Hello, welcome to another episode of Unlocked. I am Skot. Today, we are talking about unlocking the potential of your organization and your people through change. Because what's the only thing guaranteed in life? That things are going to change. And we have a very smart individual on the call today that is going to talk to us about change.
His organization, Prosci, is one of the leading companies that understands researches and builds teams around this idea of change, change management firm. And Tim Creasey, not greasy, that was his name in elementary school, and I don't know if we talked about that on the interview about his recording, but that's what he said. I'm going to say it here, and that is how you pronounce his name, Tim Creasey. And he talks about all types of things within this change management space. He's been doing this for two decades.
He has spoken globally to thousands of people about the idea of change. Prosci handles some of the world's largest research when it comes to the idea of change management. And he understands the roles and the things about change. He comes from an economic background, which helps give him that data rich analytic perspective. And the dude has a sense of humor. You got to pay attention to that because it's in there, it's in there. We even take a little break in the middle to talk about Marvel, which doesn't suck.
Because if you're a Marvel fan, you know it's pretty awesome. Let's get on with the interview. We talked about some really beautiful things at the end where he gives you an acronym called ... I'll make sure I get it right, ADKAR, A-D-K-A-R. And is that right? ADK ... Yes, it is. That's right, ADKAR. And that acronym, he explains, at the end, is the formula for effective change within your organization. Without further ado, let's get on with this, Tim. Tim, awesome having you on the show, man.
Tim Creasey:
Yeah, very excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Skot Waldron:
Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and put it out there.
TIM CREASEY:
Okay.
SKOT WALDRON:
You are the change management guru.
TIM CREASEY:
Oh, come on now. Don't go there.
SKOT WALDRON:
No, I did. I went there. I went there.
TIM CREASEY:
I don't know. I don't like it all. I've been thinking about my role leading innovation research development at Prosci, and I absolutely have decided it's much more that of a discoverer than an inventor.
SKOT WALDRON:
I love that. And so, I'll say, you're a guru when it comes to me. How about that?
TIM CREASEY:
Okay, okay, okay.
SKOT WALDRON:
Let's put it out there like that. Can we do that?
TIM CREASEY:
Alright. Okay, we do that.
SKOT WALDRON:
Because you're your guru to somebody, and I'll put it out there. And I'm going to use this as a way to educate myself about this whole change management space. I love that space. But you have been in it for two decades.
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
Tell us what it is, blow us up.
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah. And I love when we start with what is it because I joke that I've been at Prosci over 20 years now and I've been with my partner the whole time. And she can almost describe what it is I do for a job. And no knock on her, because she's twice as smart as me, guaranteed. But if you're not in this space, it's hard to wrap your head around what this discipline of change management is. And so, I started taking this approach, go to get a rental car. This was back when I traveled. Do you remember traveling, conferences and dinners and all that stuff we used to do?
Go to the rental car counter, "Are you here for business or pleasure?" I'd say, "Business." And they'd say, "What do you do for a job?" And I'd say, "Oh, do you have an hour-and-a-half?" Because sometimes it feels like that's how long it takes to explain what change management is, and they don't think that's a funny joke. Apparently, he didn't find that funny either.
SKOT WALDRON:
They're like, "Do you want an upgrade?"
TIM CREASEY:
I just need to get you off this counter like ...
SKOT WALDRON:
Do you want to purchase the gas now or later?
TIM CREASEY:
And my wife's like, "They're going to put you in the lemon if you keep messing with them like that." I started doing this, "Remember the last time they updated your registration system?" And I pointed at the computer screen and they go, "Oh my god, it was the worst three months of our life. They never told us what was going on. They didn't include us. Then they dropped the change on our heads and expected us to just be able to pick it up and run with it. And then they got mad at us when it didn't work like we needed it to work."
I said, "That's what we do, is we help them not do that to you." I got a real good friend. He was a principal of an elementary school. "Tim, I don't know what you do." I said, "Do you remember last year when you rolled out that new set of standards?" He was like, "Oh god. Teachers in my office at 6:00 in the morning, parents in my office till 9:00 at night." I'm like, "Yup, we help them think through how they did that, so that that's not how everybody had to feel." Because in times of change, there's always, always a technical side of the change.
That's the solution, the nuts and bolts of it, and the people side of the change. How do we help our people actually engage, adopt, and use the change? And so, that's what we do at Prosci. That's what change management is all about. How do we bring structure and intent to helping our people succeed through the changes we're asking to make. Because if they're more successful with the new change we ask them to make, well, first of all, they're more successful. The project is more likely to deliver results on time, on budget, be less risky, and we've got loads of data there.
