Large scale change, a new software system, a culture change initiative or a new business investment can create havoc for those unprepared and major opportunity for those who seize it. In this discussion with Brand Transitions expert, Donita Prakash she shares some of the change management secrets she’s learned working with Fortune 500 clients navigating mergers, acquisitions and other large scale changes. Takeaways include:
- insight on what’s really going on in the executive suite behind the scenes
- strategies to use major change to catapult your career
- tips for surviving the stress
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FULL TRANSCRIPT OF “Change Management Secrets: Leading (and Surviving) Large Scale Change“
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[00:00:00] Dana Theus: Hi everybody. This is Dana at the with InPower Coaching and I’m here with Donita Prakash with Brand Transitions. And we’re gonna be talking about the unique dynamics of large scale change today. with a particular emphasis on the kind of things that we anyway, don’t see, talked about enough sort of those undisclosed dynamics of organizational change and what you can do if you’re leading it or just surviving it to, to get underneath the change and be a, and have it work to your advantage. So I want to introduce. Donita I’ve known Donita way too long. As a matter of fact, I was going back through your LinkedIn Donita. I think maybe you were at AOL when we met or maybe you had just left.
[00:00:41] Donita Prakash: Yeah. maybe right about that time.
[00:00:43] Dana Theus: Exactly. And through Acumen and everything, like we’ve, we’ve been friends and colleagues for a very long time and this is a conversation you and I have privately a lot, and I’m glad that we’ll be having it, publicly and also in our women’s mastermind next month as well.
[00:00:57] And Donita, I’m going to let you introduce yourself and brand transitions, but I will say that through the entire time I’ve known you, you have been one of the most creative thinkers. And even when you’re not in a startup, Company, you have a startup mindset and like me, you seem a little addicted to change, which is pretty cool. I like that. But you’ve managed to make it into a successful career. So why don’t you give us a sense of, of who you are now?
[00:01:23] Donita Prakash: Yeah. Thank you, Dana. And I’m just thrilled to be here and love talking to you and, will be excited to share some of this, that, like you said, we’ve had private conversations about before a larger audience.
[00:01:36] So I’m the CEO of brand transitions. We turn mergers and acquisitions actions into bottom line success when people have to migrate brands. And what that means usually is the company names are changing, right. Because one company has bought the other. They retire that other company name, but often it’s product names are also merging and melding and being recast in the marketplace.
[00:02:03] So we do program management and strategic communications around all that change and have been involved in some really large scale efforts and have learned from our clients who are the brand and marketing leaders in these organizations.
[00:02:18] And you know, something else you do though. I don’t know if you do it officially through brand transitions, but you’re very active in the innovation community.
[00:02:26] Oh yeah. That’s my side hustle. I actually work in some local universities. George Washington university and George Mason university, and done a little bit with university of Maryland in their innovation program. So I instruct on lean startup and how you use customer discovery to learn about your customer before you invest a lot of money in a startup.
[00:02:49] Dana Theus: Now who knows actually, that’d be an interesting conversation point for us to talk about, which is sort of the, the, the lean startup concept and change, you know, because like with like agile development and technology, you know, there’s this kind of merger of traditional change concepts with these newer fresher approaches to development. And doing cool stuff. So I hope we get into that.
[00:03:11] So first, so Donita what’s like the biggest change you’ve ever been part of, like what was characteristic of that?
[00:03:18] Donita Prakash: Sure. So one of the first engagements I received on this topic that kind of led me to establishing a whole consulting firm focused on it was Gartner’s acquisition of corporate executive board.
[00:03:34] So Gartner bought corporate executive board for 2.6 billion. I was brought on board by the brand leaders. Of the firm to, to essentially digest that, that acquisition and integrate the various,
[00:03:49] Dana Theus: Did they give you a really big bottle of Tums?
[00:03:51] Donita Prakash: That’s how it felt some days. For sure. and you know, those are two pretty big organizations had been competing in the market. So that, that makes it challenging when your competitor buys you. Right. And you now have to be part of the bigger. Flow. And to some extent they were purchased because of some of their innovation, but some of the things also you know, were felt that it was done better in the, in the mothership and sorting all that out was part of our, our challenge.
