Welcome back in Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo on
this episode, I want to talk about change management and the elements that go
into managing change with a team, especially changes that can be a little on
the complex side. Yeah, I like that. I think what we tend
to think that all change is simple, and that we say, like change
is the only constant and change we got to figure it all out. But
like, change can be difficult most of the time, right, Right,
If you it can be simple from a leadership standpoint to change things, if
you expect to you know, have to do no work on your own and
just expect people to change, right, then that that could be simple,
but it's often not effective. Right. So when you're when you're managing change,
complex change, but even change that might not be complex, you have
to understand there are elements that go into making sure that it is effective and
that it happens. And you know, I saw a kind of a conversation
online around this that had some elements listed that are needed in order for change
to happen in an effective way. And there are five elements that go into
this, and I want to talk about it from the perspective of what happens
when each of these or any of these is lacking. And so, you
know, the conversation basically is that for effective complex change to occur, you
need to have a vision, you need to have skills, you need to
have incentives, you have resources, and you'd have an action plan. And
that seems pretty obvious, like, you know, there could be other that
you might be able to think, oh, I need this in this too,
But if you have those five things vision, skills, incentives, resources,
and an action plan, those are absolute prerequisites to you know, affecting
a change in the right way. And if any of those things is lacking,
you don't get change. You get something else, You get something other
than the change you're looking for. But what those outcomes are will vary depending
on what is lacking. And the reason I think this is an important conversation
is because there are leadership teams out there who are trying to affect change on
their teams and one of these things is lacking. They're they're really good likely
at some of these things, and some of these things they need to get
better at doing. And if you're a leader of people and you're not getting
the change you're looking for. Being able to look at it through a lens
of which of these things is lacking might help you figure out where to start
making some changes, as opposed to just thinking, Wow, this change isn't
happening. I wonder why let's start over. Maybe the plan wasn't right.
I think this is a good conversation to have around this. Yeah, And
what I like about it too is like I think, in the context of
it being about complex change, when we read through this and talk about these
things, I immediately think about times where you're looking to have a leader with
a team try to work through a strategy. So not even like we can
say like change is one thing you hear change, you think of these big
drastic movements or something that we used to do we totally don't do anymore.
We have to do this now. And I think about strategy, because strategy
on the surface is change. Like you're thinking about what's something that you're looking
to have an impact on, and then what do you have to do to
work that out so that you can have the outcome that you want. Well,
that's going to be changing some things. And so when I think about
this, I don't think necessarily about just the kind of the big elements of
major change I think about when I sit down with the leader and I'm asking
the questions about a strategy that they have and maybe why that strategy is not
being effective. This works out really, really well when I'm thinking about asking
the questions that I need to ask and figuring out why maybe they're hitting some
roadblocks on their way to success, right, because likely if they're hitting some
roadblocks, it's because one of these five things is missing. And if they're
thinking themselves, oh my gosh, like, my vision is amazing here,
and my team has told like the skills that are needed to do this.
They have those skills and they're great at them. Why is this not happening?
Well, well, clearly it's not lacking vision. It's not lacking skills.
There's something else that's lacking. So, you know, the first kind
of element of this, if we take away vision, if we just have
a team that has, uh, they have a lot of skills and you've
incentivized them, meaning there's you know, potential career advancement, or there's you
know, promotions or more money. If the organization or the team is saying,
what do you need whatever, we can provide that you need to get
this done. Here you go, you got it, and here's the plan.
If you if you have all those things but you're lacking vision, this
says that what you end up with this confusion. You have people who are
confused about what they should be doing. And that makes sense if you have
the team that is a skillful team, and you're recognizing and rewarding them and
you're giving them all the resources they need, but they have no idea what
it is that they are, you know, looking to go to. It's
not it's not like we're we're going to the moon, right, like that's
the north star? What are you looking to do? We're we're changing this
organization's branding to you know, to appeal to this customer. Whatever it is,
whatever that vision is. If it's not very clear, then you have
different people taking those skills and those incentives and those resources, that action plan,
and they're kind of directing it in varying directions, not towards kind of
like a centralized goal. Yeah, this is kind of the epitome of the
start with the why concept around like do people understand, like what is the
vision here? Why are we doing this? Right? You know, what
are we trying to accomplish with this? What's the need for this change?