But ultimately, the organization's better off because it's building the muscle to ouch pains, whatever comes at it, which is probably the most important muscle any organization can grow right now. So ...
SKOT WALDRON:
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Say that again, build the muscle ...
TIM CREASEY:
To out change.
SKOT WALDRON:
... out change? I love that. And that muscle is the people?
TIM CREASEY:
The muscle to out change exists all over throughout the organization, certainly. But people growing their own change capability is one of the most important enablers of that organizational agility to that out changing muscle. And it exists everywhere. We do a lot of work in the public sector. And so, immediately, when you think of out change, you think about changing the competition. My backgrounds in economics, so we can digress here for a little bit, that many of the sources of competitive advantage have eroded based on how fast things are changing right now.
Used to roll out a new service back in the past and it would be a year before your competitors caught up with you. Now they can mimic it. And in the next two or three weeks, things are moving that quickly. Things are moving that fast. The way we win is by being able to out change how quickly the other guy is out changing. And if it's a competitive space, we're on a shelf, we're up changing the competition, but all of us are out changing. You'll know some of the things were all out changing. Technological revolution.
They got talked about as a digital transformation, but it was really just a technological revolution up until March 2020. And then it became a true digital transformation and involuntary digital transformation. But actually, that transformed the fabric of who we are as organizations. That's one of the things we're trying to out change, is the digital transformation, global pandemic. The entire world, alright, the most collective and individual change we've ever experienced happens across the planet.
All of us are working to out change the continuing shifting conditions and what that creates for us. Societal shifts we're working to out change, new expectations of our customers or new demands of our constituents, if we happen to be in a public sector. We put together a return to the workplace advisory board early in the pandemic and they're talking about, which employees do you bring back first? Somebody in the board said, "The customer facing employees first." Somebody else around the board says, "Do your customers even want to come interact with you face to face anymore?" And they said, "Oh, no, no, no. They are so past, that kind of interaction with us. They figured out it's way more effective to go this way."
Shifting customer constituent demands, these are all of the tailwinds that we're working to out change as organizations. And so, change management is a discipline that says, how do we be smarter about helping our people through a change so that we achieve the outcomes of that change? And that's one of those most part of growing agility, really is a strategic imperative, right?
SKOT WALDRON:
The people side that you're hitting on is what you focus on and your world. I have something to share with you. You pick the hard part of that. You should just pick the other side, because the other side's the easier part, right? You pick the hard part, the people part, because if people weren't involved, everything would just be a lot easier, right? If you just didn't involve the people, it'd be so much easier. But why is that people part so hard?
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah. I think a couple of thoughts here. First of all, this conversation in 2021 is very different than it would have been in 2017 or 2009. In 2001, when I joined Prosci, the people side of change was very much like the craziest in the corner. I think overall, there's really been an acceptance of how important that people side of organizational changes and actually had started building out a podcast in 2016 with one of my best friends, his name is Patrick McCreesh, called the Rehumanization of the Workplace, really identifying a lot of the trends that we are spotting.
Not one of these like rah-rah changed the workplace, but there is a trend emerging and a lot of the things that we're watching happen in organizations that all indicated this revaluing of the human beings that makes up the organization. Did I mentioned my backgrounds in economics? So we can digress here into economic history and how we devalue and then revalue the human being and why an interaction economy and a knowledge in a service economy needs that revaluing other people.
But in the change management space, we hear about the soft side of change, and it makes the hair stand up on the back of our neck. Because sure enough, if we're integrating to big organizations, there's technical complexity in integrating the financial systems. It's technically complex. The hard side of the change is getting people to step in and work as part of this unified organization. Why is it becoming a big deal right now? I think there is this shifting of the economics, moving from an agricultural to an industrial, to a service, to a knowledge, to an interaction economy.
That's part of the reason that people said a change is getting more important. Shifting value systems is a big one too, Skot, right? This notion in the old value system of predictability, consistency, accountability, that was the old value system. And so, when an employee was asked to jump, what was their answer?
SKOT WALDRON:
How far?
TIM CREASEY:
How high, right?
SKOT WALDRON:
How high, yeah, yeah.
TIM CREASEY:
Absolutely. It's what we trained and incented and rewarded and said, those are the behaviors that we want to see in the organization. As we move towards empowerment, accountability, and ownership, I tell you, Skot, you own your job, you own all the parts of your job, I want you so invested, and now I need you to make a change. Your very first question is, why? Why do you want me to make this change? You told me I own this part of the business. I think those new value systems make the people side of change more important.
