740: How to Lead Organizational Change, with Michael Bungay Stanier

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
If you’re doing change right, it’s going to be messy. In this episode, Michael Bungay Stanier returns to show us where to start, the key mindsets to have, and the first steps for getting traction. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 740. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:27]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders and I’m Your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:37]:
And this weekly show helps you discover. leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. John Kotter said many years ago that management answers the question of complexity. Leadership answers the question of change. One of the biggest responsibilities we have as leaders is thinking about change, planning for change, and of course, doing change. It is hard, it is messy, it is complex, and there’s also some really wonderful things we can do to help change go better for ourselves, for our organizations, and for the people we support. And I am so glad to welcome back someone who’s been on the show many times over the years, has helped us navigate so much and how we communicate with people, how we coach, and of course, change as well. I’m so pleased to have back Michael Bungay Stanier. He’s best known for the Coaching Habit, the best selling coaching book of the century and recognized as a classic.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:31]:
He was a Rhodes Scholar and recently awarded the coaching prize by Thinkers50. And he’s now the host of the new Change Signal podcast. Michael, welcome back. Always a pleasure to have you on.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:01:44]:
Dave, it is a pleasure. I love talking to you. I love when we met in person and hung out on the west coast and I love these- Look, the only reason I write books and I start things is just in the hope that I get reinvited back onto your podcast. So, you know, that plan’s working out pretty well for me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:59]:
I had a conversation earlier this morning with someone you do not know, but a friend of mine and he said, I happened to mention I was talking to you today and he said, oh, I just recommended the Coaching Habit to one of my clients this morning. He’s like, that’s the name of the book, isn’t it? The Coaching Habit. And I said, well, yeah. And it’s funny you mentioned that because it has become such a touchstone for so many of us to get better at this. Thank you so much for your work and thank you, by the way, for congratulations on the award from Thinkers50. How cool. And so well deserved because we’ve all learned so much from you and I made a delightful discovery in preparing for our conversation today. One of my favorite books of all time, Transitions, by William Bridges.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:48]:
It turns out you wrote the foreword of the most recent edition.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:02:51]:
What a compliment that was to be asked. I mean, really, I was very flattered.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:56]:
It’s an extraordinary book. And you write in the foreword the first two lines. “H.L. Mencken hit the nail on the head. Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, plausible, and wrong. Change is the epitome of the complex problem.” And I was thinking about those words you wrote. And ideally, leadership answers the question of change, as I mentioned in the introduction.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:21]:
But that answer and change itself, it’s really messy, isn’t it?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:03:26]:
It is. And I don’t think anybody’s gone. You know, it’s just got a whole lot easier over the last 10 years. You know, nobody’s going. I really like how it’s slowed down, it’s become less burdensome, it’s become less ubiquitous. You know, for almost everybody, the opposites occurred, and everything’s feel like it’s heated up, it’s sped up, it’s got harder, it’s got more complex, it’s got more pervasive. And I also think this field of change is filled with solutions that feel a bit deficient. It’s the polite way of putting it.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:04:00]:
Some of them are just terrible. But even the good ones don’t feel like they embrace the whole of what you need to know and understand to help manage change. So part of the initiative for this Change Signal podcast and project was Dave, honestly to try and do what I did with coaching. And the coaching habit was to unweird it, to cut through the bladder and also to help people find the good stuff that works in this complicated space.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:25]:
And there’s so many things that we can do as leaders that help change go a little bit better. And one of the mindsets that was so helpful to me, listening to the recent episodes of your podcast, one of them came from Caroline Webb, and she highlighted the principle from Chesterton said, before you remove a fence, figure out why it’s there.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:04:52]:
Yeah. I’d never heard of this before, but Carolyn is one of those great, smart people. Has she been on your podcast yet? Cause if not, you should have her as a guest. She’s terrific.