And if you miss that part, then to your point, people create their
own narratives. And while they may have the skills, incentives resources in an
action plan, there's going to be some confusion because they're going to go different
directions. There's not that lighthouse that everybody's heading towards. There's no true clear
vision on what's happening, and that's going to create confusion because people are going
to fill in the blink on their own right. And it will happen not
at the beginning, because everybody will think that like the vision is one of
those things where if you have of the skills and the incentives and the resources
of the action plan and you're not being presented with a clear vision, people
will fill that in and they'll think it's right, and they'll start working towards
that thing they think is right, and it won't be clear that there's a
problem until people start looking around. I'm thinking, why is everybody going in
different directions here? Right? Like it happens after the fact, you know,
not at the beginning, and by then you've wasted a lot of time
and you've wasted a lot of skills and incentives and resources. The next element
that is a requirement. Here are skills. And this is when I'm thinking
about, you know, something that I've been asked to do in my life,
like any type of change that I've been asked to do. If I've
been presented with a great vision and the person who is expecting this change is
incentivizing me to do it, and I've been given the resources, they're saying
to me, hey, what do you need, Chris to get this done?
And I say I need this and this and this, and they go,
here you go, here's the plan. And in my mind, I'm
thinking I can't do this. I don't know how to do this. That
leads to a sense of anxiety. And if I don't have the skills necessary
to do something, that is where the anxiety comes from. And if they
are skills that I think I can learn, that will lessen the anxiety.
But if there's a timeline, and oftentimes change has a tight timeline or expectation
of timeline, that can heighten the anxiety. But as a leader, you
need to be aware of what skills are needed to accomplish a specific change and
where they're lacking, because if you put a team into action and say go
do this without knowing where the skills lie, you're going to have some a
lot of hesitation from a lot of team members who feel anxiety they won't be
able to get it done and they're afraid of failing. Yeah, I think
this is a big one. You know. I talk about skills a lot
because I think that we tend to make a lot of assumption of a specific
set of skills based upon the title of people, and especially when you kind
of get into the role of leadership, there's this assumption that everybody has the
skill to do this thing. And while they may have some skill, it
might not be the right skill. It might not be at the level that
you need it to be. It may not be a skill they've used in
a long time, or maybe a skill that they've been able to kind of
just barely get by with. And when you have change, when you have
a strategy, when you have something that's going on, this is kind of
the one of the first things I sniff out when it comes to just like
why people may be feeling anxious about something that's happening, is is you start
to ask enough questions you do start to under understand and discover that there can
there can be a skill gap. And that skill gap is what's causing that
exacty, Because if everything else is there, you have it all, and
there's still some anxiety towards it, it's more than likely going to be the
skills and the person maybe they're not comfortable sharing that yet, or maybe they
don't know, they don't know what they need to know, but they do
know they don't they don't necessarily have what they need to make this happen.
Right, And when it comes to skills too, I also think about,
you know, skills on paper versus skills in the in the moment when it's
needed. Those are very different. And I think about it from the standpoint
of like, let's say that you take self defense classes, right, and
you've been taking them for two years, and you you you demonstrate with your
instructor on how you can, you know, disarm a person who is trying
to rob you, and and it works well in the classroom. That doesn't
necessarily mean it works well if you're actually being robbed, right, That doesn't
mean that the moment that it actually happens, you're not going to freeze up
and forget or have the inability to demonstrate those skills in the moment. And
so when you are a leader and you're trying to ensure the skills are needed,
are there are It's not just about you know, being able to regurge
to them or have them reiterate to you these are the skills that are needed
and yes I have them. You need to see them in action in a
way that lets you be able to understand whether or not they can do it
in the moment when when push comes to shove, and and if they can't,
being able to recognize that and help them so that it becomes muscle memory,
so that becomes something they can do in the moment, and that they're
good enough at to do it when change is happening, not just good enough
to do it when that's all they have to focus on is the skill,
but when there's other things going on that might lead them not doing it as
well. The third thing that you can take away from you know, change
management that will lead to not change management, or that will lead to not
having a change is incentives. And you know, I think about this,
you know, the the old Adam, the old uh acronym with them what's
it what's in it for me? And that can sound selfish, but it
is what it is, like, it is selfish. If you're expecting teams
of people to make complex changes, they need to see what's in it for
them. And I'm not talking about they need to see that you're gonna,
like, you know, give them, you know money, here's here's cash
for making this change. That's not what it means. It just means that
they need to see why this is happening and be bought into that change for
something that is good for them and not just something that is good for other
people. And so if this, if the change is that, hey,
you know, we're gonna ask that you start helping four times as many clients
as you were currently helping, and and and and the uh, the the
incentive is the company is gonna save money because we're gonna fire three fourths of
you and one fourth of you is remaining to take on four times the work
of the other ones. That's not an incentive, obviously, right, that's
that's a disincentive. And so but if the if the if it's articulated in
a way that says, hey, you know, the the company's about to
go under. We can't do this anymore, and we have to figure out
a way to stay afloat. Then there are ways of doing this that that
keep the people who have to stay on to do more work for them to
see what's in it for them is that they're still employed and that they're gonna
get through this tough time with the organization and then there will be more doors
that are opening in the future. But let's keep the boat afloat for a
while, and you to be honest about what that incentive is it Again,
the incentive can be very basic or it can be, you know, very
broad, but it has to be articulated in a way where there's an agreement
upon what that incentive is. Yeah, absolutely, I think too it's like
resistance and incentives. And sometimes it's kind of like when you're talking through some
of the compensation pieces, bonus pieces, things like that. But I think
for me, when it comes to strategy, it's like the incentive around what
a what are you learning, what are you gaining, what's what's what?
