Kurt Nelson 0:00 Kurt, welcome to Behavioral Grooves. I'm Kurt Nelson, and just to let you know, we're not here to tell you that everything is fine in global organizations today. There are some things that we need to share, and we're here to give you the straight story. Tim Houlihan 0:26 And I'm Tim Houlihan. So, here's a problem that most of you are already familiar with. What leaders believe is on the minds of their employees, and what employees are actually thinking can be two very different things. And the larger the organization, the wider that knowledge gap can become, and that makes organizational change a landmine filled territory, Kurt Nelson 0:49 which gets us to the heart of the conversation that we had today with Julia Dar. Now, Julia is the author of How Change Really Works. Julia is a behavioral economist and is the co-founder of the Boston Consulting Group's Behavioral Science Group, and she raises a pretty uncomfortable question. She asks, if we've been studying change management for decades, and I mean decades, why are organizations still so bad at it, Tim. Why, why are they so bad? Tim Houlihan 1:23 Right, it seems like a lot of organizations are still operating under that field of dreams logic, right? Like, if we build it, they will come. Yeah, sure. Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. Except, as Julia says in our conversation about employees, if you build it, they still probably won't come. Kurt Nelson 1:45 Yeah, and that, like, the communication gap really needs to be addressed. Then she used another great metaphor that really stuck with this, and this is the one big thing that we want you to take away from this conversation, if there's one thing you remember, remember this analogy, right? She talks about organizations like airplanes with leaders in the cockpits. In order to do the best job at flying the plane, leaders need good information and easy to read instruments in that cockpit. Tim Houlihan 2:23 Yeah, and when information stops flowing honestly to the people at the controls, such as when they're a massive communication knowledge gaps between the rank and file and leadership of the organization, leaders can end up making bad decisions because if they're only getting filtered or inaccurate views of reality, they're just gonna make decisions with the data points that they have. Kurt Nelson 2:47 Yeah, now be the behavioral science lens shows us that humans are naturally motivated to avoid that social friction, right? Tim Houlihan 2:57 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 2:57 and we want to respect authority, we also want to Tim Houlihan 3:02 absolutely Kurt Nelson 3:03 embarrass the boss, right? We don't want to sound negative. We, we don't want to be that person going, 'Oh, I got.. I got an objection here. I don't think that's right. Hey, hey, we don't want to be that person in the middle of a meeting that disagrees when everybody else is agreeing, Tim Houlihan 3:23 and that's okay, right? The problem is these human tendencies can have deleterious effects on successful change initiatives. So Julia also shared some research from a global study of about 6000 employees and executives that showed when people hear about organizational change. Their first emotions are usually a combination, and this is the really clever part. It's a combination of both curiosity and anxiety at the same time. I'm Kurt Nelson 3:53 still curious, and a little anxiety about you using the word delir delirious deleterious. Oh my God, there you go, but no, this, this idea of curiosity and anxiety at the same time makes perfect sense, right? We, as humans, we want to have progress, but as we've talked about in many other episodes, we crave that certainty, right? Tim Houlihan 4:18 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 4:19 frequently employees end up getting trapped in what Julia calls the state of curious anxiety, and leaders can either help relieve that tension, Tim Houlihan 4:30 or what happens often is they unintentionally make it worse. Yeah, so buckle up, Groovers, with a fresh pour of change management, and enjoy our conversation with Julia Darr. Julia Darr, welcome to Behavioral Grooves. Julia Dhar 4:54 I'm so happy to be here. Thanks, both of you, for having me. Tim Houlihan 4:56 We're delighted to have you as a guest, and we're going to get started with our famous. Speed round or infamous, but first speed round question. Julia, would you prefer to learn a new instrument or a new language? Julia Dhar 5:10 New language. I'm a profoundly unmusical person, or as my husband says about my dancing style, it's enthusiastic, which is not a great thing for someone to say about your dancing style, but is honest, so I sense that might be my lane. Kurt Nelson 5:30 I would own the enthusiastic part. You know what, this is it. This is what we're gonna get, and I'm going all in. Well, obviously you do have your enthusiasm Julia Dhar 5:41 exactly, I think it's good to be great at things, and that's extraordinary. If you've got to a point in your life where you said, maybe I will never be great, like enthusiasm is the best you can hope for. I love Kurt Nelson 5:51 that. Oh my gosh, yes, Tim Houlihan 5:53 fantastic. Okay. Kurt Nelson 5:55 Second, second of our speed round questions, I'm gonna go with our traditional one. I was thinking of maybe changing it up, but are you a coffee drinker or a tea drinker? Julia Dhar 6:07 I'm very much a coffee drinker, and Kurt Nelson 6:11 flat white. Are you one of those Julia Dhar 6:14 Australians, as you know, brought the world the flat whites, unless you're a New Zealander, and then you think New Zealanders brought the world, I Tim Houlihan 6:20 I didn't know that, that there was this dual sense of propriety around that. Julia Dhar 6:28 Oh, I mean, go and check the edits on the Wikipedia page, like it is real bust. Tim Houlihan 6:33 Well, I have to admit, I've never been to the flat white Wikipedia page, so this might be an opportunity to go. Julia Dhar 6:40 Now we know what you're doing with the rest. Yeah, this is Kurt Nelson 6:43 what the.. my afternoon is filled. Okay. Tim Houlihan 6:45 Third speed round question: true or false? Julia, most people underestimate their own ability to influence change. Julia Dhar 6:53 100% true. Tim Houlihan 6:54 Excellent. We're going to come back to that and dive into that in a big way. Kurt Nelson 6:59 All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask another true or false question here, and this comes right from the beginning of the book. Most transformations, true or false, most transformations fail not because the strategy is wrong, but because the cockpit is Julia Dhar 7:17 completely true, but it isn't random either, so there's a pattern for success as well. Kurt Nelson 7:24 Okay, we're going to talk about that, because I want to come back to that, because I thought it was a really fascinating, like, even just the way that it said the cockpit is, and so we'll talk about that later. All right, Tim Houlihan 7:35 we, we are talking with Julia Darr about her new book, How Change Really Works, which we adore, by the way, and you and your co-authors, Christy Elmer and Philip Jameson, opened the book with a preference, a preface before the introduction, which I think is pretty high on the clever scale, and but in the preface you say this is why we wrote the book, so why did you write the book? Julia Dhar 8:01 I think that change in organizations in our own lives, and it's such a hopeful thing, like every time we set out to change as a part of us saying we can be better, and I think I'm capable of doing that, and then you get especially into large organizations, and as we know, like, as we now know for sure, because it's been true for 50 years, the level of success of organizational change and transformation is very disappointing, and the worst part about that for me is that is, of course, has a cost in terms of money and executive attention, but also the human effort and care that people poured into those changes, and we thought people deserved a better chance of success. The thing that got me really fired up was we have a set of excuses for why change doesn't succeed in organizations, things like, well, people just don't like to change, for example, that might or might not be true, like they're very attractive cliches, but we hadn't really like excavated whether that was true. And then the second, I mean, this is why what the two of you do is such a public service. There is so much behavioral science that would help people actually lead others, invite others to change, change themselves in organizations that, while very easy in some cases low effort, but profoundly human, that would give everyone a much better head start on being able to change successfully, and so even though we say at the moment the success rate isn't great, that we wrote the book because there is a chance for it to be much better. Kurt Nelson 9:49 That's fascinating, and it's so true. It really reflects at least the experience that we've had, and I love the idea that we've talked about change and or. Organizational management professors have been researching this for 50 plus, not actually way more than that, and it doesn't seem to have moved the needle, and I really do think that there are some behavioral science pieces that we can bring in. Want to go back to the speed round question, and you talked about that strategy aspect, so it's that transformations don't fail because the strategy is wrong, but because the cockpit is so first off, describe cockpit for the listeners who might not understand that, and then talk about the what, what you mean by that statement. Julia Dhar 10:34 No, so let me take you way back to 1942 ish, again, as the United States starts making a really concerted contribution to make the effort to win the Second