Communication in Change Management: Aligning Values and Behaviors with Nellie Wartoft

[00:00:00] Oh my goodness, bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided. If you had Fama, stop hiring dangerous people. Fama.io Hello, this is William Tinkup, Ryan Leary and you are listening and watching the You Should Know podcast.

[00:00:54] Nellie Wartoft, does that pronounce that correctly? Wartoft, yeah, correct. Can I get the T at the end of that? Close enough. Very, very, yeah, no. Nellie, how are you doing today? I'm good, very well, sun is shining in California so I'm happy.

[00:01:12] So we're going to be talking about employee experience and change management, kind of how those two things are intersecting, colliding, etc. So, why don't you first introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself, your business and I will lead in this research after that. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:01:32] So Nellie Wartoft, founder and CEO of Tiger Hall originally grew up in Sweden, moved to Singapore when I was 18. So I've spent a large portion of my career in Singapore and Asia and that's where I founded Tiger Hall originally.

[00:01:46] And I found a Tiger Hall to enable people to connect and overcome obstacles and share knowledge in a more efficient way. And we started working with enterprises in 2020 and supporting them through large scale transformation, large scale changes,

[00:02:04] especially driving that kind of change in transformation with their organizations instead of against them. So what we're doing today, we call it the transformation trifecta where you have the people and training side of things.

[00:02:16] You have the communication side of things and the change management side of things in all in one platform. So it's easy to manage and to run that at large scale.

[00:02:26] So we work with large enterprises across the US and the world on these topics around change, transformation and employee experience. So I'm most, I guess, familiar with technology change. So software change, right?

[00:02:45] So when they implement a new HRIS or some type of software product, so I'm familiar with tech change, but not other types of organizational change.

[00:02:54] So for the audience, what are some of the types of projects you're not customizing or anything like that, but the types of projects that you're talking about? So very common would be commercial transformation.

[00:03:06] So changing how you go to market, moving customer segment, launching a new market, culture transformation, which many times they go hand in hand. For example, if you're a tech company, you want to move from selling hardware to selling software becoming a SaaS business.

[00:03:21] That's both a go to market change and the cultural transformation. And then you have all the organizational changes, a lot of restructuring. So a lot of what we work on is actually restructuring exercises. And when people don't know, are they going to have a job or not?

[00:03:36] Which company are they going to things like divestitures could also be mergers, acquisitions bringing companies together.

[00:03:42] So I want to say like culture is usually part of all of them, but that's kind of the underlying layer of whether it's a divestiture or go to market change or some kind of strategic initiative could even be like,

[00:03:54] we want to implement AI in our business model or we want to be more sustainable. So any kind of strategic initiative and how you drive the culture and the people with that.

[00:04:04] So I know we're going to get into some research and things that you're seeing in the market, but maybe start us off with what is the big trend? What are you seeing today in the market that's driving some of your conversations?

[00:04:21] Yeah, so I mean change is the only constant right and I think that's what everyone is agreeing on more and more. And the entire space of change and transformation has grown massively over the last three years.

[00:04:33] Like just last year, for example in the US alone, there were 60,000 new jobs added in change management and transformation.

[00:04:42] So some of the things we're seeing is that they're starting a lot of offices to fully manage this because they realize that we can't really have people doing this as a side project or like a stretch assignment to drive this transformation.

[00:04:56] We need a proper office to handle it. And I'm also the chair of the executive council for leading change where we're about 250 members senior executives in the space and a lot of trends there as well.

[00:05:07] You have people coming from maybe marketing backgrounds, finance, sales and now they're suddenly the chief transformation officer. So they're all tasked with building out this transformation capability. So that's a big trend we're seeing is companies saying that we can't just hand this off to the CFO temporarily.

[00:05:24] We need a sustainable permanent practice and that's usually called a transformation office. Sometimes they transform the PMO office project management and make that into a transformation office. But many times they build from scratch. So that's one and just the growth of the space in general.

[00:05:41] The second thing we're seeing is that there are more changes to your question, William on what kind of changes there are more of them intersecting.

[00:05:49] So while five to 10 years ago you might have had, okay, we're doing this software change or an ERP implementation or we're adding a product or we want to be a little bit more innovative.

[00:06:00] Whereas now the type of changes are usually many at the same time and also larger in scale. And most of them, even if you're doing only a divestiture then that comes with a whole culture transformation and commercial transformation as well. So they combine them.

[00:06:16] And this is why we're seeing so much increase in the number of changes that people experience. So there's some great research from Gartner on this where they had looked at how many changes our employees experiencing per year. And in 2016 that number was two.

[00:06:34] So every year, two big changes for every employee they had to experience in 2023 that number was 12.

[00:06:41] So every single month you have a large significant change in transformation hitting you and usually many employees are at the intersection of many of these right so they might sit in the corner. They might sit in the commercial team driving that commercial transformation.

