Change Fatigue: why you are struggling to lead change

Amy Vaughan

Welcome to our weekly power lounge. This is your place to hear authentic conversation from those who have power to share. My name is Amy Vaughan and I am the owner and chief empowerment officer of Together Digital, a diverse and collaborative community of women who work in digital and choose to share their knowledge, power, and connections. Join the movement at Www Together in Digital. Com. Did any of you know that the willingness to support organizational change collapsed from 74% of employees in 2016 to just forty three percent and twenty twenty two today, we’re going to delve into the drastic decline in employee willingness to support organizational change and explore the indispensable role of human-centered change facilitation with our guest, Jenny Magic. Jenny is the founder and lead strategist of Build Better Change. With nearly two decades of marketing transformation experience, Jenny is renowned as a marketing therapist, two of my favorite things collapsed into one, for her expertise in revitalizing dysfunctional teams. As a certified professional coach and external practitioner of The Fearless Organization, she utilizes facilitation skills to instigate tactical consensus in areas crucial for sustainable change. In collaboration with Melissa Berker, Jenny co-authored Change Fatigue, Tips for Teams from Burnout to Buy-In, which was released last May. Welcome, Jenny. We are so excited to have you here with us today to talk about change fatigue.

Jenny Magic

Thank you, I’m thrilled to be here.

Amy Vaughan

Yeah, I am so excited to dive into this topic as someone who is a big advocate of change. In fact, a couple of episodes in the last few of our season two had a lot to do with adopting and taking in change and internalizing it. What I love about today’s conversation is we’re going to talk about how to externalize it, how to get that buy-in from others. But first, As I mentioned, I loved this duo combo title of marketing therapist. I’m curious, how does your unique perspective contribute to revitalizing dysfunctional teams? And what insights does this sort of role take in creating organizational change?

Jenny Magic

Absolutely. When one of my clients told me that I just snagged it because it feels so authentic with the work that I do. So the way that I like to think about that phrase is that successful therapists tend to try to get people to a same-sides approach. And I think that label, the same-sides approach is really significant in whatever context you’re talking about. So like if a couple, if a therapist is working with like partners or families in conflict, The thing that they’re trying to do is to get people to see each other’s perspective and sort of admit that maybe the other side isn’t trying to be mean or evil, but like they’re just human and they have their own reasons for their choices. Because marketing transformation, all transformation is full of unknowns and uncertainty, you know. People bring their humanness to these challenges. And the thing is, if I were to say, picture a job interview or picture someone negotiating for a raise, I bet that in your mind, you picture two people across the table from each other, and they each want something. And they’re each kind of trying to get something from the other. And that mindset is actually how a lot of leaders approach change. They go in and they make a case for change across the table from the employees who you know, just by being across the table, they sort of put on their like jury hat and evaluate the arguments and like, poke holes and look for reasons that the storyline might not be authentic. And just that, that setup, that dynamic is actually really unproductive for anybody trying to do anything as a team. So when we get people to sit on the same side of the table, the organizational change can just low or at least start to have authentic conversation about what we’re trying to do, which I think is like really essential as a foundational element.

Amy Vaughan

I love that. Yeah, because it’s almost like right out of the gate, we’re creating separation physically, which creates some emotionally, right. And then we’re also what I kind of heard was that sometimes when we know changes is upon us, and we need to implement it, we almost become defensive before we’ve even. Out of the gate.

Jenny Magic

Got. Yeah, I don’t even have to name a specific change you might be facing, but if I say, hey, guess what? Change is coming. None of us are like, yay, that sounds great. For the most part, we’re like, oh, what now? And even if it’s a great idea, there’s that initial human preference for the status quo.

Amy Vaughan

Absolutely. So I’m kind of curious, too, with your background in marketing transformation, how does this influence the strategies that you put towards looking at team performance, especially when it comes to creating organizational change?

6:58 – Jenny Magic
So my specialty for the last almost 20 years has been personas and journey mapping and audience identification and really trying to get organizations to think with empathy about their end user, their customer, their clients, whatever. It just occurred to me after all of this time, watching organizations try to adopt the strategies I was helping them craft, that they weren’t treating their employees with the same thoughtful empathy that they’re so willing to bring to their customers. And so one of the things I like to do is encourage teams that are navigating a change process to think about personas in their organization? Who are our early adopters? Who’s going to be excited about this? Where on the journey are people going to need more information, reassurance? The same way we would think about a customer buying journey, we need to acknowledge that our employees are going to go through like an adoption journey for whatever this thing is that we’re trying to encourage them. And those same tools that we’re really good at using for all of our, you know, digital and marketing projects can really be incredibly effective. Even things like from the world of UX, writing user stories, right? Like, how is this change going to be implemented by the people we’re asking to change? Our employees deserve that same empathy that we’re willing to give our clients and customers, especially if we want to make this a smooth and painless as possible.