World War, a really basic challenge is noted among people working with pilots, what was not yet called the Air Force, but would soon would be called the United States Air Force, which is extremely skilled, very well trained, often in this case combat tested pilots, and were crashing the next generation of fighter planes, basically. And in ways that weren't easily explainable by a lack of skill. I'm going to assume that they were highly motivated, but they had - we already knew they had been trained. Enter, I think, one of the undersung heroes of behavioral science, Paul Fitz, one of the very first psychologists, and then eventually the builder of a true industrial organizations and industrial research team inside the US military, who did what I think is the first step in any kind of sincere effort to solve a problem that you think has human roots, which is I'm going to climb into the cockpit beside these pilots and say, what is going on. A really good first question is, do we understand like what someone's job actually is, the like office space joke of like, what is it that you would say you do here? Do I know what you would do here? And through the course of that exploration, basically got to a place of concluding that when you looked at the cockpit of a fighter jet, the bomber, the result was an increasingly complex environment, like all sorts of instruments and tools, all pretty well intended, by the way, obviously to give greater guidance, greater specificity, but not particularly well designed for the way in which a human does something, and so in moments where you need basically zero gap between a decision and an action, there was a ton of friction, and so just sort of starting by saying, let's assume that the problem is not the pilot, let's assume that the problem is that we haven't created an environment where they can change, or even ask, is it likely that people are going to be able to do the thing that we want them to do, you suddenly like break wide open the whole problem. That was the generous for the book to say the problem might not be the pilot. The problem is almost certainly the cockpit, but actually even a very well-intentioned cockpit designer who is doing everything they can to help, or everything they think they can to help, and ends up making it harder, Tim Houlihan 13:22 yeah, yeah. We humans, we try to do a good job of imagining what it would be like, but sometimes we're just not that good about it, especially when it comes to defining what our own motivations are in any given situation. Go ahead, you're, you're sitting on a, I'm sure you're sitting on a concept here that I don't want to say, Julia Dhar 13:45 so true, and I think that the same happens when we get even a little bit further away from someone or get excited about our own agenda, and so, good example is leaders in organization who have a big change or transformation plan, and you say people who will lead projects are excited about doing a project and taking a moment to pause and say why would anyone do this change, why would people come with me, do we think it is likely that they will buy what we are selling, basically I think is a very productive way of flowing the decision environment down, because all of the momentum at that point is usually towards doing the thing, but if you remember, doing the thing is usually an invitation to get some other people to do the thing, whether or not that's probable. Tim Houlihan 14:40 Yeah, you know, I'm curious. Did you, am I correct in remembering you started the behavioral science group at Boston Consulting? Is that right? I sure did. Yeah, you did. So, which came first? Which came first for you, behavioral science, a love for behavioral science, or your work in consulting? Julia Dhar 14:58 Huh? And at. Couple of years in to my work at BCG, and we were starting to really focus on that idea that you could have an experience of service in all kinds of settings where you weren't necessarily a paying customer. Great example is if you're getting a service from the government, especially in a country like Australia, where people get all kinds of services from the government. It's reasonable that we give people a good quality service, and that we make it easy for them to access services that we think are generally good for them and good for the common good. And this is right around exactly the same time that Nudge comes out, that the Behavioral Insights Team is established kingdom, and that, of course, was fascinating to me, as it was to so many other people, saying you can really quickly do something with research by putting it in the hands of people who are able to take thoughtful action. The thing that surprised me continues to surprise me is a group of people with a very strong motivation, a profit motivation to take advantage of all of this knowledge that is private sector leaders. Somehow we're behind governments in how do we do this really well, not just how do we do it for customers, which, of course, is important, but actually, there's all kinds of quirky phenomenon inside our own organization where a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of testing, and experimentation could be wildly helpful to us. And by the way, you risk a bunch of money that we spend on technology or transformation or anything else. Kurt Nelson 16:41 Yeah, Julia, you talking her language? I mean, that is so, so like right on spot with exactly some of the conversations that Tim and I have had over the years. It's like there is so much opportunity out there, and it feels like it just isn't being taken advantage of, and I get it, sometimes it's status quo bias. There's a number of other factors that come into it, but what do you see? Why, why is that so hard, or why was it? I think it's changed. It's, I don't think it's exactly 100% yet, but why was it so hard for the private sector, where you think the, as you said, the incentives to do it right are significant. Tim Houlihan 17:26 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 17:26 and yet it didn't get the uptake that it did. Yeah, Julia Dhar 17:28 we do still have a really long way to go. I think that there are perhaps two parts to it, one, like the very natural first intervention for any behavioral scientists, once you have a set of hypotheses, is an experiment, like let's test something, and I think that that actually can feel much heavier to leadership teams than I had realized. For some reason, a pilot is fine, but an experiment feels like really challenging and concerning, and maybe that's just a choice of words. The second one, which I think might be a little bit more acute, but and we don't talk about enough, which is somewhere underlying a lot of change efforts in organizations are sentiments like people will just have to get on board. Let's just get everyone excited, and people are either on the bus or not on the bus. A colleague and I once wrote an article called Pathologies of Failed Change, which are basically what are all the cliches that people use in relation to these like things like it can't be that complicated, for example, I think behind that. When we were brainstorming the title for this book, Phil, one of my co-authors, the alternative title that he had pitched was Shut Up and Change. It's not where we landed, as you know. How change really works is a little bit more welcoming, but I think there's a good amount in organizations where we say people are employees of this company, and therefore when we make a shift, we do on some level expect a shut up and change with even in a moment when we know that that's not very likely, and we know that people have a choice about how much effort they bring to an ask to do something differently. Kurt Nelson 19:25 Yeah, in the book you bring up this take-up concept, and you reference the field of dreams, like this idea of if you build it they will come, and then this idea of take-up, which is this behavioral science concept that assumes field of dreams is wrong, that you can't just build it and they will come on board. Can you talk a little bit about that? And particularly, you bring up Com B, you bring up fundamental attribution error with from Lee Ross. All those different pieces help us understand what you mean by take up, and because I think it aligns exactly with what you're just saying. If I. Not, if I'm not incorrect, Julia Dhar 20:01 absolutely, and I am like very excited for this concept of take up the best articulated, I think, by Cass Sunstein, to get like more love and attention around the world. It's such a simple but important idea there, which is, is it probable or likely, and we can, can we create the conditions that it's probable or likely that people will do things that are clearly and obviously in their interest. There's a set of things like that in companies, people not taking up training that would be advantageous for them, other benefits, obviously, but also more complicated situations where we want people to give some discretionary effort into something that we think would be in their interests, but also the organization's interest, and the best way that I invite people to remember take up is to say it is a reverse field of dreams phenomenon, like if you build it, they still probably won't come, you got it, they still probably won't come is a good way to think about change in organizations, and we spend a lot of time on the building and not much time on the take up from humans. My really simple intervention for companies, by the way, is anytime we're like building a business case, you're planning to do something just saying there will there will be no money without a take-up plan. There will be no extra resources without a take-up plan, and a take-up plan could be as simple as the people on a project team having a very convincing answer to the question, why would anyone do