Dave Stachowiak [00:05:01]:
She’s not. No. But I was hanging on her words and thinking about that, and I’ve been thinking about that fence analogy ever since she brought it up.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:05:10]:
Yeah, I mean, she’s a great place to start because one of the key things I took from that conversation with her is you, you should figure out what’s actually going on before you leap in and start doing stuff. Because. And this is true whether you’re involved in change or just any project, really, which is take an audit of all the stuff that is going on, because almost certainly you are underestimating just how many initiatives are out there, just how busy people are, just how many things they’re measuring and tracking and nominally or actually engaged with. And that willingness to step back and go, really what you’re asking is, so what’s reality right now? What do we know to be true about what people are up to and up against? That’s a really powerful place to start. And way too often I think we are willfully ignorant around actually trying to listen and find some stuff out there.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:05]:
And I know I have this visceral memory of coming into, getting a promotion, coming into a new location years ago, seeing some things that by policy, were against what the organization was supposed to be doing, and, and changing it very quickly back to align with policy. And I totally missed the reason why they had made an exception to the policy. And it was a very good reason. But by missing even asking the question, I damaged some relationships early on and it took some time to recover from them.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:06:41]:
Yeah, I mean, one of the other key insights that shows up time and time again in talking to these masterful thinkers around change and transition is people don’t like having change done to them. You want to be doing change with people, not to people. And often that behavior of yours, which I’ve got my own stories which are exactly the same, even though the details are different, is you’re coming in and you’re like, oh, you guys don’t quite get it. I need to change this. As opposed to how do I figure out what’s really going on? How do I figure out who these other people really are? And then what’s the change that happens there? I mean, if you think of Michael Watkins book the first 90 days, so much of what that book really is about is, look, you need to notch up a win or two in your first 90 days, but slow the rush because you need to figure out what’s really going on. You really need to understand that the landscape, the invisible landscape of power, how things really happen, so that when you do notch up your wins, they’re actual wins and they’re not Pyrrhic victories.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:44]:
You’re a fan of Emily Dickinson, and I found a poem that you highlighted recently. And the poem Goes like, “Tell all the truth, but tell its slant. Success in circuit lies too bright for our infirm delight. The truth’s superb surprise as lightning to the children eased with explanation kind. The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.” I was reflecting on that poem and especially that first sentence, and you highlight that when thinking about change. Tell all the truth, but tell its slant. How do you think about that in the context of change?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:08:26]:
It’s so cool that you’re reading Emily Dickinson poems on a leadership podcast. That’s fantastic.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:32]:
Of course.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:08:33]:
Yeah. She is such a wonderful writer. Just for her, just learning punctuation from her is extraordinary. This is a big answer. So, Dave, you’ll have to interrupt me when I start getting tedious or monologuing too much. But the starting point for me is to understand that all change is complex. And what that means, to use the kind of the jargon of the moment, is it’s emergent. It’s not, unfortunately, something where you’re like, okay, I’m going to create a plan.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:09:04]:
It’s going to have a nice, neat spreadsheet. I’m going to press a button, and things are going to happen like they would in a machine, and a nice little change finished initiative will pop out at the other end. I mean, gosh, I mean, maybe the very most basic change is that. But everything else is messy and difficult, and it’s got people involved and it is complex. And when you’re dealing with systems, when you’re dealing with complexity, what you realize is the linear stuff rarely works. The direct attack really works. So whereas you do need change disciplines like good marketing and some decent project management and a metric or two to track, if you go too far down that road, you’re deluded about the reality of the experience that you’re having and the people who are going through change are having. When you realize how complexity works, you realize you’ve got to come at it sideways, you’ve got to come at it slant.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:10:04]:
You’ve got to try and figure out where influence lies. You’ve got to figure out where trust lies. And you’ve got to try and do things a little less directly, a little more indirectly.