[00:06:55] They also are supposed to drive the culture transformation that is part of it. They might take a role in integrating a new merger and like they're part of many of these changes. So yeah, from two to 12 in the span of seven years.

[00:07:07] It's going to impact them somewhere or another and that's load balance if it's one a month but you know how it plays out. It's nine in one month and three for the rest of the year. It kind of hits them in different ways. Several questions.

[00:07:21] We'll just go with one for right now when I was interacting with a lot of user adoption stuff with tech change. Before we move on, I need to let you know about my friend Mark Pfeffer and his show PeopleTech.

[00:07:36] If you're looking for the latest on product development, marketing funding, big deals happening in talent acquisition, HR, HCM. That's the show you need to listen to. Go to the work defined network, search up PeopleTech. Mark Pfeffer, you can find them anywhere.

[00:07:54] It was exactly what you said like a stretch. It wasn't a person that has a full-time job. It was somebody that basically got tagged to help implement and then get user adoption.

[00:08:08] And I always wondered if that would develop like what you have transformation offices rather than whether it's process or technology or whatever. But I also saw with some of those projects that internally they had difficulty getting their peers to change.

[00:08:27] Like they were a little tone deaf because they're internal. Now a chief transformation officer, okay, probably listening to that person got it. But someone that was tasked with something to handle it, their peers would almost ignore it as opposed to a third party.

[00:08:44] Third party comes in says, okay, you have to do this. They'd listen to that. But the internal person saying that the exact same thing, they wouldn't listen.

[00:08:55] So what's been your experience through the years of kind of the internal people but also their peer group listening to them about change or consuming that change? Yeah. And that's always the hardest.

[00:09:08] People always say that change is constant and I love change as long as it's not happening to me. So that's the thing, the last thing that people want to change is themselves.

[00:09:18] And it's funny when you look at leaders, there was an article or read about this where someone had put a group of leaders in a room and asked them like how much of your time do you spend tripping around other people's egos and like managing politics with them and trying to get them to agree.

[00:09:34] Like just like the whole ego side of thing. And these leaders responded around 20 to 30% of my time goes into tripping around other people's egos.

[00:09:42] And then they flip the question and they asked, okay, how much time do you think your teams and peers are spending tripping around your ego? That 20, 30% of the time. And then they were just quiet and they had nothing to say, right? Or actually avoiding them because of fear.

[00:10:04] Retaliation. Yeah, I mean that's one of the things about change is it can be seen through different eyes, it can be seen differently. So an executive can look at it one way, a manager can look at it one way, an employee can look at it completely differently.

[00:10:22] And I think we're right to your point. If the employee voices that opinion, there's fear of retaliation. Yeah. So but that's where the juice is. That's where some of the good stuff is like, wait a minute, why are we doing this?

[00:10:35] Because sometimes it's not communicated. It's not explained very well. I mean speaking specifically of tech change, the communication strategy of the technology changes horrendous. Like horrendous, horrendous. The internal part of understanding the why. Why are we moving from A to B?

[00:10:55] Like everyone should know there's why, why is it secret? Yeah, well we just had the conversation with Phil and he was explaining. So Nellie, he was sharing a story of a manager, a leader that came in and had said, okay, we need to let these people go.

[00:11:14] And it was because they were resistant to and couldn't understand how to use the new tech. But when he dug behind the situation, it was like, okay, you knew 12 months ago, you were bringing the new solution in.

[00:11:29] You started bringing it in 12 months ago and now you're giving it to them a week before you expect them to master it. He said we should fire you for not disseminating that information.

[00:11:41] So I guess it was interesting that when you brought that up, but I guess my question here is outside of just the mass amount of people, a 10,000, 100,000 person organization, difficult. I get it.

[00:11:54] But why is it difficult for a company to just change? Why can't they manage to change? I think why is it difficult for a hundred thousand person organization to shouldn't be any harder for them? Yeah, yeah, there's more people, but there are different ways of doing it.

[00:12:09] And I was speaking with the chief transformation officer a couple of weeks ago for a company with 80,000 employees. And I asked him, how do you drive the change with these 80,000 employees? And his response was, oh, me and my team, we send 10 emails a day.

[00:12:25] So I was like, you send 800,000 emails every day. That is your change management strategy. And it's a huge financial group. And I think that lies a big part of the problem lies there, right?

[00:12:38] And a big thing is also how the content consumption preferences have evolved possibly over the last 10 years. Right? I mean, again, if we take the 2016 year, there was zero TikTok users in the US, which is very hard to believe right now, zero.

[00:12:53] And now it's over 150 million Americans who spend their day scrolling short videos. Half of America. So 2016 really? Yeah, I feel like it's been here a lot longer than 2016. Yeah, 2016 there were zero Americans on TikTok and today half of America is on TikTok.

