Lead In 30 Podcast

What's Your Strategy to Lead Through All This Change?

• Russ Hill

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Your brain hates and loves change. It despises it yet craves it at the same time. If it's true for your brain then it's true for all your employees too. So, as the rate of change increases in the world around us - think tariffs, think AI, think market swings, think customer demands, think hybrid work - have you stopped to consider what your strategy is for leading through change? 

Here's some of what Lone Rock Leadership co-founder Russ Hill dives into in this jam-packed episode:

• Status quo bias makes us perceive changes as threats, triggering unconscious resistance
• Novelty seeking drives our desire for innovation, new experiences, and fresh approaches
• The modern workplace is transforming at unprecedented speed, requiring greater adaptability
• Leaders must position themselves on the past-present-future continuum based on their role
• Senior executives need to operate 6-12 months ahead while building teams that handle present operations
• Effective change leadership acknowledges both our resistance to change and desire for innovation
• Organizations moving too slowly risk irrelevance while those changing too frequently create fatigue
• Building strong teams enables leaders to focus on future strategy rather than present operations

In our next episode, we'll explore the tactical aspects of leading people through the three stages of organizational change.


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About the podcast:
The Lead In 30 Podcast with Russ Hill is for leaders of teams who want to grow and accelerate their results. In each episode, Russ Hill shares what he's learned consulting executives. Subscribe to get two new episodes every week. To connect with Russ message him on LinkedIn!



Speaker 1:

What is your strategy, what's your game plan? How do you think about how to manage change as a leader, because you've got these two conflicting human desires and you've got a world that's rotating, changing faster than ever. Do you have a game plan for it? Let's talk about it.

Speaker 2:

This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes.

Speaker 1:

We don't even realize that we do it, and yet it constantly happens. Your brain's doing it, my brain's doing it, everybody on your team, their minds are engaged in this as well. Let me give you the scenario. So I walk in, I walk into the office yeah, I know, this is like a 1985 story, because there's like an office and we go to it. I'm just playing with you. I think that, like maybe 30 years from now, that's how we'll describe it Like. Do you remember the time when there were like these office buildings and people went and worked? Like it's so interesting to think about the future, isn't it? Anyway, in this hybrid day and age and I know there are many of you who, every day, you're still in the office or you work in an environment a hospital, restaurant, a factory, whatever it might be and you're there every day and everybody needs to be but you're the exception, not the rule the vast majority of people are now in this hybrid environment.

Speaker 1:

My son, who's graduating from college in just a matter of days he got a job at a big healthcare company in the state where he's graduating from, and when he went to work for the first time in the last few days, they gave him his office computer and then they gave him an entire kit, if you will, all of this equipment for home like lights and cameras and different switchers for whatever, and multiple. I think he's got like two or three monitors at least I think he said three and all. Like he's got all this, that, that standard now at that company, this, this, this packet, if you will, or this equipment, this gear for at home, like that that. There's nobody who got that in 2018. Okay, well, maybe like a few people at Google and a few high tech companies, but that was largely unheard of. And yet now here's my um, here's my son going out into the business world and that's that's his very first job, first job, you know, career wise after college, and that's that's what they do. Because he's he's hybrid he's in the office a few days a week and then he's at home a few days a week. And, by the way, that was critically important to him at his age, by the way, um, think about that too. That's so unique to him, isn't not even, like everybody, his age. That's just what they want. It's what they expect.

Speaker 1:

You're dealing with it, right, you? You know what I'm talking about. If you recruit or interview or hire people. I don't again, I don't care the industry you're. You're sensing that anyway.

Speaker 1:

Um, so let's, let's say I walk into the office and I notice that some things are different, like maybe somebody's the furniture has been moved around, maybe somebody's office isn't where it was, like their nameplate is moved, or maybe their stuff is gone. What does my brain, what does your brain do in that moment? They call that status quo bias. They call that fight or flight, right. They call that threat detection, and so I want to start with that.

