The Two Piers Podcast

Organizational Transformation with Lisa Carlin

• Erica • Season 5 • Episode 3

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We're joined this episode by Lisa Carlin, a seasoned strategy execution mentor and co-founder of FutureBuilders Group.

We delve into the dynamics of transformation, exploring how to support individuals in achieving impactful change at scale as Lisa describes the metaphorical jigsaw puzzle of multidisciplinary skills essential for driving successful transformations.

This episode illustrates the significance of cultural mastery in finding one's voice, especially for underrepresented groups, and includes actionable strategies for effectively navigating and comprehending diverse cultures to foster empowerment.

We also discuss Lisa's current offerings, including a membership academy tailored for business leaders eager to expedite their implementation of business, culture, and digital transformation.

Tune in for a focused conversation on transformative insights, emphasizing the nuances of change, cultural understanding, and the path to achieving impactful transformations.

Check out these additional resources from Lisa's FutureBuilders Group:

Erica D'Eramo:

Hello and welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your host Erica D'Eramo. Today we have a guest joining us Lisa Carlin. So Lisa is a strategy execution mentor and co founder of Future Builders Group, a network of organizational development specialists, Lisa started her career with McKinsey and Accenture. Since 1999, she has worked directly with prestigious global clients through to Australian corporates government and high tech ventures. She works with leaders to turbocharge their transformation projects and change. Lisa has an impressive track record having successfully delivered or mentored clients through over 50 transformation programs with an outstanding 96% success rate far surpassing the average success rate reported in research. Her passion now lies in scaling up implementation success, which led her to establish a membership Academy for business leaders to fast track their implementation of business culture and digital transformation. Lisa also volunteers as the chair of an education not for profit organization. So today, Lisa will be joining us to discuss transformation and how we can effectively implement change in our organizations. Thank you so much for joining us, Lisa.

Lisa Carlin:

Thanks, Erica. It's great to be here.

Erica D'Eramo:

So tell me a little bit about yourself and your background kind of what what brought you to this place you are at today?

Lisa Carlin:

Well, I was born in Cape Town in South Africa, and grew up in the apartheid era. And I guess that's really influenced a lot of who I am today. So I was in quite a, brought up in quite a liberal community. And I joined an organization that promoted multiculturalism and understanding and meeting different people and, and through sort of social awareness and culture, I guess it was our way of building that. Understanding that Apartheid was not normal, and it was not right and, and so I used to go to meetings. And I remember that was the first time I'd ever seen a picture of Nelson Mandela, with his eyes uncovered. Because it was actually a piece of banned literature, the time, and all the pictures of Nelson Mandela were either suppressed, or if you did see them, his eyes were covered, there was like a stripe across his eyes. And that's how the press were not allowed to show pictures of him. And which, again, just makes you realize how amazing it is that, that he had the kind of following he did, when, when so much about him was suppressed. So as a teenage girl, I was meeting people across all different cultural and racial groups, which was an unusual, I guess, at the time, because everyone was streamed into their different schools and into the different areas and went to their different beaches and went to the different movie movies and restaurants and, and there's nothing, there's nowhere you could really go socially. And I realized that, you know, that. That was that that really was very confronting and upsetting when you understand how different people live. And I met one young girl whose mother was white, and her father was Black, and she was dark skinned. And she was not allowed to go on the bus with her mother as a result. So the white people went to the front of the bus, the Black people went to the back of the bus, and she had dark skin. And so she had to go at the front of the bus and not with her mother. And, you know, people are just many people who just had no voice in, you know, in the community. And so that is a big passion of mine is to give people a voice and a say. Yeah, yes, I can tell you that. That's the that's the part that's motivated me. And I can also go into the career part if you're interested.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, I mean, I would love to hear kind of what your journey looked like, you know, you mentioned McKinsey, but like, how did you end up in this work around change and transformation?

