Maple Syrup, Back Bacon and Change Agility with Justin Balaski of Idealeap

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, it's Thursday, april 18th. Welcome back to the maple syrup and back bacon edition of that chain show. And if you didn't get the reference, or if you didn't get the Beauty Clark reference on my guest today, the comic guy himself, justin Belaski from Idea Leap. So if you've seen any of his cartoons on LinkedIn, there was a nice little Beauty Clark comment on one of the comics and I wonder if anybody got the reference where that came from, considering this is the back bacon and maple syrup edition. Well, I mean two things.

Speaker 2: 0:36

First, Canadian back bacon that's the thing we need to delineate there. And second, I had to look up Beauty Clark myself, so I don't know what that says about me as a fellow Canadian. Strange brew.

Speaker 1: 0:47

Yeah, I know, I know as soon as.

Speaker 2: 0:48

I looked it up I was like I should know this yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Yeah, I was going to say, before we planned this, I thought we should have dressed up as Bob and Doug.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Eh yeah, Well, we'll see enough age during this interview, I'm sure.

Speaker 1: 1:01

So we're going to be chatting about change agility today, but just give the viewers if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening in at thatchangeshowcom or in your favorite podcast listener thingamajiggy tell the audience a little bit about yourself was lucky enough to well, I mean, come across your work, jason, back in 2012, when I was um, struggling with, you know, change management and traditional heavyweight processes, and it uh changed my career and I started pivoting, doing leading change work.

Speaker 2: 1:36

And then I launched Idea Leap in 2019, um, as just a way to put my voice out there about change management. I just just wanted to kind of and whoever liked it was going to like it, whoever didn't was not. That's fine. And I think it was around that same time that I became a Loom Change facilitator, you know, through you and we connected and I've been doing it ever since and it's been, yeah, it's been amazing. I mean, ideally, it's kind of taken off on its own thing as well the visuals which kind of took a life of their own, which people really like, and, other than that, I'm a practicing consultant, so I'm applying Lean Change practices every day and what I do, that's all I do, and I'm teaching it through Lean Change workshops. So that's a little bit about me.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Right on. So did you get into uh doing change work right out of school or did you? Did you come from a different uh profession before you got into doing change stuff?

Speaker 2: 2:32

yeah. So I say career change. I mean it's kind of like there was my early life seems so far away different that I don't count it. But no, um, I I spent actually a number of years working in like retail operations, so like a district manager for companies like not Foot Locker and Sport Check themselves, but same type of sporting good companies.

Speaker 2: 2:52

And and then you know, in my date myself here, but in my early thirties I decided to go back to graduate school and do an MBA and cause I wanted to pivot to a different kind of career and that's actually when I got exposed to change management for the first time. There was a course in there and ironically, all the stuff I learned in the course now are stuff that it just feels so dated, right, like the old models and stuff like that. But at the time I remember thinking that's what I want to do. I want to help organizations kind of get in a change, and so I kind of started, just um, after I finished my graduate, started applying and trying to tell the story about how my retail background and operations background was good with people I thought, good at managing change and landed my first real gig and then it kind of just went from there.

Speaker 1: 3:37

Okay cool, I asked that question because it's. I always find that when folks come into change from other areas if you want to call it that or previous careers where it's service-based, you kind of already have that co-creative attitude because that's the job.

Speaker 2: 3:58

Like I came from service too.

Speaker 1: 3:59

I started in IT support and doing phone support and then desktop support, server support, stuff like that. So you're just kind of ingrained that you learn that the job is helping people get stuff done. And I know I took a lot of that attitude into change because the do you remember what your first official well, I shouldn't say official what would you say would have been your first like change initiative that you worked on, Maybe as, maybe not as a change manager? What was the first thing where I wanted to bring this change in kind of thing, and how did? How did you? How did you approach it?

Speaker 2: 4:36

so like I was, you know even before working in change management type of thing um yeah, I mean I, you know I had a you know um, an early job where I had a really cool job with purchase management too, don't get me wrong. One of them was I was the global brand manager for the world's largest scuba diving equipment manufacturer and I was I'm a big scuba diver and we had affiliates around the world, like you know, france and the US and you know all over the place, and it was really around launching new products and stuff through global markets, trying to get everybody aligned around. The messaging, the kind of marketing, even the price points, how you position these products right Was, I think. Probably, when I think back, that was a lot of change management work right. It was a lot of having dialogue, conversations with different cultures too, and so it was kind of thrown right into the deep end right away.

Speaker 2: 5:27

Probably some of those complex work ever did before you even got into change management right. Um, you know, which is why I always tell people who want to get into change managers you need to tell the story of what you're doing. You're doing stuff right now. If you come from that kind of background and it's just flipping the script and understanding how that relates to change management, to get you kind of into the field you know yeah, the um, the, the.

Speaker 1: 5:50

The first one I remember was, uh, taking our procedural binders and building a web app out of it at the call center. Just be out of necessity more than anything else. It was just, we had 60 call center agents and we all just hated this, like we had a global. It was a global call center. So somebody would call from Raleigh, North Carolina, and be like the voicemail on my phone doesn't work, Can you reset my password? And we have to flip these gigantic binders open and find all the mainframe codes and then route it.

Speaker 1: 6:18

And the change we wanted to implement was we just built a web app to make it easier to look stuff up. And then from there it was. You know all the stuff that you would do in change management. You know how do you, how do you tell people that or how do you get people on the bus to use this thing? But it was us that was actually building it.

