[00:00:00] A warm welcome to Second Crack — The Leadership Podcast. If you're new to the show, this is where we explore everyday leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you as our listener to self reflect. And if you have joined us before, welcome back. I am Gerrit Pelzer, and I'm joined as usual by my friend and business partner, Martin Aldergård. So Martin, how are you?
[00:00:35] Hello, Gerrit I'm fine. And nice to talk to you today again.
[00:00:38] Nice talking to you again, too. Um, so our world is becoming increasingly complex and fast paced, and therefore it's getting more and more critical to achieve transformations faster in organizations, and that's exactly what we want to focus on today. How leaders can speed up transformations.
[00:00:58] Before we go there a quick reminder. If you like our podcast, please help us out by subscribing on the platform of your choice and by letting others know about Second Crack. We will appreciate it.
[00:01:12] So Martin, you work a lot with companies and help them accelerate transformations. In your experience, what are the key factors to make these transformations successful?
[00:01:24] Yes Gerrit, let's look into that in more detail today. First of all, I have observed three changes compared to the past that impacts how we do transformation successfully. First of all, we see companies embark on much longer and much more complex transformation journeys, for example towards greater sustainability. And, and this complexity means that the traditional way of managing change is becoming way too slow.
[00:01:52] The second thing that is changing is that people are less and less likely to just accept change as they are told. They want to know why, they want to be involved, they want to feel they are listened to, and that they can make a real difference. So we need to change how we engage people in transformation.
[00:02:13] And finally, as I mentioned, the complexity of change is so much greater. The top of the company, the leaders, they cannot possibly know everything to design all the solutions. They need to involve all their people in making this happen. So these three items really setting the scene for how to make transformation successful.
[00:02:39] So when I listened to you, I hear about this longer and complex transformations towards for instance sustainability, a huge topic in context of climate change. And then I picked up I would say tool people aspects. On the one hand that people are not just accepting change top down. Um, but also actually the leaders on the top of the organization they can't simply, they can't have all the answers, right. So if I highlight here the people aspect it sounds to me like that if we want to achieve successful transformation, if we want to speed up transformation it sounds like we need to involve people across the whole organization much more actively than we have done perhaps in traditional approaches. Is that right?
[00:03:32] I really agree with you. I think we can talk about really scaling up how we reach and involve everyone across the organization much faster and with much more involvement than the past. We need to work much more with a two way dialogue, two-way communication, compared to the past.
[00:03:54] Yes and this this two-way dialogue, I mean it reminds me when you say things like we need to reach out to everyone faster. Um, yeah, you can send everybody an email, right? This is the change we're going through. But I think what I always observe in my work is that the key is not just information. It's about getting the buy-in to the change, right. So people can let's say at headquarters a decision is made for a new strategy and then we just roll it out. But then if people have hesitations, they don't understand why it's done, they were not heard, um, it's not working, right. So, so how can we, how should I say, how can we get a better buy-in to this change and transformation?
[00:04:40] Gerrit buy-in is so important and that people accept change, and of course this is a big part. But I think we need to aim even higher. We need to move beyond buy-in. We need to get ownership. That means that people know what is to change. They understand their role and they can figure out based on their own role, what is the best way to contribute towards the overall direction. And this is certainly, as you said, it's certainly not achieved with the traditional one-way communication top-down. And again, this means that we need to create two way dialogue. For a person to take ownership of a job they really need, people need to understand, but they also need to feel heard, they need to feel understood. So we need to create these opportunities at scale across the organization where people can learn about the change, where they can share their opinions and their ideas, where they can ask question to management and where they can co-create solutions. And I think this whole process is what ultimately creates a sense of ownership across the organization.
[00:05:58] Yeah, I hear you but is it really I mean, is it really necessary or I could also rephrase that, is it actually possible to involve everyone? I mean there's a difference whether you have a small company with 30 employees or if you have a global organization with a, with a couple of thousand.
[00:06:18] Yeah. This is also a great question. I think actually as a principle it is necessary to involve. Coming from the point that we have recruited good people across the organization, and we cannot afford not to use all their full potential to drive the transformation. But then of course, like you mentioned, there might be, there might be constraints in term of when and how fast we can involve everybody. But the goal needs to be, I believe, everybody needs to be on the bus together and have a clear role to contribute.
[00:06:59] Yeah. So when I hear this, isn't it isn't that a contradiction. So on one hand, we want to make the transformation faster. And now you come and tell me we need to involve everyone. And I'm coming back to this example. I worked in an organization where the numbers changed, right, but we have that say around 10,000 employees worldwide. It sounds like this involving everybody it just makes it longer and as a huge effort.