Amy Vaughan

That’s amazing. So essentially what I’m hearing is that you through the efforts of creating marketing transformation, you are not just looking at what it is what you’re handing over and what transformation you’re creating but adoption right like what’s the point of creating any sort of transformation if it’s not adopted. It’s just going to be dead in the water. And it sounds like it’s like a bit of your marketing background and expertise that’s allowed you to sort of adopt those practices and put them into the play of organizational change, which I love that. That’s so creative. And was that something that kind of just struck you at once? Was it something that came over time? And how has it kind of evolved your business and the work that you’re doing?

Jenny Magic

Yeah, I would say, during the pandemic, it’s just really, I think a lot of us rethought our, our careers and our moment as we were going through that as a global experience. And I realized that I didn’t want my professional legacy to be a whole bunch of really well thought out strategies that didn’t ever make it to the light of day, right? Like, if nobody does anything that I advise, then that really doesn’t leave me with a whole lot of impact in the world. And I know, I’m exaggerating, but it really pushed me to go get certified as a professional coach, to learn how to benchmark psychological safety in teams through the Fearless organization and really start thinking about what are the reasons that people can take like a really good idea that makes a ton of sense on paper and just find a dozen ways to either reject it outright or just to kind of slow play it until it falls apart. Because those are two things that we see happen a lot with organizational change.

Amy Vaughan

Yeah, I love it. That’s fantastic. I like to joke and say that we all went through a COVID life crisis with ourselves, with our businesses, you know, it was just kind of faced with the mortality and such a big huge shift in society. We all had to reevaluate a lot of things in our lives. And on that note, I kind of wonder if this contributed to it as well, based on the stats that I shared at the opening of the episode, the fact that the decline of employee willingness to support organizational change seems, that’s pretty sick. That’s a huge jump. Why do you think that is? And could you share an example that maybe highlights this decline and its real world impact? Because yeah, it seems legit.

Jenny Magic

Yeah, well, I mean, absolutely, to your point, I think the pandemic was a key factor there. So the stat is that 74% of employees were willing to support organizational change in 2016. And that number is now down in the 40s, I think it’s 46% at the last study from Gartner. And I think a lot of cases, Employees worked incredibly hard to, you know, quote, keep the company afloat in the pandemic. Nobody really knew what was coming next. And so we had parents who were, you know, homeschooling in one corner and and, you know, just really working themselves to the bone to to do what needed to be done. And when everything kind of shook out, I think the end result for a lot of companies was record profits, right? Like we had a lot of organizations that anticipated bumps and really put everybody on the, on the, uh, you know, high alert to show up. And then in fact, you know, everything was. We, we made it work. We, we hybrid worked our way through this or remote worked our way through this situation. Um, but when everything kind of settled down, that discrepancy really wasn’t addressed. I don’t feel like a lot of companies came back and said, hey, we’re sorry. We really called you to the front lines. And then everything was fine. And I think there’s some really built up resentment that still hasn’t been resolved. And I hate putting my marketing therapist, I’m not a therapist, but I love that title, putting that hat back on. I think that there’s some unresolved things that some organizations probably would benefit from trying to unpack. I think the other thing that really impacted it was, you know, that number from 2016. If we think about what’s happened since 2016, it’s both the pandemic and a whole bunch of social discourse turmoil. I like to say, you know, people are saying the quiet parts out loud, and there’s a lot of decorum and politeness and doing things out of a sense of duty that has kind of fallen by the wayside. And I think people feel a lot more comfortable saying, you know, no, thank you. I’m not really, I’m not really going to do that just because I’m supposed to, or I should. And then finally, I think the third piece is just too much change. Another stat is that the average employee faced 10 enterprise changes last year, up from two in 2016. So We have a fivefold increase of things we’re asking people to do in eight years, which is a massive cause for this resentment and resistance. An example from my work, an organization that shall not be named, I spent a lot of time putting together a custom project management system built on top of a Microsoft platform. And they had worked really hard at thinking through everything that the leaders in management needed to know about what everybody was doing, global organization, lots of stuff, lots of moving parts. And this, you know, it came time for like, okay, you’re trained, go put your stuff in there. And there was an outright rejection. People were asking questions like, are you going to fire me if I don’t do this? And these are people with decade tenures, if it ends up, you know, this was not a, you know, there was this real resistance. And in hindsight, they realized that they had sort of taken one group’s perspective, which is what leaders and managers needed this tool to execute against. And there was very little thought about why want to do this, what the UX experience would be for this tool, and how that journey of being asked to do something different was considered. There was no consideration. I think people felt that lack of consideration and just said, No, you’re going to have to, I’m going to need you to sweeten this deal. And they ended up going back to the drawing board and rethinking the UX experience to address some of the concerns that were necessary. I feel like they had a real missed opportunity to do that earlier. A time delay, there was a cost. And I also talk a lot about something called change tokens. This is my way of saying like you only have so many tokens you can put in in the machine to get people to change. There is a limit to what people will accept. And it’s really painful when you see an organization spend one of their change tokens in a way that doesn’t get them anything. And so I think these are examples of places where just thinking about your employee as a customer can really help your whole project get off to a better start.

