Unlocking A Brilliant Model For Change With Karen Ball

Skot Waldron (00:00.222)
Then just say I don't know what you said, but if it's going and pixelated and getting weird It's still a recording high res on my side and high res on your side So just go with it But I haven't had too many issues lately. So

Karen Ball (00:13.652)
I'm a go with a gal, so got it.

Skot Waldron (00:16.158)
but it is 2025 and I don't know what has in store for us right now. So we'll see what happens. So, okay, you ready to go?

Karen Ball (00:27.17)
And you know what, you are pixelating on me right now. it is, I'll just.

Skot Waldron (00:30.534)
Okay. It, it should be, it should be fine though. I mean, as long as yeah, as long as, yeah, as long as you didn't hear me and like I said, just kind of flow with it. But again, if I glitch so bad that you have no idea what I said, then just say, Skot, that I have no idea what you said and I'll edit it afterwards. So cool. I'm going to do an intro and outro app. I'll do an intro and outro after this too. So you don't have to worry about that. All right.

Karen Ball (00:34.262)
Yeah, now I'm not worried about it. As long as I can hear you.

Okay. The magic of editing. Sounds great.

Skot Waldron (01:00.264)
Here we go, Karen. We're going to talk about some fun stuff today.

Karen Ball (01:04.194)
We are, I'm really looking forward to it.

Skot Waldron (01:06.936)
yeah, I had another one of your friends on about three years ago and now I get to talk to you. that episode with Tim was, was awesome and people should go back and listen to that episode. and Tim Creasy and his brain is just fantastic. So,

Karen Ball (01:22.83)
His brain is one of those, you just wonder what's going on in there, right? You can see the words coming out and you can see the expressions, but I would love to have a front row seat to the connections that are taking place.

Skot Waldron (01:26.93)
Yeah, totally.

I know, and I was sitting there interviewing Tim and I'm going, am I connecting? Like, am I saying the right things right now to get the right stuff out of him? I don't know, I was just kind of second guessing myself because I think his presence has just demands this intellectual capacity to like engage, you know? So it was really fun interviewing him. was really fun.

So I get to hang out with you now and we're going to talk. I want to talk about this change thing. Cause this is a hot topic. I'm speaking on this a lot around the country right now. And as you are, I'm sure as well, and other colleagues that you have, but you specialize in this whole change thing.

Karen Ball (02:19.424)
Yeah, I do. have, you and I've got some fun background stories too on my career transitions from, yeah, I almost said transgression. I think that was a slip. Yeah. The transition from where I was, I started my career in the information technology space. So I was out helping organizations implement pretty complex, large scale IT changes.

Skot Waldron (02:30.46)
No, a little slip there.

Karen Ball (02:45.434)
that were platform level changes, transformational changes. I just kept observing what, you know, I, gosh, it was one of those feelings where I really cared a lot about the people who were impacted by these changes. And we're just coming in and implementing technology and wondering why the benefits weren't being realized. So I started pulling the covers back on the concepts of the focus on adoption versus installation, right? Instead of installing changes, let's focus on the adoption of changes. So that's when my attention transitioned from the technical side of what the change was happening to the people who were impacted. And how do we support, equip, and enable each of those people?

To have a successful transition so the investment that organizations are making are going to be realized. There's ROI on the other side of the table.

Skot Waldron (03:40.296)
Can I ask you about that adoption versus installation thing you just said? So do you see a lot of organizations look to, what do mean by install something versus like adopt something? Expand on that for me.