[00:07:30] Yeah, I think with the traditional approaches, it is almost impossible because we have so many silos, like communication and involvement is blocked because of the hierarchy, because of the silos between different functions and different business units. And the information sharing becomes less transparent. There is a lot of delays messages getting lost or misinterpreted in the hierarchy up and down the hierarchy. So. You're totally right. I think with the traditional approaches, this will take a huge effort. But you know there's really good news and this is what we want to share a lot today and also sharing a case on this.
[00:08:13] If we now can use the new tools, the new tools that are are available to us, that that makes it possible for us to involve many people in dialogue across the organization at scale. This means these new tools that are for instance with artificial intelligence, they allow us to, to as employees not only received one way information passively, but actively participating in shaping and co-creating change. And these new tools they make for much faster, more transparent communication between the top and the front line across all the different silos in the organization.
[00:08:52] This, this actually reminds me when I reflect on it of a real life example of Decathlon, the French sports company. They did something amazing a couple of years back. They wanted to create a new vision and they involved literary everyone. So they had it on a website and not only their employees could contribute. So they asked basically the whole world to contribute to, to their vision. So that was an amazing example, but I think what you do in your work goes far, or lets say is a very different approach, right, you're going to just have a website and everybody can, can comment. Uh, you mentioned something about, uh, AI could you elaborate on this and maybe talk about some practical examples.
[00:09:39] I, I like to use a case and in this case the new vision and the new strategy had been defined by limited involvement of all the employee base. But even in the then implementation of the new , that is where we then really need to scale up the involvement. But let me take a step back. The background I've been working with a company that really urgently needs to transform, towards a greater sustainability. Without the real drastic change this company with 5,000 employees is at a real risk of going out of business sooner or later.
[00:10:24] So as I mentioned, they have developed a new vision towards greater sustainability and a strategy that's really it's refocusing everything they do towards sustainability. And this, of course that has really far reaching implications into every part of their organization and they operate across eight countries. So involving all employees becomes a top priority and I was working with them for two years as the lead consultant on engaging and involving employees in this new vision and strategy.
[00:11:02] I think to zoom in from this even I want to zoom in on what happened in one country of this company. And in this particular country, they have a lot of operators and they are working in the natural resources industry, and their part of the business would be particularly hard hit if this transformation fails. So we knew that naturally there was a lot of unspoken questions in among operators in this country. And of course, supervisors and managers they were asking, uh, unspoken questions, like how about our future? And we will, the head office invest in us and will we have a job? So this, this was a real challenge.
[00:11:49] When, when, when I hear these questions, they resonate so well with me because I also worked for quite some time in the corporate world and been through many changes. And the questions that you pointed out, how about the future will, will we still have a job, are really the, the questions that are on people's mind. And this has another effect that I would say is another aspect of accelerating transformation, or maybe not just accelerating, but as soon as let's say the rumors spread, something is going to happen. Um, the, the, the, the, the company has a new strategy or is reorganizing or whatever. So it's a bit like people feel there might be on a sinking ship and what you want to avoid is that in this phase the best people, is typically the best people, they might jump ship, right. Because they, they know they have chances elsewhere. So that is I think another aspect of accelerating the process and getting the buy in and the ownership right.
[00:12:52] To, to quickly scale up and get it out there and start to engage and involve with everybody, without perhaps having all the . We can't wait until we have the clear answers because as you said, rumors are starting and the best people they will not wait until it's too late. So, so yeah, this is your spot on here Gerrit.
[00:13:16] And what we actually did in this case to really scale up, to speed-up how fast we could reach out and involve everyone, we use a new digital tool called Howspace. And this tool gives us this unique ability to reach out and involve people at scale. So we use Howspace where people could access to explore and discuss what is changing, why are we changing, where are we heading. And with this tool we can use the artificial intelligence to quickly summarize and really tap into and understand the inputs from thousands of employees without manual work. Imagine how this would be done in the past. With emails and surveys and lots of data to process. But with the modern AI technology, we can very quickly tap into the sentiment. We can understand what different departments what's on their mind, what they're thinking. And finally, we also created this one center of information and communication we're all the two way dialogue was placed. So there, there was a sense of high transparency and management could really easily get a sense of what was happening and get directly involved in these conversations. So it just created a very high level of transparency and open communication. And we know that is the driver of buy-in and eventually people taking ownership of making change happen.