Speaker 1:

And then I want to talk about how that it conflicts with our desire for change. And then we're going to spend some time talking about how are you managing this? Like, what's your game plan for making sure that you're taking your organization into the future? You're innovating, you're forward looking, forward, forward thinking. You're not stuck in the present and and you're you're helping the organization and maybe the leaders who report into you manage through change effectively. They call this agility, adaptability, right? It's one of the most in demand leadership development skills right now, according to all the research. Why? Because the world's changing like at an insane pace. So do you have the ability? Do I have the ability? Have we trained the leaders in our organization to manage change, to lead through change? That's what we're talking about in this episode. Welcome in to the Lead in 30 podcast. In less than 30 minutes, we'll give you a framework, a model, an idea, best practices story, something to think. That's what we're talking about in this episode. Welcome in to the lead in 30 podcast. In less than 30 minutes, we'll give you a framework, a model, an idea, best practices story, something to think about as you work to strengthen your ability to lead others. Nothing has more impact in your life on your ability to earn income, to scale results, to be happy, to lead others. All these things Then your your ability to lead right. It affects everything in life, and so I'm glad that you're here listening to a podcast about leadership development.

Speaker 1:

I hope that you've got a multifaceted approach to try to develop yourself as a leader. I hope you're paying to go to mastermind groups. I hope you're in networking groups. I hope you're going to conferences. I hope you're logging in and buying courses. I hope you've got a coach or a consultant or somebody that you're tapping into, challenges your thinking and ask lots of questions. I hope that you're you're. You've got a mentor. I hope you've got people that you, you connect with, that are helping you think differently. If you do, your growth curve is steep and that's awesome. Well, if you actually pursue or implement some of what they share with you.

Speaker 1:

If you want to find out more about our firm, go to loanrockio. There's a lead in 30 course. It's the foundational course, the first one that we offered in the leadership development space, which is all about the three core fundamental capabilities of a leader who scales, what did they do and what what's most required. We boiled it down to three things and uh, it's in that. It's in that lead in 30 course at lone rockio. We only offer it for for organizations. You can't just take it on your own. You've got a, you've got to buy it for 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 managers at your organization to be able to go through it. And our book, our book on uh that's centered around that course because it's a foundation of our executive consulting company as well.

Speaker 1:

That book is coming out this year. It is the first draft, is done, it's written, it's all there. I think it's 37,000 words, something like that. We've been working on it for three years. Yeah, three years. We've had a team of different writers. We've got a head ghostwriter on it now, who's phenomenal, and I am so excited for you to have access to that book. It's at a whole. It's at a whole different level than anything we've ever done before. It's our fourth book and it's by far going to be this one. You all, we wanted it to be just timeless, to be, um, something that ages well, that people can go back to 20 years from now, and and and the principles will apply. And we're we're just so, so excited about it. So more on that to come soon.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so change. Let's talk about change, and there's so much that we could say about it. The the. The reason that I want to talk about this is a couple different reasons. Number one the world that we live in, the marketplace that we operate in, the society around us, the workforce that we lead, the customers that we serve. The amount of change happening, the amount of change demanded, the amount of agility required is off the charts. It's not even close. It's not even close to what we thought it was in 2019. Not like we thought. We thought. We thought the world was changing quickly in 2018 and 2017. Right, we thought, man, you got to have agility. You got to be adaptable, you got to be able to lead through. We didn't even know the half of it.