Amy Vaughan

Absolutely, absolutely. So many good things in there, Jenny. My brain’s reeling, and I hope that there are some organizational leaders that are listening, that are reading your book, because I think you guys are so on the cusp and or ahead of a major issue. People are becoming disillusioned with authority, and they aren’t wanting to fight for or blindly work for corporations. We see more people going out and becoming entrepreneurs. So apres, there’s just like there is a shift. Happening and I think like you said between the social discourse, the political climate, and COVID, kind of those things all collectively have definitely changed the ways in which we want to show up and work and how we work and what we do and you’re right if if leaders aren’t bringing people along, if they aren’t giving them a seat at the table, if they’re just making decisions without consideration, it’s just going to be outright rejected. It’s a new generation of worker that’s out there. And I think employers really need to be listening and paying attention to that. I also think there’s this sense of collective trauma that we’ve all experienced. And I think we give ourselves a hard enough time coming back from that, that, yeah, this whole expectation that we’re all going to return to the world the quote unquote normal world with the same energy we had before the pandemic is just absolutely ridiculous because we’re still going through it, right? Like right before we got on here, I was telling you my whole family has been just kind of going through the stages of each of us having COVID, even though we’ve been vaccinated and we try to be safe. It’s just it’s not gone. None of this is gone. We’re not on the other side of things. We’re in a new space. And I think your book and the conversations we’re having are a really critical part to sort of figure out how do we right the ship and start to move things forward again. Let’s talk a little bit about organizational change, because I think, you know, those who are listening, I mean, you’re right, the stats you shared, and just anecdotally speaking, we’ve got members who’ve talked about how in the last two years they’ve had, you know, three organizational changes, seven different bosses, and I’m not even exaggerating, But what are some common misconceptions or myths about organizational change that you’ve been working to dispel? Because we already had some adversity to it before. Clearly, now we’ve got more.

Jenny Magic

So I think the first and most important one is that this kind of work that I’m suggesting, treating your employees the same way you would treat your customers or clients with empathy, is going to take more time when, in fact, what it really does is cut time off the adoption part, the training and adoption part of the process. So it actually saves time, even though it feels like it’s more work. It just sort of delays the getting started, the activity part of the process. It sort of front loads a lot of the conversation about training and onboarding and what are we going to try to do here? And puts it ahead of the doing. And so it actually is not something that ends up costing a lot of time or money, even. It can be an internal process. It can just be a new way of thinking, which is what we tried in the book to do, is just give people a new way of thinking, even if they don’t have the capacity to bring in support for this kind of thinking.The second myth is that I’d like to dispel is that people don’t want to work or that they’re just trying to sabotage your projects or that there’s some sort of like negativity that is making your projects fail. I think, or we know from a whole bunch of psychological study that humans are wired for purpose and community. They are not happy phoning it in or pawning work off on others. They get to that point when something has gone wrong and they are not in a healthy, safe space. There’s resentment or there’s frustration or whatever. So if you’re seeing those kinds of behaviors, it’s a signal that there’s something kind of wrong. If you get people what they need to do their job and what they need to succeed and that’s aligned with where they’re trying to go, you get amazing energy. People love working for purpose and doing something that aligns with their own goals and that they believe in. So it is not them trying to sabotage. I think finally, I would say how you ask is just as important as what you ask. We’ve been talking about that. Again, going back to that like family therapist kind of context that I think we can all really understand intrinsically. In real life, when partners or parents start expecting compliance, instead of collaboration, then you get a struggle. Like you absolutely get a struggle. And I don’t know why we would assume it’s any different at work. So there may be an org chart saying that you’re in charge and leaders are at the top and employers are at the bottom. But if organizational change isn’t treated as a same size of the table partnership, then you’re just asking for failure. And something like 80% of change initiatives fail, which is a dramatic, painful number. And that is a ton of wasted effort and wasted change tokens that we don’t have to spend.

Amy Vaughan

I love that. I think it’s so true that that mindset trap of us versus them comes in both directions. Those are great examples. Thank you for those. All right, let’s talk a little bit more about change fatigue because it is obviously a nuanced challenge. Can you dive into a little bit of what part human-centered change plays into it? That’s definitely a term that you use often in the book and I’d love to kind of expound on it some more.

