The Culture Nerds - A Leadership Podcast
Want to constantly grow as a leader and shape a great culture in your workplace? This is the podcast for you.
Of course, if you’re a yoghurt fan who typed in ‘culture’ and ended up here …(sorry, nerdy workplace culture joke). If you’re a serious person who believes serious topics must be covered in a serious way, we may not be the petri dish for you either.
But, if you want lived executive experience and decades working with corporate clients, government agencies & NFPs, all topped off by the hilarious hosts (at least we think so!), welcome - we're glad you could join us!
We nerd out on leadership and workplace culture – which is why we’re good at them. We tackle the topics you need to develop as a leader and to transform the workplace culture you have into the workplace culture you want. And we have fun doing it.
Hard hitting topics. Easy listening.
The Culture Nerds - A Leadership Podcast
Evolution or Revolution: Why Leaders Must Embrace Change to Stay Relevant
Text us your thoughts or questions
Change doesn’t fail because of the plan — it fails because of how people are led through it.
In this episode, Simon explores why leading change isn’t just about managing logistics — it’s about leading emotions, expectations, and resistance with purpose and clarity.
You’ll learn:
- Why “evolution or revolution” isn’t just a clever phrase — it’s a choice every organisation must make
- The difference between change management and change leadership (and why the latter matters most)
- What makes the “valley of despair” so dangerous — and how to help your team move through it
- 10 straight-talking tips to lead people through discomfort, resistance, and real transformation
- Why honesty, visibility, and relentless communication are your most powerful change tools
Whether you’re facing a major transformation or trying to embed small but meaningful shifts, this episode will challenge your mindset and sharpen your approach to leading change that sticks.
0:00 - Introduction and Monthly Resources
9:31 - Embracing Change as a Leader
16:47 - Leadership vs. Management in Change
22:31 - Leading Yourself Through Change First
27:55 - Ten Tips for Successful Change Leadership
35:49 - Effective Change Communication Strategies
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Visit our website The Real Learning Experience
Thanks to our producer, Josh at JCALdigital.org
Before we get into today's episode, we want to acknowledge the privilege of living and working on Aboriginal land and we pay our respects to the Elders, past, present and emerging. Hello listeners and welcome to another episode of the Culture Nerds a leadership podcast. Hello listeners and welcome to another episode of the Culture Nerds a leadership podcast. My name is Simon Tyson and I'm your host for this episode. As with every month, this month we have a focus of the resources we create for our listeners and our followers. We listen to the topics that leaders, managers all over Australia tell us are important to them, the things that they're grappling with, the things that they struggle most with, the things they need a bit of a leg up with, and this month's topic is all around leading change. As with every month, there will be a host of free resources. There will be an e-book, which I'm really excited about. We'll put a lot of time and effort into creating that e-book for you. There will be a bunch of other resources, including a Plenty in 20, so one of our short, sharp, on-demand webinars full of useful tips and strategies. And, of course, there will be this podcast. At the end of every month, there's a newsletter that comes out that summarizes all the resources available for that month, so make sure you subscribe to that, but that will be in the show notes and that gives you access to every resource we create under each theme each month. There'll also be a product page. That's the only thing that's not free, and if you feel that you need more assistance with leading change, to help you or your team deal with change, then reach out to us. We'd love to have a chat and, of course, that first conversation is something we don't charge for. If that then leads to us doing business together, that's great. We'd love that. So on with the episode.
Speaker 1:The first thing I really want to say, before we talk about some strategies to help you manage your people or lead your people through change, I just want to touch on a couple of really big picture mindsets, I guess, about change, and the first one is that, whether it's your comfort zone or not, so some people are naturally more excited about change. They like things changing because it provides that sort of energy and the stimulation and so on. Other people like things a little more stable. Whatever your personality is, whatever your personal preference and style is whatever your personal preference and style is it's essential as a leader that you embrace change. In fact, if your organization isn't changing, you should be very scared because something has to give. You'll either have irrelevance or major disruption. So what I mean by that is, if you're not changing, the world around you is Everything out there that surrounds our organization and I'll dig into that a little bit more in a moment is changing, and it's changing at a faster pace. And we said this five years ago and we said this two years ago and we're saying it even more today. And we're saying it even more today it's changing at a faster pace than any time before. If you don't change in that environment, you're either going to stop being relevant and once you stop being relevant, not existing is not far behind or you're going to have major disruption.
