Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Preparing for Change: from DC to CrowdStrike (w/ Greg Satell)

Transcript

Preparing for Change: from DC to CrowdStrike (w/ Greg Satell) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
0:05
Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGrath.
0:07
Speaker 2: Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers, welcome back to
0:11
Speaker 2: the Deck Show. I'm Tom McGraw. I'm here with Tim Flower.
0:14
Speaker 2: What's going on, Tim, Tom?
0:16
Speaker 3: You know, it's been a while since I was out
0:17
Speaker 3: on the road. A nice little downtime at the house,
0:21
Speaker 3: but back on the road. Took the train down to
0:23
Speaker 3: DC to work with some some cool connections to government
0:26
Speaker 3: and defense. So it's nice to nice to get out
0:28
Speaker 3: and about again.
0:29
Speaker 2: Listen, I guess you were visiting d C in quite
0:32
Speaker 2: a week.
0:33
Speaker 4: You know, DC has been.
0:34
Speaker 2: Quite quite quite quite a focal point, shall we say?
0:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's I think that's a different episode time.
0:43
Speaker 4: Okay, a whole different a whole different conversation.
0:46
Speaker 2: Well, isn't we had this week we got to record
0:50
Speaker 2: what we called our emergency podcast with Grag Wonderful conversation.
0:55
Speaker 2: Wonderful episode, obviously covering the crowd strike incident a response
1:00
Speaker 2: to it, and one thing I was thinking to him,
1:03
Speaker 2: is we prepared for this episode, prepare to introduce our
1:06
Speaker 2: guests today, is that it's a pretty amazing illustration of
1:13
Speaker 2: what we're discussing today, Right, because you saw organizations which
1:17
Speaker 2: had undertaken painstaking organizational change, and because of the measures
1:23
Speaker 2: they've taken, because of a care and investment and seriousness
1:26
Speaker 2: they've gone about it, they would buy and large many
1:29
Speaker 2: for one. Certainly our customers were able to escape severe
1:32
Speaker 2: consequences of that incident, and it just seems it seems
1:37
Speaker 2: really teed up. I feel to welcome Greg Setel to
1:40
Speaker 2: the Deck show. He's a co founder of change Os,
1:44
Speaker 2: a transformation and change advisory He's also an international keynote
1:47
Speaker 2: speaker and a best selling author of Cascades, How to
1:51
Speaker 2: Create a Movement that drives Transformational Change and also Mapping
1:56
Speaker 2: innovation and Greg, welcome to the show. We reached out
1:59
Speaker 2: reached out to you weeks ago, before we knew this
2:01
Speaker 2: was going to be such a pertinent conversation, right.
2:05
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Well thanks for having me, Tim and Tom.
2:09
Speaker 4: Great pleasure, Great pleasure.
2:10
Speaker 2: So before we get into the sort of specifics of
2:13
Speaker 2: the themes that you cover quite extensively, can you share
2:17
Speaker 2: what inspired you to move in the direction of somebody
2:21
Speaker 2: who writes specifically about innovation and transformation with such a focus.
2:28
Speaker 5: Well, it's a kind of a funny story I was.
2:34
Speaker 5: In two thousand and four, I found myself running a
2:37
Speaker 5: major media and news organization in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution,
2:47
Speaker 5: and I and it was one of those those moments
2:53
Speaker 5: where the universe kind of opens itself up and reveals
2:58
Speaker 5: a bit of itself to you. You and I realized
3:02
Speaker 5: that the world didn't work the way I thought it did. Uh.
3:06
Speaker 5: You know, where we grow up and we think that, okay,
3:10
Speaker 5: there's there's certain power structures at work, and and and
3:17
Speaker 5: and and they kind of, you know, play the music
3:20
Speaker 5: and we dance the tune. But then all of a sudden,
3:25
Speaker 5: nobody with any conventional form of power had any ability
3:29
Speaker 5: to shape events at all, and there just seemed to
3:32
Speaker 5: be this mysterious force that was moving things along. And
3:36
Speaker 5: here I was running an eight hundred person company of
3:41
Speaker 5: a lot of you know, smart, ambitious young people, all
3:46
Speaker 5: with ideas of their own, and and I wanted them
3:52
Speaker 5: to embrace the one or two priorities that that I
3:56
Speaker 5: thought we needed to pursue. So I looked at what
4:00
Speaker 5: was going on in the Orange Revolution and I said,
4:04
Speaker 5: you know, I'd like to do that. I'd like to
4:08
Speaker 5: I'd like to bottle that force, whatever it is. And
4:12
Speaker 5: put it to some good use, But I had no
4:14
Speaker 5: idea how to do that, and that's what set me
4:17
Speaker 5: out on my fifteen year long journey that led to
4:22
Speaker 5: my book Cascades to understand change and how to make
4:29
Speaker 5: it happen.
