Ep. 19 - Change Leadership vs. Management: The Retail Transformation Gap

In an increasingly omnichannel landscape, retailers and brands spend millions on machine learning, AI tools, and advanced tech stacks, yet implementations routinely stall out. The bottleneck isn't the code or the engineering architecture, it is a fundamental breakdown in leadership alignment and organizational design. Host Scott Benedict sits down with Jennifer Selby Long, founder and CEO of Selby Group, to discuss the critical human frameworks required to successfully navigate massive technology driven disruption.

We sit down to map out the distinction between change management and true change leadership. Jennifer shares her strategic playbook on how to build objective empathy across business units, dismantle persistent tribal silos, and cultivate T-shaped expertise. We dig deep into temperament theory and essential motivators, examining how to partner with traditionalists to effectively derisk your projects. Jennifer also breaks down why entry level analyst roles are shifting and how human discernment, taste, and ultimate accountability remain irreplaceable even as tools like AI scale.

The hard truth of corporate transformation is that structure does not equal behavioral shift. You can adjust KPIs, execute thirty seven restructures, and buy the most expensive enterprise licenses available, but it means nothing if your executive leadership team is trapped in a feedback echo chamber. True operational evolution requires intense critical self reflection from the very top down. Viewers will walk away with a practical understanding of how to read peer motivators, build side to side influence without direct reporting authority, and transform technology disruption into measurable business impact.

If you care about organizational design, retail leadership, and cross functional alignment, you will get a lot from this conversation. Be sure to subscribe and share this episode with your professional network. We want to hear from you in the comments: What is the biggest organizational barrier your team currently faces when trying to adopt new technology?

Transcript

Welcome And The Real Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Digital Front Door, the podcast that explores how retailers and consumer brands are transforming the way that we connect with consumers in an increasingly digital and omnichannel world. I'm Scott Benedict. And on today's episode, we're going to step back from the technology discussion that we've all been having and focus on something that I believe might be even more important. And that's how organizations lead to digital transformation in our industry. We spend a lot of time, as in the industry, talking about AI and digital commerce and retail media and emerging technology, and all those are important. But what I see every day, both in my work as a consultant and in contacts that I talk to across our industry, is that one of the biggest challenges facing both brands and retailers is not technical necessarily. In many cases, it's organizational. They're talking about things like leadership alignment across the organization, breaking down silos, and fundamentally changing how decisions get made. To help us explore that topic a little bit further, I'm joined by someone who has spent her career working with executive teams navigating exactly those kinds of transformations. Jennifer Selby Long is the founder and CEO of Selby Group, where she advises senior leaders and organizations on how to successfully lead large organizational changes. Over the course of her career, she has coached hundreds of leaders and worked with organizations both inside and outside of retailing to help them align leadership teams, navigate complex change, and turn technology-driven disruption into real positive business impacts. Her work focuses not just on the mechanics of change, but on the human side of transformation as well and how leaders influence, align, and mobilize organizations to actually execute in an omnichannel world. And Jennifer, we're so excited to have you join us here on the digital front door today.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Thank you, Scott. I'm really glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Outstanding. So why don't we kind of start the conversation by setting the stage a little bit? And a theme that seems to come up a lot in retailing these days. There's a lot of discussion about AI and

Why Good Tech Still Fails

SPEAKER_00 2:45

digital transformation. But one of the things I've been saying is that it's not just a technology shift, as I talked about in the open, it's an a leadership shift. I'm curious, from your perspective, why do so many transformation efforts in retail struggle, even if the technology itself is sound and is well thought of?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, I think it's a great question. There are several reasons, but the first one uh has to do with leadership and the mindset of leaders. There is really no change without critical self-examination among leaders. And uh that starts at the very top of organizations. The higher you go in terms of willingness to examine your own attitudes, assumptions around change, uh, the better off you will be in terms of leading change. And that's absolutely number one on my list of why the technology seems sound. Objectively speaking, the change sounds good, and yet it's not quite getting there. I would also rate up there close, closely related is generally a failure to look side to side and really truly get to know the business and your peers. There's been a lot of focus in the media over the last few years that was a sharp turn from the past around empathy and the benefits of empathy. I would extend that though beyond what we usually think of when we think of empathy, because I think it's very hard to empathize with someone if you haven't bothered to really try to understand their business. So think of it as subjective empathy and I don't know, objective empathy. Then you're gonna do better with both because to technology-driven change, particularly AI, but really any technology-driven change cuts across enterprises. It doesn't take place just within one subset or one silo.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

It makes sense. And one of the things I recall when you and I first met, uh, you spoke about the distinction between change management and change leadership.