Jenny Magic

I love it. So we titled the book Change Fatigue because that is really like such a real experience people are having. But what we’re really trying to get people to understand is that the opposite of change fatigue is active alignment, this sense of having a shared vision that we all trust and agree to and having the bandwidth and motivation to work on that vision. So when we’re all in agreement with what we’re doing and excited to head in that direction, we’re actively listening to each other and aligning sort of in a moment by moment, day in and day out kind of way. You get shared vision when you allow open conversation on organizational goals. What is it the organization is trying to achieve? Is it a good idea? You know, is this one of those things that’s only benefiting the shareholders and the employees are like super not interested in doing it? Like, what is it that we’re trying to do? And is that shared vision really there? And you get motivation when you allow open conversation about personal goals. So where do people as individuals want to grow? What are their passions? You know, what are they trying to achieve? And the intersection of those two is powerful magic. Trying to move forward without either of those things is a recipe for failure. So we know that motivation without shared vision is fast mistakes. And shared vision without motivation is collective inertia. And I think everybody can sort of relate to those ideas of fast mistakes where we’re just diving in and like trying to get things done. It doesn’t really matter if it’s the right direction. We just need to show progress in, you know, moving versus the other thing, collective inertia, which is when everyone’s like, yeah, we really ought to do something about that. But like, you know, I mean, we could form a committee and maybe next fiscal, you know, that kind of like slow drag when you don’t have that motivation.

Amy Vaughan

Well, it definitely makes me think this is a great way to start to address. And I don’t know if you have any insights or ideas to help as well. I mean, it’s a little outside of change, but employee engagement. I hear so much from employers now. They feel like they’re struggling in that area. Do you feel like human-centered change is another place where you can make that sort of come back? To wait, I am.

Jenny Magic

Just talked last month at disrupt HR talking to a whole bunch of hr leaders about this exact thing, because I feel like the missing component of change is what our employees are trying to do as individuals, right. So we have these big organizational goals. And we’re just like plugging people in. I like to say that we shouldn’t assign tasks based on availability, we should assign it based on ambition. Who is interested in moving this needle forward, it doesn’t really matter where they sit in the org. Like, let’s get the energy behind whatever it is we’re trying to achieve. But if you’re a lazy leader, you’re just looking at the org chart and going, Oh, that’s a data project, it should be this person. Oh, that’s a marketing project, it should belong to her. And, you know, you’re really missing the opportunity to like actively understand your employees. And I feel that, and this is gonna be a bit of a hot take, but a lot of employers feel like they gave a lot of grace for people working remotely. And they feel like they’ve been generous leaders. And I don’t know that that is the feeling or representation that employees have. So we have both sides that are saying, I’ve been good to you. Now it’s your turn to be good to me. And it is not really working out in that context. And so really trying to think about Yes, we both want something from each other, but much like a parent-child relationship, parents, leaders, employers, it’s, you have to be the first one to swallow the pill and come to the table and say, okay, my needs can wait. What is it you need? How can I get to know what you need? And I think that a lot of organizations and leaders are having a really hard time, you know, setting aside their own feelings that we should be back to normal and everything should be, you know, we should be just operating the way it used to. They’re having a hard time setting that aside. Using this basic, simple, proven historic approach of empathy to try to raise employee engagement. They’re looking for every other solution except obvious proven one right in front of them.

Amy Vaughan

Well, because it takes time, right? And they don’t understand, like you said earlier, that’s one of the misconceptions, right? Is that the time you spend on the upfront, getting to understand people in that way, is going to create efficiencies and better results in the future. And I love, I just want to come back for a second to that availability versus ambition. How different would your teams and your organization operate? How many more things would you be able to accomplish and actually achieve if that’s the way you kind of looked at it? I think that’s pretty mind shattering. I loved that statement. I wanted to make sure I reiterated for anyone who maybe missed it because I think it is a different way of thinking. And yes, I want to see employers start to lean in to learn and know and understand the intricacies of their employees and their employees’ lives. It’s interesting. Actually, it’d be a great complimentary episode for y’all to go back and listen to our last episode with Teresa Harlow was actually talking about remote team mastery, because that’s a challenge, right? We’re not sharing the same physical space. So how do we actually connect in more deep, more meaningful ways with our teammates and get to know them and I can say as the owner of an organization that’s about 500 women that basically spend the majority of their time meeting and connecting remotely, it is absolutely possible. We’ve had members start businesses together. We have had them create and build friendships where they, you know, are accountability buddies and check in with each other on a semi-weekly basis. I mean, just through strong, deep, meaningful relationships. It’s just about intentionality, right? It’s finding the ways in which you can learn more about your people. And I think that there’s lots of tools out there now as well. One that springs to mind that I’ll plug real quick, because it’s an amazing women-owned tech business, is Cloverleaf. They are a team building group where they kind of take into account your things like your Myers-Briggs, your Enneagram, all these different aspects of your personality and help you to set clear goals, understand how you communicate with others, how you prefer to be communicated with. And I think that more deeper, more meaningful human understanding, the more we can make that accessible so that others cannot just treat others the way they want to be treated. But to treat others the way that they would want to be treated, so huge, makes people feel so much more seen and valued. And I think in an economy where there’s a lot of people job seeking, but people are being so much more picky, if you want to retain your team and your talent and grow your talent, you’ve got to get on this boat. You can’t just keep sitting and waiting for things that, like you said, used to work in the past. Aren’t going to work any longer. So anyhow, Jenny, this is all such good stuff. Let’s keep going through these questions. In the past, you’ve talked about uncovering habits that hinder progress and leading change. Can you provide some examples of a habit that commonly hinders change efforts and how it can be addressed?

