‘How Change Really Happens’ with Greg Satell

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, host Jean Gomes talks to Greg Satell. Greg is a Lecturer at Wharton, accomplished entrepreneur (Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory), global executive and one of the foremost experts on transformation and change today. Greg is the author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change (2019) and Mapping Innovation (2017) and his work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Barron’s, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company amongst others.

 IDG have listed Greg as one of “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today.” 

Referenced during this episode:

Cascades: How to Create a Movement That Drives Transformational Change

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

Social:

Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader
YouTube           @evolvingleader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Transcript

Scott Allender: 0:03

One of the most important jobs of leaders is to envision, lead and deliver change. And yet, so many have little understanding of how to do exactly that. Many still believe that change starts with an intellectual leap a big idea, and then require sufficient power and persuasion to see it through when demonstrably it isn't working for decades. The failure rate of change in all sectors, including the public sphere is 70 to 80%. This represents trillions of dollars, pounds, yen and euros being burned. We don't accept that level of failure rate in other critical human activities, would you, for example, have a hip replacement if there was more than a 70% failure rate? So why haven't we gotten better at change? Many leaders fall back on well worn lazy phrases about well, it's just human nature, and you don't get to control all the variables. But should we accept that status quo as leaders? In this show, Jean talks to Greg's to tell about his countercultural ideas about how the change industry needs to change. This is an important topic with powerful ideas to help leaders improve at one of their most critical responsibilities.

Jean Gomes: 1:49

Welcome to the show, Greg, how're you feeling today?

Greg Satell: 1:51

feeling? Feeling fine, Jean. Good to see you. It's been a while since since we saw each other in, in Austria. Yeah,

Jean Gomes: 2:02

no, that was an amazing experience. We were at the 15 seconds festival together. And I had the challenge of going onto the main stage after Greg. Greg is a very big personality in lots of ways. Physically, very, very muscled, robust character and a presence that, you know, is quite powerful. And you did an amazing talk, and got a huge response from the audience. So I had to kind of follow that, which actually is really good, because it just lifted my game as well. So thank you for that. And then we had some great conversations afterwards, with our friend Aiden, who runs The Innovation Show.

Greg Satell: 2:43

Aiden who is large personality himself.

Jean Gomes: 2:46

Exactly, yeah.

Greg Satell: 2:48

Personality, former professional rugby player. Yeah.

Jean Gomes: 2:52

So the three of us had had a great time. And then we carried on that conversation at the airport as well. So that was really good. So Greg, let's get you familiarised with our audience. Let's say you're at a dinner party. And someone you've just met asks you? He's not in a in a kind of related field. What do you do? How would you describe your work, and the reason you do it to somebody who's not in the business world, I

Greg Satell: 3:20

help organisations work with transformation and change. And the it's, it's a deep, deep passion of, because organisations have such a difficult time changing anything. And when you one of the examples I love to use is lean manufacturing. So lean manufacturing was a methodology that was first developed in the 1980s. And it works. Wonderfully, everybody knows that if you implement lean manufacturing programme, it will lift your productivity, and in many cases quite dramatically. But after 40 years now, adoption is is stuck at around 10 15%. And this is for something this is not a new idea. It's for something that has a proven track record. And it's still incredibly hard to get implemented and adopted at scale. So there's so many new ideas all the time. But if we can even just get the old ideas adopted at scale, the ones we know, we can make an incredible impact. And that should be doable, but it's actually much more difficult than most people imagine. So you've

Jean Gomes: 4:52

been working on this topic for a long time, and you've got some some big ideas that you have outlined. And in, in your work. One of them is that revolutions don't begin with a slogan, they begin with a cause. Can you talk to us about that?