Karen Ball (03:58.048)
Yeah, let me just give you a quick example. So imagine that you're sitting in the office environment and over the holiday breaks, your organization went around and installed automated systems in the conference rooms to shut the lighting down once there's no activity in the room. Of course, organizations do that for cost savings and energy efficiencies and sustainability. And when you think about that, particular change, if you are someone who's impacted by that change, you walk into the conference room and, you know, after a certain amount of time, you know, the lights shut down when, there's inactivity. And so there's an installation of a change, the installation of the automated lighting systems, but there's very little around adoption. So there's really not much I need to do other than, of course, you know, this happens to all of us. We're sitting there quietly at our desktop and the lights go out. So we have to wave our arms to get the lights to reengage. So the installed change is the automated lighting systems for the business reasons that we install them. The adoption story is rather insignificant partner that with another scenario that you now go to the cafe. And of course, now I'm in the assumption that we're in an in-person work environment, which is a whole other story that we can start heading down that path. But I walk into the cafe and in addition over the holiday breaks and the time away, they installed a whole system for helping us sort our trash. So we've got our recycle and we've got our compost and we've got our place where we put our utensils that need to be washed and I'm standing there with my tray after lunch and wondering what to do. All of a sudden there's so many things I need to be aware of and I have to sort my things and next thing you know the adoption story is great because I actually have to change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. So there's two examples of the installation of a change versus the adoption of a change.

One is heavily dependent on people changing the way that they do things, and the other is not. So that's an example of installation versus adoption. Hopefully that's helpful.

Skot Waldron (06:08.056)
Is, I mean, is installation, I mean, installation is just part of it, I would assume. Is there a negative consequence to over emphasizing the installation and not enough of the adoption? And do we always need to be thinking about adoption or as, you know, with the conference light thing, you know, or

Is it okay just to worry about installation and not really put some emphasis on adoption or like where do we allocate our resources?

Karen Ball (06:40.556)
Yeah, great question. think, this is one of those key questions that, you know, at Prosci we invite our customers to consider for any change is what percentage of the benefits of a particular change depend on adoption and usage. So, you know, the simple examples of the conference room lighting situation or the sorts in the cafe.

But think about it from the process improvement or installing a new technology or bringing an AI agent into our customer service platform. Each one of those, we can ask that question. What percentage of the benefits depend on adoption and usage? And the next question, of course, is how much are we investing in the people side of that change to realize that benefit? So that's where change management as a discipline really steps in when we are heavily dependent on people changing the way they do things. And it could be mindset, attitudes and beliefs. could be, you know, process behavior, systems behaviors, roles change, compensation structures change, locations change. There's lots of different things that are changing. And then the question is how much of the benefits depend on people coming alongside that change, knowing how, being able, implementing the required behaviors and changes that are necessary to realize the outcomes and the results. Because organizations change for a reason. There's a reason why things are different. There's a reason why we upgrade that system or they implement the tool or they change the process or they redefine role clarity. I mean, all the things around what's changing. And then we have to think about who has to do something differently. And that's where change management comes in.

Skot Waldron (08:28.978)
Okay. And what is the thing right now that you feel is like the big change that you're addressing all the time? It's like the thing right now that you think would resonate with a lot of people out there.

Karen Ball (08:48.546)
You know, lot of the changes are still technology. That's certainly not going to change. The digital transformation story that has been part of our work environments continues. And of course, what we're digitally transforming to, right? The introduction of AI is certainly one that's top of mind and top of priority for lots of organizations trying to figure out what in fact is the technology. What does it do for us? How does it help us?

Know, serve our customers, compete more effectively, reach new markets, all of the things around the strategy execution and strategy implementation that we're all focused on. So a lot of changes are still digital transformations. We have an awful lot of organizations that continue, for example, their ERP journeys, their enterprise resource planning and resource management journeys, whether it's Next Gen.

What they've implemented already, or it's the acquisition of multiple companies. I worked with an organization just a couple of weeks ago who had recently acquired a name brand organization that we all know and love. And there was a thousand people that were going to have to be integrated into that organization across all of their systems and tools, including what they considered to be not a really successful ERP implementation. So they were trying to rethink that.

So a lot of it is that, but I think there's also coming into how we're thinking about organization structures and design and how we support people. There's an awful lot of focus on the people side of things, whether it's from a change perspective or it's emotional intelligence or decision quality. There's just an awful lot of human centric changes that are taking place in our organizations, which is obviously great to see.