Dave Stachowiak [00:10:15]:
And so often we, and I certainly have made this mistake of coming at change of the direct nature, the plan, the structure, the strategy. Yes to doing some of that, of course, but also not getting caught up in it, where you forget the human parts. And you and I are both fans of Cassandra Worthy. She’s been on both of our podcasts, and you asked her recently what frustrates her about change. And what she said is the assumption that emotion should be left at the door of business. And I thought about that, and I thought, like, how often when a change is happening, is underway, somebody with a leadership responsibility gets up in front of a room or a virtual room and says, you know, we’re all going to have some emotions, we’re going to have some challenges coming through this, but we’re going to kind of pull up our bootstraps and go. And like, there’s sort of like this moment of acknowledgment of emotion and difficulty. And then the message is maybe not directly, but sort of in context.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:25]:
Then it’s time for us to go.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:27]:
And leave our emotions at the door.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:29]:
And how often we do that, you know, exactly.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:11:31]:
It’s like we’re going to give you three to five minutes to have your feels, and after that, you’re just going to have to get on with the work. So, you know, don’t linger on the feeling piece. I mean, it all keeps coming back, Dave, to this whole thing around the people to change an organization. You’re trying to change people’s behavior. And let me step back for a moment, because I’ve got a loose model, a loose framework for how I start thinking about change, which will then help me get into kind of some of the stuff that Cassandra, amongst other people, are talking about. So here’s a starting point. It’s like if you’re in an organization, you actually need to understand two different types of change. You need to understand individual change and organizational change.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:12:14]:
And they sound like they’re going to be similar. They sound like they’re the kind of the same thing. But I’ve come to realize they’re different. And they’re different like Newtonian physics is different from quantum physics. Newtonian physics basically explains the physics of big things, like apples dropping on people’s heads. And quantum physics basically explains the physics of really small things, like tiny, tiny things, right? And between the two of them, they explain the world. But here’s what’s amazing. They’re contradictory to each other.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:12:48]:
They don’t seem to work at all well together, but somehow they combine, and somehow they explain and make sense of our entire universe. And I think when you’re thinking about change and transformation in your organization, you need to understand both individual change and organizational changes. And one is about shifting people’s behavior so they do something differently. Because if you’d make changes but nobody behaves differently, have you really made any change? And then the second thing Is you need to shift organizational structures. Because if people start trying to behave differently, but the organizational structure is the same people’s behavior change is not sustainable. So you need to understand both of these things. They’re different, they require different approaches, different levers, different interventions. And that’s all fine, but there’s also two different types of change.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:13:40]:
And in my world I call this easy change and hard change. And I’ve talked about this in some of my other books, like how to Begin, but it’s really about this, trying to understand these two different types of change. This work has its roots in Ron Heifetz’s work. If those of you who know him around, his language is technical change and adaptive change. But here’s how I think about the two. Easy change is a change that is more in the sunlight, more measurable, more mechanical, more trackable. It’s one of those things that you can learn how to do it and you can improve the way you do it. So in individual change, I’m talking about things like good training.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:14:24]:
Now, Dave, you and I both know there is a universe of shockingly bad corporate training out there in the world. But there’s also the knowledge out there about here’s what you need to do to create a really good learning experience these days. And on the corporate level, I’d be thinking about things like project management and also marketing as corporate organizational change. That’s easy change because there’s a ton of great stuff out there on how to market something. Well now again, our world is filled with change initiatives that are really badly marketed or not marketed marketed at all, so people don’t buy into it. Or change initiatives that are really badly project managed, so it’s a disaster or it’s over managed. That’s easy change. Hard change is more in the twilight zone, more amorphous, less tangible, less easy to pin down, doesn’t respond so well to kind of systemic stuff.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:15:25]:
It’s not really stuff that you can put on a spreadsheet. So at an individual level, it’s things like managing people’s grief around letting go of the status quo. At an organizational level, it’s like understanding how power and influence flows through the organization and understanding where the points are. The influence points are to make the most difference, much harder to track. But that’s actually another type of change you also need to master to pull all of this back. So you’ve got this framework, I mean, to give people some metaphors. I think easy change is like U Plus and hard change is like U 2.0. Easy change is a bit like, okay, this is what I need to do.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:16:10]:
I’m going to download an app on my phone. Because with a good app, I get a bit smarter, a bit more efficient, a bit more systemic. But hard change is like, I need a new operating system, I need a kind of a new wiring, a new rewiring perhaps around there. Does that all make sense?