Lisa Carlin:

So I, I worked for Accenture, actually in Cape Town first. And I was doing systems development and I, we implemented the the systems and then I realized that the this the systems, people couldn't get the best out of the systems because they hadn't really learned how to use them properly or they weren't designed well from a human centered point of view. And so I became quite interested in the people side of things and then because of all the turmoil and the and the and unrest in South Africa and the crime I, I decided I wanted to leave and to cut a very long story short when to go and live in the US and and work for McKinsey there, it was a great opportunity. So I got to work with all different sorts of businesses and mostly strategy work but a range of different work around the strategy. And we used to deliver these beautiful reports to executives, and I used to have the sinking feeling that they wouldn't know what to do with that, or, you know, it just didn't have necessarily the full impact that it could have had. Because again, the people side hadn't, we, you know, we hadn't really focused on the people that were receiving the reports sufficiently. And it just sort of wasn't part of the scope. So although the material was outstanding, it didn't have the full impact that I that I would like, and again became really interested in, in the people side. And that's how so so again, cutting a long story short moved to Australia, I did my MBA here, I went to go work for a small culture, boutique culture change, organization, which was a lot of fun. And in 1999, went out on my own and I put all the strands of those those, you know that the culture change and strategy work in the systems work together. And I've been ever since then implementing programs of change in organizations that are multidisciplinary, cross functional, and strategic generally. So that's what I've been doing up till the last few years, when I've tended to focus more on the mentoring side and mentoring executives and teams, so I can I can have more of an impact. Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, I love that you mentioned the culture piece, because I mean, you know, it's like written on the wall of every MBA program, that culture will eat strategy for breakfast. So I think so it's so, so often when we're looking at these big shifts in how organizations operate, which, frankly, any diversity, equity and inclusion program really is a change management program, right? Like, this is a big change that is going to have effects, you know, it should, if done correctly, should have effects all throughout the organization. It's not something that you just tack on. And so that piece around the cultural shift and cultural change, I think, is often left out of these conversations. So I like that you mentioned that, and the human element of it.

Lisa Carlin:

Yeah, because, and I guess that's what ties back to giving people a voice. Because I think that that passion that I have about really hearing people from all their, you know, all different parts of the organization, all different levels, you know, a diversity of voices, that that is so important. And through the work I've done, I've realized that you can turbocharge the transformation through listening to more of a diversity of voices in the organization, and really hearing what people have to say. And in fact, I love the expression strategy eats, as culture eats strategy for breakfast, and the iteration of that that's going to go into one of my upcoming newsletters, because I do a free weekly newsletter in Turbocharger Your Transformation, or Turbocharge Qeekly it's called, is culture eats strategy execution for lunch, right? Because it's even more important, you know, in as you go through the execution of the strategy to make sure that it's attuned to the culture.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's best laid plans and whatnot. So. So when, in this work that you're doing, what would you say are some of the biggest like myths or misconceptions that you encounter?

Lisa Carlin:

So I guess, through the years, people have become more and more specialized. And they, it there's, there's a feeling that you know, that degree of specialization is really, really important. So you know, it's not enough to be a technology specialist, you've got to be a software specialist, not enough to be a software, you've got to be a front end developer or a back end developer or data specialist, you know, and then, even within front end and back end development, there's this, you know, hyper specializations of people's focus. So, and that is useful and having a whole lot of specialists is useful. But I think that there's a myth there. There's something missed around generalist skills, which are so important as well, and the ability to see all pieces of a puzzle and step back, because otherwise if you've only got the red pieces, or the blue pieces, and you or you can only see those pieces because that's your specialization, you aren't actually able to see the entire jigsaw unless you know how to step back and look at that.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's, that's an interesting misconception to touch on, especially in your role now taking on more of the mentorship and development of, you know, other transformation leaders, because I see that a lot in coaching as well. And people think, oh, I need a coach who is my specialty, right? Like, I need a coach who is also XY and Z. And in reality, often that's a bit of a liability when a coach's background specifically matches the client's background, because that's where you get into the weeds, right? That's where like you said, you, you sort of end up with these blinders on, because you're, everything is so familiar. And it's that fresh perspective that the generalist viewpoint brings, that kind of asks the questions brings the curiosity knows where to see the gaps, or the holes, and they're speaking a new language in some cases, you know, so to speak. So. So yeah, that's an interesting kind of parallel, I would say, then, to the coaching world.