Skot Waldron (10:36.016)
Implementing the AI digital transformation stuff with the human stuff that you're talking about. I mean, we're focused a lot on the technology, as you said, and as, as, as is probably something that will be. You know, what we do in the normal everyday workspace into the future. but we can't ignore the human side of what this all entails, how are you advising companies that are going, you know, thinking about AI, thinking about integrating the idea of AI into their workplace? How are you, what are you talking to them about and how they implement that and keeping the human side of what they do?

Karen Ball (11:22.242)
Yeah, AI is no different than any other change. We bring that one forward because again, it's top of mind and top of priority for a lot of organizations. But many organizations are just trying to figure out what it is and how it helps them. How does it help them do what they're trying to do? How does it help them improve efficiencies and effectiveness and all of the business drivers? But with that, as any change, there's a people side. Who has to do their jobs differently?

So whether it's ERP or AI or customer relationship management or you name it, right? In the medical systems, right? When we made the major transformations to electronic medical records, for example, what was the impact on all the people in these systems? Who has to do their jobs differently? How are they impacted? What is the degree of impact?

And then how do we engage with people to make sure they make a successful change journey? And one of the things that we talk about at Prosci, know, change is individual first before it's organizational. The unit of change is a person. So depending on, you know, what is the change or the nature of the change that we're introducing, who are those individuals who are impacted and how are we going to help them through those individual change journeys?

There's also the leadership story inside of all of that, Skot too, is, you know, we look at people managers or we look at organizational leaders. How do we introduce for them a new way of thinking about a new way of considering change as a journey, how we support those people who are impacted to go through a successful transition so that the organization realizes the benefits at the end of the day, it's the change outcomes that produce the benefits as we talked about the difference between installation and adoption. Adoption is when we realize the benefits, not just by installing something.

Skot Waldron (13:20.348)
I really like this idea of individual firsts or organizational because I, and you tell me if I'm wrong, but I feel like organizations go in to think this is an organizational change. And then they think about how are we going to bring along the people and how are we going to help the people come along with this organizational change? so thinking about organizational change.

First, and then they think about individuals. Second, is that what you're getting into a lot with people right now thinking, we got to bring out this change. It's organizational. And then we got to figure out how to bring.

My gosh, I don't know what just happened.

Karen Ball (14:57.868)
Yeah, Riverside just completely shut down on your, yeah.

Skot Waldron (14:59.744)
It went bye bye. but your side was okay. Okay. Totally just, Riverside. I think it was my internet. Something just crashed on my internet site.

Karen Ball (15:04.022)
Yeah, I'm fine. I just sat here and waited for you to come back.

Yeah, I'm on a high speed network, so I should be fine.

Skot Waldron (15:17.348)
Yeah. No, you should be good. I mean, I am too. I don't know. I don't know. My, my son did something with one of my mesh network things and I don't know if that affected it or not, but anyway, thank you. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to start that question over again. Okay. You ready? All right. Here we go. Okay. I think that organizations, they think about, I'm going to bring about this change and they think about organizational change and I don't know if you're seeing this, but

Karen Ball (15:29.038)
Welcome to 2025. Sure.

Skot Waldron (15:46.212)
I think their first, their first thing is I'm to go organizational and then we'll figure out how to bring the people along after that. I mean, is that what you're finding or are people like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're working on the individual first and that will bring the organization.

Karen Ball (16:02.19)
Yeah, maybe this is a little bit of a chicken in the egg. It depends on who you're talking to. Senior leaders of organizations, we have them in their places because they're the vision setters. They're the ones that are articulating the desired future state. So sometimes that's aspirational future state. Sometimes it's very specific.

But organizations think more holistically first, I need to drive this particular change. I need to have this particular implementation. know, again, we can come up with all kinds of examples. I've got, you know, one customer who is implementing, you know, let's just think of something entirely different. Autonomous.

Mining machines for a mine in Brazil. So, you know, that's not a change that you would ordinarily think of, but it was something that that particular organization, that mining organization needed to implement to stay relevant for lots of different reasons. And what a significant impact to go into autonomous mining machines. So they're thinking more broadly about, you know, what the future state looks like. And then as we start imagining bringing that change to life, then taking it back to who are all of the groups that are impacted, who are the individuals in those groups? What does it look like for somebody who is on the ground in that particular scenario versus somebody who's in the corporate environment, who's managing the corporate aspects of the business? So it's a combination of things. Organizations are continuously thinking about the future state.