Greg Satell: 5:08

So I think it's, it's important to go back to the beginning of what is often called Change Management. And it's important to understand that change itself has changed a lot in the last 40 or 50 years. So back in the 70s, the vast majority of corporate assets more than 80% were tangible assets. So things like factory and equipment in real estate. But today, that's completely flipped. And more than 80%, of tangible assets are intangible things like patents and licences and know how and processes and so when the process of change management first arose in the in the early 1980s, it was really, it was really designed to address that first type of change, there was, somebody high up in the organisation would make a decision about some strategic asset, like, I don't know, building a new factory or launching a new product line. And the practice of change management was really designed to communicate that change and help people understand it, embrace it, so that they could adopt it and make it their own. But if they didn't like to change, there wasn't really much they could do about it. I mean, if the boss says that they're building a factory, they're building a factory, if they're launching a new product line, they're launching a new product line. But today, when we talk about change, it has almost always has to do with some intangible assets, and changes in the way the way people do things. Changes in what they think and what they do every day. And people have an enormous capacity to resist that. And they often do. So if you're applying that old, those that those old ideas about change management, to the new type of change, it's not going to go very well. So change is no longer about persuasion. It's about influence. And we know that ideas about change are propagated socially through peer networks. So if you think that you know, through some word smithing and you know, a communication campaign, you're going to get people to change, you're going to be sorely disappointed, you need to make it number one, you need to make it clear. The cause why people need to change. So no amount of wordsmithing, or sloganeering or any sort of gimmicks is going to do that. You need to get out of the business of selling an idea and into the business of selling an actual success. So

Jean Gomes: 8:14

I see the truth of that, because, you know, being working alongside large change and transformation programmes, there's a disproportionate emphasis on change communications. So there's a whole industry around crafting that message. And I guess it's to your point, it's a very tangible thing that leaders can kind of hold on to as being, yeah, we've made this really clear now. And we just need to communicate it, communicate it, communicate it. And in many cases, that is counterproductive, because it creates more of the resistance to change, rather than bringing people with you. Can you talk about what what's the alternative? What do we need to move past? How do we create this cause? Well,

Greg Satell: 8:58

if I can, if I can touch on that point about triggering resistance, we know. And there are, you know, we have decades of research, hundreds of studies. And we know a lot about change. And one of the things that we know is that the tipping point for change is somewhat somewhere in between 10 and 20%. For the vast majority of cases, you know, that's the the S shaped curve that people often talk about. So we don't need to convince everybody all at once, we just need to get to that 10 to 20% tipping point. And I often I often laugh when you see these, these huge launch events, and they actually show the the S shaped curve. And it's like, well, if you know about it, why are you having this huge launch event? Right? When you'd be much better off, rather than having this huge launch event, which is likely to trigger resistance long before you reach that tipping point, if you focused on getting together a small group of people who believe in the change, who want it to work, and pursue what we call a keystone change, which is a clear and tangible goal that involves multiple stakeholders, and will pave the way for future change. So it's not a quick and easy win. But it's some real tangible success, that shows that the change whatever it is, whether it's agile development, or lean manufacturing, or whatever, that shows it can work and produce results. And that's the way you can start bringing in other people who can bring in others still, and how you can build to that 10 to 20%. Tipping Point,

Jean Gomes: 11:10

can you give us an example of where you've seen that really working, because that resonates with me hugely, this idea of creating a tipping point, rather than trying to convince the whole organisation I've seen that myself. But can you give us an example where you've, you've seen that really powerfully work?

Greg Satell: 11:25

Sure. So I'll give you two examples, because because one I found out after the fact. And the second is, is from a recent project I worked on so there was a guy at Procter and Gamble. He was in his mid 30s guy named John Gadsby. And really middle of the middle management. So there's this myth that change always has to come from the top, which, which really isn't true. And he had solved a problem, I'm still not exactly clear on what problem he solved, apparently, it's, it's some super secret, but he won a big award from the CTO, I think it was called a pathfinder award. And he, he used it, essentially, he took a process that took weeks. And he he brought it down to a matter of hours. And the ease, he told the CTO, hey, you know, I can do this across the company, you know, I can, I can apply the same principles that I use to solve this problem, to solve lots of other problems. And he launched this movement for process improvement across the company across the company, and he got essentially a year to prove this out. And he started going around the world to different innovation centres and starting programmes, at at, at innovation centres across the world. And as they started to pick up wins, it picked up steam and I think within 18 months, this had grown to 2500 people and within and today, I think it's four or five years into it because as As luck would have it. As soon as he got the green light to get this award, Mike book cascades came out. And he used that as a model. But today, it's this PFG programme, in Procter and Gamble, is has grown to more than 60,000. And it started off very, very slow. And in the first six months or something, it was only, you know, a handful of people, but that's how things grow. And then I recently was doing some work with a a mid sized a mid sized city in America, and they wonder rollout a programme to the throughout the the city government, it was about 220 500 employees, and they wanted to start with the 40 directors. And that was going to be their initial group. And I asked them well, what if you what if you started with with 12. And they became, at first they became a little bit nervous? And they said, Well wouldn't you know? You know, when that slow us down? And I said well, you know, how how many of the 40 Do you think would be enthusiastic about the change? And and they say well Maybe half. And the way they said maybe half made me think it was more like a third. And, and I said, Well, what if you started with just 12? And they said, Could you find 12? Who who'd be enthusiastic? And they say, Oh, yay, of course, you know, and they immediately started coming up with names of people. And I said, if you run into a problem with with the training, what's going to happen with, with with with the 40? And they say, Oh, well, you know, people start complaining and undermining. I said, and if you run into a problem with with the 12, what's going to happen? Oh, oh, they'll just push through it. And I said, well, and then what do you think that 12 is, say about the training? Oh, those, you know, those, they'll, they'll be really enthusiastic about it and say how great it is. And don't you think that's worth the 90 days to start with, as well. And within five minutes, they realise that, it's going to be a whole lot easier to start with the people who are enthusiastic. And, and pick up the wins and and learn from whatever the problems are, and then roll it out to the next 40. And certainly worth the 90 days, nothing. Nothing slows you down faster than than failing.