Change Management Versus Leadership

SPEAKER_00 5:05

And I'm wondering if you can walk us, walk the audience through that distinction and why you you believe that organizations often get the management part right, but struggle with the leadership side of that equation.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, to answer that question, we first have to get in the way back time machine when I was working in IT. I was in, you know, what today would be knowledge management, and then was just known as the training department. And I had I had been there about two weeks, and uh my boss said, Hey, you know, you two uh go go up to 29. There's a you know, they're having trouble with getting the engineers to use a new storage management system. Okay, great. So up we went, ready to take notes on the process and how hard it was, and you know, why else would engineers not be adopting this? So young and naive I was. And you know, through that project, I became an accidental change manager because what had happened wasn't that the process was hard. Scott, you've worked with engineers. The process had three steps in it. Three. That was it, that was the whole thing. There is there is no three-step process that an engineer can't do. And so I started to get a little nervous because I thought, oh boy, this is just great. I've just gotten here, and my first project's gonna be a waste of time, and they're gonna think, who's that ding dog in training? Because it doesn't make any difference. Nobody's using it. And so um I I had actually in I had actually studied to be a professor before that. And I have a graduate degree in what is essentially human dynamics and communication? What causes people to follow some leaders and not others and influence and that whole mess of things? And so I thought, well, I better dust that off because I'm gonna need it here. And I just started asking the leader, well, gee, that doesn't sound like such a hard process after all. Why do you think they're not all adopting this? And we went down that path until we got at the various reasons. So talk about becoming an accidental change manager and totally unprepared. Uh, so when I say that a lot of companies, I think actually do change management fair to well, you got to remember I have a much longer time in the business workforce than many other people. And so I have a super long viewpoint on it. I know where it was then, and I see where it is now. I think it is actually greatly improved. And a lot of my clients argue with me on this. They go, no, we're terrible, we suck, we can do so much better. Yeah, I'm sure you could do better. I'm sure you could. Yes, I can see some gaps. But but really that has so vastly improved as it's become a discipline, a profession, something that even if people don't believe they're doing super well, they acknowledge that they need to. So, what is change? Management to me, that is the management tasks that would be associated with anything. Ensuring that you have a strategy, that you have a project plan, that you have deadlines, that you have standards, that the work can be done to those standards, that it is done on time. And so that is the management of the change to ensure that things get done in the coordinated way that they need to get done on time. That's really, really hard. But again, I think people are doing it much better than they often give themselves credit for. Now, change leadership is where I'm still seeing a gap. And I think going all the way back to that early story, we see the challenge there was really not around change management. They purchased the system, they customized the system, they released it on time. The the parts came to, you know, it was well managed, the parts came together. But the missing piece was that um they didn't account for one, the leader was actually letting certain engineers get by with not using it. Who were these engineers? The rock stars, the one who was super dependent on, got time, you know, didn't want to, you know, fight the fight over that with them. So he was letting them slide and take a lot longer than everyone else. He also hadn't thought about the genuine fear and nervousness. You know, most employees are extremely diligent in good times and bad and want to do a good job. And imagine how nerve-wracking it was for these engineers who were used to having more control over how they stored their work, such as on a laptop, um, to not to going into this, you know, amorphous space where they don't have so much control. You already take people who are kind of control-oriented anyway, and a little triggered by that, and you just kind of say, here's the new system, it's great. Big win for the company, saves a lot of money. I don't know that that's a huge motivator for people. So when we look at change leadership, that is about keeping people inspired and hopeful for the future, keeping them productive, even as they struggle with the chaos of new processes and sometimes different leaders giving different direction and all of that. Um, it's being able to successfully address the massive levels of conflict and resistance. You know, no matter what you do in terms of your change management, it's not just going to be all rainbows and unicorns. You're going to have conflict and resistance along the way. And so being able to successfully handle that and manage that is all part of the game. Not to mention building very strong cross-functional relationships and encouraging your people to do the same. These are all harder in many ways because they're the soft leadership side of things. And people are complex and therefore situations are complicated.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

No, and it's interesting because so much of what we see in the retail-oriented examples of what you're talking about, and it could be engineers, it could be any functional area, is that inherently we're living through a time where many leaders either grew up in physical retail or grew up in digital retail or grew up in a certain function uh that they started out in. And it feels like silos in many cases are at the root uh uh of challenges because that's that's what they've grown up in, and we're asking them to kind of change. And this is one of my passions is the challenge of silos and retail organizations where we've had silos and merchandising or in the on the digital e-commerce team when those are separate teams, or the IT, uh to your point, more engineers, marketers,

Why Silos Refuse To Die

SPEAKER_00 12:15

you can go on and on across different functional areas, all operating historically as separate units, sometimes in different locations, sometimes with different group dynamics or cultural elements. I'm curious, from your experience, why are these kind of silos, these organizational silos, so persistent? And why is it difficult to kind of break through them, break them down, even when everybody agrees theoretically that they should, but when it actually comes time to lead it, to your point, to do it, it becomes hard. Why is that behind?