What what is this going to do to like kind of help you to move
forward? Like I recently think about some conversations I was having and talking about
like the not just the skills, but the things that you gain when you
work in retail, and and like these are like lifelong skills. These are
things that you can either build a career on when it comes to you know,
staying with the company working in retail. These are things that you can
take with you as a side hustle, small business, other types of things.
If you're really kind of thinking about what you what you get in working
in this type of an environment, and those are incentives if you think of
them that way. But it's clear and you talk about it that way,
and sometimes people don't think about those types of things, and so like that's
where I think it's important to kind of clarify for people, Like when it
comes to either the change or the strategy, here and here is kind of
where this can go and which you can get from this and how this is
going to help you going forward. Right, And if the incentives don't speak
to that person, then they're the wrong incentives. And that means either you
need to help that person with incentives that are effective, or you have to
understand that they're the wrong person to help manage this change. If the if
you can't find an agreed upon set of incentives that work, then that's the
wrong person to be, you know, part of this change, and it
might mean the the wrong person for the organization. But if you if you
know your people and you work hard enough to make sure that you that you
know what their long term goals are, it really shouldn't be that hard to
figure out incentives that work. Even if you are limited on what you can
you know, pay them or bonus them, there's there are incentives you can
come up with that will work. The fourth element that is necessary here that
we've been talking about is resources. And so if you have a great vision
and your people are skilled, and you've incentivized them by talking about the what's
in it for them in terms of skill building, you know, doors being
opened for them, promotions, potential bonuses, whatever that is. And you
have a great action plan but you're not willing to put the resources into it,
then you're going to get a lot of frustrated employees. You're going to
get employees who really want to make something happen, but they just can't because
you have not put the resources into it that are necessary. Yeah, this
one's pretty self explanatory. Pretty easy. And I think we all we've all
been a part of that before, where it's like you have everything, you
know, everything makes total sense. You just don't have the resources you need
to get it done in the time that it needs to get done or with
the urgency that it needs to get done. And that can be super frustrating.
Yeah, it can. And and you know, if you are a
leader and you're noticing this, sometimes you know having to revisit the resources needed
in the moment or throughout the process is necessary. Sometimes you do your due
diligence and you think these are the resources needed, and then you realize,
you know what, maybe they're different resources are needed, and maybe more resource
sources are needed, whatever that is. You need to be noticing this so
that you can react to it in the moment. And oftentimes you maybe you
don't have the ability to make that decision to say I need more resources,
but there are people you can partner with to at least put that out there
and say, you know what, I feel like this is not working because
I don't have the resources. You'll get one of two answers, either oh
my gosh, here's more resources, or they're going to say, well,
other people are doing it with the resources that we'll be giving. Let's talk
more about this, because maybe you think it's a lack of resources, but
it's really a lack of skills, Or maybe you think it's a lack of
resources, but it's a lack of vision. Whatever it is, you can
interpret a lack of You could interpret a frustration as a lack of resources when
it might not be. And sometimes taking a partner with somebody who is not
as close to it, who can you know, kind of look at it
from a macro view, might be able to help you, you know,
get through it. But if you're one of a whole bunch of leaders who
is articulating that they don't have the resources and it's a kind of a shared
frustration throughout, at that point your organization will have to decide either we need
to put more resources towards this, or it was the wrong plan of action
and we need to kind of kind of back off. But but yeah,
this is this is a very important one. The last one is a lack
of action plan. And with a lack of action plan, you get you
get what with this basically is false starting people have the vision, they have
the skills, they have incentive incentivized to do it, they have the resources,
but no one is really sat down and said, Okay, this is
step one, this is step two, this is step ten. Uh.
If you don't have that action plan in place before the beginning, you'll have
people who are starting at different parts of a plan, whatever works in their
own head and and you won't be working together. There won't be any cohesion.
There'll be people kind of like looking at different outcomes as the goal.
When when an actuality, you know, you should be kind of level setting
to make sure people are doing the same thing. It's a great call out.
