From Fortune 500 to Founder: Why Staying Comfortable Is the Biggest Career Risk

Jackie Phichith spent nearly two decades inside Fortune 500 boardrooms helping McDonald's, Merck, and Pfizer navigate transformation. Then she realized the framework she had been teaching organizations was the same one she needed to apply to herself. What she learned next might change how you think about the career decision you are sitting on right now.

What You'll Learn:

1: Why 70% of enterprise transformations fail and the one thing companies keep cutting that guarantees it
2: The SHINE framework: a 5-step method for moving any team through change without losing people
3: What the Midnight Rambles of Teddy Roosevelt teach us about effective leadership in 2025
4: How to do a quarterly business review on yourself when you're a founder of one
5: Why employee engagement scores are not soft data and what happens when leadership ignores them
6: The identity shift nobody talks about when you leave a corporate title behind

About Jackie Phichith:
Jackie Phichith is a change management strategist, keynote speaker, and founder of Inspiration Your Way. With nearly 20 years inside Fortune 500 companies including McDonald's, Merck, and Pfizer, she has developed the SHINE framework to help leaders and organizations move through transformation without losing their people. She now brings that expertise to a broader stage, working with executives and founders across industries.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 — Cold open and episode introduction
01:00 — What 20 years inside Fortune 500 companies actually looked like
03:30 — Why only 27% of employees trust their leaders to guide them through change
07:00 — The real reason companies cut training during transformations
08:30 — The moment Jackie knew she had to step outside the corporate box
13:00 — How staying comfortable becomes the biggest risk
15:00 — The identity shift of going from corporate employee to founder
20:00 — How to protect your focus as a solo founder
24:00 — Running a quarterly business review on yourself
28:00 — The Teddy Roosevelt Midnight Rambles story and what it means for CEOs
31:00 — The organizations that will be left behind by AI and rapid change
38:00 — The SHINE framework explained step by step
44:00 — Lightning Round
46:00 — The Last Question: What would you go back and tell yourself on day one?

Connect with Jackie Phichith
Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinephichith/

About the Show:
Outside the Corporate Box is a Monday podcast co-hosted by JMan and Jeffrey Scott Stanton. Every episode explores what happens when ambitious professionals step beyond traditional titles and build something on their own terms. Real stories about reinvention, risk, and what it actually takes to bet on yourself.

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Outside the Corporate Box is part of J Squared Podcast Productions — a premium media network built for professionals who want more than entertainment.Read the full episode breakdown: https://jmanai.com/why-70-of-corporate-transformations-fail-and-what-leaders-can-do-about-it/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

70% of enterprise transformations, enterprise-wide transformations fell. 70%. And what I've found is that the first place that they cut costs, especially during transformations, whether it's system or policies and organizations, is training and professional development and helping people move their change.

SPEAKER_05 0:24

Always this feeling of like I am doing this for someone else and now undoing it myself.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

I am suggesting something so significant, especially when you go from making money to no money. And let's be honest, that's one of the biggest reasons that people don't step out of the corporate box. If something doesn't work, you shouldn't be saying that didn't work. How do we move forward? Don't try to make a story, don't try to run a campaign around it. You can see right through that.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

19 years, Fortune 500 companies. McDonald's, Merck, Pfizer. From the outside, it looked like the definition of a successful career, but Jackie Peach told me something in our conversation that stopped me cold. She said the bigger risk wasn't leaving, it was staying comfortable. Today she's here to tell us exactly what that meant. This is outside the corporate box. But before we get into today's show, a quick thank you to our partners who make this possible, Wise Agent Subi and the CE Shop. These are the companies that believe in us and what we're building here. We're grateful to have them in our corner.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

The playbook is changing. The question is, are you changing with it? This is outside the corporate box. Real conversations with real leaders who broke the mold and built something better. With your host, Jay Mann and Jeffrey Scott Stanton.

SPEAKER_04 1:33

Today we're sitting down with Jackie Peacheth, former change management leader inside Fortune 500 companies, a keynote speaker, and the founder of Inspiration World Way. But what we really want to talk about is what happened when someone who spent two decades helping giant organizations navigate change and realized she had to navigate it on her own. Jackie, welcome to Outside the Corporate Box.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

Welcome, Jackie.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Thank you both.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

So paint the picture for us. You're inside these like massive organizations doing work that by any objective measure looks like success, right? What did that actually look like from the inside?

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Well, so I've been in corporate for 20 years, uh, on and off. When I founded Inspiration Your Way was actually the first time outside of the corporate box. And that one was when I was working as an agency partner for the top 20 life science companies in the world. And what that experience looked like was getting this really interesting option of getting into Fortune 500 companies, seeing what's happening, and then sort of doing your project and then leaving. So it was kind of think of it like a consultant's experience.

