Episode 97
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the show. [00:01:00] Let's talk about managing change on your team. And the reason I want to talk about this is because this is something that a lot of times we get an idea as a business owner or team leader, and we're really excited about it. And then we get somebody on board to roll out the change.
And then it fizzles out and we're like, well, what happened? And I want to talk about the common things that often get in the way from a successful change that you want to make on your team and super simple ways to mitigate those. All right. So this is gonna be a fun one. And you know, why is this so near and dear to my heart?
Well, because driving team operations for over a decade in the corporate world—doing this work at Bank of America, at Apple, at Microsoft, at Google what I found more often than not was, these breakdowns in rolling out change weren't in, in the change itself. It was in how we rolled it out and specifically around that leader, the person that really, you know, that really we needed out there, championing the change to actually stick through it and hold folks accountable.
Okay. I want to [00:02:00] start by sharing, you know, you listening to this as that business owner, as that leader, it is so paramount that you champion this change all the way through, whether we're talking about rolling out a task tracking system on your team or tracking time, whether we're talking about how to get everyone aligned around a new working norm, maybe around, you know, days in the week for return to office, whatever it is, big or small.
Because your teams are looking to you, they are looking to you to say, Hey, do we really want to do this? Are we on board with this? And so if you don't kind of keep that narrative really consistent throughout the whole thing, then that's where things are going to break down. And so what I want to talk about today are these three things, okay, that we can do to get away the challenges of something fizzling out along the way.
You know, so I mentioned already needing to have that air cover. Another thing that often can go a little bit sideways is when you start having those naysayers that are, questioning everything to allow a reopening of a decision that's been made to [00:03:00] say like, okay, well let's wait, let's hear more people out.
When you've already heard people out and come to a decision that you're feeling good about. Okay. And so this is something that can really break down the integrity of a decision. It can create, it can chip away and not create, it chips away at accountability because we see, Oh, well, once we decide something we can just question if we don't like with a plan.
No, that's not what we want to do. Right. We are, setting up professional work environment. We want people to be accountable to the work, to the decisions that are made that are for the best of the company and also for the team members. So, another thing to be really mindful of is, is that reopening decision and letting dissenting opinions that kind of surfacing and surfacing and surfacing keep coming back up.
one's kind of simple way to mitigate that is to decide as a team, as a company, well, what is our decision making framework? Are we a decide and commit kind of team? I would strongly suggest that disagree and still commit. We pilot something and we share feedback and we adjust if needed. Once we've tried it, whatever that looks like really kind of holding your ground around that.
That's another [00:04:00] one that I think can really get in the way of, of this getting people on board around a change. And again, I'm not talking about huge broad sweeping changes, like what your company is focused on, like doing a strategy pivot. I'm talking about changes into how work gets done because honestly, these can be the toughest ones.
Well, sure. Sure. It's all work for me. You know, driving operations around things like planning how we track time, what our goals are for the quarter how we're reporting status on projects, how we're communicating to upper management, all of these kinds of things. can create such sticking points that make it so hard for folks to get the work done.
And when you get through that, and you've gotten these things implemented, these are the things that make it so freaking easy to get work done. That's why this is so important to me. That's why I'm like literally yelling at you right now, because when we Make it easy to implement these things. Your team will start to see what's in it for them.
And then everybody starts to reap the benefits. Okay. So you know, the whole point is making a change. So to not be [00:05:00] afraid of it, to not be like, Oh, we're kind of like doing this because no, go in really excited. Okay. So the first thing that I want to ask you to do to ensure that you have a successful change, whatever process option, whatever it is, is to present and set expectations with your teams that like, you are excited about this.
Saying something like, Hey, I've been looking at some of the places that work just feels harder than it needs to be in this team. And I'm really excited to experiment with this change or, and because of that, I wanted to try out rolling this new process out. Or because of that, I've asked Joe over here to take the charge in rolling this thing out.
Okay. And you frame it in being excited that you're aware of the problem, that maybe you've heard feedback from people that you are taking an active role in champion this change. Now the change maybe didn't come from you originally. Maybe someone had shared some feedback and that's why you're rolling out.
That's okay. Okay. But saying, Hey, it's come to my attention. This thing's really tricky on our [00:06:00] team or we're not tapping into as much revenue opportunities we could be. Or, Hey, we're leaving money on the table over here. Our customers are frustrated with this, whatever it is. And so I want to do something about it.
