativity into the job. Back to that example of the salespeople and the CRM, I would think a consequences of change in that scenario, if you don't get the salespeople to do what you want, then the question then becomes, who's really in charge?
00:36:33
Speaker
And if they don't like something else, you've now created a precedent that they don't have to do it if they don't want to. And that's because what is missing from that conversation is to talk to salespeople about what is the nature of your conversation now. Because you have this tool, how can you change your conversation? That does not mean losing everything you have always done.
00:37:00
Speaker
How can you change the direction of that conversation? What new information can you gather? Everyone can make a change, but they don't know how to talk about it. Well, I'm sorry. Now I have to ask you all these questions because we have the CRM and I know it's an inconvenience. I hate doing it, but we have to do it now.
00:37:22
Speaker
That has about as much appeal as rotten fish. So how do you shift that conversation? What are the questions? What are the tools for saying? That's wonderful to know now. I'm just curious. How about this? What about that? How do you help salespeople shift that conversation like everything else we get wired and
00:37:48
Speaker
to only having one type of conversation that helps us reach our goals as fast as possible with the least amount of pain as possible. And one thing we don't ever think about is, okay, how do I keep in conversation with people and ask different questions and still keep or improve the relationship that I have with them?
00:38:17
Speaker
It occurs to me that perhaps one of the things that we've struggled with with our clients, and I'm thinking specifically back on a couple of clients that we've implemented CRMs, but then they ultimately failed. I'm thinking about where things might've gone wrong, right? So part of, I guess, where leadership didn't carry the ball forward is that they didn't tell the story of why.
00:38:45
Speaker
And they approached the project with Apathy where they were like, okay, we're making this change. And they were bought in on it. But they were like, okay, well, I'll just let my team figure it out from there. And they never really told the story on what the wins were of having, for example, a CRM.
00:39:03
Speaker
and they didn't take into account or they didn't answer the objections of the people that they were relying on to make the changes. Like, well, in one specific example, we had a client who was excited about it internally, like with us and them, but then they're just like, okay, well, the sales team will take care of it. And then the sales team never did anything with it because they said, well, we can't do this one report.
00:39:30
Speaker
And so they never handled the objection around that report. They let the team set up the wall that turned out to be impregnable because nobody helped them get over it.
00:39:45
Speaker
That was a fantastic example of, and the tone you used in sharing it, so accurate of how executives launch a change. Well, here's what we're going to be doing. And so employees are reacting to the energy in their voice and what wasn't said. That was forceful. We're going to be doing it no matter what. And so employees quit thinking about
00:40:12
Speaker
How do I make this work? What will this take? What leniency do I have in this in terms of, pause, wrong word. What decisions do I have in making this work? What contributions do you need from me in figuring out how to make it work? The way that change was announced was so forceful. It's like,
00:40:40
Speaker
damn the torpedoes full steam ahead without thinking about the consequences and not including
00:40:49
Speaker
a recognition of the change this will mean for salespeople to implement in deciding how to communicate it differently, changing their role with the customer, changing their relationships. And oftentimes, salespeople don't have the knowledge of how do you change your conversation to
00:41:12
Speaker
get different information to move the relationship deeper. And so when BusyWeb is selling to these types of customers, explaining to them the opportunities of when you have a CRM like this
00:41:28
Speaker
to customize the data collections so that you build a deeper relationship, do some learning and development along with the installation to say, here's how we need to change our conversation. Because in today's world that is moving so fast, you need a lot of time and headspace to be able to think about, okay, so what does this mean? How do I need to do it? How can I do it rather than just react to it?
00:41:57
Speaker
Sure. So it's important to key into the story of the net benefit that comes from the change and to identify or maybe even clearly spell out a mechanism wherein people can register objections and have conversation around them.
00:42:17
Speaker
It's sort of like the old improv trick where you need to say yes and. We are instituting this change and here is why.
00:42:32
Speaker
We're doing this because we think your life is going to get better in these ways. Will you come along with us? Yes. And how will our customers benefit? And how will the employee experience improve? And what's the value we want to bring to our brand and how it differentiates us?
00:42:57
Speaker
Is it really that much of a people problem that when you're trying to Institute change to, to have, make sure that you have that much institutional buy-in from the, the, the farther down leaders? Cause I think the, I think I know what the answer is, but I want to hear you as the experts say it. Yes, it is that much of a people problem. And I'll give you a little
00:43:21
Speaker
suggestion for why. In business, we are trained to be communicators rather than having a conversation. In business, I ask you a question, you answer the question. I ask you a question, you answer the question.
00:43:38
Speaker
And because you answered my questions and I felt so good about the way you answered it, I just assume a whole bunch of stuff around that. You love it. You accept it. You know what I'm talking about. Everything's going to work out hunky-dory.
00:43:55
Speaker
What you don't understand is how much you don't know, how much your client doesn't know, how much your client doesn't know they don't know. And the way you find that out is to have a conversation. A conversation is
00:44:14
Speaker
a lot of give and take, much like what we're doing here. We're kind of interrupting each other. We're kind of joking around a bit. We're talking all around the issues. I'm not joking. I genuinely hate change. I hear change. I don't like it. I want all of you off my lawn.
00:44:36
Speaker
that isn't going to work so well for you if you want to live a happy life, if you want to have a great place to work, if you want to make it a great place to work for your employees. So it is a part of our DNA of not liking change at an unprecedented time of change in history.