this, and if the answer is not much more detailed than, well, we really like it and think it's a great idea. Hey, we might need to dig a little bit deeper, and that doesn't mean that it has to be impossibly easy or incredibly attractive to do something. It just needs to be probable that they have a pathway for it to align with their incentives and to align with their goals, and indeed, as you said, that's very crowded by a complicated set of biases and barriers on both sides. Tim Houlihan 22:13 A few years ago, I was working for the sixth largest bank in the US, out of Charlotte, North Carolina, 55,000 employees, they announced a massive $750 million payroll reduction, and within a couple of weeks, and you know, layoffs start happening, they had a big town hall, and the entire C suite, the entire executive team was on the stage for this town hall, and I got up and asked the question I wanted to kind of see, of primarily the chief operations and marketing guy, I wanted to hear from him, sort of, what's the next move, how is this going to play out, and so I, and he's a big basketball fan, so I framed it as, okay, this is an important game, we're in the, we're in the basketball game, but where are we in the game? And he answered it and gave what I thought was a good answer, but then he turned and he, he went to the head of HR and said, How would you answer that? And she answers it completely differently, and then, and then she turns, and they find this interesting, and then goes to the head of finance, and then compliance, and like five different people on the stage answered it completely differently. The CEO didn't even - he even said, "Well, I don't know where we are in the game, but this is the most important game of our life. It's like, "Oh my god, they just destroyed the sense of alignment that you, you talk about as being so fundamental to to getting change happening, and they just demonstrated right there in front of, I don't know, 5000 people in, you know, in the audience. We don't know where the hell we're going. Julia Dhar 23:53 One of the things I think about a lot is the thing that we can almost always give people in communications and situations like that is honesty and specificity. I do think it might add a third to that, which is consistency. It might be nice to be honest and specific, but if the three of us are honest in Tim Houlihan 24:15 very Julia Dhar 24:17 different ways, that is not at all clarifying for anyone, and I think being able to do that really well is an extremely empathetic act. I don't know about the two of you, but I always think like the first law of behavioral science should be people are not doofuses, like generally people have a pretty good sense of the business context in an organization. They know why things are happening. People who work in large, publicly traded companies are not ignorant of the fact that they are like part of a capitalist enterprise owned by shareholders, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise to them, and so. Know honesty and specificity in a moment where they can take some action, or in this case, you're giving them some clarity about their future path helps a lot, but only if the executives have agreed in advance what they're trying to convey, what they're trying to be clear and specific about. Tim Houlihan 25:18 Why is that lacking? Why is that so hard Julia Dhar 25:21 I think part of it might be a big part of the danger is actually in a word that you use, which is alignment, and I do worry that alignment has become one of these incredibly dangerous words in organizations, because it's Tim Houlihan 25:36 buzzy, because it's a buzzword kind of thing, Julia Dhar 25:38 because it's both buzzy and fuzzy, and so you could say, then there often comes a point in a meeting. It sounds like we all might have been in one of these, where many minutes in, like someone often, someone very senior looks around and says, "Okay, are we all aligned? It's like pretty much only one correct answer to that question at that point in the meeting, and I think it can be a cover for any like sentiment. Like Kurt, I totally agree with you. I'm completely on board. I know exactly what you're expecting me to do. Let's go all the way through to totally reject your agenda, and by the way, everything you stand for. There are only two minutes left in the meeting, and so maybe if I say that we are aligned and we're sort of a.. and I just kind of expand my cognitive frame of what that could mean, I can talk myself into it, but if you press like a little bit further and say, okay, what's the mountain beyond alignment? And the mountain beyond alignment is agreement. And if we just changed out the word and said, do we have an agreement? I think it creates two obligations. One is an obligation on me to tell you what I'm asking you to agree to, as opposed to saying you've seen a long presentation good enough, and then the second is think it requires like a much more committal response of whether or not you do in fact agree, and then I think all the pretty positive things that we know about human beings, like once we have made a commitment, we will try to keep it, we're like, you know, wired for sincerity. I think once people say they have agreed, they will try to get there. I think it's slower, of course, it's slower to get to an agreement, but in pretty productive ways. Kurt Nelson 27:33 Yeah, I think that's that idea of changing that word just shifts the perception of what people need to think about when they're, when they're aligning or agreeing, right, that's that's two different pieces to the puzzle, and I think it's so important for leaders, particularly as Tim was saying, look, you are, you are at the people put a lot of emphasis on the words that you say, on the way that you behave, and the way that you act, and we've talked to a number of people about the extra emphasis that employees look up to leaders to see how they're responding and how they're doing, and that feeds back into how they're doing, and one of the things, and this is kind of taking tangent here, you talk about in the book, how change is emotional, that it's, and I think we can all agree, right, change is an emotional component, it's that, that's just a given, right, but you bring up this key aspect where it says oftentimes leaders rely on their instinct about that emotional and how the teams are doing and feeling and various different pieces of that, and we probably can't identify as a leader what 1000s of employees are feeling, and so you really need to just don't go on your gut, but get some feedback, is that, yeah. Does that align? I mean, I use a line instead of agree. Oh my god, Julia Dhar 29:08 and they get some feedback on a systematic basis, and so one of my absolute favorite things we did in preparation for this book was an enormous global experiment with 6000 people, 1000 executives, 5000 employees, first line managers about how people feel about change, how they think about change, what they do in response to change, and one of the questions was when you hear generically about a change coming to your organization, but you don't yet have all the details. One of the first two emotions that you feel, and by far the most common is curiosity, which is encouraging, and the second is anxiety. And so, a really good assumption is, like, we've got people trapped until we give them something else to expect in a state of curious anxiety. Capacity and that sort of trapped capacity that we have to figure out a way to unleash in the organization, but it's of course also not true that everybody is feeling that all at the same time, the same way that sometimes a while into a big change effort people will say something like I think the organization is tired, I mean, probably not. So, organizations don't have feelings. It is like, for sure, true that, and like a group of individuals in the organization might be tired, but unlikely that everybody is tired. We, the first thing we do, which comes, I think, from a good place, is to say, oh well, with we should get out there, we should talk to people, we should get some input, but that very often involves someone very senior walking around to a lot of people who are relatively junior and saying, How is it going? And then they come back and they say, Well, I went out to three different plants last week and I asked people, How's it going, and the answer seems to be like, Yeah, pretty good, and the discipline hierarchies are real. It's very empathetic to CEOs in this situation. You say it is very, very difficult to get people to tell you the truth, but you might also say it's not realistic that people will necessarily always just volunteer the truth in that situation, and so finding ways around that. I think there are simple ones, like giving people permission. So, CEO, that I know talks about, like, anytime he visits a store or distribution center, says, "What is the stupidest thing we do at this company? as a way to tell people it's okay to tell me what you're afraid to tell me, but actually systematically, in some cases, just measuring, and this is where, like, really short surveys can be useful. Like, what are the strong emotions that you are feeling this week? Do you think we are likely to be successful in the change that we are undertaking? Because, of course, confidence that we're going to be successful becomes pretty self-fulfilling, and my personal favorite, which is a measure, by the way, that basically every corporation on earth has agreed to. Would you recommend this change or transformation to a colleague? Would you recommend? Kurt Nelson 32:15 So, Julia, do you think, do those types of things need to be anonymous? I mean, do you need to use a third party in order to really get quality, honest responses, because we just talked with another researcher about one of the