Jean Gomes: 16:30

I mean, you're backing success, rather than trying to prove why it's not going to work.

Greg Satell: 16:37

Yes, it's a really good point. I mean, I mean, the urge to persuade is is usually a red flag, it means you have the wrong change where the wrong people

Jean Gomes: 16:47

I love the sentiment that you have in the book around a movement without values is nothing more than a mob. Can you talk us to us about why change and values are so important? Because values

Greg Satell: 17:01

are constraints. Um, so my favourite example of this is Nelson Mandela and the anti apartheid movement, because throughout his his career, throughout his life, people called him all sorts of nasty things like communist and anarchist and extremist. And he always had the same answer that he said, Nobody, nobody needs to guess what my values are, they were all written down in 1955. In a document called the Freedom Charter, and his organisation, the African National Congress, they invited 300 or so groups to contribute to to this this document, which they called the Freedom Charter, which, and Nelson Mandela would later say that if his organisation the African National Congress had had written it, themselves, it would have been very different, but it wouldn't have been nearly as as powerful. Because values represent costs. If and one of the things we do when we work with organisations, we ask them what their values are. And then, and they always say things like, well, we value the customer, we value value, excellence. And then we ask them what those values cost you. Because if the values don't come with costs and constraints, it's not a value. It's just a platitude. A great example of how this works out in the business world is Lou Gerstner is turned around at IBM where he said, we're going to get back to valuing the customer. And he also made it quite clear that they were willing to forego revenue on every sale. Because before Gerstner got there, if if you had one nine, non IBM piece of equipment and in an entire data centre, they would threaten to cancel your your contract. He stopped that and I've interviewed dozens of, of executives from that period at IBM. And every single one of them points to not only Gerstner is focused on the customer, but the fact that he was willing to forego revenue on every sale as the probably the biggest reason IBM is still in business, because without that, it wouldn't have any credibility. So this signalling of willing to incur costs and constraints. That's what makes the change that That's what makes the, the the effort, credible and believable. If you're not willing to do that, if you're not willing to be explicit about what your values are, and be clear about what you're what costs and constraints, you're willing to, to, to endure, to to enforce those values, then it's it's really just a bunch of stuff that you want. It's not, it's not, it's not really something serious.

Jean Gomes: 20:45

So Greg, this observation about what's missing in the nature, the spirit of of change, leadership is really interesting, because I do see, you know, disproportionate emphasis on the clarity of change, you know, the to, from explanation, the honing of messages, and then the maniacal move to let's get it done through, you know, PMO, and process and over communication, and so on. So why do leaders avoid the values based conversation because it's so intrinsically important to helping people to make sense of things?