Lisa Carlin:

Yeah, that is so true. And one of the things I

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, in the end, that part two that touches on always try and do when I put together teams for clients is think about who's going to be the foil, for the for each person, like who's going to be the opposite fit. So that you get a min... you get a bit of overlap and skills, but it's fairly minimal. And then you've got those different perspectives, because that's what gives you the very rich view. So I love working with technology firms, and I've done a lot of work with tech firms. However, I still, I still do work for, you know, government, and big corporates and services, organizations and professional services. Because I think that bringing those different perspectives to my, my, my clients, from different from different types of industries and different types of organizations, gives them such a rich way of thinking about things. So I'll give you an example. You know, purpose statements have become a little bit more, you know, important. And, you know, when you read literature, people are saying, well, what's the purpose of the business, and that's really taken out of "for purpose," or"not for profit" organizations where they've always been very purpose led. But then when you take it to a business, and you find the altruistic part of, at the core that's in that business, then you know, that that can really motivate people and give you some cultural cohesion that you might not otherwise have. Right? So Canva is a great example. And so Canva is one of these, you know, unicorns that are worth, you know, I can't remember exactly what it is at the moment, but more than 50 billion, and the valuation changes a lot, depending on on what's happening in the industry, and that their purpose is all about empowering people to design. And when you when you think of it in that way, you know, there's a there's an altruistic social focus, right, in that in that purpose statement. And, you know, other companies that are, you know, can find the altruistic social benefit of what they do. And when they focus on that, you know, that that will create a huge amount of motivation, if it's, if it's done in an authentic way, if there's if they're authentic about it. And and that's borrowed from the nonprofit industry, really. So there's value in that in that diverse perspective, that diverse industry view. not just that diversity, but also the equity piece and the inclusion piece this like alignment with being a positive impact in the world in general. And it kind of harkens back to some of what Simon Sinek explores in Infinite Game a little bit like, what are you actually trying to do here? Besides shareholder profits and getting exactly the power? Why are we here?

Lisa Carlin:

Yeah, the power of why. Exactly.

Erica D'Eramo:

Start with Why.

Lisa Carlin:

Exactly.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, I think that's so. So that's, that sounds like a really interesting best practice around transformation. I should probably for folks who are listening and maybe aren't sure what we're talking about in terms of transformation, like how do you how do you define this, like, the realm that you operate in and what you specialize in here, like what would you how would you define transformation for someone listening who maybe hasn't participated in a big effort like this?

Lisa Carlin:

What a wonderful question and I get asked that a lot. And to be honest, I actually use a very broad definition for the terms because they use differently in different places. So the work that is in the field, it could include things like a change from of any sort in the organization. So it could be a very small change. Like we're introducing a new policy for staff to travel, you know, when they travel, it's a new expense policy, right. Or it could be a huge change in the organization, which might be the restructure of the whole organization, or the change in the strategic focus to a new product or service. And all of those are transformations. Now, I also use the word change, because it's a change. I also use the word projects, because you've usually got to do it via project. But it could be a selection of of sub projects, if you like. So it could be a program of change or program of transformation. And then there's the broadest term possible, which it could be a a strategy execution or strategy implementation, right? So any of those terms, I would use interchangeably. And there are nuances for all of them. But you know, is are you using the word strategy? Because it's more strategic? Are you using the word transformation, because you're trying to indicate it's a complete change, whereas you're going to use the word change if it's a small change. But to be honest, in the different organizations I work in, there are nuances to those words. So some organizations, for example, won't use the word transformation, because they've done a one transformation program 10 years ago, that was highly unsuccessful, and it's got a dirty name. So you learn to be a bit of a chameleon to be successful in different organizations and use the terminology that's going to work there. And does does that help explain that it can be any kind of change in the organization?

Erica D'Eramo:

Yes, it does. And so when do you think it warrants getting help? Like, when did when does it reach the threshold of sort of support or implement, you know, implementation, being intentional about this, because like you said, it could be something small, it could be something big. So for folks listening, you know, and especially for maybe individuals who are not necessarily in a large organization, and maybe are in a smaller organization, or maybe are an entrepreneur and building their own team, like, how might this apply to them? And what what indicates this is worthy of looking at holistically?

