Engineering an Epiphany: How to Make Large-Scale Change a Guaranteed Success | MJ Reiners

70% of all change efforts fail. Learn from my guest today about how your change can be different. MJ Reiners is a speaker, author, consultant and educator. She launched Summerland Education to enable organizations to harness the energy and techniques needed for successful change. Keep listening for her tried and trued mindsets, and approaches for large scale change, you'll be glad you did.

Welcome to the Courage of a Leader podcast. This is where you hear real life stories of top leaders achieving extraordinary results. And you get practical advice and techniques, you can immediately apply for your own success. This is where you will get inspired. And take bold, courageous action. I'm so glad you can join us. I'm your host, Amy Riley. Now, are you ready to step into the full power of your leadership and achieve the results you care about most? Let's ignite the courage of a leader.

MJ, I am so glad you are with me on the Courage of a Leader podcast today. Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much, Amy. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you.

Me too. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Because your experience and research has led you to deeply understand the importance of energy in change efforts. Yeah, and we all have change efforts going on in our work and in our lives. How do you think about energy? And how does it work with or possibly work against change initiatives.

A lot of times when we are embarking on a change effort, the very first thing that we react to is taking physical action. And that is good, and that is necessary. But so often after we get down the path, we realize we're off course a bit because our physical action hasn't aligned with our mental energy. And even more important, our emotional energy. And in organizations today, 70% of all change efforts fail. So our standard change management way of looking at it isn't working anymore. And so we have to get upstream of that physical effort. And so what I work with individual leaders and organizations on is how to think through the design of your change project and your mindset. And your emotional set needs to be aligned with that, and design those physical activities that are all together, because then you will find you're actually using a lot less physical effort, and you're getting better results.

Okay, MJ, some people are resistant to speaking about emotions, right? And some of us are more self aware of our emotions than others. How do you get there with leaders in organizations? You're right

there. And there's so much fear around change, and there's so much resistance around change. And the way I have seen organizations and leaders work is that by failing to use that enthusiasm, failing to use that joy, that camaraderie, you're leaving absolute gold on the table, that is your big driver for success for change. And it is a lot of fear with people. But if you can make it fun, and that's where the results come. So as a leader, if that's really, really, really not your skill set, and you're really uncomfortable, first of all, I will talk all day long about Yeah, gotta get used to being uncomfortable. But if you're not that Energizer, right, find the people on your team who are and just give them some opportunities to say, hey, here is our event. And this is the mind shift that we're trying to create. This is the experience that we want people to realize, and have, you know their own. You want empowerment, right? Change is not about forcing people but designing an experience a training experience, an open house experience, a show Intel experience, having people learn and experience, they're all on nuances related to change and they start to practice it in a safe setting. As a leader that's really not your skill, then use some people who are your energizers because they are all over the place these days, especially with the younger generation in the workforce. You give them a specific task and a specific goal and you say here's the energy I want around that I want it to be light I want it to be, you know, fun. I want it to be professional. I want it to be serious, but here's the outcome that we want and turn it loose and bring in some team members to help build that energy. And you'll be really, really surprised how that enthusiasm carries momentum forward.

This is terrific. MJ. So first of all, knowing that 70% of change efforts historically have failed.

And that's according to Forbes magazine. They've done a lot of research on this. Yes.

So we've got to be doing something different. Absolutely. Right. And tapping into our energy is one of those differences. And you've already thrown out a lot of great ideas that every leader listening can grab on to and figure out how do I include this in my change effort, make it fun, make it fun, normalize, that folks are going to feel uncomfortable, right? We're doing something new, normalize that tap into your energizers. Who are your energizers that can influence others to come along? How do we empower folks? Give them a task with a specific outcome? Get assemble a team, right? Let's work together to do this practice situation in an experiment. And then you've already talked about training and showcase what's possible we do this this new way or implement this new system? Or have this new business model like this was what can be possible? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. I love it MJ, MJ. Let me take this moment to tell listeners more about you. Okay, MJ Reiners is a speaker, author, consultant, and educator. And she launched Summerland Education and 2011 to enable organizations to leverage internal resources and develop high performing teams in order to reach their business goals, which requires change, right? MJ teaches individuals and organizations how to save significant dollars, time and stress with her unique aided discovery Transformation Model. MJ 's best selling book, Engineering an Epiphany. For those that are watching the video, you can see my copy, it already looks well warned. It was called Engineering an Epiphany, Master business evolution using the seven forces, seven energy forces, and it is a must have guide for any change maker. MJ, I'm so glad that you're here. And that you've already provided so much value in our conversation already.