Greg Satell: 21:21

Because values come with costs and constraints? Yeah, it's easy to say you value the customer, but and when we work with organisations, and we sit in workshops with them, and we say, what's your value? Oh, we value this we value that we value excellent. We value the customer. And then you ask, What did those values cost you? How do they constrain? And that becomes a very, very different conversation, because it's easy to say you value something. But if you're not willing to incur costs and constraints, it's not a value. It's just platitude. It's just something you say. And I go back to Lou Gerstner is turnaround of IBM, where when he was a customer, he was furious that because they installed one piece of competing equipment, they IBM was threatened to shut down his entire data centre, which would have had an enormous impact on his business. Does that show you value the customer. So when, when Lou Gerstner said, we're going to get back to valuing the customer, and that means that we're going to shift from our proprietary stack of technologies to the customer's stack of business processes. And we're willing to forego revenue on every sale, to make sure we're delivering the best solution for the customer. And he proved that he meant it. It's, it's just dramatic. When you talk to anybody who worked in IBM at that time, what a shift it was. And nobody, nobody thinks IBM would would have would have survived without that. So being able to say, these are our values, and this is what we're willing to sacrifice for them. That's a hard thing to do. It's it requires you to really commit and to give something up. It's easy to say that there's a bunch of stuff you want to say there's some things that you're going to deny yourself, well, that's much harder. I

Jean Gomes: 23:42

love that. So you say we should resist the urge to engage those who attack and undermine us. Can you talk to us about that.

Greg Satell: 23:50

So there is a very strange quirk in human nature that whenever we're passionate about something, we want to go convince the sceptics, we've got to find the people who hate the idea and try and convince them. And that's almost that's almost never a good idea. Chances are, it's going to just frustrate and exhaust you. And that's energy that you can put into helping helping people who liked the idea succeed, to empower them to create that first Keystone change so that they can bring others in, who can bring in others still and eventually get to that, you know, 10 to 20% tipping point. And one exercise I often suggest for pupils to to think about this situation. So you're in a conference room, and somebody proposes an idea And over the next hour, it's discussed and, and certain objections are, are, are, are brought up and and address. And as you're coming to the end of the meeting and going to next steps, somebody who hadn't said a word the entire time throws a hissy fit completely discredits themselves. I mean, have you ever experienced that?

Jean Gomes: 25:27

Oh, gosh, yeah. Yes. So think about why

Greg Satell: 25:29

it happens, right? Somebody, that person when the idea was proposed, they had such a visceral reaction, that they couldn't even articulate why they like, why they objected to it. Usually, it had something to do with with some sort of memory, we know that our amygdala, the, the emotional part of our brain is, is tightly linked to the the hippocampus. So when we're, you know, and we often have this in, in, in our close relationships or family where something triggers us, but it's not. And people look at us, and they say, Well, why did you have that reaction, and we're not actually reacting to the present state, but but something in the past that it triggered. Anyway, they had this, this triggering reaction, and they couldn't articulate it, which is why they, they they didn't say anything, the entire meeting, and it was only going to next steps that triggered them. So there's a bunch of stuff we can learn from this. First of all, people are going to react to change in in that way, there's always going to be some people who aren't going to like it for reasons of identity, dignity and sense of self. And you can ask people to change what they think or do, but you can't ask them to change who they think they are. The second thing is that it was the initial success, that that triggered them. So we often think that once we, once we get that first success, we get, you know, a budget for our initiative, or executive sponsorship, that everything's going to be downhill after that. But it's usually the opposite. Usually it gets harder, because now people can see that it's possible. And the third is that once they had the hissy fit, they completely discredited themselves, and nothing. And they completely lost their power to make any serious objection. So in this is something that I talked about when I talked to transformation and change professionals. When I mentioned this, I always get people come up to me afterwards, because if you're gaining traction, the people who oppose the change will, as long as you don't engage with them, they will lash out, and they will overreach. And they will describe it themselves, as long as you don't engage. So and whenever I speak to transformation and change professionals, they always say, I always get people coming, coming up to me and saying, Oh, I thought that was something special that happened in our case. I didn't know that was a regular thing. But it very much is a regular thing.

Jean Gomes: 28:51

Yeah. So really, what you're talking about here is some deep, counterintuitive, emotional response that you have to try and develop in identity is a very,

Greg Satell: 29:02

very powerful thing. Yeah. And, and that doesn't mean that every objection is like that we when the first things we do when we sit down with an organisation to talk about change, is go through a resistance inventory. And we've categorised five five reasons people resist change. One is lack of trust, there's change fatigue, there's competing incentives or commitments, and then there is switching costs. And those are all completely rational reasons why people would resist change. And then you need to build strategies to mitigate each of them. But then there's the last category the the resistance related to identity or, or dignity or sense of self. And you're always going to get some of that no matter what know what it is, and simply knowing it's there. And not, you know, understanding that resistance to change doesn't always have to have a reason. It it, it can help you a lot, because then you just know that it's there. And you can focus on on more productive aspects of, of how you can bring the change about rather than trying to convince people who are never going to be convinced.