And then, truly, just the iterative and adaptive nature of change today, especially in this post pandemic world. I think that's one of the biggest pills, I'm watching organizations swallow right now. Because that we are no longer in pandemic response. The organizations that thought, oh, we'll just get through this, we'll just get through this. Or we're way past just getting through this. It's time to step into reimagining what's in front of us. And that means the people side of change of the organization is going to be even more important.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's brilliant. Hit on those three things again, so empowerment, ownership, and what?
TIM CREASEY:
Empowerment, ownership, and accountability.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay, and versus ...
TIM CREASEY:
They're replacing predictability control, authority, right, right.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, authority, yeah. And you got that right. And I was doing a recent workshop for a group of executives talking about succession planning and this is the first time and history that we know of that there's five generations in the workforce actually working. My dad is 82 and still works. He shouldn't, but we won't go into that. He's still working. And we've got this massive ideology happening where we have older generations, baby boomers coming from a society and a culture of not having things like depression, just having a job for the industrial mindset, clock in clock out, I'm grateful for the job I have.
You respect authority and the people that give you your job and you're grateful for that, versus this new mentality of the pandemic's going to shape this new generation. It's going to shape this mentality of who values me and who I am over profit, who values people over profit. But where is that line? And how do I make my name for myself and grow and invest in somebody? I love that whole discussion.
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah, I think there's a couple of interesting wrinkles here. I think the notion that the generation entering the workplace right now has this immense sense of purpose that hasn't been around in other generations. I'm not quite sure I buy into that. I think sometimes we start to misalign and misattribute behaviors into some of those generations. But I do think you're spot on, that we are stepping into leading change across an organization made up of a whole bunch of different generations that carry with them different sets of values.
I tend to like to focus more on the relationship between the organization and the employee. I think we often talk about it as the organization and the employee and it used to be employee beholden to the organization. Now employee wants their sense of themselves and the organizations down here. I'd much more like to think about it as a relationship between the two, and each brings a different part to that relationship. And I think one of the things the pandemic gave all of us is forced prioritization.
I think that's one of the things that came out of the pandemic, is that everybody had to stack rank what mattered. And there was a tremendous amount of suffering, but also a tremendous amount of growth and learning that took place during the pandemic. And so, I think every generation went through a series of stack ranking what mattered. And I think organizations, as they step into embracing flexibility in space and embracing the flexibility that people brought into their work life over the last year-and-a-half, we have a fascinating frontier in terms of reimagining the workplace.
SKOT WALDRON:
And it's also the mindset change where the pandemic has created. I mean, I believe that the pandemic, this great resignation we're all talking about right now is ... A huge part of that was the pandemic of that prioritization you're talking about, right? It's like, hold on, I used to be a slave to this job, I used to just begrudgingly wake up every day, go to where I hated going because I needed to put food on the table. And now they realize after this that, hold on, I don't have to do that. There are other opportunities. And it's just me creating that opportunity for myself and building upon that.
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah. And so, I think there's two sides of the coin. One is about the notion of place, the folks that are stepping away from their organization as they're being forced back. And I think that's because we learned that the office was not ... When we used to ask, what's the office for? The answer was where we had to go to work. And then we proved we could do work anywhere. And so, I think there's people that are pushing back against that forced return to the workplace, as opposed to embracing hybrid flexibility.
The other thing that I think's interesting behind what you laid out around the stack ranking and prioritization is ... And again, I have this return to the workplace advisory board. And so, there's a guy who runs the change practice a big, big bank. He said, "One of the other things, Tim, that came out of the pandemic is resilience, unintended resilience." Because think about it, I'm that guy that you're just describing who hates my job. It's November of 2021. I've gone through ... I'm sitting there trying to decide what to do. I hate my job.
I'd already think about quitting and find something else. But I just don't know if I got it in me. If I were to ask myself that question two years ago, it's very different than asking myself that question today. Do I have it in me to try to step away from my job in November of '19? I'm not sure. Do I have it in me to step away from my job November of '21? I just survived a pandemic. Oh, man, of course, right?
SKOT WALDRON:
I got this, right?
TIM CREASEY:
I got this. I just made it through 18 months with just my three family members. Like, yeah, that ... Force prioritization comes out of the pandemic, and also some of this unintended resilience. Also, starts to come out of the experience we all went through. Which means organizations are going to have to be. I mentioned the unintentional digital transformation, the involuntary digital transformation, what organizations are studying in front of is an involuntary cultural transformation if they don't get out in front of it.