4:31
Speaker 2: So, if I think back to an Orange Revolution, my
4:33
Speaker 2: contemporary history not the strongest, but my sense of it
4:37
Speaker 2: is that it was quite a sort of decentralized movement.
4:40
Speaker 2: Is that is that an accurate description? Is that kind
4:43
Speaker 2: of does that parallel what you were thinking? Had so
4:46
Speaker 2: so much kind of organizational potential.
4:50
Speaker 5: That's how it seemed at the time. At this time,
4:54
Speaker 5: it seemed very spontaneous. Later I would find that it
5:00
Speaker 5: was very much organized, and I wouldn't say centralized, but
5:07
Speaker 5: I would say it was engineered. And a lot of
5:11
Speaker 5: it has to do with social networks, but a lot
5:14
Speaker 5: of it has to do with principles that were developed
5:21
Speaker 5: by a guy named Jeane Sharp back in the nineteen
5:23
Speaker 5: sixties and perfected by a guy named Sir joh Popovich
5:31
Speaker 5: who's become a friend of mine, who led the movement
5:36
Speaker 5: that overthrow Melosovich in Serbia and then train the guys
5:42
Speaker 5: in the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and then the Orange
5:45
Speaker 5: Revolution in Ukraine and since has been active in over
5:50
Speaker 5: fifty countries. And when I got the chance to meet
5:55
Speaker 5: Serjah and to get to know him and to learn
5:59
Speaker 5: about what he did. Of course, spending fifteen years in
6:06
Speaker 5: Eastern Europe, you get an opportunity to do a decent
6:12
Speaker 5: amount of transformation yourself. And when I heard when he
6:19
Speaker 5: explained to me how he had achieved these things, I said, well,
6:25
Speaker 5: that seems like a good model for organizational change. And
6:33
Speaker 5: that's what led me to the research that became the
6:37
Speaker 5: book Cascades and my practice with organizational change today that
6:45
Speaker 5: I worked with organizations of all types fascinating.
6:51
Speaker 2: I was going to jump into the sort of you know,
6:53
Speaker 2: the dimension of technology leadership and such like, which we're
6:57
Speaker 2: going to go into, but I feel I would be
6:59
Speaker 2: remiss if I didn't ask you, Greg to maybe flesh
7:01
Speaker 2: out those parallels or where you saw that potential for
7:05
Speaker 2: organizational impact in this model of social change.
7:08
Speaker 5: Effectively, that actually isn't that interesting. It just I had,
7:18
Speaker 5: you know, I'd run a number of organizations and and
7:25
Speaker 5: so I had experienced organizational change myself, and the types
7:32
Speaker 5: of things that he was talking about just resonated with me.
7:36
Speaker 5: I think, I think you need to start with how
7:41
Speaker 5: organizational change is practiced today. And there's a number of
7:48
Speaker 5: change management frameworks or so called OCM or organizational change management,
7:56
Speaker 5: and you know they have names like si ad car,
8:03
Speaker 5: cat Her Eight Steps, Lewin, what have you. But you
8:10
Speaker 5: look into them and they're not they're not particularly evidence based.
8:16
Speaker 5: I mean, John Cutter was a Harvard business professor, business
8:23
Speaker 5: school professor who went and you know, talked to a
8:32
Speaker 5: bunch of executives and did case study interviews. And of
8:36
Speaker 5: course when he talked to these executives, they told him
8:42
Speaker 5: stories in which they were the heroes. I mean, big surprise,
8:48
Speaker 5: you know, when they talked about change, they said they
8:53
Speaker 5: tended their stories tended to be well, our change was successful,
8:59
Speaker 5: which because I'm so clever and I you know, it
9:06
Speaker 5: was all centered on me and things that I did well. Maybe,
9:14
Speaker 5: but that's you know, that's a bit self serving, right.