[00:04:22] Worked across 18 different business units. It’s it. Wasn’t just marketing it. Wasn’t just slapping a logo on new materials. It was, you know, let’s get in the weeds of the trademarks and which ones are we gonna keep and which ones go and how do you do all the legal stuff and merge them together? How do you change signs on buildings around the world?
[00:04:44] So it was a huge project. It took 18 months to, to complete, and even some of that, you know, certain products were on a longer lead time. So quite a big deal, lots of great interaction with the teams, working with the, both the CEB team, as well as Gartner and getting them all on the. Same page fun and exciting.
[00:05:06] And I, I loved it so much, as I said, I’ve gone on to make my firm all about this, this type of work and brought other people on board. And,
[00:05:15] and so just, just to paint the picture of like, in the situation where there’s an acquisition or a merger, as opposed to a, a more isolated change that only affects, you know, part of the organization.
[00:05:25] Dana Theus: One of the things that is interesting, and I, and I’m curious about your perception of this, which. So there are all these, there are multiple changes going on, right? So operational integration and and you know, human resources, integration and asset integration, financial integration, marketing, and identity integration.
[00:05:42] All those things are kind of happening in parallel. And you you’ve, you’ve kind of been owning the marketing and identity and external communication piece. Is that the right place to put you on?
[00:05:53] Donita Prakash: Right. So I, I typically get involved with the brand and like I said, I work with the brand leaders who are typically marketing.
[00:06:00] Sometimes it’s a CMO directly, but it is it sort of is, and. All about brand is everywhere. And so typically there is a team who’s focusing on the financial integration and there’s certainly many teams focused on the operational integration, but all of those almost always have brand touchpoints.
[00:06:21] And so. In select ways you weigh in like, Hey, you’re going to update the invoice and bring all the invoicing together, make sure it’s got the new brand. And maybe here’s the new message. If there’s a message on that invoice, you know, for example the brand leaders were busy in the meantime, trying to figure out, you know, what’s our new message.
[00:06:40] Now we’re this much bigger company. How do we accurately describe ourselves? And the whole fact of why we bought them was to have bigger market share, to get more mind share within the C-suite. So whole new messaging structure around who the company was had to be developed. And it wasn’t developed out of the gate.
[00:07:01] You know, it was kind of changing the wheels on the bus while it was moving. And as those pieces started to come together, We would continue to roll those out as we were you know, managing the program of, of change that was going on within the firm.
[00:07:14] Dana Theus: Well, and, and this is, so this is getting me ahead of where I thought we’d be at this point in the conversation, but yeah, I want to bring it up, which is now you and I both come out of marketing.
[00:07:24] So we have a communication centric lens on a lot of things. Right. However, the point you’re making, I think is really critical on multiple levels that. In my experience, you know, when there is change the underappreciated aspect of it, that when it’s surfaced becomes actually part of the glue, that brings it together.
[00:07:43] But when it’s not surfaced, it keeps driving us apart is the fact that it is an identity shift. You know, and, and like you’re talking about is like, okay, so we have a new logo. Great. But it has to be everywhere, which means, you know, everybody doing an invoice, everybody’s sending an email, everybody, you know, all these people that are doing things, all the boxes that get shipped, you know, like everything, the company touches that creates the experience.
[00:08:08] The brand experience of working with the company has to have an identity shift. And a lot of the times we think of it as a logo and it really is much, much deeper than that. So I’m, I’m curious about your experience of those deeper layers of the identity?
[00:08:20] Donita Prakash: Well, I was going to say maybe this is that place where kind of the small startup and the bigger company, I mean, CEB and Gartner were almost equals, so it was a little bit different and maybe the CEB people came in with a little more corporate mindset.
[00:08:36] But when, what I have seen is when a bigger company buys a smaller company, And especially in the tech world software companies, you know, it’s all about culture these days, right? As a company starts up and starts to grow, they’re building that emotional loyalty with their employees and their customers about who they are.
[00:08:56] And. To disrupt that by saying, Hey, we, you know, new company has now bought us and we are now new company is very disruptive emotionally, right? Like you have been trained. And it’s the whole reason you’re at this company is because you just love the culture and you love who they are. But the opportunity, the flip side is now you have, they bought you because you are innovative, right.
[00:09:21] And you have that opportunity to bring that in to a larger organization with more scale. Which is exciting in my opinion, but can be hard, certainly.