Speaker 1:

I mean, when you talk about what I was talking about just a minute ago, the hybrid, all the changes in the workplace, then you think about customers, then you think about tariffs, then you think about AI, then you think about, I mean, all of these things together, you mix them in a bowl and you're like holy crap, there's a lot, there's a lot of variables coming at us as leaders today. And so if you're part of an organization that moves like it's in a freaking school zone, barely creeping a lot like you are gonna be left in the dust. Do you have to like clean your glasses off a bunch because they're just covered in dust, left by your competitors and your customers in the market that are just zooming by you? You can't do that. You can't be that leader who's getting left behind and yet, at the same time, you can't be the leader. That's just it's flavor of the month, that it's a million different things and we're just constantly we're doing this org reshuffle and that change and that thing, and and now you got change fatigue inside your organization, because not only are so many things happening out there but we like we can't. We can't pick a strategy in here. We're constantly just it looks like we got no strategic ability whatsoever. So you don't want to be that leader? Oh my gosh, have I worked for that leader before? Have I consulted that leader before? So much so, both of them the extreme. We don't want to be at the end of that continuum.

Speaker 1:

On either side, like addicted to change I constantly mix it up. Every day is something different or on the other end, that's like all right, walking into the academic library where it's quiet and we move at a snail's pace, right? So I'm going to give you a. There's just way more than I could fit in 30 minutes in this episode. We've created a whole course. This is our. You know I told you in the last episode that we launched three new courses this year and the last few months we went from lead in 30, which has been the only course that's, you know, available off the shelf. Basically, again, just to reset. So everybody's aware.

Speaker 1:

You know we took everything we've been doing with executives at these large fortune 500 companies for the last 20 years and we looked at what are the main core models and how can we commoditize and make them available, put them on a shelf that people can just buy, take it up to the cash register and buy, and that can be taught by HR people or L&D people or trainers inside companies? How can we create that curriculum? And so the very first thing we did was we created Lead in 30. And now tens of thousands of people have been through it. It's been around for five, four years. I got to think through that. I think four or five years now a long time in today's day and age and and it's phenomenal and it's amazing and the impact is just on real. We recently added some videos to uh, to loan rockio, our website, where we've got several leaders talking about, um, the impact of lead in 30, putting managers through that, that training, what, what impact it's had, and they're from numerous different industries, different size companies, and so we've we've uploaded those to the website If you ever want to watch those or have need to show somebody else that. So we've had that course. Now we've added three more and the the, the the kind of leading one.

Speaker 1:

It all depends on what your organization needs. One's on decision making and how that slows organizations down. They don't have a framework. Another one's what we call power in 30, which is all about this feeling of powerlessness. There's nothing that's more suffocating, that's more isolating, that's more just deflating that feeling powerless in any relationship, in any situation, in any organization, in any job, and yet, at the end of the day, it is a decision. Whoa, really, it's not done to you what it's counterintuitive? Yeah, we teach that in Power in 30.

Speaker 1:

And then this one that I'm talking about today, we call it Adapt in 30. In fact, if you go to our website and you look, it's listed there. There's a whole page now where you can read about Adapt in 30, everything I'm going to be talking about in this. So we've commoditized it now, we've got it on the shelf and we offer it as training to companies. So enough about that, but let's talk about, let's talk about change. And so first I'm going to talk about where gosh there's so many things I want to say. I'm going to talk about where your mindset needs to be Okay, and then I'm going to talk about what's going on in the people that you lead, what's going on in their head and why, and what you need to do about it in order to help them lean into the future, all right. So, um for you and I've talked about this before as far as past, present, future, right.

Speaker 1:

If I had to draw a continuum on figure that I'm in, just visualize this with me. I walk up to a, a whiteboard or a flip chart in your office or in the conference room and I write three words on it. On the left side, I write past, in the middle, I write present, on the right, I write future, past on the left, present in the middle of the flip chart, whiteboard, future on the right. And then I draw this arrow underneath it, this line, and then I ask where's your organization? Is it stuck in the past?

Speaker 1:

So many of your organizations are stuck in the past. Why? I'm going to get into that in a minute. Why that exists. It's human nature. Okay, the problem is your employees go there, but your customers move into the future.