Speaker 1:When I first went into the workforce, there was not much change, but when it happened, it was major transformational change that was incredibly disruptive, quite stressful, quite anxiety-inducing. People didn't cope at all. Everything, the world as we knew it was totally reformulated. That was because of the failure to change organically. So and again, we'll touch on this in a little bit more depth later but if you're not changing and you don't want to become irrelevant, you will get to the point. You'll get to the top of the cliff where it's either fall off or do something drastic, and that drastic is that transformational change so I always talk about. You've either got to have evolution or a revolution, and evolution is progressive, it's organic. Often it's small, constant, unrelenting change, and that comes with a price of its own constant, unrelenting change, and that comes with a price of its own. Or you do nothing but ultimately face the revolution where everything gets turned on its head. So, as a leader, if you're not embracing constant change constant, organic, small, progressive change then your teams won't and you're heading down that path of irrelevance or major disruption. It's not about change for the sake of it. So I'm not suggesting that you should just walk in tomorrow and turn things on their head just for the heck of it, just because Simon said there should be change.
Speaker 1:It's about recognising the world around us, our customers or clients, or the people that your organisation exists to serve. Their needs are changing, their expectations are changing because so many other organisations are changing, so what they consider normal is different to what it was five years ago. Technology is out of control in terms of the pace of change. If we're not embracing AI, we're getting left behind. It's as simple as that. So AI is critical in our businesses, but so many other aspects of technology.
Speaker 1:Our team members are changing dramatically, so what they expect in the workplace. Members are changing dramatically, so what they expect in the workplace is very different to what it was 50 years ago. It's even different to what it was 20 years ago and 10 years ago and five years ago. Why is that important? Because we're competing. We're competing to attract the best people, but even more importantly than that, the degree to which we're meeting their needs determines how well they'll perform when they are in our workplace. So if they come into our workplace and we're not changing, we're not adapting to the changing needs our team members have, then this workplace is not one that particularly inspires them. They respond in a less inspired way, and that, of course, means that we lose out on all those things like engagement, on motivation, on productivity, et cetera, and ultimately on retention. And then we recruit someone else and they find the same thing, and we just go through that pattern.
Speaker 1:So it's not about change for the sake of it. It is change because if we don't, then we're no longer doing what people need from us, and if we're not meeting a need, then there's no purpose for us existing. The other thing about change is it does act as a filter. It's one of my favorite things about change, my favorite things about change. Those who can't or won't adapt will tend to move on if you don't compromise on the change. So what I mean by that and the word compromise is a really interesting one when it comes to change, when it comes to standards, when it comes to accountability, compromise feels like the right thing because we're working with other people and finding compromises. But when we compromise on outcomes so if we've identified change we need to make and we compromise on that change because people don't like it then we only half adapt. We're neither one thing or the other. So what we need to do is decide what the change is that we were committed to making and then go at that unrelentingly and those who can't or won't adapt, they'll move on, and that's okay. Anchors slow ships, and every organization has some anchors and it's okay if you move and they decide I can't cope with this anymore. This is not where I want to be.
Speaker 1:What very often happens is that very same person goes somewhere else and becomes a better version of themselves. They thrive because they're in an environment where they don't have a whole bunch of preconceptions and they're not tied to the expectations of the past. They're not saying, oh, everything's different around here. They don't know what that looks like because they've just arrived in the new organisation. So very often it's the kindest thing we can do for both parties is to just be unrelenting, and people will get to the point where they opt out.
Speaker 1:I can give you a million examples of change and how people have failed to adapt and the cost of that. But think of someone like Kodak, who actually invented the digital camera, but they resisted change because they wanted to protect their film sales. Where are they now? Bankrupt. Compare that to something like Netflix, who's reinvented itself multiple times and they're just a Goliath now. So they've gone from DVDs to streaming, to producing content, and they've read the environment. They've looked at it and said what's changing out there and what do we need to do to stay relevant? But of course that happens in small businesses the small business that takes advantage of a new trend and all of a sudden thrives, all of a sudden booms. They're just as impressive as a giant like Netflix. So that's all about embracing change. So that's all about embracing change.