You're going to have a delta in the ways in which people take action
quickly and and how you know, even with the vision, the skills and
sentives and resources, like, how they want to go about getting things done
when they want to get it done. What's the level of urgency? You
know? And and when you leave the ability to have a plan kind of
open to all, then you get a lot of variance when it comes to
you know, when does it start, when does it end, how does
it get cascaded? What what do the milestones look like? How do you
communicate back in and form back it just it creates a lot of just kind
of everybody running down their own path and then that you know again that can
then then pull back and to cost some other issues there. But it's it
makes it really hard to move teams together. If ever, if everybody doesn't
have a clear objective on what they're trying to do together from an action planning
standpoint, right, And if you're if you're a retail leader or if you're
you know, kind of in middle management in an organization, then oftentimes the
action plan is given to you, like oftentimes the plan of action has been
figured out by other people in beta testing or in you know kind of you
know, storyboarding things out, and resources have already been put into figuring out
what the action plan is, and that it's assumed that if it as long
as it's executed, that it will work. If you're fortunate enough to have
that, that's fantastic. If you're the person who's putting together the action plan,
then it's really important to make sure that the people who have to execute
that plan are involved in the planning of it and are involved in the creation
of it. If you're just if you're a leader of people and you are
putting together an action plan that your team has to execute, you won't get
you You will get resistance from them. You will get this kind of you
know, like, who are you to create this plan all on your own?
If you are just you know, telling people what a plan is that
was given to you, that's fine. It is what it is. And
you're you're essentially a part of that plan too. You have your role to
play in that plan. But if you're creating that plan, do whatever you
can to make sure that the people are executing it are as involved in that
action plan as possible, because they will it will be more likely to buy
into it and execute it correctly and be on the same page as far as
what the plan is. You kind of agree on it in advance, on
what step one is and where you're going to start, and then you know
you're less likely to get those false starts or people kind of acting on what
they think is the right thing but doing it doing it in the wrong way.
Absolutely, And with that it brings us to this episode to one minute
Hack. But first a few words from our sponsors. All right, for
this episode, one minute Heckers wants you to do. I want you to
look at this infograph and I'll put a link to it in the podcast description.
It clearly lays out what happens when each of these things are are lacking.
Look at this in the in the context of a change or a strategy
that you're trying to put in place that you're having some difficulty with, and
think about it from the perspective of which of these items is missing that could
be leading to it. Having an idea of where where an element is missing
from this list of five things can greatly help you figure out where to put
your efforts at resources into solving it. And also, and this is equally
importan and ask somebody to look at it with you who is not as close
to the work as you are. So if you're the one leading the team
and you have to do this, partnering with a person who can look at
you and your team and give you ideas about where something might be lacking,
that can be important because if they have a different perspective than you have,
it could just be that you think one thing is lacking when really it's something
else. Partner with your team as well. If they're being expected to do
something and you're not seeing the results, you're looking for, ask them what
they think is missing. You can show them this this infograph and say,
you know, this is what what we're expecting here, This isn't happening.
Why do you think is not happening? Which of these things do you believe
is missing? If you have varying answers from people who are all over the
placing what they think is missing, then then that's a problem. If they're
all in agreement on what's missing, or if they're all raising their hands saying
yep, it's resources, resources, resource. If they're all in agreement,
you probably know at least where to start. You know where to start that
process going. But it's necessary to manage complex change to have all of these
things. If you're lacking any of them, you won't get the change you're
looking for. Yeah. No, I think it's a great practice as well
when you're thinking about change or strategy to be able to answer the questions for
yourself as a leader. So what is the vision here? Do I think
we have the skills or what are the skills necessary? Not even do I
think we have them? Like, what are the skills necessary to make this
happen? What is the intensive for us to be successful here. You know,
do we have the resources? What are the resources? And then and
then what is the action plan? And again to your point, is is
it prepared for us or is this something that we have to create for ourselves.
But taking that time to kind of answer those questions will be super helpful
in either avoiding some of this from happening or minimizing it as much as possible.
Right, And I like that you brought up skills again because I think
defining the skills necessary to do something not in the context of whether or not
your people have them, but just in the context of what is needed and
kind of defining that. You know, we talk a lot about that when
it comes to talent management and talent calibration. Being able to look at what
skills are needed to be able to to do something and then applying that agreed
upon skill set to the people is far more effective than starting with the question
of do my people have the skills necessary to do this? It's much more
subjective to start with the person and then to see if they have the skills
necessary. It's far more effective to start with the skills necessary, clearly define
what those skills are, and then look at that look at each of your
people through the lens of what you've agreed upon the skills are. If you
don't do that first, it can be very easy to have different beliefs of
who has the skills. You know, you have some leaders thinking that this
team does have the skills and other people thinking this team doesn't have the skills.
And it all starts with the fact that no one is level set on
what the skills are and how to define them absolutely. And with that it
brings us to the end of this episode, this is hacking your leadership.
I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and we'll talk to you all next time.