[00:13:13] So I think that is just one point to show how much people have adopted these short form videos, how much people have podcasts, and people are not reading long documents anymore. I was with a CHRO who told me like, Nellie, nobody opens my emails.

[00:13:27] Like why are they not opening my emails? Because nobody knows you. Like nobody knows who you are. You're an anonymous person in HQ. And when you send emails, you're literally just an anonymous name in their inbox. And the same for this chief transformation officer.

[00:13:42] Like if you're sending that out, like they're not going to care what comes from a global HQ, right? And to the point that you mentioned earlier, like why is it so hard for peers to get it and get the change in having that outside in perspective?

[00:13:57] That is very key. But also who delivers it internally? And many times this come from as much as companies are building these centralized headquarter transformation offices, communications should not come 100% from there because people don't know those people.

[00:14:11] They don't care who sits in headquarters and they don't care about these HQ people. They're sending out 10 emails a day. So the way that we deliver the message has to change both in terms of the kind of format we deliver it in,

[00:14:23] who it comes from and thinking through that method and come strategy a lot better. Yeah, it's audience specific. So what works for ExxonMobil won't work for Kimberly Clark. That won't work for Walmart. It's got to be dependent on the audience that you're trying to reach.

[00:14:42] And then you work backwards. And even the audience inside, even the audience within a Kimberly Clark, right? You can't send the same message to everyone in Kimberly Clark. You need to think about specific audience even within companies.

[00:14:54] And if you're an 80,000 or 100,000 person organization that might be 2,000 audiences that you need to talk to. That's a really, really good point. Ryan would have all of those emails filtered to trash. He'd never see them.

[00:15:07] It would just be like this email goes into this box folder called trash. People tell us, was it your son that said it's a boomer board? Google? Yeah. Emails like the boomer box for me. In fact, when he sends an email to me or even a client,

[00:15:29] he gets me on chat and says, hey, check your email because he knows I'm not going to see it. And it's not that I don't want to see it. No, no, there's difference. It's just different preference.

[00:15:41] Ryan, I think at the heart of your question is when you drive from your home to your favorite bait shop, you drive the exact same way every time. You don't take 19 different ways to it. So humans kind of were oriented around kind of once we've got a pattern,

[00:16:04] we just stay with that pattern. That's the pattern we know. That's the pattern we become comfortable with and we just stay in that pattern. I think a lot of organizational change kind of comes down to you're shifting with that old book, Who Moved My Cheese?

[00:16:17] You're shifting things for them. A lot of companies aren't explaining why this is being shifted. This will be actually better for you once we get through the part of, okay, you have to learn something new.

[00:16:31] But I think it's that or maybe the status quo and the JDN are really, really, really cynical part of me would think that the people that don't like change are more like bureaucrats

[00:16:42] that just think I don't really have to worry about this because by the time I have to worry about it, they'll be changing something else. Right. How does it affect me today?

[00:16:52] And then by the time I care about it, you've already changed what you've changed to affect me before. That's a very cynical perspective, by the way. I wouldn't advise anybody to do that. However, I do believe in large companies that that does that can happen.

[00:17:08] This is why companies and people like Nelly exist to prevent this from happening. Seek out people like me? No, hire people like you and fix companies that you work in. 100%. But they aren't afraid of change necessarily.

[00:17:26] But what they are afraid of is change of identity and loss of identity. And they're afraid of the loss that comes with that change because the change itself is not harmful, right? But something I spend a lot of time thinking about is how people identify.

[00:17:42] And the people I see having the hardest time with change are the ones that have a very core identity that is tied to things that are changing. So let's say your identity is the title you have in the company you work for. And then you get laid off.

[00:18:00] Massive trauma, right? Because that affects your entire identity. Or if you see yourself as an, say you're an EA and you're proud of your type speed, right? And then AI comes, if that's your identity, how fast you type, then you're going to be very against AI.

[00:18:17] But if your identity is I am a very forward thinking professional, then you're going to be happy to be driving change, right? So actually I think a big part of this comes down to how people identify and how they view themselves.

[00:18:30] And if they view themselves in ways that are changing. I can validate that from the work that I did in payroll that it wasn't the payroll tech from A to B. It was that the clerk or the person that was the admin, they were steeped in that product.

[00:18:47] And they knew the ins and outs. They knew how to break it. They knew all that stuff. They knew that bodies were buried. And so they had to learn a brand new technology start over essentially. And so I tell people like they're confident and competent in this technology.

[00:19:01] You're taking away. Doesn't matter that you're moving to a better technology. They'll get that. But problem is, is that interim step of like, hey, we understand you spent 20 years in this payroll tech and now we're moving over to a more sophisticated payroll tech.