And so, Andy Horlick on my ... He's the development team member and instructor here at Prosci, been part of the Prosci family for over a dozen years, but he's really starting to step out into, if we, as organizations, let the cultural transformation that's in front of us be involuntary, we let the digital one, we're going to be in a world that hurt. And so, how do we step out and be intentional around really shaping and nurturing? What culture means in a reimagined workplace?
SKOT WALDRON:
Tell me about that culture. What is culture? What's that role of culture inside of the idea of change?
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah, awesome question. And I can get up on a pretty big soapbox here. We're big Marvel fans in our house. The soapbox I'll get up on is culture is never the villain when a change goes poorly, and it's never the hero when a change goes well. Culture is not Thanos and it's not Captain Marvel. Culture is, culture is, culture is the backdrop in which you are trying to bring this change to life. And as a change agent, your job is to adapt and understand and accommodate for and adjust for the cultural conditions in which you're bringing that change to life.
Now, certainly, there are some changes with the expressed intent to change the culture. We may have a change where the intention of the change is to help us become more collaborative and less combative, but that's a little bit different. That's where the nature of a particular change is to nudge or influence the culture. Generally, I think most of the time, that culture is what we need to better understand that we're stepping into so that we can help people navigate the change journey we're asking them to take. Because culture is like the water they're swimming in.
For not accommodating for the water they're swimming in and we're asking them to make this change swim this way, that's an impediment to us supporting them through the change we're asking them to take on.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. It's understanding the environment. What comes first, the culture or the change? I mean, how ...
TIM CREASEY:
The culture is. Where the way we dove into, it's interesting, we tackled culture three studies ago, I think. We tacked it. I got fed up with how culture was being treated in a couple of ways. One of them was this notion of like, here's your three-month culture change, the plan for the three-month culture change. Better be presented by the tooth fairy, neither of those. This is imaginary, a three-month culture change project. My other beef with how culture was being treated was you'd see these judgmental notions, you'd see a graph of a culture and it would be an inside outside, like bad good.
And I'm like, no, culture, there's too much value laden in that assessment of a good culture, bad culture. The culture is how people interact and engage with one another. It's the behaviors and the norms that they step into and live into because that's what's been created in the space made up between the people in the organization. We took six cultural dimensions, we'll see if I don't know if I'll be able to remember all of them. But you take something like a performance orientation. Organization lives across the spectrum around performance orientation.
Where you live on the spectrum is the water. How does that impact how change happens? That was the question we unpacked in the research. You take another one, uncertainty avoidance, tolerance of ambiguity. An organization lives somewhere on a spectrum in terms of its ability to tolerate ambiguity. It either can tolerate none or it gets really uncomfortable if there's not ambiguity. And we can envision organizations that live across that spectrum. Change is going to happen in every organization on that spectrum.
But if you try to bring about a change where we love ambiguity, how do you accommodate and adapt for that in your strategy to bring the change to life? Or if you're bringing the change to life in an organization that can handle no ambiguity, how do you adapt and accommodate for that in your communications, in your training, in the way you tap into sponsorship? That's, I guess, how we ended up taking six dimensions and for every dimension said, what are the unique challenges bringing change to life in that kind of an organization?
And then what are the specific adaptations you make to bring change forward there? That's how we decided to take on culture that it's never Thanos, it's never Captain Marvel, it's not the hero, it's not the villain, it is. And our ability to adapt and accommodate for it, that's the crux. That's where culture and successful change intersect.
SKOT WALDRON:
I like that. I like that analysis. I think that it's a little deeper than what typically people go into when they're talking about culture. And for simplicity's sake, I usually just say it's like atmosphere in that greenhouse. And it's either more toxic or less toxic or more pure or less pure, depending on how you want to label it.
TIM CREASEY:
Certainly. And competitiveness as a cultural trait will be an asset in certain organizations and will be detrimental in other organizations. It might be an asset in parts of the organization and detrimental in parts of the organization. Certainly, the notion of the cultural and in particular, the behaviors that manifest out of that culture, I think, are ... It's powerful. We got to take them into account. Because they can certainly squash a change.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, 100%.
TIM CREASEY:
Culture can squash a change instantly. To say it's not either Thanos or Captain Marvel, it certainly has the ability to squash change, but it's never the reason that change succeeded or the reason to change field.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay, alright. Question for you, should Captain Marvel get all the glory for flying in at the very end of the movie and saving everybody? Should she get all the credit?