SPEAKER_01 12:56

You know, there are so many reasons. I don't say that to be discouraging, um, as to simply say, you know, you need to pick a few reasons and start working on those rather than let yourself be overwhelmed by all of the things that fight against you wanting to cut across the silos to really introduce that transformational change. I mean, there are several that um I think we can look at. The first is if you're at the top of the organization, you're probably in a little bit of an echo chamber. And you might think you're sharing this inspiring vision and that people are on board with it, but you're probably in a little bit of an echo chamber chamber because it is super hard to get honest feedback when you're at the top of an organization. Very, very difficult. Absolutely no one is genuinely incented to give you that unless you work super hard to build a culture in which more junior people would be comfortable coming to someone above them and saying, hey, you know, boss, not for nothing, but I think you kind of blew it on that. I wasn't inspired. I didn't notice anyone else was. And so, so, you know, when you start at the very top, that is certainly um a key element, is is they they do the higher you are, the more you tend to be in an echo chamber and need to really find ways that you're gonna get honest feedback. Are people inspired by this vision? Um, are they moved to follow this vision because you're asking them to do hard things for what future? For what goal? Um, what what does that look like that that that feels like an exciting challenge for them? Um, I think that's a big one at the top. Obviously, there's things I'm sure you've talked about in other episodes, like are your KPIs aligned. I often find that there is a pretty big gap between, you know, the the ELT will say, well, you know, operational excellence has to be a top goal for this year. Um and as long as we're working around that one initiative that's associated with it, we manage to somewhat give up our silos. But then once that objective is hit, you know, we're right back in them. And that's because most of the incentives, most of the rewards, most of the objectives do wind up being pretty much in the silos. And so if you're at the ELT level, you you really have to push yourself harder to push your own people harder around having those objectives that cut across the enterprise as a routine matter, right? But but above and beyond those things that are more at the org level, um, let's say you're that level below the ELT, you're C-suite, you're a VP. You know, if they're telling you these are changes that have to happen, guess who gets tasked with actually making it happen? It ain't that. It's you, right? One of my clients, you know, used to have the driest way of delivering when someone would say, Well, what are you doing with such and such? And he'll go, Well, you know, I'm an executive. We don't do anything. But I love that little self-effacing humor because it is really that next level below. It's your C-suite VP senior directors who are tasked with actually getting it done. And so, if you're tasked with this, you know, my first question would be sort of circling back to something I mentioned earlier, which is simply how well do you know the business beyond your silo? Um, do you invite yourself to your peers' ops reviews every quarter, for example? One of uh one of my CISO clients found that highly effective for him. He's kind of a man of action type of person. And so he said, Well, I'd really like to get to know your business. You know, do you mind if I just sit in on your ops reviews every quarter? It was the first time any CISO had asked him that. And you can imagine it was really helpful for him because by sitting in those, he could get a much better read on that business unit. What is, what are their pain points? What is stressing them out to no end? How does his stuff fit in with that? When you think about it, CISOs introduce a lot of technological change that requires exquisite change leadership because they're looking at people who already have margin pressure. I don't care what the margins are, somehow the BUs always have stronger margin pressure. Um, and and they're coming at them and going, hey, I need you to cough up some money that's going to be, you know, hard on your margin to prevent something that might never happen anyway. And so that um that ability to really just get in there and understand their business. I have a list of questions I'm happy to share with any of your listeners who wants a copy. It's just a list of questions uh that you can ask business unit leaders. And I take that down to about in some companies, the senior manager level, certainly the director level, um, where if you take that little bit of time to get to know them on a little bit more routine basis to get to know their business, you will do a better job of influencing them and breaking down the silo. We must always remember we were built to be in tribes, and tribes aren't 10,000 people.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