9:20
Speaker 5: So when you look at you know, Ad Car or
9:24
Speaker 5: you look at Cotter's eight Steps, it tends to be
9:27
Speaker 5: focused on the change leader rather than the organizational dynamics, which, okay,
9:36
Speaker 5: maybe sometimes it does work like that, but you know,
9:40
Speaker 5: we've got like fifty sixty years of research from sociology, psychology,
9:49
Speaker 5: network science, political science that says change works a very
9:54
Speaker 5: different way. There's one strand of it that comes from
9:59
Speaker 5: every Rogers who studied how ideas diffuse. Another strand of
10:05
Speaker 5: it comes from Gene Sharp and UH and and UH
10:13
Speaker 5: social and political movements. There's a whole nother brand of
10:18
Speaker 5: it that that comes from studying networks and and how
10:23
Speaker 5: how networks cascade, and people like Duncan Watts UH are
10:30
Speaker 5: leaders in that type of research, but they all pretty
10:33
Speaker 5: much agree with each other and not with the UH
10:40
Speaker 5: and not with what comes out of the the change
10:44
Speaker 5: management research. And there's there's pretty much four principles that
10:51
Speaker 5: we know from the science that hold true. The first
10:55
Speaker 5: is that change tends to come from outside the community
11:00
Speaker 5: and incurs resistance. And I can't stress enough that is
11:07
Speaker 5: the very first principle you need to embrace. Any time
11:11
Speaker 5: you set out to change what people think or what
11:15
Speaker 5: people do. There's going to be those who aren't gonna
11:18
Speaker 5: like it, and they're going to resist and work to
11:22
Speaker 5: undermine you in ways that are dishonest and underhanded and deceptive,
11:28
Speaker 5: and you need to internalize that before you can move forward.
11:33
Speaker 5: The second is that change follows an S curve, meaning
11:37
Speaker 5: it starts off slowly hits eventually, if you're successful, it
11:43
Speaker 5: hits an inflection point and which unlocks a cascade and
11:52
Speaker 5: exponential acceleration and eventually leads to widespread change. The third
12:01
Speaker 5: is that there is something called a cap gap, meaning
12:06
Speaker 5: that changes in knowledge and attitudes don't necessarily result in
12:13
Speaker 5: changes in practice. You know, we might know that we
12:17
Speaker 5: shouldn't eat the brownie, it doesn't mean that we're not
12:21
Speaker 5: going to eat the brownie. And in a very similar way,
12:25
Speaker 5: every organization has has knowing doing gaps. And the fourth
12:31
Speaker 5: and the last one is that change propagates through pure networks.
12:38
Speaker 5: We tend to adopt the changes we see working around us,
12:42
Speaker 5: not the ones that are broadcasted to us. So those
12:47
Speaker 5: are the four principles that we that we know from
12:51
Speaker 5: the research, and I think any change program needs to
12:56
Speaker 5: be rooted in them.
12:59
Speaker 4: Got it? Got it?
13:00
Speaker 2: I mean, so let's see if we can relate these
13:03
Speaker 2: principles kind of more concretely to it. So, how can
13:08
Speaker 2: CIOs or other IT leaders do you think, build and
13:11
Speaker 2: utilize these kinds of networks inside their organizations?
13:14
Speaker 4: And these principles in general.
13:16
Speaker 5: Well, first you need the first place to start is
13:21
Speaker 5: what's the vision, right, what are you trying to achieve?
13:27
Speaker 5: And secondly, what's the grievance. When we work with organizations,
13:31
Speaker 5: they tend to have one or the other, but not both.
13:36
Speaker 5: So for example, if you want to, I don't know,
13:41
Speaker 5: implement an agile transformation, well that's a fairly clear vision,
13:47
Speaker 5: but what's the actual grievance? What's the problem you're trying
13:51
Speaker 5: to solve. Quite often, especially in innovative initiatives, we find
13:59
Speaker 5: that they have a vision but not the grievance. So
14:05
Speaker 5: it's a solution for a problem that hasn't been defined
14:10
Speaker 5: and and that can often seem like irrelevant. Secondly, you
14:16
Speaker 5: need to think seriously about the the resistance you're you're
14:23
Speaker 5: going to incur. So one of the first things we
14:27
Speaker 5: do is sit down and go through a resistance inventory.