[00:09:32] Dana Theus: Yeah. And I, I have several clients actually, who are, have gone through this over the last year. You know, being purchased as either the innovative part of the company. Actually, I think they were all purchased to be the innovative part of the company. I could be wrong on that. And there’s a lot of cultural resistance that, you know, you get one message, which is we want your innovation. We want all your new ideas. You guys have such good energy. You know, we, we, you’re doing great things in the market. We want that.
[00:09:57] And then you hit this buzz saw of not , you know, not invented here. That’s not the way we do things, et cetera.
[00:10:03] Donita Prakash: Right. Or stop using your credit card to charge your expenses. And now you have to apply, you know, like, you know, now there’s a process, right. You know, It feels like, oh, this is this doesn’t align with the innovation I signed up for.
[00:10:17] But you hit on the note, which is kind of like real estate location, location, location, change management secrets are just communication, communication, communication. Like, you know, you can screw up almost everything else, but if you get the communication. You’re in a much better place. And that goes for how you’re communicating with the customer, but then you also need to employ, communicate with the employees before you communicate with the customer.
[00:10:44] And you need to keep that in lockstep. And sometimes in these complex mergers and acquisitions, you need to do it at a product level because customers have. Certain loyalties around certain product features and the sales teams are organized such that that aligns. And you just, the, the comms plans are very complex if they’re done right, frankly.
[00:11:07] And that’s part of what we help people figure out.
[00:11:10] Dana Theus: So, so let’s, let’s dive into that for a minute because I think this is, I think what you said is absolutely true, even if it’s not a. Merger and acquisition, you know, you’re just, you’re bringing in a new software system or you’re going to launch a new product or, I mean, there’s a lot of changes that are disruptive, even when it’s not company wide and communication is always key. What, what would you say are the underappreciated aspects of communication that are commonly done wrong? That if we just, if there are just a few things we could do, right, we’d make this all better. I can a couple, but I, but you’re the expert. You’re the one that does this day in and day.
[00:11:43] Donita Prakash: So, well, some of the, I just learned from my clients for the most part, but I have a recent case where it was a, a larger SAS software firm buying a couple of smaller ones. We came up with a framework that I thought worked really well. So one was let the employees know. Before the change happens to them.
[00:12:04] Like, don’t be reactive. Make sure if they’re, you’re going to change their email address or something, you know, you’re going to make them log into a different system, make sure they know in advance. And that it gets echoed. Like one email probably isn’t enough. You need to put it in D various places where they might see it and have their manager reinforce it, et cetera.
[00:12:23] Like. Nothing like, you know, frankly, one on one communication to make people, make sure people know what what’s happening and why it’s important, framing it in how to do their job better is usually the best way to do that. So how is this change going to make your job better, easier, you know, your career. More productive, you know, your career path, bigger, whatever the benefits are.
[00:12:49] You really have to hone in on that and make sure you lead the communications consistently around that. Here’s why we’re doing it. We’re reminding you here. Why are we doing it? And here’s what’s going to happen. And then finally having a consistent voice. So. Sometimes when one company buys another, like all the leadership leaves, but pick one person who is still trusted within the community that you’re communicating with and have them be that voice of change.
[00:13:18] And so if there’s an email campaign of three messages to make sure they know about the change, have it be that person consistently, I think that’s a simple.
[00:13:27] Dana Theus: And I want, I want to pull out something else you said, which I think so putting my coaching hat on and also thinking about organizations I’ve worked with from an OD standpoint, organizational design, through change sort of thing.
[00:13:39] Something that, you know, speaking now to the executives who are usually the ones doing this, is they like to think, well, you know, we’ll just decide and then sure. We’ll tell them it’s coming the week before it comes or we’ll tell people it’s coming and then, and then they’ll just go do it. mm-hmm and they forget that these are real people and that those managers, like you’re saying the manager reinforcing it is critical, but for the manager to actually voice it and say, yeah, this is important.
[00:14:04] They, they have to have processed that. Change themselves. Some. Right. So, so they, they have to have not only gotten an email themselves the night before, but you know, they have to have had a chance to ask questions, a chance to give feedback a chance to say, well, you know, the way you’re talking about doing it would be better if you did it this way.