And you know become their tribe, part of their tribe.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Exactly. And what's interesting, and you kind of alluded to this, that in many cases, you know, uh different elements of a of a retail organization are doing all the right things on on paper. They've they've worked to inline incentives and adjust KPIs so that they're measuring things that cut across physical and digital. In many cases, they've they've been through 37 restructures, and that's maybe not the exaggeration that I wish it was. Uh and I guess my question in your experience, does doing all those things solve the problem by itself? And I think I know where what you're gonna say, because it it feels like there's still the difference between structural alignment and actual behavioral, behavioral change in organizations that need to transform. And I suspect you've seen a lot of different examples of that across different uh scenarios. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Yeah, absolutely. Um, the the structural and organizational pieces are uh if you don't do them, you put your odds of success a lot lower. There's no doubt about it. I have seen from time to time significant change that was executed despite pretty rocky alignment and all, you know, poor poor this

Influence Skills Beat Reorg Charts

SPEAKER_01 19:40

and poor that and lousy KPIs. But it's not, you know, you're not really setting yourself up for success. You might accidentally succeed in that situation. It happens. Um, but but yes, those things are very important and they're very vital. But where I think the you're alluding to is it just it can be so discouraging and frustrating and exasperating just doing those things is hard work. It is very hard work, and then still you're not getting the change that you want to see. And that's where I would say we need to look at those skills around influence and persuasion. Um, at that it's going to be from uh roughly your C-ish suede, VP for sure, director, senior director level. Um, we need to look at your change resiliency skills all the way down to your ICs. Are you developing those? I said earlier there's massive conflict and resistance that goes along the way, even in the process of getting aligned. Do you know how to successfully address conflict? How well do you do this in your company? Um, are you good at this, poor at this? How do you know? What's your standard for success? Um, so really getting into those elements more is pretty important. Um, I find it tends to be pretty underinvested. Um, and you know, the vast majority of clients who say anything to me about initially and their engagements around their sphere of influence will say, I do great leading my team, and my boss and I have a great relationship. It's those peers.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

And I say, Well, those other people.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah, it's them over there to decide. Well, yeah, of course, the people who report to you are obligated to be persuaded by you ultimately. It's either that or come to work resentful every day. The person above you has huge, huge incentive to get aligned with you and you with them because your success is their success. And so there's an awful lot of um positive forces pushing you along, like a gentle breeze toward aligning up and down. But when you get side to side, it's a lot harder. And so that's probably the piece that I would say at just that leadership skill level, it's working on your own influence skills. How well can you read people's essential motivators? Do you want even understand what that is? Um, how well can you adapt to those motivators once you understand what they are? Um, how effective are you at both and thinking? You know, the reality of human situations is two, three, four things can actually be true at the same time. Ah, true.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's it's funny because while you're while you're talking, I'm thinking about, you know, one of the one of the recurring themes of retailing historically is uh comp sales or comp comparisons. In other words, comparing yourself to your own performance last year in the same timeframe. And one of the things that I learned to embrace, although it took a while, particularly during parts of my e-commerce career, was the concept of benchmarking. In other words, not just trying to do better than what you have done or your team has done or your organization has done, but trying to find who out there is doing it the best and how far are we from them and what will it take for us to get there. And that, to your point, uh really talks a lot about uh influencing uh teams that you don't directly have reporting relationships to. And not everybody who listens to our podcast is a CEO. In many cases, they're VPs or they're leaders of functional areas, they're heads of merchandising or marketing or digital or whatever. And they're being asked to drive transformation across teams that they don't control. And part of how I tried to do that was by doing benchmarking, by finding out who what was the KPIs that the best organization delivered. And instead of just trying to get better in last year, how do we influence ourselves and our own kind of competitive spirit? I'm kind of curious from your experience, is that a way to influence peers and stakeholders? Or are there other ways that you can think of beyond that that influences people that don't have a reporting relationship to you, but that are necessary for the organization to truly transform, evolve, and get better over time?

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Yeah, yeah. Well, first I want to commend you on the decision you made when you were in the leadership role. Um, you I had a big time flashback to uh my first, you know, rather short career in retail as an assistant manager of women's wear. And I remember those reports that came in every morning. The first thing you looked at was last year's sales for today, last year's sales for this week, last year's sales for the week before. And I remember thinking, just shoot me now. I can't take it. Like to just every day be comparing yourself to a year ago, which for some of us of certain personality types is like torture. You know, it's like, oh, oh, why don't you just ask me to compare this to something 10 years ago? A year ago might as well have been 10. Um, what I so desperately wanted from my leaders was a vision of the future, um, which can come from looking at those who excel in your field. For folks who are in industries where there is nobody really excelling, you're gonna have to find another technique. You're gonna have to generate it, right? But but in retail, it is a crowded field. There is always someone who is doing something, you know, they're really delivering in a way that you admire and that you know your colleagues would admire too. So major kudos, commendations. Anyone considering doing that, do what Scott did. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Do it, do it. Well, it wasn't a fishing for a compliment, but I'll take it in this case. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