Jenny Magic

Yeah, there are two thoughts that come to mind, and I would label them as habits of assumption more than habits of behavior. I think the first is a habit of assuming that a rational argument is all you need, like if it makes sense on paper and A plus B equals and it’s going to lead to profits, and everyone’s going to be sunny and happy, that that sort of seals the deal for change. Because we know that everybody approaches any sort of decision with the ability to use their rational brain, but only after their emotional, internal concerns have been handled. And so if you’re changing anything, we’re going to gravitate back to the status quo, and we’re going to resist and defend regardless. And so trying to think about you know, not just what it is we’re trying to ask for, but who and how they’re going to hear and receive that. And I think the second is assuming that nodding heads in a meeting means that people agree with you. So we have a lot of leaders who stand up at all staff, and they introduce a change, and they get some sort of like, yeah, and like, they’re, you know, senior folks are sort of like rah-rah-ing on the side, and they feel like that went really well. When in fact there may be a whole entirely different temperature, probably an entirely different response going on sort of at the sub-level. And I think anybody who’s ever worked in a medium or larger organization can talk about what happens after those meetings and all those side conversations, right? I think it’s really, really essential to not skip what I like to call the cone of silence conversations. So in that old TV show, Get Smart, they would have this cone of silence that would descend over the meeting, right? And, you know, sort of like what happens in this meeting stays in this meeting. I think it is essential that your staff has a place for their private thoughts about concerns and feelings to make its way to leadership in a way that can’t have repercussions. And I feel like a lot of what we’ve done these days is move that to, like, anonymous digital forums. We’ve had enough employers break the trust of that where it’s not truly anonymous or it’s not truly, you know, it doesn’t work that I think a lot of employees are not interested in engaging in that way. They’re not filling out the anonymous form. They’re not, you know, leveling their concerns. They’ll talk to their coworker about concerns. But like that’s probably kind of where it stops if one of them doesn’t volunteer to take it up the food chain. And so one of the things that I really advise organizations that feel like they might have this challenge and not really know how to handle it is thinking about whether there is a trusted party in the organization that can be a listening ear to hear and roll up concerns and feedback. A lot of times HR is in a really great position to do that in the sense that they They are sort of obligated to have both the employees needs and the organization’s needs at heart. You know, some organizations, the culture isn’t there for that. And so they need like an outside third party. I do this a lot. I’ll do 15. 20, 30 minute interviews with people and say, okay, what did you hear about this change? What concerns do you have? And I’ll hear things like, we’ve tried this five times before and I don’t believe it’s going to be any different. You know, we’re going to get to a certain point and then it’s all going to fall apart when it’s time for the leadership to do X, right? And so being able to roll that feedback up into themes and say, like, I’m not naming names, but you have a challenge in this spot. Before you move anything forward, you need to reassure this, you needed to resource that you need those kinds of opportunities for actually slowing down and listening, they’re not that hard. It is not this is not something like a rocket science situation, but taking the time and being willing to hear. I think earlier you talked about leaders not wanting to take the time. I think there’s also a subtle concern. And I know I keep going back to parenting. I have two boys in elementary school. There’s a subtle concern that if you give into what your employees need, if you listen to them vent and you listen to what it is they need, that you’re implicitly agreeing to give them everything they ask for. And that just opening that space for them to like really authentically show up is going to give them the power. And so it’s easier if you sort of keep things separate. And, you know, that is one way of leadership. That’s an old leadership style. You know, you show up, you get paid, you do what I say. It’s just not working with our more progressive, younger, enlightened, transformed COVID crisis folks. And so, you know, keep trying if that’s what you want to do. But if you’d like to do something different, there is a better way.