[00:14:23] Right. or else, they don’t really feel like they can represent the change effectively. So too often, and I’m thinking of one organization in particular, everybody below the executive suite just said it was like this constant lobbying of. Do this, do this every week, you know, we’re gonna do this differently.
[00:14:39] And the next week the executives say, well, how come it’s not done yet? And then three things have come over the wall since. Right. And they never really engaged that middle level. Who were the people that everybody else was looking to to say, what does this mean? And, and. , you know, how should we do it in the middle?
[00:14:54] Level’s like, we don’t know. We just get the same emails you do two days before, right?
[00:14:58] Donita Prakash: Yeah, I think it does really depending on the size of the change, it does really help to have sort of a change committee. And, different parts of the organization represented in one place. So you can vet some of those, like vetting, the communications is half the battle too.
[00:15:17] Like let’s draft it, but then let’s run it by the managers. Right. Did do they, is this the right tone of voice? Is this telling the benefits enough? You know, is it too long, too short? You know, I do think there’s sort of an. A current emphasis on speed, over quality, which comes back to bite people sometimes in that, you know, what you were describing, you know, just get it done, right.
[00:15:41] Like just get it done and let’s throw it out there. But there are definitely are ramifications to that approach.
[00:15:46] Dana Theus: You know, something else is made me think a lot of the times we, we think of communications at the end, we’ve made all the decisions. Now, somebody you marketing go communicate it.
[00:15:56] And in reality, when you have like that vetting process, you vet the communications, things can come back up the stream. Right. Either some, some are substantive like, oh, we didn’t realize it was going to have this effect. Maybe we should make a different decision. And sometimes it’s, it’s less substantive, but more, you know, emotional and, and related to how you communicate it.
[00:16:18] But the point is when you factor that vetting process, Of the communications. You often pick up a whole other dimension of how to actually do the change mm-hmm and, and it becomes a, a resource in the change process, but, but not if you treat it as like the, the tail wagging the dog
[00:16:34] Donita Prakash: Yeah. A hundred percent.
[00:16:36] And. You know, when I think about the various projects that our company’s been involved with quite often they get rescheduled for, for good, valid reasons, right? Like this group’s not ready yet, or, Hey, we’re going to impact sales. And the sales plan of this year, that’s too much of a risk let’s delay, the change part so that we can deliver on the revenue plan that we committed to in order to then change next year, essentially. So it’s quite common. I think that just what you said once you are involving the people that matter, you start to hear certain consequences that were not originally envisioned and you needed to plan for and, and revise the plan.
[00:17:16] Dana Theus: And maybe, maybe that’s a good bridge into the question of innovation and resistance to change, because a lot of the time that process like the, oh, wait, we didn’t see all the ramifications. Let’s take another look. A lot of people. Look at that and say, well, that’s, they’re just resisting the change. Or people are like, dang it. That’s not, that’s not the plan we had, but if you take an innovation mindset, you’re kinda like, wait, okay, it’s a more fluid reality where you just learn more information.
[00:17:41] Let’s adjust our thinking to this new level of information, same process, let’s delay somewhere, you know, for a good reason, same process, but a much different feel when you’re looking at it as we’re off schedule versus this is let’s innovate and adapt and, and adjust.
[00:17:57] Donita Prakash: Yeah, absolutely. It’s definitely agile cycles.
[00:18:01] And you know, we, we did this, this is, this is what’s happening, you know? Oops. A few things are falling on the floor. Does that mean we have to change what we’re doing or not? Or can we adjust in a different way? So, absolutely. And you’re right. It’s, it’s sort of how you frame it, right? If you just come in and say, no, well, this is not possible.
[00:18:23] You know, you guys. Are trying to do things too fast versus, Hey, here’s the ramifications, here’s the risks, right? Here’s the rewards and here’s the risks. And right now we think on balance, maybe the risks are too high and we might want to reevaluate dates or, or approaches, frankly. And what’s a level of success that we’re trying to go for.
[00:18:45] Dana Theus: But, but in this context, what is your philosophy about resistance to change? You know, Everybody says people hate change. People hate change. I, I’m not sure. I believe that.
[00:18:53] Donita Prakash: Yeah. I mean, honestly, every team I’ve ever worked with and we’ve seen across these clients if, if people are in the group, that’s trying to enact the change, then it’s a whole new goal.