I was gonna say, you know, certainly um what I mentioned earlier, though, beyond that, is you really have to understand the pain points and the pressures of those peers. Otherwise, forget it. How are you going? Why would they bother? Think about it. Someone comes to you and says, I have this exciting thing that's gonna change the business for the best, and I need you to do stuff, and you're going, you don't know anything about my business. You don't know the challenges I'm facing, you don't know what it's gonna take. You probably don't even know that I have a similar initiative underway.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

And I'm not sure I want

Winning Peers Without Direct Authority

SPEAKER_01 26:55

to tell you about it until I know how much power is behind yours. So again, down in the weeds, right? The the change happens in those very real conversations and relationships.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Yeah, and it reminds me of this concept of uh of leadership development called a T kind of a T-shaped uh expertise, where you have deep knowledge in your home area, but you have complementary understanding of other parts of the business, of other different functional areas. You and I have talked about the fact I spent most of my career as a buyer, but that meant I still had to understand marketing and store operations and supply chain and other things in order to do my job well and to interact with those different functional areas. And it feels like this idea of people working with other functional areas, I mean in a respectful way, respecting the expertise that they have, but but trying to find how those pieces kind of fit together, how kind of work together to accomplish business goals. I guess my question is, I I think we're both advocates for that, but why is that so critical and why is that so critical, particularly in organizations or leaders that are trying to drive their organization through a transformation is understanding those areas that maybe you don't reside in, but that intersect with your area or your function or your part of the business.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

You know, if you would have asked me that question 15 years ago and to some extent 10, I would have said, well, maybe that depends on the change. And most of the only very don't and focus on your work. But today, the the biggest changes, I they used to be driven by the market. That was really what was driving everything. And so you you could probably make the case, well, yeah, who better than the BU that addresses that market to make the changes needed, and maybe you don't need to worry so much about your peers and you don't need them that much, and what you need from them is not that big of a deal. And but it's just not how it is with technology-driven change today. Um, and of course, anyone listening who, for example, um is a seasoned CIO will tell you all we ever drive, you know, with a few exceptions, is stuff that has to cut across the silos. Overwhelmingly, uh, most of those big toolkits cut across everything. Um, you know, it's not just one BU that needs Snowflake. Uh, and at the price of those licenses, they better all be able to use it. So, you know, it it's um it's I just don't see how, since technology is what's really driving these changes, and it's technology that cuts across the operations. I'm not sure how you can drive today's transformations without that, and without really even in some cases, thinking of the culture change you need to drive. And I'll give you a really, you know, an example that's probably only tremendously exciting to people on the finance side, but financial planning and analysis. It's literally the opposite, broader and more complex than it was pre-AI. And the companies who were getting out ahead of that before the technology was even well formed are the ones today who are doing better than their peers. Um, and you know, how did they do that? I can tell you there's almost nothing that FPA does by themselves. They are jointly responsible for results with the business owners, but ultimately the business owners do make the decisions. And so, in order to get um, in order to get a in the simplest level, in order to get a company off of Excel spreadsheets for every single thing, you know, pulled together by, you know, a PhD physicist, because that's who it took to figure it out. I'm telling you, a real example from a real player. Um, you know, you just that is a huge change when you go from that to something that's driven by complex AI-driven technology. And I think we with large-scale transformation, like true operational transformation, it's very easy to forget that you're not just changing people's jobs. I mean, certainly there are probably people who will lose jobs, and that's traumatic. Um, that's a known trauma. That should be something that you are better at um compassionately managing and leading. But what I think is often forgotten is it's an identity change. So taking my FPA, I mean, everyone has an FPA partner. You all can relate to this, right? Taking that example, when we first looked at that group six years ago, the first thing we did was say, wow, what are the skills they're gonna need when we make this change? Because what was their number one complaint at the time? It was, I worked so hard on my degree in finance, and I spend 90% of my time jockeying these spreadsheets around in response to requests for data. And that's not a good use, you know. I thought I would be advising, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Guess what? Now you're gonna get what you wished for. Because all that Excel jockeying that you were doing that was 90% of what you got paid for, this now goes to about 5% of your time. You're not doing it anymore. So now you will be the advisor. So, what happens the first time you try to go advise? You have no credibility. You have to learn how to gain credibility. You have to learn how to see yourself as an advisor because it's a heck of a lot different than you thought it would be. You thought you'd walk in there and they'd go, thank you, we'll do what you say. Um, you have to develop your influence skills, you have to develop your empathy skills, you have to develop your storytelling skills.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yeah. And etc. Yeah, well, it I think kind of what you're saying is you have to read the motivators that people on other teams, what you know, what have they historically been held accountable for? What are they passionate about? And how can you you find common ground? I I told somebody a story once that in working with a technology team that delivered updates and upgrades to our website, I I did something that I thought was commonplace, which is I showed them the business result of an update or an upgrade that they had made to our website. And you had thought I had hung the moon. I I just they were so unused to. They just delivered, you know, code and delivered updates, and no one stopped to show. Look at the wonderful business results we are getting because of the hard work you did. And that's that's changed my view on you know understanding motivators and using it to kind of drive uh alignment. And