SPEAKER_04 2:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Then my last outside of the corporate box jump was working full-time for an organization, for um, for an enterprise. And one thing that I can tell you both is consistent is that consistently organizations have an extreme challenge with moving through transformation and change. And so actually, it's industry agnostic. It is not something where you see people have an ease of implementing all of these changes. It is difficult, and everyone sort of goes through change in a similar way. And that is that it is not easy, and most people are change resistant purely because they're uncertain with what's happening. They don't have necessarily leaders that are trained well in actually leading through change. In fact, there's this really great um data point I have to share with you guys. There was a survey done, and they surveyed employees, and they basically said, How qualified do you think your leadership is to help you move through this transformation? What do you think the percentage was? Where do you think people said?

SPEAKER_04 3:54

Very low. 12%.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Actually, they were more generous than the 12%. They said 27% felt that their leaders were ready. But I mean, this is a stat that tells you that the the belief that leaders have in general, again, industry and company agnostic, is that, hey, we don't really need to invest when we have pressure, when our when our revenue's down, when our board members are putting pressure on us, when we have to cut cost, when restructuring is in our future, the first thing we've got to do is think where do we cut the cost? And what I've found is that the first place that they cut cost, especially during transformations, whether it's system or policy within an organization, is training and professional development and helping people move through change. And the the reality is an organization is what? It's a construct of people that are working on a unified mission. So by cutting the cost for supporting the people, you're actually setting yourself up for failure. And here's another fun stat for you, gentlemen, because I love some good data points. This was actually from the Harvard Business Review. And one of the things that they found was that 70% of enterprise transformations, enterprise-wide transformations fail. 70%.

SPEAKER_04 5:17

This is something that we're very familiar with. Jeffrey, I know you want to jump in. There was a couple, couple key words that that I know you want to speak on.

SPEAKER_05 5:27

I like that you said this learning development because to me, because that's my background and our organizational structuring and that type of stuff. Um but always amazed to me, that's what companies do because you figure if you're going through a change, that's something you need to help people through the change, is that you know, learning development, you know, and and I'm and I'm shocked, but I'm not shocked that that number of that 20-some odd who only believe, you know, 20 some percent believe the leaders can get them through this crisis. I think people are used to what they're used to, and they worry anytime, oh, is a change. Can this person actually help us through that change?

SPEAKER_02 5:59

Well, and you know, because if you look back 10 years ago, 2016, on average, there were two major enterprise transformations a year that were planned. Now, fast forward 10 years with the fake with this the incredible amount of change that we're seeing through technology, that's turned up to 10 a year. So what happens is you get all of these different enterprise projects that are showing up on people's plan for the year, their strategic plan. And let's be honest, we all have memory too. And we all remember when our last time we heard the presidents of the company or our leadership chain come down and say, hey, this thing is happening this year, and this is all of the things that are going to change. And then remember that success rate that I gave you? 30% success rate. Yeah, most of them fail. So, what do people have in their short-term memory or even in their long-term memory? It's the last time you showed up and told us this change was happening, we did not actually go through this well, and things broke and massive changes happened. And now the worst part is I don't trust you anymore. And so that now has a huge challenge for our leadership out there. So anyone that's listening, that sits in an executive leadership position, or are a leader in any form in an organization, you need to hear this seriously. The companies that are going to be left behind are the companies that do not pay attention to their people and help that transformation and that shift. Because if if you what if you showed up to your board and you said, hey, we did our due diligence, we decided to go with this software company to implement the following things. And here's our anticipated ROI, here's the value proposition of why we're doing this. And if they ask the question of, okay, well, what's your anticipated success rate? And you show up and say, Well, I cut the costs on training. And by the way, I didn't think it was that important to have a change management strategist in place because you know what? We'll just have Bob, our CEO, on a video camera for 30 seconds, and that should do it. Bob, Bob is people love Bob. And so we don't really need all that stuff. That's the place where we cut. Well, if they actually could get the numbers, and that's I think where we're missing, gentlemen, we're missing the language and the numbers and the data points that draw the line for people to say, guys, this is only going to lead you to a 30% success rate. I think people would be making better choices.