biggest barriers in organizations is fear, and, and there is, like, if I am against the mode, saying this change isn't something I would recommend to a colleague. Am I going to be suspect in, like, saying that honestly if it's not anonymous or different things? Or how do you go about doing that in a way that makes sure that people feel that they can answer in a way that is truthful? Julia Dhar 32:57 You know, we've tried it so many different ways. I'm not sure that I yet have comprehensive answer. A thing that I do know for sure is, and then provided that people feel listened to, even if, by the way, their suggestion ended up being rejected, and that is the single most important thing. One of the greatest comments of all time in one of these rounds of feedback that I received from someone was, unless anything changes, unless I see any evidence of something changes. This is my last time filling out this survey, and I love that they get to say giving you some quantity of their discretionary effort and their attention and their input because they believe that you will do something with that someone who matters will read that and do something about it and so you have to show people really early on that a human being on the other side read cared about it appreciated and one intervention that I really liked in a company was their version of a survey exactly like this that we were running, and it was anonymous, and you could go and like all the way through the survey totally anonymously, and then it said at the end, would you like someone to follow up with you about anything that you have said today, and yes, no, and then, of course, if you said yes, it was like, in order to do that, like, you have to tell us who you are, because, like, how else will we find you in this, and there's sort of like some beautiful glitchiness in it, that, like, because in this case, the field was available to everyone, lots of people who did not want to follow up also just wrote in their name, they're like, "I'll just tell you who I am anyway, which says to me people are not as concerned about anonymity as, like, maybe we expect in that situation. They definitely, definitely, definitely want to be listened to, and if they like know that there are. People on the other side doing something with it that helps them a lot. I will also say one of my, like, favorite things to do, like, before you're even in the world of your change, having, like, actually influenced the way you're asking someone to do their job, is upfront in the organization, say, let's with the project team. How do you rate the change abilities of this organization? Interestingly, it's very rare that anyone says we are great at changing. Mostly people say we're not good at changing, and I think what they mean is we all have a very memorable experience of a failed transformation, and that has left scar tissue in the organization, but as soon as you go like a little bit further out into like the wild of the company, people are relatively compassionate and forgiving, so they say things like we know that in large software implementations, for example, or like big location shifts, things go wrong. We know that timelines shift or change around. Just be honest, they just tell us what is really happening, and that idea that people actually, they, they sort of have a great deal of empathy for how difficult it is to run a big thing. They know that people are handling a lot when they do that, and we can probably be a bit more honest about what's really going on, what we're learning a little bit more forthcoming than is the tendency, because I think the tendency is sometimes when those things start to slip, we say, oh, let's not, let's not talk about it too much. Let's wait for it to be back on track. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 36:47 as I'm listening to talk about this, it reminds me of so many other conversations we've had with other researchers and people in the behavioral science world. When they look at management and they look at the health of corporations, so much seems to rely on the leadership. Is that a fair premise to start from, Julia? That the leaders do have an outsized effect on culture, and, and how things, well, how things actually change. Julia Dhar 37:18 I think that's totally right. Like, I think the thing that leaders can disproportionately do is transmit to people expectations and intent, and they have lots of opportunities to do it, and to like frame that in really basic ways, like saying, here is what I expect, and my intent in telling you that information is not for you to be afraid, for example, my intent is to invite you to be part of something, so the opportunity to clarify expectations and intent, of course, and I think that I know the two of you talk about this all the time, and behavioral science is not a magic trick, they sometimes the incentives are just not set up in the organization for people to meet that expectation, even if they do understand the intent, and you can get people to give much more effort than they are incentivized to directly. Tim Houlihan 38:10 Yeah, Julia Dhar 38:11 but because first law of behavioral science, people are not doofuses, it's very hard to get someone to negotiate directly against their own incentives. Yeah, but it's quite often the case, like that we're asking people to do something that we have not yet set up the conditions for them, and to do it in the amidst all of the ways in which we can intervene productively to help create the right conditions for change, like we should remember that in many organizations and companies, the single biggest predictor of what someone will do in any given situation is what their line manager tells them to do in that situation. Kurt Nelson 38:52 Yeah, yeah, is change fatigue something that you see, and I'm asked this because I worked with an organization, came in, and they had gone through over 10 years, I think they had 910, VPs that had changed, literally between like six months and 18 months was the average, and they almost, it seemed like, at least from the people that we talked to, is they would come in, there'd be a month of like checking things out, and then they would change things, and then they would be gone, and then the new leader would come in, and a month of kind of going through, and then they would change things, and so they got to this point that I described as survivor mode, you know, so survivor of the show, it's outlast, outplay, outwit, and they would almost to a part, it's like, oh, you want me to change the way that I'm doing this, sure, I'll do that, and then you know, six months later, they're going, you haven't changed, then you're going, oh, I'm sorry, I, I meant to. But it's been harder than we thought, and different things, and they would just outlast them, because they knew when that new leader would come in, there'd be a different change, and they're going, you know, it's just not, they've gone through it so many times, and then it was like this back and forth, I'm not sure if you've seen that as well, or if, if that was just a one off, Julia Dhar 40:19 it's definitely not a one off, and it is kind of astonishing as you look at situations like that, where you say this organization, not any one leader, not any one situation, any one particular situation, this organization has taught people that that is the optimal strategy, and in fact that has been really consistently rewarded and there is fundamental attribution error. There's actually nothing wrong, probably, with the people at the end of that change, but the way there may not even be anything wrong with each individual direction, but the way in which we have set up the conditions, the context for change has become really problematic. You asked about change fatigue, which is always one of those sentiments that it makes me a little apprehensive as we talk about it, because I think it becomes really convenient to say, "Oh, I think there's just change fatigue in this organization, there's a lot going on. Okay, like it's a busy world, there's a lot going on everywhere, and I wonder if we talked more about change disappointments, like your organization is not, maybe they're just very disappointed, and the returns that they have seen on their efforts not very high, and so, of course, like a very rational adaptive strategy is to say I'm going to see exactly how passively I can resist you and wait you out. I mean, a very strategically procrastinate on this change, and so if we said, like, let's talk about change disappointment, because it is also definitely true that every like failed change, like ebbs away like a little bit. Exactly how much I don't know, but at that adaptive capacity and willingness for the organization to change. We talk a bit in the book about self efficacy and why that's basically believing that you can change becomes effectively a self fulfilling prophecy for individuals. I think the best extension of the Albert Bandura self efficacy research is this notion of collective self-efficacy, and when you think about it for a second, it sounds hilarious, but efficacy, but also collective, but it's so important, and this idea that, like, whether or not this group of people believes that we have the capability and resources to change will be pretty determinative of whether they can, I Hey, Kurt Nelson 42:43 Groovers. Quick break from the conversation to talk about something we don't bring up enough on the show. Tim Houlihan 42:48 Yeah, that's right. When we're not behind the mic, we're working with organizations to apply behavioral science in ways that actually move the needle for leaders, teams, and whole cultures. Kurt Nelson 43:00 So, whether it's designing smarter incentives, boosting engagement, setting goals that actually stick, or helping teams navigate change, we bring real