Transformation As An Identity Shift

SPEAKER_00 34:10

and I I guess that leads to the the question I want to ask you, which is how how should leaders in in our industry think about identifying what drives stakeholders in other parts of the of the business, whether they're part of their broader responsibility or not, and maybe adapting their approach to leadership accordingly by understanding what drives and motivates people who, and you gave a great example from FPA, but you could you could apply that to a lot of different functional areas, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Any function, absolutely. So, you know, first I want to uh again, I want to commend you again. I know you weren't fishing for a compliment, but um what what you were doing was something that is is extrem I would say extremely well researched and proven in the real world, which is the flywheel effect. Um if you're constantly push, push, pushing change out, um, it it's just such a constant heavy lift. Um, you can create more of a flywheel effect by getting back to people about the positive impact of the hard work that they just did. Um, you can actually create a flywheel effect by complimenting and acknowledging something that they did that seems very small to you, but that you know for them was kind of a scary shift. Um, so the flywheel effect can be made on things little and big, and it makes your job easier. Likewise, kind of related to that idea of how hard it is if you have to do all the lifting, um, as leaders strategically find those people who are the most open to the idea in each of those corresponding functions and business units, um, and really put your attention on them because they are going to have more credibility with their peers than you will ever hope to have, no matter how good you are. And so really focus the bulk of your attention on them, not trying to get all of the other people on board who need to be on board. Let them then bring the others along, make it a team effort. Um, I will say too, there's one little thing that I think often gets overlooked when I talk about essential motivators. I'm talking about a very specific framework or model around personality and personality type. Um, and you know, yes, we're all individuals and we're all unique in our own way, but when you have to lead change across, you know, say more than five or six people, then you can't really get to know each individual snowflake in all of its beauty, right? You have to have some shortcuts a little bit for your own sanity. And so one that I found very helpful when thinking about influence is called temperament theory or essential motivators, as our uh my colleague and friend Linda Barrens renamed them. And it's this notion that there are essentially four kind of key essential motivators in life. And for each of us, there's one that's that's that gateway for us, that's the biggie. And one of the things that I think often gets overlooked by people leading change and transformation is that in a larger company, about half your population will all have the same essential motivator. And it's probably not yours, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with status or hierarchy or gender or country that you're in or any of those things. And it's called um the stabilizer or traditionalist temperament. And for those folks, what the the glory of those folks that I think people driving change fail to grasp is that they help you de-risk yourself. So they'll come across as just stick in the mud, resistant, or you know, and and the thing is that's such a miss if you're reading them that way, because what you have there, if if it's that person who can say, yeah, we tried that, or something just like nearly like that, and that was in, let's see, that was in 2002, release date was uh April 29th. And, you know, and and the and here are the exact results that we got. And so when you have these people who have these astounding memories and they seem to be asking you a lot of demanding questions to which you think, well, how can I possibly have the answer to that? So still we're married, you know, shut those voices up in your head because you've just met someone who can de-risk your project. You have met someone who, if you take them seriously, you address their concerns, you don't disregard them, you work with them to come up with solutions to lessen risk associated with a transformation, they are the ones who make it so it works, so that it doesn't just stay pie in the sky. And so I think misreading the traditionalist is an incredibly common miss just across the board, because there are so many of them in larger companies.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Yeah. I and I've seen them, and and they're the ones who will point out why this transformation is going to work and will be the fly in the awaitment of really bringing about change because they hold back to traditional norms and how the organization served the customer and went about their business, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:45