Where are we going? And sometimes this is strategy execution. Sometimes it's operational improvement. Sometimes it's reactive. Sometimes it's proactive. There's lots of reasons that we implement changes inside of our organizational contexts. But if we don't go eventually, know, someone eventually needs to get to the point of who are all of the individuals who have to do something differently and what is it that they have to do? Is it, is it a new process? Is it a new system? Is it a new tool? Is it new?

Like I said before, reporting structures, mindsets, attitudes, and beliefs. So without the individual focus and understanding each individual impacted by change and how we're going to support them through that, then the organizational outcomes are just not going to be realized. know, at Prosci, we talk about that in terms of the Swiss cheese future state. So we've got this imagined, you know, aspirational future state, you know, 30 days from now, three years from now, 30 years from now, whatever the planning horizon is.

And without all those individual transitions, there's just a lot of holes as people don't understand why and why now and what if we don't and haven't chosen to and don't know how to and aren't able to. And you know what I'm basically taking you through is the individual change model that's represented in the acronym ADKAR. So without that, without the focus on understanding that individuals are the unit of change and what we need to do as organizations is scale.

Individual change to the level of change impact. One person, 10 people, 50 people, hundreds of people, thousands of people. You know, worked with one organization that's a major global pharmaceutical company that was implementing some digital transformation journey steps that impacted 50,000 people with 5,000 migrations from, you know, old systems in tech to new systems in tech.

And they architected the entire journey for those 50,000 people through the lens of change as individual first before it's organizational.

Skot Waldron (19:41.342)
Okay. I mean, I, I think it's natural to think organizational, especially if you're one of the C-suite individuals up there talking about broad things, looking out into the vast future of what this is going to implement and then backing into, okay, now we got to figure out how to get these people on board with this thing.

Karen Ball (20:02.158)
Yeah, it's a little bit of time travel, right? We're living and thinking in the future, but then we have to come back to the current state and collect everybody and bring them to the future state with us. And it's a very intentional and structured process to be able to do that and to be able to sit in both places in the desired future state and then step back to where people are in their own individual current states to help them through that process.

Skot Waldron (20:27.708)
Exactly. And that's what I, I talked to people about quite a bit because I'll hear oftentimes, and I want to hear what you think about this, this phrase of, people don't like change. People don't like change. What do you think about that statement?

Karen Ball (20:43.316)
Yeah, you know, there's a lot of layers in that, you know, as humans, right? If we go to the human animal that we all are, know, change oftentimes feels threatening. And so you get into the, you can talk to our neuroscience friends who spend time thinking about the human response to change, right? That we are wired for consistency and it takes less brain energy once you create habit and it's, you you unlock habit and then you have to reinstall, you know, it just takes energy to change. But people don't like change that they don't understand or they don't have any idea of why it's being implemented or how it impacts them. So the intent around the discipline of change management even more broadly is to help people understand that

Of course, we can't say we don't like change. Everything changes every day all the time. But what is our natural response to change versus how is change introduced to us? And it can be personal. It can be professional. We've studied, and I'll spend some more time talking about ADKAR as we've introduced it just for the model, right, as an acronym. And I can share the details behind that.

You know, there's a story that, you know, someone who, as an adult was learning to swim. He was in his thirties and his wife said, you know, now that I'm expecting our first child, don't you think that you should develop the skills of swimming? I think that's something that's an important life skill as a parent. And so he went through the whole change journey and, know, at first he said, you know, I really had no interest in learning to swim. He had had a traumatic experience as a child and kind of set off that skill as something that you know, wasn't necessary. again, it depends on what is the driver for the change? Why are we being asked to change? And then, you know, helping us understand the brain process naturally, but also the psychological process of change. And people like change when the change is welcome. It solves problems. It identifies opportunities. They understand how they're going to be supported through the change and what success looks like on the other side.