TIM CREASEY:
Well, yes. That's why we that's why we brought her back at the end of infinity war. We wouldn't have sent out the signal if we didn't know she was going to be our savior. It's topical. People listen to this podcast at any time, I'm sure. But it's right around Halloween here in the United States. So, for Halloween, my son was Captain America from the end of Endgame. Had the shield and everything. I managed to find a Thanos from the end of Endgame costume as well, but he didn't even know I got. So ...
SKOT WALDRON:
And you obviously didn't have to bulk up any muscle for that custome.
TIM CREASEY:
No. I mean, it's my posture. So I step into it. Schedules get shuffled at 9:00 that Peach needs full day class on how to build change capability in organizations. What we talked about in the beginning like, how do you bring structure and intent to the journey of growing change muscle to a huge class? There's probably 22 in it of just change architects, the people that are out there trying to help their organizations get better at change, jumped in the car, ran home, changed, got to the school with three minutes to spare, and showed up as Thanos on the playground to pick them up from school.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well done, man. Well done.
TIM CREASEY:
Indeed.
SKOT WALDRON:
That did ...
TIM CREASEY:
Are you Marvel fans or not?
SKOT WALDRON:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
TIM CREASEY:
My son's in fifth grade. The kindergarteners come out first. And the first four of them, of course, are dressed up like Spiderman. And they start catcalling me across the playground, "Thanos, Thanos." And so, I turned around and I started to really get into it, getting all big. And I started to raise up a hand to snap. And all four of them are still shooting webs at me, and I pull a snap, and one of the four falls back and disappears. And I just had to applaud that kid's parents. I was like ...
SKOT WALDRON:
That is well done.
TIM CREASEY:
... kudos to you.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well done.
TIM CREASEY:
The other three, they're just shooting webs trying to knock me down. But that kid, he knew, he knew the pain that Tony Stark felt as he looked into Peter Parker's eyes.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's deep, man. That's deep. I could see you sitting with that kid on the side just going deep, just talking, just talking.
TIM CREASEY:
He knew. Well, then I turn around and I start trying to talk to my wife and her friends again. And pretty soon, the cat calls come again, "Thanos, Thanos." And so, yeah, back and forth we played. Then I got really into it and they'd shoot webs. And I'd start to pretend that I was getting hit and knocked backwards.
SKOT WALDRON:
The other parents are like, who is that guy?
TIM CREASEY:
Who is the dude in the Thanos custome?
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, little bit weird, but that's okay. Because that's what makes it so beautiful. Makes that so beautiful.
TIM CREASEY:
Balance, right?
SKOT WALDRON:
Balance, balance.
TIM CREASEY:
There it is.
SKOT WALDRON:
Let's talk about this coin thing. Speaking of snaps and eternity and dust particles, talk about the coin. You like to talk about the coin. Tell me about the coin.
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah. I find analogies make things accessible for human beings because as they give us something outside of us to attach to. If I'm trying to make sense and an idea inside my brain, it's a lot easier if I have something outside of my body to attach that concept to. And you get the double entendre of change and coin. Just like any quarter or nickel or dime or penny, change has two sides, the technical side. And that's where we design, develop, and deliver a solution for whatever the issue or opportunity is in front of us. That's the technical side of change.
And while I say technical, it doesn't have to be technological. A lot of the technical side of change is powered by or enabled by technology, but there's a lot of technical sides of change that aren't necessarily technological in nature. I'll give you a Prosci, our leadership team rolled out six new values at the start of 2021. Those six new values are the technical side of the change coin, even though there's no technology that sits behind them. The other side of the coin then is the people side of change.
How do I help people engage, adopt, and use whatever that technical solution is that I'm going to bring forward. Because we know the change landscape is littered by examples of beautifully designed technical solutions. All the buttons work, all the buttons work, but nobody actually picked up and started using the thing. And that creates no value to the organization. And in fact, it creates negative value to the organization. Because we put a lot of time, effort, energy trying to make that thing where the buttons work that we could have been doing other things with.
And now the fact that nobody will pick it up and use it, even though the buttons work, that's the crux, that's the pain of organizational change. And so, the technical sides and people sides, it's the boat, same side of the coin. It's how do we help the organization improve by undertaking this journey, both by designing, developing, delivering, and helping our people engage it up and use it.
SKOT WALDRON:
Love that. And it's a simple concept, but it's something that so many people get wrong. And I've seen, and I'm not going to mention this client that I've worked with in the past, spend millions of dollars developing something that then gets put on the shelf. And it was like, so then you got to understand. What was the motivation behind that thing in the first place? And if the motivation was pure and the idea was right, then where did the adoption go wrong? And I assume that's what you analyze and implement at first.
