Engineering an Epiphany: How to Make Large-Scale Change a Guaranteed Success | MJ Reiners

70% of all change efforts fail. Learn from my guest today about how your change can be different. MJ Reiners is a speaker, author, consultant and educator. She launched Summerland Education to enable organizations to harness the energy and techniques needed for successful change. Keep listening for her tried and trued mindsets, and approaches for large scale change, you'll be glad you did.

Welcome to the Courage of a Leader podcast. This is where you hear real life stories of top leaders achieving extraordinary results. And you get practical advice and techniques, you can immediately apply for your own success. This is where you will get inspired. And take bold, courageous action. I'm so glad you can join us. I'm your host, Amy Riley. Now, are you ready to step into the full power of your leadership and achieve the results you care about most? Let's ignite the courage of a leader.

MJ, I am so glad you are with me on the Courage of a Leader podcast today. Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much, Amy. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you.

Me too. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Because your experience and research has led you to deeply understand the importance of energy in change efforts. Yeah, and we all have change efforts going on in our work and in our lives. How do you think about energy? And how does it work with or possibly work against change initiatives.

A lot of times when we are embarking on a change effort, the very first thing that we react to is taking physical action. And that is good, and that is necessary. But so often after we get down the path, we realize we're off course a bit because our physical action hasn't aligned with our mental energy. And even more important, our emotional energy. And in organizations today, 70% of all change efforts fail. So our standard change management way of looking at it isn't working anymore. And so we have to get upstream of that physical effort. And so what I work with individual leaders and organizations on is how to think through the design of your change project and your mindset. And your emotional set needs to be aligned with that, and design those physical activities that are all together, because then you will find you're actually using a lot less physical effort, and you're getting better results.

Okay, MJ, some people are resistant to speaking about emotions, right? And some of us are more self aware of our emotions than others. How do you get there with leaders in organizations? You're right

there. And there's so much fear around change, and there's so much resistance around change. And the way I have seen organizations and leaders work is that by failing to use that enthusiasm, failing to use that joy, that camaraderie, you're leaving absolute gold on the table, that is your big driver for success for change. And it is a lot of fear with people. But if you can make it fun, and that's where the results come. So as a leader, if that's really, really, really not your skill set, and you're really uncomfortable, first of all, I will talk all day long about Yeah, gotta get used to being uncomfortable. But if you're not that Energizer, right, find the people on your team who are and just give them some opportunities to say, hey, here is our event. And this is the mind shift that we're trying to create. This is the experience that we want people to realize, and have, you know their own. You want empowerment, right? Change is not about forcing people but designing an experience a training experience, an open house experience, a show Intel experience, having people learn and experience, they're all on nuances related to change and they start to practice it in a safe setting. As a leader that's really not your skill, then use some people who are your energizers because they are all over the place these days, especially with the younger generation in the workforce. You give them a specific task and a specific goal and you say here's the energy I want around that I want it to be light I want it to be, you know, fun. I want it to be professional. I want it to be serious, but here's the outcome that we want and turn it loose and bring in some team members to help build that energy. And you'll be really, really surprised how that enthusiasm carries momentum forward.

This is terrific. MJ. So first of all, knowing that 70% of change efforts historically have failed.

And that's according to Forbes magazine. They've done a lot of research on this. Yes.

Well, thank you so much for that really nice, generous introduction.

Yeah, so MJ, you said, we need to think through the design. Can you tell us a little bit more about how do we get started in a successful way? Like, let's say I'm a team leader out there, I've got an idea. How do I get this going?

I know, I know how important you think you know, governments to be my first reaction to what you just said, MJ is that I don't know that I've ever heard the word delight with a system implementation. And I love that, right? What's our dream? What are we headed? Like, let's, let's talk all along the way about how we can delight our internal customers, right or delight our end users, whomever and all the folks that the change might impact. I love that as a as a dialog, right and a glance what

I worked with my customers on I so encouraged that I have done large scale transformations for over 20 years. My biggest one was $350 million. With with 200 people and and we did fantastic with many, many of those outcomes. But I've done projects in the past, where people are like, what was this all for? It's a lot of disruption, it's a lot of disruption. So you can't wait to the end to figure out delight. Delight has to go at the beginning. And that's where your energizing and you're thinking through your mindsets that you want and those emotional sets. When somebody is using your new product or service, how do you want them to feel? You know? And is your goal sales? Of course, that's a big, big part of it? Or is it delighting the customer? So they have long term sales with you. That's what you really want is you want lifelong customers, right? So it's just a different mindset. So when you you gotta be thinking of that upfront.