SPEAKER_05 8:22

After doing this from for 19 years, yeah. Is when you were doing this for? So after doing this for 19 years, what was the shift of now I'm going to go out?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

It's a great question. And I think the impetus of me wanting to take this message and broaden it is because it truly feels like a mission for me. Being inside the walls of any organization and seeing the fact that these are problems that are industry agnostic, it's a human problem that we're all facing. And especially because a lot of the things that we're we're facing in organizations and the trends are that we do have to move faster. There is a lot of urgency. The economy is forcing us to make difficult decisions. But the biggest thing I think we can do is to help support our decision makers with the right information so that they can offer their service or product and do their work while still maintaining the human-centric care and emotional intelligence within their organizations. And that's why I felt this really strong, compelling, urgent feeling that I needed to get on a broader stage to help people. This is this is not just, okay, well, Jackie's helping this company on this project. This is Jackie needs to be able to talk to the leaders of our biggest companies out there and help them get the right information. Because I believe that when they have the right information, then they can see the data trends, that if they were able to think about human centricity from a leadership point of view to enable some of these other tech solutions and digital or other transformations in the organization, they would be able to make better decision making and it would protect our employees. And ultimately it would make this is going to sound like a big leap, but it would make people more happy in the work that they're doing. People would be more empowered, you'd see less burnout. And when you think about humans, we do not compartmentalize. People say sometimes that we do, but we just don't. So you think about the ripple effect that that has on our families and our children and the next generation. I think it's our responsibility to be helping people make better decisions, especially as people are moving through change. So that's why, Jeffrey and J Mem, I uh I felt that this was a calling. I had to get out there. I have to help people understand this in a more intimate way.

SPEAKER_04 11:02

So could you pinpoint it to like a specific day or moment where you were like, this is it? I have to. I'm called. Like this is what I like what you said, you're inspired to do it. And I can hear the passion in your voice. You're like, I have to, this wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. And I have to, was there a moment where you just said, okay, now now's the time? Or where did it where did it begin?

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Yes, I think that it began, it began as a slow burn. And it began about a year ago.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

We hear that a lot, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Yeah. And as that slow burn started, and I started to feel this need for stepping into my actual power and feeling that I don't need to have that title or I don't need to be given permission to share the information that I know and to help people. And that slow burn started to really enable me to say, okay, well, I have two, I have two vectors to go in here. I either continue the corporate road and keep trying to support the organization in the way that I can, or I step out and it gives me a broader landscape to help. And so for a long time, when I think we're in a place where we're comfortable and we say, well, what's what's the risk versus the benefit or the reward? A lot of us will take the stance, a lot of us, not all of us, will take the stance of I make a great salary, I have great benefits. This just feels like too much work, and it feels, by the way, uncertain and scary and stressful. And so why would I do that? And until that pressure starts to build, where you either feel like it's a mission-driven belief, sort of a purpose, or there's something else that I think adds to the mix, you can stay stuck and just kind of float. And actually, I think that's the majority of what people tend to be. They tend to be kind of just floating. And um, and I'm not a floater. Um, I actually credit a lot of my physical activity with this. So Jamin and I first met um in a workout clear class, what, like 10 years ago? And I think there's one consistent thing with the personality profiles of the people in this class is that we were all showing up to challenge ourselves and driven. And we're driven. And I don't love stagnation. When I start to feel stagnant, I start to question there's a reason I'm here, there's a reason why I'm in this world. Am I doing what I should be doing? And when I'm 80 years old, will I look back at myself and my decisions and feel proud of what I've done? Or will I feel like I could have done more, I could have stepped out, or I could have helped more people. And so that is truly the decision making for me. It was a slow burn plus the belief system of self-reflection. I do a ton of self-reflection. And the timing of this, we're recording this now in June. The timing of this really started the beginning of the new calendar year. And I think the timing of the year had something to do with it as well.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Like a new beginning. Yeah. New year.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

New year, new me. Well, more like how am I elevating myself this year?

SPEAKER_04 14:11

Yeah. You know? Elevate, elevated.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Yeah, not new. It's still the same core. It's just an elevated version.

SPEAKER_04 14:18

A better you.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:19

So someone jumped around a little bit. What what was the feeling of like, hey, I'm doing this for someone else, and now talking about organizational restructuring and how they do it within their companies. And now I'm doing it myself, to myself, for myself.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

To myself. I'm restructuring myself.

