SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mossri and Kira Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_04 0:28

All right, welcome to the CRM Success Show. Today we're talking with Richard K Dag, Global Technology Leader, formerly of Hulahan Loki. Welcome, Richard.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Thanks for having me on, guys.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Good to see you again, Richard. So just tell our listeners who might not be familiar who is Richard and also what did Hulahan Loki do?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

So a little bit about me. Dad, husband to a 17-year-old daughter who's heavy into barrel racing. And I've been an IT executive across eight industries and done what I've done, major transformation across 40 different countries. Most recently spent eight years at a global investment bank, Hulahan Loki.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Awesome. So your career has taken you globally, as you mentioned, across multiple industries, but it's always had kind of one thing in particular that you've been passionate about and you've always circled back to, and that's change management, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:24

That is correct. That's the underpinning of any successful project.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

So in terms of change management, there's a general acceptance that it's often undervalued. And most people hear change management, they immediately think training, communication plans, user adoption. Now it is those three things are part of that journey, but it is so much more bigger and complex than that. Why do you think change management is so undervalued?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I think it's undervalued because when people light up a capital investment for a transformation or a project, it's not tied to business outcomes. It's tied to I want to achieve a new ERP or I want to achieve a new CRM, right? That's not a business outcome. And when you understand the change management dynamic of making sure that this new CRM is going to drive better data for me, easier reporting, AI insights, you start to tie it down to that minutiae. Suddenly people are more focused and they're driving better business value. But to orchestrate that, you need to have a methodology. And just to cite a couple stats that I pulled for this podcast, the Standish group states 69% of projects fail or challenged. Gartner has it at 80%. McKinsey and Oxford, 45% average cost overrun on large IT projects. And then Prosky, which has that ad car methodology, 79% success rate with highly effective sponsors. 79%. What they don't talk about is 17% of all projects turn into a black swan event, which means you're way over budget and you're putting the financial health of a company at risk. You need to tie that back to something. Change management is where it's at.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

So you you referenced Frosty and the ADCAR model, which was late 1990s. From what I've researched, you know, change management first became, as we know it today, probably in the early 80s, as the evolution of ERPs and so on became a thing. It does date back into the 40s in some aspects, but I think as we know it as a mainstream term, probably 80s onwards, 90s, as you mentioned, and then obviously you bring it to today over the last 10-15 years, especially. It's often not a role that's on an org chart. We're gonna go a little bit into detail where it should sit, but why do you think it's often seen as an afterthought versus you know, like a pre-scoping requirement gathering? You'll hear requirement gathering a lot more than you'll hear change management strategy. Do you think that is as simple as lack of ROI or easiness of calculating the ROI, or is it more than that?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

I think it really ties back well to how enterprises are structured, right? Everybody works in their vertical, and that's how they show that they've made progress at the end of their fiscal year and they want their nice bonus and show that they're adding value. But change management for any organization has to be cross-functional. I remember before I even agreed to do a project with a firm, I insisted on meeting with the C-suite independently. And I asked them all the same question. You guys are wildly profitable. Why are you doing this to yourself? This transformation is going to be painful. It's not pretty. I don't care how much you plan for it, but you're pulling your A players off of the day-to-day work, you're putting them on a project, which could be a year long. Why do you want to do this? And this company was very unique. They were a unicorn. Each and every single C-suite person came back with the same answer. This is compliance driven. We went public, we have to meet our obligations. We have no choice but to move forward and do this project. I said, All right, my follow-up question is Is that message cascaded down through the organization? Yes. Why is that important to me? It's important to me because when we have a decision point, do you guys want option A or option B? There's no option C of you know what, we're tired, we're exhausted, maybe we shouldn't have done this project, let's not do it and let's abandon it. It's always the we burn the boats and we have to move forward. We've got to pick a decision and we need to move that forward.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Now, majority of our listeners are probably familiar with the term change management. Always interesting to hear from a guest perspective. How would you define change management?