[00:19:16] And you're going to have to learn a bunch of new stuff. Guess what we're going to do? We're going to get you a bunch of training. We're going to send you to a couple places like there's ways companies can change for that key.

[00:19:27] They can make that change easier for people. But they, they, it's almost like they have to be intuitive and thoughtful about understanding how it impacts the individual. Yeah.

[00:19:38] And helping them find that new identity and helping them see themselves as a modern payroll professional as opposed to an expert in system X rate. It's just, it's just like divorce. I'm not, I'm not divorced, but this is what I know of divorce.

[00:19:53] The faster that the people go on and get married or get into other relationships, the easier the divorce. So there's a reason for divorce as well. So yeah, the second divorce is by the way, the divorce rate is way high.

[00:20:11] But, but if you, if you just look at the A to B of like, if both parties get on with their lives and then they're partnered up whether or not they're married. Or not, if they're partnered up within a year with other people, it's not near as contentious.

[00:20:30] So there's a, again, the belt of change. You know, I said this last night to somebody we were talking in a group and this almost talked about divorce. If we ever got divorced and Eric and my wife, Nellie was sitting right now.

[00:20:45] I said, I don't think I'd want any relationship ever again. Like, I'm just gone. Once we're done, we're done. Like we'll do the divorce thing. We have the family, the kids, the whole thing. Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:58] Yeah, but I don't, I think I'm going to be a loner if that ever happened. My wife made the mistake, you know how this goes, right? So my, I'm such so dark. My wife, we have this conversation as a user. We married 30 years ago.

[00:21:12] She goes, I'll never remarry. Oh my goodness. Bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided. If you had Fama, stop hiring dangerous people. Fama.io. Oh my, I said, listen, here's what my best advice. I'm dead, marry rich.

[00:21:42] Just find the richest guy or galf, doesn't matter who gives a shit. Just go find someone rich and then go have fun. Go to Houston. Yeah, go to Houston. I'm not going to do it, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:21:58] And she goes, what would you do if I died? I'm like, I'd do the same thing. I'd get a mail order bride. She's like, what? I said, you had pride in Russian? I don't really care if they understand English or anything.

[00:22:10] Yeah, just, just somebody can like keep me organized. That's all I really need from change management and change. This is the essence of change. All right, I'll ask a real question. This is just getting a Russian wife. This wouldn't be the title. That's the title.

[00:22:30] I just, I just need someone to organize me. That's all. I don't great care. I'm having AI assistant in about a half year. Good boy. I'm an AI wife as well. Well, that would go a lot of directions. So now that I did because you brought up AI,

[00:22:49] some things that we've been kind of playing with is, is AI within the organizations that we're thinking about change? Is it siloed or is it an AI office that kind of manages all AI transformation? So what are you, what are you thinking about?

[00:23:05] Cause you know, you're obviously thinking about this. I hold a lot more than we are, but like we, we see a lot of AI and TA and HR, but AI is going on and all the other parts of the organization, but just Ryan and I's focuses on work.

[00:23:19] So that's all the stuff that we kind of see. But like if, okay, we'll use a, we use the Kimbellary Cark just as an example. Would you, would you think that they need to have it siloed off?

[00:23:32] And so it's specific to, or do you think that there should be an office like transformation that basically helps them look at AI across the organization? Yeah. So I think there's been a pendulum like since if we take November 2022, which was when it really broke right with

[00:23:50] chat GPT and this whole conversation started. I think the pendulum initially went very much to everyone is using it. Everyone brought in like they started using chat GPT. They started putting confidential documents out of the internet and it just went like quite nuts immediately. Right?

[00:24:07] And then the pendulum very quickly with a fear that exists in a big part of corporate America, there's a lot of fear for good reasons many times. And then the pendulum swing back to, okay, we need to control this.

[00:24:20] So where we are right now and what I'm seeing is that AI is now sitting in that transformation office and is usually transformation offices that manage it centrally. And for the reason that AI has now become something there's a huge legal and compliance and ethics problem. Right.

[00:24:38] And the control around, especially around what documents you put in, like the input of it, if we talk about generative AI, which kind of the whole, the whole discussion has become just generative AI, which I also find interesting. We forgot the other 99% of AI and everything is

[00:24:53] just gen AI. But if we focus on gen AI, the input requires a lot of regulation and control and so on. So corporations are now extremely centralizing it and focusing it in one place. And everyone is talking about AI policy and as

[00:25:07] a vendor when we onboard with companies, we now see added controls around AI because we use a lot of AI in our product. And then they have special AI questionnaires and AI cybersecurity onboarding and so on to control the type of AI that we use.

[00:25:22] But I do think that this pendulum will swing back the other way again in about a year or so, maybe towards the end of this year and we will start to see more distributed use and control of AI as well.