Speaker 1:The second thing I want to talk about and there's three of them, before we get into some tips is that leadership is, in fact, a tool irretrievably connected to change. So, in your role, if you're a senior manager, a senior leader in an organization, what you need to bring is that blend of management and leadership. So, in the words that we've used many times, admiral Grace Hopper said you manage things, you lead people, so you need to bring that unique blend. Now, the management part of what you bring is all about stability, creating circumstances in which people know exactly what's expected of them, know how things work, have systems etc. And can systematically produce results. But leadership's about change.
Speaker 1:Leadership, and whether that's major change, like a restructure of an organisation, or simply about asking someone to step it up a little bit, to learn something new, to take on a new role, to take on a new task, whatever level it's at, from the most minor to the most major leadership is irretrievably linked with change. So what we need to do is make sure that we're bringing both. We need to know when we need to provide that stability, when people need predictability to just get on with the job and when they need change, stability, when people need predictability to just get on with the job and when they need change. I don't think they're phases we go through of three months of stability from the manager and three months of change from the leader. I think they're constantly interwoven. So it's about a baseline of stability with an overlay of growth and change. Now, research backs that up.
Speaker 1:John Cotter, who's written some amazing books on change. He found that 70% of change initiatives fail, often because they're managed like projects instead of being led as a transformation. So we approach them in that same way that we would manage most other processes in the organization. We have to lead them, and this is a little bit as a transformation. And this is a little bit of a window into something probably the most critical thing that we'll talk about today, because when change fails, it's not because of your plan, of your logistics, of your logical thinking that sits behind it. It's almost always and this was in Cotter's research as well it's almost always because of the people aspect of change, and that's what my tips a bit later are, for it's entirely around leading people through change. So we talk about change management. I think we've got to talk more about change leadership, change management great, you've got all your logical plans, et cetera. Change leadership is getting people to come on that journey with you, because the best plans, even if the place we're taking people is great, if they're not on board, it will fail, exactly as Cotter found Another researcher McKinsey confirmed this that they found that only 26% of transformations succeed, but that rate doubles when leaders simply focus on better communication and involving people more. So one strategy doubled its success. We're still only at 52%, which is a little bit alarming. So we want better than a half and half odds that the change that we're going to lead people through is going to succeed. Now, those numbers tend to relate to transformational change. I think the lessons can be learned for change, no matter what the scope, no matter what the scale, but we can definitely increase our chances by doing those things and some of the other things we'll come to.
Speaker 1:My final broad topic that I want to talk about before we get to the tips is you've got to lead yourself first. So, bluntly speaking, if you don't have your shit together, you can't help people get their shit together. So when you're leading people through change, you've got to recognize that you're a people going through change as well, and so if you're not coping, if you're not okay with the change, then your ability to lead others successfully through the change is really poor. Now as a leader, depending upon the level, if you fail to lead your people through change, what you might find is that the organisation stays relevant through the change and you become irrelevant, which is not where you want to be as a leader. So like it, hate it, ambivalent about it, does not matter. When you try to resist change as a leader, it's like getting in a river and swimming as hard as you can against the current and then finding you swept out the mouth of the river and into the ocean. Anyway. You've wasted a whole bunch of effort that would have been better spent on working with the change and maybe shaping the change to deal with some of your concerns about it, rather than out and out resisting it. So it's a really stressful place for you to be. You need to get yourself through a little bit of a cycle and, speaking of cycles, in some of the resources we'll share with you, there are some graphics that help you understand the emotional process everyone, including you as the leader, goes through in order to deal with change. If you can help yourself get through that, then you can help others move through that cycle. So make sure you've got your stuff together.
Speaker 1:The advantage of the leader there's a couple of advantages you have as a leader often. One is that you've often got a bit more control because you've got you're managing things, you're making some decisions. So, depending upon how senior you are, you might have a little bit more control, which is absolutely correlated to dealing with change more positively. The other thing that you might have is a little bit more information. So there might be a fair bit of stuff that you know that other people don't. Again, highly correlated to coping with change. The more people understand, the more they know, the better they do. Bit of a lesson in that one isn't there, and that's going to be where we're going to finish up, because if you cope better by knowing more, so would your people, and that's where we'll finish today's episode with some specific things around that. The third reason that you may cope with change a little bit better is you might be on the same curve, but maybe better is not the right term. You might just be ahead of them on the curve because potentially you knew about stuff earlier. So the emotional process there's not a given speed that everyone goes through the emotional process. It's very unique, based on personal traits, based upon a whole bunch of other factors previous experiences, et cetera, how much I know about it, how much I can control it, et cetera. But there's a chance that you're further along that curve because you knew stuff before other people did, and that's actually a really good if you're a really senior leader listening to this.