It's when we introduce change without all those factors that we get the natural resistance barriers. talk about people reaching into a bag and putting up a resistance flag. It's like sending a flag up the pole that says, no, I don't like this change. But only because they don't really know what it is or why it's happening. Not necessarily that they don't like the change. They just don't have what they need to be successful.

Skot Waldron (23:21.604)
Yeah, I'll push back on people sometimes. I'll say, I mean, there are going to be certain people that aren't totally on board with the fact that pay phones don't exist anymore or that we moved over to like mobile phones. I'm sure the pay phone companies, whether it's AT &T or Bell South or whoever, you know, that's from the South. That's that, you know, we're not too happy about some of that stuff. AT &T probably thinks fine. Bell South probably isn't, but when you think about that change,

It actually benefited commerce and all kinds of things for us as individuals to, and we probably welcome that change and, but it's probably scary for some. we also love to change our hair and we love to, or else we would still dress like we did 20, 30 years ago. You know, there's, there's change that we just go through. And I think we like change the way we like it. I mean, if, I mean, I'm cool with change as long as it's.

You like you said, it makes sense to me. know it's in it for me. I feel like I'm not being bulldozed into the change. I feel like I'm being brought along into the change. I think the way that we implement change is probably as a big, you know, a big weight on how we adopt the change. I will also add this, but I feel like people have been traumatized by change in the past. So now when change happens, they're way guarded. So I don't know, do you see that happening in your line of work?

Karen Ball (24:51.798)
Yeah, and again, we can do personal versus professional. We undergo changes in our personal lives all of the time. It's just the natural cycles in our lives to go through lots of different changes. Of course, my adult children, going through their cycles of life, now I can observe and watch that from a completely different lens than when I was parenting them at home.

Professionally the same as organizations. Change is a natural inclination. If we don't change, we're going to become irrelevant and get left behind somewhere in the process. think the biggest challenge, Skot, is that understanding that change is a process. It's not an event. It's a process.

And the process of change has very clearly defined steps and stages. And once we understand that we speak differently, we communicate differently, we engage differently, we... bring people into the change process more intentionally. And we can do that for ourselves as well as for others. I think one of the most insightful skill sets that as leaders of organizations is once we understand that change is a process and that there is a structured and repeatable and modeled way that we go through change, once I get that insight, I can be much more supportive because I also have to be responsible for my own response to change. So once I am responsible to my own influence by the change that's happening, then I know I can support and equip others more effectively. At Prosci, we talk about this in terms of putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others.

So it raises our intelligence emotionally and just focus on what are the stages and steps? Where are my team in this process? Where are the individuals on my team in this process? Where is my son, my daughter, my husband in this process? Again, it's personal and professional because it's individual. And that individual change process is an unlocking mechanism both intellectually, understanding that process, but also in our behaviors and actions. So once we know what the process is, I like to use two words, sense making and way finding. And once we have a way to make sense of change and the individual change process, then that naturally gives us a way to find our path through it successfully, efficiently, effectively.

Organizations, for example, that have taken on building change as a muscle, getting really good at change. What happens is change capacity goes up just naturally because people believe we're good at this. We've got this. There's a lot happening and we're good at this. So change is a process. Change is individual. There is an individual change process. All of those things are unlocks that we can observe more effectively. can look retrospective. We can look at failed changes in our past and go, I see exactly where it failed. Once we've got that model in that lens.

Skot Waldron (28:06.978)
Hmm. Really, really good. All right. Let's talk about bringing people along. You you've introduced this ad car framework, the acronym and just what you were saying here. If we can build a good model for change, we'll increase our change capacity. I love that. Right. It doesn't have to be a, here we go again with change. here we go again with change. here we, you know, like

Karen Ball (28:24.878)
Mm.

Skot Waldron (28:32.152)
You work out one time, your muscles are going to be really sore. Then you work out in a month later, one time, your muscles are going to be really sore. So it hurts every time you work out. But if we can build consistency along that workout and a system and a framework, our muscles aren't as sore and we can actually walk, you know, the next day. Same thing with change. So introduce us to the ad car framework and how that helps an organization actually build in that good process.