SPEAKER_05 14:35

Well, that that's what you did do. You restructured your what you're doing. That's that's yeah. What what was that like? Because I know Lily, walking through helping companies help their people through that is one thing. Doing it yourself is, you know, it's like almost like the shoemaker's shoes that that'll line.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Thank you for asking this question because I think it's a really important one. And I think a lot of times when people are looking from the outside and they see someone that takes this leap, they think, well, but they're just like that. And so they would be good at that. They are so strong and happy and successful that they'll make anything work. But the reality is that when you're shifting something so significant, especially when you go from making money to no money, and let's be honest, that's one of the biggest reasons that people don't step out of the corporate box. It adds such an amount of stress. And you also are going through this phase where you've had an identity and now you're moving into a new identity. And that transformation psychologically has a lot, it takes a lot on you, and it is very stressful, it's very high anxiety. And you you've probably heard a lot of people talk about imposter syndrome of being, you know, how are how am I able to embody this new self? And I think what that really is stemming from is how do I create my new identity in this way that I'm working? And so because this is my second time stepping out, you would say, oh, well, she's done it before and this is easier. I actually think this time around it was a little harder because I had built a system and a and a business before, but this was a different version of what this is going to look like. And I was really rebuilding a new business. And some things that had not gone well in my first round started to pop up in my fear complex, like, oh no, I hope I don't redo that, or I hope this doesn't show up again. Um, I think also the anxiety of making that step, not every step is created equally. Some steps are easier than others. And that step of moving out after that adrenaline subsides and you're left with the reality of what you have to now climb is difficult. And I have had to spend a lot of time working on my mindset to make sure that I'm solidly talking myself up, reminding myself of my mission, going back to the core of why I'm doing it. So when I'm faced with a challenge or feeling overwhelmed or anxious, I always go back to the foundation. And then I take the next best step. What's the next best thing I can do? It doesn't have to be solve the world's problems, it's solve this little thing that I can take care of today.

SPEAKER_04 17:25

Well, you mentioned fears and you said like things I was afraid of from the first time that I stepped outside. What were some of those?

SPEAKER_02 17:33

I think when you reflect on work you've done in the past and where you do kind of a lessons learned, and you realize, well, when I took that, when I spent my time here, this didn't add value to the business mission.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

And sometimes when you're separated from an organization, and because we're humans that want community and tribes, and when you're a founder, you're a founder of one. And so I've had to be very careful and mindful of where am I spending my time and energy so that I'm still mission focused, but I'm doing it in a way that's balancing the time and the ratio of my time appropriately. The other thing is when you're a founder, you have so much um latitude in what work you're doing and how you decide to do it. And I think the the other challenge there is that you have to be mindful of where you're focusing again, your service or your product or whatever you're doing. And you've got to build boundary conditions around that to protect it, because otherwise it will get watered down and you'll end up doing things that were outside of the scope of what you hadn't initially anticipated. Now, of course, you should flex because sometimes you don't realize that there's a need where there is a need, but you also still have to have that foundation of your mission and your values and what you're trying to achieve at the core of everything that a request comes in, you're checking the corner on. So I'll give you an example. In my previous business, I built my business on really consulting and going into organizations and consulting with organizations on change. And that's what I did within the walls of my other agency. But then I started getting requests for executive coaching and personal coaching. And of course, I loved doing that, but that wasn't the original mission. And it actually took a lot of time away from what I was trying to do. And I don't know if either of you gentlemen have spent time executive coaching, but it's a it's a very time-consuming work. And if you're only one person, you can't scale.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

So um, so that was something that when I looked back at now, rebuilding this new version of my business, I had to be very mindful of how am I taking in every request? Every request cannot just be a perfect fit in a yes.

SPEAKER_04 19:50

So you were afraid of look losing focus and being intentional? Yes. Just wanted to summarize it all. So she was afraid of based on past experiences, being intentional with her time and losing focus on the wrong, you know, focusing on the wrong things that aren't aren't exactly with within her nature or specialty or expertise.

SPEAKER_05 20:13

So how how does because a lot of people listen to this are want to move from that corporate box or they're in the corporate box and want to do their own thing. So how how do you how do you make sure as a loan founder, if it's a real estate agent that they're a lone real estate agent, like that they're doing the things that they sh, that they should be doing the things that they excel at instead of all the other noise and fluff that's around them?

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Yeah, it's a really, really good question. And I think the key there is you have to spend a solid amount of time internalizing and creating your core mission. And you hear different people call this different things. Sometimes you hear it referred to as like a transformation promise, or what is it that you're doing with your business? But that's the filter of every decision that you make. And so the way that I look at my calendar, so I come from an operations background, and I think the first thing you can do is manage your calendar. So when you look at your week's calendar and you say, okay, what are the five major priorities that I have to do in order to maintain my business? Some might fall into the category of lead generation, business operations, you know, fill in the blank. Then you really have to understand what are the subtasks and how much time does it take and how much do you want to scale your calendar to manage those elements. You're one person. How many hours a week are you going to work? Now, as a founder, you're probably working a lot. Um, but it also gives you great visibility into two things. It becomes the filter of helping to manage how you're doing work that's absolutely aligned to what your core goals are. But the other thing it does is it showcases what's your resource allocation across. Across those different functional responsibilities and priorities. So if you're starting to see, well, I just am one person, the math's not mathing, I cannot make this work. This then starts to open your eyes to, okay, do I need to reprioritize? Which as a founder, when you don't first, first when you're trying to work on building revenue, that's probably what I would recommend. But shortly following that, it would be what kind of support do I need to get? And how do I do that in a cost-effective way? But the key is you've got to balance those priorities.