Speaker 1:It's one of the most important reasons to get leadership, to get other managers involved in the change process before you communicate it to everyone else. It's not to be secretive, it's not to keep people in the dark. I really dislike the whole need-to-know basis. People need to know and deserve to know as much as they possibly can about their workplace because it's their lives as well. We're asking them to invest their lives in it. We should be giving them as much information as we can. I know the stuff we can't tell them, but move away from the need to know basis. It's more about what can I absolutely not tell people and hold that back and tell them everything else. But one of the reasons to get managers involved a bit early is to give them time to process this because as if you're a senior leader listening to this one of the biggest predictors of the success of change is how much the middle levels of management advocate for the change, not against it. So if they've had time to cope, if they've had time to process it and ask questions and get themselves through that cycle to the point they're feeling a bit better about it, they're much, much more likely to advocate for change.
Speaker 1:So, leaders, get your stuff together, because if you can't get your stuff together and you might have to actively work on it you might actually have to go and talk to someone and say I'm really struggling with this change. I know where I am. I want to move on. I'm having trouble doing that. Can you help me with that? And that could be internal, that could be your manager, it could be people and culture. It could be external, it could be the EAP. So let's get into 10 tips. And look, a 10 tip sounds so glib, doesn't it? It was purely coincidental that there were 10 tips, as I jotted down what I thought was important to share with you. It just happened there were 10. So number one and this could be number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10 is people before process.
Speaker 1:So change leadership absolutely matters more than change management. People resist even good change. So if their emotions are ignored, so we try and persuade them with a very logical change management plan, that shows really poor emotional intelligence and really poor emotional awareness. What we have to recognize is it doesn't matter how logical the facts are, if the emotions aren't aligned, then the facts aren't landing. So what we have to do is manage the emotions around change, get people involved, make sure they don't feel ignored and this will come down to the communication stuff we talk about later. And then they're open to that more factual side. So Gallup, as in the Gallup polls, found only 13% of people believe their leaders communicated well about change that they've been through, that they've experienced. So 13%. If you can work on your communication, even just a little bit, you're probably in the top half already and you know, if you really get strategic about communication as part of your not just change management, your change leadership plan, then you've got a much higher chance of the change landing effectively.
Speaker 1:The second thing is don't promise bruise-free change. So I don't know if you're listening. I'm not really a footy follower. I've followed it. At times I've got a team. I can go weeks and not know who's playing or who's won. So that's sort of my level of of engagement with with afl. But I do remember A few years back one coach said his team was playing bruise-free football. I think it's a brilliant phrase. Essentially what that coach was saying is their team were holding back. They would have quite liked to do well in the game, they would have quite liked to win, but they pulled back at that critical moment because they were staying bruise-free.
Speaker 1:I think exactly the same thing happens with so many dynamics in the workplace. We can't have bruise-free accountability. We can't have bruise-free leadership. We have to accept that there will be uncomfortable moments. There will be things that people don't like. We cannot have bruise-free change. It does not exist.
Speaker 1:No matter how positive we feel about the change, other people will see the downsides. They'll see the negatives. Every change comes with some benefits, some things that it produces, things we wouldn't otherwise have. Even quite negative change will often take us to a place or help open up some possibilities that weren't there before. But every change, even very positive change, has downsides and sometimes that's just letting go of the things that I'm comfortable with, that. I've become used to, that I value in some way.