Lisa Carlin:

What a great question, Erica, and I'm lots of podcasts and write a lot. And no one's actually asked me that. And I think it's such an important question. Yeah, well, what I say to executives, and particularly chief executives, or executives running a large division of a large business, or a CEO of a smaller business, is that strategy is a big chunk. And you know, that saying, you can't eat an elephant? How do you eat an elephant, it's chunk by chunk, right. So chunking things down makes them more manageable. So if you're implementing something, the best way to get it implemented fast is to, to scope it out as a whole, and then chunk it into pieces that you can then delegate to others to get it done. Right. And that is basically then becomes a project because it's got a defined beginning and a defined end. So at the most, you know, one of the more granular levels of that strategy, or that transformation is a project. So thinking about any kind of change that you're implemented, implementing in an organization, as as a project, and then you know, doing a project plan, and very, very purposeful around who's doing what, that that is the best way to get implementation done at scale, whether you're a big organization or a small organization, and then the question is, what skills do you need to make that work? And I always say, for for, for execution, you need three skills, and each of those in general, Okay, three generic skill sets. And that has to be they all have to be attuned to the culture that you're in. Right? So the first one is a business focused, business acumen, strategy, commercial, you know, what's the business outcome that you're trying to do, and making sure that you've got enough of that represented in the project. Okay. Second of all, you need a so that that will give you the precision around where you're headed. Second of all, you need to have the change skills change management or people focus, right. So how you bring people on board to do new things. And third of all you need the project governance and project management infrastructure around you, Okay? So it might be the authorities and sign offs and reports around where you're at, and, and so forth. And all of those things need to be adjusted for the culture. So if you're in a small, for example, innovative, you know, electronics business, you need to know that you can move fast, and you don't need a lot of governance, and there's not a lot of levels of sign off. So you might just have one, you know, simple, very simple project structure. And the CEO might be the sign off point, right. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got a, you've got an organization with 100,000 people, then you're going to need a steering committee, and you're going to need a whole lot of working groups that will have representation from people across the business, because that gives the voice that gives the people who see the color, you know, who understand the customer well, you've got that software developer that I mentioned, you've got whatever the different specializations are, you've got them all working in the right in the right way. And they've been reflected in the in the, in the project structure. So yeah, so those three rows, three skills, the business, the, and when I took my business, I could talk about any of the business technical skills, including technology. And then the second of all that change management and third of all the project management.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, Okay. And three, yeah, yeah,

Lisa Carlin:

Sorry, I actually just one really important thing I forgot to mention, if you don't have all of that in the business, that's when you go externally for expertise, right? And if you don't have anybody who is integrating across those disciplines, and who knows how to bring it all together, yeah.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, so were so out of those three that you mentioned. And you did mention like a change specialist, which I think some people might not necessarily know what that means. So I would be interested in your description of what a change specialist is. And then I have another follow up question.

Lisa Carlin:

Okay. Well change, they're often called change managers or change specialists. And there's, there's broadly two levels of change specialists. So there's, there's somebody who will be an integral member in a complex change, complex program, execution program, where you're needing to really understand the stakeholders and manage them well to get the change implemented. Right. And where there's potentially a lot of risk around disruption to business as usual. So I'll give you an example of a client that took brought me in who'd implemented a new ERP system, so a system that was a new financial management system across the whole business, and it had gone off the rails, and it the customers were not paying their bills as a result. Okay, so they had a massive cashflow crisis, the CFO was hospitalized for double pneumonia, the CEO was working incredibly long hours, the fight, the finance team had no one to manage them, it was an absolute mess. So they brought me in there to to help bring it back, you know, to on track and, and manage the recovery of this and, and fix it up so that they didn't have future issues. And a significant part of the reason why this had gone off the rails is they had no change management. So they didn't really think about how people would use the system. They didn't train the people sufficiently in, in actually setting up the right parameters of the system. And and then there was another whole category of process, so they hadn't thought about the change in the process. So when you describe a change manager, it's not just the people skills that are important, because you're changing people, you're changing what people are doing, you're also changing process. And so change managers will also look at the processes that will change. And they hadn't done their work properly around that, which is why they hadn't spec'd the system or created the right specifications. And that's why the customers were getting wrong invoices, and they weren't paying. So that's one whole type of of change management specialists. I'll just pause there, and then I can talk about the other one in a moment.

Erica D'Eramo:

No, I mean, I so I asked these questions because I know not everyone has come through the ranks of doing a lot of major change management and I recognize that I might even take for granted some of these things that are just part of doing change. Having worked in energy where change management is, like almost religious, right? It's management of change is such an important part of keeping people safe and some of the largest tragedies in the industry history were around change management and so, very, very structured, very, very rigorous, even at the like, whether it's a small tiny change, or it's a big momentous change. And so I think I've noticed when I go into other organizations that haven't done that, they aren't necessarily thinking about that management of change, knock on effect, if we change this, where, where else do we what what do we need to update? What documents do we need to update? What lists? Do we need to update? What, does a vendor need to change, like all the tiny little things that people take for granted. And so just having you elaborate a little bit on who, like, what role that change management specialist plays, I think is really helpful for the audience.