science to real workplace challenges, Tim Houlihan 43:11 and we don't just talk theory. Our approach blends research-backed insights with hands-on strategies that drive results, and we've seen small behavioral shifts lead to big wins in Fortune 500 companies and scrappy startups, and even in mission-driven nonprofits. Kurt Nelson 43:28 Yeah, and we bring the same curiosity, creativity, and care to our client work that we bring to every episode of the show. Tim Houlihan 43:36 Really, I think people might want more than what we bring to the show Kurt Nelson 43:40 and you, you probably have a point there. You're probably right. Tim Houlihan 43:45 Okay, so we'll bring more care and creativity to our work with you and your teams than what we do on the show. Kurt Nelson 43:52 Yes, more care. So, so if you're ready to build stronger motivation, better team dynamics, and maybe even make your workplace a little more groovey, Tim Houlihan 44:02 yeah. Reach out to us, grab us on LinkedIn or Facebook, or just drop us a line. We'd love to help you and your team find your groove. Kurt Nelson 44:12 I like the idea of change, disappointment, and it goes back, I think, to what you said, like your study showed that hey, when change it happens, it's like curiosity and anxiety, and I think that change, disappointment probably shifts that, like, you probably get more anxiety than you did curiosity because of that. So, yeah, Julia Dhar 44:35 oh, people say, like, here we go again, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, there's like the idea that, like, and Adam Grant talks about it as like we end up languishing, basically that feels right, Kurt Nelson 44:46 yeah, languishes. So, Tim Houlihan 44:47 Julia, before we went live, you, we were chit chatting about different aspects of the book, and the second half of the book is really all about putting the principles to work, which we love, because you're still doing it. With all the verve and behavioral science that we, we love, you know, in reading, and so it's, it's so thorough, but you mentioned, what about the endings, because there's a whole chapter dedicated to ending the change, we know the peak end rule is important, Danny Kahneman figured that out years ago. Why, first of all, why is ending so important? And the second, my second half of the question is why aren't, why aren't executives paying more attention Julia Dhar 45:31 to it? Why, why don't people love ending the start has like so much sex appeal around it, like we get to decide, and then we plan, and then we start, and then you're in the middle for a while, and generally we're building Tim Houlihan 45:46 momentum, we're running, we're heading towards something, Julia Dhar 45:49 and then at some point often it becomes, it's kind of well, then it's then we're just going, and it's no longer getting as much executive attention, and so right, like the whole mission of the second half of the book was to say we hope you love behavioral science as much as we do, like we hope you want a really systematic approach to changing, and to really like uncover what the like human is thinking and feeling, but even if you don't like the just like put this in a systematic, organized frame for me, like just give me what I can use in order to get a big thing done. That's the service that we're hoping it provides. And we gave a whole chapter to this idea that you have to end things really well. No, I was thinking that if there is a like one concept in psychology that you would say, like the general population, like really like understands, and it's like very literate about probably like great thanks to Oprah Winfrey for this. It is this idea of closure, like people instinctively get like our need for closure, and it's very well known, and yet in organizations we, or in projects, we don't really end things we talk a lot about, like when we deprioritize it, or now it's moved to a steady state, or it's business as usual, but nothing ever really comes to an end, and I think that can be like very tiring in its own way. What I think it doesn't do is give people the chance to come back together, so we have closed this component of the work, or this way in which the team is operating for now. Give people the chance to do the things we know that our brain does at a moment of ending, consolidate our learning, reflect on what has happened, remind people by the way how far they have come, so they say, oh, like, actually we are capable of changing in quite impressive ways, like I'm much further ahead than I thought we would be at this stage, do an ending really, really well, and then kind of gather the momentum and enthusiasm to be able to start something else, I mean, and I think, by the way, this is like a public service announcement to leaders out there that if you just take on the mantle of, I'm just going to be the person who ends things, I mean, this is literally free, and I think gives people so much chance to appreciate where they've come from, but also all the people who've contributed across the organization, and then, of course, as we know from the peak end rule, it's not only about getting psychological closure. Remember, like, the ending is much, much more memorable than the start in almost all situations. So, why wouldn't we take a bit of the like attention we gave to the start, and move it over to the end. I think we can get on the end is huge as well. So, why not, right? Kurt Nelson 48:49 All right, I think you've just given leaders a new playbook that they can like take and actually make a real big input by the whole book, Tim Houlihan 48:57 because it's chock full of great stuff. Julia Dhar 49:00 Yeah, exactly. You didn't get that in the sample precisely. Don't just be a free writer. Yeah, there you go. CEO, Chief Endings Officer. I think it could happen. Oh, I Kurt Nelson 49:12 love it. I love it. Tim Houlihan 49:14 So, Julia, sticking with these, these last principles, the application principles that you go through, can you? We have to ask this. I'm almost going to bite my tongue when I say it, but can you talk about the role of AI in some of the these implementation phases? Julia Dhar 49:33 Yeah, of course. Why? But by the way, why do I feel not asking? Tim Houlihan 49:40 It's because I mean it's like, oh, everybody's got to have an AI, you by the way, I love the way you addressed AI in the book, first of all, you don't flood it with AI this and AI that, it's just there are selected points where you say, hey, here's here's an idea for using an agentic AI to help the organization, and I thought it was really. Thoughtful, and I'm just, I'm fatigued, I'm disappointed with all of the crap about AI. So, I'm, excuse me for editorializing, but I'm excited by it too, by the way that exists as well. Julia Dhar 50:13 Yeah, you're curious too. I totally agree. I mean, one of the things that we confidently know for sure there's a robust MIT study that shows this that says 95% of AI pilots in companies and didn't positively return, so part of it is saying, oh, like there is an element here of here we go again for other types of organizational transformation that for the moment the direction of travel appears to be that many of them are going to be quite disappointing, partly because a lot of them use a theory of if you deploy it, they will come Tim Houlihan 50:53 there. It is Julia Dhar 50:55 sometimes no, they won't. No, they won't. The reason that I think that is particularly a missed opportunity in the context of AI is twofold. One, because we talk all the time about what a potentially disruptive technology it is. I think it's reasonable to assume that in that curiosity emotion that people are feeling, the anxious might be outweighing the curious plenty of times, and the vaguer that we are about what we think it means for the company, the worst that that is likely to get for individuals. The second is, I think, we talk so much at basically two levels of abstraction, both of which leave people a bit lost. One is like, what does it mean for your individual job and the tasks that you are currently doing today? And the other is, what might the implications be for society, or even for the whole company, and hardly ever about the team, or the handoff, or the collaboration. Like, so much of what we do in a company is basically to prepare something to hand it off to another person, and that's where a lot of opportunity and like value is created. It's also where plenty of it is lost, by the way. But why aren't we talking much more about how the interactions between humans have the potential to be influenced here? Because that is where, if you were to say, here's where there is something potentially really heroic that we could do together. Most of work, we say we think people are underserved. People feel under coached by managers. They worry that things get dropped or that quality is lost when they hand it off to other people. It's like not as though we have perfected human collaboration and straightforward, cheap, highly accountable ways to for information and wisdom to move through an organization, or for people to get better at doing what they're doing. These are really good things, and these are things that people could also want for themselves, and I think instead we are very often like down in the task or up in the company and not enough in the team, Kurt Nelson 53:07 yeah, Tim Houlihan 53:08 yeah, yeah, that's Kurt Nelson 53:10 amazing. Tim Houlihan 53:11 When before we went live, we always tee up, we let guests know that we're going to talk about music, and I've got a kind of a slightly odd question here for you that's relatively musically driven, because you've seemed excited about maybe talking about music. So, Julia Dhar 53:27 YouTube, by the way, about music, make sure you Tim Houlihan 53:34 direct that to Kurt, because he's always the best one