Well, thank you so much for that really nice, generous introduction.

Yeah, so MJ, you said, we need to think through the design. Can you tell us a little bit more about how do we get started in a successful way? Like, let's say I'm a team leader out there, I've got an idea. How do I get this going?

There's two things that a leader has to think about. And that's their own vision and the direction of that change effort. Okay, they usually have to set it, or at least, you know, be the builder of that energy of that power. That's what I talk about, and helping people to know, where are they headed? And what are the outcomes that we desire and not just getting something done, I work a lot with technology. And there's nothing crazier to end users and customers and Dev a new technology laid in. But then there's no new improvement and an emotion or in mindset, it's, you know, that to take people through a process of a lot of disruption and a tremendous amount of hard work, where they don't see benefits to themselves, you know, they're not happier, you know, so my whole driver for change efforts is use is not your goal, the light is your change should be the end outcome is delight. Because otherwise, why are we doing it? Yes, the organization might save money. And that is important. That's clearly clearly important. But you won't bring your customers along for the long term, if you haven't delighted them, or your end users, your employees, if you haven't delighted them and empowered them, they have to be empowered along with you with that change. So back to your first question, what what gets started, it's usually a dream. It's a dream that a visionary a leader has, and then how do you empower and encourage and influence people around you? And that's can be a very, very exciting time and very interactive time but you want to build that idea that dream, you know, with your group, and then the next step is to lay out the rules. What what are the rules that we're going to abide by here? How are we going to implement this change? Who's going to be involved? How are we going to measure our success? And that all falls under the energy of governance. And governance is super important, especially as we move forward with implementing more technology, specifically artificial intelligence, what are the rules, we're going to use a rod that, and we have to get aligned with that, and grounded in that. And a lot of times those rules must reflect the organization values, what are the values we are going to uphold? So that we don't get in the middle of change and realize, wow, we're way off course. Because once you get in the middle of it, and you realize you're off course, it's oftentimes 1000s, or even millions of dollars to correct. It's better to get that grounded upfront. So I always encourage organizations to start with power to start with that dream, and also decide to sign on some rules. They don't have to be heavy and complex, it doesn't have to take you a year to figure this out. But you know, how are we going to operate? How are we going to work as a team, some of those basic rules setting are to help define the governance energy that you're going to be working with?

I know, I know how important you think you know, governments to be my first reaction to what you just said, MJ is that I don't know that I've ever heard the word delight with a system implementation. And I love that, right? What's our dream? What are we headed? Like, let's, let's talk all along the way about how we can delight our internal customers, right or delight our end users, whomever and all the folks that the change might impact. I love that as a as a dialog, right and a glance what

I worked with my customers on I so encouraged that I have done large scale transformations for over 20 years. My biggest one was $350 million. With with 200 people and and we did fantastic with many, many of those outcomes. But I've done projects in the past, where people are like, what was this all for? It's a lot of disruption, it's a lot of disruption. So you can't wait to the end to figure out delight. Delight has to go at the beginning. And that's where your energizing and you're thinking through your mindsets that you want and those emotional sets. When somebody is using your new product or service, how do you want them to feel? You know? And is your goal sales? Of course, that's a big, big part of it? Or is it delighting the customer? So they have long term sales with you. That's what you really want is you want lifelong customers, right? So it's just a different mindset. So when you you gotta be thinking of that upfront.