SPEAKER_01 5:59

So change management is making sure that the organization and the people are ready to accept the change. And if you look at any company in business today, you take somebody who's been doing their job for five years, it becomes pretty much autopilot. There's times they don't have to think about what they do. And when you come in with a new big idea, I'm dropping in a new CRM or we're doing an acquisition we have to fold in, they now need to take time away from where their brain has been focused and now relearn a new thing, and it becomes very uncomfortable for them and they don't understand what that resistance is. Why do they see the project team walking down the hall and their anxiety level starts creeping up? When you can explain that and you can rationalize it for them and see that we're all going on that same journey together with the same outcome, it helps bolster what that project is meant to do. And at the end of the day, the organization accepts the change. That's the difference. You can do a project, it's very binary. Here's a new system. Getting them to accept it and use it and adopt that new business process, that's where the real change is.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

So, how would you go about planning change management when perhaps a business doesn't really know the true extent of what the change is going to be, the impact it might have, or even just that it is going to be a change, right? You know, this is a technology CRM. Okay, sure, it's there's a few things that look and feel a bit different, but it's still a CRM. It's not a new go-to-market strategy, right? So, how would you go about planning that?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

So a lot of that has to do with the top-down leadership. Why are we going on that? How are you going to support it when we come up with different decision points? If there's friction, who's got the center of truth, right? Where is that system of record? Who owns that? Right. And that speaks to the power base. You may be rolling out a new CRM, but if people's needs aren't felt and they're not visible in the project, and those are not aligned to a business outcome, you have the opportunity for everybody to have a different perspective of what they expect to get out of the project. I remember doing a project for a company in Culver City, and they had this big map up on the wall of this elephant with seven blind wise men. Oh, I feel a snake, or I feel leather, or I feel this, or everybody had all that different perspective. Aligning them with that right business outcome and getting them to marry up to that overarching goal means a lot of times that people are sacrificing things that they want for the greater good. And it's better to do that at the front end of the project than, hey, we're at the 11th month, we go live in the 12 month, and here's the punch list of stuff that we're not getting, and we're very dissatisfied.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Do you think change management is both a business capability and a people capability that requires, I guess, both technical understanding and the human input? Or where does responsibility lie? Is it because often change management is still viewed as a soft skill, right? So do you think that's on the business or do you think that's on the people that are making that change a reality?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

I think the business determines the need. I think the people are the outcome for the change management, and getting them aligned to what that change is is where you're really going to find the value. Who owns it though? That was a separate question you had. This isn't a the CIO owns the new CRM rollout. That is not the case at all, right? They're in charge of the technical delivery. The rest of the executive leadership is on deck for making sure that the right change management is done and that program is supported. It can't rely on a CIO for something like that. It needs to be wider spread. And when that's shared, that responsibility cascades through the org, and you get a much better outcome.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Now, you've done Oracle, Workday, Concur, Salesforce, other types of projects. Naturally, you are maybe approaching it from a technology standpoint, but do you think leaders have gone too laser focused on technology instead of the adoption piece? Like, what's your personal opinion on that?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

What I see a lot of times and I speak at conferences and networking events, and everybody shares their stories. That there's always that marquee logo that somebody wants. We got to go buy a workday or we gotta go buy Salesforce, right? Nobody ever asks the question, what are you trying to achieve? Right? What's the overall goal for that? Why do you want to do that? Can you fix what you have? And it's always the, you know, I saw it when I was talking to an individual last week. They just finished a big ERP implementation, they got all the credit. Recruiters started calling, and boom, you know, they're off and running on a new CIO role somewhere because that was what was important to them. Was that the right thing for the firm? Probably, but I saw the alignment of the delivery more of the personal look what I was able to accomplish and prove myself, and now I'm valuable somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

So other than failed adoption to a system which can cost millions and millions of dollars, what else happens when businesses don't invest in change management from what you've seen over the years?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Oh, I you know, I see it all the time. People don't want to use the system. CRMs are especially rife with we need good data, we need accurate data, we need complete data. And if people aren't on board for what they're getting out of that system, they're gonna do the bare minimum, right? It's that soft, silent resistance where the project gets delivered for sure, and now you're on contract with an enterprise vendor, but you're not getting the results out of that, and you're standing around scratching your head, like, why isn't this working for me? Right? That change management wasn't done. I saw an article, UCLA stepped away from a $217 million implementation that didn't work out, ended up in the courts. That's a big, big problem. Change management is going to bridge that gap and get you there.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

So going back to what you what exactly change management is most people when they think of change management, they tend to think of two things. It's either a new system rollout, which means training on a new system, or a process change. And I think that's about it. Now I'm probably thinking that's a little bit uh narrow-sided. What else is there when you're thinking besides training and process change, which is again basically training?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

I've seen it with companies being acquired. I've seen it as an acquiring company as well. If you don't put the right change management in, you may acquire a company and fold them in. Here's your new system, and here's your new login, and here's your new laptops. But if they're not on board with the journey, you're always going to get that resistance. And what you don't want to find out a year, two years down the road is well, yeah, you're now the new parent company. We're still gonna operate the way we've been operating. And you wonder why your investment in buying that company is not getting you the same rate of return that you were expecting to see.