to answer music questions. So, Julia, if, if driving change in an organization was a piece of music, would it be more like jazz, which is improvisational and adaptive, or would it be more like a classical or orchestral piece that is more structured and deliberate? Julia Dhar 53:55 Oh, you hit on one of, like, the great existential debates of this author team into the maelstrom of contra of musical controversy. Wow, let me, let me explain why to our listeners. My co-author, Phil Jamison, is by training a musician and a composer, and was also the chief of staff and head of strategy for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Obviously, he has, and one of the things that he does frequently is take business leaders to the symphony to use that as a demonstration of what collaboration looks like, but also makes the role of the conductor, but you know the importance of composition and interpretation, all of this, and so, and then by the way, one of the like great, like prototypical pieces of the Boston Consulting Group thought leadership was around this idea that like strategy is basically jazz, that it's highly adaptive. And responsive and improvisational, so this was a huge existential, existential debate for us around what are we, what's the right metaphor for what we are trying to do, the thing that we always got really, I don't think we ever got to a conclusion, the thing we got bent out of shape about that we couldn't resolve is the challenge with both metaphors is we talk a lot about the musicians and almost never about the audience and so our like big debate was like who is the audience in this situation like is the audience the rest of the company because the audience Wall Street they what are we generally speaking like professional musicians are hoping to play for an audience, and that idea of like who are they serving. I told you one of the alternative titles for the book, the very original one, which is ruled out as being too confusing, but I think gets to the heart of what we were trying to say was customers of change, and the idea was the if you approached organizational change like a customer experience, where people could choose to buy or not, and they could like decide how much to spend, and you had to be like anticipatory of their objections, you would have a better approach, and so we were there constantly wrestling with other customers of change, like are they in the jazz quartet, are they like part of the string section, or are they the audience, and for the change, I think really good example, though, coming back to the example that you gave us early on, if the musicians, like, have not decided, like, what are we trying to play here, like, what are we trying to do? I think it is a, we talk a lot about flexibility and agility and adaptiveness as a leadership value. I do wonder, like, if we should have a little bit of caution on the idea that improvisation is not really a strength, and it may actually not really be a service to people to say it might not be the most respectful thing that you could say, like we will figure it out along the way. Tim Houlihan 57:13 Wow, wow, that was Julia Dhar 57:16 that. You touched like the third rail of the book writing process, Kurt Nelson 57:22 I was, I was quite happy when you got it's an existential question that we, Tim Houlihan 57:29 okay, well, Julia Dhar 57:31 that controversy, but like me, you'll have to get Phil on and hear his side of the story. Tim Houlihan 57:37 Absolutely, he is next, and he's gonna be, we're gonna be the first question, Kurt Nelson 57:42 counterpoint here, Julia Dhar 57:45 a Smackdown episode. Yes, let's Tim Houlihan 57:50 lighten things up. Julia, let's imagine that you were on a desert island, and for a year, and you had a listening device with you that could only play two artists, you get the whole catalog, everything that they've ever created, but which two artists would you want to bring with you? Julia Dhar 58:09 Oh, wow. Okay, gonna give you two, the entire Imagine Dragons catalog, which I think is very inspirational, me, as I'm thinking about change. And then this one has a special place in my heart, unique to Matthew Wilder. I have, like, basically one great song, 'Break My Stride' which is hilarious and like chanting, and like very inspiring, maybe only to me, I don't hear it get much radio play anymore, but I feel like I would play that song on a repeat. Break Tim Houlihan 58:48 My Stripe was a was a hit, though. I mean, Julia Dhar 58:50 I totally agree, at least a top Tim Houlihan 58:52 10, if not, if not a number one hit for a while, but I think it was a one hit wonder, though. After that, Julia Dhar 58:59 and I be a behavioral intervention that my husband recommended to me, and as I kind of continue my quest to, like, get up earlier in the morning, or indeed, like, get up at all, if your alarm tone is your favorite song, um, that's likely to, like, set a kind of positive intention psychologically, for the for the day, and so that is my alarm tone now, but yeah, 100% it is my singing is sort of a bit like my dancing, enthusiastic below quality. I do sometimes get reports from my husband that there's like sleep singing that is not the greatest. Oh my gosh, I just want Tim Houlihan 59:41 to just check this. You're going to choose Imagine Dragons because of sort of the depth and emotional impact of their catalog. Yeah, right. And then you're then one Julia Dhar 59:55 song, you're going to go all in on one. You could, Tim Houlihan 59:58 you could pick. I'd be funny Julia Dhar 1:00:01 with, but Kurt Nelson 1:00:03 that one song, that one song has such like emotional, yeah. Julia Dhar 1:00:09 I think it's, it's a beautiful day. I sometimes say to people when I'm trying to like build like encouragement for more behavioral science in an organization, and more like spending more time like actually understanding not humans in general, but your specific humans. I say, like human beings are beautiful and surprising. This is an important insight from behavioral science, and not always totally rational. And I like the idea, not saying, like, look, Kurt and Tim, like you could have had, like, 1000 songs, you've gone with one. This is like a good sign. People are not totally rational, like they have willings and desires that they bring to something, Kurt Nelson 1:00:45 so, but I will say that's not, I mean, Matthew Wilder has more than one song, right? So you actually, it's, you'd get those as well, and you probably have never listened to those, so this would be an exploration, Julia Dhar 1:00:59 yes, exactly, but that wasn't true, so you could, you Kurt Nelson 1:01:03 could find like brand new songs that you could fall in love with, so, so there, Tim, yeah, Julia Dhar 1:01:10 exactly, capable of, capable of musical growth, right here, yes, can I give you both my musical question? Kurt Nelson 1:01:17 Okay. Tim Houlihan 1:01:18 Oh, yeah, God, are you sure you want to ask this? Julia Dhar 1:01:21 Yeah, actually we just need a bit of free consultation on this one. Actually, so often like when you like speaking in front of large audiences, one of the things that I get very well produced events now people say, what would you like your walk up song to be? What do you think is a good change related walk up song. Oh, Kurt Nelson 1:01:42 change related. All right, Tim Houlihan 1:01:45 the very.. I'm sorry. The first thing that that comes to me.. well, of course, I'm gonna.. can I have a two-part answer? Julia Dhar 1:01:52 100% you got to walk off at some point. So, yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:01:55 so we asked this of Bob Cialdini about. and Bob Cialdini's favorite walk-up song is Think by Aretha Franklin. Julia Dhar 1:02:04 Oh, that's so.. Tim Houlihan 1:02:08 I think that's a solid, that's a solid play across any, and even in even if you were at a big change thing, think could be fantastic, but to the second part of my second answer would I just go to Bowie, I'd go with changes, you Kurt Nelson 1:02:29 take the easy shot, it is, Tim Houlihan 1:02:30 but it, the thing is that you want to communicate to people, right? So, like, the wonderful thing about Aretha Franklin's think is that she's, it's the like the first word in the song, think what you're trying to do, and it's emphasized and changes same thing changes, it's right there on top of the chorus, you can't mistake that for anything, it's not buried deep in the in the lyrics, Kurt Nelson 1:02:57 turn to face, you know, the changes, yeah, yeah, so Tim Houlihan 1:03:00 that's that's Kurt. I don't know, you, you probably have, you Kurt Nelson 1:03:04 just stole the easy single that I had, that was sorry, changes was my, my choice. So, what? Yeah, what do you Tim Houlihan 1:03:12 use now, Julia? Julia Dhar 1:03:14 We're in this place of testing this out. I'm like quite a fan of John Mayer's changing, I thought him play it live a couple of weeks ago, and I think it's actually like beautiful. It's about this idea that, like, we're never finished changing of change, and I like changing as a, like, it's a verb. We can't just, like, it's not a description or a noun of something that we are trying to do. I like work by Rihanna, I think there are like this. I do have to put in some effort, but I'm taking submissions if people have ideas. Kurt Nelson 1:03:48 All right, well, we will ask that out to our listeners, and so we'll, Julia Dhar 1:03:51 we'll Kurt Nelson 1:03:52 make sure that they can add in potential options for you. So, Tim Houlihan 1:03:58 Julia Darr, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure having you as a guest on Behavioral Grooves. Julia Dhar 1:04:04 Oh, pleasure was mine. Thank you both. Kurt Nelson 1:04:14 Welcome to our grooving session, where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Julia. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our curiously anxious brains. Tim Houlihan 1:04:28 Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a.. I love the fact that she's not trying to name it as just one thing this way or the other, it's both, both, both are happening at the same time, and that's okay, Kurt Nelson 1:04:41 this has been a theme, Tim, not curiously anxious, that not that theme, but this theme of having paradox is been a theme that we have encountered a lot on the show recently, I don't know, maybe I'm just. Reading into things, but I think there's been a lot of like studies of paradoxes and focusing in on these, you can be excited and anxious about something at the same time is kind of a paradox, and this idea that that's actually okay is sometimes hard to grapple with. Tim Houlihan 1:05:24 Yeah, well, we're gonna have an upcoming conversation with Bill Von Hippel, right, about about the paradoxes of the human success story. It's that we're both individualists and collectivists, we're both collaborators and competitors. Kurt Nelson 1:05:40 Yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:05:40 and those two apparent opposites can exist at the same time, and I think Julia does a great job of pulling that out here with this, this curiosity and anxiety, which can exist at sort of opposite ends of the spectrum of the spectrum, both being evident at the same time. Kurt Nelson 1:05:59 Yeah, I mean, this was really, I thought, pretty impactful. Is look, the purpose of leadership, the goal of leadership during change is not about taking all that anxiety away, it's not about eliminating that anxiety, right, right, but it's, it's, it's converting that anxiety, leveling up that curiosity with it, so that you create action, so that you turn that into some sort of confident action that employees are going, yeah, this is what we need to do. I'm going to actually move from this status quo, where I am, to another point, and that's anxiety driven, but it's also, I'm curious about it, and I want to see, I want to have that opportunity, Tim Houlihan 1:07:03 and couldn't this be part of the reason that we are still seeing engagement figures in the 30 to 40% range, right, that they're kind of bad still after decades of all kinds of interventions that we're not seeing a lot of of huge margin there, because, because leaders are not converting this anxiety into engagement. Kurt Nelson 1:07:28 Yeah, I think that's a, it's a part of it, right? The engagement is a vastly different piece of the organizational culture jigsaw puzzle that we have to put, yeah, together, Tim Houlihan 1:07:46 and again, anxiety is going to be natural because uncertainty about status and competence, and what's going to happen to me, and what's going to happen in my role. Is there going to be a big layout? All the, all the what if negativity bias absolutely creeps in and floods our consciousness, so that's totally natural, but the curiosity part can be stimulated, like that part about well, actually, what is going to happen, right? What are the possibilities that could happen? Is this actually thing if I'm paying attention to the right things, am I going to see opportunity through some potential chaos? Kurt Nelson 1:08:27 And this is the part where I think Julia brings in a really good part. Right, she talked about that. Look, employees are neither purely resistant nor are they purely enthusiastic, right? We're not. there's very few people that are at the ends of that spectrum, and this is across multiple components, but in this, in particular, and it's that I, you know, talked about the 2060 20 rule that I believe, you know, happens a lot within organizations with employees, as they explain Tim Houlihan 1:08:58 that for those who aren't familiar with it, so Kurt Nelson 1:09:00 you know, I, when I was doing team building programs way, way back when I had hair and different things, right? So a long time Tim Houlihan 1:09:08 ago, Kurt Nelson 1:09:09 that yes, yes, but I used to get really upset because I would like everybody wasn't just kumbaya at the end of my fantastic team building program that I did, and they weren't all just like, right, this is the greatest thing ever, Kurt, and thank you, you know, I had a lot of people that were doing that, but not everybody, and, and it, it kind of dawned on me, and it was through conversations with multitudes of different facilitators and people much smarter than me is this idea that you know what we could play tiddlywinks, right, and just tiddlywinks for all those young people. It was an old game that you had pushed down and things, and they'd flip up, and I don't even know if there was a goal to the game, but you'd flip. Things up by applying pressure on one side of things, and 20% of the group, regardless of how good I was doing, would find some meaning in it, and they'd take it, and they'd go, "Oh, I get it, you apply pressure here to move something over there, and it would just happen, right, and I could do the best team building program ever, and there's going to be 20% of the people, 15% of the people who are going to go, yeah, but you know, he said it this way as opposed to that way, and I don't really align with that, they'll find something wrong with what we're doing, or it just doesn't resonate with them, and it's the 60% in the middle that are the big ones who, depending upon what, how well you do that program and different things, you can shift them now. That's a, it's a broad over generalization of a variety of things, but I found that that 2060 20 rule applies in a lot of different things, not just in team building, and I think in this change component it probably in this curious anxiety component, I think it applies as well, to a certain degree, Tim Houlihan 1:11:23 and explain that for just a second. So, you're thinking that there's going to be 20% that are curious, and that lean more curious, and 20% that lean more anxious. Tell me more about.. oh, I Kurt Nelson 1:11:34 don't think.. I don't think that.. I think that there's going to be. you put a change initiative in place, and 20% are going to embrace it. They're going to just, regardless, they're going to be the ones who, because of the way that they're wired, because of how their experience in the past, they're going to say, "Let's do this. They have that curiosity way outweighs that anxiety on different things. So, there's going to be 20% that you could have the best change program in the world, and they're going to be a little hesitant, they're going to be, they'll feel Tim Houlihan 1:12:09 both curiosity, Kurt Nelson 1:12:11 yeah, but I think the anxiety probably outweighs, right, so again, for them it's going to be you're going to have to really get that curiosity, you're gonna have to really ramp it up, and there's that 60% somewhere in the middle who is really what is the organization, what leadership needs to target. They need to be the ones that we're putting that effort into that Julia talks about the ways to engage that curiosity and not overcome the anxiety, because you're not going to overcome that anxiety, you just need to outweigh it with the curiosity, and those are the folks that you really need to be focusing in. Tim Houlihan 1:12:54 Yeah, yeah, I love actually the way that you're thinking about that. Now, what should leaders be doing, especially from a communication perspective, when it comes to making the move to engage, turn that, turn that anxiety and curiosity into engagement. What are some of the things that they should be doing? Like, Kurt Nelson 1:13:15 well, communicate honestly, right? I mean, number one, we are really good at BS detecting, you know, our little radar goes up pretty easy, and we do, we have that negativity bias, and so we are skeptics at heart to a certain degree, be can be specific, it use concrete examples, and like, what is going.. what this change means consistent across those communications, right? Yeah, what do you think? What.. well, Tim Houlihan 1:13:53 well, I'm thinking of things that they shouldn't be doing, and thinking that don't be inconsistent. Kurt Nelson 1:13:59 Okay? Right. So, just the opposite, just the opposite. Don't be vague, Tim Houlihan 1:14:04 right? Be more concrete. I just, you know, if you're gonna, if you're gonna amplify curiosity, then stimulate that with positive things, you know. Continue to, to paint the picture realistically and authentically, as for the positive outcomes, and of course, it's change management and big change initiatives, and companies aren't always positive for everybody. Kurt Nelson 1:14:31 No, Tim Houlihan 1:14:31 so you can't, you can't just, as, as my father said, you can't bullshit a bullshitter. So, okay, so don't, don't try to create something that isn't there, be candid about it, but don't lay on this thick layer of some non-reality that's out there that that no one can even imagine is becoming even close to being real. Kurt Nelson 1:14:56 Yeah, I think there's there's a fee. Hear that if leaders tell the truth, everybody's going to just freak out and throw up their hands and quit, or just give up, or whatever it is. I don't think the research supports that, and my personal experience doesn't support that. Is we are resilient, you know, we, we can tolerate as long as we believe that we're being told the truth, and it's honest, and there's rationale that this isn't just an arbitrary decision that is made because some person's doing, you know, going through some ego trip on their own, or whatever, that would be. If there's a rational reason for it, we deal with it pretty well. Tim Houlihan 1:15:55 Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We're not just irrational beings, we're not, you know, if we've got a writer and an elephant, it's still a writer and an elephant. There's.. it's not just an elephant, and it's not just a writer, it's not just the