00:44:59
Speaker
To get back to my earlier comment about being right or being successful, I think that the people who need to be right are often the most lonely because they aren't working with people. And they are feeling very safe when they don't realize they're sitting atop a very small branch in a very high tree. This is not the time where you want to risk thinking you are right all by yourself.
00:45:30
Speaker
There is no right, and it has to be socialized so people understand the context around the change, why the change is important, the value of change in our culture, and the necessity of it. Love it. So what can, if organizations are knowing that a change is inevitable, what are some tips you can give people to prepare
00:45:58
Speaker
accordingly, sort of like disaster preparation. What's the plywood and toilet paper purchases for change? Well, for plywood, I would suggest that from the leadership
00:46:18
Speaker
all the way through the organization, you ask people to prioritize, to free up X amount of time and resources because a large change is being planned, okay? Not everything can be a priority at the same level, all at the same time. Something will suffer. Then you have to move slow
00:46:41
Speaker
in order to get everyone aligned and on board with the change so that when you are going through the process, you can move rather quickly. If you don't do that, the opposite will occur, the change will stall out and it will be a disaster. The toilet paper would be normalizing change inside of the organization, letting people know that we're going to have some things that are going to change,
00:47:11
Speaker
We don't know all the answers. It's okay not to have all the answers or to have the right answers. What is better is to be able to have places where you can provide feedback, ask really challenging questions, become trained in having difficult conversations. There's your plywood and toilet paper.
00:47:36
Speaker
So what I'm hearing, Sarah, is Elon Musk probably should have hired you before he bought Twitter and instituted so many changes. And for folks that are listening, because we're probably going to be publishing this in 2023, Twitter was a thing in 2022 and we're still alive. I'm only semi joking because, wow, what a dumpster fire. But if you... What's going on there? Can you help unravel that
Critique of Elon Musk's Change Management
00:48:05
Speaker
a little?
00:48:05
Speaker
At this, yeah, well, I'll do like super and then Sarah tell us where he's going wrong. But, you know, Alon, as of our taping right now in mid-November of 2022, he just essentially fired 90% of his employees now. And the last round happened when he essentially sent an email to everyone that was left saying, you need to click this link.
00:48:33
Speaker
in order to say that you want to stay working with us. And by clicking this link, you are saying that you're going to work longer hours and come into the office and you agree that there's no overtime and that you're just going to suck it up and do what's right. Or if you don't click that, you get three months of severance. Enjoy your vacation and get out by tomorrow.
00:48:57
Speaker
So that's probably a good example of a badly led change, correct? What might you have done differently for this, Sarah? Wow. Well, the unusual... Pause. The unusual aspect about Elon Musk taking over Twitter is
00:49:24
Speaker
How elon thinks he is the inventor uh the uber smart individual Who thinks that the way they think about things is the way the world needs to think about things and his inventiveness Complicated this Approach that he used to changing twitter and he did not
00:49:52
Speaker
implement anything that you would normally implement in change. And I would ask him is that because you see that it can operate entirely differently than it is now? Question number two, what do you want Twitter to be in the world? And who is going to support that? And should the conversation go beyond
00:50:21
Speaker
those 15 seconds, then I would talk about how do you want to approach that in terms of aligning what's going on in the world, how Twitter needs to change, what your vision is, and engaging the employees. Yeah, I think that's probably one of the key things that he hasn't done, at least from an outside perspective. He's not shared any vision. He's just come in and started
00:50:49
Speaker
acting like a bull in a china shop and throwing everything out for the sake of making change. I mean, he's not afraid of change, that's for sure. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Dave, but I think he's sharing a vision, but it's one that nobody really gets. He talked about wanting Twitter to be this open source, free speech haven, and he's banning people left and right from making fun of him.
00:51:19
Speaker
So, admirable or not, he has an idea. It's just how he's going about trying to do it is...
00:51:31
Speaker
I don't know. I don't get it. As you say, back in the deuce deuce, Twitter was a thing. Who knows what it'll be like next week. There's certainly some schadenfreude I'm involved with that doesn't feel bad for all those people because it is a good company and there is a possibility for it to change. There's a possibility to monetize it, but not like this. Right. But my question would be,
00:51:59
Speaker
Why wouldn't you just start a brand new company that's different from Twitter if that's the approach you're going to use? You know, if you're a great competitor for Twitter and Twitter ends up collapsing, that's something else. But why would you be so destructive and really muddy the situation so much that you might not be able to recover from it before creating something new?
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:52:27
Speaker
Well, I think we'll let Elon get the last word on our Change Management podcast. You guys know how to make a small fortune in social media? I know I saw the tweet. I'll let you finish it though. It's by starting with a large one. Sarah Darling, thank you for joining us. How can people find you if they need help with change, much like Dave and I constantly need your help?
00:52:56
Speaker
You can find me on LinkedIn. I can assure you there's no one else with my name on LinkedIn. You can also find me at sairdarling.com is my website. And her first name is spelled S-A-Y-R-E, sairdarling.com. Sarah, thanks so much. And God, I hope I don't need any of this. My day just kind of smooths along. Well, when you do, you know where to find me. And it's been my incredible pleasure talking with you today.
00:53:25
Speaker
We'll see you next time.