[00:25:36] So I think we're at a place right now where corporations are freaking out a bit, frankly. And they don't really know how to handle it. And I've also heard of countless Fortune 500 firms that have completely banned it. Just banned it outright.

[00:25:49] And that is like being in the 90s and saying that the internet was a fluke, right? Like that's not the way to handle innovation. I love reference. I'm going to steal that. I'm going to go ahead and put my head in the sand. Yeah.

[00:26:01] Maybe I'll just let it pass by. It'll go by. Just ban it. No one can use it. No way. No way. Someone telling me like we had this chat about around a roundtable and this person was like, oh yeah, we don't use AI at all.

[00:26:18] I'm like, what do you mean? Like not using it all. Like yeah, we just like banned it. But in your personal know, we're banned from using chat GPT on like all devices. Like we just cannot be in touch with it at all.

[00:26:30] Even at home or on all work products? All work products. Work products. But even like your phone and like, yeah, everything, like all work devices. That's insane. But they just have this guidance to not use AI. Like just stay away from it. It will pass.

[00:26:43] So very much like, yeah, head in the sand. Wow. And like, you don't want to be that person. So no, no, no. Wow. That is fascinating. Definitely don't want to work for that company. Yeah. That was my first one. I was like, why are you still there?

[00:26:59] Yeah, I can imagine the interview process. It's good Lord. Yeah. And again, the thing about the innovation of what's being lost again, it's kind of like the internet. It's a great way of looking at the beginning 97. The internet was not the best we have today. Right?

[00:27:18] I think we can all agree on that. And there was a lot of misses. So there's a lot of wild pitches and a lot of misses. And there were people that did think, oh yeah, just cares. Let's let it go. Whatever.

[00:27:30] And they just thought it was a fad. Yep. That's fair. I don't, this isn't that. I've, this just isn't that. It's just woven too much into everything else. Consumerization. When I think people have learned from history. Oh no, no one learns from history. Hard stop. That's not true.

[00:27:52] I learn a lot from you about history. Oh no, but I mean learning from history now is just, we're not good at that. So Nellie, where are companies missing in change? And you kind of covered it throughout the entire conversation thus far.

[00:28:09] But where are you seeing companies that you're working with where you go into a company and you're kind of like, why? Why are we doing this? Right. One, why are we changing? Do you absolutely need to change? And whatever that changes. That's a good question.

[00:28:23] But second, did you just ever look at them and say, yeah, I can't even help you? Like what's, what are you seeing in there? That's a good question. It is the feeling we have sometimes like you can't be helped.

[00:28:38] The ones who ban AI, I'm like, yeah, you're too far. It's a bridge too far. I'm sorry. You know what? Good meeting and we're going to go. Do you all validate? No? All right. Yeah. But I think a few big mistakes that people do that I see

[00:28:57] over and over again. One is too many changes happening at once. I think that's the most common and they load it up and then in combination slash conjunction with that is not removing what doesn't need to be changed. You're like, you know, like taking things off of people's

[00:29:12] plate. So they just add and they have like, okay, we have three large changes and then we're also adding all these small projects around it. And you also need to do all your BAU job and we're not going to say that anything is not important.

[00:29:24] So I think that entire positioning of it is a mistake that people usually do in the beginning and then three to nine months down the line, they go, oh crap, like this is not going to work because we don't have the capacity. We don't have the bandwidth.

[00:29:37] We don't have the focus. And when you tell people, like you have to always tell people what is not important because actually that's even harder than to tell them what is important because everything is important. But by telling them you don't need to focus on this

[00:29:49] or like this is not important. So I think that's number one. The second thing I see companies screw up all the time is communication. They're so bad at communication and what do they do? Oh, let's set up a SharePoint site. We already have 65,000 SharePoint sites.

[00:30:06] So why don't we have SharePoint site number 65,000 and one? How great. What a brilliant idea. And then of course everyone is going to come into that SharePoint site, right? They're just going to flock to the SharePoint site. They're going to read all your PDF documents are going

[00:30:20] to be so engaged. Never, never ever happens. And communications just always, yeah, that's where it ends. And some people are like, oh yeah, we, because people want a bit of like two-way interaction. And then they set up like a special email inbox and expect

[00:30:35] people to email their questions to this email inbox, which is also like, not really going to happen. Just goes into nowhere. Yeah. And he's going to respond. And he's going to respond to the company that doesn't use AI. No, these are companies that actually are trying to change.

[00:30:52] Yeah. I mean, these are some of the most innovative companies externally. Like when you look at the companies I'm talking about, you would think these companies are ahead of the curve, but these are still the things they're doing on the inside.

[00:31:03] So is this just because they just, is this just because, sorry, is this just because they don't have the proper people running or leading change and they just don't get it? Or like what's, I mean, this seems like basic stuff. Yeah.