Lisa Carlin:

Sure, and then the other one is, the other type of change resource that can be quite useful as strategic change, change resources. So and there's a there's a big overlap, because there's some outstanding change management people who will be quite strategic. But a number of them will also be quite analytical. And so there's a whole spectrum of those that are, you know, doing, you know, change frameworks and stakeholder analysis and that sort of more change analyst type type work. And then on the other end of the, of the, of the spectrum of change resources are the strategic change managers or strategic change professionals, and a lot of the work that I do as a strategy, I call myself a strategy execution specialist or strategy execution mentor. But of course, that's got a huge overlap. And some people say to me, Oh, you do change management? And in some ways, I'll just go yes, because it's the easiest thing to answer because the nuances of all those, that terminology that I mentioned to you is not is not always as well understood by the people that bring me in. But the the broadest focus of a strategic change person will be if you think of those three skills that I mentioned, business change management, and project management, or project governance, which all sits within a sea of, of the culture, the context of the culture. If you think of the middle of that Venn diagram, and I've got, you know, this, if you Google, people Google my 17 Top Tips, they'll see the diagram and they'll get all the description of it, they, the strategic change person professional, potentially, would be that person that could sit between the middle of that Venn diagram, which is the view that I take, or your program manager that can, or program director who can manage the whole transformation program would be that person that sits in the middle of those three, because the business people who, who generally the business executives, who generally are the ones that would bring in those resources, they are very much going to be focused on that business circle, right, they are going to be thinking about the business as a whole. And so that's why sometimes it's quite useful, especially when it's a very sensitive change. And very complex, like a merger integration is extremely complex, or some particular types of digital transformations, which effect the way every single person in the business operates and goes to the core business processes, those changes are very sensitive, and likely to cause a huge amount of disruption in the business if they're not handled well. So having a program manager or program director, who sits in the middle of that Venn diagram, who can manage the interface and the connections between all the different specializations that is extremely valuable in being able to just get through all the kinds of obstacles that you typically see in these programs.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, to orchestrate, right to have that higher level view

Lisa Carlin:

Exactly.

Erica D'Eramo:

And manage some of the tensions in the trade offs.

Lisa Carlin:

Exactly.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah. So my, you know, I mentioned earlier that I had a follow up, question the piece around as you're watching the change, unfold, and orchestrating this change and measuring, you know, are we on track? How are we doing? How are you taking into account the intangibles or the maybe leading what we would call leading indicators, right, the things that are more closely related to how are people handling this, how the human element, the cultural element of it, because I think that that's where a lot of people struggle, especially around these big cultural transformations. Were really shifting how people are relating to the company, how they're identifying with the entity. So what are some of your thoughts there?

Lisa Carlin:

You ask really interesting questions Erica. And and that really goes to the the way that you have that two way communications and organization and how you listen to the voices of people. And they're there the two main ways that I would recommend in this that situation. One is to have cross functional working groups that are involved in, in the change. And in right from the beginning of actually developing the strategy, it's really useful to have those people involved. So you get a different levels, you get different functions, you get different geographies, you get different types of people. And you bring in that that diversity element. And then, as I set up those groups, on, on the programs that I that I'm involved in, I advise clients how to set them up in a way that busy people who have busy day jobs have an incentive to join them. Right. And in fact, I have a membership called Turbocharge Your Transformation. We were just talking about that in a session yesterday, one of the questions was, how do I get my people in business as usual, that are so busy involved in these working groups, and there are some great ways and tips to to do that. And, and encourage them when they when they you know, see how how valuable it's going to be for their careers and the visibility they get and numerous other incentives that you can can provide. So yeah, so you get them involved, and then you've actually got a, it's very consistent with what they call open strategy or human centered design or design thinking, where you get the involvement of people right up, you know, upfront and you go, very divergent in the views. And then before you converge on what you're actually going to implement. But by doing that, you've got the engagement of the people, and, to some extent, the loyalty and interest of those people right up front. And so you've got a group of people that are involved in the change, and that are listening in the organization. And that will give you that feedback as you go through. Right, so you get that all the way through. So that's the one way, the other way is to, to ask, so to do a targeted survey, and I, you know, we designed these surveys, you got to be really careful about how you ask the questions, so that you know, open ended and they're not biased, etc. And then you can get the feedback. And that is really helpful for social proof as well, because you get some really interesting quotes of what people are saying, and and you can pull those out the the quotes that are for those, you know, there's the early adopters. And then there, the more laggards. So you get the early adopter quotes that are very positive. And I've tried things out and you can use those quotes to motivate others, you can also go back to the people that are the ones that are the most skeptical. And you can offer to do it anonymously, or offer people to include their names, if they want to be followed up with. And if you involve those people who are very skeptical, they can eventually become your biggest advocates as well. So those are some of the ways and I can talk about diagnostics till the cows come home because it's one of my favorite topics. And, yeah, and measuring the behaviors before and after, and all sorts of other things as well. So that's also useful.