[00:19:07] Right. And people like to complete goals. So I think it’s the. Making sure people are on board with the goal. And that again, all about communication beginning, mostly at the executive level, Hey, we’re coming to your department for this. Like, who’s your person, you know you know, make sure they’re on board with why this is important.
[00:19:26] But getting that team buy in really helps, I think. And then they kind of are the advocate. Deeper into the organization, as they’re working with their individual teams in order to make something happen. So I actually see less resistance to change. I see more people missing the opportunity of change. I think that’s maybe a. One of those under discussed opportunities out there in a change.
[00:19:52] Dana Theus: You think missing the opportunity, cuz it’s not presented to them in a way that they can see the opportunity or they just kind of don’t look for it or both.
[00:19:59] Donita Prakash: I think again, we’re talking about the situation where maybe it’s a smaller company that’s been bought by a bigger company.
[00:20:05] The smaller company point of view might be again because they’ve been emotionally sort of trained to be. Very passionate about their small company culture. It’s harder. They come in sort of with a, you know, oh, this is going to be bad kind of viewpoint, a kind of negative viewpoint, but really any change is a huge opportunity to, you know, shine your light, you know, make recommendations.
[00:20:31] That’s what every company is hungry for is how can we do something better? You know, we just bought this company. Because of their innovation, you know, bring me the innovation. And that means people need to be able to feel comfortable taking the risk to recommend new things or even to call out issues.
[00:20:50] But again, you always want to partner that with, well, what’s your recommendation.
[00:20:54] Dana Theus: Yeah. And I, and I think too, the, one of the biggest dynamics that I see under discussed and underappreciated. That often appears as resistance to change, but I don’t think is, is when, they hear, well, we want your ideas, you know, we, we want your recommendations and then people say what they think and they don’t feel heard now. Sometimes they are heard, they just not agreed with and it’s not all about you getting your way. Right. but, but, but quite often, they’re not really heard. They’re allowed to speak, but that’s not the same as being heard. That’s not being, that’s not the same as saying, okay, so what you’re saying is this, and this can be happening either on interpersonal level or an organizational level.
[00:21:36] So this is the feedback we’re getting. Here’s how we have processed it, how we’re thinking about it, what we’re taking in, what we can’t take in, you know, all of which, let’s the people who are allowed to speak to say, oh, wow, I really was hurt. Just because they didn’t do everything I wanted. doesn’t mean I didn’t have an impact.
[00:21:52] And a lot of the time. That can be part of the vetting process of the communication. It can be part of the initial change design. There’s a lot of different ways you can decide what will change, but engage people and how to communicate it or how to roll it out in a way that allows people to be heard. So that being heard piece is, is at all levels, organizationally and interpersonally just constantly. just shoved aside. Yeah. And yet it can make all the difference in the world.
[00:22:17] Donita Prakash: And the one rule you there is a rule which is, don’t ask people’s opinion if you’re not going to act on it. Right. And so that’s like a big, no, no. And. Something that we are constantly challenging. You know, if, if there is gonna be some solicitation of input, then make sure that you have a plan to act on it.
[00:22:37] Dana Theus: Right. Which isn’t
[00:22:38] the same as doing what people tell you they want you to do. Right. Which is a lot of people hear they go, oh, well, if I have to act on it, that means I have to do everything everybody wants. It’s like, no, you just have to listen and respond to take the good ideas.
[00:22:50] Donita Prakash: And report back, right. And report back, you, you hit on that, which is tell people what’s happening with that input. Even if it’s we put these in a parking lot, cuz we just can’t get to ’em this year.
[00:23:01] Dana Theus: Yep, exactly, exactly. Sort of one other thought on that, and I’m curious as we sort of move to closing. So if people have specific questions, please, please raise your hand talking about these, you know, communications tips.
[00:23:14] Like if you’re leading a change or you’re managing a change management secrets and communications tips. One of the things that I think is a part of the. Under appreciated aspect of the identity shift is it’s one thing to say, well, the company is shifting its identity, but the people have to shift their identity too.
[00:23:30] Sometimes it’s because they have a new title or a new reporting structure. But oftentimes they may have the same title and same reporting structure, but that brand on their email or their business card, if those still exist, you know, You know, like, like there is an identity shift that people need to process.