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:26]:
It does.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:27]:
And as I think about that distinction between easy and hard change, and especially leading a team, leading an organization through change, how do you know which one you’re in the midst of?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:16:39]:
Yeah, so that’s such a good question. I actually think perhaps when you’re trying to lead a team and or an organization through change, you need to be understanding that all of these things are in play to make a really good change process work. You need to understand easy change for an individual and easy change at the organization. You need to be able to deliver that. And you also need to be conscious and aware of hard change at an individual and an organizational level as well. And when your change process starts struggling, or where it gets hard or it gets messy or it gets stuck, what’s interesting then is to go, well, of all the things and the levers and the catalysts that I can be using, which one am I underutilizing? Which ones am I maybe over utilizing? Which ones am I a bit blind to? Because you could be going, look, we’ve done a brilliant job at managing the C suite. We’re figuring out the power thing. We’ve done a nice job at marketing this.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:17:43]:
So people are actually keen to go through the change. But our training is so bad that people aren’t actually getting the upgrade in skills and behavior changes so that they can do things differently. Or you might be going, look, our training is fantastic, but we haven’t given people a chance to really let go of the past so that they can create space for the future. So they keep getting pulled back into the old ways of working rather than being allowed to step forward into the new ways of working. So I think it’s more of a question of going rather than, which one of these am I in? It’s like you’re in all of them. All models are wrong, but some are useful. And what this model does is it tries to blow out a way of you of understanding your in the moment experience, going, look, there’s these four different quadrants. Where are you strong? Where might you be vulnerable?

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:35]:
And as you were saying that, I was thinking, like, regardless of where you are and what you’re seeing, like our Tendency to miss stuff. And you said the word being blinded sometimes, and it reminded me of a quote from one of your friends, Jason Fox. I listened to one of his episodes on leadership, and he has this great quote. “When you fixate upon something that’s shining bright, it means that it’s harder to see what exists in the penumbra.” And I just think about that in the context of change, like, how easy it is to shine, you know, to think about the bright, shiny object and where we’re heading and to miss the things that are happening. And one of the most common things that I see in myself and I see in the leaders I work with is oftentimes when change is occurring, that the people who have the fancier titles have had the time to process that change and think about that change for sometimes months, weeks and months, and then they are ready to roll it out, to which that’s the language people use. It’s not necessarily the best language, but they’re ready to roll out the change to the rest of the organization. And I think about the shining bright object and missing what’s in the penumbra of, like, how easily we forget that the people who are then getting whatever’s being rolled out to are just hearing it for the first time and haven’t had the weeks and months to process the change like the leader has.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:11]:
And that’s often such a blind spot.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:20:14]:
I think that’s great, Dave. I’ve heard that called the marathon effect, which is effectively your change leaders or the C Suite say they’re crossing the finish line of the marathon, and they’re like, oh, that’s great. I’m done. Or at least I’ve done the thinking. So I’m ready forgetting that a whole bunch of people are still running the course and aren’t even close to where they’re at. So this idea of going, what do we need to do to bring the people along with us so they’re in the right place and the ready place to kind of process this change. In some ways, it takes you back to that question you raised when you were referencing Cassandra Worthy, which is like, about the feelings at work, which is like, that senior person might have gone through and processed a whole bunch of their stuff. Their doubt, their enthusiasm, their confusion, their anxiety.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:21:03]:
And they’re like, okay, I’m in a place of acceptance. Surely everybody else is here as well. And you almost forget the work you’ve done to get to a certain place. And you just assume everybody else is in the same place you are, and almost guaranteed they’re not.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:19]:
Jason said something else that really caught my attention, too. He said, “strategy emerges from relationality. Strategy is a living conversation.” And I think about that also in the context of change, of often there is a plan, there is a slide deck, there’s the process, as there should be. There should always, of course, be a plan. And yet how often we miss the opportunity for change to be about relationships and a living conversation and dialogue with everyone who’s involved with it. And I hear a really strong invitation in the work you’ve been doing on Change Signal to be thinking about that way more intentionally and to go there.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:22:01]:
I mean, this is really helpful conversation for me, Dave, because you’re helping me see things in the work and in the podcast that I hadn’t really been seeing myself. I mean, there’s a heartbeat that seems to be coming through on the Change Signal podcast, which is change is more complex than you realize, and so it needs time to kind of move. It’s easy to dehumanize change, meaning you kind of forget that you’re human and you kind of forget the people you’re trying to move through change as human. And the other connection with strategy and relationships is that A, we forget that the twin DNA of an organization is strategy and culture, and you need both. I mean, I’ve never really understood culture eats strategy for breakfast. I know it’s a catchy frame, but I’ve never really quite caught that, because for me, it’s not even one eating the other. It’s, these are the twin DNA. You need a strategy.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:23:00]:
You need a way of going, here’s how we need to be different and how we need to be useful in the market. And then you need your very best people understanding that strategy and putting their time and attention to the stuff that matters most. That’s kind of the. The work of coaching, I think, is to A, amplify the very best of your people and B, make sure they’re doing the work that matters the most. So you’re building that culture to deliver on the strategy, and you know it. You know, in an episode that hasn’t yet been released on Change Signal with Anne Gotti, who’s the EVP of Organizational Something in Mondelez, one of her first statements in the podcast, which is why I remember it, she just said, look, change by decree just doesn’t work. It probably never has worked, but it definitely definitely doesn’t work anymore. So this idea of strategy by decree probably doesn’t work either, because at the heart of strategy is that coaching question.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:24:07]:
This is what we’re saying yes to. And therefore this is what we are also saying no to. But if you just decree the strategy, it’s unlikely that’s really going to be fully understood and fully embraced and fully acted on.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:20]:
One of the through lines that I have been hearing from you and also from a number of the folks you’ve been talking to on change is the invitation to run experiments.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:24:33]:
Yes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:33]:
What is it that’s so critical about experiments?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:24:38]:
You know, I remember reading Jim Collins when Jim Collins was particularly influential. And one of the things that you have to give Jim Collins is he’s got a really good grasp of metaphor. I’m not sure all of his research stacks up, but holy cow, his metaphors are outstanding. And in the context of strategy, I think Colin said people should be firing bullets and then they should be firing cannonballs. Now, for him, a bullet is an experiment. It’s a small, low risk, low cost thing to figure out where the real target lies. Because whatever you think is a real target, that’s not the real target. You’ve got to test it out, probe it out, feel your way into it till you get a sense of actually, here’s the bullseye, here’s the thing we really need to be going for.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:25:29]:
And then when you have that, when you know what the target is, that’s when you commit, that’s when you fire your cannon. And for Collins, he says, look, most people don’t fire enough bullets and they fire their cannonballs too soon or they don’t ever end up firing their cannonballs. All they ever do is firing bullets. And small experiments, they lose their nerve. They don’t have the courage to really commit. And I think one of the things here is you’re running small experiments, you’re firing bullets because your change experience is a moving target. Just to carry on with this metaphor, it keeps changing, it keeps evolving. The outcome that you’ve named and you may be measuring, perhaps that is staying somewhat the same.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:26:21]:
But so much of what is going on is changing. Some of the stuff you’re trying is working. Some of the stuff you’re trying is not working. And rather than setting yourself to say, here’s the plan, we’re going to execute the plan. It’ll either work or it won’t work. We’ll either fail or we’ll succeed. When you frame it as we’re running the next experiment, the point of the next experiment is for us to learn more, to gather data, to get a better sense of what the right intervention is by reframing it as an experiment think it has more of that emergent quality, that learning quality. You still get to keep making progress on the change that you’re making, but it’s in a more agile and adaptive and generous way.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:08]:
And messier too. Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:27:10]:
You know, and it’s like, that’s the problem with experiments is like, yeah, I want to run experiments. I just don’t want any of them to fail. It’s like, it’s like when you see an organization go, right, we need to be more innovative. So we’re going to really kind of like we need more creativity and more innovation. But the innovation has to work all the time. It has to be 100% delivery rate. You know, like that’s, that’s just the, that’s, that’s actually counter to the, the definition of innovation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:37]:
Yeah.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:27:37]:
So part of what you’re trying to build, when you are trying, what you’re trying to do is build change capacity as much as anything in your organization. An ability to be in a place of unknown and ambiguity and not to panic around that. An ability to experiment and try and figure out the next step forward. An ability to stay curious a little bit longer, rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly. All of these are this ongoing change capacity. Because if you’re leading change in an organization, really what will be the determining factor of the success or failure of your change initiative is whether the people you’re trying to change have capacity to change. And so if you can be doing the work that’s building their capacity as much as it is kind of rolling out your plan, then I think you’re onto something.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:33]:
And the irony of the whole thing is, of course if you try to have it not be messy at the beginning, it just ends up being more messy in the long run. But by leaning into the messiness early on and experimenting and firing the bullets, as you say that, that. Yes, messier initially. Right. Like for sure. And especially more people involved, large organization. And more likely though that you really get the engagement that you want. And it reminds me of Dan Heath came on your show recently and said that motivations the single most important factor in this, even if you’re doing it in the way that isn’t the most efficient.