SPEAKER_05 22:29

And I I think I think a lot of people, like when you're a founder, you want to try to do it all yourself. And I think they're afraid to a certain extent of going outside and like what people do I need? Either they hire people too quickly as a founder or they don't bring someone in quick enough and then they and then they falter for and then they falter.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yes. And you know, I think that's why going back to if you create the core of your brand and the core of your mission, that is a really solid um cornerstone of how you could even bring people in. Because when you're onboarding, you should indoctrinate them into your mission and strategy. And that way, it takes some of that risk down. So, and the fear probably as well, of releasing and relinquishing the control and having people support your business.

SPEAKER_04 23:16

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SPEAKER_05 23:43

So you you had said I we've said this before too, is going through this yourself opposed to coaching a coaching an executive how to do this or consulting with a company on how to do this. What's it like moving through that like uncertainty of is this actually gonna work? Because I think that's a big question our audience has is like, is this gonna work? How do I like because I know that goes in everybody's mind? We'll have a positive attitude, yeah, it's gonna work, it's gonna work, it's gonna work. But somewhere down deep inside, it's always that little question of, like you said, the imposter syndrome or you know, the the someone else is the golden handcuffs where I'm doing so good and making such at this title, I had this money, now I'm gonna go do it to myself. How do you work, how do you work through that yourself?

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Well, there's really two things to that, I think. The first is that when you start to have those thoughts, I think you have to go back to your strategy. And when you're building your strategy, you should make it time-bound. By making your strategy strategy time-bound, you have sort of gates or milestones in which you're checking in to see how your progress is well progressing. And I think that's a healthy way to take the stress and the thoughts that can sometimes create noise and quite honestly, distrust within yourself and put it into data on paper. Because remember, when we're founders and when we've stepped out on ourselves, we don't have a whole team that can give us the check-in-balance of thought process. We're a lot of times fighting our own internal dialogue, for better or for worse. So the more you can make it as professional and opera operationalized as possible, putting it down on paper, building it into a presentation, having quarterly check-ins with yourself.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

So typically, what do we do in a quarter if in an organization? We do a quarterly business review. Do a quarterly business review, see how you're performing towards your goals and keep your deadlines solid. That's the other thing I would say. You have to make deadlines for yourself and you have to keep them and honor them. So if in a simple way to bring that all together, I would say this you kind of want to use your imagination a little bit and pretend that all of the functions of the business world that you've seen that work, like you think about all the things that we do, weekly status check-ins, quarterly business reviews, presentations to the board, you should mimic those kind of cadence as well because they exist for a reason. So if you don't have that in place, that's a really first best step to take is to organize your calendar for the for the quarter, for the year, and and start to put that down there. That really helps, I think, alleviate a lot of that internal dialogue that can throw you off.

SPEAKER_05 26:26

So now you were you were the expert from the outside. What did you get?

SPEAKER_02 26:31

Sometimes I was outside. Sometimes I was inside.

SPEAKER_05 26:34

Well, that's so the expert from from outside the organization. From from yeah, from expert from outside the organization or expert that they brought into the organization to do this. What did you get wrong, if I can ask when you were doing this for yourself? Like, was there anything you got wrong that you would have advised like a CEO or somebody who was going through this that you might have said, eh, I probably wouldn't have done it that way?