SPEAKER_04 13:27

In terms of actually doing change, man, what else is there besides training? And maybe that's all there is, right? Besides training and process improvements, which is again, it's just training and communication is or again the way it tends to be looked at is like here's what here's the change that's coming, here's what you need to do, here's what to expect. Obviously, that's super important. I get that if people don't follow it, you basically wasted the whole project, right? Which is your point, right? What's the point of making changes if no one's gonna do it?

SPEAKER_01 13:58

So, so to dig under the covers a little bit, right? You know, I I have 10 pillars because there are in my mind 10 pillars that encompass the entire program. And the first one starts with the most important, right? What is the source of truth, especially with acquisitions or the festitures, who owns what, and then how do we stand behind what that is? You can't have two different groups saying that I have the system of record and my numbers are the ones driving the financials. So, you know, going through that, you have to have the right alignment at the entire organization to have all your systems and business process and people in to support it. Part of that, too, is the rules of engagement. How do we operate? If you own that, how do I support you and get you what you need? And then how do I get what I need to run my business?

SPEAKER_04 14:50

So it's making sure that people are on board with the change as opposed to assuming I told you this is what's coming, so I guess it's gonna happen type thing. You want them bought in.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

That's right. And sometimes it's giving up a source of power, right? Or a shared responsibility that needs to happen at the front end, not when the project's done and people are fighting over territory. That's the worst possible outcome.

SPEAKER_04 15:23

Okay, awesome. So getting back to that point, how do you measure the success of the change management? And is that something that's measured separately from the success of the project? So is there a separate set of KPIs that you would have specifically for change management that's different than the project itself?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Oh, absolutely. So besides the project itself being attached to business outcomes, it's the behavior of the people that are working on the project, the behavior of the people that are benefiting from the project. I've seen it time and again, right? Here's your new system. Well, but I still get my reports over here, right? Trying to retire that legacy tech debt should not be a project mandate, it should be a change management mandate. We've agreed to do this, we've published a timeline, we've brought you on the journey through everything. This is now where you get your data points from. And them resisting and not wanting to do that shows some territorialism and some possessiveness. That needs to be put away. And it's not the project team that can motivate that, that's got to be at the change management level, which is why I always push it up to the executive team. You have to be the one telling them, stop going there to go get your data. We've all agreed to go on this journey together. This is what's going to happen. And if you're still resistant, then we need to ratchet up the pressure a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 16:49

Yeah, in your book, which I know we're going to talk to a bit about more later, you talk a lot about not just like passive resistance or like not being motivated to accept a change, but like an active resistance for various reasons, be it you know job security, territories, you know, territorialism, something like that, or ego, flat out just ego. So, how do you handle that like before you just go escalating up to their boss? Right? I can't imagine that's your first.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

So I've been fortunate in my career to be able to sign up and tackle the most complicated, difficult projects, as well as come in and do project rescues that for whatever reason couldn't cross the finish line. That's when you start running into that active resistance. So there was a project I was working on, and we were re-aligning the company and getting it ready for sale. And I remember the president of the business unit showed up when we arrived at the office and flat out, you're not allowed on my floor. You're not even gonna look at my department, you're not gonna look at my team. Like, I appreciate that, but you know, in this case, the change management's been done. You and I report up to the same COO, and the mandate for us is to come in and analyze and come up with recommendations for your group. You can't block me from your floor. However, let's get on a phone call and let's work it out ahead of time. And we got the green light to come in and do what needed to be done, and we built a nice big beautiful exit for the company afterwards. But in that case, change management was kind of 50-50. We ran into pockets of resistance and we had to deal with it when we came across it.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

So, in that particular case, we were nervous his people were gonna get let go or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

I probably eliminated over a thousand jobs during that project. So I was probably the least popular person, but you don't do a 60 or 70 person call center team in a tower building in downtown LA. That's not cost effective when you can move things out to like Kansas City or Charlotte.