Speaker 1:So if you try and sell change as being all sugar and rainbows and unicorns, you're going to sound like you're conning people. You're much better off to acknowledge there will be some upsides, there will be some downsides and that it will be uncomfortable, it will be disruptive. There will be a price. It will cause more work for some people. It will impact services. Perhaps it will impact how people feel about certain things. It will impact the relationships people have developed. We're much better off to be really honest about that and talk about the fact that it will leave some bruises. So that means we've got to really make sure that and talk about the fact that it will leave some bruises. So that means we've got to really make sure that we do everything we can to reduce that, to mitigate those. But we've also got to make it worthwhile, because who wants the bruises without the outcome, without the win? I also believe, as a leader, there's some language that people use that we talk about change having an end point.
Speaker 1:I hear a lot of leaders say this is the third tip. By the way, I should number them as I go. I hear a lot of leaders say, oh, when we get through the change? You know what I say to them when you get through the change, there'll be another change. So don't sell this oasis at the end of the change, this beautiful, tranquil place where everything will be serene and stable and nothing will change again. Basically and again listening to the introduction today we need to constantly evolve. So if you're going through major change, there's a high chance that's because you failed to make small changes, incremental changes along the way. Perhaps not, that's not a 100%, but there's a really good chance. What we need to do is sell change as a way of existing, as a way of operating that we're constantly going to be adapting.
Speaker 1:Our goal is that we won't have to do too many things too often that are highly disruptive, because we'll make little adaptations. It's an entirely different skill set. Coping with major change takes huge resilience. Coping with constant, ongoing change requires some energy and it still requires the resilience, but it's a whole different mindset to my world's not being turned upside down, but you know what? There's not really an end point in sight for this. A researcher called Gartner actually found that 45% of team members said their performance drops because of constant change, but getting into a state of apathy, where nothing's changing, where nothing's evolving, is actually worse. So when nothing's changing, we have that whole philosophy of you're either green and growing or ripe and rotting. When nothing changes, we become ripe and rotting, and the impact on performance of becoming complacent, of becoming ripe and rotting, of becoming mediocre or average, is significantly higher over time than the cost of that change fatigue. Having said that, as a manager, if you follow the tips we've talked about, you will reduce the impact of change fatigue.
Speaker 1:Number four and this relates I'm not going to spend too much time here. Number four and this relates, I'm not going to spend too much time here ask people to make continuous improvements so that there's constant momentum towards adapting without it ever becoming overwhelming. The other beauty about this is, if people are making constant small adaptations, they're things that are often within their control. The more control people have over change, the better they cope with it. So, in their own work, in their, in their own teams, make it a focus for the organization that they spend some time looking at. So what could we adapt? What could we improve? How could we we improve, how could we innovate, when you spend a small amount of time doing that. You're ahead of the change curve and you get to a point of examining and saying, do we need to change? And you find that you've already made some of those. It doesn't avoid it altogether. So the fifth tip is understand the change curve and this is something that absolutely, in the show notes, will link to the resources. In the monthly newsletter You'll be able to get a summary of the resources and it will include the ebook and potentially a separate download will include the change curve.
Speaker 1:So people go on a journey and broadly the journey. I'm not going to go into too much depth today. It's really handy to have the graphic in front of you and I don't want to make this pod too long but people go from resisting to questioning. Their first impulse is to resist, then to questioning, then to accepting and then to adapting. There's sort of a bit of a curve they go through there and there's some sub-behaviors that sit under each of those. In the middle between questioning and accepting is what we call the valley of despair. Everyone goes through the valley of despair. What you as a leader, with yourself and with your team, have to be very careful of is the valley of despair doesn't become the destination rather than simply a point on the journey through. I don't think we can actually avoid it. I think it's just emotionally part of the process we go through.
Speaker 1:When people are in the valley of despair, there's only three choices. One is to, because that's when the apathy peaks. There's only three choices. One is to, because that's when the apathy peaks. So there's only three choices. One is to move through it and people might need some help doing that. And again, giving them information, giving them control, et cetera, will help. Sometimes people move through, which is exactly what we want. Sometimes people move out. They get to that point and they say this is not for me, I'm going somewhere else, I've got another opportunity or I don't want to do this, and they move out. That's not the ideal, but it's much better than the third option, which is they settle into the valley of despair, they set up camp there and I've met I've been in organizations where people have been in the valley of despair for months and even years. It's a really destructive place. It's destructive for the organization, it's destructive for the team around them and it's destructive for the individual who's camping there. So we need to find ways to keep people moving through and again, these tips will help.