[00:31:18] Like to you and me, it's basic, right? But I think many people, they don't, do they just don't know any alternative? They don't think along these lines like how can we better engage people? How can we get this message out to the right people at the right time?

[00:31:31] That's another big problem in comms. They send these 10 emails and then they think, oh, my job here is done because I've sent the 10 emails. And I'm like, no, it's not done because it's about how do the people receive it on the other end.

[00:31:42] And your job is not done until they have consumed it, understood it. If they have any questions, reflections. Right. So I think it's pretty much an input mindset as opposed to an output mindset. And I think the default is like, oh, let's rely on email

[00:31:55] and SharePoint because it's what we've had for the last 20, 30 years. And they don't, they just don't know of any other option. The irony is they're asking the organization to change yet they're using the same tactics that haven't been changed. Not lost on me.

[00:32:12] Nelly, when I studied a user adoption for a couple of years in my life, this is all tech related change. It kind of came down to three things. It came down to kind of training, communications and incentivizing.

[00:32:29] And one of the things that I, people would always ask me, still do quite frankly, they asked me the same question like, how do I get people to use the software that I bought? Like, pay them. They're like, what do you mean, pay them?

[00:32:42] Like it's not their job to use your software. You bought software because it's a business decision. That you made that to hopefully help them do whatever. That's not their job. Rarely is it their job to use a piece of software that you bought.

[00:32:57] So you want them to use it, incentivize them, rewards and recognition, find a way to train them, train the hell out of them, communicate really well to where they understand the why and all that other stuff. And, and it just give them an incentive.

[00:33:11] Hey, the first person that goes through and gets accredited on this new software, you know, gets a thousand dollars. Guess what you'll get? User adoption. People will start to use the software because they're like, okay, they understand why they've been trained

[00:33:27] so they get how it makes their life better and all that other stuff. And oh, by the way, they recognize that this isn't my job, but I have an incentive to be take this on extra. And I think that's some of the things that happen

[00:33:41] in organizational change is changes in anywhere in the job description for somebody outside of the people in transformation. But if you're a marketing demand generation director, there's nowhere in the job direction. A job description doesn't say, oh yeah, by the way, consume change.

[00:33:59] I think it should be an everyone's job description though. It should be. Because it is their job to use the technology. Like if you're changing CRM system, right? I think it is in their job to do it. But I do think the behavior change is another part

[00:34:14] where companies usually miss out and they just think that, oh, we can tell people to change and then they will do it. But actually many times people don't know how. And whether it's technology adoption is more straightforward because you can tell them how to

[00:34:27] use the software and so on. But if it's a change from like, we have this mindset in the company, like a hardware mindset to a software mindset, that's much harder to do. So the enablement of them, the behavior change and also even if it is technology

[00:34:40] adoption, if you're rolling out a new HRS system or CRM platform, making sure that people get the change and the comms when they're doing something in that system. I think the timing is another thing that people miss out and they bombard you with

[00:34:54] 10 emails about this new CRM system. And then later, like three days later when you're in the new CRM system, you have forgotten all about those 10 emails, right? So making sure they get the comms and the knowledge and the training when they're actually doing it, I think is another

[00:35:09] big part. I love that. I love that. What I saw, where I see technology adoption is right now is it's a lot of in-app training. So when they log into whatever it is, the CRM, then the training happens there.

[00:35:27] They log in and it's like, okay, here is this and here is that. Okay, you want to do a performance review? Here's how to do that. And so a person that maybe like performance reviews are great to think about is they might not do

[00:35:41] them, but quarterly or twice a year, once a year, whatever. So they don't log into that software every day. So it's almost like every time they log into the software, they have to be retrained on what that is, how to make it work.

[00:35:54] I did have a separate question though. It was about culture. So I wrote last night to a journalist, actually, and the question that he posed to me was about HR and culture. And I came back and I said, listen, first of all, why does HR own culture?

[00:36:15] Why do they own that? Why specifically? They can't control it. It's something that's in the value system of the board and the leadership team, and it's also all the way down to the receptionist. They can't do anything to control any of those things.

[00:36:34] I don't know why they, when someone first thought up the idea like, oh yeah, HR, they've got culture. They should have never, ever taken that on. Like it was just a bad idea for HR to own culture, just in general.

[00:36:47] You know culture a hell of a lot better than I do. So how do you get people to think about culture kind of in a 2024 perspective as opposed to 1980 perspective? Yeah, the 1980 perspective is not going to serve anyone apart from maybe the people that

[00:37:04] are still alive in the 1980s, but it's not that many of us. And I completely agree with your statement, it shouldn't be HR's responsibility. I go nuts every time I see a head of culture title and it's like, head of culture?