Amy Vaughan

I love that I remember once I had a client when I was still working within an agency that did that they created a what was called a voices program, and they really looked for what Adam grant would call disagreeable givers he’s got a whole book on it give and take if you’re not familiar I talk about him a lot because he’s awesome organizational. Psychologist, I’m super fascinated by the work and the research that he’s done. But really finding those voices, people who are there to disagree for the sake of giving, they’re not there to take away, they’re not, you know, disagreeing for the sake of just being disagreeable, they truly do care. And they’ve got the ears and the attention of those who are on the ground, usually trying to do the work. And you’re right, I think it is It’s a challenge for any leader, and I can imagine it’s even more so a challenge when you are fully remote to, you know, create those spaces and places in which people have enough psychological safety and a sense of security in their jobs to be able to say something. So I can imagine for any leader, whether you’re, you know, a big company or even something small, to find ways to begin to implement that. I was kind of curious, and that was going to be a quick follow-up question. Outside of identifying kind of those voices and giving them a seat at the table, have you ever seen any other successful strategies for, you know, especially if the culture has kind of been down in the dumps and you’re now saying, yes, we want to hear your feedback. You know, I think even in calls, right, you try to give that moment of pause and say, Any thoughts, any feedback? And like you said, it’s all the head nods, right? How do you get people to say something?

Jenny Magic

Yeah, I think the main takeaway I would offer most leaders is to have those conversations before everything is decided. So if you present and say, we have a challenge, we think we’ve identified one approach. It looks like we might be going down this path, but we could also go down this other path. It’s not decided yet. We’re not sure. That will get feedback. People will have an opinion. You’ve given them something to respond to. When you say, we spent a ton of time thinking about a thing, and it’s decided, and we’re going down this path. Everybody get on board. It feels a little too late to rock the boat. And I think we’re all thinking about our social capital. When we raise our hand and say, I think there’s a problem with your plan, we are risking a ton of social capital, often for very little, depending on the culture and the experience they’ve had before, often for very little chance that it changes anything. And, you know, there may actually be some negative impacts around that as well. So I think we have to open the door a little bit to the process and be comfortable as leaders, letting things be undecided or unfinished or incomplete and be willing if the team says, I know you think you’ve picked the right answer, but you absolutely haven’t, to be willing to hear that and let their feedback mean something. Because they’re going to be thinking it, whether or not you’ve given them the chance. And they’re going to be able, in knowledge work, we like to say that in knowledge work, resistance is really hard to measure, because we’re not pumping out widgets on the factory floor. We’re all thinking and bringing our best ideas. When someone’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea. I’m going to meet with Susan. We’re going to figure that out. And then the meeting keeps getting for very good reasons, you know, and six months later, nothing’s happened. That’s clearly someone who’s not super connected and ambitious about what the thing is, but it’s really hard to suss out and correct those plausibly deniable ways that we can sandbag, so to speak, the process.

Amy Vaughan

I love it. That’s great. That’s super. That’s fantastic answer. Thank you. I’m glad I asked the follow up. That’s super helpful. You also emphasize realizing one’s capacity to influence change. So for those of us who are listening who are not in the role of leadership, so regardless of hierarchy, how can we each actively contribute to meaningful organizational change for those who are more motivated and ambitious about it?

Jenny Magic

I think there’s two key ways that you can approach this. So the first is, if you have the social capital and the capacity to sort of act in that regard, when there’s co worker conversations, and you kind of get a sense that the tide is turning in one direction or the other, being able to say, Hey, can I have a private conversation, I would just I’m hearing some things. And I would love to just put a bug in your ear that, you know, I’m hearing some concerns, we may be moving too fast, or the team is feeling like there may not be capacity to achieve everything, or We’re worried that the budget might not support things. We’re going to do all this planning work and then it won’t go anywhere. So being able to put a bug in someone’s ear and kind of urge the message up the food chain, again, if you have the social capital and the willingness, that’s not for everybody. I think the other piece is if you are seeing a change come down the road and you’re in any way involved, bringing what we know about marketing and UX and project management to the planning phase and sort of leaning in with the intention of helping those concerns become uncovered just in the course of project planning can be incredibly useful. This is a place where a lot of people are like, oh, Jenny’s got it. She’s running with that. I’ll poke my nose in. Later. But that moment where we’re just starting to figure out what the problem is and how the solution is going to come together is a great chance to be like, wait, how are employees going to make time for this change? Let’s go do some focus grouping. You know, you can use the sort of standard project planning exercises to help surface the challenges again, as if your employees were your customers or clients and this change that you’re producing with the product or service that you’re investing your time and energy. Because to some extent it is, you’re putting employee hours against this activity.

Amy Vaughan

I love that lens. It’s so fantastic and so versatile. I love it. Also, we’ve got a couple of questions left. We’ve got some folks in our live listening audience. I just want to remind you, if you have questions, feel free to drop them in the chat. Although you’ve been getting lots of encouraging comments in the chat. So you’re crushing it, Jenny. And don’t hesitate to ask. All right, could you elaborate a little bit on what constitutes authentic problem agreement and share a success story where it played a key role in steering a change project to success?

Jenny Magic

Yeah, so I think too often, maybe even most of the time, companies are spending time trying to solve the wrong problem. And that can be for a variety of reasons. It can be because the real problem feels too hard, or is maybe off the table for discussion. Maybe the real problem is a specific, you know, caused by leadership problem that isn’t going to be. Able to be looked at.