Jean Gomes: 30:33

Yeah, yes, I guess what I was driving out is that you have to try and, and you've helpfully here trying to make a distinction between the logical debate and the value based debate, you know, my value versus you might your value, your identity versus your identity, which is not a productive conversation, and it's often feels you feel compelled to enter into because you're confusing whether it's a logical answer versus what you're talking about. So that's, that's super helpful to make that distinction.

Greg Satell: 31:04

Well, I can, if I can stop you there. Because I think you've touched on a really, really important point, I think values are a little bit different than identities. Well,

Jean Gomes: 31:12

when I meant when I use the word value, I use the word value, rather than values an element, your sense of value, which your sense

Greg Satell: 31:21

of self, yes, but But still, it's, it's, it's a very important point about values, because there's two different kinds of values. When it comes to change. There's differentiating values and shared values. So the example I love to use is the Agile Manifesto. So any, anybody who comes back from an agile training loves to talk about the Agile Manifesto. And that's those are differentiating values. And when people feel passionate about an idea, they want to talk about the differentiating values, why their idea is different, because that's what makes them so passionate, and people like to talk about their passion. But if you want to bring other people in, you need to focus on shared values. So not the Agile Manifesto, but better projects on faster and cheaper. And making that shift is surprisingly easy. And, again, in workshops, when we say when we mentioned that people say oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And they don't have a problem doing it. And just because you're leaving with your shared values, just because you're talking about better projects done faster and cheaper, doesn't mean that you were foregoing or obscuring or forgetting the Agile Manifesto. It's just, you're building a bridge. So people can get from point A to point B, rather than just starting with point B.

Jean Gomes: 32:55

That's a really great distinction. So one of the ways in which you think about operationalizing, building support throughout the organisation, and this idea of cascading, the change is about focusing on building local majorities. And again, it's another version of not fighting the resistance, but actually building the movement if you talk to us about that.

Greg Satell: 33:22

Well, there's a famous very, very famous series of experiments done by a psychologist named Solomon Asch, where they brought people into the room and they showed them these two cards. And they asked, there's a very simple exercise of asking which line on the right, best match the line on the left. And as they went around the room, the first seven people all gave the same wrong answer, until they got to the last one, who was the only real subject the others were, of course, confederates. And the vast majority of the time they all gay, they conform to the majority opinion, even if it was obviously wrong. And most of the issues we deal with are somewhat less clear than the length of lines sitting, sitting right next to each other. More recent research by by Nicholas Christakis has shown that this effect goes to three three degrees of relationships so not only our friends, and the friends of our friends, but the friends of our friends, friends, affect how, what we think and what we do even for, you know, things like smoking and obesity. So, the best in research study after research study shows that the best indicator of what we think and do is what the people Around us thinking do. So you want to start with the majority, if you start, you know, you can always expand the majority out, even if it's three people in a room of five. But as soon as you're in the minority, so two people in a room of five, rather than three, you're going to feel immediate pushback. So that simple principle of always starting with the majority, it doesn't need to be unanimous, but at least a majority, can be incredibly helpful in how your sequencing change. So think about that, that compared to traditional change management, where you're trying to communicate to the entire organisation, this change at once, where you're triggering those people who aren't going to like the change, to have some sort of identity issue, and have this visceral reaction to it. And you're triggering that response, before you hit that 10 to 20% tipping point. And then this other approach, where you start with three people in a room of five, and you get to work on a keystone change, and you start with people are enthusiastic, and you're not bothering with those other people, then you can keep expanding until you hit that tipping point. And your chances of success are going to be obviously much, much, much, much better.