Speaker 1:

You see the conflict, you see the challenge, you see the business, the strategic challenge for organizations, because that's why leaders who aren't, who don't have a game plan for managing leading through change, suck. It's why they drag organizations down, that's why they lose market share. And they're human and they don't know what to do. Well, they've never been trained, they don't, they've never been educated on this. They're doing the best they can. So you got to help them, you got to give them a framework, you got to give them these concepts.

Speaker 1:

So, past, present, future, where are we as an organization? So many are stuck in the past. And then you've got managers. In fact, if I had, if I gave you 10 direct reports of names, maybe closer to the present, you write four or five names and then over there, more into the future, you'd probably write two or three names innovators, disruptors, visionaries, people who are really forward thinkers on your team. You've got one or two, a couple maybe, but most of your people are in present or in the past. That's a problem.

Speaker 1:

And then let's talk about where you are. Where are you? Are you in an organization where you're stuck managing all of the things of today? And, by the way, if you're the factory floor supervisor, that's exactly where we want you. By the way, if you're the shift manager of the restaurant, that's exactly where we want you. We want you thinking only about the present. We need you here and now and owning this space. Your job is to be right here in the present, not in the past, because if you're stuck going, well, the way we used to run this restaurant, okay, well, that's really good, but the world changed seven times since since you said that. You know what I mean. Like we've spot, the globe has spot like five times that the rate it's changing right now. So I need you in the future or, excuse me, I need you. I need you in the present. I need you focused here and now rather than focused on the past.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we need some people, depending on where you're at on the org chart, depending on your organization in the present, but many of you who listen to this podcast, you're, you're in a position in your organization or a place in your career where, if you want to advance the most senior executives in our organizations on that continuum, they cannot succeed if they're in the present period. End of episode. Right, so if your organization struggling and I promise you, one of the challenges that most likely exist is you've got a CEO, you've got a uh an owner, you've got an executive team that lives so close to the present and not enough into the future that our revenue is not growing, our market share is not growing, our innovation and products and all that they aren't changing in order to keep up with the market. Why? Because you have leaders at the top of the org chart who are too in the middle of that continuum, the top of the org chart, who are two in the middle of that continuum. And if that's and and your ability to climb the org chart like for me, you guys at leading our firm I cannot be stuck in the present.

Speaker 1:

I've got to be aware of it. But I've got to be taking our firm into the future. I've got to be thinking about, at a minimum, three to six months from now, and I really need to be right now, at the time this episode is coming out, thinking about 2026. What's really going to drive our revenue? What are our customers going to want then? What are the market trends? Where's the industry going? What are we going to succeed? What? You know? I'm six to 12 months ahead of the organization where I live mentally on a daily basis. Now, I don't live 24 hours a day there, but I spend time there and, and, and, and, and. Then I spend a few hours in the present. You have to write what's going on today. What do I need to be aware of? What are a couple of things I need to fix.

Speaker 1:

But the way that you get yourself, free yourself up to think about the future is by building the team around you. That's the secret, that's the unlock. If you aren't forward thinking enough, it's because you don't have the right people with the right capabilities, the right speed or the right amount of buy-in that they're creating for you to delegate decisions to them, and so you can't it can't free you up. This was so. I could tell so many stories now, but I got to do this in under 30 minutes. Like this was critical to the turnarounds in the media industry that I led, that our team led. This was the unlock. This is what occurred to me and I went oh my gosh, I'm stuck in the present. So I had to literally turn off the radio. I couldn't listen to the products that we were producing, I couldn't listen to the shows. I had to think about the future anyway, and the only way I could do that is building up the leadership team around me that then managed the present I needed in terms of for you all. I needed the supervisor managing the front of the house in the restaurant. Well, so I could be in the back of the house thinking about tomorrow or next week sales or the products that we needed to get in. You know what I mean. I'm trying to put it in terms that some of you would understand. Okay, so that's you. Now let's talk about the dynamics on your team.