14:32
Speaker 5: We have five categories of resistance and we uh and
14:38
Speaker 5: we go through each one, think about who's going to
14:40
Speaker 5: resist in this way, what form is that resistance going
14:45
Speaker 5: to take, and how can we mitigate that resistance? So
14:50
Speaker 5: you can't anticipate everything, but if you sit down and
14:56
Speaker 5: think about it, you can. You can you can anticipate
15:00
Speaker 5: quite a bit. And the problem is, in the beginning,
15:03
Speaker 5: most people, most organizations don't really think through resistance. Rather,
15:11
Speaker 5: they tend to cheerlead, cheerlead the idea for change, and
15:18
Speaker 5: any talk about resistance is almost seen as disloyalty. So
15:23
Speaker 5: that's a sure sign that that's a sure way to fail.
15:29
Speaker 5: Unless you you think about resistance from the start, then
15:37
Speaker 5: you're just gonna get caught in the trap of reacting
15:41
Speaker 5: to it when it comes about. And that's obviously not
15:45
Speaker 5: not a successful way to go about things. But I
15:48
Speaker 5: would say the most important thing is you need to
15:50
Speaker 5: understand that change is not some sort of hero's journey
15:57
Speaker 5: where you have this alter earntive future vision and that
16:02
Speaker 5: if you're good enough and you do all the right things,
16:05
Speaker 5: somehow you'll get to you'll get to that place, But
16:11
Speaker 5: rather changes a strategic conflict between that future vision and
16:17
Speaker 5: the status quo. And the status quo always has sources
16:22
Speaker 5: of power keeping it in place, and those sources of
16:26
Speaker 5: power have an institutional basis and those and those form
16:36
Speaker 5: pillars that support the current state. So if you're going
16:40
Speaker 5: to change the status quo, you need to identify those
16:44
Speaker 5: pillars and influence them to bring change about.
16:50
Speaker 3: It's a great segue, Greg, because it's top of mind
16:53
Speaker 3: for me. We mentioned at the top of the show
16:55
Speaker 3: that I'm down in DC working with a customer who
16:59
Speaker 3: is looking to implement change. They are a current customer,
17:05
Speaker 3: but I'm sure there's parallels between social and government change
17:10
Speaker 3: as well as change in business. It's this whole concept
17:15
Speaker 3: of innovation ROI or change ROI. Right, You've got the
17:20
Speaker 3: change management process, You've got the cheerleader versus the.
17:27
Speaker 4: Pushback.
17:29
Speaker 3: You identify the problem, you make sure that you're able
17:32
Speaker 3: to implement in a logical way. But the other side
17:36
Speaker 3: of the coin is a lot of that change requires funding.
17:40
Speaker 3: I'm curious if you see any of this, if you
17:43
Speaker 3: see some kind of the common challenges maybe at an
17:46
Speaker 3: IT leadership, a CIO leadership, or just leadership in general,
17:49
Speaker 3: getting all the psychological and social pieces nailed down, but
17:54
Speaker 3: continuing to struggle with the hurdle of innovation ROI or
17:59
Speaker 3: change ROI.
18:01
Speaker 5: It's a great question, Tim, So let's try and help
18:04
Speaker 5: your client.
18:05
Speaker 4: Right.
18:06
Speaker 5: So your client, I assume as an IT organization, right,
18:10
Speaker 5: and they have a solution for a problem they've defined,
18:16
Speaker 5: and that solution is going to change the status quo
18:21
Speaker 5: in some way. So what if you're actually going to
18:30
Speaker 5: bring the change about? You need to understand the sources
18:34
Speaker 5: of power that support the current state. Some of them
18:40
Speaker 5: are going to be internal, So there are internally in
18:45
Speaker 5: the organization, there are functional groups, there are departments, there
18:52
Speaker 5: are different power centers within the organization. There are also
19:00
Speaker 5: so external institutions. These are can be customers, they can
19:07
Speaker 5: be professional organizations, they can be partners, regulators, labor unions.
19:15
Speaker 5: I mean, the possibilities are endless. But these are all
19:20
Speaker 5: institutions that have power that can affect the outcome. So
19:26
Speaker 5: once you identify them, you want to think about which
19:30
Speaker 5: ones support the current state, which support the status quo,
19:35
Speaker 5: which support that alternative future state, and which are somewhat
19:41
Speaker 5: on the fence. And once you start doing that, you
19:45
Speaker 5: can analyze them in terms of their level of influence
19:50
Speaker 5: and their level of support. And that's how you can
19:53
Speaker 5: build out what we call a power matrix. And you
20:00
Speaker 5: can and you can start you can start to envision
20:05
Speaker 5: what are your targets for influence, And once you've identified
20:11
Speaker 5: the targets, then you can start thinking about your tactics.