And it brings a different kind of energy, or does the way Exactly, yeah, MJ I want to underscore, I feel like I often hear one or the other. You talked about dreaming, right? That dream, that vision. And then you talked about rules, Raisa, wrote some rules of governance, how we're going to operate. And I feel like I have often seen that a leader or an organization is successful at one or the other, but powerful combination of the two sides really important. I know that you work with leaders and organizations on governance all the time, to kind of help folks understand how do you get involved in that? How far reaching should it be, if I'm the head of a division, and I'm, we're implementing a new software platform in my area, who all gets involved in setting the governance versus if I'm a team leader, and we're making a change in our team, and we've got a team of 8am I setting it? Am I involving all eight? Is it a subgroup? Any recommendations there?

Well, a few guidelines for governance is don't let it get too big, you know, the bigger, the more more complicated it can get. And I also often do not start from scratch. I honestly say what, what committees do you have that are already functioning and working really well? Now, typically, they're interdisciplinary committees. Yeah, maybe you take a committee and you're looking at, I'm making this up, oh, we don't have anybody from marketing represented. So maybe we want to include someone there. Okay. But you know, you do want you know, some of your leaders, but the more critical critical part is, who will be the people actually utilizing this change when it is fully operational. It's a lot of times, that's your frontline folks, your operations folks. And you definitely want them involved because the people who are going to be using a new technology or implementing or abiding by a new policy, they are the ones who understand that absolute day to day tasks and steps and connections back to the rest of the organization. So the people who are going to use the change must must be represented. Yep, That's hard to do, because you can't have, you know, ginormous teams, but you can have the people that are respected and people listen to so your opinion leaders and your operational experts, because, you know, having one operational expert can bring just a massive amount of insight and wisdom and experience to the organization that oftentimes, you know, if you're higher up in the organization, you just don't have that day to day perspective. Often, a leader may have a perspective of where the organization has to be in a year or two years. That's perspective that's necessary. And then the operations folks understand the day to day nuances, they know often the customer experience to best. So you want to make sure there's balance the whole key to governance, along with governance and power, it's about balance. And it doesn't mean that it's a perfect 5050. But what you don't want is 75 or 100%. Power in no governance. And you also don't want governance without power. Because if you have a group of people that are writing all the rules, but they don't know where they're headed, they don't have the direction, a lot of times just the individual differences and how they see the world, a lot of things don't get done. So you need to have both.

Great, I think that will help people get their heads around this. You want your opinion leaders, you want your operational experts, and you want to make sure that the different perspectives are represented. Absolutely, yeah. Terrific. MJ, a lot of said about how people resist change, right or straight out fearful of change. And in a lot of it has to do with how our brains work. Right? I remember, our brains are designed for survival. So they're constantly scanning for threat and oh, no, right? This, this is a threat in in my world, right? I used to know how to operate competently in the old model or on the old system. Now, something's new coming. I don't know how this is going to go. Our brains release cortisol. So how do you recommend that leaders think about that, and work to reduce resistance? Excellent.

Well, you nailed it, I wrote a whole chapter in my book, it's one of the beginning chapters is about how the brain works. And many change leaders aren't familiar with that. This is part of human nature. And so I've been in many projects, I fell under this trap myself a long time ago, where you think somebody's being stubborn, or they're being rigid. And maybe, maybe they are, maybe they're not even aware that they're responding that way, but it is how the brain works. And so a change leader needs to be aware of those things, educate yourself on those things, and to have compassion around it. This is a normal human experience, but there's ways that we can craft our experiences to move people through it safely. And with support, it is huge to have support. And the other part of why people change fear is because historically, we have failed at it. And so we have a lot of bad memories around chain. It didn't work so well. And so a good change leader to stand out, you gotta get results. And it was one of the questions you wanted me to make sure I focus on is, what does a good change leader need to do? You got to get results? And if 70% of history isn't, you know, change management is broken, what do you do differently? And so that energetic perspective, I think, can drive a lot more results for people. But huge. Yes, MJ