SPEAKER_03 19:11

We were talking about getting laid off. We get we know we do know how to play.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

It's reality, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Yeah happens. Wow, Kiro, you're continuing at your sympathy for this, just like uh I mean I mean, I mean, look, it it happens.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

It's you know, change brings opportunity though at the same time, right? There is always going to be winners and losers out of situations. And we also had a podcast that talked about how to bulletproof yourself to when an acquisition's happening and might lead to job losses, and that individual's career was ultimately built off acquisitions and being survival of the fittest. So conversation for another time, but I guess to pivot back to change management, right? So, in terms of measuring that success and establishing like what does success look like, do you I I think like I think change management is about getting people on board as early as possible, right? Ultimately, there's been a decision made. Let's say it is a new system and it's gonna impact the sales team primarily. Salespeople should be involved in that requirement gathering process. Why are we even moving the system in the first place? If we move the system, we're gonna experience these benefits. Okay, we start to get them on board. Wouldn't it be great if I could do XYZ? Increase your productivity, save you 10 seconds per call on putting in your systems, your notes to the system manually, whatever it is, right? The users need to be bought in early, which often doesn't happen. Usually, CIO says, all right, well, I like Salesforce or whatever, and everyone's like, Well, what's wrong with the system that we've got? For example, right? So, how I guess when my opinion is change management should start at the very beginning before a system's selected. But let's say you walk into an environment or a leader listening to this podcast walks into an in-flight implementation, maybe that wasn't done at the start. How would you how so how would you go about that if that was you in terms of not salvaging, but like you said, you've come into these failed implementations, how would you then measure success?

SPEAKER_01 21:20

So the first thing I would do is do a baseline assessment. Where is everybody? How do we triangulate them? You know, I've I've got a hundred-point questionnaire that I run with C-suites for companies to find out, and I do it individually with each of them, and then I come back and provide a readback of here's where you guys diverge on your answers. So these are areas where there's potential friction in the future. It's no different than coming in the middle of a project. You get the baseline of where everybody's at. Sometimes they're way on board in some areas, other areas, it's like, well, I'm really not sure about the new tool because I have all this other custom stuff that I do, and I don't see how that's going to work in the new. World, right? Now we're dealing with the gap. And then once we have the gap identified, we can start to put a plan together. Some people will not come along on the journey, it's just human nature, right? They like things the way they like it. I've always done it this way, and this has been the tool I've used, and I've been successful because look how many cars I have in my garage and how much square foot my house is. But at the end of the day, it's a greater good piece. Ideally, you want 100% of people on board, realistically, this never gonna happen. But if you can identify the outliers, now you can come up with a plan to deal with that.

SPEAKER_04 22:39

Well, why can't you get it to 100%? I mean, if you think about it, like if you take your reporting example, all you got to do is shut off the old reports and they got no choice, right? Uh-huh. And most of the time, particularly with major system switches, you don't allow them to go back. Like me, I do a lot of data migrations, and I tell my clients, if you don't lock them out of the old system, some moron's gonna go in there and enter data into it, and then you're just gonna either lose that data or have to redo the whole migration and try to identify it, right? So, yeah, you just lock them out.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

So you're trying to force an issue, and that's the right attitude that goes into burning the boats, right? There's only a path forward, there's no point of return. However, human nature being what it is, I've seen time and again where people are running their own CRM on the side because it's their data. That's resistance. And when it comes time to onboard with the new system, they're putting in the bare minimum. That means that you're not achieving the right business outcome moving forward. Right? There's always going to be those pockets of people. I remember rolling out a lockbox solution for a manufacturing company, and there were four people that managed to check deposits for this firm, and all four of them ended up in my office. I don't want the lockbox, my job is to open up mail. We got this new thing. Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore. All the checks are gonna go right to the bank, and the bank's gonna deposit it, and we're gonna train you up on some new things that you can do. And by the way, you're gonna get paid more for it. Three out of the four people stayed and they went on the journey. The fourth one was very resistant. I don't care. My job is to open mail, and that's all I want to do. Oh, okay. We gave them a graceful exit and they went off to go do something else, but you'll never get 100%.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

So that's easy for a mail opener, let's say. So the example that you brought up is very common, which is the shadow systems, right? They got their own little database in the back. Usually that's salespeople, and usually because again, this is the territorial thing. If I put my data in the CRM, someone's gonna someone's gonna poach my clients internally. That's generally the fear. It's often because the corporate culture allows that to go unpunished when you just go in there and take someone else's stuff. But putting that aside, they're often very good salespeople that are doing this. So when you say you're just gonna let them go, they're not like letting go the back office person who's doing, you know, relatively mindless work or easy to replace. So, how do you deal with it when there's a significant key man risk or at least a top-tier salesperson risk of leaving?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

So, this goes back to the earlier question of who owns change management, right? And my statement is it can't be the CIO rolling out a new tech system that change management needs to be owned at the C-suite level across the board. And if you have really valuable salespeople that don't want to go on that journey, they need to come up with an answer for their organization of how they're going to deal with that. Are you going to allow them to continue to put company data in their own shadow system and operate in that fashion because they're bringing in so much revenue? Or are you going to do something to help bring them into alignment so that everybody's rowing in the same direction? And in my experience, the high-performing companies figure out a way to fold everybody in so they're all in the same system.