You owning it and you saying me as a business owner, I want to do something about this and I've enlisted support in this way, I've hired someone to come in and help us with our ops, hired a project manager here. I've, I've tasked, like I just mentioned, I've tasked Joe with really, really owning the space.
This is going to set you up for success. So again, the first, first, first thing we got to do, set the expectation that you want this change and you're on board because not only does it show like the modeling that we want to have, it shows people that, you know, if they're going to start dissenting or saying, I don't know about this, do we have to do this, that they're going to be going against a little bit of an uphill battle because you've already said you are bought in.
So you've already been convinced of it. And that's why it's so important to say that. So let me give you an example. Years ago I was rolling out like a quarterly business review process on our team. And it was something that our VP and our team really, really wanted. We met [00:07:00] about it numerous times, how we wanted the flow of the meetings to go, how we wanted the templates to go to preparing for them, what kind of content we want to talk about.
And she was really, really bought into it, but when we presented it to her leadership team, a lot of people were humming and hawing saying, do we want to do this or this way? And unfortunately she didn't eat up. She allowed all of those dissenting opinions. And even though she had shared with me, she had a pretty clear vision of this.
what happened was it created a ton of churn and we actually didn't get to an end state that was giving her the result that she wanted from those meetings. So her as that leader really sacrificed the goal that she had in mind because she was allowing all these just different debates about like what the template should look like and all these really trivial details.
And so what I wish she could have done that situation, I really urge you to do is, you know, to hold firm and saying, no, I'm excited about this. We're going to do this. And if we'll collect feedback as we go, we can totally change and tweak it, make it better. This is the plan we're going to run with.
Okay. And going with that. [00:08:00] Now, number two. Okay. This is especially important if you are tasking someone else, which as a business owner, you're probably always doing right to roll out a change. Again, whether it's an ops person, project manager, a program manager, an account manager, an admin, a virtual assistant, you've hired a consultant, whoever it is.
If you are asking someone else to roll it out, you have to give that person air cover. Okay. Okay. And what I mean by that is saying, Hey, am [00:09:00] so excited. I have asked Leah to come in here and take a look at where these things are kind of causing more stress than they need to be and really help you guys and implement this change.
And so, when Leah asks you about this, please answer her questions, sit down with her, meet with her, right? You are setting the stage for that person who's implementing it to be successful. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you don't do that, it is going to be so hard for that person. And you're setting up for failure because Change is tough for folks and if we don't say, Hey, this person is tasked with doing this, other team members are going to look around and be like, Hey, is Leah asking about like my timesheet?
Why is Joe over here like asking me to be tracking my work in this tool? Like, no, I'm not doing that. Right. And you may have a team where everyone's like, okay, great. Whatever is on board. But more often than not, you see people are kind of like, sure, Leah, sure, Joe, I'll do it. And then they actually just like, don't do it.
They don't respond to the emails. they ignore it, you know, and they kind of just like, you know, agree publicly and privately dissent. And this is something that I've seen a lot in teams that have hired an ops person [00:10:00] or hired someone to kind of get some of their process into shape is.
That person starts and they're maybe meeting with people one on one and they have some good conversations. But when it's time to hit, like put the rubber to the road and they're trying to implement some change and roll something out people are like, nah, I don't think so. That is honestly like later than I'd want for you to give air cover.
You want to give air cover when that person starts. Teeing it up again with those expectations you set that you're excited about this. And that's why I got Leah here implementing this change. So I'm, I'm asking you to talk to her. She is deputized with making decisions about this stuff. Of course you can come to me with questions, but you know, when she's asking, think of it as me asking when you give that air cover, Oh my gosh, you have set that person up so much for success.
And again, you're showing your bot into this. Okay. And so that's going to make sure the person feels like, you know, they can bring their own ideas to it. Maybe in that air cover, you know, you have a pre conversation with that person implementing and you say, Hey, these are some of my concerns. These are some of the things I want to see.
If these kinds of questions come up, please bring them to me. You [00:11:00] should totally set expectations of that person, but you have to tee that person up to be able to run with it effectively. Okay. So that was the second one. Now the third one, and this is so, so important and really a major step in any change management rollout, really even large scale, massive organizational change about enlisting an internal supporter or set of folks internally that will champion this.
And why is this so important? Well, when we're rolling out a massive change, like maybe a company strategy or. Reorganization, you know, in a larger company where you change what people were working on or their roles have, there's going to be a lot of folks like, Oh, I don't know about this.