TIM CREASEY:
Absolutely. Yeah, that's how are we ... And we were founded by a very curious engineer. He was running huge process optimization projects, but he kept running into people.
SKOT WALDRON:
Thank people.
TIM CREASEY:
The hard side of change, getting people to actually follow the process no matter how beautifully designed the process was. And so, it was that question, what can you do? Why do some projects succeed and others don't? And it turns out, it's how well do we help people embrace, adopt, and use that change. And so, that's the foundation of what Prosci was, was asking that question across tons of dimensions. Because it turns out, human beings navigate change in a fairly predictable way. People are beautifully complex.
Things are always going to go different than we thought they might. But it turns out, if you answer the questions a person has in the order they typically have them when they get exposed to a change, you can help them step through that change journey. And so, that becomes this foundation of the discipline of change management. And I think you're right. I have an image that I use in some of my slides, are on the left hand side. It's a picture of a coin you'd see at a museum, like crazy high relief.
I mean, the thing is just beautiful, the artwork and precision that went into that side of the coin. And on the other side, I have a picture of like a playdough coin, like when your kids would take a lump of playdough and use that playdough imprint to ... And unfortunately, that's the level of fidelity and the level of relief we usually can pay to the people side of change. We spend all this time getting the technical side, highly polished and ready to go, and then leave that people side completely up to chance. That's the gap we try to close.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, and it takes intentionality and it takes understanding that it takes effort. Likewise, while we're comparing presentation slides, I have another slide like that where it's this beautiful house and it's glorious. I mean, the lighting is beautiful, beautiful pool area. And I look at it and I asked the audience, I say, this is what we all want, whatever the end ... We want the end result. And when we go into buying a house or building a house, you know it's going to be painful. You have that expectation. It's going to be over budget.
It's going to scheduled over ... The schedule is going to be blown apart I'm going to have to get into all the details. I'm probably going to fight with my spouse at time. All this stuff goes into that. And yet when it really comes down to our profession, when it comes down to whether it's culture or brand and marketing work or change management, I flip over to this next slide of this busted up shack. And it's just like, and I say, this is what we do. We want that, but we really implement this. And the mentality is it's good enough. Like, oh, it's good enough, Skot.
What we're doing, it's good enough to get by. We're just going to go with that for now. And I'm like, really? The shack is good enough to keep the rain off my head, but is it sustainable? Is it scalable? Is it simple? Is it going to last? Is it going to impact? Is it going to create the brand image that you want within your organization? That's the problem. And I think that we are so hung up on the thing, and we're so finite in our mindset that we just don't put in the effort.
TIM CREASEY:
Absolutely. I like your slide, and I'll raise you one more slide that I use in this.
SKOT WALDRON:
Oh no, I don't have any more slides. Those are the only two I use.
TIM CREASEY:
This is just a big finish line flag. And the question is, what's the finish line? What's the finish line of this change? Is it turning the thing on with the buttons working? Is it getting that just enough stack? Or is it improving performance the organization in a market way? And if we can align on what the finish line is, this is the interesting thing. There's a wonderful Peter Senge quote and it's too long, so I haven't memorized it yet. But it's about the notion of empowerment.
Here's the Tim Creasey shortened version, alignment ... Or sorry, empowerment without alignment only amplifies the chaos. Empowerment without alignment only amplifies the chaos. And so, getting anchored to the same finish line, I think, is actually where this whole entire journey starts. Because we watch project managers and change managers sometimes butt heads in the midst of an organizational change. If they realize they're on the same team, charging at the same finish line, now we actually have the platform, the bed rock before effective collaboration.
But if you're going to that flag over there on the horizon, I'm going to that flag on the horizon over there, we're at odds, we're not even. And here's the worst part, you will know when that happens and it's the worst. It's when we think we're going to the same flag on the horizon, but we're actually onto different ones. It's one thing if I'm like, let's go that way, and Skot's like, no, let's go that way. It's worse when it's like, oh yeah, Skot and I are going in the same ... We're going in the same place. But off you go that way and off I go that way.
I mean, that's even more devastating than us just disagreeing. This alignment on what are we actually trying to do here, what is the problem to solve, right out of the Lean Six Sigma space? What's our finish line? What is the flag on the horizon? How would we know? Anchoring to success, I think, is one of those huge opportunities for anybody who's trying to help organizations do anything differently?
SKOT WALDRON:
I just had visions of third grade partner three-legged races going on. That painted that whole picture for me really well. Thank you for that. This ADKAR, A-D-K-A-R, what is that? I see it behind you on your shoulder. What is that?