And when you say serve the customer, serve is the important word. This is by far the most service-oriented of the four temperaments. The others don't even come close, though they think we all think we do. Oh, of course I'm service-oriented. We pale in comparison, right? So it is about service, it is about um uh the institution, others, right? It's probably the most selfless of the various temperaments. And so really um plugging into those uh interests and passions around how do we make a good plan, right? Here's how we make a good plan that can make this successful. How do we lessen the risk in this so that we we increase our odds that it'll work? Who's gonna be there burning the midnight oil, making executing this thing? I'm telling you, it's gonna be your traditional and your stabilizers. They will be the ones working till the wee hours to make it happen. And so it's very risky to see them as some somehow somebody who's a barrier in the way. They're actually your ultimate enablers because do you know who everyone looks at when a change is coming along?

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Yeah, the traditionalists.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Always, always more like, you know, that that guy, when he's on board, I'm on board. As go the traditionalists, so goes the change.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Yeah. That makes so much sense. And uh I I've witnessed it in organizations I've I've been in. We didn't have a name for it, but I I think you could you kind of you give a name to what I think a lot of us witness, particularly during times of great transformation, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:22

Yes, yeah. They're absolutely vital to transformation. Absolutely vital.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Well, this probably won't shock you, but I I I want to bring AI back into this conversation because we're gonna get through it without a coming out. Oh yeah. Here's the context. Uh I I've seen a lot of organizations in our industry using or positioning AI as a tool and something that they're relied upon to help make or inform decisions, not

The Traditionalists Who De Risk Change

SPEAKER_00 41:55

replace human decision making. And so a lot of the conversation, I think, in retail is how do leaders think about decision making when there's these wonderful tools, powerful tools available to them, and still, you know, uh putting accountability and trust in their organization because the first time something goes awry in a retail organization and someone in a meeting says, Well, the AI said I should do it, somebody's getting fired. So I guess my question for you, particularly given your expertise, is an environment where technology is this tool, this wonderful, powerful tool that is kind of a force multiplier, if you will. How do you really guide organizations to say it is a tool in the decision-making process, but human oversight, leadership oversight is still what drives a business forward. You can't blame, you can't fire the machine, you can't fire that. Somebody has to be accountable. And it's just that it's a tool, it's not that.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Yeah, yeah. So I do think um that that it your distinction is extremely important. Um what what from where I sit, from where I sit, which is often more through my client's eyes than my own experience. Our business is really small. There's like five of us. So um uh I I you know from our my own business, where we don't have the perspective on these larger organizations and and how AI is used, but through the clients, we absolutely do. And what I'm seeing is that AI kind of takes us back to the old manufacturing model. It's good at economics. Executing a task, if properly instructed, and you must always tell it to swim in its own lane. No, do not do, you're not an apprentice four, you're an apprentice three, do apprentice three work, right? You really, it's it's good at doing stuff. Um, it it's weak in terms of judgment. And so this is particularly vital. As you said, you can tell a machine to do a task, but you can't hold it accountable. And so uh leaders really need to be clear on this ultimate accountability and on just being honest about the inherent polarities here. You you're asking people to use a machine and to figure out where that line is, um, that is your judgment versus the machines. You know, recognize there's some polarities there. Recognize that it is challenging and everybody's kind of trying to figure it out at the same time, uh, but that ultimately they own it, right? However, you're using the machine, you own the final decision that you make. I haven't really seen, in my experience yet, AI have the judgment to make decisions. It's pretty good at executing certain tasks. And in some tasks, it's superb.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Um I think it does a great job of informing decisions, Jennifer. Yeah. But not, you know, operating completely autonomously. It still needs to have oversight, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:35

It has no judgment, you know. AI can only feed, can only process what it's been told. It can't develop judgment about that yet, which is why, you know, most of the stories that we see about AI gone, you know, gone very wrong. It is where um someone leaned on it for good judgment, which only humans have, um taste. Um, so one of my colleagues writes a great blog, and he's over on the super techie space, and he writes his great blog. And, you know, he was saying, get ready to get sick of the word discernment, because everybody's gonna be saying, well, uh, you know, I'm bringing discernment to the table, which the machine can't, you know. But it is true. AI just cannot discern, it's not human. Um, it doesn't have any taste. That's the other word this guy was saying, get ready to get sick of it. You're hiring me for my taste, the machine can't do it. Um, but it is very much true, especially when we think about retail. There's a lot of tastemaking involved, right? You can't teach a machine taste. You just can't. It just doesn't have it. You know, it's a machine. Uh, you can't teach it morality, you can't teach it a lot of things, you just can't. It doesn't do it yet. If ever, probably never, uh, for some of these things, probably never. Um, and so um I think it's it it does it does replace some jobs. It replaces a lot of execution jobs, but on the retail side, I don't know that it replaces so very many. Um, my clients in tech, it's replacing the entry-level coders. It already has. It's replacing the entry-level analysts to mixed results, right? We all heard about that. I think it was that, forgive me if I'm wrong, McKinsey report in Australia that I called the $750,000 error because they used AI instead of any young analysts on it, and it was AI slop. And the client caught them at it. They're like, that's wrong. And they credited back a seven hundred fifty thousand, refunded $750k in their fee um to make up for it. So I called the $750,000 mistake. Um given given the slop, I think they probably should have refunded the whole fee and walked out with the tail between their legs. So uh so I think it was McKinsey, I can't say for sure, but uh um the judgment, no one held on to the judgment in that example. No one, no one held on to that.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