SPEAKER_04 26:14

Another question when you're talking about measuring success of change management, how did that differ from measuring project success?

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Yeah, yeah. So part of it is did we hit everything that we expected to? So here's my list of requirements, and I've got 500 requirements that are mandatory in the system. Did we deliver that? Did we deliver it within time and within budget and blah, blah, blah? The utilization for that are people really driving all the reporting out of there or entering all their data and how they're engaging it, those are entirely different metrics. And those metrics are irrespective of the project itself, it's the behavior that you expect to see. Right? That's more tied to adoption of what that project's doing, and it helps bolster what those business outcomes are. So if you go live in January, you want to see that persistence in June and then in September and then in December.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

So a couple of questions I've got. One on measuring change management and then another on budget. So do you think change management should be measured on an ongoing basis, pre and post-go live, six months, 12 months, 18 months, whatever? Or is it just comparing kind of past to present? So post-go live, you were reviewing for a couple of months. All right, user adoptions up compared to pre-implementation by 20% success, right? We all move on. What are your thoughts, sir?

SPEAKER_01 27:43

So I think there's a spectrum between we brought a project live, we did the white glove support for 30, 60, 90, 120 days, right? We continue to measure that business outcome and the change management six months out if it's a major transformation. The companies that do it very, very well, the unicorns, they bake that change management into the culture. And I've seen it for many companies I've worked for. Hey, we acquired this company. We're never going to use the name of that acquiring company again. We're all one team, right? They bake that in every single conversation. It's got nothing to do with the project. It has everything to do with the culture and the behavior that we expect to see out of the people.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

So you mentioned a moment ago, rightly so, change management has to be driven from the top, C suite level. If you've got sales reps, then maybe your chief revenue officer needs to address that. If it's IT related, you CIO, CTO, etc., operational COO, right? Fairly straightforward. When you're doing a cross-system business change transformation initiative, how do you go about who should pay what, whose budget it should come out of change management, right? Is that just something you universally say, right? You know, there's four of us, we'll split it 25% each, or like how you must have had that conversation. Like, yeah, I'm down for change management, but I'm not paying for it. Like you can if you if you're passionate about it, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:10

It depends. I've seen different models work for different companies. Sometimes it's that percentile split. How many headcount do you have in each department on this project? And whatever the costs are, we're gonna we're gonna split it accordingly. Sometimes companies have a global head of transformation, and that budget is separately funded, and it's their job to make sure that companies move forward in the right direction and everybody's aligned. So it depends on the size of the company, depends on the complexity. Most of the firms that I've worked for, they've been global in nature. So corporates got a much bigger budget than all the smaller offices, and then that rolls up to a corporate budget somewhere. And if they want to do an allocation at the tail end for like you know, a quarter close, they can reallocate those costs out to the independent offices if they want to. That's an accounting trick at that point.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

I could ask a bit more about the accounting tricks that you've seen. Um but we might go off on a tangent. So um maybe that's a story for a beer. But um, what what about curious to get your thoughts on how much of a let's say PL responsibility, you have full full PL responsibility, or hypothetically someone in your position would. What percentage of your budget would you allocate to change management? I know that might ramp up, ramp down, but let's say over uh a 12, 18 month project.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Most recently we were delivering about 150 projects a year, right? That doesn't mean all projects are the same. Some are eight weeks long and minor in nature. It's the much bigger projects that are cross-functional in nature, that are complex, that run 12 months or 18 months. You've got to put a 20% bogey in the budget just to deal with change management because it's not a one size fix-all. And again, especially in the companies that I've worked for, you're dealing with different cultural norms, right? Whether you're in Asia or Europe or the US, there's different ways of approaching that to get people aligned. So you have to accommodate all that, meet people at the level that they're at, and help bring them on the journey. So big projects, probably 20%.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