Erica D'Eramo:

I think well, that I think that that's just so important, because it's easy to track, budget, milestones, timelines, Gantt charts, like that's, that's the easy stuff, in my opinion. It's the underlying elements of adoption, and how are people feeling? And how are they reacting to this that will determine whether this will be a sustainable change, a lasting change, whether people will be motivated to help implement it, or if they'll passively resist it, that's like, to me, passive resistance is one of the most dangerous elements in change, because it's harder to surface. And it can really, it can really derail progress. So how do you how do you deal with that? Or do you have any thoughts?

Lisa Carlin:

Tell me a little bit more when what you asking.

Erica D'Eramo:

The passive, I think the passive resistance to change, right? So you mentioned the people who are vocal like the laggards, who maybe are the biggest resistors. And they will usually voice their resistance. That resistance that is voiced can be addressed, right? You can say, "Oh, if you're worried about XY and Z, look, this is how we'll handle it. This is how we'll address your concerns how will mitigate the risk." The passive resistance that is like,"I maybe just won't, I maybe just won't read this email. I maybe just won't reply to the email. I'm not actively saying I won't do it. I'm just passively resisting." I think that that is often where change can struggle because, it's harder to address issues that aren't surfaced, right. And the passive resistance is just more difficult to even identify and then address.

Lisa Carlin:

Yes, it definitely is, if you don't know what's going on, and, and you know, that that's where there's so many subtleties around change management, and you can just miss that entirely. If you have the right expertise on the project, as the change will, will pick that up, or a really experienced program manager will tap into what's happening and understand properly. And I'll give you an example. When you have that sort of passive reaction, passive defensive reaction, it usually comes out of a fear of some sort, and you're and you know, one really needs to understand what their fear is. So one of the more unusual ones, I've done a lot of work for partnerships. So like law firms, for example. And lawyers are, you know, really busy, they are really, really busy. Because time is money, you know, they they, so they don't want to spend any time, they want to minimize the time that they spend on non-billable non-client work, right. Because that sort of, yeah, it's less productive, right, for from a revenue point of view. So, and these partners have generally been in the organization for a long time. And they know, a lot of they know, you know, they've had a lot of training, and they've had a lot of experience, and they don't want to spend time going to training sessions. And yet training sessions are what's needed for for new work, new new introductions, new ways of working, you know, innovations, transformational change, you need to, you know, be able to spend that time in those sessions. So you get a lot of that kind of passive resistance. And you've got to understand what what, what is what is the fear of those of those of those partners not wanting to attend those sessions? Well, there's fear that it's going to affect their, their their time, and there's possibly a fear that they are not going to look good, because there's something that they don't know, perhaps. So you get really get underneath the the, what is actually causing that fear. And that that lack of interest. And, you know, because, you know, I know, we've you know, over the years, you can't just set up training sessions and expect the more senior people to attend. Same in a corporate, right, we've got experienced executives, they want their people to go to the training, but they don't want to go, and you need them that you need the partners, you need the executives you need, because they're the ones who are, you know, people will take their cues from those people. And if they disinterested and think it's not worth their time, they won't go. So yeah, we come up with some really imaginative ways to do this, that encourages those senior people to attend. And they have a role in the sessions. And the role is a fairly rehearsed role. So they feel comfortable, and they're not, you know, they're not made out to look like they don't, there's something that they don't know that they should know. And it it respects their position in the in the business, and it maximizes their time. And sometimes it's a cameo, you know, it's a five minute cameo appearance at the beginning of a session that, you know, that kicks it off that anyway. So there are lots of ways to do to work around that passive and lack of interest, if you know what triggers are for people.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, and how to how to notice when the passive resistance, is there, because you usually get a lot of Yes, yes, yes. And then just things are not moving at the way that you expected. And I think when we get into the really, you know, technology changes can elicit some of that fear, certainly, organizational changes can elicit that, certainly, but when we start to look at things that happened to people's identity, or nowadays, there's a lot of talk of like"cancel culture" and all these things that tap into a lot of fears. And that's when I see a lot of the passive resistance surfacing. So I think it's really important for people to A) be on the lookout for it and then B) understand, how do we overcome that? How do we identify it and address it?