And it brings a different kind of energy, or does the way Exactly, yeah, MJ I want to underscore, I feel like I often hear one or the other. You talked about dreaming, right? That dream, that vision. And then you talked about rules, Raisa, wrote some rules of governance, how we're going to operate. And I feel like I have often seen that a leader or an organization is successful at one or the other, but powerful combination of the two sides really important. I know that you work with leaders and organizations on governance all the time, to kind of help folks understand how do you get involved in that? How far reaching should it be, if I'm the head of a division, and I'm, we're implementing a new software platform in my area, who all gets involved in setting the governance versus if I'm a team leader, and we're making a change in our team, and we've got a team of 8am I setting it? Am I involving all eight? Is it a subgroup? Any recommendations there?

Great, I think that will help people get their heads around this. You want your opinion leaders, you want your operational experts, and you want to make sure that the different perspectives are represented. Absolutely, yeah. Terrific. MJ, a lot of said about how people resist change, right or straight out fearful of change. And in a lot of it has to do with how our brains work. Right? I remember, our brains are designed for survival. So they're constantly scanning for threat and oh, no, right? This, this is a threat in in my world, right? I used to know how to operate competently in the old model or on the old system. Now, something's new coming. I don't know how this is going to go. Our brains release cortisol. So how do you recommend that leaders think about that, and work to reduce resistance? Excellent.

Well, you nailed it, I wrote a whole chapter in my book, it's one of the beginning chapters is about how the brain works. And many change leaders aren't familiar with that. This is part of human nature. And so I've been in many projects, I fell under this trap myself a long time ago, where you think somebody's being stubborn, or they're being rigid. And maybe, maybe they are, maybe they're not even aware that they're responding that way, but it is how the brain works. And so a change leader needs to be aware of those things, educate yourself on those things, and to have compassion around it. This is a normal human experience, but there's ways that we can craft our experiences to move people through it safely. And with support, it is huge to have support. And the other part of why people change fear is because historically, we have failed at it. And so we have a lot of bad memories around chain. It didn't work so well. And so a good change leader to stand out, you gotta get results. And it was one of the questions you wanted me to make sure I focus on is, what does a good change leader need to do? You got to get results? And if 70% of history isn't, you know, change management is broken, what do you do differently? And so that energetic perspective, I think, can drive a lot more results for people. But huge. Yes, MJ

Can I clarify? So I think you're not just talking about results. At the end, are we also talking about results? Along the way,

there are milestones that you definitely want to hit that you want to make sure that you're not off track? 100% and how you measure those, and what metrics are the meaningful ones isn't important. And that's something that a governance team can figure out. You don't need to have the dozens of them but pick a couple. But back to the fear question. So I think that for change leaders, you really have to be compassionate. And understanding two things. One, fear is part of the change cycle, and we got to move through it, we can't let that hold us back. And what often fear does is it saps us of our willpower. And that's where a leader has to come in and be present and say, Hey, this is a little bit uncomfortable. This is a little bit scary, but we are going to do this together. And here's how we're going to support each other. And we will make some mistakes, but we'll go through those together. And the great antidote for fear is a process you know, and having the step by step and understanding and walking through those steps and when people can start to see something you know, getting it on paper or walking through it physically and experiencing it before it's real. i That's my go to strategy all the time with fear is just practice it before it's real. because then they realize, oh, this wasn't what I thought it was. This wasn't as scary as I thought. But until you get people to move through something in practice, you're not going to have that awareness and that realization?

Yes. So first of all, know that it's human nature. Absolutely.

I find not trying to make your life miserable. Trying to maybe one or two, but not not the masses.

Yeah, there's just relief there. And knowing that it's human nature, right. It's not conspiracy theory, and bring that compassion and that support be present with it? No, no, it's a part of the process. And to me, and this your response here, I'm like, Oh, this is just it's pulling it all together. Right? The support, the governance is going to provide comfort for folks, right? We there's some rules here. And we know what to epsilon. Yes.

It's not willy nilly. And we don't know what we're doing. There's some there's some guidelines and guardrails that are helping us exactly. Based on our values based on our values, right? How us

right? And here are some results that we're measuring that we all care about, right? Like know that the world in the work would be better when we hit those, and then ways to practice and experience the new world. Right? That's really great. Can you give some examples of support MJ? How do leaders support along the way?