Can I clarify? So I think you're not just talking about results. At the end, are we also talking about results? Along the way,

there are milestones that you definitely want to hit that you want to make sure that you're not off track? 100% and how you measure those, and what metrics are the meaningful ones isn't important. And that's something that a governance team can figure out. You don't need to have the dozens of them but pick a couple. But back to the fear question. So I think that for change leaders, you really have to be compassionate. And understanding two things. One, fear is part of the change cycle, and we got to move through it, we can't let that hold us back. And what often fear does is it saps us of our willpower. And that's where a leader has to come in and be present and say, Hey, this is a little bit uncomfortable. This is a little bit scary, but we are going to do this together. And here's how we're going to support each other. And we will make some mistakes, but we'll go through those together. And the great antidote for fear is a process you know, and having the step by step and understanding and walking through those steps and when people can start to see something you know, getting it on paper or walking through it physically and experiencing it before it's real. i That's my go to strategy all the time with fear is just practice it before it's real. because then they realize, oh, this wasn't what I thought it was. This wasn't as scary as I thought. But until you get people to move through something in practice, you're not going to have that awareness and that realization?

Yes. So first of all, know that it's human nature. Absolutely.

I find not trying to make your life miserable. Trying to maybe one or two, but not not the masses.

Yeah, there's just relief there. And knowing that it's human nature, right. It's not conspiracy theory, and bring that compassion and that support be present with it? No, no, it's a part of the process. And to me, and this your response here, I'm like, Oh, this is just it's pulling it all together. Right? The support, the governance is going to provide comfort for folks, right? We there's some rules here. And we know what to epsilon. Yes.

It's not willy nilly. And we don't know what we're doing. There's some there's some guidelines and guardrails that are helping us exactly. Based on our values based on our values, right? How us

right? And here are some results that we're measuring that we all care about, right? Like know that the world in the work would be better when we hit those, and then ways to practice and experience the new world. Right? That's really great. Can you give some examples of support MJ? How do leaders support along the way?

Well, there's visible support. And I think that can never be underestimated. When I've had big, big technology go lives, just the presence of the CEO or the CIO, walking around and talking to people is just such a huge influence and motivator, you know that because it's really demonstrating that the leader cares. So that's a big part visibility, engagement, being their presence. But then there's tactical support, right is, if somebody's going through a new change, it's giving them the training that they need, because you are caring about their experience, and you want them to develop new skills. And I always encourage you want them to develop new skills in the new habits for them to be successful. If you don't provide them the training and support upfront, they're going to learn as they go. And they may make a lot of errors, and develop habits that are not in accordance with the overall vision. So the proper training, and then when the actual experience of the change goes live, right? Your your date that you're saying, Okay, this policy is now we're all going to abide by this policy, we're all going to use this new software, whatever that date is, you don't having people shoulder to shoulder that can help guide somebody, whether it's helping them navigate on a computer screen, or helping out, you know, a new, you know, form or just being there to answer question because you want them to establish new habits in accordance with the vision. So I've had, you know, some goals where maybe even 1000 support people involved. Now, that's a huge project, you know, but, you know, just one or two support people to answer questions. But a lot of times, if somebody's not there, they're not going to, it may not make support easy for the end user for the employees, they're not going to go seek it out. So you know, sometimes I would put a person in to answer questions in a doctor's lounge or at a nurse's station or in the teachers lounge, you know, where they're in their comfort zone. And they know this person who, hopefully you're engaging another employee that they know, and it's just becomes a conversation of nurse with nurse or teacher with teacher, and that support is much more likely to drive those behaviors and new habits with the with the change.

Those were some great examples and ways to provide support. I'm going to recap them for listeners, the visibility being accessible, right, you talked about walking around, if your organization is virtual or hybrid, you know, it might be having open office hours or just reaching out, right. I mean, if you're a team leader, just you're checking in with folks, the training so many reasons to have well thought out, put together training, more getting more and more comfortable that real time help. And I love I know sometimes called super users, right? Or the nurses helping nurses, right or customer service, helping customer service. And here's your person, here's the number to call. Here's the person to reach out to and communicating the expectations and the support that's available along the way. Right

when you call and get an answering machine. That doesn't make you feel good, but when you get a human and it makes you feel good. We can't have humans entering every call. But when there's critical moments, like new changes going in, you need to have some people available to help people. Yes,

I'm gonna use it and it's a human you know, and you Rust and exactly, yes, you know, yeah, like it like it's, you know, not that person over there and a vendor who doesn't know about my job, right. And this is a fellow colleague who I work alongside, and I told him that, and I know that they know what I'm trying to do.