20:17
Speaker 5: So all too often people think about tactics first, you know,
20:22
Speaker 5: we need to do a social campaign or wouldn't it
20:25
Speaker 5: be great if we did a hackathon. But unless you've
20:31
Speaker 5: identified what you're trying to influence first, those tactics aren't
20:36
Speaker 5: going to be successful. So you want to you want
20:40
Speaker 5: to identify your targets and then design your tactics. So
20:45
Speaker 5: I hope that's helpful.
20:48
Speaker 3: It does, and you know it pertains not only to
20:51
Speaker 3: next Thick as a vendor, but to a lot of
20:53
Speaker 3: our customers as well. Internally trying to pitch innovation and modernization.
20:58
Speaker 3: We've said it for years, our biggest competition is status quo.
21:01
Speaker 3: It's the easy path, it's the cheap path. I don't
21:04
Speaker 3: need to fund it. I don't need to go through
21:05
Speaker 3: change management. What I'm doing today works, Why would I change?
21:09
Speaker 3: So status quo is a big.
21:12
Speaker 5: And there are institutions that are invested in it. Yeah,
21:15
Speaker 5: those you know. I think a great example from it
21:21
Speaker 5: is Dell's direct model. And if you talk to people
21:25
Speaker 5: from Compac and HP, they all they all knew that
21:32
Speaker 5: that Dell had a superior model, that Dell was eating
21:37
Speaker 5: their lunch, but they and they tried to adopt it.
21:42
Speaker 5: It wasn't a complicated model. But you start thinking about
21:48
Speaker 5: all the people who who who supported the status quo.
21:52
Speaker 5: You had your enterprise sales people who had built their
21:57
Speaker 5: careers based on their relationships with three sellers, you had partners,
22:04
Speaker 5: you had all of these institutional forces that we're working
22:10
Speaker 5: against the direct model and tim when you look at
22:15
Speaker 5: at cultures, we tend to look at behaviors and we say, well,
22:21
Speaker 5: these are behaviors that we don't like and we want
22:24
Speaker 5: to change them, so we devise incentives. So we go
22:28
Speaker 5: to those enterprise salespeople and say, hey, we're gonna change
22:32
Speaker 5: your incentives to sort of steer you towards this direct
22:38
Speaker 5: model because we want you to change your behavior. But
22:42
Speaker 5: the truth is is that culture isn't just behaviors. It
22:47
Speaker 5: also involves norms and rituals, so and these form a complex.
22:53
Speaker 5: So unless you're changing those norms and rituals, unless you're
22:57
Speaker 5: changing that mindset of the enterprise salesperson who really likes,
23:03
Speaker 5: you know, taking that customer for dinner or really looking
23:08
Speaker 5: after their needs and servicing that customer, you're not going
23:12
Speaker 5: to change the behaviors. Which is why companies like COMPAC
23:17
Speaker 5: and HP were never able to adopt that direct model
23:21
Speaker 5: of Dell that was so successful even though they knew
23:25
Speaker 5: that they needed to.
23:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, I came up through the ranks at Digital Equipment,
23:30
Speaker 3: compact Ate our Lunch and then HP eight Compacts Lunch.
23:33
Speaker 3: I've seen that the struggle of enterprise struggling to adopt
23:40
Speaker 3: to modernization.
23:42
Speaker 5: That's a fantastic example. You know, a good friend of mine,
23:46
Speaker 5: Annali Saksinian, wrote a book about that called Regional Advantage,
23:52
Speaker 5: about how the culture of the Boston companies they which
23:58
Speaker 5: was you know, very vertical. If you left d C,
24:03
Speaker 5: you became a trader, whereas if where the Silicon Valley
24:08
Speaker 5: model was much more network and ecosystem based. Those different
24:13
Speaker 5: cultures really determined the strategy. And not just d C,
24:20
Speaker 5: but Data General and all of the Boston companies were
24:24
Speaker 5: unable to change those those norms and rituals that were
24:30
Speaker 5: so embedded, which is why the behavior never changed.
24:34
Speaker 3: Well, they also it's what spawned the non compete agreements.
24:38
Speaker 3: They were so negative on change that they forced their
24:42
Speaker 3: employees to stay with non compete agreements.