Dave Stachowiak [00:29:10]:
Like if you get there sort of in a securitas route, but people are engaged in with you on it, it’s better than like trying to be most efficient and have people sort of, you know, maybe giving lip service to it, but not really with you. And it, it reminded me of something I saw that you posted on LinkedIn recently. It’s a brief paragraph. I’m going to read it because I think it like captures this perfectly. You write, “you want to know the real secret to making change stick? Let people actually shape it. Not just the people in charge, not just a fly in consultant with a 97 slide deck. The ones doing the work, the ones in the messy middle. Because when change is co created by the people who live it, breathe it. Are in it, that’s when it becomes more than just a plan, it becomes a movement. That’s when it accelerates and maybe, just maybe lasts.”

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:00]:
So key.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:30:01]:
Yeah, I know. It’s one of those things that’s easy to whip out on a quick LinkedIn paragraph and remarkably tricky to do. I remember, I mean this is perhaps analogous. I remember seeing probably on LinkedIn or somewhere. A here’s how you draw Darth Vader and it’s like four boxes and box one is you draw a circle and a triangle. Box two, you slightly shade the circle and the triangle. Box three just says fill in all the extra details. And then box four is a perfectly drawn Darth Vader.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:30:36]:
And it’s like so that box three, it feels like that’s where the magic is. And when you listen to people like Dan Heath and Cassandra Worthy on the podcast, what you hear is them keep saying keep going back to the people and bring them along with you and get them engaged and co create this. It is slower and messier and more frustrating but also more successful and more joyful and more likely to work. But it is tricky because. And you started this whole conversation with this quote around. For every problem there’s a solution that’s neat, fast, quick, shiny, but wrong.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:20]:
I could make a pretty good argument that you’ve been working on change leadership for the last decade, perhaps your entire career. You’ve really been thinking about it a lot in recent months though, with the new podcast and talking to people about change and change leadership especially. You know, I often ask people what they’ve changed their minds on and I’m curious, as you’ve been, you know, waist deep in this and been talking to the experts and also just reflecting on the work you’ve done with clients and organizations. Yeah, I’m curious, like what have you changed your mind on about change?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:31:52]:
Well, let’s say two things come to mind. Three things come to mind. Actually, about 107 things come to mind, but let me limit it to three. The first is I don’t have an answer for this. I’m really curious to what we should call this discipline. Now, I was a change management consultant in the late 90s, and that title just feels ludicrous. I mean, what am I managing? What is change? So change management doesn’t really work. Transformation feels like it’s come and gone.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:32:28]:
Is it the same as digital transformation? Adaptation? There’s so many words, but they all feel like they’re trying to label a distinct and contained moment. And change feels like it’s overspilled the boundaries. So that’s one thing which I’m less having changed my mind and just having my mind melted. What is this even called now? The second thing, it comes from that conversation with Anne Gotti that I mentioned and which I’ve already referenced, which is what if the secret to change wasn’t leading a change project, but continuing to build change capacity in the people in your organization? So it was an ongoing quest to build the skills and the mindset and the ability of people so that as the change waves roll constantly through an organization, there’s a greater ability for that organization to ride those waves. And then the third thing is to realize just what a powerful, powerful grip the status quo has on all of us at an individual and at an organizational level. I mean, it is. We’re trying to move into the future, but the status quo has its hands strongly around our ankles and it’s making life difficult. And ironically, even as we are frustrated with the status quo, even as we are irritated by the way things are right now, there is something we are getting from that.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:34:11]:
There’s a famous quote that says, every system is perfectly designed to generate exactly the results it’s currently delivering. And there’s a way that that system doesn’t want to change. That’s homeostasis. And I think I have often underestimated just how much work it takes to loosen the shackles of the status quo.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:37]:
Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of the Coaching Habit and host of the new Change Signal podcast. Michael, always a pleasure.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:34:45]:
David, it is always a pleasure. Thank you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:54]:
There’s a whole series of past episodes on organizational change on the website. Set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com to get access. Here’s three in particular that I think would be starting points for you. One of them is episode 571, engaging people through Change. Cassandra Worthy was my guest on that episode. Michael recently had her on the Change Signal podcast as well. A wonderful voice on change. And she has that wonderful line that change isn’t happening to you, it’s happening for you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:26]:
And thinking about how to bring that attitude into the organization. Not just the technical and the strategic things, but the human parts of change. Episode 571 for more of her thinking, I’d also invite you to check out episode 621, how to approach a Reorg with Claire Hughes Johnson Claire, one of the longtime leaders at Stripe, the company that powers so much of the infrastructure of payments on the Internet. In that conversation, she talked about how Stripe, of course, has grown so much in recent years and some of the reorgs that they have been through and of course the lessons that she has learned and her team has learned of going through that process. So much. Wonderful insight, mindset, tactical things there. Episode 621 for that. Especially helpful if you’re in the midst of a reorg right now or just about to embark upon one.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:18]:
And then finally, I’d recommend episode 660, how to Prevent a Team from Repeating Mistakes. Robert “Cujo” Teschner was my guest on that episode, and he’s formerly in charge of debriefing for the US Air Force and the Air Force. And by the way, most military organizations do a wonderful job with debriefing after the change has happened or the mission or whatever is going on in the organization of sitting down intentionally and talking about what happened. What are the lessons learned? How do you keep from repeating mistakes? Most other industries do not do this well, and there is so much that we can learn from the debriefing practice that Cujo and so many of his colleagues have utilized so well in order to achieve just incredible results. Episode 660 is a great starting point for that. All of those episodes you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. And if you do not have your free membership set up, go ahead and set it up over at coachingforleaders.com because it’s going to give you access to the entire library of episodes that I’ve aired since 2011 weekly on Mondays, and the ability to be able to search by topics you can find what you’re looking for. If it is organizational change, there’s a ton in there.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:29]:
We’ve also done a lot on organizational politics, organizational culture, coaching skills is of course Michael’s talked about so much over the years. Tons more inside of the free membership, plus lots of other benefits. Just go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership and when you do, you have access to that and so much more. And speaking of coaching, one of the reach outs that I get from folks listening to the show is reaching out to me and saying, hey, I’m a HR leader inside the organization or I’m involved with talent development and I have been tasked with finding a great coach for one of our internal folks. Often it’s an executive inside their organization who needs a coach, is seeking someone externally and folks are reaching out to me to say, who would you recommend? Well, I’ve been very fortunate over the years to have many of the top coaches on the show and have partnered with a number of them in order to support our listeners who are looking for coaches to recommend inside of their organizations. If that’s you right now, a great place to start is going over to coachingforleaders.com/partners. You can tell us a bit more about what you’re seeking and then myself, our team will reach out and be able to make a recommendation or a few recommendations that’ll be helpful to you as a starting point. Again, go over to coaching4leaders.com partners.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:50]:
It’s also a good place to go if you’re looking for a coach for yourself, but particularly if you’re inside an organization. A great starting point for you to be able to find the right person that can support your organization right now. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. I’ll be back next Monday for our next conversation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:39:10]:
Have a wonderful week and see you back then.