Speaker 1: 6:37

The people that were affected by it wanted to build this thing to make our lives a lot easier, because it was just such a pain. I mean, you get one office that gets shut down and you got to go through these 500 pages and go oh, I got to tear out all these mainframe codes and replace them with the new thing and it was just such a pain and much easier to do in database and stuff. So I find you know from what you described that that whole attitude towards change agility, which we'll chat about, tends to come from, you know, being involved in service-related functions and just knowing I got to work with the people that have to live with this.

Speaker 2: 7:14

Yeah, and I think you know, indeed, I think that it also comes from knowing that you're not going to have things perfect up front and you can plan it all you want. And then when you get it out there, I mean I remember, you know, going back to the marketing, the global brand marketing scenario, there would be these big plans we put in place, right, Global marketing plans, positioning that kind of stuff, and then we'd have these nice juiced up, glossy bindersers and presentations and we'd get out there and get a feel of it. It was just basically tearing pages out of them, you know what I mean and just kind of like iterating and pivoting and changing direction over time. And so I think I learned early on that not to be so beholden to those type of plans and expect things to change. And then, you know, as I kind of got into change management and my knowledge and experience through, I just realized that, okay, now we can, we can plan differently and do all this kind of good stuff we're going to talk about.

Speaker 2: 8:14

But I think when I think about, you know, change agility, which is what we're going to talk about today, I learned a lot of lessons from those early days that I'm now able to go back to, and back then they just seemed that was normal, that's what we had to do. It was just you just had to get things done and get people aligned around this and we did what we had to do, right. So same kind of mentality, I think.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Yeah, I think it's cool that we kind of arrived to the same place from different dimensions Like I came from software and intentionally from like agile came from software and intentionally from like agile coaching and consulting and very quickly realized that this agile stuff has nothing to do with agile and it's all about change. But, um, I think we have a pretty similar stance on how we approach change in general. Even before all of the change agility or lean change, ideas or stuff there's just, I think, just something about temperament that naturally leads you into trying to figure out the lightest way to approach the change. So, with like that phrase, change agility, if you had to put a definition on it, what would you say it is?

Speaker 2: 9:18

minimizing speed to pivoting.

Speaker 2: 9:19

Oh, you know so yeah, I, you know, you know, so I found and I was guilty of this as well the term agility has been conflated with velocity. It feels like in a lot of um areas whether you're doing like agile, development work and or whatever. But just agility in general is everybody you know, and especially you know around senior leaders and such right. They see we want to go faster, faster, faster, which, of course, is what, not what agile is all about. And so you know, for me, the big and especially around senior leaders and such right, they say we want to go faster, faster, faster, which, of course, is not what agile is all about. And so you know, for me, the big thing I've been talking a lot lately is that you know, change agility is not about just do we change faster at people you can't. It's about how fast you can change your approach to change and pivot and go in a different direction, and so that's how I've been defining it, is that, yeah, it's supposed to be the pivoting and that, in fact, I think one of the paradoxical things about agility is that it can conceivably slow you down at times.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Right, it's, you know what I mean. If you want to think about it, it's like you know. Well, it's the thing we're doing. Do we need to do anything right now? Maybe we don't, maybe we just need to pause, maybe things are moving in the right direction, nothing we need to do, or maybe we need to step back and reassess, which means actually slowing down a little bit, um, in terms of delivering change and looking at the new direction. So you know, that's how I define it. How about yourself?

Speaker 1: 10:44

A friend of mine likes to say sooner, not faster. So very similar, because it has been misinterpreted that it's speed and it magically makes everything go faster. I tend to go with the sooner, not faster as well, and it just means the sooner you act on the system that you're trying to change, the sooner you're going to get feedback about what that reaction is. And then you've got to figure out how to separate the signal and the noise, because there's always noise, right, you talk about. You know, back in my day, in early agile, we always used to say things like you've got to slow down to speed up, which means at least agile when you're using it in software. Um, better testing practices, using extreme programming, right, it takes time and effort to slow down and, uh, upskill teams on those techniques. Plus, depending on the state of your application. You know a lot of the places where I work. You could call them technically bankrupt, right, they've got. No, no, automated tests they've got.

Speaker 1: 11:45

I think the worst I ever saw was they didn't even have source control. They were emailing binary files back and forth and I was like, oh, my God, so you have to, you really have to, not just get trapped in your IT bubble and try to figure out what is the consequence to the greater organization when we in IT want to use these. And back then, when we were talking about Agile, I think the best the Agile community could do at the time was it's not just an IT thing and it's not a silver bullet, but everybody still acted that way and we still kind of say those same things that way and we still kind of say those same things. So for for me, it's it's it's about taking action based on what we know now and um planning to replan when things change yeah, indeed, have the uh.

Speaker 2: 12:36

You know the big picture, you know vision, where you want to go and um and then start to work in, you know, like, like we say, shorter time rides in smaller chunks, more of that just-in-time type of planning, right, based on you know. So when we go back to definition, one little phrase that I whipped up to help people think about this is what I call the three Ms, that change agility is about minimizing time to pivoting by minimizing time to learning, by minimizing time to action. So same kind of concept is that you don't know which way you need to go until you can learn from the system, like what kind of impact you're having, is this approach working, are these messages landing right, all that kind of good stuff, and so that's the learning piece, right? That's going to tell you, oh no, this isn't working, we need to pivot or whatever. But you can't get the learning until you do something right.

Speaker 2: 13:31

And so minimizing time to action is like stop spending weeks and months creating these big plans that are all full of assumptions and stuff and go and plan lighter, co-create where you can right, plan meaner, and actually go try something. See, you know, with the canvas, take the canvas out. If you're going to use a change canvas to market your strategy, see if it lands with people. So it's about you know same kind of thing. Encourage people to take smaller actions more frequently, sooner, which is kind of how you test and learn your way forward.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Right, yeah, I'd add, and be intentionally lazy too, and by lazy I mean it's so much easier to just go and talk to people and start doing stuff than it is to lock yourself in an office inside your brain and play the Marvel. What if scenarios?