Karen Ball (28:59.0)
Yeah. And, and, and, you know, it is a model and I'll be happy to describe and then go back to your exercise example. Here's the other challenge is you worked out once and it was, you were sore and you worked out twice and you know, a month later and you were sore. And now you're like, working out equals being sore. So you build a history that tells you that this is hard. So we've got to rewire that history with some successes in order to set ourselves up for people going, yeah, it's okay, we're okay.

Because we've got this. So organizations actually, many of them live in a history of failed change and it's like a ball and chain that they drag along with them. So we want to break that chain and start doing things differently. So just to give you an idea, you know, ADKAR is an acronym and it is a core part of the Prosci methodology and the Prosci way of doing things. And let me just tell you a little bit about the background, but as an acronym, it stands for awareness,

Desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. So each one of those is an outcome. It's an outcome of the activities that we conduct to help people go through the individual change process. So that's the individual change process, whether we're, know, Graham learning to swim or we're the, you know, mining company in Brazil trying to introduce those autonomous mining machines, or we're that pharmaceutical company introducing change journeys for 50,000 impacted employees. So ADKAR was discovered and I, and I like to use the word discovered because it was a pursuit of understanding and the critical question and this was the critical question that Jeff Hyatt, who's Prosci founder in the late 1990s, he worked for Bell Laboratories and he was part of large scale, was an engineer, part of large scale changes, systems, process, organizational changes and he was just observing lots of field changes and some successes and he wanted to discover what were the patterns of those successful changes. So he left Bell Laboratories soon after that and started this pursuit of research and looked at change patterns across four years with over 700 companies. And he discovered that it wasn't what was changing that was causing the most difficulty. It was the people side of the change and what the change process is at the individual level. Because again, remember change is individual first before it's organizational.

And he developed the ad car model and it was his way to articulate the change journey. Each of those are building blocks. Each of them are in sequence necessary for someone to successfully find their way through a change. So for Graham going through the swimming story, he had awareness. His wife was giving him a really strong awareness of why she felt that change was necessary. And he had to decide the desire is all about that personal decision that we make deciding to the the motivators whether it's individual or organizational and then he started down the path of knowledge and He said he signed up for swim lessons at like two or three different places because he was you know a super Achiever and he thought well if I just learn more I'll be able to swim sooner and discovered that that knowledge to ability Gap was something that he couldn't shortcut. He had to do the work and get in the pool and get those 15 year old instructors teaching a 30 something person how to swim. Then of course he talks about the reinforcement of being able to take his wife eventually to the swimming center and watch him get in the pool and swim. And he brought that story forward to two children now and going to lakes and oceans and being able to feel comfortable and confident around water with his children.

So the, the ADKAR journey is, you know, a personal, it's professional, it's individual, and then we scale it to organizational. But what Jeff was discovering was that is a universal process of change. So as organizations, it gives us the guidance to know what to communicate, who should communicate, what we should say, how we engage with people, how we support them through that awareness, desire, knowledge to ability, and then reinforcement.

It becomes the central component of an incredibly effective change journey. The 50,000 person pharmaceutical company said they architected the change journeys for 50,000 people through the lens of ADKAR and found their way to the end of that digital transformation with many, many, successes under their belts.

So that's what ADKAR is. It was a discovery. It's been around since the late 1990s. And what we see is it's just increasing in influence and impact because it works. And it's simple and people connect to it.

Skot Waldron (34:11.736)
Do you have any, do you think any of those five stages is more important than the other? I know you're going to say they're all important. I get it. but is there one that when it's not done well, we'll break the whole thing.

Karen Ball (34:26.67)
You know what? Gosh, that's a great way. I, you know, it's hard not to say they're all important. It is a sequential model. So, you know, you need to make your way through each of those ad-car elements. And sometimes they happen almost instantaneously. Sometimes I don't need, you know, there's actually an ad-car journey happening in my mind, but it just happens instantaneously. You know, there's two places that organizations often get stuck, is under desire because people need to choose to participate. We can inform and influence desire.