[00:14:52] Yeah. I see this with, uh, this one center of information, when I think of the, uh, traditional approach to changes that I've been through, you have this different change agents, right, then they communicate with groups and it's all nice. But how do you extract all this, how do you compile this? And I see how this one center it's almost like the pilot on the flight deck right, who has all the information at a glance.
[00:15:18] And with the AI, how does it work? Is that like, it extracts certain themes from the comments that people make. Like almost, I mean, it's maybe not the right term, but like a word clouds that you can see what are the focus themes that come up again, or how does it works?
[00:15:37] This can be designed in so many different ways, and we used it throughout this program for, for many different dialogues, many different conversations. But basically you're right. This AI helps us to summarize, or condense, or pick out the sentiments on what people are talking about, what people are writing. And also the AI of course it helps to keep conversations active because the AI will remind people to reply to answer. And it becomes it, it builds on this social network kind of interactivity that people are already used to.
[00:16:19] How did people react to this new approach?
[00:16:21] Yes we were a little bit concerned from the beginning because in this country it doesn't look very good. So we were concerned that they might be very negative, perhaps cynical and not the... ,
[00:16:34] Sorry the the business situation was particularly bad?.
[00:16:37] Yes, and uh, but on the contrary, people reacted very positively and with a lots and lots of passion. When we looking into what they answer, what they sharing, what they say, they showed real concern for the challenges, but they are also really optimistic and showing very great motivation wanting to be part of this journey towards a more sustainable business.
[00:17:03] And actually we have some statistics. 95% of operators were actively involved over a longer time in this program, right, 95%. And these are operator level and supervisor level on shift, they've working on shifts, and they still choose to be actively involved.
[00:17:24] Wow. I mean, that is really impressive, right. I'm just thinking of political elections, never get 95% participation. So, and, and you said in a way it was, um, surprising, right? So the people were not pessimistic or even cynical, and it actually shows and I think from my experience that is often underestimated also by leaders, how much people actually want to be involved. So we talk about a lot about motivation and there are these motivational aspects, to contributing to something, to be part of something bigger than just oneself and, and achievement. Right. So, so, uh, yeah, I'm repeating myself here. It demonstrates how much people want to be involved.
[00:18:12] Yeah. And we got the very clear feedback. And something as simple as thank you for, uh, for asking us these questions. Thank you for giving us the opportunity. And we can see on the questions they are challenging questions there, but they are sincere and they are well-intended. And then people really clearly wanted transparency. They wanted to be in the dialogue, not only with their managers, but also across sites with their peers because they worked on different sites. They never had a chance to talk about the future of their business with other colleagues.
[00:18:49] But can I, can I interrupt you right here? Because, um, so you're, you're doing this with a couple of hundred people and doesn't this then lead to a situation where people say their opinion, let's say what they wish the organization would do, what they need. But then realistically, I doubt that all these expectations can be met. So in other words, doesn't this then lead to more frustration? So I'm the employee, I am asked my opinion, I give management my opinion, and then it's ignored.
[00:19:25] I think this actually also reflects some of the concerns of management. Isn't it better that we don't listen so much because we might not have the answers, or we might raise expectations that we cannot fulfill. So, so this is a really valid concern. But again, in practice, what we noticed on the contrary. If people are given the chance to understand, if we give them a time and listen to them so that they feel listened to. In my experience, they don't expect that every opinion or every expectations from them, that management will do something about it.
[00:20:05] And this reminds me again, of motivational theory. There are situations that, that are simply bad, bad, it can't be changed. But then if people have the feeling, my boss, my bosses, the leadership in general, they listened to me, they know, and let's say maybe they have empathy for the situation I am in, that is a motivational aspect in itself. So even when I know the situation doesn't change, it helps if I feel listened to. So that, that makes perfect sense to me.
[00:20:39] And of course in this case I think, the strategy and the vision aims much further. Of course they will really change and challenge the status quo. But the, there was no negative, um, expectations raised by employees or, or any concerns raised by employees in terms of, of how are you going to, to meet all our opinions.
[00:21:07] But there is a few things. So, so over all this, this worked very, very well. We create a lot of momentum and, and the local management team here, they really positively impressed by all their people. Because they perhaps have never asked these kinds of questions and perhaps had, they underestimated like you said as well, how much people care about the business.