Lisa Carlin:

It's really important because it's only getting worse in terms of information overload and, you know, attention economy, it's just it's so hard to get people's attention. And people are busy and there's a lot of distractions, and there's a lot of content out there. So, you know, being too busy, maybe just, you know, it's not necessarily a fear, but it's just, I'm too busy to pay attention and that's why I'm not I'm not involved in or not engaging,

Erica D'Eramo:

Right. It might not be an activity deprioritization and it could even just show up as, as a deprioritization amongst other important things. So, yeah,

Lisa Carlin:

I talk about inertia a lot in my in my work, and how do you overcome inertia. And Erica, you know, it's creating that pull effect rather than push. So I always say, you can't get to the unicorn zone, by pushing harder, you got to create a pull effect, you've got to create an effect where people see the benefit that what's in it for me, and they pull, they are asking to be involved. So we had one project in a industrial business where the executives were just, you know, we had a bit of that inertia, just not interested. You know, and some were interested. So what we did was we created a bit of scarcity. And we said, we are only going to work where the executives who are, you know, are really passionate and excited about this. And they fulfill, these other criteria out because we only have a limited amount of resources, and nobody else is going to get any of it. Well, what do you think happened? We got all this kind of pool effect from everybody else, because they saw, you know, we saw the one part of the organization getting the support and getting all these great results. And they obviously felt then felt, you know, like the laggards. And so they wanted in.

Erica D'Eramo:

I think that that's, that's a really important psychological element of being pushed, and being forced, just takes away people's feeling of agency and choice and autonomy. And so giving that poll where people opt in, they buy in, and they get on board, and they can see that case for change. That's, you know, not just a broad case for change. But how it impacts them directly, I think is hugely important. And I also think that that case for change, cannot, and you've touched on this already, like it cannot be centered around shame, or you know, where you've gone wrong. It's like it has to paint the picture of a better future that people are drawn to, and not just like, don't be bad. But instead, here's how we can be great. And that's where I think the messaging on some of the bigger cultural shifts that we see in organizations, I think they, they have a big task ahead of them to shift away from the, you know, "don't be bad" and shift towards the "let's be great."

Lisa Carlin:

Ya know, exactly, exactly.

Erica D'Eramo:

So where, where do you typically see, organizations, we've, we've covered some of this, but where would you say like you typically see organizations kind of go off the rails or really struggle? Well, if you had to pick maybe one or two.

Lisa Carlin:

So I often see businesses that try and over process everything, and it creates a lot of red tape and bureaucracy. And that comes in because organizations are risk averse. And so they are setting things up to for the lowest common denominator, you know, where there's, they're, they know that there's going to be issues, and then everybody is has sort of subject to the same rules. So when they do these transformational transformations, it's the same thing. It's, you know, very, very tight governance on those projects. Too many levels of of sign offs. You know, I think of one bank that I did some work for where 25 signatures were needed for every major decision. And, you know, and that slows things down incredibly. So it's, it's, it's trying to find ways that will streamline the decision making that that would be, you know, number one, find ways to streamline that decision making. And then the second major part is, and that's a lot of it is the governance the program governance or strategy execution governance, that that's put in. So that's, that's one of the so many. The others is the other one is, it's easy to forget what matters to different people. It's really easy. And what matters to them most. It's easy to to forget what matters to people most. And, you know, what matters to people most is what needs to be addressed.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, yeah. And that ties into what you said in the beginning about having the diverse set of views and the diverse set of voices from the multidisciplinary team to explain what is going to matter to the accountant, what's going to matter to the technologists, to the HR person, to all of those different functions that will then be living in this change and I think tying back to the piece that you mentioned around the process and all the sign offs, that is just as you get into these larger companies, that are risk averse, that is such a fascinating phenomenon that we see. Because A) definitely will take your momentum away, right? Like that'll that'll kill any momentum and excitement. But B) there's this interesting thing that happens when the decision making is distributed amongst so many people, you actually end up with less ownership over the decisions because the 25th person to sign off on that it's like, well, 20 more people have already signed off. It's not going anywhere without 25 signatures. So I'm sure it's fine, right. Like, there's less of that ownership sometimes when that decision making is distributed too broadly. So