Speaker 2: 14:19

like oh, what if the leaders don't like it?

Speaker 1: 14:21

Yeah, what if the teams do this, or what if this happens and that happens? I have to have all this. What if they resist?

Speaker 2: 14:26

this and what if they do?

Speaker 2: 14:27

that I mean you're trying to predict the future. I mean, this is why, like, so you know, going back to you know I made that pivot in my early career in the change management and my first gig was for a government agency and made a terrible mistake and it changed my, because all I was doing was planning and analysis and analysis and making stuff up. I felt like and nothing was moving the needle. And then, you know, when I came across the business model, canvas started playing with that, and then the lean change management. So you were doing canvases and immediately when I started saying you know, I'm going to leave this word document, take this kind of canvas and go talk to people, things changed. Not only was it more effective, it was more fun, it reignited my passion for change. I felt like I was moving the needle right, like nothing gives me.

Speaker 2: 15:11

I was thinking about this the other day, like what gives me adrenaline at work and it might sound like in change management we actually didn't get an adrenaline hit, um, but for me it's when I do something or say something or bring people together and set the context and you see people go oh or aha and the lights go off and the alignment's made and then I feel like I've done a good day's work, like you know what I mean, that's my job there to do and so you know it's really ignited my passion for change and going to talk to people and that kind of thing for change and going to talk to people and that kind of thing. And I think there's one other big thing it does. You know, if you really want to get to agility, I think that as change in this, we need to let go of a couple of things, and you talk a lot about this and the four dimensions of change. Like you know who we are as people has an outsized impact on, on, on change. And for me it's the ego part and I catch that that sometimes, even myself, where you, you know, you you build this cool plan and nobody wants it or they don't follow it and you think, oh, and then you start getting upset that they're not doing it and it's a them problem.

Speaker 2: 16:16

But it's not a them problem, right, it's the fact that we built something without talking to anybody or testing it out and it's kind of an rs problem. So look in the mirror, type of thing. Right, and so letting go of that ego and even today, like even working in a more agile way. If I, if I suggest something or do something and people don't want to do it, you know what I mean or it you know it doesn't work out, but normally it does. It's just letting go of that, that ego, and realizing the system's not there. There's things that are outside of my control and I can't control everything, right, so it's not my fault. Let's pivot and try something different, right? So to keep going down that direction.

Speaker 1: 16:55

Where do you think some of the the egocentric stuff comes from? You know, I see a lot of. We are the change leaders, as the change managers, and I've always a hundred percent disagreed with that statement. We're not the face of it, right. Like I've been internal, I've been external, and a lot of the times they want to prop you up as the external, as the face of the change One cause I think it gives them an out. They've got somebody else that you know. Your face is on the change. Therefore, when the change doesn't go well, it's your face that's out of the building. You know what I mean. So in one sense, it's easier to give people an out. And the second, the expectation sometimes, I find, is that when you are brought in as the, you know the lead change manager or the agile coach or the external consultant that you're going to drive the change, you're going to change, and I've always thought that's definitely not the way it should be. You should be in the back seat with the sunshade pulled down so nobody can see you.

Speaker 2: 17:55

Yeah, yeah, I mean this is something you know. I talk about a lot in the lean change in a workshop. We always have some good discussions around it and where does fault lie? But it's hard. I mean I think that there's a few different areas. Certainly the our certification ecosystem, I think, has contributed to this.

Speaker 2: 18:13

Um, you know, um, you know people go out and get you know a three-day certification change manager and then they come in and they're like I'm a certified change manager profession. Now, you know, know what I mean. And so I think that's where some of the ego sometimes comes from. Right, when you come out and you're like well, I'm the change manager and I said to do this and you're not doing it right. So I think that's part of the problem. But I think that whole certification ecosystem not only has it done some disservice there for change managers but also for our organizations and the leadership within right. So it's created, I think, this kind of context or this false narrative that change managers will lead the change I mean it's an entitle is inherent change manager, and so I mean that's a whole another debate. I don't think that you know, but but that you know the time is not going to change. But it's created that kind of, I think, context that we have a change manager and you know, for for leaders, I think that you know, I don't.

Speaker 2: 19:14

I think that leaders care and they want change to work well, but just super busy and their organization this is part of the whole systems piece, this system, whole systems piece, this system. They're failing to the their system, right. Um, they're not given the latitude to step into change and actually lead it. They're so busy with run the business, day-to-day operations. And you know, speaking of cartoons, I did one once that showed how leaders create value then versus now, and then was, you know, a circle, a pie chart.

Speaker 2: 19:42

It was all essentially operations and maybe a little sliver of change. And now I kind of split it 50, 50 and might maybe even be more for us change, but the premise being you've got to have one foot in both sides, right, if you're going to be successful, right. But I think that leaders go back to question, they want that out a little bit and they want to know that it's taken care of. So they kind of pass the buck a little bit and it's and it's causing a lot of challenge with our change initiatives going on. So that's my kind of perspective. How do you see it?

Speaker 1: 20:14

Yeah, it's, it's delegation by necessity. Yeah, we forget and I'm guilty, I've been guilty of this too but I think we forget that people have day jobs right, exactly if you, if you, you know, if you had that pie chart and you're like, how much of the percentage of this pie chart is our brains thinking about the change? It's like a 99. And the people who actually have to live with the consequence is one percent for them because they got day jobs like they're, they're, they're busy, they got releases to get out, they've got marketing programs to do or whatever it is. And I think it's just one more thing on the pile, especially nowadays.