Yeah, I was after a number, and I'm glad you provided one. So I did a bit of research prior to this podcast on the topic and under change management, and I'm using quotation marks for those that are listening. The market estimates around two and a half billion dollars a year is spent on change management, quotation marks, services. You know, if you think about consulting across implementations, be it Salesforce, SAP, workday, general AI adoption, MA's, some digital transformation, etc., all group structures, which is phenomenal, over two and a half billion dollars expected to go into next year. On average, a few articles say around 15%. Others say, depending on the size of the project, 20 to 25%. So if you're talking a 10 million transformation, you should be allocating between half a mil to one and a half million of your budget to that, which pretty much aligns with what your take has been. Now, naturally, you're more passionate about change management, so slightly higher. I'm not surprised to hear that because you know you've seen change management done right. So, did you think it was that much? Like it's being spent on change management, or is that number surprising or it's not enough?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

It's not surprising at all. Typically, when I come in and do a transformation, that project team's locked in with me, especially in the days of pre-COVID, where everybody's in a war room together and you're there six o'clock in the morning, sometimes till 11 o'clock at night during high cycles of that project, and to take care of the team and make sure that the team is supported. Who's the backfill? Who's doing the day-to-day operations? Otherwise, you're dragging your team through the mud. An army marches on their stomach, right? I'm gonna provide breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever it is that you need so that I can focus that A-team on the objective at hand and we can move things forward. A lot of folks don't do that, right? It's well, you know, we'll we'll deal with it. We'll give you a nominal bonus at the end of it. That's not the case. Major transformation, that A-team is giving up time with their family, missing birthdays or holidays, especially critical weekends. When that project's done and if it's done right, there should be a sizable bonus at the tail end of it, not to reward you, but to compensate for everything that you sacrifice to help get that firm there.

SPEAKER_04 33:44

Well, I'm not gonna argue with that. Um uh contractors don't get bonuses. I will say that.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

No, but they get buildable hours.

SPEAKER_04 33:54

Yes, yes. So they gotta like position this book right because of this background. Maybe put it in my front of my face, you can see it. So you authored the book, Disruptive Change Management. I ordered this off Amazon. I'm sure there are other ways to order it. I'm only about halfway through, unfortunately. I'll probably finish it up this weekend. So before I say my thoughts or or any kind of comments, why don't you why don't you tell us a bit about it? You know, what do you cover in the book?

SPEAKER_01 34:19

So the intended audience really is for everybody, but I geared the book. You know, as an executive, I've always run book clubs with my team. I want to keep them engaged, I want to keep some thought leadership kicking around against different topics. So I wanted a book that somebody can consume in a couple hours. It's geared more for a book club type book because it's got a lot of carve outs in there for the framework that I built based on my career. And the reason I wrote it is all these stories keep coming up in networking events. You did this project or that project. I was having dinner with Kiro, I don't know what, a month ago, and I shared my story in Europe about ending up in the back of a town car in a salvage yard. Right? Why did that happen? Right. I was uncovering some fraud for a company that I was doing a project for. The CFO was openly hostile at the beginning of the project, saying that he had his own set of books and I'd never get a copy of it. And it was at that point in time that I called my wife and I said, I'm not sure I'm coming home from this project. But it's all of those stories and everything that I've gained, the perspective that I have of wow, you know, I'm getting active resistance over here, or people are pushing back, or this isn't getting adopted. How do we muscle through and find success? So it's not an academic book, it's a real-world battle scar, blood, sweat, and tear of here's what I dealt with, here's what I had to overcome, and here's how that project finally got delivered.

SPEAKER_04 35:51

Yeah, it was an interesting read. So I've done quite a bit of project management, but definitely smaller scale projects than what you're talking about in here. A couple of things that jumped out on me is the language in the book is very warlike, let's say. And you know, maybe, maybe the it's a generational thing. I'm very much the same way. It's like how it's got to be right, you're gonna do A, B, and C, we're gonna accomplish X. You put together a very tactical plan, and then you execute on that plan and you measure the results, right? And then you adjust. I would say the younger generation doesn't seem to be for me. Like, what are your thoughts on that? On like dealing with the different generations of the younger generation, particularly Gen Z.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yeah, so it did take a lot of military tactics to heart, and that's what I relied on to get these projects done, and that's what bleeds through in the writing. Sometimes it's bridging that gap between the younger generation that they don't see that. So every strategic project I picked up on, I've always hired a project manager to work for me who was an officer in the military, and they want to transition out of the military into the business world. So, how do we bridge that gap? And what does the military background give us? Very disciplined, right? They're unshakable in nature. I brought a guy into a project that was very hostile. We were probably getting five or six hundred project emails a day because it was a global project in nature. And I gave this guy a ticket. I said, We're flying out here, we're gonna be there for six weeks to get us through the next cycle, and we're coming back. He looked at me and he said, Okay, no problem. Shortest deployment he's ever had. How soon can I come home? And we're curing a disaster project and getting it back to health, and we've got to put the right time in. So I've leaned heavily into that background, and it works very well for providing a rigid framework of if we attain all these different things, now we can move the ball forward.