[00:37:17] How can you be a head of culture? And they usually sit in the HR team, right? And many times it's head of employee experience and culture. And like, yes, you can do things that impact the employee experience and make buddies. Head of culture exactly to your point.

[00:37:30] CEO is in my view, 60% on culture, who your CEO is. And then the other 40% is who the rest in the company are. But if you don't have, if the CEO is not manifesting that culture and is that culture frankly, I think it's going to be

[00:37:46] very hard to build a culture that you want. And I've seen this happen in many large companies that we work with. Where the CEO in one particular case, he was like, why aren't people changing? And this is a 20,000 person company. He's like, why aren't people changing?

[00:38:03] And I was like, because you are not changing. You're still the same person. You're still talking in the same way you haven't changed. So it's 100% about leadership. And then I think what people underestimate, like culture is a very soft word, right?

[00:38:17] And people talk about culture all the time. I think really what it comes down to is our behavior change, like behaviors, mindsets, how you think, how you make decisions. And the best way to drive culture is to see across the organization who actually

[00:38:32] have these values and these decision making in this, like who represents the culture already? And then what can you do to amplify them? Don't send more emails from the HR department. That's not going to work. But if you have Ryan in sales and William in finance, Ryan and

[00:38:47] William represent our culture. These are our values. How can you make sure they're more visible? You amplify them. People can look up to them. That's the best way to drive culture because people become what they see around them and what they respect them.

[00:39:01] So let me ask this real quick, Ryan. So how does a company figure out what their culture actually is as opposed to what they want it to be? Like the aspirational culture. And I'll give you an example, something I've done in the past where I've sent

[00:39:22] surveys out to our employees and basically said, all right, three employees, they're setting up an office on the moon. So who are the employees that best kind of exemplify who we are? And why? Give me an example of something that they did that makes you think that

[00:39:39] they'd be great to help set up the new office. And what I was trying to get at is really basic. But what I was trying to get at was who are those people, first of all? Who does everyone think those people are because it's probably not what I

[00:39:53] think. But secondly, what were the actions that they saw or observed that was emblematic of our culture? And I'm sure there's a more sophisticated way to do that. However, it was basic and it was only 50, 60 employees. So it wasn't that bad. But the responses were fascinating

[00:40:13] as to, because it was, in none of them were the people that I thought. So I had a different idea of who those people were going to be. I didn't know what the experiences were going to be, but I had a different

[00:40:25] idea of who would go to the moon. Well now you look at those people that they selected and compare that to what you thought your culture was versus. I know. So Nellie on top of his, he's a great person. Hello. So Nellie on top of his question,

[00:40:42] as you're answering that, should a company fight to change the culture or fight to, maybe change the culture is not the right word. Should they fight to make the culture what they feel it should be as opposed to what it already is in the company? That's good.

[00:41:05] So culture transformation is one of the top transformations right now because in the last 10 years it was more digital transformation and technology transformation. Now people have come to the realization that, oh, we can't just buy more tech and software because our people haven't changed.

[00:41:22] So they have these like super fancy new systems, but then the people are still stupid people. Sorry. I didn't mean to say that out loud. Wow. Did I say that out loud? I got to hit that damn you fucking quicker. So that's why culture transformation

[00:41:41] has kind of risen to the forefront and there is a saying that I think it's from Netflix. I think it might have been read in Netflix that said this that culture is who you hire, fire and promote. And to both of your questions,

[00:41:55] can you change a culture that you have and should you aspire to make it what you want it to be? Yes, you should absolutely aspire to build the culture that you wanted to be. How do you do that and how do you find out what culture you have?

[00:42:07] Look at who did you hire in the last 12 months? Who did you fire and who did you promote? And then look at why did you hire that person? Why did you promote that person most of all? And then who did you fire and why?

[00:42:17] And if you're for example, look at the people that you're promoting and you see the people that you have promoted are the ones that were maybe the loudest, most political and managed to get the senior leaders attention in the best way. That is your culture. Right.

[00:42:30] So I think that's a good point. Because in this way that is your culture. That is what your culture rewards because people will behave in a way that they get rewarded, right? And if you look at why you promote people, that's a big answer to your culture.

[00:42:45] So one way of changing culture is actually to look at how can you change who you hire, who you fire and who you promote. And maybe instead of promoting those political loud people, you should actually fire them. If you don't want a political environment, fire your political people.