Speaker 1: 20:56

I've talked about this a lot with other organizations and a bunch of people over the last probably year and a half, I guess, like once post-COVID kind of went back to normal, even though it's not really back to normal. There's more, I think it's not really back to normal. There's more, I think, awareness about. I don't want to use the term work-life fusion, but there's two. Pre-covid those things were much more separate. Right, you go to work at nine, you come home at five. Now it's, you might get up at six in the morning and do emails for a couple of hours and then you go get the kids ready, you take them to school, you go do your first zoom call from the school parking lot you know you're just oversaturated with things not being able to get into a good routine that now you've got this change person who's trying to get you into a session to do alignment around this new thing and you're like, can I just like have a day off from?

Speaker 2: 21:50

this and I just, yeah, well, I mean, I think you know, I think part of it, and if you look at relevant to agility, you know, and this is a big one, but I think I mean, I know this isn't going to happen overnight, but I think that the way a lot of organizations treat initiatives as like orbiting moons, right, like if they're the mother ship, and the initiatives are kind of out there, they're floating out there and, uh, when we're ready to change, we'll bring them into the organization, you know it's a big bang. Go live, that kind of thing. And I think that that's a big problem too. It's created also this narrative for changing this discussion. They don't have to pay attention to this stuff until somebody brings it to you, right, and then that's when they care and that's when things happen and you know that kind of thing. And I think that, yeah, I mean, and I think, going back to the thing about people don't care about it, it's because they see it as not their job, really, right, and they're so focused on their day-to-day job.

Speaker 2: 22:41

And that's why I think the most agile organizations they don't treat change as a step, that things floating out there as part of everybody's job, right, like, and so one thing that I've been really over the years experiment with and trying to encourage people to do is get employees to leave the employees leave the change initiative, and I've actually started to find that relying less on senior leaders gives me better agility. Right? This whole narrative that we need senior leaders to sponsor do everything for us I just don't see it actually working real life. It actually slows you down tremendously. Instead, build that relationship. They're good, they like to see things happening. Good. I'm going to go and work with people and have them pull changes and start to implement right, and just use the sponsor as kind of an approver, if you will. Right, like employees, lead the change and implement it, the sponsor as just checking off on it, and I find that's a you know it kind of flips the script a little bit on things as well.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Oh yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I think there's too much stock and emphasis put on getting leadership buy-in when I find, as long as they're not being surprised with bad news, right, they, they really don't. I shouldn't say they don't care, I should say they've got other things to think about. Yeah, you know, um, and as long as you know they're not the last to know about something, if something is off the rails or if there's bad news, they're fine. But they don't have to be actively involved every day, like we.

Speaker 1: 24:13

We kind of see people post about. We need active stakeholder engagement and I think the stakeholder word's a tricky one too, because I think people throw it out there and some, when they say stakeholder, they mean C-level people, and some people, like, when I say stakeholder I mean anybody who's affected by it. So that might be like the junior tester on the team who has to use a new tool or whatever it is. Those are the stakeholders. So it's focus on those stakeholders that find value in it, think it's useful, and you don't need everybody. You need, like a handful of strong influencers, because not everybody's impacted in the same way at the same time. A handful of strong influencers because not everybody's impacted in the same way at the same time, and I think people mistake change agility for something that we can do at people to get them to change faster, as opposed to flipping our stance about how we actually approach and do change with people instead of at them.

Speaker 2: 25:05

well, it's the whole concept of I'm doing change sprints, so I'm agile, right I'm. I'm working in a, an iteration, you know, and you know I, you know I'm a big proponent of. You know, you know it's a lean change. You know. What we teach in the workshop is, you know, um, you know, use some sort of iteration as as check-ins, right, as as, as you know, as a bookend in your process to see how things are working and and then. But flow the work using Kanban, flow it when it's right. You know what I mean and that kind of thing, because one of the big challenges, I think in change management that's impacting agility is that if we keep working the way we are, we are, you know, when you think about like a scrum team, right, one of the things that they're supposed to be independent, in a way like not have dependencies, because otherwise they can't deliver every few weeks if they're waiting for other teams, well, I can't think of a more dependent profession than change management. Right, we are dependent on everybody If we want to sign this off, this email and this, and a lot of that has to do with the culture of the organization. It's different in different places, right, but it slows you down tremendously and having so many dependencies, and that's going to impact your agility there, um, as well. So unless you can break free of that somehow, um, that organization will never be able to achieve it. That need for control type of thing, right, um, the illusion of control that they've got right, but, um, yeah, I mean, I've seen a lot of people that go and they just think, well, we can work in small sprints now, and we have. We have agility, um, and all they're. All they're. All you're really doing is taking a kind of a big plan and breaking it out and doing a small piece at a time. It's still the same plan, right, and it's that.

Speaker 2: 26:45

And the scary part for people is this is when they step back and I say, well, when you see something not working, how willing are you just to like say, yeah, we need to ditch that and move on from this? And I think that there's a switching cost, there's an opportunity cost, right, and that's what scares a lot of people the more effort you put up front into it, the less likely you are to want to move away from it. Right, right as well. So the sunk cost fallacy yeah as well. So the sunk cost fallacy, yeah, exactly. And so I, you know it's definitely that, minus the thing I'll tell you, I think what probably the the biggest thing for me with it, um, agility, is and, and the biggest epiphany that I had in my career was when I realized that um as change units that we don't own change outcomes.