[00:23:46] They have to come to have understand the meaning of the new brand, the new role, the new market presence, you know, whatever it is. So, so what are your top communications tips? for getting people into their new identity and, and new way of thinking about whatever the change was.
[00:24:05] Donita Prakash: Yeah. Some of the best practices I’ve seen is there is an acknowledgement of the fact that, there’s a new, personal brand is, is what we tend to call it.
[00:24:17] Right. That goes to how do you represent yourself? And. To your exact point. You need to know what to say. And so giving people sort of the, the speaking points is very important, especially in sales, right? Because they’re the ones talking to the customers, but you really want to offer that up to everyone.
[00:24:35] Like, and I think many companies today are having innovative use of technology where they do a brand video. Right. Which gives you those speaking points. They. They do some recordings of employees going from, you know, here’s what we used to say to here’s what we say now. So they actually invest some resources in making sure that is widely communicated across the new, bigger organization of, Hey, here’s how we talk about ourselves now.
[00:25:03] And that’s not to be taken lightly. That’s how you transfer that brand equity and get that bigger. Bang in the marketplace because you’ve invested, you’ve invest millions in your branding, right? You, if you’ve invested in it, you want everybody to use it and all your employees are your sales people at, at the end of the day because they represent you out there in the marketplace, regardless of what their role is.
[00:25:25] So. One, one thing I wanted to jump in, I know it’s the last few minutes, but you had specifically about managers. I think managers have a special role in doing a couple things, one inspiring trust. So we all, you know, have a low level of trust these days for organizations, but often the people to people, stuff is the high level of trust.
[00:25:47] Continue to do what you say you’re going to do is, is really important to inspire trust in your, your employees be humble, which means in my opinion, be open to new opportunities. Like maybe it be invented here. Like maybe you should challenge that. Maybe there’s a new process that might be better. And then finally for everyone be bold, like, as I was saying, make recommendations, be proactive.
[00:26:12] If you think you’re going to lose your job. The what’s the downside of you taking a stand and trying to be an innovator, right? Like you get some practice doing that. But frankly you’ll get noticed and you’ll probably not lose your job, right. Because you’re a thinker. So those three things would be mine advice.
[00:26:28] I, well, the last one would be bold.
[00:26:30] Dana Theus: I think that that’s always good advice but I think during change, you know, it’s really, there’s a lot of incentives to put your head. You know, there’s a lot of incentives not to do the thing or bring attention to yourself. And yet when things are fluid, that’s when the organization needs people to kind of stand up and say, you know, not only innovative, but also just.
[00:26:53] Stand for whatever decisions have to be made, you know, and not run away from conflict and discomfort. And so it’s an opportunity to become recognized as someone who gets that and can think at that higher level and can manage discomfort and uncertainty, all of which are leadership characteristics.
[00:27:10] And if you think about it, In the day to day of business, there are fewer opportunities than there are during change to be seen as someone who can manage an uncertainty. And so in some ways it’s the best environment to stand up, not just to be seen, but to prove to yourself and to gain the skills of.
[00:27:28] you know, managing in chaos and, and not needing to know all the answers to, to be able to produce results and get things done.
[00:27:35] Donita Prakash: Yeah. A hundred percent. And those are the skills we all need in this future world of work, you know everything’s getting pushed down to the individual level and you got to make your plans and, and make recommendations like a manager, even if you’re not, frankly.
[00:27:50] Dana Theus: Yeah.
[00:27:51] And, and if you’re worried about losing your job, come up with. I call it the plan B you know, like your plan B list of things to do like, well, if I get fired, if I quit tomorrow, what would be the first 10 things I’d do? And if you have that in your hip pocket, it kind of frees you a little bit, not to take stupid risks, but you know, to be thinking more freely like, well, I have a plan.
[00:28:10] If, if I lose my job, I, I have a, I have a way forward.
[00:28:13] Donita Prakash: I love that. Yeah.
[00:28:15] So it’s a little, a little less scary. Well just so I think we are officially done with all the points you and I had planned to talk about. And I’m curious as to whether there’s folks on the line. Who are wondering about applying these principles to specific kinds of change, like, you know, a, a new product launch or a reorganization there’s a lot of change around reorganization that I think a lot of these principles apply to.
[00:28:39] Equally. And sometimes we just think, well, we publish a new org chart but it needs to be communicated. You need to think about the ramifications. You need to involve people and get the managers conversant about what this change is going to mean to, to other people. So if anyone has any specific questions or thoughts, now’s the time to offer them or share them or ask questions.