Speaker 1:A bit related to the Brews Free don't sugarcoat change. If it sucks, tell people it sucks when you oversell it. It destroys your credibility. So when people come to you with a concern and you try and persuade them, they're wrong and they need to see the world differently and they just need to be a bit more positive and open-minded. Every word there destroyed your credibility. You're better off to acknowledge it and say yeah, I can see that really sucks for you. I can see that's something that's not great for you. What can we do about it? So when people encounter the resistance around, they feel that something isn't great and they encounter that resistance. They tend to double down on the resistance. When they bring that resistance to you and you work with them on it and acknowledge it and talk about, yeah, that's not a great situation, they're much more willing to move to what can we do about it? Because at some point in that conversation, once you've listened to them, it's okay to say I know it sucks, but it's what we're dealing with. It's our reality. So how do we make this okay for you? What can we do? That's a classic sign that someone's sitting in the valley of despair when they double down on that resistance and just go. I'm just not buying into this. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just not buying into this.
Speaker 1:Number seven is give people control to the greatest degree you can, and I've talked about this a number of times through the pod, but I'm just going to dive deeper into it a little now. Even really small choices matter so often with change. What we're doing is not up for debate, but how we're going to do it. That might be something you can give people control over. But how we're going to do it, that might be something you can give people control over. How they're going to play it out in their own teams could be something that you can give people control over. The more you can give them control over, the more likely they are to move through that change cycle and to become a part of promoting the change and adapting to the change than resisting the change and having apathy. I'm going to give you a really simple example.
Speaker 1:I was involved in an organization in an executive role. There was a change and in retrospect it wasn't that big, but admin had always been in the corner of one of the branches and it was out of control. When that situation started, there were two branches and there were two or three people in admin. Now there were 20, and they were rotating through this ridiculously small space. It was completely unworkable. So we purchased a separate admin building as an organization and we arranged to move all of admin there the people who'd been in admin and who'd been there for a very long time and sitting in the corner of this office. It was diabolically poor work conditions and they were horrified about leaving them, not because the change wasn't good, but because it was a change. It was going to change relationships they had. It was going to change habits they had. It was going to change the comfort they had. They knew everything in this place, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:And I was sitting with a group of them and with another executive and one of the team said what are we going to do about the photocopier? And the other executive went to answer and I just said, just for a second, what do you think we should do with the photocopier? And they then started talking about well, I think we could do this, but maybe we shouldn't even take that one with us. We probably need a new one, because that one's getting a bit outdated, et cetera, et cetera. And afterwards the other executive, very insightful, said to me they weren't asking about the photocopier, were they? And my answer was no, no, they weren't. They just wanted some control, some certainty. It's not that they were control freaks, but all of these loose ends. What can I control? How can I feel better about this? What can I adapt there in the new environment to make me feel better about being there? So that's a really simple example.
Speaker 1:There are so many things that you can give people control of in change processes. My eighth tip is to lose this phrase. You can't teach old dogs new tricks, dog's new tricks. It's utter bullshit. It's not true. People can adapt at any age, absolutely. When people get set in their ways, they may not adapt as well, but that's not necessarily 100% correlated with age. The reason I think we've got to do that is if we look at certain people and think that they won't adapt, we treat them differently. I think we've got to do that is, if we look at certain people and think that they won't adapt, we treat them differently. I think we've got to support learning and I think we've got to assume that people are willing to adapt and willing to learn new things.
Speaker 1:We shouldn't assume resistance is inevitable. All of my experience in so many change processes is you will get resistance from the least likely place and you'll get acceptance and support from the least likely place, particularly if you're a large organization. There are some bits that are a bit more predictable because we know that that department tends to in the past, have resisted change or this will impact them more or this will be less favorable for them. It's absolutely okay to try and anticipate that, but don't brand people as not being able to adapt. Number nine is exactly what I just talked about. An extension of that is plan for resistance. Ask yourself who's likely to resist. Why will they resist? What impact will their resistance have? How will we respond? How can we get them on board? What do they need to feel better about this change? That doesn't mean compromising the changes, as said at the beginning, but it might mean involving them in the change in some way at an earlier phase than we otherwise would have. So my recommendation with resistance is we shouldn't assume it tip eight, but we should plan for it.