rational person, and it's not just the irrational person. We're both.. we, we humans have both that rational thinking and the irrational thinking. Kurt Nelson 1:16:21 Well, and it goes back to what we talked about, about like fatigue, right? We think about change fatigue, it's not necessarily change fatigue, it's change disappointment, as Julia points out, right? It's this, you've talked about change, we tried something, and it didn't, you know, it doesn't work. It just like we keep continuing to get disappointed with change, and sometimes that disappointment comes not because the change didn't actually work, but we just don't recognize it, and we don't talk about it, and we don't celebrate it. Tim Houlihan 1:16:56 Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:16:56 yeah, that was the other piece, that peak end rule piece that Julia talked about, I thought was, Tim Houlihan 1:17:02 yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:17:03 so important. So often we miss as leaders within organizations is highlight the endings, highlight that this project is done, that this change initiative is over, and we're we're now in the new constant, but hey, don't just let it petter out and dissipate through osmosis, you know, you need to really highlight it. Tim Houlihan 1:17:29 Yeah, when, when I was a, an employee at a bank that went through a $750 million payroll reduction, you know, a massive, that's a lot. It was like 5% of the workforce, more than 5% of the workforce. There's a lot of anxiety. There's there is that curiosity, but it took months for this to happen once it was announced, and it's.. I don't object to the amount of time that it took to make it happen, because you got to be careful, you got to be thoughtful. Leaders need to be thinking about who stays and who goes. Those are those are important questions, but not communicating frequently enough with honesty and, and sort of giving people a fair and accurate assessment of what's happening on kind of creates this scar tissue for people, for the employees who are just sitting around waiting, and they're, they're trying their best, they're going to prove themselves, they're going to talk about peak end rule, they're going to, they're going to score that touchdown in the last, in the final seconds of the game, just to show that they're worthwhile and they're meaningful, and they shouldn't be cut, so you got all that going on, but it creates this negative residue within the organization that becomes a cultural downer, and it's really, it's really sad, Kurt Nelson 1:18:53 and as I've talked about, right, the that survivor mentality within organizations where change just it's like I will out last I will outwit and I will outplay as you, you know, play being the kind of conniving, you know, different pieces as opposed to embracing the change, and working with it, if a company has that survivor mentality, that survivor ethos throughout, then it's I'm going to wait this out, because somebody new will come in and will change it, I will out wit, I will say I'm doing the right things, but I'm really just hanging on, doing what I have been, and I, you know, I'll play. I will obfuscate until it just doesn't matter anymore. So, yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:19:53 did you just say obfuscate? Wow, Kurt Nelson 1:19:55 it. That, yeah, you got me from the intro. I know I did. I Tim Houlihan 1:20:03 did okay. Anything, anything else that you want to cover? So, Kurt Nelson 1:20:08 jazz versus classical music as a metaphor. Tim Houlihan 1:20:12 Oh yeah, we talked about this. Okay, so, so I.. one of the things that's been on my mind since we talked to Julia is so many leadership books, so many stories, metaphors about leadership, is about jazz, you know, jazz musicians, you know, they get in and they've got a rough playbook and then they're just improvising and everybody's watching each other and it's all collaboration and improvisation, and then that's how they get to the end, and I was thinking with Julia's really great insight, and the work that she's done in research, it informs me that sometimes change is more like a symphony, like there's a whole bunch of players that have very specific parts to play that are already scripted, and when everybody plays those parts, those, the right notes at the right time, you wind up with a fantastic piece of music. So, there are.. so, what I come away with is this: sometimes it's important to be a jazz player, but sometimes it's important to follow the symphony as well. Why Kurt Nelson 1:21:20 are you dissing on jazz players? Man, Tim Houlihan 1:21:21 I love jazz players. Love him. I just love him. No, Kurt Nelson 1:21:28 I think it's a really great insight. Again, too often we fall into that easy trap of saying that jazz metaphor sounds fantastic, doesn't Tim Houlihan 1:21:44 it? Doesn't Kurt Nelson 1:21:45 it make you go, yeah, I want to be part of that. We're improvising, we're on stage, it's not, you know, all right, I'm, I'm, we're gonna shift with, you know, how everything's moving on. We're Tim Houlihan 1:21:55 agile, we're light, yeah, all that stuff. I Kurt Nelson 1:21:58 mean, those, they, they sound great, but you know every jazz improv session doesn't have great music that comes up. It's like, holy crap, where did we go? I mean, and I'm not a jazz player, I don't, you know, but I've heard enough that I can go, yeah, that that did not work right, yeah, unless Tim Houlihan 1:22:21 it's, you know, Pat Metheny or Miles Davis, or you know, and even also high level, every single Kurt Nelson 1:22:28 one. I'm sure there, oh yeah, some Tim Houlihan 1:22:30 flops, yeah, yeah. Kurt Nelson 1:22:31 That being said, sometimes you really do need people to, here's the specific role, here are the notes that I need to play, and here's when I need to play them, and if we all do this right, yeah, then we're going to have this wonderful composition that just gets done and played well. Tim Houlihan 1:22:51 Yeah, because that, that's that symphonic piece of music is that very clip, that's the clarity and the shared purpose, and and shared communication, and and sort of that coordination of this is how we're going to get this done, different people are going to play different roles in it at specific times to do this, and that kind of clarity can add, can reduce a lot of anxiety, I think, as opposed to I don't know how it's going to turn out, we're all just on our feet, we're improvising anxious again, Kurt Nelson 1:23:19 oh my god, going into that. No, I know my part. I know when I'm gonna join in. Everybody else I know is pretty, which goes back to the other piece, though. Is you have to trust that again. In either of those metaphors, you have to trust that the other players in the band, in the orchestra, have the skill set and the ability and the motivation to do the play their part right and to do that and she talks about that idea of collective change as opposed to collective self efficacy versus individual self visual efficacy and that that is another thing that leaders need to really convey, is as an organization we have the capabilities to do this, we have the right people in place, we have the right systems, we have the right sheet music that we're going to be playing from, and everybody has their instrument, and they know enough that they were going to be able to do this, so Tim Houlihan 1:24:23 yes. Well said. Okay, Kurt Nelson 1:24:27 wrap it up. Tim Houlihan 1:24:28 Yes, yeah. Just a quick reminder, folks, if you are not engaged in our Facebook Behavioral Grooves community page, come on out and join us. If Kurt Nelson 1:24:41 you are a member, go out there right now and answer one of the questions that you haven't answered, because I know everybody that's part of that group hasn't answered, hasn't responded to those questions. Get out there, I want 275 responses to the last question that's out there, 275 people. So should answer to use this afternoon, Tim Houlihan 1:25:02 right now, today, now, Kurt Nelson 1:25:04 now, get out there and do that, all right, yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:25:06 be a sip, be be a symphony player, just Kurt Nelson 1:25:09 yes, play your part, yes, and then obviously also sign up for our Substack newsletter, great information, we were just commenting, our producer helps put that out and write it, and she's been doing fantastic. It's just amazing how well it's written, and different things, and so really, really Tim Houlihan 1:25:30 great insights. In fact, I just got an independent email from one of our regular listeners who really enjoys reading our Substack newsletter, and like I love hearing that. It's like one thing that we do this podcast, but I think it's a second initiative that we've got that Caroline, our producer, puts together fantastic content in that newsletter every week. So, so please check that out, Kurt Nelson 1:25:58 and if you like us, leave us a review on, you know, Apple on Spotify on Podbean, wherever you listen, just leave us a review. It, you know, we don't, we don't talk about this like we used to talk about all the time, but it really does help people, more people find this information, and so the more and better reviews that we have, the more likely the algorithms, as they like to say, will come and share this with other people, and that's really what we want. We want this to be shared as broadly, so that as many people can learn and benefit from our great guests, and yeah, you know, laugh at Tim and me when we try to think that we're smart. There we go, Tim Houlihan 1:26:43 which is pretty much all the time. So, with that, Groovers, we hope that you take some of these wonderful insights from Julia Dar and put them to use in in your work this week as you go out and find your groove, Unknown Speaker 1:26:57 you Transcribed by https://otter.ai