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Um, that's a really hard question because if you're asking me to compare the advice I've given inside of a large enterprise organization versus right now, I'm just a founding company of one. So that's really hard because change management inherently is about moving people through change. Um, but if I were to say speaking to the highest level of an organization when you're trying to move through change and you're making massive transformations, the biggest thing I would suggest, and I don't think that this is anything that I've done wrong, I think I would have leaned more into it. I think I would have leaned more into the humanity side of it and said, look, I know we have board pressure, I know we have money we have to hit. But what I didn't say were the things that I said at the beginning of this conversation, which is your success rate is directly correlated to how you're caring about your people. And and, and not just caring, but how well do you know what this transformation is really going to affect your business? You know, it reminds me of um, do you guys remember uh Teddy Roosevelt? Obviously, you remember him as our president. Um, but he used to do this thing called the midnight rambles when he was the president of the police commissioners in New York City. Do you know anything about this? Okay, tell you a little story. So when um when Teddy Roosevelt became the president of the police commissioners at the time in New York City, the police department was a mess. They didn't have any kind of solid performance measures and they were really living in a way that they weren't standing on their posts, they were being bribed. I mean, it was a real, it was a real problem. And so he came in and he did this thing called the midnight rambles, where he actually dressed in a big coat, a floppy hat, and he walked out at midnight to find where were the police officers, what were they doing? And as he did this, he was able to build at the ground level, number one, see what was really happening. But number two, he really built that trust in people that I'm here to make this change. And I will show up to see if you're at your post or if you're if you're engaging in bribery. And so anyway, that was one of the ways he was able to transform the entire police department. And I think about that story, and I think about our CEOs and our executive leadership, and I think if they're not showing up and doing a midnight ramble, they don't know what the actual transformation that one needs to happen, and two, how they can support it in the best way. Because a lot of times you get someone talking up from the top, trying to do their best job, but they have bad intel. And it's so watered down that it sounds like nothing when it comes down the line. So that would be my recommendation back to myself, would have been I had to be more specific on how they would fail if they didn't really care about getting down to the dirty details and understanding really what are you asking of your team and your people and what is this going to do for the business? Because I think that there's a huge misunderstanding of how culture impacts performance. And I don't think our executive leadership teams across our organizations truly understand what that means for the business in quantifiable ways when they're making these transformational changes, whether it's restructuring, cost cutting, whatever it is. Sometimes things need to happen like that, yes, but the way that you do it is really important.

SPEAKER_04 30:31

So let's talk about what this becomes on the other side, right? You said something in your intake about every leader in our audience, every leader in our audience needs to hear. Umganizations that thrive in the future are the ones that know how to help humans move through change well. Like, break that down for us. Because again, like it could be the solopreneur, the founder, it could be a small team, two to four people, me and a couple of assistants, or I'm building my team, larger team, as I build an organization. And and I think every evolution of of that organization, there's change. Right? From one to two, there's change, from two to four. It's like, so break break that down for us. Like, how can we help them with that?

SPEAKER_02 31:22

So I think the biggest thing to understand is that change is here and it's constant, and change is moving faster than ever. So I gave you the stat earlier of just even 10 years ago, two major changes would happen versus 10 now. And I think what we're going to see is that within probably two to three years, because of AI, we're going to see change even more rapidly.

SPEAKER_04 31:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

And so the best thing we can do is to enable our people to truly become adaptable and not have a couple of things happen. You don't want to lose the their willingness to support the change. Um, if that happens, your success rate drops even further down, believe it or not, because the more change that starts to show up and the more failures that you have on the back end of those changes, unfortunately, it's a downtrending curve. So my suggestion would be this: you've got to understand where your people truly are in that change curve. Do they already have extreme change fatigue? You have to do kind of a diagnostic. If they already are feeling like, hey, we've had 15 change initiatives. How did you think that they went? Well, they didn't go well. They failed. And by the way, what's the morale of the environment right now through employee engagement surveys? Well, it's low. Okay, so the key here is you cannot just look at that and think that's fluff. I have to say that again. You cannot look at employee engagement scores and think that means nothing if it's low. You have to look at that and say, I need to prioritize this. Because at the end of the day, if you believe every person is just replaceable, that's fine, but that's gonna have a cost on your business. It's going to be more expensive to bring new people in. It's going to have really huge impact on your culture. And quite frankly, it's going to hurt your reputation. And right now, more than anything, the language of reputation of organizations are pretty profound and easy to get to. So you have to consider these elements when you're making decisions. And if you're not building an environment for your people and having that as a point of responsibility where they can thrive and be empowered to help move your business forward, you're going to be left behind. Sam Altman has been quoted, and I think a lot of people say this, right? So it's not the AI's replacing people, it's people who know how to use AI that's replacing people. Well, I want to take it one step further, and I want to say it's the empowered people that feel motivated and feel like they can add value to the business that will actually stay and make a significant impact and change. But that third piece only happens if you create a place of psychological safety for your people and you actually are focusing on those enablements. So your morale, great communication, training and development, you have to have these things at the forefront, not in the back end at the forefront.