Lisa Carlin:

That is so true. So true. Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah.

Lisa Carlin:

And one of those people can just hold it up. That's the prolem. And you know, it might be because they're on on a

Erica D'Eramo:

Oh yeah. days of holiday or vacation or something. And Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Carlin:

So that that, you know that that that whole, you add up each of those little delays on times it by 25. And you've got a massive amount of delay. And this is why these projects, so that's why, you know, I use the word Turbocharge, because a lot of my work over the years has been really trying to figure out how to fast track execution. And there are so many little subtle things that hold things up. And you know, and they all have such a huge compounding effect. Huge. The takeaway would be, make sure you have somebody

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, yeah, yep. Absolutely. Because in some of these projects, there's projects, there's 1000s and 1000s of decisions. And each one has a knock on effect. Yeah. So I appreciate everything you've shared with us today. What would be, there's two things I would love to for us, for you to leave us with today. What would be the key takeaway that somebody is going to retain after their mind wipe happens at the end of this who can see all the different color pieces of your jigsaw episode? One key take away, and then how organizations or puzzle, right? At least the, the more people that can see the individuals can work with you? whole picture rather than just say like red pieces, or blue pieces, or whatever. That is, that is absolutely critical. Seeing the whole Jigsaw is critical. Okay.

Lisa Carlin:

And the second question you asked me is where people can get in touch with me. So if they look at my LinkedIn, Lisa Carlin that's got all the links to everything, come find me and and join me. I also have a free weekly newsletter, which is listed in my About section. It's called Turbocharge Weekly. And I provide all sorts of tips every week to turbocharge this kind of work. So I invite people to join along. There's about 6000, at the moment, 6000 subscribers, and I've got a goal of 10,000. So because I want to get that message out there about successful transformation, because so many are failing. So so that's a second source. And the third is if people want to dive deep into this stuff, my, the Turbocharge Your Transformation, membership, just Google Turbocharge Your Transformation. That is a membership, where we discuss all of these things and dive, and I've got playbooks. And I've got group coaching conversations, it's all around the price of a coffee a day. And that is where you can find other people. If you find, if the listeners out there are finding this stuff interesting, and this is their passion, come and join us because this is the forum, a global forum for discussing these things.

Erica D'Eramo:

Yeah, that sounds like a really engaging group of folks who can learn from each other and learn from you as well. And you mentioned global, so many of our listeners are in the US, but we also have listeners kind of all over the place. So how does that work with your community?

Lisa Carlin:

Yeah, so we have two sessions a month on Zoom. And they timed to perfectly fit in with the Asia and the US audiences. It's a little bit harder for folks in Europe. And as soon as I get more interest from from people in Europe, I'll start another session which fits in with that time zone. Unfortunately, the one thing technology can't solve is time differences. So that's where we're stuck but their meetings on Zoom and they are editable PowerPoint playbooks that people can grab immediately and start using these templates and frameworks in their in their work to turbocharge what they're doing. So please Google Turbocharge Your Transformation, then come track me down.

Erica D'Eramo:

And folks don't even need to Google if they're listening because they can access it in the show notes. So we'll include all the links that you've provided for working with you and accessing some of these resources. And we really appreciate you coming on and sharing some of these best practices, insights and what you've learned over the years.

Lisa Carlin:

Thanks, Erica. I've loved your interesting questions. It's been great talking with you.

Erica D'Eramo:

Absolutely. And for anyone looking for the transcript of this episode and the links that we mentioned. You can find it either in the show notes or on our website at twopiersconsulting.com. And we look forward to seeing you next episode.

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