SPEAKER_02 38:03

I personally like the black and white direct aspect of it. Again, maybe it's backgrounds and generational thing, but I could see where people are a bit more sensitive, it might come across as a bit macho-like. But but you know, I'd rather be told what works by someone who's been there, lived it, like you said, wore the t-shirt, got the battle scars. So it taught me why you buy the book to learn at the end of the day. So one of the core themes that the book goes through is the notion and the idea, the framework of the 10 pillars of change management. You touched on the first couple, uh, a few questions back, but very quickly, just kind of you know, give us a three, four-minute version of the 10 pillars, you know, leave a little bit so people will carry on buying the book, you know. Don't give them all the secrets, don't maybe miss out a few, but give us a high level.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

I'll give you a couple of my favorite ones. You know, first is at center of gravity. Who owns the power for that project and that project success in an organization? And if you see it decentralized, well, I own it and I own it, but we've got different stories. That needs to be fixed first and foremost. I I saw that in Europe when I was uncovering fraud. You may do a project for the overall global organization, but I have my set of books. I'm never gonna be successful with that project until I fold your stuff into the greater good. So that's why that's the first one. The third pillar is the unstoppable mandate. So if it's a compliance-driven change, most of the change management's done for you. Everybody's already aligned. We have to do this, or we're gonna get audited or fined, whether it's GDPR, Dora, or SOC, whatever it happens to be. You can always rely on that government governing rule set to say we're going to do this to bring that compliance. And again, that aligns it with a business outcome. Part of it is the recon versus reality. Everybody's seen a board deck or steering committee deck or presentation. Look at the metrics and look at the numbers, and here's where we're really at. Does anybody really go under the covers to say I've independently verified this? If you're sitting on a steering committee and your entire work is involved with that steering committee deck, you're not doing your job. You need to pick up the phone and talk to the people, boots on the ground, to find out does this reconcile with what you guys are seeing, or are there other gaps that we need to be made aware of? Right? That steering committee has a responsibility for that project success and it does not end at the steering committee deck. They need to be involved, right? And then, of course, crossing the Rubicon, right? There comes that point in time when that firm needs to make a decision to say, fine, this is the go-no-go point. And if we're going to your point, Mass, we're locking you out of systems. There is no going back, there's no, well, it didn't work out in 45 days, and let's unlock. It's gone. We are moving forward, moving forward together, and we're all aligned on that point.

SPEAKER_04 41:05

Yeah, so one of the things you talked about in your book that is super important is the having the buy-in by the executive team, the stakeholder management, that they really care about success of the project, and they're gonna help you move any roadblocks to be done. You told the story, which was actually in your book earlier earlier about how you spoke to all those executives and they'll give you the same answer, like this is the compliance issue, we have to meet it. And I mean that's that's an obvious case where you're saying, okay, great, we have alignment across the board, I have a solid mandate to push this through. Do you need to change tactics if you don't have that level of mandate? Or if there is disputes, you know, in the board level, how do you handle that? Or if you just don't have that level of access, you're just not that senior, you're a mid-level PM reporting up to you know an associate VP.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

The further you're removed from those individuals that control that power, the more challenging your job becomes. If you're four levels down, yeah, you can put it in a steering committee deck, but is it going to get the right attention? Probably not, right? So you need to be aware of that. Can you bolster it? Sometimes. Sometimes you can mitigate it. You can argue for a longer go-live period or more training. You dig into that particular area where you're not getting the right executive air cover for that issue. If not, it's better to know at the beginning of the project you're going to run into those problems rather than at the end. And hey, we went live and everybody gets a P party and you know a high five for a project well done. Six months later, if the firm's wondering how come we're not getting the benefits out of this, I can point exactly where that problem is.

