[Applause] hello and welcome to the friday fast 15. the snack size show where we break down big topics in under 15 minutes let's face it the world has seen a lot of change in the past 18 months and covid19 only accelerated that change and it shows no signs of slowing down while we may be on the brink of change burnout change will keep happening what to do why not invite crossfuse advisory consultant noel radley to talk about us she's an organizational change management expert who's led initiatives for the past six years in various organizations welcome to the show noel hi kim thanks for having me noel you have a super interesting background that includes a phd in english literature with an emphasis on 16th century poets and while 16th century poetry may be a topic for another show you ended up somehow in organizational change management can you tell us your story absolutely you know i don't know if you want me to get one of my old poetry books my chaucer down to uh for our for our audiences at cross fuse but um you know uh i made a big change uh in about 2013 i just did not see the growth opportunity in academia for me and so i stepped out into the unknown and i started working at an insurance company and at that company i was doing communications and started working on it projects and supporting especially the development of customer facing portals and agent insurance agent-facing portals and this was part of a broad transformation of that company to move from legacy systems to web-based suites in the insurance industry and as i began to lead organizational change management efforts i found that it was a really good fit for my background in writing and that background in teaching and that it really helped me to apply my new my skills and my background but in a new way um and i became a senior manager leading the ocm function for that for that company um and you know i'm passionate about the work it's a lot of fun um what i like about it is working with and advising it leaders project managers program managers helping them to see how to drive that adoption along with their implementation of a new system and keeping everyone focused on the customer journey the employee experience so that the business outcomes people are expecting or get realized now in the corporate world organizational change management is a pretty hefty topic but really we tackle these kinds of challenges in our everyday lives and you recently went through this in your own life moving your mother-in-law to a retirement facility can you tell us about that so it's been a huge change huge change from my mother-in-law huge change for us my mother-in-law had lived most of her life um in the same city in texas and a few years she had spent abroad but most of the time was in was in that city and her sister lived there her brother lived there and we knew um you know we knew she probably needed to move here but it took some time um you know most change starts with a form of awareness what's worked in the past isn't working anymore what you depended on just isn't really doing the same job for you or that what's that book what got you here won't get you there um and for my mother-in-law we started to become aware that you know it really would be better for her if she could be close to us if we could help her and um but we for a while there we didn't have a sense of urgency when in the last several months it became more clear that she needed more and more care that sense of urgency became you know palpable we understood it she understood it her family and support system and caretakers in in that town her town understood it and so we were able to agree that it was time and then the work started so the project of getting her here and you know that took a lot of research uh finding the right community for her it took um looking at budget and doing a lot of logistics around where she you know what what furniture she needed what clothing she needed um how to move all of her things here and um ultimately you know what i think really made it a successful transition is that we ramped up the communication my partner went from talking to her one to two times a month to almost every day i started talking to her and communicating with her so that communication allow supported all of us as we tried to figure out you know what the future would look like and how we could get her here and those tools and skills are exactly what leadership can use to drive major change like the adoption of servicenow or any digital transformation correct yes it's really about communicating and supporting end users through that transition so you know many times when it leadership starts to roll out a new system there are people-dependent parts of that process that is um they rely on the adoption of of employees or other end users and external users to make that rollout successful and to to get utilization and to get the value and so um when we're talking about you know our customers or our front line employees uh we really need to help make them aware of the need for change and help them understand the sense of urgency why do we need to change now what and what will be the benefit to them i really love to see when companies invest in their employees and help them build the skills to enact the change so building a knowledge management strategy helping identify the skill sets needed to use the new system and supporting existing employees as they make that transition um you know when we it's not like the press of a flip of a switch or the press of a button uh when we're talking about people we have to give them um the the the stair steps uh to get there and the footholds to get to make that ascent into the into the future state for it leaders for program managers for cios who are looking to enact a big transformation i really think that a change strategy that is aligned to your implementation strategy is is needed when you have those people dependent uh processes where you need those end users to adopt and you know that's what's gonna drive the business value and get you where you're imagining for your future state of course with the exponential acceleration caused by the pandemic this isn't the time to take our foot off the gas do you have any final thoughts for us noelle we are also change saturated right now and yet it is a time when we need change more and more we need to adapt and so how do we um and thomas friedman talks about you know all these concurrent accelerations where climate politics technology globalization these are all happening concurrently and compounding each other so when we feel that change is palpably faster than it used to be it it is we we're really having to contend with quite a lot so how do organizations how do individuals contend with the this chaotic and very fast pace of change and the way i see it is it's about managing fear so change management as a discipline is really at its core about managing the stress response because when you have a lot of change people they they start to worry that they catastrophize oh i'm going to lose my job i'm not going to be able to support the people i love i'm going to um i'm not going to be able to work with the people i have or do the things i did before with my team i'm going to have to do new things that i'm not good at um these fears are real and it's it's the way our brains work we're wired to protect against unknown risk and so when we have resistance this is really natural this is a natural part of the process and so for it leaders and for program managers project managers mid-level managers we know that today it requires a lot of emotional intelligence to provide psychological safety to provide a sense of trust um and to that's going to short-circuit that fear response if we can build trust with our teams um you know just as powerful as our fear response is our reward response you know and we're and i'm not just talking about reward like a bonus although certainly if people are doing new responsibilities that are that are really advanced we should consider you know changing their their compensation as part of the change but we're really talking about um the rewards of working with a team of being a belonging and being on a team and really that it doesn't cost a lot in in terms of money to reward people and to make them feel that sense of trust it just takes an investment of time and energy and attention and given them the empathy um as in support as they make the transition and that's really i guess my my message today is that you know in this time we we really need leadership we really need people to lead with empathy and to help people make this transition and work with as a team thank you so much noelle that is so insightful and thank you everyone else for joining us today this has been organizational change management with dr noel radley on the fridayfast15 if you'd like to learn more about ocm visit crossfuse.com or reach out at let's talk at crossfuse.com and for more snack size conversations subscribe at apple podcasts spotify or youtube see you next week [Applause] [Music] you