Amy Vaughan

Maybe it’s a you.

Jenny Magic

Maybe it’s a you problem, right? It can also be shiny object syndrome, right? Like we just got excited about a thing. Exactly. We’re just like, oh, we need AI in everything that we do, all the things, right? And so they’re sort of chasing the wrong problem. And so one of the ways we like to work is just making sure that you have true, authentic problem agreement before anybody’s time is invested in a solution. And it can feel like you’re belaboring the point because you’re like, yeah, of course we have a problem. Of course, AI is everywhere. We got to do it, right? It’s a given. But being able to say like, no, let’s stop. And slow down and think about the why and the cost benefit analysis and what we’re stopping in order to do this. I think leaders like to pile on change and not take anything off the table. And I like to ask, do you have employees that are just sitting around a day a week? Do they have 20% of their time to just give to a new thing? Because if you have been maximizing their productivity and cutting headcount and having them do the jobs of those missing faces, there is not capacity for them to even think about whatever this thing is, even if it is a great idea. So, you know, what are you taking off the table? That problem agreement, scoping agreement before we even talk about what the thing is or how we’re going to do it is really essential. As an example, I got brought in to help with some internal communication challenges and The leadership was like, it’s an intranet problem. We need an internet, we need a new intranet platform. And they were jumping right into technology solutions and how AI is going to help solve all this problem. And I had to slow them down and really say like the real problem here, I think, is that our teams are siloed both geographically and by function. And everyone’s just way too busy to slow down and cross-share information. So it really doesn’t matter what platform we put in place. We’re just going to replicate the silos in a shiny new way. And in the end, the technology they had was actually just fine. And the budget they had excuse me, set aside for the internet project was pushed towards, you know, content organization, and a new manager for governance to make sure that things stayed organized, right. And that’s, that’s a very different approach to problem solving that just sort of says, like, I know buying something would feel like a solution, but we actually have a people problem or a culture problem or a process problem. And so much of the time, that’s actually what’s going on is there’s, there’s underlying hard, you know, difficult human things that need solving. And they don’t have to get solved with a new platform, but, you know, it’s easier from a budget planning, strategic perspective to just put, you know, tool A solves problem B and call it a day.

Amy Vaughan

You know, I’m just like wishing I could take your book and this conversation and send it to like every past company I’ve ever worked for because it’s just, you know, I love this idea of problem alignment because it almost takes it as stuff before the whole bringing them in before it’s decided, right? Asking, are we actually addressing the right problem? Because as an employee, it is the worst thing in the world to be asked to put your time towards something that you don’t think is broken. And then being asked to be the one to fix it, it’s just the most infuriating thing. And so unless you can get problem agreement and alignment, you’re not going to get people to buy in on how to go about fixing it. It’s great. It’s crazy. So many years of effort. And

Jenny Magic

And So I know so often leaders want to stand up and say, we’re going to solve this problem. And then they delegate it to someone who actually doesn’t believe in the problem or the solution. And I’ve seen that fail so many times with the senior leaders, like, I guess I’m supposed to launch a thing. And it’s just a lot of spinning wheels and a lot of wasted effort. And we just don’t have the mental capacity or wasted time these days. Like nobody does ever, but like, especially now we have to cut that out of our scripts.

Amy Vaughan

I agree. And it does remind me to have a mantra of mine I’ve been clinging to lately, which is falling in love with the problem you’re trying to solve, not the product you’re creating or building, no matter what that is. So yeah, I love that. Monique was in our chat saying, I’m starting to think Jenny is inside of my head. I can see out of my eyes to exactly what is happening within my org. I’m right with you. Sorry, Monique. Sorry, I said Monique. Monique, I Same, like you’re bringing up stuff and I’m having these like mini flashbacks to just all of these moments and projects and times in which, you know, there was just always that friction and that conflict. And I spent a lot of my career being a middle manager, you know, and I was very passionate about being there because it did, it helped me kind of communicate to the top what was, you know, needed to be shared. With folks on the ground and it made me not love things that were all, all things hierarchy, honestly. But this gives me hope that maybe, you know, those kinds of establishments can still exist and hierarchy can still be a thing, I guess, if we feel it’s absolutely necessary, but creating more effective and efficient ways in which they can collaborate and work together. All right. We’ve got a few minutes left, and I’ve got a few more questions. Listeners, again, if you have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to add them in. Let’s see. Let’s talk about your book. As you showed earlier, for those who can’t see, if you’re listening to the podcast, don’t worry. We’re going to have a link to the book so you can get your own copy. In the show notes. You co-authored the book Change Fatigue. What are some key messages or tools that you hope readers will take away to navigate the challenges of change fatigue more effectively, since we’ve proven without a doubt it’s a thing?