SPEAKER_04 42:57

So it sounds a little bit like document and cover your ass.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

You can document a plan to mitigate, but again, you know, it's the same thing as is arguing, well, the CIO owns a CRM implementation. That's not the case. And if the firm's pushing that responsibility 100% down on the CIO, you need to go work and mitigate that opinion before the project starts. Otherwise, you're already at a disadvantage.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

Unfortunately, it happens all the time. You're just fighting the power struggle, and you know you're gonna lose. Like, what do you do? Should you just start looking for another job or like or do you just like you said, do the best you can, document the decisions were made by who and what and move on? Like if if you're f if you're if you're fighting a power center and you don't have the power to win like what would you be your advice to someone who's in that position? 'Cause it happens a lot.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

It does. It does happen a lot. So, my advice to those individuals, I've been very lucky in my career to be able to call those shots before I take a project and before I go work for the firm. But when I see that type of thing happening, it's probably time to move on and go somewhere where you can add value. Now, people spend 30 years in a career just doing the job and doing what they're told. There's not a lot of massive transformation or new things that are coming out of those types of roles. But if your job's really to run transformation, you got to make sure that the deck is stacked in your favor. And this is how you do it. You follow the methodology. If they don't want to support that, you're not going to be successful.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

I agree with you. I was once on a project, it seemed doomed to failure, and I couldn't fight, I couldn't fight to power for whatever reason. When I gave my resignation, I told my boss, I just can't endure two years of failure. Like, I just can't do it. It's going to make me crazy. And he completely understood. He's like, Yeah, I get it. Another thing that, believe it or not, I've ever heard this for the first time in your book was confirmed pilots. Call them CRPs. You stressed the importance of them. I've never heard that term before. Is that different than demos, like end of sprint demos or product companies call them whole? Oh, it is the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Same thing. Bring everybody to the conference room, white CRI meeting. Here's the software that we're looking at. We're looking at it together. Folks that run projects like to run projects off numbers. Hey, everybody was here and they did so many test cases. I focus not only on that, but what's the behavior of the people that are running it? Are they happy when they're running it? Are they engaged? Are they asking the right questions? Or are they just in to punch out a whole list of here's the 25 things I got to test and I'm going to go off to my next meeting? Right? There's a difference between doing something comprehensive and the best possible ability versus, yeah, I came in, I checked the box. Tell me when I'm due back in the meeting.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

So last comment on the book before we wrap up, it does mention in the book there is a sample people can read as well to get a feel, and we'll put the link in the podcast, you know, for people to access. But again, it's called Disruptive Change Management, The Ten Pillars by Richard Kadeg. Um you are writing another book if I read correctly, yes?

SPEAKER_01 46:17

So I set out to write a book that that was promised to myself this year. And one of the rules I had was you don't want a huge tome or large volume where somebody's never going to get through it. It has to be a book club-sized book. Can you get the information I want to download into your head, give you a framework to apply? So it ended up breaking up into three books. This one is on the change management, which is overarching for any type of project. The second one is vendor management, which goes hand in hand. So now you've got the change management done. How do you effectively partner with vendors? How do you manage them? Where are their motivations and are they aligned to yours? Probably not all the time, right? But there's a framework for that too. And then the third book, which will come out later this year, is on how to build and maintain and manage a high-performing team. So once you have the change management done, you know how to deal with the vendors. How do you make sure that you're doing what you need to to grow that team? Because at some point that project's done and now you're responsible for it.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

So stay tuned for those books to follow. I have four questions, and we've got about 45 seconds per question. So, what's one myth about change management that you'd like to eliminate forever?

SPEAKER_01 47:38

Oh, that's an easy one. The myth is that change management's optional. I see that time and again. We don't need that.

SPEAKER_02 47:45

How has AI changed the role of change management?

SPEAKER_01 47:49

AI is not going to impact change management. That's a human skill. That is something you're dealing with carbon-based life forms, and AI will not step in. It can help aggregate data, it can help write reports, it can help build trackers, blah, blah, blah. The true change management is going to be person to person.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

Are our organizations experienced more change fatigue than ever before, from your personal view?

SPEAKER_01 48:14

I think this past year, so I got involved with AI five years ago. We did a proof of concept up in my media room for a week and we got some innovation awards five years ago on AI. Now that it's becoming more commonplace, I think that change fatigue is really chewing up a lot of enterprises.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

And then last but by no means least, is change management its own role, or should it be part of everyone's role who is on the project team?

SPEAKER_01 48:40

I think there needs to be some point person that's in charge of change management, and it needs to cascade down to everybody. So two areas. Somebody needs to own it for the firm, and then that change management methodology needs to be rolled out across everybody in the firm.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

And then how would you summarize change management in three words?

SPEAKER_01 49:04

Summarize change management in three words. I'll give you five.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

Breakfast, dinner, and tea always. Project done well. Yep, yep, yep. Awesome. All right. Well, Richard, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. Excellent addition to the CRM success show. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

Thank you, guys. I appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_02 49:29

My pleasure.