Speaker 1:

Status quo bias what is that? Right? These are terms that are used in the field of psychology. They're real, they're in all the academic whatever. Status quo bias what does that mean? It means that our brains, it's just the way we are as humans, and if you want to get into the depths of it, you can get into the depths of it. Go find chat, gpt or grok or something, and just dig into status quo bias. You'll find amazing stuff around it. Go find chat, gpt or grok or something, and just dig into status quo bias. You'll find amazing stuff around it. If you're super interested in learning more about that here, here's the main point of it, though.

Speaker 1:

We, we as humans, we, when we came back to the cave from going out and and and capturing the beast, we wanted everything at the cave to look the same. Why? Because if it wasn't in place, then we thought oh no, a dragon is nearby. Oh no, some creature, uh uh, snuck in here and might, might threaten us. Oh no, there's another tribe like ours nearby that's watching us, or whatever. Somebody was here. How would you feel? You walk into your house, you open the garage door, you pull in, you walk in and things aren't where they were when you left the house.

Speaker 1:

What do you feel? What goes through your mind? That is status quo bias. We have a bias and everyone on your team has that bias. They don't choose it, they don't think about it, they're just wired that way. I want everyone in the same chair today as they were yesterday. I want every policy to be the same as it was yesterday. I want every policy to be the same as it was yesterday. I want every customer to behave the same way today that they did yesterday. I want the weather the same. I want the commute the same. I want everything the same Status quo bias. Why are our brains wired that way? Lots of reasons. I've gotten to some about the caveman right Evolution. Another reason is threat detection. When our brain senses change, when something's different, we feel threatened. We don't choose to feel threatened. It's not conscious, it just happens.

Speaker 1:

You change a policy and I'm concerned now that my customers aren't going to buy the way they did before you change a policy. And I'm concerned now that my customers aren't going to buy the way they did before you change a policy. I'm concerned Some of my team members are going to be upset. They might even quit over it. You change a policy, I think, oh no, how am I going to manage that? That's going to require an hour more of my day or my week. I am already feeling totally stretched. I'm not sure what to do about it. I immediately go into loss aversion. I don't think about the gain that could create for our company. I don't think about how that could make my life better. I don't think about why that might be a good thing. I am wired as a human being to think about worst case scenario, the threat that this could cause.

Speaker 1:

I walk into the conference room. There's a new person there. I've never met her. She's a threat instantly. Until she smiles, until she stands up and comes over and shakes my hand or gives me a hug or whatever, or says says hey, russ, how are you? It's so nice to meet you. I've heard so many good things about you. Instantly my shoulders drop a little, my breathing relaxes, I smile and I go. Good, she knows I'm amazing. She's not a threat, I think. Yet I'm going to kind of watch her over the next 20 minutes in this meeting to see if she was get play in me or she really meant.

Speaker 1:

You do this all the time. People around you do this all the time. It's loss, aversion, threat detection, status quo bias. Now let's go to the other thing that's going on in our minds and these things coexist, you all, and it's crazy that they coexist in the human brain. We so. We have. We have everything I just talked about. Let's just call that status quo bias. It covers everything I just said. We're going to use that term more broadly than it's defined to cover all of that now at the same time.

Speaker 1:

How do you feel if you've got an iphone that's four years old? How do you feel if you go into your closet and you really haven't shopped for anything new in three or four years? How do you feel if you go out to get into your truck or your car or whatever it is, and it's a 2015. How do you feel if your house was built in 1985? How do you feel if the furniture sitting in your family room is 12 years old? You crave change.

Speaker 1:

You crave, novelty, the term that they use in the field of psychology. Now aren't you glad that I study all this crap so you don't have to. But the reason I study it, the reason I dig into this, is because I see it all the time. I've seen it over and over and over and over and over again. I see the emotion around it in organizations. I see the leaders struggling with it. I see the companies that are thriving in it. I see the companies that suck because they're moving so slow or that are challenged. Right, the companies don't suck, but they're sucking wind, they're behind the times and you're cheering for them and yet they're struggling. So the psychological term is novelty seeking. Look it up, chat, gpt, whatever. Novelty seeking. It means we have a strong desire for new experience, stimuli or trends. Another term for it is that we change crave.