TIM CREASEY:
Yes. I never know which side.
SKOT WALDRON:
That side.
TIM CREASEY:
It's going to be on this side? That's precise individual change model. It's an acronym, stands for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement. It's the five building blocks of successful change, whether it's getting a child to pick up their room, getting your neighbor to pick up their yard, helping that community group you're a part of, or getting your organization to adopt that new cloud based CRM system.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. What's the five again?
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah, ready? The first is awareness of the need for change, not awareness that the change is happening, awareness of the need for change. It means I've internalized the answers to why, why now, what if we don't. Once I've internalized those answers, I would be able to say, I understand why this change is necessary. And that's that success milestone for awareness. I understand why. The next is desire to participate and support the change. When I made the personal decision to step out of what is today, to step out of the current state, and to step into making the change.
And it's a personal decision, so we can't make it happen. But we can influence it, nudge it. And that's where our personal motivators, organizational motivators, the what's in it for me, answering the what's in it for me is how we help somebody get to the point where they would say, I have decided to. I understand why I've decided to. The next is I know how to, knowledge. The problem, Skot, is knowledge is the one we just default to all the time. We need our people to be more customer oriented. What do we do? Send them to customer orientation training.
We need jerk default to knowledge, sending people to training as the way to try to get them to change. We gloss over the ad campaign of awareness and desire. Knowledge needs context on the back of awareness desire. I also need to know what to do during and after the change, so how am I going to get there. After that is ability. That's the second A, and that's where I've actually demonstrated the skills to do things differently. I can do things differently now when I get to that A ability. There's physical barriers, mental blocks and barriers.
It takes practice and coaching, a safe space to refine ability. But ability is where I've actually made the change happen. And then I've joked that had Jeff invented the ADKA model, just A-D-K-A, Prosci would be a complete failure. Because that are, at the end, that's reinforcement. If he would have forgot that reinforcement just like most changes do, Prosci would have been a failure. But he remembered, he put that R at the end. Because it's our natural, physiological, psychological tendency to go back to what we've always done.
And so, we have to be intentional about providing reinforcement to make sure that that change sticks. So, A-D-K-A-R is how we describe successful change at the individual level. And then the discipline of change management is how we scale that. I mean, we've supported organizations rolling out changes across 250,000 employees. And they structure the way they engage and support those employees around A-D-K-A and R.
SKOT WALDRON:
So say that we've got awareness of the need. Here we're like, yeah, I can see that, I can see where we need to ...
TIM CREASEY:
That's not awareness.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's not awareness?
TIM CREASEY:
Awareness is I understand why we're making this change.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So say they understand why they're making the change. Okay, straight up. I understand we're making this change. I'll say it more with more conviction. And then there's some knowledge behind it of how to do it, but there is a lack of desire to participate by some people in the organization. Some people will say, some people, meaning executives are like, "We're doing this, this has to happen. We're responsible to stakeholders, we've got some responsibility here." But then you have people, some managers, they're just like, "Ah, I know.
I know we need this, but I'm not on this page right now. I've got other fires to put out, I'm just not going to do it." But can you get still bring about change within that organization without every single person on board with that desire to participate?
TIM CREASEY:
You can bring about the project at a project level, but individuals will need to move through A-D-K-A and R. They might get to the desire step, they might get through desire just to be through it and be done with it. They might get through desire because we know they were stuck and their manager came and had a one on one with them and said, "You know what, I know you're stuck with this and struggling with it, but I need you to step through this one and get on board."
They might start to build that desire when they start to see a pilot project and see some of the examples and wins and benefits that are coming about the project. And they can start to see what it means to them and their own personal motivator. I'd maintain a person has to get through desire in order to make the change successfully. Organizations can bring about systemic shifts and nudges and movements without every single person locked in. However, the kinds of changes we implemented in our organizations today are going more end-to-end.
The more you go end-to-end with an ERP, the more you start to tie together the parts of the organization. You've actually heightened the need for each person to follow the story alone. We have had a story in our old ADKAR book, maybe it was the old people side book. Somebody was at our training program, I got to have dinner with him. They had put in a new shipping system, he runs the warehouse. One of his guys picks up a box, scans it with a gun, and the gun says, we're sorry, that box is not available to ship to the customer. It wasn't entered correctly earlier in the chain.