And they're looking out for me they have the same interest that I have, you know, so there's that bonding that really helps improve the relationship and the outcome. Yes.

So really smart to engage those folks. Or dad identify right early on, who are those folks who can be ultimately our support team? Exactly. go live date? Yes, MJ so much great information, what should I have asked that I didn't? Oh,

gosh, I think 2024 is going to be another year of change for a lot of people. And I just encourage people to get ready, you cannot predict but you can prepare. And I am a big proponent of developing your change skills for you as the change leader or the change maker, but also encouraging your own team members to scale up. And you know, there's a lot of good resources, you know, my book is available, I've got classes online, but practice now before you get into something that's really, really super challenging, and super deep. So I encourage people, this is part of our new normal change is going to continue to speed up. And the more skilled you are, the more comfort you're going to have. And then ultimately, as your skill levels and your comfort levels rise with the challenges that will be presented to us, we can move out that that change capability scale, and be able to flow with change and have a much greater experience. What I love

this idea of daily, we can't always predict we can always prepare, yes, upskill. Yes. What skills are most critical for us to be building a muscle around?

Well, I think it depends on where you are in the organization, right? But but for chains leaders, the biggest one is anticipation and forecasting. And that's where my seven forces model really, really comes into play is because you don't have to specialize in one particular thing. But you need to see, do we have all seven forces which align the mind the body and the heart, and then get us into flow experience. So we're flowing upward, not backward, not downward into despair, or flowing upward. So if you're a change leader, that forecasting that anticipation, if you are more on the front lines, like an analyst, you know, it's really understanding workflow. And that's out of the chapter of technique, and understanding what steps are involved in our work, what steps are part of the process and or the program, because technology is going to allow us to automate a lot, which is going to lift us up to do higher creative activities, which will be wonderful. But we have to know where to apply the fix. Because if we fix the wrong problems, you still the overall system still, you know, is intact, you know, so the example I get just real super granular, but visual, like if you on a Pancake House, and it takes your chef, five minutes to make a pancake, but your front line order taker takes them two and a half minutes, that total system is seven half minutes. So if you use AI, or a robot or something else, you know, when you go into restaurants today, you just scan the menu, if you place your own order, so you eliminate that cost, the cost has gone down. But that cook still needs five minutes. So all you've done is create a better bigger backlog. So his timeline is increased. So what you need to do is to take the savings from the front end, and again, another cook to create twice as fast, then you improve the experience, you know, but what often we do is we take cost out of one part, which only creates a increase in in different parts like

Yeah, yeah, that's a great example to your

frontline people know where those constraints are. Yeah, as a change leader, or a CIO or CEO, a lot of times you don't know where those constraints are. And so they you know, they may be really tempted by you know, wonderful new sales pitches, oh, you know, this new thing is gonna save your life. But the frontline person is because No, no, no, it's okay to do that. But we also need to get another cook. They know that information. So that comes out of technique and understanding the workflow and the specific constraints of where improvements can really drive great outcomes and greater performance.

Yes, yeah. Well, then you see your opportunities for are all kinds of improvements, like exactly in including improvements with a technology? Make your process maps, everyone? Yes,

absolutely. I know that's really boring task. But there is so much enlightenment that comes out of doing that writing it down. Yep. Yeah, well

and then then right then you can start to understand what skills what knowledge is needed in aid and each part of the flow right, and help you understand where where change might impact or understand what changes would be most beneficial. You can do really great information. MJ, thank you for sharing freely your energy and your expertise with Courage of a Leader podcast listeners.

Thank you so much. This was really a lot of fun.

Thank you for listening to the Courage of a Leader podcast. If you'd like to further explore this episode's topic, please reach out to me through the courage of a leader website at www.courageofaleader.com. I'd love to hear from you. Please take the time to leave a review on iTunes. That helps us expand our reach and get more people fully stepping into their leadership potential. Until next time, be bold and be brave because you've got the Courage of a Leader.