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Mark LaScola · Calm Under Fire

• Col. John Boggs: Well, hey, welcome back to Calm Under Fire. I'm Colonel John Boggs, president of Fortitude Consulting, ⁓ leadership ⁓ coaching ⁓ executive development firm. Well, hey, today we have Mark La Scala, ⁓ he has spent more than three decades helping organizations navigate complex change. As a founder and managing principal of On The Mark, and now with Turner and Townsend as a director, he's led hundreds of redesigns and transformation efforts across industries around the world. But at the heart of his work is something simpler, helping leaders understand the human system they're operating in, especially when the pressure is real. Today, we're talking about what actually sustains change when the stakes are high. Mark, welcome, welcome, welcome. Mark LaScola: Thank you, John. It's delightful to be here. And ⁓ I'm sitting ⁓ down in Rocky Point, my beach place. So if you're hearing a little wind or something, ⁓ you'll have some sense of where I'm at. Anyway, it's lovely to be here with you. Col. John Boggs: ⁓ man, that's amazing. That's wonderful. I'm jealous. Mark, you spent a career looking at organizations as living systems. What happens to those systems when pressure arises? Mark LaScola: Well, like any system, ⁓ human or technical or machine, when pressure rises, it basically tests the system. And the system starts to spring leaks or cracks. In human systems terms, people become stressed, point fingers at each other, ⁓ work long and hard, might be frustrated. ⁓ You know, conversely, they might be ⁓ making credible inroads and really innovating. But really, when a company's under stress, it's not fun. It's not fun for anyone. And it shows up ⁓ quite dramatically in the human system. It's also, I'll say this, John. We're going to talk about operating models today because operating models are in an organization in any business. Doesn't matter if you're private, public, government, ⁓ NGO. ⁓ An operating model is like the water we swim in as human beings. And if that operating model isn't fit for purpose, isn't firing and set up the way it should be, it requires quite a bit of human, ⁓ Herculean efforts to make things work. And the more pressure that's put on that business system, the more it shows up in the human system. And typically what we find is a lot of finger pointing, a lot of, we need to clarify our roles and responsibilities. ⁓ if that team just did their work better. These are lagging indicators for an operating model that's under pressure. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: And under pressure may come from growth. It may come from driving efficiency. It may come from a variety of areas. It might be volume. Who knows? But typically, humans and the way we interact with each other and our complaints and our concerns and our moaning and whinging about what's going on in the business is typically a lagging indicator of a faulty or unfit operating model. Col. John Boggs: So how hard is it, Mark, for a company to change their operating model? Mark LaScola: Well, that's the question, John. That's the key question. So I'm going to be not dramatic, but I'm going to try to be black and white in my explanation, although for those of us who live life, we know that there's shades of gray and nuance. But ⁓ an operating model doesn't change by hiring a large, big box consulting firm. Crawl around your business like ants on a picnic basket and then bestow a ⁓ salt tablet from the mountaintop. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: explaining what a company needs to do to change its operating model. It's not how change works. Change will never work like that. Although the industry and leaders within businesses hire consulting firms every day to do just that. ⁓ For me, it's a major flaw in both the leaders hiring these big box consulting firms. I don't care if it's McKenzie or KPMG or Accenture. Col. John Boggs: Yes, they do. Mark LaScola: Boston Consulting Group or PA, you name it. It doesn't really matter. But going in and telling people what to do does not change an operating model. And leaving them with a 300 page deck that doesn't help them activate or operationalize an operating model is of no use to anyone. And it's just not how change happens. So changing an operating model really requires you to deconstruct your business while the proverbial plane is flying and then reconstruct it and reconstruct it in a manner that is not top down but from the customer and what drives value for the customers on out. Most big box consulting firms will start with leaders and put managers over boxes and say, which is not redesigning an operating model at all. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: It's actually superficial and it's more restructuring and that's not redesign. Let me give you an example, which I think we've talked about offline. A restructure is almost like taking your kitchen that you currently have, maybe getting a new table, maybe changing the chairs around on the table. You might get some new handles for your cabinets, but everything is structurally stays the same. That's an example of restructuring and that's akin to Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: putting new leaders in different places and changing the boxes around a little bit, which is really, in my terms, we call it, it's really cosmetic change. Yes, it's sometimes tough for humans and I'm reporting to somebody else or this or that, but really in its essence, it's cosmetic change. A redesign, if we took that same kitchen, is akin to, we're gonna take everything out. We're gonna take the cabinets out, the sinks out, we're going to get it down to its bare studs and we're going to say, do we even need a kitchen? What does our customer need? What is needed for us to be able to deliver value to our customers? Maybe that's a kitchen. Maybe it's a kitchen we haven't even thought about. Maybe we blow out the wall. It's in the social and social sciences called second order change. Second order change is stepping out of the box. First order changes is staying within the box and is more cosmetic change. And so to change an operating model, number one is you need a courageous and a bold leader that understands, number one, how change really works, which is, and that you've alluded to it in your introduction, on the mark establish its business based on the adage, people support what they help to create. If people don't have Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: sweat and blood in the change itself, they're not going to basically embrace that change. Then what you do is you spend your time and your efforts ensuring people comply with some change that may or may not be relevant. People support what they help to create is based on the fact that ⁓ people want to be architects and have some influence over the change that impacts them. Doing cosmetic or artificial brainstorming sessions is not a real way for people to engage. That's what I would call nonsense. So to create an operating model, you need several things. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: to really change. Number one is you need a really good definition of what an operating model is. And it can't be an org chart or an organization chart or a WIDA diagram. That is not an operating model. That's not even a structure, although everybody thinks it is. So that's number one. You need a really good, holistic, systemic definition of what an operating model, which starts with everything from why we're in business and our business model. Col. John Boggs: Yes. Mark LaScola: to our strategy flows all the way through the value creating processes, not management stuff. Management activity is not value creating stuff. It's management activity. in lean terms, it's what we call necessary waste. Necessary, but not value to the customer. So you have to change the structure. You have to change all the management systems, all your Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: people processes from the way you identify them, recruit them, bring them into the business, all the way through the life cycle of an employee in terms of culture and the behavior. the first thing you have to have is a systemic and correct complete picture of what an operating model is. The second thing you need is you need a step-by-step solution. Most large big box consulting firms make it up as they go. ⁓ It's crazy to me. It's crazy to me how ⁓ they'll have one little department typically in HR that's their organization design. not only is the operating model definition flawed, but it's also their methodology is not holistic, is not step by step, mixes up what are key decisions. Col. John Boggs: Oh-ho. Mark LaScola: There's not a critical pathing. They'll bounce all over the place. Now it sounds like I'm hammering big box consulting firms. There's a lot of great consultants out there, but I would not hire a big box consulting firm to redesign a company ⁓ with my life dependent on it. The third thing you need to redesign an operating model is head and heart commitment to the change. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: So John, I don't know if you know this, but my firm On The Mark won a piece of work ⁓ in the UK ⁓ with the military supply chain in the UK and redesigned it. And we won the work first as just pure On The Mark and then we delivered it with On The Mark and Turner and Townsend. So to be fair, it bridged both companies. But we just recently won. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: the transformation project of the year by the Institute of Global Project Management. And because not only of the impact that we had and the results that we achieved, which were incredible, but the fact that this is a government organization and a defense supply chain that has been changed upon, had consulting firms all over it running around like an anathema picnic basket and never was able to do any real change. And we set that business on fire in terms of head and heart engagement. People were excited because they were the architect of their change. We guided them through the process, gave them the trade-offs, but they made the decisions. And all the way from the executive team, the CEO, what they called the quad, which is the generals who run the UK military. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: all the way down to the frontline interns. And it was just a phenomenal project. Very proud. But all of our projects, we have hundreds of projects that we've done that have that element. the key here is to create stickiness, real change, and to create behavior change. You need people to have full head and heart engagement in the process and own it. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Wow. Mark LaScola: you'll hear a lot of executives talk about buy-in. I don't know what buy-in, typically buy-in means getting beat over the head with PowerPoint slides until you acquiesce and just say, okay, enough of it. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and we'll see what happens. ⁓ We're not talking about that kind of change. We're talking about change that people are their own change leaders, where they're driving the change themselves. And when that happens, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: There's nothing like it. It's phenomenal to watch people redesign themselves out of a job saying, you don't need what I do. You may need me, but you don't need my job anymore. We need to be doing something different. ⁓ anyway, it's it's phenomenal to watch these things happen. ⁓ yeah, it's been 36 years, 37 years I've been doing this work and it never gets boring. It's phenomenal to watch that happen. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Well, you know, this is very interesting. This is extremely interesting. ⁓ I know you're not bashing those big box stores, but I've even come in behind ⁓ one of those big stores. It's interesting you said head and heart. Head and heart and create stickiness. I love that. That's a phrase that I've actually used. I stop and I tell folks, look, if you're gonna do leadership training without coaching, you're not creating any stickiness. You're just spending money. That's dumb. Mark LaScola: Well, it's the 10-20-70 model of training and development, right? You give them the classroom training, which is 10%, but the 20 and 70 is experiential. It's real life. It's application. then guiding them through that process. Behavior doesn't change just because you tell someone to change. Col. John Boggs: That's correct. That's certainly the point. Can I go back to head and heart? So when you're talking head and heart, are you getting the entire company involved? How does that work? Mark LaScola: you Well, to answer your question is what we do is we create how to let me try to answer in a couple ways. If we can get the entire business involved, yes, we will. Sometimes that's unreasonable if you've got 100,000, 50,000 people. But what we try to do is we touch and we involve a critical mass. of the organization to create what's called the 100th monkey syndrome. And the 100th monkey syndrome is ⁓ where you start to create change with one maybe ⁓ clan of monkeys and then another clan and another clan. And what happens is the other clan see it and they pick it up and they run with it. And all of a sudden you get a synergy in the social system because it's self-inflicted. It's because they're doing it and people are excited by what's going on. And so what you'll see and how we do it in very practical terms. As you might see us in a room with 200 people doing an as-is assessment of the current operating model and asking the question, how fit for purpose is your operating model? And we're not doing a 360 degree feedback on any individual. We're looking at the operating model. And we talk about it being really hard on the operating model, really hard on the issues, and really gentle, loving on each other. because you're all here doing the best you can. And we'll set up that kind of maybe three day event. We can evaluate an operating model in three days. Most large big box consulting firms would charge you a million dollars and they'll come in and crawl around for three months. ⁓ Col. John Boggs: Wow. That's exactly right. Mark LaScola: So, and what you see is these 200 people breaking apart, looking at, critically reviewing every aspect of their operating model together and creating a story and a narrative. And what's important about that is it's not us telling them what's broken. They're coming face to face with it. And we use real scenarios to run through the newly modeled or the current operating model. and they get to see where it breaks down and they go, boy, I never knew you did that. And the discovery that happens. Now, there's something that's really important about this in our design workshops, whether we're doing a current evaluation of an operating model or whether we're designing the future operating model. There's two concepts that you need to understand about group work. One is puzzle learning. I don't care if you're Bill Gates, I don't care if you're Elon Musk, no one person knows everything that's going on in a business. So we employ what's called puzzle learning. And what that means is we bring everyone who touches any part of that operating model into the room because they have a view from where they sit, because no one person has the whole view. Col. John Boggs: everyone. Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: And what happens as a result of that puzzle learning and employing that by having the entire impacted system in the room or representation of that entire system in the room, no matter what level, what happens is you get this thing we call collective genius. And what they do is they see things they have never seen before. And the genius that comes out of that and creating one one picture of the operating model that everybody now understands is a powerful thing. Because most operating models, leaders don't design them intentionally. They fragmented, they do this, they do that, they set up one function over there and another function. And they never step back and say, really intentionally design their operating models. And so when they look at it, I go, would you ever design something like this? And they go, no. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Mark LaScola: Most say, no, I would never design something like this. Well, this is your operating model right here, right in front of you. You're looking at it in all its splendor. And it creates for them like, and then they see holistically how it impacts the way they behave, the Herculean efforts it takes to get things done. It clarifies why we can't make a decision quickly. They get to see all the issues in their glorious splendor. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Mark LaScola: ⁓ And it creates quite a compelling motivation for human beings who work in that system. So what you would see is how we make head and heart engagement come alive is we use design teams, 30 people, 50 people, 100 people. I've done them as large as 800 people in a room with vendors and suppliers over the course of five days. ⁓ And with that kind of resource, ⁓ Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: You can make a lot of inroads and you can redesign. Give you a case in point. We had the honor of redesigning Fitbit in 2017 for James Park, who was the CEO at the time. And they were a year into getting beat down by Apple Watch. And their SharePoint went from the 40s and 50s SharePoint to like $4 a share. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: So for their investors and for their ⁓ shareholders and the finance tree is a big deal for them. So we did a redesign of Fitbit in eight weeks, including their global manufacturers and supply chain. And what we did is we took them through our eight-phase process, ⁓ got them into implementation in eight weeks. And we did four hours a day for eight weeks Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: We had 50 people in a room and they had other subject matter experts coming in and out. And at the end of those eight weeks, they were ready to implement. They were ready to go. Now, that redesign is what set them up to be acquired by Google. Now, I'll give you another example, which I think you need to, this is even more recent. We also had the honor of redesigning a company called Celestica, which is headquartered out of Toronto. And they're an EMS company, electronic manufacturing systems, and they put stuff in stuff. They're in everything. Their gadgets are in everything. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Mark LaScola: In that business, when we were redesigning for the CEO, ⁓ who's still there, gentleman named Rob Mionis, who got his start with Honeywell, that whole business, CMS business, was being commoditized, driven to cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And if you play that game, it's a game to nowhere. ⁓ And so what they had decided in 17, 18 was to become a more systems integrator and they were going to go up the value chain up up the value steps and do more and offer a different proposition But you don't just turn a cup a global company around like that overnight so at the time when we were working with them their shares were around 10 20 Canadian dollars they're up to I think 450 somewhere when I last looked and Rob was just on ⁓ was just on TV talking about the MS business and the turnaround at Celestica. To change an operating model, you really need to change. You really need to bring your people along with you. And that's not change management. That's not just ⁓ that's not just telling people what you're going to do. That's employing them to be part of that change process. in real substantial ways, not artificial ways. Col. John Boggs: Okay, you said something that was very, very, ⁓ I don't want this to get lost. You said it's not change management. So where does the change manager fall into this? Is the change manager a busy beaver or is the change manager really a distraction, a new? Mark LaScola: Yeah, that's a good question. So when I used the term change management, I'm referring to remedial after the fact change. So in social science, particularly Albert Churns, engineer who published one of the most significant pieces of work on organization design. And he was associated with the Tavistock Institute out of London. So there's something called joint optimization ⁓ and Most change today is done in a suboptimized way, and I'll give you an example. An airline takes over another airline. What's the first thing they do? Paint the planes. What's the second thing they do? ⁓ Maybe get new uniforms for everyone. What's next thing they do? Maybe they start to change some of the systems, right? What's the last thing they do? They integrate the people and the unions and the flight attendants. They do all that. Col. John Boggs: Ha ha ha. Yeah, yeah. I Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: That is classic suboptimal change. And this is where change management comes into play. ⁓ Suboptimization is basically you do your technical change first, and then you worry about the social system last. And then you bring in your change managers, and they send out a lot of pretty PowerPoint decks. You're going to hear the cynicism dripping off the camera here. Col. John Boggs: Yeah. Mark LaScola: And they tell people what it's going to do and they hold their hand and they tell them about Elizabeth Kubler's Ross dip in productivity and they do things. But it's the change in the social system is the last thing and it's a telling change. I'm going to tell you what needs to be done. And it's based on compliance, John. This is the core of change management. The core of change management is based on change, based on compliance. It's not real head and heart. Col. John Boggs: Mmm. Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: engagement and it's not commitment. So most of your change managers are thrown in once something's ready to be implemented and the change has already been cooked. And so now we're just trying to figure out how to make it work. And so then you got people running around talking to me about what I think is change nonsense. ⁓ The opposite of sub-optimized change is joint optimization. And joint optimization is basically saying, we're going to change the social system simultaneously with the technical system. We're going to do them both at the same time. We're going to achieve culture and behavior change simultaneously as we're changing the technical system. The only way to do that, John, is to involve people as their own change architects. that they're involved with solving the problems and coming up with the solutions. That is the linchpin for joint optimization. There's no other way around it. And that's the only way you get real stickiness and sustainability to change. Col. John Boggs: Wow. So. Where does the executives play in this? Where do the high level executives, where does the leadership actually come in and do something when they're trying to make a change like this? What is their part in this? Mark LaScola: Well, they have a massive part. And I'm glad you asked. First of all, Do the change to go about changing an operating model or optimizing an operating model in the way that we've talked about by involving your people in that change process. Takes a highly emotionally intelligent leader and someone with a lot of courage. I will say this in the honor of Women's Month celebration of women. In all honesty, most of our, of close to 600 projects, redesigned projects we've done around the globe. At least 50 to 60 % are women who are incredibly courage, who know I don't have all the answers and are not afraid to stand up in front of their people and say, I don't have the answers, but I know how to get us there. And I believe we know the answers. Now, the role of leadership is everything. A little factoid, the number one predictor of successful change is leadership. visible, demonstrable leadership from start to finish. So you can't just have a leader say, we're going to change, pass it off to somebody else, and then they disappear and go on to something else. So leaders in our projects play three roles, wear three hats. The first is they're saying, we're going to change, we have to change, and they're the perturbors, so they initiate the change. And they say, Here's how we're gonna go about the change. Very important decisions. Do we want compliance-based change, which is ⁓ a pay later strategy, or do we want commitment-based change, which is a pay now strategy in terms of investment? You invest upfront to go faster at the backend versus going fast upfront and then crumbling at the backend. I'll come back to that. So leaders. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: The one hat they wear is leaders, we're going to make this change and here's why. The second hat they wear is they become team members with everyone else where they're investigating, they're curious. It's beautiful to watch an executive team member or a board member or a general working in a design team trying to solve some big, sticky, hairy problem and working with an intern and a frontline person and a line leader and they're dissecting it and having meaningful real conversations about the business. It's a beautiful thing to watch, John. But leaders have to be able to know when they're being a team member and just working like every other team member versus, this is a leadership requirement. This is I'm going to tell you what needs to be done here. And this is very important distinction. ⁓ The third thing they do is they remove barriers, you know, like every other leader. They make things happen, they remove barriers, they make decisions. And we have structures for all those things, for those to happen and mechanisms to make sure those things happen. But leadership is critically important. Now, the one thing I will say to you, John, this is where... Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: ⁓ This is consistent across all of our projects from day one ten to forty percent of leaders turn over in our projects Meaning they either voluntarily leave or they are asked to leave. And the reason is simple. The first is when we start a redesign project, the last jobs we put in place, we design and put in place are management jobs. Because we design a business from what creates value for the customer on out, not managers down in. And then you never get real change at the front line. So we're changing. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: We're changing the work that gets done, how it gets done, who does it, where it gets done. We're changing all of that. One of the things that's required by leaders, even though they're the decision makers, you'll see an executive with his or her leadership team and maybe some others from Peppered around the organization approving these final decisions around what's our future operating model, what have you. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: But the leaders in that room don't have a job. They don't know what they're going to do. So they have to step into the ambiguity and put it forward and leave nothing on the table and work towards what we call collective good versus self-interest. Now, here's how people get deselected off. You get to see one of the things in our working systems, our design teams, our leadership teams. are like pressure cookers in that you get to see what people are made of. They're like a tea bag in hot water. You get to see what people are made of and how strong the tea is and what kind of courage they have. There are some leaders who struggle with collective good in the ambiguity and are only in self-interest. I can't tell you how many leaders have shot themselves in the foot because maybe their part of the business went from 300 people to 80 people and they were pissed off about that. Col. John Boggs: Mm. Mark LaScola: and tried to do ends around and ultimately were asked to leave because they didn't have the grit, the courage, the vision to see what the business was trying to do. And so they become more concerned about how they're being impacted. It's also important to give leaders an out if their heart's not in the game. And that's not uncommon either as part of that 10 to 40 % is I don't really believe in what we're trying to do. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: So I'm going to exit out. another one might be a leader says, I've got one more year left till I retire. Put me in an interim role. You know, let me help this because I believe in what we're doing. But let me ride into the sunset because there are lots of interim temporary jobs when you're changing an operating model. you get this 10 to 40 percent turnover in leadership ⁓ because it really tests the heart and it tests people's mettle. about what they believe in, what they believe in about the business, and do they believe in each other and what they're trying to do. So it's a big part of the equation. So leaders have a massive role, and then they have to lead this process all the way through. Now, one of the last steps in our, one of the last phases is called implement through stabilization. You don't flip a switch and just put a person in a new team. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: and say that's it, our change is done. That's change nonsense. And that's one of the three reasons these projects fail, by the way, is what I call ⁓ lousy implementation, which is just putting people in new teams and thinking it's gonna sort itself out. It never does. ⁓ But the leaders have a responsibility of driving that change through completion. When we move into implementation, the responsibility to stabilize the new operating model Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: falls to all your natural work teams, no matter how new they are or where they're at. And so it really becomes incumbent upon not only those leaders, but the middle managers and the line leaders to be driving their teams to change and to stabilize the new operating model. And it's a very cool thing to watch. But that implementation through stabilization could take three months to six months to stabilize an operating model, dependent on how how different the new operating model is compared to what they did in the current world. So leaders have a massive role ⁓ and yeah, without it, it's not gonna be successful. Col. John Boggs: Wow. Well, what's interesting here, Mark, is you're describing something. I have, well, I'm sure you know this too. There are companies out there. I'm thinking of one in particular. I mean, and they hired a big box store to come in. And ⁓ what was interesting is they're taking a top-down approach. And there are customers, of course, but there's a top-down approach. And it's, we'll just cut our way to being more efficient. So, well, how do you know? You're taking a top-down approach. on the way down, more and more people are being... I mean, the workforce is being decimated. Oddly enough, the leadership is not. which strikes me as very odd. Mark LaScola: Well, this is why. The unspoken truth here is big box consulting firms do that as an investment into future work. As a leader, I'm going to put you in place. And the unspoken truth to that is I'm hoping you'll hire us again. And that's the psychological piece that drives me nuts. It's unethical. It's inappropriate. ⁓ And you know what? If you want efficiency, Let me give you this number. We can easily find 10 to 25%, easily, 10 to 25 % capacity release in any, ⁓ any, operating models. Now capacity release, John, is some combination of getting rid of waste. It could be in processes, it could be in work effort, it could be in jobs and roles, but most companies are set up. and are overly fragmented. And the more you fragment an operating model, more time and effort that has to be spent gluing up and putting the pieces back together, which by itself is a huge source of waste in an organization. So most operating models that are highly fragmented, can easily, by redesigning the operating model, release 25 % of their operating costs. of which the company can decide how do we want to invest