Speaker 1:Tip nine and there's a very big difference. And tip number 10 is communicate, then communicate again and communicate again. If you think you've communicated enough, you might be 20% of the way to what you should have communicated. Cotter, who I mentioned earlier, says that leaders need to communicate during change 10 times more than they think is necessary, and particularly around the vision, around what's driving the change. So let's dig into that. They're the 10 tips, and I've deliberately left communication to last because I want to dig into some really specific things when you're communicating. Here's some things, and this is not exhaustive, but I think there's a really good starter.
Speaker 1:What should you communicate? Well, obviously, what's changing. I think that's really important why it's changing, so why the old way no longer works and why the new way matters. When we are asking people to change, we shouldn't spend all our time selling the new destination. We should also talk about why the current state is not as effective. We should also talk about why the current state is not as effective. Our communication should really explicitly name up why B is a place worth going to, why it's worth the effort that people are about to go through to get there, but also why A is not going to be a good place to stay at.
Speaker 1:Going back to our list of what to communicate, what it means for them personally. Going back to our list of what to communicate, what it means for them personally. So and this is time consuming, but we need to understand each person will feel impacted by change in a different way. We need to communicate with them personally. Now, not one leader has to do that, but senior leaders. You need to invest a heck of a lot of your time in making sure you're visible and accessible and communicating and people can ask questions. You will probably deal with more people one-on-one in a big organization than you have for a long time.
Speaker 1:What the process looks like? Notice, the first three questions are really around the emotions, around change. Now we're going to talk a little bit about logic. So what the process looks like. So what's the plan for change? What's the timeline? What are the steps? What do they need to do? What do we expect from them? So, specifically, what will they need to change and when will they need to do it? Here's a huge one, and we're back in emotions. This is fundamental to resistance.
Speaker 1:What are your motives? Because if I don't know your motives, I'll guess them, and the problem is most people guess something worse, something more insidious than the truth. So what are your motives? Why should they trust you in that change? So what are your motives? Why should they trust you in that change? What are the pros and the cons of the change? When a senior leader acknowledges to their teams there are cons to the change, people feel a whole lot better.
Speaker 1:This is not a PR process. If you're tackling change in a PR process, you will 100% have cynicism. I can guarantee it. Just tell people the truth. If you don't tell people the truth, they make stuff up which is worse than the truth. They were better off with the truth in the first place. And if some people decide that I'm not going to get on board with that, well that's okay. It's better if they had the truth and they opted out at that time.
Speaker 1:How long will it take? But be really upfront that there is a likelihood, there's a probability, because the chances are with change that that may blow out. It may not be as quick. What's going to slow the change down? Almost certainly resistance. It could be poor planning. If it's poor planning, then that's something else you're going to have to deal with. But resistance slows change down more than anything. So if you can be really honest with people and if you also talk to them about the timelines and be honest that what could slow that down is if we find people aren't on the journey with us. So we're going to have some time up front where we help people adapt to the fact that this is happening. But then, once we roll it out, this is the timeline and the way we're going to stay on track with that is to make sure you're all on board. And also the final one I've jotted down here is where can they get more information? Where can they get support? They may need support, they may need training, in which case, talk to us. We're experts at helping people cope with change and helping leaders lead change. So where can they get that information and support, which again could be the EPA?
Speaker 1:My closing thought for you, change isn't a project, it's not a practice, not a phase. It's an ongoing practice, it's a way of operating, it's a way of being so as a leader, you're not there to keep the status quo. You're there to help people grow, to help the organization adapt, to help the organization adapt, to help the organization stay relevant and leading. Change is all about guiding people through uncertainty, through fatigue, through resistance, through the discovery process. So do it well yourself. Take yourself through that process, make sure you're not just surviving and hanging in there with the change, and then steer your people through the same process.
Speaker 1:That's it for me today. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope that whatever change, whether it be major transformational change or just a smaller but important change, an organic, evolutionary change, which hopefully that's what it is, whatever you're doing, I hope it goes well and I know, by following these tips and accessing the other resources we've made available to you, they will help. Call us if you would like additional help. And until next time, stay authentic. Come and see the real thing. Come and see the real thing. Come and see. Come and see the real thing. Come and see the real thing.