Jean Gomes: 36:33

So let's just pause here for a moment because we You have given us an awful lot to think about. And if I was a change leader in any kind of industry, you've already probably overturned a number of my key assumptions about how I do things. And how I approach things. What kind of reactions do you get to peep from people when you are sitting down with them? And having these conversations? What's the kind of aha moments for them? What are the what's the internal journey, they have to go through their own resistance to their, their perceived wisdom about how this works? Well,

Greg Satell: 37:10

I have to say, not so much that people that I work with, because the the people that I work with are kind of already, you know, self selecting, drinking

Jean Gomes: 37:21

from the Kool Aid already,

Greg Satell: 37:23

to a certain extent. And they have some uneasiness, which I'll get to in a second. But generally speaking, when I say that, which is so obviously true, that whenever you ask people to change what they think, or what they do, there's always going to be people who resist it. And they're going to do it in ways that are dishonest, and underhanded and deceptive. People have a real problem with that. Which is strange, because it's it, we all do that. It doesn't mean they're bad people. But people seem to think that that's kind of blaming or something, when actually it's just, it's just human nature. And I see it is completely the opposite, putting, putting the burden on the people who want to change, who want to push change, and saying no, no, no, they have to persuade everybody else. It's on them. I mean, that's a terrible burden. And when we when we work with people, and and they hear that you don't have to persuade everybody all at once. You can, you can feel like a collective, you know, everybody's sort of breathing out, because it, you know, especially when people have an idea for change, it's something they're quite passionate about. And to tell them that they need to take this idea that they feel so strongly about, and the burden is on them to convince everybody that that they should change. That's that it's a very, very heavy burden. And, you know, change isn't gymnastics. Right? You don't, you don't get extra points for making it more difficult on yourself. Right. But I would say that the people that we do work with there is, again, because people who start change initiatives tend to be enthusiastic. The pushback we tend to get is they want to go faster, and we keep telling them to go slower. You know, with the Keystone change, what we keep asking is, how can we make it smaller? And then that, you know, usually they may come up with a proposal, we ask them, How can we make it smaller? And then they say they, it usually takes a couple of iterations to where we can get to the smallest possible most reducible element. And, and that takes a little bit of adjusting.

Scott Allender: 40:23

Friends, if you're enjoying the evolving leader, I encourage you to order a copy of Jean's new book leading in a non linear world, which provides a new understanding of mindset, and how to build it in order to thrive in a more uncertain future. It's available online at all major retailers, and there's a link in the show notes.

Jean Gomes: 40:43

So what Scott and I are seeing all the time in our conversations with leaders, and then the work we do is that change is, for most leaders, the side gig, they've got to deliver value today, they've got to deliver the short term and at the side of their peripheral vision, they've got this huge transformational effort that's going on. And frankly, most of them feel completely out of the depth, the expectation of more or less has gone into hyperdrive. And people are exhausted and overwhelmed. How do we how do we manage the change challenge with people burning out and routinely feeling they've got more work than they can possibly do?

Greg Satell: 41:23

It's a great point, because the research is very, very clear that even before the pandemic, that change fatigue is enormous and real. PwC had a study, which showed that two thirds of employees are experiencing some form of change fatigue. So the first thing I would say is, change is not always a good thing. You need to get to it, to start an initiative, that is the easiest thing in the world. But you need to be very, very disciplined about the change that you pursue, you can't change everything all the time. So the first thing I would say is, is less initiatives and and see them through there is. So that's the first thing. The second thing is limiting the limiting the size of your initial start, again, starting slower, with less people and proving it out. Can that makes it less stressful, right, because if you're starting an initiative with a handful of people, then it's not such a big deal, especially if those people are enthusiastic. And they're, they're going to push through any sort of glitches or snack foods, and they're going to fix problems on the fly. That's very, very difficult to do. If you're starting with an enormous organisation wide initiative, which is really just an idea. And maybe you can point to some success in other organisations or other contexts. But people within the organisation haven't seen it. That's very, very different than something that's already been successful in the organisation. And lastly, I think that managers need to understand that the change maker mindset is different from the manager mindset. When we're managing operations we need, we need to focus on consensus and predictability and execution. a change maker mindset focuses on coalition building, because there is no consensus about a change, it's something new uncertainty, it's not going to be predictable. You haven't done it before, and exploration, because, you know, you can't just execute something that you haven't done before. Now, effective leaders need to manage both mindsets. And just because you're pursuing change doesn't mean you can abandon the managing mindset. We still need to run every day operations. But if you try to pursue change, with a manager mindset with this idea, that we need to build consensus and everybody needs to be on board from the beginning, you will fail. And that becomes very, very stressful. This, this idea that everybody needs to buy into your idea from the start. That's inherently stressful. And that you need to convince people you need to go to where the energy is. You can't. You can't try and create and maintain it all by yourself. So

Jean Gomes: 45:15

you've got your idea of minimal Keystone change, tried to keep it as small as possible. How do you scale that idea successfully? Once you've established the proof, and you've got a coalition of like minded people who are really behind this, how do you get how to get into the organisation at scale?