SPEAKER_04 34:31

Yeah. And so hearing you talk about that, do you think then like part of the onboarding process or the culture should be like, hey, we're going to be changing constantly. We're going to truly, right? Because we're going to need to adapt and overcome. That's part of what we do here with AI. Every so often we're going to change. And so now they're like, oh yeah, J-Man said that when I first started. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. And so they're they're evolving and adapting because that's part of what was uh what they were taught to expect, if you were like building that expectation.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Yeah, there's something to that around how you're profiling your hires. I think that that's a key, a key point. I think the other piece is though, as organizations become larger or larger organizations, it's not as I think simple to do that, although you do have a culture. So if you look, actually, if you reference the CEO of Uber, he talks a lot about this. Yeah. He talks a lot about how when they bring people into the organization, they're very clear on the culture and the mission. And similar to what you're saying, J-Man, goes back to your mission. How are you guys showing up? And what kind of people do you want that to work there? And what kind of people are successful working at the place where you are? But on a broader state stage, I would say that a leader's job is to help create safety and certainty. And so your decision making on what changes are happening. And by the way, if something doesn't work, you should be saying that didn't work. How do we move forward? Don't try to make a story, don't try to run a campaign around it, because people see right through that. You've got to have a little bit more honesty and transparency with your people. And I think that does a lot too in in keeping that connection to the human, to the human employee base.

SPEAKER_05 36:18

I think one of the things that pointed out that maybe they just said was the whole, you know, AI, because we're being re- not say restructured, but it's things are moving so quickly now than they were years and years ago.

SPEAKER_04 36:31

Um was that reorganized in a way? Systems are changing because of AI.

SPEAKER_05 36:37

It is because it's not it's like, hey, I'm doing a job right now, but with that AI, do I still have my job, do I still need my job, or is my job totally all altering? Um so I think anyone that can give advice to people or or companies on that is having a huge benefit. And I think the the way from reading everything and learning a little about you is uh the your work is really human-centered leadership, behavioral change is probably the best way that you could use to describe it. What like what do you actually do with a team? Say I'm a team, I'm going through a change, say I'm I'm a team. Um a team inside a brokerage. I have a team leader, you know, there's three of us that run the team, but one person all of a sudden is gonna step out and no longer be part of the team, but they're one of the leaders. Like, how do you how do you walk somebody through or that team through a process where it helps them instead of breaking apart the team?

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Yeah, it's a really, really great question. So I've developed something called Remember to Shine. It's a framework, and it really is based on a couple of different things. It's based on the philosophy of sound change management principles, but also human behavior. So the first step in that is see it. So the S stands for see it. So first thing is first, you have to help people by telling them the story. People become paralyzed when they feel fear. It's a human behavior reaction. The amygdala starts the fire, and we either have fight or flight. So when change is happening, all of a sudden, the first thing that happens is we say, wait a minute, this is different from how we've done it. What does this mean for me? Am I safe? So when I talked before about creating safety, psychological safety is a component of this. But the other piece is just you have to help people understand the circumstance. And that's a step people miss a lot of the times. They think, well, if I just say the system's going to be implemented, they don't need to know all this other stuff. It's fine. But the but the reality is they do because it helps regulate their nervous system. Yeah. So the first thing is fear. And by the way, awareness, being aware, strips fear of its control. So that's a really key first um sort of see it step. And I would say things that you might hear if you don't do this first step is I'm behind, or I'm not good enough. If that person's leaving and that's changing, now I'm gonna have a new person. Am I gonna perform well enough? What is this gonna mean for me? And I had a bonus structure, and ah, those thoughts are what show up, right? I think we can all relate to this. New boss, what is this gonna mean? So then that's the S. So the next letter in shine is H. And this is honor the shift.

SPEAKER_05 39:19

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

A lot of times organizations and leaders, they try to force this confidence on people before people have really processed the reality. And so we talked actually a little bit about this, but we have to honor this transition of identity shift because it's deeply emotional. When something's shifting, they have to imagine themselves in this new team. And a really good tool for this, by the way, is and an expert communication person would help paint the picture. So think of a movie. If you want the team to perform, let's talk about sports. It's an easy metaphor. If you want the team to win, you start to talk about when you dunk that ball in the net, when you cross that finish line. I want you to hear the sounds, I want you to smell the things. What you're really doing is you're creating a shortcut to creating a new identity because they're visualizing this new identity. So honoring the shift helps people move from where you were to where you want to go. And you also need to acknowledge the grief for uncertainty in this step, because that exists. And that for founders is a big piece too. So the shine method, by the way, remember to shine is something your founders could really use too. Um, and by the way, accept that hard does not mean impossible. That's the other piece with honor the shift. Um, and working out teaches you this constantly. If you feel hard in that last set, remember next time you might be able to do another rep. Um, the next letter in shine is I. And this is initiate action. I love this idea because it's this idea of readiness is created from momentum. So you have to start to take some moves, even if you don't feel ready, because that's going to help build that momentum. And that could look like a single conversation with a person that's feeling challenged. So, Jeffrey, to your example, you have that new leader coming in and you know John is nervous. Jeffrey should go and talk to John. He should say, Hey, I'm sensing there's something going on here. Tell me, what are you worried about? Now, take some time to build trust and openness and conversation, but a single conversation can help build some momentum in action. And from a personal standpoint, taking a single uncomfortable step is key. I think what you're also noticing, maybe in this language here, is that the agency lives within yourself.