Those were some great examples and ways to provide support. I'm going to recap them for listeners, the visibility being accessible, right, you talked about walking around, if your organization is virtual or hybrid, you know, it might be having open office hours or just reaching out, right. I mean, if you're a team leader, just you're checking in with folks, the training so many reasons to have well thought out, put together training, more getting more and more comfortable that real time help. And I love I know sometimes called super users, right? Or the nurses helping nurses, right or customer service, helping customer service. And here's your person, here's the number to call. Here's the person to reach out to and communicating the expectations and the support that's available along the way. Right

when you call and get an answering machine. That doesn't make you feel good, but when you get a human and it makes you feel good. We can't have humans entering every call. But when there's critical moments, like new changes going in, you need to have some people available to help people. Yes,

I'm gonna use it and it's a human you know, and you Rust and exactly, yes, you know, yeah, like it like it's, you know, not that person over there and a vendor who doesn't know about my job, right. And this is a fellow colleague who I work alongside, and I told him that, and I know that they know what I'm trying to do.

And they're looking out for me they have the same interest that I have, you know, so there's that bonding that really helps improve the relationship and the outcome. Yes.

So really smart to engage those folks. Or dad identify right early on, who are those folks who can be ultimately our support team? Exactly. go live date? Yes, MJ so much great information, what should I have asked that I didn't? Oh,

this idea of daily, we can't always predict we can always prepare, yes, upskill. Yes. What skills are most critical for us to be building a muscle around?

Well, I think it depends on where you are in the organization, right? But but for chains leaders, the biggest one is anticipation and forecasting. And that's where my seven forces model really, really comes into play is because you don't have to specialize in one particular thing. But you need to see, do we have all seven forces which align the mind the body and the heart, and then get us into flow experience. So we're flowing upward, not backward, not downward into despair, or flowing upward. So if you're a change leader, that forecasting that anticipation, if you are more on the front lines, like an analyst, you know, it's really understanding workflow. And that's out of the chapter of technique, and understanding what steps are involved in our work, what steps are part of the process and or the program, because technology is going to allow us to automate a lot, which is going to lift us up to do higher creative activities, which will be wonderful. But we have to know where to apply the fix. Because if we fix the wrong problems, you still the overall system still, you know, is intact, you know, so the example I get just real super granular, but visual, like if you on a Pancake House, and it takes your chef, five minutes to make a pancake, but your front line order taker takes them two and a half minutes, that total system is seven half minutes. So if you use AI, or a robot or something else, you know, when you go into restaurants today, you just scan the menu, if you place your own order, so you eliminate that cost, the cost has gone down. But that cook still needs five minutes. So all you've done is create a better bigger backlog. So his timeline is increased. So what you need to do is to take the savings from the front end, and again, another cook to create twice as fast, then you improve the experience, you know, but what often we do is we take cost out of one part, which only creates a increase in in different parts like

Yeah, yeah, that's a great example to your

frontline people know where those constraints are. Yeah, as a change leader, or a CIO or CEO, a lot of times you don't know where those constraints are. And so they you know, they may be really tempted by you know, wonderful new sales pitches, oh, you know, this new thing is gonna save your life. But the frontline person is because No, no, no, it's okay to do that. But we also need to get another cook. They know that information. So that comes out of technique and understanding the workflow and the specific constraints of where improvements can really drive great outcomes and greater performance.

Yes, yeah. Well, then you see your opportunities for are all kinds of improvements, like exactly in including improvements with a technology? Make your process maps, everyone? Yes,

absolutely. I know that's really boring task. But there is so much enlightenment that comes out of doing that writing it down. Yep. Yeah, well

and then then right then you can start to understand what skills what knowledge is needed in aid and each part of the flow right, and help you understand where where change might impact or understand what changes would be most beneficial. You can do really great information. MJ, thank you for sharing freely your energy and your expertise with Courage of a Leader podcast listeners.

Thank you so much. This was really a lot of fun.

Thank you for listening to the Courage of a Leader podcast. If you'd like to further explore this episode's topic, please reach out to me through the courage of a leader website at www.courageofaleader.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please take the time to leave a review on iTunes. That helps us expand our reach and get more people fully stepping into their leadership potential. Until next time, be bold and be brave because you've got the Courage of a Leader.