[00:21:37] But there, there is of course, a few things that we can learn, and I wanted to focus in here on the leader role. What is the leader role when we want to speed up the transformation, especially by involving people at scale. So my learning point from this is we need to spend much more time to discuss with leaders and help the leaders to think about what does this higher level of involvement, this higher level, this higher speed and communication, this higher level of transparency, what would that mean to us as leaders? How will that make us feel and how should we handle that?
[00:22:23] And this learning point comes from this con what I learned in this country, as I mentioned this, the management team they were very happy with the outcomes, and they always want more involvement, they want more ownership. But what I observed is when they realized the extent, the level, how much involvement they actually got, how much people wanted to be heard, how many questions they had, how transparent people actually wanted it to be. I noticed a hesitation in the management team, they started to slow down. And for instance, one example is, we really had to fight to get a Q&A session, an open Q&A session where actually in the end management preferred to, OK give me the questions, let us review those questions, formulate the answers and communicate those answers in a more traditional way.
[00:23:20] So here I saw a little bit of a contradiction. On one side they really wanted speed, involvement, transparency, but they also suddenly starting to, to wanting to slow down a little bit.
[00:23:36] So the, the management, the leadership wanted to slow down or?
[00:23:40] Yes.
[00:23:41] Okay. And why do you think that is?
[00:23:44] I think they, for instance, they might have had these concerns about, what if we cannot answer the questions, or what if we don't know what questions will come up? They might feel a little bit a sense of losing control because they are not they not knowing exactly what's going to happen in this Q&A sessions.
[00:24:10] Okay.
[00:24:10] And from this, this is where I learned perhaps we need to help leaders to deal with this before we start this kind of program.
[00:24:23] I'm not sure if now is already a time to wrap up, but if, if it could wrap up here, I think a few things really stand out for me. So when we talk about how can leaders speed up transformation then one key aspect is not only involving people, but as you said so nicely Martin, involving people at scale. So that helps then to get people involved, get their buy-in. And ultimately I think he used this word take ownership of the change. So it's not, not only the, let's say the top management of the organization driving the . The whole organizations, all the individuals are driving the change and I can visualize the momentum, this, this creates.
[00:25:07] Then the second aspect that I picked up from you is the use of tools. And I want maybe add a personal comment here. I'm not a big fan of, uh, an app or a digital tool or AI as the solution to everything. I don't know. On the contrary, I think we need actually more human interaction and less digital . But I can see how you say, you mentioned Howspace, um, how this makes it possible to involve people in ways that were simply not possible in the past. So when I think about some change that I had to lead or was involved in maybe 15 years back, we simply didn't have these tools and then it would have really prolonged the process.
[00:25:54] Uh, but then, and I think for our topics, there is maybe one of the most important aspects. It's also the leaders who need to be mentally prepared for a different approach, right. It's about what's considering what what's, what's my mindset as a leader. And do I need to change this in order to be effective in this transformational process? And I realize I, I go into my coaching mode and asking questions. So. Uh, for people who are new to our podcast, we typically end each episode with some reflection questions, because we believe that in the end, our simplified how to advise does not help people in the end you need to find the ideal solution for yourself. And that is often found through asking yourself some questions. Martin. I don't know if you want to add anything else or could we, could we come to some suggestions for reflection questions?
[00:26:56] I think you had a very nice wrap up with these three key points. And as a leader now to reflect if you're considering how to speed up transformation in your organization, to me, a beginning point would be then to reflect on: What degree of control are you prepared to, so to say 'give up' in order to speed up the transformation. Because if you maintain too strong control, if you want to be in charge of everything, you're going to be the bottleneck of the speed that the organization can change it. So what degree of control are you prepared to give up. And think about how would that make you feel? It might make you feel very uncomfortable, uncertain. It might even make you feel less competent or does it make you feel like a loss of power or a loss of status, and do you really feel how much could you trust your team or would you need to stay in control? So this is, I think a fundamental question for leaders to reflect on, to set up and speed up transforming.
[00:28:12] And, and I can see how all these questions, well, how, how will I feel in this situation? Uh, anticipate how it will go and then when I can anticipate how it will look like I can prepare myself better today. Wonderful. Yeah. I think these, these are really useful questions. Is there anything else that you want to add?
[00:28:35] Thank you Gerrit. I think we had a great conversation.
[00:28:38] Thank you Martin and this concludes our episode today on how leaders can speed up transformations during times that are increasingly complex and fast paced.
[00:28:49] And once again, if you enjoy our show, please subscribe and let others know about Second Crack. And if you leave a positive comment or rating, we will certainly appreciate it.
More info about our work is also on our website: that's secondcrackleadership.com