Exactly. So I think the last thing I I wanted to ask you, Jennifer, is if if you're sitting down with a retail executive today, someone who acknowledges that the organization needs to evolve, needs to change, needs to transform. Are there maybe one or or two things that you would tell them to focus on as they're leading through that transformation?

SPEAKER_01 48:39

First and foremost would be critical self-reflection. Um getting yourself out of the bubble that you don't think you're in, but you probably are, for reasons that don't have much to do with you. Um, really get yourself out of that bubble. Make sure that you have someone giving you frank

AI As Tool And Accountability

SPEAKER_01 48:55

feedback. Make sure that you personally are working, understand, and are working on the things you need to change in yourself in order to get others to change. No one gets too inspired by a leader who says, all of you change. Me, abstains.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

I'm gonna keep I'm gonna keep doing things exactly the same.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Yeah, the rest of you, yeah, you're the ones who need to change. I got this. And so no CEO thinks they're doing that, right? And that's why you need that um that bold, tough feedback. That's why you need that. That's why you need to be um accountable and held accountable for your improvement. Um and so that that would be number one, first and foremost. Have your, you know, get yourself out of that echo chamber, know what you need to work on, work on it, have an accountability partner. Um, same for your directs, that whole e-suite. Um, really, really needs to be focused on that. Secondarily, ask yourselves the very tough questions. Are we an optimized leadership team? Do we move as one? Because if you don't move as one, how easy is it going to be for all those people below you to move as one? And so that those would be the two things that would be first and foremost in my mind. Beyond that, you know, we can talk about the levers for change organizationally and the KPIs that need to be aligned and all that stuff, but none of it matters if that senior leadership team isn't aligned and game to change. I should say change can happen without that, but it's a lot harder. So why make it harder for your org? Make it easier.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Exactly. Exactly. I think that's fair to expect of people in leadership in any organization, certainly in retail. Uh, Jennifer, it's been a fantastic conversation. And I think what's really stood out to me is how we spend so much time talking about the technology elements, as I was I was mentioning at the at the beginning of the show and the impact of AI and digital and retail media. And the real challenge, it feels like, in many cases, is more fundamental. It's it's how do you get the organization to align, how leaders influence uh change to your to your point, and not just manage it, but lead it, and how teams actually work together to execute that. And breaking down silos, building trust, leading through on certain times. Those are all those aren't necessarily new challenges for any industry, including retail, but they are becoming, it feels like, more important and in the work that you and your team do kind of amplifies that. Before we we part, I'm curious if some of our listeners want to learn more about Selby Group and the and the work that you all do, is there a place you would point them to kind of learn more about you and the and your team?

Self Reflection And Leading As One

SPEAKER_01 51:55

Uh sure. Our website is selbygroup.com. When you go there, you've got several options. Um, one, uh of course you can read through our services, but I've written about 120 blogs that are posted there. And you can just do your little keyword search for whatever's bothering you and see what tips we have. The blogs are all very practical. They're not abstract. They're do this, this, this, then this. Um, you can also pop over to the contact us page if you'd like that uh list of questions to get to know those peers, those business leaders. I'm happy to send you that. And so you're you know more than welcome to have that. Just just drop a note in that contact us and we'll get one to you.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

Awesome. Jennifer, thank you so much. And for our listeners, as always, we thank you for joining us on the Digital Front Door. One of the things I might ask in closing is if you if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share us uh in your network, and stay tuned for more conversations about the intersection of retailing, technology, and digital transformation through the lens of great guests like Jennifer. And Jennifer, thank you again for joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

That was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Scott. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

You bet. For the Digital Front Door, I'm Scott Benedict.