[00:28:59] And so Donita, I’ll just ask you this one last question while we Wait. Oh, it’s Jasmine. And I’m just going to put the question out there for maybe Jasmine has an opinion on this too. which is, are there any gender dynamics that you experience about change that are worth us talking about?
[00:29:16] Jasmine Lamb: Well first, thank you so much for this conversation. It’s really interesting. And I really am grateful, Dana, that you just brought that point up of when we’re maybe talking about smaller change than a whole merger. But just change within the organization that, that.
[00:29:34] We live in and that is happening right now in my department by adding an additional person. And that’s, who’s Haley, who’s also listening here. And I just wonder if you would speak more to that point, because I think that, This, conversation’s helping me think about some of the communication steps that we are going to want to take as a department in even the coming weeks, to start to help, especially our leadership team, understand how the changes in this department is going to impact them because there’s lots of things where they used to come to me for something.
[00:30:07] And now they’re going to need to go to Haley and it’s going to be like, there’s going to be confusion about who should, who should be at the table. And also just you know, new relationships forming and I just would love to hear any other kind of tips you have for that kind of internal change process, where all everybody’s aware this has happened.
[00:30:25] And yet I think most of them have not thought at all about how it’s going to actually impact them, besides the people who are actually getting a new supervisor. But outside of that, I’m, I’m my guess is people haven’t really thought about how this is actually going to be a pretty big change that they’re going to experience.
[00:30:39] Donita Prakash: So one, one thought I have Jasmine is, goes back to one of those principles around communicating. How does bringing a new person on in your department help your clients, your internal clients do their job better. Right. So making it in context of what’s the win for them. And then maybe if you need to communicate within your own department similarly, and maybe it’s a different when you know, how is, is this helping them do their job?
[00:31:09] Dana Theus: Yeah, I think that’s a good one. And I think the other thing is so there was one thing to send out the email and say, Haley’s here. Welcome Haley. You know, this is her job description and here’s her title and, and and, and. You have to do that. And in that context, as Donita says, it’s an opportunity to sort of say why this is great.
[00:31:28] It’s also an opportunity for you to provide a vision of your department. And how it’s evolving, you know, to, to, to reframe and reestablish how they should see, not just her or you and her, or, you know, the individuals, but your whole department and what you’re capable of with, with this new headcount.
[00:31:47] But I do think so it’s a great opportunity to kind of re articulate reticulate everybody’s identity. But then when it comes down to like, well, who should they call? And things like that. There’s probably, you know, 10 different meetings that Haley will go to instead of somebody else. And, and, you know, you’ll be shuffling around the responsibilities and you can list all those 10 things.
[00:32:08] But frankly, one of the best things to do is just to, to find out like, what are those things that they usually. Would go to you for, or somebody else that now they’ll go to her for and just call that out and say, you know how you usually call me with this kind of problem and this kind of problem, and this kind of problem.
[00:32:23] Now I want you to call Haley and they’ll go great. And then they’ll forget, and they’ll call you and you go, remember how I told you that now for these kind of problems you need to call Haley . So you, you just, you know, be patient say, okay, you know, And once they’ve, they’ve been reminded a few times, it’s kind of like learning a new piece of software or they something on your software menu changes and you keep doing the wrong thing three times.
[00:32:44] And after three times you realize, oh right, this is the menu item I have to go to. It’s like retrain it’s muscle memory, you know, and you have to be patient with that. And you can use it particularly with senior management as an opportunity to reiterate how. Oh, well, you know, now Haley can, is now able to do this so that I can do this, or somebody else can do this and use those as excuses to remind them of the bigger shift that’s happened.
[00:33:07] But in reality, it’s just changing the muscle memory, you know, one person at a time, hopefully several times.
[00:33:13] Donita Prakash: Yeah. I mean, sometimes we feel like we’re repeating ourselves, but again a brief second and in their mind about your departmental changes is going to be forgotten. So I would just, you know, it’s just like brand recognition, like seven times.
[00:33:29] You need to tell them seven times. I think it’s the same on any kind of change. You have to keep reiterating it and, and reinforcing.