Like, is this the right thing? And so having people that can really kind of at all levels of your organization of your team share, well, what are the upsides? What are they excited? What are they enthusiastic about? What do they see as a win here? That's going to start to quiet some of that chatter. That's really just fear of change in general.
Now, this isn't about like rainwashing people and telling them everything's fine if it's not. No, this is [00:12:00] about having people that already can see through to the other side of the change and are able to advocate for it. So for example in a, in a marketing firm that I work with that had rolled out tracking time it was really, really.
They, they did a fantastic job of this by first enlisting their account managers and other folks across the team that were really bought into tracking time and really saw the value in it. So when they rolled it out on the broader team, when people would come with questions to the account managers, like, ah, what level of detail do I have to do this?
Those account managers were able to be like, Oh yeah, like, here's why this is awesome. Here's how it's going to help you make sure that you're not overloaded with work and they could be championing this change, not just the one person rolling it out or not just the business owner having to convince people to get on board.
So, you know, this finding people in kind of at all level organization within the team, if you have a small team finding one person, you know, that can be there, that's really not the person implementing it. So a second person, at least that can be championing the change. This is going to be. So helpful to help [00:13:00] give you that boost over the line.
When, when there is some concerns about you know, do we need to do this and why? and again, you know, I'm not, I'm not talking about rolling out a change, like paying people less or something like that's going to be super controversial or, like that. We don't really want to do right. No, what I'm talking about is minor incremental changes that will just accelerate the way work gets done on your team.
And these are the places I have seen for a decade plus people get most stuck. Literally, I'm telling you, what should we call the name of the quarterly review? How many pages should the template be? What font should we use? For the client briefing, you know, should we put this paragraph before this one?
These are the things that can make us so, so stuck that can cost so much time and pain and agony because we're working through them, iterating over and over and over again. Okay. So again, you know, thinking about what are the places where you see bottlenecks in your team. I always start with, how can you simplify, what are the steps you can remove?
And then who is that person that's going to run with it? [00:14:00] And then again, giving that person air cover, find that internal champion and always, always sticking firm on the fact that you are bought into the change. You're not doing it secretly. You're not doing it under the radar. You're not trying to have it just be like, ta da, we did this.
Isn't it easier? No, because that, person implementing is going to get so much resistance. And I'm telling you because it was me, it is me. Right. And I'm also telling you because. What's so funny that I've found over the years is that the resistance to change is very rarely from the people that are going to receive the benefits of it.
For example on a design team and in a corporation I worked at they didn't have a really seamless way of tracking work and the designers. We're really, really frustrated about that. And they were asking me like, Hey, we need to track our work better. And so I brought this to the team of other, you know, design program managers, producers, and all the disagreement around how to track the work.
It was there across my peer group. It was not from the people in the receiving end. So I want you to really think about it. If you're encountering disagreement [00:15:00] and, kind of some, you know, slowing of decision making different things. On your team to look at, well, who is this coming from? Is it coming from the people on the receiving end of this process, or is it coming from potentially middle managers or your, or your leadership team who is kind of just kind of being nitpicky about how the way, how work gets done, because we always want process to be.
As simple as possible for the people who are utilizing the process, right? And this is something that I think can be a little bit tricky to discern. And this is one of the places I really like to dig in with folks with my team ops consulting or with the SOS calls is looking at, well, where are things getting stuck that you're trying to implement?
Where does it feel harder than it needs to? And actually who is driving that narrative and how do we want to get that person on board or those people on board? Okay. So if you're finding that you're like, Hey, everything I said sounds awesome, but there's some key people in my team that like, I know just aren't going to be on board with this.
Let's do that SOS call. In that conversation, it's a one hour call. We will [00:16:00] dive into exactly where things are getting stuck, what the messages has been to date and how you can fine tune and like reframe that messaging a little bit to get that person on board. Hey, so if you want support, head to leahgarvin.
com slash SOS. If you want to look at this in the broader framework, the obvious playbook, you know where to go. leahgarvin. com. You can set up your free scale up strategy call. We'll really dive into details of, you know, what makes sense to roll out on your team, what stage you're in, how many team members you have.
But again, if you follow these three steps, again, setting the expectations that you're on board on that plan, that you give that person implementing an air cover, right? Deputize them to make decisions and you find that internal or those internal champions to really help accelerate the adoptionist process.
You are going to be good. Okay. And I am here to support you along the way. See you next time.
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