Speaker 2: 27:29

And I say that people go, well, we need where the change, and I'm like, no, you don't, because you're working within a system and a complex system where so much is outside of your control, right, and and I think that once you understand that and you accept that, then what you do naturally is you start to let go of your perceived requirement to control and to implement the plan, and that kind of ego, the cost of switching, all that kind of stuff we talk about. And when your actions become congruent with that mindset of, well, I don't own outcomes, I'm here to try to set the context as much as I can in the system and give it the best shot, but at the end of the day, there's going to be unpredictable outcomes. Once you become congruent with that, you start to let go of that manager title and start to see yourself, I think, more as a facilitator, or I think you use that analogy, or somebody does a lot about dancing with the system a little bit more right and um, and I think that changes for me. That changes everything. Because what it did for me was, you know, I used to take it hard when things were not going to plan, and that's what I, what I, what I really didn't like in my first job was I'd write the plan and then it was clear it wasn't working to go back in and readjust it and change things, and it was just so frustrating and I felt I took it personally.

Speaker 2: 28:44

It was like like I actually blamed myself, like as a change manager I'm a certified change manager I should know, know, somehow, I should know this right, and it took me many years to realize that so much of that's beyond my control. The future is unknowable, unpredictable. I can't know those things. And once I came to the Tiffany, I just let go of all that stress that I used to have and I'm much more relaxed now in my approach, I think, to change and much more. You know, I can, you know, go with the flow right and and and see where the system takes you. So for me that's been the biggest epiphany and I think has been enabled me to move towards agility more than anything else. Right.

Speaker 1: 29:20

Yeah, I like that you brought in a lot of the context in there too, because it's the, the, the, the. The level of change agility you're going to reach is largely going to be based on the context, you know and what's the what's, what's the consequence of if the change isn't going well?

Speaker 1: 29:36

most of the time, from the things I've worked on there, there isn't really a consequence other than just me. Or maybe people will be upset, maybe a scorecard won't get filled out the way that it should, stuff like that. And in other cases you know working in medical there are severe consequences. One healthcare company I worked for, their software rollouts were being used by nurses and doctors to take care of people in long-term care facilities. So if you don't take a little extra caution and a little bit of extra detail, planning and stuff like that, you can kill a patient.

Speaker 1: 30:09

So it's you know we got to talk about consequence of if it's a project based change, transformational change, I find what's the real consequence? I mean we throw out the. We have to be more agile, we have to implement business agility, we have to implement change agility, otherwise you know the competitors are going to overtake us and we're going to be out of business. There's a lot of fear selling with this type of stuff and that becomes. I find that just gets lost on deaf ears because what's urgent for somebody at the top? Why does that matter to me as somebody who's banging away on the keyboard writing code.

Speaker 1: 30:45

So, you know you can think of it as changing how we approach change. As one dimension of change, agility. The easy one is I'll say it quiet so nobody gets upset replace the project managers with a big, visible sticky note wall and make decisions in front of it. So manager change work. And you kind of alluded to the difference between agility and incremental and iterative. So that's been something that agile folks have talked about forever. So you know, incremental is like building things in layers. So Jeff Patton talks a lot about this. I took his product owner course like way way back when and funny story we did this with a company called lean dog who has a boat on the harbor in Cleveland by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they're Lean Dog because the owner had two bulldogs and we actually certified the dog. So we sent the dog's certificate into the Scrum Alliance and for a brief period of time a hat was a certified product. But that wasn't the moral of the story he showed something like his.

Speaker 1: 31:56

His metaphor was you know you want a picture of the mona lisa right and incremental is where you know you draw the bottom part of it and paint it and make it perfect, and then you draw the next one and then six months later you get the picture and iterative is you draw the outline, so you've got a whole piece of value delivered, blah, blah, blah, and I think we can use those same. And then you draw the next one and then six months later, you get the picture and iterative is you draw the outline, so you've got a whole piece of value delivered, blah, blah, blah. And I think we can use those same metaphors in change agility, because that helps us, I think, adapt to the context of the change.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Yeah, right, right, yeah, that makes. I mean that makes, because I mean those and those terms are so conflated now, right, working experience, iterative, incremental agility they become so conflated that they've lost kind of all meaning, right, for a lot of people. So I think that you know and you know I don't know how you feel about the mindset versus the tools piece as well. Like you know, we always talk about and I've been kind of exploring this a little bit more in my workshops and asking people, like you know, there's always a thing like and the agile community is very dogmatic about this, right, like you've got to have the mindset, you know, before you can do this kind of stuff. And over the years, I and I used to kind of be there as well and I've become a little bit, I think, less dogmatic and more pragmatic and starting to think. Well, here's what I've seen Often people come in to a workshop and I say, if you're hearing this stuff that I'm saying, you're reading, like you know, lean change, management, the book, and you're not, in a way, and all your confirmation biases went off.

Speaker 2: 33:26

You have that mindset, you're there, you just didn't know it. You information biases going off. You're, you have that mindset. You're there, you just didn't know it, you didn't label it as a manager on minds and that was a big thing for me as I I recognized that I was just already thinking in that direction. Um, but I've also seen that and I've had a lot of people come through the workshop, for example, that maybe weren't there, had that more traditional kind of thinking and mindset and control and planning, and once they went out and didn't say change plans, for the first time they never wanted to go back to writing a plan once they started using the can-ban bargain, and so the mindset kind of followed when they saw the success and the practices and that kind of thing right, and so I I've kind of become more of like I don't know if it's like a chicken and egg thing or the cart and the horse type of analogy. I think either way you come into, it is okay, right, um, If practicing in a safe place with a tool or something like that starts nudging in that direction, towards the mindset, that's fine. But I do think that unless you go all the way and really you know you truly get there with the mindset, you'll never get to the.