[00:33:36] Dana Theus: Yeah. And that, I mean, going back to the communications principle in general, those of us who make the change, we’ve been thinking about it for months, maybe years, you know, this is, this is very old hat to us.
[00:33:47] By the time we started communicating it. And we forget that other people haven’t been spending that same amount of time and energy on it, and we just have to be patient while. Come back around and consistent, we have to be consistent. So if you want them to go to Haley for something instead of you, but then they come to you and you’re like, oh, I can just do that.
[00:34:05] You’ve just untrained them again.
[00:34:07] I don’t know if that answered your question, Jasmine.
[00:34:09] Jasmine Lamb: Yes, that was incredibly helpful. I really appreciate it.
[00:34:13] Dana Theus: You’re welcome. Anyone else have a specific question? I am curious, donate if you had any of those any thoughts on the gender dynamic?
[00:34:21] Donita Prakash: Actually, you know, I did think long and hard about that.
[00:34:23] I can’t point to specific examples, but I will say there are role differences. There are definitely departments in corporations that are more testosterone fueled. I would say just to call out like maybe legal finance, and I think it’s because they’re busy managing the risk of an organization. And so they’re.
[00:34:46] Kind of there maybe of any more change resistant, right. Because you don’t want to mess with the revenue stream or the legal risks. And, and their job is to be the watchdogs of that. So it’s not so much that they’re male or female, frankly, but I, I just feel like they kind of come in guns blazing sometimes when there’s change, they didn’t know about.
[00:35:09] And, you know, even if it’s the first meeting where we’re trying to explain the change, but. I think the way to get past that resistance is to Alli align with them and be their advocate, which is what I’ve found has been really useful is like, Hey, I know you’re trying to get to X. I’m gonna help you get there.
[00:35:26] And you’re gonna have to spend less time on trying to. Communicate why that’s important because I’m gonna have your back basically. Mm-hmm .
[00:35:34] Dana Theus: Yeah, I, and I had a similar reaction in the sense that I, there, I don’t see a huge gender dynamic in the sense. There, there are, there are men and women, both who are very excited about change, and there are those who are not excited about change.
[00:35:47] They do tend to express themselves differently often as we often do, and many things. And just any, any. Any stereotype that a woman has to deal with anyway, is it change is an opportunity either, either turn that stereotype away or to reinforce it for, for women in particular. So that’s, that was kind of, my takeaway was like for women, it’s an opportunity to, if people think you’re gonna be resistant to change.
[00:36:11] Don’t be, you know, show up as yeah. Bold and more solution oriented, and it can be an opportunity to reframe your personal brand. That was kind of my takeaway on that point.
[00:36:20] Donita Prakash: One thing anecdotally I’ve seen is I tend to see women leave more in the case of a merger acquisition, like. To, to leave. And I’ve I’m, I don’t know the reason there.
[00:36:34] But it may be that they feel less empowered to make those changes or to, to come in with recommendations. And that’s one thing I’d like to change. Right. You know, that’s my, the whole thing about be bold, like, you know, make recommendations you’re as informed as anyone about your role. You know, own it and trying to make the change, at least before you, you give up and leave.
[00:36:58] Right.
[00:36:59] Dana Theus: That’s an interesting observation. I have probably anecdotally also seen that. And I don’t know if this is exactly why, but I do notice that during change, there’s a lot of competitive dynamics, musical chairs kind of thing. And some women don’t feel like they can win.
[00:37:15] And some people, some women don’t win because if there’s an old boys club aspect to it and so that they, they feel like their better option is just to leave. And I think that’s very personalized, but I do think it’s real. I do think it’s real, all those things.
[00:37:28] Donita Prakash: Yeah. I tried to find some stat, but I couldn’t find any actual
[00:37:32] Dana Theus: Yeah, haven’t seen any either.
[00:37:33] So good thing. We brought it up now. There we’re a stat on the interwebs All right. Well, thank you so much. Don’t need it for your time. I’m looking forward to taking this into private conversation in our mastermind next month. And I will make sure that wherever this video is posted, there’s connect, you know, links to your website and, and to you. And I want to thank you for your change management secrets and years of friendship and more interesting conversations.
[00:37:53] Donita Prakash: Thank you Dana. Really appreciate it and love to keep going on this conversation.
[00:37:58] Dana Theus: Good. Take care. Everybody care. Bye.