But we can't make someone. Now, it doesn't mean that there aren't consequences. So if my organization is implementing an ERP system and I'm sitting in an impacted group and I need to learn to use this tool to be able to do my job effectively, then I can say, choose not to participate. There's consequences. I'm certainly not going to continue to be in that job. The organization will find other places for me to contribute or find me places not to contribute.

So desire is hard because we need to focus on both individual motivators and organizational motivators. Sometimes it's not enough to say, you know, what's in it for the organization, but something, you know, what's in it for me. You know, I was working with one organization and there was a woman who is actively involved in a large scale change. It was a big SharePoint implementation that I was working on for a client.

And a woman who was actively involved in all the planning, all of a sudden started stepping away. I knew something, I could tell something was different. And I sat down with her one day and I said, you know, what's going on here, Sharon? I really see that you're stepping away from what we're trying to accomplish. And she said, you know, I just had this realization that I've been the subject matter expert on our old process for six years. And I really liked being the subject matter expert. And I see that getting stripped away.

And I'm not sure I see myself in this new future state. And so we sat down together and, you know, I encouraged her to talk to her people manager. And I said, well, if you like being the subject matter expert, step into that role again. It just might mean that you need to say, I need more training. I want to go first, help me help others. Can I do train the trainer? I, can I, can, what can I do to continue in that? So her desire, you know, the motivators.

Were something she kind of have had to dig into. But if I hadn't have had that conversation with her, I think the organization might have lost a really, really important resource on the team. So desire is hard, but I think reinforcement is one that we forget as well. It is the ad car model, not the ad ca model. So we need to think about what are the reinforcing and sustaining mechanisms for the change? And it can be, and this is an interesting one. I worked with the organization that the change, the compensation program reinforced old behaviors. So nobody sat down and figured out how are we going to support the reinforcement of the structural mechanism of compensation to make sure people make the transition and stay in that. Otherwise people are going back naturally to the current state that they knew because that's where their compensation structure was targeting.

So I think desire and reinforcement are ones that take some more intentionality. know, knowledge is where, you know, we send people to training, right? Send them an email on Monday for a training on Tuesday for a go live on Wednesday. That's not change management, right? We need some time to get the awareness and why is it happening? Why now? And get that decision. I understand why, so that we can get into the others. organizations also sometimes miss the K to A, knowing how and being able are two different things.

There can be barriers at each one of them, and it's just the structure and intent that we put behind the activities and actions that we take by the right people at the right time to help people through those EdCard journeys.

Skot Waldron (38:17.816)
Very cool. And y'all had a book, on this, obviously, when you have a framework like that, you write a book about it and you just had a big role in revising, not revising the process, but kind of going back in and adding some stories and your touch on, on the new book. So the new old book, the old new bird, you know, so, so, so tell me about that.

Karen Ball (38:40.27)
Yeah, old new new old. What are we going to say? Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Hyatt wrote a book in 2006. So he's, know, the author, the founder of Prosci, the discoverer of the Prosci ADKAR model. And he wrote a book in 2006 that was the first introduction to the ADKAR model. So, you know, fast forward in almost 20 years later.

What we have in our body of knowledge in regards to ADKAR is, you know, an additional 18, 20 years of the promise of ADKAR through research, proof of ADKAR through application, and all those stories. As you mentioned, the book includes over 50 individuals who share their personal and professional ADKAR stories. The story about Graham, for example, learning to swim is in the book, and Anna Belaine, who's getting her son to eat broccoli.

to eat more nutritious foods through the lens of ADKAR, but all the way up to what we've described in terms of those big organizational changes. So the promise, the proof and the practice, so much of what we've learned in the last 20 years is the steps and the actions and change management as a discipline has become much more mature. And we have individuals in our organizations that are change practitioners who are working alongside those project teams to focus not just on what's changing, but who's changing and how they're impacted. So it was an opportunity for us to bring forward the additional research, the additional stories, the additional practice aspects in order to tell the big story around ADKAR.