24:45
Speaker 5: And even if you even if you took away the
24:48
Speaker 5: non compete agreements. Yeah, the culture of those companies was
24:53
Speaker 5: very much against you know, people leaving and and obviously
24:59
Speaker 5: the non compete agreements were part of it. But I
25:03
Speaker 5: suspect if you took away all of those non compete agreements,
25:08
Speaker 5: little would have changed.
25:10
Speaker 3: I have friends that I left DECK after eight years.
25:15
Speaker 3: They went through that time period longer than me a DECK.
25:18
Speaker 3: They went through the entire time period of Compact. They
25:20
Speaker 3: retired from HP, so it was ingrained in them that
25:24
Speaker 3: this is my company and I'm not going anywhere.
25:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't think the lack of non compete agreements
25:32
Speaker 5: would have changed that.
25:33
Speaker 3: I agree. So let's switch gears a little bit. It
25:35
Speaker 3: wouldn't be a tech show if we didn't talk about AI.
25:38
Speaker 3: It's the biggest innovation and transformation going right now. It's
25:44
Speaker 3: changing fundamentally, not only how enterprises work, but how employees work,
25:50
Speaker 3: and it's changing at an extraordinary rate. It's almost like
25:54
Speaker 3: the tail wagon the dog, right this new technology is
25:57
Speaker 3: out and it's now changing. How do we how do
26:00
Speaker 3: we adopt, how do we adapt? How do we come
26:03
Speaker 3: up with the right strategy? What are your thoughts on
26:05
Speaker 3: the role of the top senior leadership the CIOs in
26:09
Speaker 3: integrating AI technologies, both with the it tools that we
26:13
Speaker 3: use as well as the broader application portfolio. AI has
26:17
Speaker 3: to be done in a strategic way, but how do
26:19
Speaker 3: CIOs make it happen?
26:23
Speaker 5: So this is something I'm actively working with with a
26:28
Speaker 5: guy named Todd mccle's and he's got a company called
26:32
Speaker 5: Human Skills. And I think the core principle is that
26:38
Speaker 5: the future of technology is always more human and digital
26:43
Speaker 5: transformation is always human transformation. So as every time we
26:51
Speaker 5: automate an activity, every time something's automated, it becomes commodified
26:58
Speaker 5: and and value shifts to a higher level. So if
27:03
Speaker 5: you look at companies that are really good at automation,
27:07
Speaker 5: and I think an Apple store is a great example
27:10
Speaker 5: of this, which is hugely automated. But you go in
27:14
Speaker 5: there and what do you see. You see like a
27:16
Speaker 5: sea of blue shirts. It's not that they've eliminated people,
27:20
Speaker 5: it's that they've upgraded them. So that's the question, how
27:25
Speaker 5: can you upgrade the humans? And the key thing is
27:31
Speaker 5: that everybody's going to change at their own pace. That's
27:34
Speaker 5: why we focus on what's called a keystone change, which
27:38
Speaker 5: is a concrete and tangible change that involves multiple stakeholders
27:45
Speaker 5: and paves the way for future change. And when we
27:49
Speaker 5: think about big changes, we always want to start big,
27:54
Speaker 5: but the right way is to start small. And when
27:56
Speaker 5: we work with organizations on a keystone change, we always say,
28:01
Speaker 5: how can we make it smaller, how can we shrink
28:05
Speaker 5: it down? How can we start with one team, one process,
28:10
Speaker 5: one location, one whatever and build success. Because once you
28:17
Speaker 5: build that first success, then you can start scaling it out.
28:24
Speaker 5: But if you try and change the entire organization from
28:31
Speaker 5: the beginning, you're going to run into all those institutional
28:36
Speaker 5: sources of power that support the status quo. So instead
28:41
Speaker 5: of and here's a crucial concept, tim when you feel
28:47
Speaker 5: the urge to persuade, that's a red flag that means
28:52
Speaker 5: you either have the wrong change or the wrong people start.
28:56
Speaker 5: You always want to start with a majority. You can
28:59
Speaker 5: always expand the majority out, even if that's three people
29:03
Speaker 5: in a room of five. But once you're in the minority,
29:05
Speaker 5: you're going to feel immediate pushback. So go find people
29:09
Speaker 5: who are enthusiastic about the idea, whether that's one process
29:14
Speaker 5: owner or one you know, one location manager, one whatever,
29:21
Speaker 5: who wants the idea to succeed, and get working with
29:25
Speaker 5: them on a keystone change that you can use as
29:30
Speaker 5: a basis to build traction.