Jenny Magic

Yeah, absolutely. I think the main one is really just that building buy-in is essential. There isn’t a way forward with authoritarian Yeah, because I said so leadership anymore It doesn’t work and you’re you can try and they will nod and there will be a really good reason why your thing failed but the odds of you being able to achieve what you’re trying to achieve is is Way lower than it was even just a decade ago. And so This is not just a way forward. It is the way forward building by and I don’t just mean the book. But I think we My co-author Melissa is a certified change management professional with a bunch of letters after her name and a whole bunch of strong experience in giant change. And what we wanted to do is bring change management that can be sort of an ivory tower with a lot of jargon and the books and change management often read like textbooks and bring those ideas to, you know, this is a book, someone said, I read it on the plane home and it, you know, it’s a quick read. It’s intended to be a mindset shift. It’s intended to give you, and ammunition to go into your organization and say, Hey, I think there’s a better way. Like we can do better. And it’s not that much harder. It’s not about a big investment. It can save us time. It’s going to be great. As a follow-up to the book, we actually launched an online course called Build Better Buy-In, also on the book’s website, and with the intention of trying to say, okay, you loved what we said, you have a project coming up, what are the templates and the tools and the scripts and, like, how do you build this change in an organization because there’s a whole bunch of stuff. We have a six steps to our change roadmap and three of them happen before you start solutioning, right? So thinking about what it is you need to have in place to build buy-in before you get to the work of like pulling together a committee and taking time on people’s calendars. These are really essential activities that are gonna help you save so much time or sometimes detour away from the solution. Like sometimes we’ve seen organizations do the problem alignment work and then go, actually, we’re fine. We just need to rejigger this one little corner and we’re going to be fine. So yeah.

Amy Vaughan

That’s amazing. That’s awesome. Well, I know I can’t wait to dig in more. I’m going to check out the course as well. I’m going to share this with all of my friends who are still in leadership. Whether they want it or not, I’m going to be that little disagreeable giver and be like, you’re welcome. All right. Well, our listening audience doesn’t seem to have any questions. So Jenny, I just wanted to ask if you had any final advice or words of wisdom for our listeners. We covered a lot of ground here today, but was there anything in particular you either wanted to reiterate or maybe share in addition to what you’ve already shared? It’s all such good stuff.

Jenny Magic

Um I think I would just say that the one thing I would like for everyone to put on their 2024 resolutions list is to really examine your own motivations and what you’re being asked to do. And if there’s a gap there to think about whether or not you can speak up or if that gap signals, you know, a real disconnect because it’s not just causing you distress, it’s likely causing the same kind of distress for your peers. And it’s definitely contributing to your organization’s ability to do what they’re trying to do. So that distress is a signal that, you know, there is something better that can achieved, you don’t have to live with that distress, that burnout, that change fatigue. And if you don’t feel comfortable speaking up, it may be a sign that your organization has some psychological safety issues, or that there’s some leadership concerns. And, you know, that can be an opportunity to say, hey, this project that’s coming up that we are all dreading, crossing our fingers behind our back and hoping it goes away. Maybe we could use some support. Like maybe we ought to think about this adoption piece or some change facilitation piece. And, you know, shameless plug, like this is what I do. I drop in on projects that are starting to go sideways and help them figure out which pieces need to sort of be amped up or plugged in or, you know, or whatever. And I think it doesn’t have to be me. There’s a million people doing this kind of work, but just looking at what you’re dreading and seeing if there’s a way to add some of these exercises and techniques and support so that that particular project is more successful and so that your team has new tools. For next time to help that distress go down for future change. Because I don’t think the pace of change is slowing down anytime soon.

Amy Vaughan

Nope. Unfortunately not. I love this. Thank you again, Jenny. So I do love that. As much as we’ve talked about external factors and change fatigue, There’s so much that we have to work on and manage within ourselves. And I think goals and resolution alignment with what we truly value versus what other people think we should be doing. I mean, that’s going to help that sort of disconnect that we’re feeling. It’s not on everyone else to solve for that. It’s for us to do the internal work, figure that out, and then figure out how to bravely move forward. And I just have to say, I feel like you’re just in your zone of genius, this combination of your unique gifts and abilities to be like a marketing therapist. Again, a great term. It suits you perfectly. Love the work that you’re doing. So glad you got to come and have this conversation with us today. This is one of those podcasts I don’t normally go back and listen because I don’t want to listen to myself, but I might go back and listen just because I still feel like there’s some things you said I want to like think through and work on and brainstorm on. This has been fantastic. Jenny, thank you so much for your time today.

Jenny Magic

Thank you. Such a pleasure. I always love talking with you.

Amy Vaughan

Fantastic. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Don’t know what the weather’s like with you all, but it’s January. It’s been like wicked weather across the country. So stay warm, stay dry, stay safe. Enjoy your weekend. Stay healthy. All that good stuff. And I hope to see you all next week, everyone. Take care. Thank you.

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