Speaker 2: 34:21

There's a lot of pressure on us to show that we're doing work right. And so what do we do? I'll quote you. I love your quote Change work remains invisible unless you make it visible, right? So what do we do? We create a bunch of documentation and stuff to show that we're, that we're doing something, because it's hard to show. Hey, I had a great conversation with this team and their mindsets are changing, and I think that's where we kind of get into that that trap as well, where we, we just can't let go of those things because we feel like we're being judged and assessed by them. You know what I mean. We're being judged and assessed by them. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Yeah, that's. That's definitely one of the a pattern from at least all the workshops I've done too is people have a hard time trying to figure out what. What's the evidence that I can provide or what can I make visible to show I'll say sponsors instead of stakeholders like senior leaders or whatever. Show them that we're making progress. Because actually one of my friends I won't mention their name just in case they get mad but they were working on a project and the leader wanted bigger documentation.

Speaker 1: 35:43

It was sort of like if you've ever seen that back to school movie with Rodney Dangerfield, where he's a successful business owner and he goes and writes a paper while he hires the person who actually invented the theory to write his term paper and the guy comes back with a big pile of documents and he lifts it up and he goes add a couple more pounds.

Speaker 2: 36:04

I should make a cartoon based on that. That's funny. Oh, that'd be a great one.

Speaker 1: 36:09

Change it just so so you don't get sued by rodney dangerfield yeah, exactly, yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:16

That was what the situation she was in was um, this is what I'm being asked for. And and she pulled a george costanza and did the opposite, basically, and did a canvas session with them and didn't do any of that. And they immediately thought the interaction that they had, because her view was the conversation matters more than the artifact and the canvas built itself in the session. And I think I know, at least earlier in my career now it's a little bit easier, I think, probably for both of us because we've been doing this for a long time, but when you just get started out, you almost kind of think you should be an order taker. You have asked me for this. I will. I will do my part of the transaction and give it back to you.

Speaker 2: 36:55

Yeah, it's, it's hard and you know you're, you're, you're touching on a lot of stuff there around. You know the agility you got to work within the context you're in as well, right, like um, you can't just push and push and push. But here's the thing I think that even a lot of senior, that whole order taker mentality, it stays with people for a long time. So one thing I hear a lot is well, this looks good, but my leaders, they want the plan and they want the documentation and all that kind of stuff. And I would say, you know, I know the quote they attribute to Henry Ford. I don't think it actually was him that said this, but it was something like if I asked my customers what I wanted, they would have said a faster course, right, you know that would quote. I would say, like, if I ask my clients what they want, they'll say a bigger change plan, right, but that's actually not what they want. They just the art of the possible, what change management can be. And that again is a large part because of the industry, the factories, things like standards right, the standard for change management and the three-phase processes and that kind of stuff that gets ingrained in them. That's what needs to be done. And so I'm always encouraging people like, look, don't say in advance what you're going to do, like a change canvas workshop, just go and do it. And once people see it, generally people don't say, well, that was amazing, that was amazing. And then generally they forget about the big, heavy plan.

Speaker 2: 38:18

I often tell people true story. I have not written a big, heavy change document in at least 12 years, besides one time in the last few years with the one client that insisted that I do it. So I decided just to do it to see if I still felt as frustrated and it was a Word document, not even PowerPoint but see if I was still as frustrated with this as I used to be. And it took me weeks to go through. There were things that asked me in 18 months from now and this thing goes live, how many hours do you even have to spend on hypercare? How many hypercare, how many hours on job? And I'm like what I don't you know like like predicting 18 months. It was shocking to me, but I I I granted got through it. It took me about three weeks. I submitted it. You know what the feedback I got on. The plan was that I'd used the wrong font.

Speaker 2: 39:02

That was it you used the wrong corporate font and that is so, and so I talk about this a lot too. In terms of agility, the opportunity cost of what you're doing matters, right? There was a huge opportunity cost me. Instead of spending three weeks doing that, I could have been out interacting with people and doing co-creation and talking and done a lot more effort and moving the change forward in in in about three weeks than I did right in that plan, right? So I think that for change ages wanting more agility, it's really incumbent. No one's going to give it to them, right? No one's going to say go be more agile, you don't get into this process. You need to actually and that's where I think a little bit of that kind of that courage and experimentation yourself. You need to kind of live that and I always say, like taking small hops upstream. I mean, what is that? That quote I don't know if it's from you or somebody but don't, don't fight your organizational current right, you're gonna lose every time.

Speaker 1: 39:57

That's from uh, I got that from don don don gray um okay, I know it came from summer and summer yeah, swim with the current, and we uh, the activity was great because we actually took I think he had six or eight different dimensions. There was power, there was I don't remember what all the attributes were and the workshop that he did. He broke people into pairs and they said pick one of the you know, the infinity stones or whatever, and, um, do a little activity on how you would swim with the current in that particular thing. So the one that we did was how do you swim with the power currents instead of against it, and what would it look like? And stuff like that, which, yeah, I thought was because sometimes you do have to swim with the current for a bit and then you can be a little bit more disruptive, but you have to Well, you build the credibility.

Speaker 2: 40:44

And, like I said, I did that change plan because they were insistent on it, right. I said I I did that change plan because they were insistent on it, right. But then guess what? You know what I did, by the way. So here's a tip for change people watching this, if they're going to make you write the plan um, and you're, you're new, you're, you know you don't want to push too hard okay, write the plan and in the plan, say, right, my plan is to run this in a very lean sort of agile way. I'm going to use canvases, you know what I mean. I'm going to use Kanban, and that's what I did.

Speaker 2: 41:08

I wrote all that in the plan, so you know luckily they don't read it and they signed off on it and then I was just free to go do whatever I wanted. And if anybody ever said anything I said, well, it's in the plan. And then nobody wants to admit they didn't read the plan, right? So that's one way because people often say to me, how do we get away with these things you know in organizations and often it's not a good example of just kind of like, okay, swimming with the current a bit right, before you kind of take that detour right and start to do your own thing.