29:32
Speaker 3: It's interesting had earlier said that a lot of successful
29:36
Speaker 3: change or reasons for change come from the grassroots, come
29:41
Speaker 3: from the outer edges, and build support to make a change,
29:45
Speaker 3: especially in social situations. There are times, however, where enterprise
29:53
Speaker 3: leadership and CIOs and the c suite sees a problem
29:57
Speaker 3: and needs to make a singular decision to change from
30:00
Speaker 3: the top and convince lots of people that this is
30:03
Speaker 3: the right change. In terms of like maybe a case
30:05
Speaker 3: study in implementing change from the top, What are your
30:08
Speaker 3: thoughts about how CIOs and maybe we target it to
30:12
Speaker 3: employee experience, the digital employee experience. How can CIOs communicate
30:17
Speaker 3: the right way not only to their own teams to
30:19
Speaker 3: and get them on board, but also to the business
30:22
Speaker 3: leadership and the masses of employees that are gonna have
30:24
Speaker 3: to get on board with this change that's kind of
30:27
Speaker 3: being driven from the top. What are some strategies to
30:30
Speaker 3: get people on board?
30:33
Speaker 5: Well, I think what you need to start with is
30:40
Speaker 5: the realization that nothing slows you down like failure, right,
30:45
Speaker 5: and anytime you set out to change what people think
30:50
Speaker 5: and what they do, there's always going to be some
30:53
Speaker 5: who aren't gonna like it, and they're gonna work to
30:56
Speaker 5: undermine you in ways that are dishonest and underhanded and deceptive.
31:01
Speaker 5: And anybody who's ever tried to change anything knows that.
31:06
Speaker 5: So what you want to avoid is that big rollout,
31:09
Speaker 5: that big launch event that because it's that's going to
31:19
Speaker 5: trigger that resistance even before you start. You know, ed
31:24
Speaker 5: Catmill one of my favorite quotes ever, the founder of Pixar.
31:31
Speaker 5: He said that new ideas are like ugly babies. They
31:36
Speaker 5: need to be protected, you know, they need to be nurtured.
31:40
Speaker 5: What you don't want to do is drop your baby
31:43
Speaker 5: off at a biker bar, right. You don't want to
31:48
Speaker 5: expose that baby to the roughest type of resistance you
31:56
Speaker 5: can possibly have, and a big launch event is pretty
32:00
Speaker 5: much guaranteed to do that. So what you want to
32:04
Speaker 5: do is say, who's willing to nurture this ugly baby?
32:10
Speaker 5: And I don't think it's true that that change always
32:14
Speaker 5: starts at the periphery. Change often starts at the center.
32:19
Speaker 5: And I think the turnaround at IBM is the best
32:23
Speaker 5: example of that. And I've interviewed dozens of executives at
32:29
Speaker 5: IBM from that time period and Luke Gersner. He went
32:36
Speaker 5: and found the people who were excited about the idea
32:39
Speaker 5: and he started with them. So go find somebody who
32:43
Speaker 5: actually wants this idea to succeed, who's willing to nurture
32:47
Speaker 5: this ugly baby and build a success. And you need
32:53
Speaker 5: to start with people who are willing to undergo a
32:56
Speaker 5: few initial failures if you want to aren't big one
33:01
Speaker 5: failure and you're going to be done right, that's going
33:05
Speaker 5: to empower the naysayers. But if you start with people
33:09
Speaker 5: who wanted to succeed, they'll push through and they'll find
33:12
Speaker 5: a way to make it work, and then you have
33:15
Speaker 5: something to build on. What I think is important is
33:19
Speaker 5: that is to understand that change is non linear. Right,
33:25
Speaker 5: we know that it follows an S curve. It starts
33:27
Speaker 5: out slowly. Eventually, if you're successful, it will hit an
33:32
Speaker 5: inflection point which will unlock a cascade. That we even
33:37
Speaker 5: know where that inflection point is. It tends to be,
33:42
Speaker 5: and we have decades of research that show show this.
33:46
Speaker 5: It tends to be between ten and twenty percent participation.
33:51
Speaker 5: So your goal isn't to you know, convince everybody at once.