that money. Do we want to keep it all in savings? Do we want to put it new jobs, new roles? Now you think about it, let's say our operating costs are 500 million a year. And if I said to you, you can buy our services, we can redesign your operating model for 10 million or less. And I'll put in writing and guarantee you, we'll save 10 to 25 % Col. John Boggs: Hmm? Mark LaScola: of your 500 million in capacity release and then you get to decide how you want to invest that capacity. It's phenomenal and no one is ever doing the top down. That is so much nonsense from a consulting perspective. That's just about headcount. It's all it is about headcount. Col. John Boggs: Well, I tend to see that more often than not. I'm just being honest. Mark LaScola: No, I know. most companies and the wonderful thing about On the Mark, our track record, and even now with with now is with Turner and Townsend. 70 percent, 80 percent of our work is not going into companies that are or government organizations that are on the verge of collapsing. They're wanting their leaders in their field or wanting to stay ahead of it or, you know, changing their business model and changing how they're going to marketplace to stay ahead of themselves. So the great thing is You know, when you're in desperate times, it requires, and I totally get it, it requires desperate measures. the way to do that is not just top down and then cut, cut, cut. Col. John Boggs: Well Mark, if a CEO called you tomorrow about a major enterprise transformation, what question would you ask them first? Mark LaScola: How do you want to go about this change? You have two choices, compliance based change. or had an art commitment based change. And the reason being is I'm going to refer back to the eight phases. When leaders call us, they have a pretty good idea of the symptoms, what's wrong with their, where things are breaking. But they not, may not be at the root cause. Most leaders do not fully appreciate nor understand an operating model. But when they start to get an inkling of it, they'll call us and say, we've done this change here, these changes here over last two years. We've done a lot of these little, what I call, a targeted change, maybe we tried to improve some processes, maybe we brought in a COO, maybe we changed some of this over here, but it hasn't really given us what we need. most times when a leader calls us and asks us, ⁓ you know, and says, need some help, and we'll ask them about what they've done, clearly, what have you been... And why do you think it's your operating model? But most leaders don't have a really good understanding of operating model until we go through the first phase of work, which is ⁓ what we call the current state review or evaluating your current operating model. And once we see it over three days, ⁓ once they see it, you start to see the root cause, where things really break down and what's driving not only them being unable to change, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: which is typically the social system. But also it's the management system that they have in place, what we call the management operating system, which sits on top of the value creation process and mucks it all up. But the management operating system keeps things stable and working. And if when you make cosmetic changes to that, it doesn't really create the second order change that we talked about at the beginning of this. So it's really, I think the biggest decision a leader has is, Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Mark LaScola: Do you want to redesign your operating model or do you want to start that and let's see if it is even your operating model because at end of the current state review, you have three decisions, one of three decisions to make. Do nothing, do something around the edges or go to the next phase of the potential redesign ⁓ and I'll share with you that. ⁓ And so at the end of the current state review phase, a leader will have a really good idea. about the root causes that are driving poor performance of organization. Now, the second question is, how do you want to go about doing this? Do you want a compliance-based approach or do you want to take a commitment-based approach? And that decision is probably the most important decision they'll have to make. Col. John Boggs: Mm-hmm. Wow. Mark, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much. And I mean that. I hope everybody's paid a lot of attention here. Making that model change is really significant. And you've got to want something for your organization. So you've reminded us that transfer, it's more than structural, it's human. And thank you for that conversation, Mark. Thank you very much. So Mark, for leaders listening who are navigating serious change or they want to explore your work further, what's the best way for them to connect to you? Mark LaScola: ⁓ I'll give you my mobile number which is plus one six zero two two eight four eight zero nine zero and call leave a message the other one is you can write me at ⁓ mark at mark Lascola dot-com that's mar k at mark mar k la SCO la dot-com Col. John Boggs: Mark, thank you very much. So for everyone listening, remember the mobile is 602-284-8090. writing is marklaskola.com. OK. Hey, Mark, thank you very much. And for all of you listening, thank you very much. And I'll see you again on our next go around. For that, out here.