Speaker 1: 41:38

Yeah, yeah, I want to go back to when you mentioned, before we get into the wrap up. You mentioned the art of the possible. I think that came from James Shore. The art of agile development is probably the best agile book out there in my opinion, but what I like about that is what you described is exactly how it works in software, right?

Speaker 1: 42:01

Customers want features. Customers ask for features. They don't want features. They want you to help them solve a problem that makes their job suck, and they don't know what they want till they see it. So the you know, one of the power with agile and software is we're not going out and eliciting requirements. We're not going to get a list of all the features and things that we need to build. We're trying to. We're trying to unpack problems people have and we're trying to get them in increment as fast as possible so they can try it, because they don't know what they want till they use it.

Speaker 1: 42:33

It's the same, and you know I used to be a web designer. It was the same. You know you do mock-ups, you do whatever. They don't know what they want till they can see it, touch it, start interacting with it, and I think that's. It's exactly what change agility is.

Speaker 1: 42:44

People don't you know we talk, uh, people sometimes don't even know what the outcome should be for this change until they start working in whatever that change is, and then I think the best thing is we realize a lot faster that oh crap, this is not even the right change, let's completely pivot or let's completely stop the thing, whereas traditional thinking would say, well, you failed because you didn't get the change done, and for me I'm like that's a huge success. We didn't just waste $10 million in a year trying to do something that was clearly the wrong thing at the time. So I think, getting back to we're both chatting about this kind of sooner thing, right, take action sooner, get feedback sooner, minimize this. If you can validate it's the wrong change and you can pivot away that, that's a gigantic win in my books.

Speaker 2: 43:32

yeah and as a change, as a change manager, if you're, if you're kind of, you know, the actual change itself has already been predetermined a lot of the times, right, like an organization decides we're putting in sap, we're putting in oracle, we're putting in workday, these things are happening, so there's no opportunity, you know, to change that generally at the change agents level. Um, you know, I'm real, um, but what we can do in those circumstances is validate. Are we the things we thought were going to be good about this change? What people think is going to be? Are the things that we thought people are going to be worried about this change? Is that actually what they're worried about? You know what I mean? Um, their level of impact, their support, you know, I mean, or is it aligning um from the change manager's perspective? Right, and, and that's where you get just going out and testing these assumptions and getting feedback and iterating on all that instead of trying to make it all up yourself, right? So, um, yeah, because you know you're gonna.

Speaker 2: 44:26

You know, unfortunately, unfortunately, there's always we're gonna be still working on these type of predetermined kind of waterfall, linear products for a long time and, um, when we talk, you know, and often meet the outcome of what is going to happen.

Speaker 2: 44:38

Right, the organization is going to do that. We don't really want to change that um in a non-agile, you know kind of environment, and so I really wanted to make sure that I touched on this today as well. Is that everything we're talking about today would change the reality can and should be applied to waterfall type projects as well. It's not just agile projects, right, you can iterate and co-create and work in shorter cycles and test yourself out, and you don't have to be stuck to the project management timeline there. Their timeline is a turning on a switch at the end, right, and you're. But now if we're working with the people, it's different. Right, we're working in the system and doing different work, and so, you know, that's kind of how I always looked at it as well. Is that apply this thinking to any initiative? This is not just for agile type of initiatives, right?

Speaker 1: 45:27

Oh yeah, definitely. You just described a project I worked on I don't remember when it was, but it was a three-year either people, software, sap, implementation, where they already had like the four vendors picked and everything. And they, um, I think we were at a conference or something and the program manager and a couple of the team members were there um, I did a session, i't know something, on lean change or agile or whatever. I think it was agile and change management before that was kind of a thing, and they wanted to use that because they said, well, we're government and 100% of the time when we do these three year long programs, after the end of the third year the software is live and it's worse than what it was before because we don't pay any attention to change, than what it was before, because we don't pay any attention to change. So we talked about how does the method work to apply this to change? And then basically they just threw out all the stuff they already did. Well, we're not going to do a canvas, because they already bought the software, they already have the vendors, they already have these things not approved. Let's just put all this crap on a wall. And they, they made a gigantic, big, visible wall and they replaced two of their update meetings with a 15 minute stand-up once a week with the stakeholders.

Speaker 1: 46:36

And I remember, a year into it, the that the key thing in this was the program manager wanted to do it. So it wasn't like somebody, an outsider, was coming in and trying to get them to do change agility, it was. The program manager was like there is no way we're going to do this correctly If we don't take a different approach to how we do change. And he sent me an email like a year later and said I can't believe how many things we found early because of visualizing that on the Kanban. That's really all they did. They visualized it and they met in front of it once a week as a whole program team and that kicked off a whole series of risks that they found early, risks that we don't have to worry about this, just push it all this stuff. So I totally agree you don't have to throw out everything you do. You can make some small think of why you want to do this. What's your objective, what's a lighter weight thing or an agile thing that's going to get you what you want sooner? Yeah, indeed.