33:55
Speaker 5: Your goal is, you know, to build that one to
33:59
Speaker 5: two percent that can grow into that ten twenty percent,
34:04
Speaker 5: And once you build into that ten twenty percent, then
34:08
Speaker 5: it'll naturally accelerate. Uh so you want to move slower
34:14
Speaker 5: in order to go fast.
34:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to give the conversation back to Tom
34:19
Speaker 3: from here. But I love the baby analogy. We are
34:22
Speaker 3: often in a position where we have to go in
34:23
Speaker 3: and actually call the perspective customers baby ugly. And we
34:28
Speaker 3: said it out loud at one meeting. We said, listen,
34:30
Speaker 3: we really don't want to offend you, but we got
34:31
Speaker 3: to call your baby ugly. And we knew we had
34:33
Speaker 3: someone who was willing to change because they looked at
34:35
Speaker 3: us and said, we don't care if you call it ugly.
34:37
Speaker 3: We just want to stop dropping the baby.
34:41
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean change needs and tim it's such an
34:47
Speaker 5: important point. Change needs to be protected, especially in the
34:53
Speaker 5: early stages. And if you don't protect that change, if
34:58
Speaker 5: you don't protect that baby, if you just drop the
35:01
Speaker 5: baby off at the biker bar, chances are the baby's
35:06
Speaker 5: not going to survive.
35:08
Speaker 2: We've got so many baby analogies flying around here. Guys,
35:10
Speaker 2: We've got ugly babies. Baby he's dropped off a biker
35:13
Speaker 2: bars babies. We've got to change. I'm getting lost in
35:18
Speaker 2: this nursery of metaphor, guys, but this is great. What
35:22
Speaker 2: a timely and wonderful discussion really like to finish? Please
35:27
Speaker 2: if you could sort of surmise and condense advice for CEOs.
35:32
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe they.
35:33
Speaker 2: Just narrowly missed CrowdStrike. Maybe they didn't and they're thinking, Okay,
35:39
Speaker 2: we do need to instigate change in this organization and transformation.
35:45
Speaker 2: What would be your sort of inner nucleus, your advice
35:48
Speaker 2: to them as they begin this journey.
35:54
Speaker 5: Well, go out and find somebody who thinks like you
35:58
Speaker 5: do and start with them. There. There's a human tendency
36:07
Speaker 5: that when we feel passionate about an idea, we want
36:12
Speaker 5: to go and convince the skeptics. We want to go
36:16
Speaker 5: tell people who hate the idea and somehow convince them
36:21
Speaker 5: that it's good. So don't do that. It's a bad
36:28
Speaker 5: it's a bad idea. Go out and find someone who
36:34
Speaker 5: loves the baby just as much as you do and
36:37
Speaker 5: empower them to make the change work and then build
36:43
Speaker 5: from there. Change is. Transformations are always about small groups
36:50
Speaker 5: loosely connected but united by a shared purpose. The job
36:54
Speaker 5: of a change leader is to help those groups to
37:00
Speaker 5: connect and inspire them with a shared sense of mission
37:06
Speaker 5: and purpose, not to take the change on their back
37:10
Speaker 5: and make it all happen themselves.
37:13
Speaker 4: Wonderful.
37:14
Speaker 2: Wonderful And where can our listeners find more about you
37:16
Speaker 2: and your work?
37:17
Speaker 5: Right so, you can see my blog at Digitaltonto dot com. Uh.
37:26
Speaker 5: If you want to work with me, you can go
37:28
Speaker 5: to my site Greg Stel dot com. And just launching
37:32
Speaker 5: tomorrow is our new website, our new podcast website, which
37:41
Speaker 5: is change Maker mindset dot net, where we UH interview
37:48
Speaker 5: people who who make who make an impact in all
37:53
Speaker 5: sorts of UH walks of life and fields and and
37:59
Speaker 5: and uh and uncover how they made it happen.
38:04
Speaker 2: Well, there are many change makers in this audience, Greg,
38:07
Speaker 2: So hopefully you're doing find find some new listeners and
38:11
Speaker 2: people to talk to.
38:13
Speaker 4: Greg.
38:13
Speaker 2: Absolute pleasure, such a timely conversation. We're really happy to
38:17
Speaker 2: have had you on, Michelle Regardless, thanks so.
38:18
Speaker 3: Much, Thanks Greg.
38:21
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38:42
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for listening.
38:43
Speaker 1: Until next time,