SPEAKER_03 41:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

This is not an external source of power or control, it's actually you. And that's what I teach constantly. You have the power, you have the authority, you have the agency. Then the second to last is navigate together or navigate. That's the end and shine. And this is really this idea where humans were never meant to change alone. And when you sit in a meeting and you pretend that, yeah, yeah, yeah, everything's fine and I'm not worried. And yes, it's it's good. Uh maybe I'm the only one struggling, but you're totally pretending, you've got to remember that actually everyone's thinking these things and stressed. And so the more we build trust within our team units to talk about these things, the better we are at getting them on the table and moving forward and coming up with solutions. Which leads us into the last step of shine, which is E. So when you stop surviving the change and feeling like change is done unto you, and you start growing through it, again, that workout metaphor, which is always so good to use, you now are able to work together differently. You're actually, if you do this correctly, you're gonna build stronger bonds within your own team. Because remember that last step about navigate together. Imagine building that trust within your group and everyone just sort of putting their feelings on the table and saying, Yeah, I'm stressed. I don't, I'm worried about this guy that's now shown up to lead this new team. Well, in a proactive way, if you all can be on this remember to shine mindset, you now can transform as a team and elevate as a team. So that's really the order of operations and that's the framework that I work with people on. And it's really industry agnostic, it's team agnostic. But obviously, if I'm working within a specific problem, I would do more diagnosis and I would come up with something very specific for the situation. But at a high level, this is a really good tool that you can use as you're moving through change. Remember to shine.

SPEAKER_04 43:38

Okay, Jackie. Quick, quick fire around. First honest thing that comes to mind. Jeffrey and I are gonna tray off. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_02 43:44

I'm ready. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 43:45

And I I know you like this because you're this is like best leadership advice you've ever received, 10 words or less.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Perfection is the enemy of greatness.

SPEAKER_05 43:54

Now I'm gonna answer this question, but I didn't think I know the answer. Um, book that changed how you see people.

SPEAKER_02 43:59

Can't give you one single book. I read over 50 books a year. So I will say that every single book has given me um empathy for different perspectives.

SPEAKER_04 44:07

The thing about corporate life you actually miss, be honest.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

I miss seeing all of my friends and all of the people. And there's something where you can go and have a cup of coffee with someone and learn about what they're doing. And by the way, all these sort of things solve themselves together that that I really miss. We're not meant to be alone.

SPEAKER_05 44:31

What do most leaders underestimate about change?

SPEAKER_02 44:34

How it is the the human piece is the most important to actually successfully have change and adopt change.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

One word that describes where you are right now.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Transforming.

SPEAKER_04 44:44

If your next chapter had a title, what would the title be?

SPEAKER_02 44:47

We rise together.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

All right, last question. And it's the same one we ask every single guest on the show. It rotates, but what would you go back and tell yourself on day one?

SPEAKER_02 44:57

Take a deep breath. Everything will not be done overnight, and trust yourself.

SPEAKER_04 45:03

That's exactly where we need to end. Jackie, thank you for this conversation. This is the stuff that makes this show worth making. Really appreciate your time and effort.

SPEAKER_05 45:12

Yeah, thank thank you very much. I mean, the the whole order of these psychology is right up my line. So I saw this, I was like, Oh, this is so cool. This is so cool. So that thank you so thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. I think the audience and I got a lot out of it.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

My pleasure. Thank you both for having me. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 45:29

Thank you. And if this conversation hit you the way it hit us, everyone, please share it with someone that you care about. Send it to some, send it to somebody who's in the middle of their own moment right now. Subscribe if you haven't already. And next Monday, we're sitting out with another great guest living outside the corporate box. You don't want to miss that one. But before we let you go, we want to say thank you to our founding partners, Wise Agent, Subie, and the CE shop. They make this show possible and they're building tools that actually help people in this industry. Check them out. All the links are in the show notes. And thank you again, Jackie, for spending your time with us. And thank you to everyone for listening. That's not something we take lightly. Now go make it happen.