Greg Satell: 45:35

For scaling isn't that difficult? You know, traditional things like Yammer groups or newsletters or once you've once you've built that success, but there's one strategy in particular, that we find especially helpful, and we call it a co optimal resource. So asking yourself, what resource can you give to people that will help them coop this initiative for their own reasons, which might be different than yours. My favourite example of this is TEDx. So if you think about it, Ted X is, there's 14,000 of these events around the world every year, people don't get paid for putting them on. In fact, they're, they're not allowed to profit for them. But they're all They're all promoting the TED conference. Which of course, benefits Ted, but they're not doing it for the sake of Ted, they're doing it for their own reasons. So another, an example, within an organisation that I like a lot is, when experience when they when they were shifting from, from on premise computing to the cloud, one of the things they did is they set up an API Centre of Excellence. So it was a resource that product managers could co OPT, could help them solve their problems and help them create cloud based products, for free. And it was just, it was just something that they could use for their own purposes. So whenever you, you give people you put resources in their, in their hands, that can help push the the initiative forward, that helps them further their own goals. That's really super, super helpful, and much more then sort of sort of some sort of mandate or carrots and sticks

Jean Gomes: 47:49

to talk about the victory phase being the most dangerous point of the change journey. Talk to us about that. Right.

Greg Satell: 47:56

So we were talking about about the situation in in the conference room. If if you start with that initial group, and you get that Keystone change, and people see that the programme is is gaining traction, that's when that's and people see that change is possible. That's when you're going to get the most fierce resistance. And we certainly saw that in Ukraine and in 2004, which is why there needed to be another another revolution in in in 2014. But we see it all the time, that that once people get that initial when that that executive sponsorship or the budget being approved. That's when that's when that's when people start start working to undermine the initiative. And and you have to be aware of that. Very, very often. People get that initial backing. And they think, Well, now it's it's it's just about execution. But what tends to happen is very much like the conference room example. People keep their composure, they don't have the hissy fit, and they just go out of the room and start sabotaging it in the hallways. And if you don't understand that's going on, what's going to happen is six to 12 months later, you'll realise that you've been quietly undermined the entire time. And once you get to that point, it's very, very hard to recover.

Jean Gomes: 49:40

Great because we start bringing the to the close and we think about what's coming next. Can you give us a final kind of thought to inspire change makers about how they can lead into the future more effectively.

Greg Satell: 49:56

I would go back to my comment about that. You don't need to put change all on your shoulders, you don't need to create the energy yourself, you need to go to where the energy is go to people who actually want change, to happen, who are ready to embrace change, and use them to build to that 10 to 20%. Tipping Point, that can actually trigger a cascade that leads to that exponential acceleration. Before that point, you need to be very, very protective. But once you get to that point, change becomes inevitable. And that, and I can tell you this, and Jean knew, you know a little bit about my background. Change can happen in even the most unlikely places. And change is always possible, even in the most dire circumstances. So don't lose faith, just focus on what you can change in front of you. And the larger changes will come. That's

Jean Gomes: 51:23

a lovely place to leave it what's next for you? What's What are you looking forward to in the new year?

Greg Satell: 51:29

I'm just as I think I mentioned at the beginning, I'm just so passionate about this, because we know that that all too often change fails, we know that roughly three quarters of transformational initiatives fail, and they don't have to, and we really can make an impact. So that's what I'm looking forward to is is helping people to make the impacts that they want to see.

Jean Gomes: 52:00

Greg, this has been a wonderful conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I know our listeners are gonna get a tremendous amount from this and very practical way of thinking about change differently. So thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Greg Satell: 52:15

Thanks so much for having me.

Scott Allender: 52:18

Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed Greg and Jean's conversation as much as I did and make sure you pick up a copy of Greg's book cascades today. And until next time, the world is evolving. Are you