Speaker 1:

So, as your customers, they want, they want a new product, they want packaging different, like put the word new on your packaging, put your word. I remember we had this place down the street from us when we lived in Utah. It was a new China buffet, like the word new was like part of the permanent sign. I laughed every time I went by. I'm like the new. Well, it was new when they opened, but not exactly new. I don't know if the sign still worked right.

Speaker 1:

New, so new and improved, right. How often do you see that in the grocery store, the newest product, whatever, new design, new, this extra, that. So we, we desire that. And so your customers crave newness. Your employees, they, they. They don't again, they don't even think about this. Your team members, they don't. They. At the same time, they want everything in the same place. They have this innate, subconscious desire for newness, for us to be innovative, cutting edge into the future, trying new things, and so they don't even realize the contradiction this is.

Speaker 1:

And so how the crap am I supposed to lead through this? Because it is iron. Newness and whatever, and the board wants that, and the investors want that, the shareholders want it, the customers want us to innovate and change whatever. And yet I got the all the. And my people want, like I talked in the last episode, you don't leave the same leader in the chair for five, 15, 10 years, right? Your, your organization is being held back by that, and that's all about this innovation and attraction to the new and the novel that's wired into us. And so, at the same time. We have that, and yet we have the status quo buys. So how the crap do I manage through that? As a manager Number one, you're aware of it.

Speaker 1:

So if I was training managers, if I had your team, we'd talk about that continuum. If I had your team, we'd talk about that continuum past, present, future. We'd talk about where we are, where the person in your seat needed to be, who in the room or who on the team was pulling us into the future. I'd zero in on that person. If that was you, we'd spend a lot of time talking about that, leading us into the future. What does it look like? Have you defined it? What forces are you up against? Why are you, why do you need to take us there? All of that.

Speaker 1:

And then, and then we talk about these dynamics, status quo bias and and this change crave. And then we would talk about disruption, the power of disruption, and how it just causes everyone's brain to freak out because of status quo bias, and yet how it's a good thing because of change crave or this novelty seeking. And then we talk about how, and maybe I'll maybe I'll get into this in the next episode. Uh, in fact, yeah, let's do two episodes on this. There's just too much to talk about. You all and I. I got to shut up because we're at 30 minutes and because I want to talk about these three stages that you need to lead people through as it pertains to change. So disruption happens and you set off all the status quo alarms and yet it's good because of the change crave or novelty seeking, and because the market and your customers demand novelty, newness, innovation. So how do I lead people through that?

Speaker 1:

Let's dive into the tactical aspects of this in the next episode, but hopefully I've given you a lot to think about. You've got to have a strategy wall. You've got to be thinking about how you're positioned as a leader. What are your unique abilities? What are you? How are you, what's your plan for your mindset in leading the organization through all of this? Because all of these forces are at work.

Speaker 1:

And the last comment I'd make in this episode before uh, I'm literally going to hit stop and just go immediately into the next episode, which will come out a few days later than this one Um, at the time we're releasing it. But the last I'd share with you is how stinking lucky are we to be alive and to be leaders of this organization or in this industry. At this time, we are so fortunate that there's so much movement, that we've got so many tools in our toolbox to be able to lead people through change. And the fact that you're listening to things, you're digging in trying to improve your ability to lead others, means you're listening to things. You're digging in, trying to improve your ability to lead others, means you're going to have, you're going to be a step ahead, because all those other leaders you're driving by or walking by, they're not thinking about this and they're going to get left in the dust. We'll talk more in the next episode of the lead in 30 podcast.

Speaker 2:

Share this episode with a colleague, your team or a friend. Tap on the share button and text the link. Thanks for listening to the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill You're listening to.

Speaker 1:

Lead in 30.