Skot Waldron (40:03.566)
Dang it.

My gosh, Karen. This has never happened. I swear this has never happened. I'm so sorry. This is like, gosh, I'm so sorry. I was just, I was, you know, getting you back for not having, you know, having to wear your headphones. So.

Karen Ball (41:40.125)
Welcome back.

It's all good.

Skot Waldron (42:00.152)
Okay. We're going to try to finish this. I promise in the next couple of minutes we're closing up. All right. So what I want you to do, I heard, you know, the stories of, of the two individuals that are in there, the broccoli one. So I want you to go from there. Okay. Cause that's where I'm going to cut it in.

Karen Ball (42:00.494)
My hair stays in place when I have my headphones on.

Gosh. Okay. I'm with you.

Skot Waldron (42:21.71)
Got me? got me? Okay. I'm so sorry. I'm just, training you. I'm training you for things that happen on the fly. So here we go.

Karen Ball (42:29.784)
Hey, you know what? At my age, I've been through everything.

Skot Waldron (42:32.6)
I'm sure you have now you've been through this. So thanks for your patience. I'm so sorry. Okay, here we go. You ready? Go for it.

Karen Ball (42:42.222)
Yeah, so the stories in the book are everything from those personal changes about, I mentioned Graham and Graham learning to swim. There's also a story about Anna Belaine getting her six-year-old son to eat broccoli because she was trying to focus on the behavior changes of a small child for how to eat more nutritionally. So it's a really fun story to hear from her.

But the whole point of the stories is it continues. And again, those are personal stories. So you'll see any number, well, gosh, over 30 stories of organizational changes. But the difference in the book is the promise of ADKAR, the proof through those stories and the relatable engagement of individuals and organizations around the world, over 20 countries represented, but also the practice.

And many organizations have built more discipline over the last 20 years around change management, introducing change as a capability inside of the organization and building that muscle as we've talked about. So when we think about change as a capability, it's how do we flex from where we are today to where we're trying to get building change resources, change practitioners that come alongside our technical changes and the things that are changing and help deliver the change outcomes through adoption and usage. So the book is all about, you know, the introduction of the model, walking through each of the elements, a deep dive. The first part is about how one person goes through change, as we've talked about, change as individual first, how organizations bring this to bodies of people, groups of people, and then how organizations build change as a capability. So, how one person changes, how groups of people change, and how organizations become better at change with lots of stories and lots of new research and lots of very practical guidance and downloadable resources.

Skot Waldron (44:35.386)
Beautiful. Thank you for talking about this. This is so relevant and you know, the only thing guaranteed in life, Karen, that's it. You know, so we've, we've heard the phrase and that, and that is why I think this is so relevant. You're always going to have a job. So congratulations and getting into an industry where you always have a job. so this is, this is fantastic. Thanks for writing the book. Thanks for spreading the knowledge and.

Karen Ball (44:56.376)
Ha

Skot Waldron (45:03.62)
Helping my audience grasp some of these concepts a little bit better. think that that's the idea is can we create a good system, a good model that, that brings about not that everybody has to like change all the time, but that we move through it in a way that creates less trauma and actually healthy environments to where we are the type of organization that does change well. Instead of.

Karen Ball (45:08.844)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (45:30.146)
We are the type of organization that changes grueling every time we do it.

Karen Ball (45:34.382)
Absolutely, and people are going to find their way to places that do it well. again, it's the right way to treat our people. It's the right way to responsibly manage our organizations. Again, my two key words, sense making. We can make sense of the change process and we can find our way through it. Scan and act, scan and act. And when we do that through the lens of ADKAR in a more structured and intentional way, the benefits are there.

Absolutely. So many benefits that can be realized. And it's the unlock, I think, that all of us were hoping for and maybe just haven't explored yet. And we'd love for people to think about that more intentionally.

Skot Waldron (46:14.01)
Well, thank you. Thank you for being here. Appreciate you. Good luck with the book.

Karen Ball (46:18.114)
Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Skot.