[00:43:01] And promote the ones that are authentic and real and more meritocratic and implement a meritocratic promotion system. So I think those three, like I like the way they've simplified it with hire, fire and promote and that's what I look at too. And then you have all the

[00:43:17] leadership drives that. 100% yeah. And leadership drives that and leadership, if you have leadership that is usually insecure, fearful, very big egos, they will lead political cultures and they will promote people that make them feel good rather than people who question them. And they will say mostly male, but

[00:43:39] without any empirical data to back that up. That's a survey of one by the way. Oh, it's a survey of one. I'm going to say that's about 80% male. Okay. Sorry. It's also because you have a lot of like if you take the like white male above 45

[00:43:56] years of age, you have a lot of those in leadership positions. So they are also overrepresented in the big survey of one. Yeah. Yeah. That might be why they come up. Yeah. Stars with leaders and if you have leaders that promote like oh, this person made me feel

[00:44:10] good. They said what I wanted to hear. I feel great. My ego was nice. Like that's what you got. Yeah. That's what you got. So yeah. That's why the CEO is so critical. It means he said something that kind of stood out for me there.

[00:44:25] That's your culture because that's what your culture rewards. So it might not be what your culture, what you want your culture to be from a CEO level or a founder, co-founder level, you may not want your culture to be that way. But your leadership is rewarding that therefore.

[00:44:41] I can see a lot of boards Ryan having a lot of boards, a lot of executive leadership teams having this quandary of how the hell do we get here? Yeah. And someone not recognizing we got here, because this is what we did hire, promote and fire.

[00:44:58] We didn't lay down the guard rails correctly and communicate the importance of the guard rails and follow through. So last question for me, I know Ryan will have others. I've been on record. So whilst New York Times puts out an article a couple years ago about Amazon's

[00:45:18] culture being bad. And I fought that because I don't think you have a bad outside of toxicity and sexual harassment, illegal. The cartel has a, every cartel has a culture, right? Okay, fair. Not what I'm talking about. But Amazon has a very similar culture to most

[00:45:39] investment banks on the Wall Street. It's your char-confested waters, best idea wins, meritocracy. There is no such thing as work-life balance. So this culture that they've created is maybe not a culture that I would thrive in, but it's not a bad culture. It's a culture where those

[00:46:01] types of individuals at that career stage or personality or otherwise, that's what they're looking for. They want to be in that culture. So okay, you're the expert, turns out. How often am I when I say there is such a thing as bad culture? Again, excusing the illegalities and

[00:46:24] toxicity and all that other stuff that's pretty basic. Are you looking at that as an opinion of that person? Me? Yeah. So you read the article that's there opinion of the culture. I thought the article was retarded. Right. Because I thought it was a hit piece.

[00:46:41] What I was going to say, yeah, it was their opinion of what the toxic culture was. So it was basic. I think it was a hit piece. I think they were paid to do it. So I'm really jaded and cynical when it comes to this shit, but

[00:46:57] basically I thought that this was let's position Amazon as evil. It's like, it's not like an evil. It's just, it's, you go to Goldman Sachs, you'll find those two organizations operate the exact same way. So if you hate this one and they're evil, well this one

[00:47:15] is a good one. So please tear all that apart. No, I think there is no such thing as bad culture. I mean, illegality is on the side. I mean, anything that is illegal is illegal and full stop. But besides that, I don't think

[00:47:28] there is such a thing as bad culture. And this is why I think it's so important to hire the people that would appreciate that kind of culture because the people who think that is a bad culture, like if you hire people who are like work-life

[00:47:42] balance is the number one item to hire. So you need to ensure that what your culture is, is something that you communicate during the recruitment process. People know what they're getting themselves into. And also what you as an employer can offer, right?

[00:47:58] Like you might not be able to offer the highest pay or the best benefits package, but you can offer this type of flexibility or like this type of culture or like you work in this way. You need to be very clear on who

[00:48:12] you want to have work-life balance and then like just because they want maybe a big brand. So they align on the big brand to go to Amazon, but they don't align on the work-life balance. And then to them that will be a bad culture, right?

[00:48:25] But I don't think there is no way. There's such a thing as a wrong culture for some people. Yeah, for that person exactly. But there's not like a bad culture overall. Love it. Ryan, what do you got? I don't think I'm going to add anything else.

[00:48:39] I think this is good. I like that you brought it back to transparency and communications. So you brought it back to recruiting, you brought it back to that hire, promote, fire, etc. So in that situation it's like if you communicate, hey, you're going

[00:48:53] to be working 80 hours is what it is. Now we'll pay you 40% more than anybody else. Great. But you're going to work 80 hours. That's it. And if your ideas aren't good at one point we won't promote you. So I think that's the transparency of what is the culture.

[00:49:13] I think that's the, I think, first of all, I'm glad that you brought it back to communications and transparency because I think that's where we fail a lot in employer branding as we put our best, shiniest, most perfect self forward. And that's not what they're going

[00:49:30] to get after they get hired. Exactly. Thank you so much for coming on this show. Thank you so much. Conversations this week. 100%. 100% thanks so much. Love chatting with you too. It was Monday 9 a.m. though it would be not so great. Good point, good point.

[00:49:49] Thank you for coming on the show and thank you for educating the audience. We appreciate you.