You have a customer with an order, a box to be shipped, somebody ready to ship it, but there was poor adoption and usage of this new solution somewhere earlier in the chain. And it inhibited our ability to create the value out of the change. Skot, we'll actually sit down with any project and say, what percentage of this project outcomes depend on adoption and usage? What percentage of this project's outcomes depend on effective adoption and usage? Because that then tells us how important the people side of change to this equation.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's impactful. That's a big question to understand, for sure. Tell me about the ... We're going to wrap this up, but I want to give you the opportunity to talk about the certification, the process certification. Unpack that for me, what is that?
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah. So, Prosci, the cornerstone offering is this three-day certification program. We don't lay it in the door, unless you have a project you're working on. And you can do it as a post mortem, if you happen to be between gigs. But for the most part, everybody in the program is working on a real project that they've brought through the door. As you learn the Prosci methodology of defining success, defining impact, defining approach, you're actually doing it in real-time on the project that you brought. You build an ADKAR blueprint for your project.
You start into your communication plan and maybe even a sponsor plan. You start to identify the sustainment metrics you're going to measure at the project, the individual, and the change management levels. It's really about applying as you learn it and bringing a level of structure and intent to the adoption side of the equation. The people side of that coin, so it's a real immersive program. It's all virtual now. The wild thing, Skot, is that on March 1st, 2020, we had never taught a virtual training program. And I run the development portfolio.
At that point, it was over my dead body will we ever take ... Because it was a three-day program, and we leveraged the environment so intensely. We did treasure hunts. We were whiteboarding all the time. There was karaoke and chili cook-offs. We leveraged the environment to help facilitate this mindset shift about how important the people side of change was. Because back in '03, '04, '05, it was critical to help people get there. Of course, in response to the pandemic, it's all been virtualized now. But it's a really engaging, fun example of a captivating virtual experience over a course of three days. So, prosci.com is where people can go to ... We have hosts of free articles, blogs, webinar replays. But you can also go there to learn about that training program too.
SKOT WALDRON:
I feel like my guruness about change management has now been lifted to be almost be equal to yours, now that I've spoken to you and been educated. Thank you. Those are some awesome wise words thrown across here that I've written down that I'll share with my audience after this, but so cool, awesome having you, man. This was a referral from another person at changed management space. He referred you, and I'm grateful for them for sending you over. If people want to get in touch with you personally, whether it's to speak or to come in and talk about this topic with their organization, how do they do that?
TIM CREASEY:
Yeah, prosci.com is how you would come into the front door. I'm also most personally active on LinkedIn. You can track me down on LinkedIn. That's where some of the bourbon inspired stuff happens, which can even be more fun than the middle of the day recordings. But thank you for having me. I've started to describe my own personal aha or what I'm all about is to help people see the challenges of change as unlockable. Because I think most of the time, people have the answers. They can overcome that challenge of change.
Once they see that challenge as conquerable, as something they can unlock. So I was really excited about the opportunity to come share and a little bit of the way we try to see the world, to make it more unlockable for people trying to make sense of change.
SKOT WALDRON:
And I'm going to give you $5 for every time you say the word unlock. You are the man. Thank you. I appreciate that.
TIM CREASEY:
Thank you, sir.
SKOT WALDRON:
ADKAR, it's not a city in the Middle East. No, it is an acronym. And it stands for awareness, so awareness of the need for change, desire, to be part of that to participate in that change, knowledge, so the K is knowledge to actually do it. A is the ability to demonstrate those skills. And R, the key to it all, is reinforcement, making sure that it's implemented, making sure that there is a sustainable system and place to scale this thing. Because if it's not scalable, if it's not sustainable, it's not going to stick.
And if you don't have the desire, which is what I brought up in the interview, if there is a lack of desire, you're also going to have a hard time implementing change within your organization. There's a few other things, I loved that empowerment, ownership, and accountability aspect of what we deal with now and our culture versus the predictability, the authority, and the control that we used to deal with. And I guess, the industrial age and the way of thinking back then, the way of work. And that's really interesting.
We think about how does change fit into those two spectrums, and how does it play a role in what we do now? It's all about the people, and that people are what are going to make or break our ability to change successfully within our organizations and within our culture and humanity as a whole. I'm really grateful for Tim, wicked smart guy. Thank you, Tim, for being here and good luck at Prosci and all the things y'all are doing over there. If you want to find out more about me, go to skotwaldron.com. You can find out more of these interviews.
You can find some tools and free tools I have on there for you. You can also go to my YouTube channel, like, subscribe, comment there. I have a ton of free tools to help you and your leadership and cultural and team building journey, really short, simple tidbits of help there that you can gather. LinkedIn, connect with me there. And I will talk to you pretty much all day because I like to talk on LinkedIn. So, let's do it. Thanks, everybody, for being here on another episode of Unlocked.
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