Speaker 2: 47:35

Indeed, and you know we're probably at a good point here to say well, what can this look like in action? Like you know, with change agility, this all sounds good, but how does that? And it's way less complicated than people think. Here's my simple example of my baseline, kind of where I start, you know, with what we call my minimum viable process and that kind of stuff. These are all lean change terms that you can find. But you know, I was on a project recently where it was a very kind of waterfall, you know kind of project. I said, look, I went to the team and said I actually used a strategic change canvas to work with the it leadership to map, co-create the strategy, and then with the core team, who was like myself and one other consultant and a couple business leads, right, I just said, look, can we agree that we're going to meet once a week to start with 30 minutes every monday, and this is our kind of what I call our weekly insights meeting. And they said, okay, that makes sense. I put that in calendars right away. Right, so we had that recurring kind of session with Stacey and then, when they came in, we met in front of our visible wall on we use in this organization, microsoft whiteboard, and it works. We just put our kind of and I have my Kanban board up there and my canvas and all we did was meet in front of that wall on Monday and say, right, here are the things that are in progress, that got finished. How do they work? You know, what do we need to do this week? And and that was it, and we didn't actually have to expand, we didn't have to do a stand-up, we didn't have to do anything and it was just um.

Speaker 2: 49:01

The point I want to make is this is the most simplistic type of view of agility. For me. It can get, you know, maybe for a bigger, faster-than-product need stand-ups and all that kind of stuff, but for us we just kept it really simple. We need to stay in alignment, we need to stay in sync and that whole sooner concept that you referenced a few times, for me that means continuous flow. Right, it's about also just creating flow where we're pulling work constantly, when we're ready using Kanban, using Kanban.

Speaker 2: 49:32

And so we started there and the agility part came in by doing we did a bi-weekly retrospective every two weeks where we had a session just to talk about how things were moving and did we need to add another session? And we decided we didn't. In this case Our process was working well, right and so, and we have a super agile type of initiative there where we were able to switch and pivot and deprioritize work on our Kanban, pull the work we wanted, and that was it One meeting a week. But it doesn't work unless you do it working visually right, like you said, in front of your wall, with your Kanban board or your workflow on the wall, so everybody can visually align and discuss what needs to happen next. But that is for me, the baseline, most simplistic kind of idea of how to move to a more agile way of working right.

Speaker 1: 50:17

Yeah, yeah, that's why I like to use people always ask well, why didn't you call it agile change? Why did you call it lean change? Because I'm like well, everybody's going to get sick of agile at some point and it seems like a lot of people are Agile's dead. Blah, blah, blah. So everybody who's invested in agile sales and agile marketing and agile bathroom tissue replacement and stuff are all like great, everybody hates agile. I can't sell anything but lean dictionary definition, as lightweight and as thin as possible.

Speaker 1: 50:47

The Yagney principle that agile folks about like in the early 2000s you ain't going to need it, so just don't. You know, be lazy, just do the stuff. That forces conversations. That's why Agile works, because the techniques are intentionally simplified to provoke conversations and that's where you create meaning. If you want to document it, go for it. I mean, we're not going to get into ai, but ai can make some of that stuff a lot easier. Uh, there used to be, but it's the, the conversations. You know. I don't know if you've heard the well, what happens if people leave? I'm like well, if you have a mass exodus and you haven't documented stuff, you have another problem and a change framework ain't gonna fix that you know, right like there's tacit knowledge people share and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 51:32

So, um, I know I already said we were going to get into the wrap-up and we try to keep these short, but this is a fun. Uh, we could probably talk forever, but tell folks uh tell folks what's uh, what's new and exciting uh for you, and what you've got going on well, you know, busy as usual.

Speaker 2: 51:51

You know, running, uh, running, a lot of uh workshops. The ring change agent workshop, um, as you know, has just been taken off globally. Um, I've really been focusing my attention on that traditional change management market where two types of folks change managers who are classically trained and are frustrated with their. Where two types of folks change managers who are classically trained and are frustrated with their mechanical process and nature, like I was back in the day. And then the other one is change managers, classically trained, who are now starting to work with more agile teams and they need to know what to do. And so I've been really, really busy there doing all that.

Speaker 2: 52:23

Still, you know, I woke up with a sweat one day and realized I'd become a content creator somehow on LinkedIn. So still putting out, you know, the images and cartoons, which is fun because you know people find them empowering and able to kind of communicate things about change in a in an easy way, and a lot of it's kind of sometimes poking fun at how we do things and change, pointing out the obvious ridiculousness of how people perceive change and also kind of new ideas. I think the kind of the big thing for me is, as you know and I've been saying this a lot I have been working towards a book. If that ever happens, we'll see. But I've started to do more long, long form content on LinkedIn this year and I'm hoping that eventually I can kind of start to put that all together into some sort of some sort of book. You know what I mean. So we'll see.

Speaker 1: 53:08

Yeah some sort of book. You know what I mean, so we'll see. Yeah, cool. So, everybody, if you're watching this on youtube, you can drop a comment below and say, hey, when, when's the book coming out? When's?

Speaker 2: 53:15

the book.

Speaker 1: 53:16

You might be late in a while yeah, our target metric is 100 comments, so once we hit 100 comments, then justin's scorecard is now uh updated to green status and yeah, exactly, yeah right on. So any parting thoughts or or or final advice before we wrap it up yeah, I mean just do it.

Speaker 2: 53:39

I mean I hate to, I don't want to get sued by nike now, but, um, this is one of the things um, a lot of people, whether they come through the workshop or you know, stuff on agility is out there. You can look at it, you can find it, and the biggest gap between it happening is just, you know, having that bit of courage to go and try something and experiment with it. And I always tell people, once you do and you see the impact this way of working has and the ripple effects it creates in the system, you will never want to go back and neither will your clients. So just go do it and you're going to be changing the industry and the way change is perceived, one, one practice at a time.

Speaker 1: 54:17

Right on. That is a perfect summary. So show notes are down below. There's links to Idealeap's website and LinkedIn page and all of Idealeap and Justin's social stuff. So you can find that stuff in the description and the show notes below. Thanks for stopping by and thanks a lot for the chat today. This was fun.

Speaker 2: 54:36

Yeah, it was fun. Thanks, it was great to see you.