Music Hi Manola. Hi Leif. Hi. How are you? How are you doing? I'm very good. I was very much looking forward to this. Me too. I was really excited to have this conversation, especially we talked before. You had a very interesting outlook about how sustainable leadership needs change. That was a fascinating concept for me. Before we get into anything else, I was hoping you could give us a bit of background on your career
and what led you into the field. I found that fascinating when you told that to me as well. Thank you so very much and thank you for the introduction. It's been a journey filled with change, not surprisingly so. Like I told you, I'm a journalist by trade and I stumbled into change management completely by accident. I do believe that best things in life happen by accident than when you least expect them. I worked as a business and as an investigative journalist for years.
Then I resigned. I went into PR and communications. I went into corporate affairs. I ended up doing marketing and PR within the HR services industries. At some point I went into corporate consulting and I heard this change management. When I started looking into it, I realized that I've been doing so many change management things without having the word for them. Without being able to label them as such. This was probably the first steep learning about change management.
That is something that we do intuitively. That is something that I do believe everyone has default settings for. It's just a matter of becoming self-aware and becoming intentional about it. And having the right words and the right experiences to recognize it. A lot of these conversations, one of the common threads that we tend to pull on is self-awareness.
Being aware of what you're dealing with in terms of your leadership style, how you come off to other people, what you're saying and how it's perceived. Understanding also internally why are you so frustrated with the things that frustrate you when you look at another manager dealing with similar problems. That's the least of his concerns. True. Very, very true. Just a couple of reflections on leadership and change management and quite potentially what they have in common.
Is that oftentimes, in search of optimization and efficiency and quick wins, people tend to leap straight into conversations about methodologies and methods and tools and frameworks. And I believe it's just human nature looking for structure and human nature looking for concrete things. And like you said, there's a lot of value coming out of reflection and self-awareness and mindset and a lot of conversations and self-conversations about principles and values and value.
Because at the end of the day, you know, all methodologies and frameworks and tools, no matter how revolutionary or traditional they are, are tools and a way of packaging things. Right. Right. And also if you're not implementing them, they're all for nothing. Absolutely. And also if you don't know what you're implementing them for, how do you know you're doing a good job?
The intention is just as important. I think Bob, who was on our last Leaders Talk, a friend of yours as well, Bob mentioned that the intention is just as important as any action. It is. And I remember when we talked, we did open the conversation about intentionality. And, you know, where does change management value come from and where leadership value comes from. And intentionality, I believe, is key.
Right. And it's not just about, you know, would-intend or ill-intend, but it's about why do you do it and what's the intention behind it, be it strategic, be it personal, be it operational? How is it going to affect our business objectives? How is it going to affect our personal objectives or relationship objectives? And based on how it's going to affect those things is going to affect, you know, how you take the action, how you word things, how you deal with things, and who you involve even.
Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned who you involve. I've been involved in a series of conversations around stakeholder management, you know, stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management. And it also ties into what we touched on very, very early on in today's conversation. Oftentimes, I sit in stakeholder analysis and mapping exercises and workshops.
And I listen to people, you know, being very dedicated and committed to defining and understanding and analyzing and mapping influence and impact and all those fancy tools. And towards the end of the conversation, it's almost, you know, like the mic drop moment. I asked them, okay, so how long does this list need to get before you list yourselves? And, you know, just like with storytelling, for example, going back to my journalistic days, it's the same with intention.
It's not only outward looking. It is also inward looking. And the most important stories and the most important intentions are the ones that, you know, we tell ourselves and we build for ourselves. I love that perspective because, you know, you have a lot of entrepreneurs and you have a lot of managers that are, they have that really significant sense of ownership. And the sense of ownership is a double-edged sword because you tend to forget about serving yourself as well.
I know a lot of my friends who have launched businesses, me included, where we forget to compensate ourselves. We're not even in the equation. Yeah. And that's a big mistake, too. Absolutely. And I can give you another quite, you know, classic example of unintentional self-exclusion. You hear talks about employee experience and try to have conversations about employee experience with people within HR.
And I did raise the question, like, unless I'm completely oblivious to something, HR people are employees, too. So where are they in this employee experience journey? And how do they map themselves? That's true. Yeah. I think we often forget to use this. I actually have seen this. It's a very common mistake that you see in companies is they've written KPIs for the sales teams. They've written KPIs for the marketing teams. Anything that drives cash, right?
But they neglect not only HR, but they also tend to neglect, like, let's say, internal service departments, IT and so on.
But then you have these multinationals where they have gone above and beyond and they have really thought about these things to the point where they offer compensation to these service departments in terms of, you know, some of them call it the ABC Award, where if you've saved the company a certain amount of money, you know, you get incentivized with a percentage of the savings.
And in a way, it's commission for people who normally, or let's say, cost centers that normally tend to just accumulate expenses rather than drive any cash influx. That's true. That's very true. And it reminds me of a book I read many, many years ago, and it was the beginning of my change management work within IT. And, you know, IT, just like a lot of other support functions, their work tends to be perceived as purely transactional.
And the book is called Benefits Management, and it actually shifts the conversation into delivering value and into opening, you know, opening the conversation not to purely quantitative KPIs. And when you put qualitative KPIs into the conversation, that opens up new perspectives. And like, like we chatted a little bit before, don't lie, it shifts the conversation from deliverable to outcome and from time sheets to value.
Right. And I believe COVID accelerated a lot of long overdue recognition to support functions. And I hope that is, you know, beyond washing hands and taking care of ourselves. I do. I hope that will remain beyond COVID. Yes. No, I mean, you've actually seen a lot of things that we were talking earlier, how COVID and remote work as funny as it's, you know, reduced human physical interaction. It's actually created a more human atmosphere and respect for each other's personal lives as well.
I think I had mentioned the example of, you know, I've developed this relationship with my team at Spartan that I normally I think I would not have had it not been for me in a way being in their homes virtually during our, you know, daily meeting. And I see that one has their dog barking in the background and I see one has, you know, the renovation happening in their house and like I have the only text because it's too loud here for me to respond vocally.
And it made us more, way more understanding if someone comes in late. And, and I think another conversation is, is it really sustainable to have attendance be the ultimate guide for for performance. Well, I know that this sounds like a yes or no question. But like all great questions, you know, it opens a layered response. There are industries.
And there are functions across industries where attendance and or remote work is is a given that's non-negotiable because of the type and the content of the activity. Right. But at the end of the day, the conversation for me is about the purpose and the intention of work and and the use of workspace. And listening to all the talks and principles around future of work. It becomes clear and clear that there's no one size fits all not even within the same company.
And we are trying to find organizational solutions for some deeply personal journeys and how we relate to work. And this whole work life, rebalance and and blending is also raises challenges regarding attendance and definition of efficiency and the meaning of the time sheets. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at the history as well of of, you know, the eight to eight to five work hour that was that was created during the industrial revolution.
You know, that's that was in a time of war where, you know, you needed more control over the employees and the workers. But it's it's not it can't be the standard across every industry. Some industries and, you know, they might work three to four hours a day. And that's more than enough to bring in enough cash to cover your expenses and make some margin. But when you look at more traditional industries, let's say logistics transportation FMCG.
These these need more than the normal work hours, more than more than that eight to five. I mean, if you're not in the market constantly trying to, you know, continue to build the relationship with your customers, follow up cash collections and so on, then you're, you know, you're going to fall behind with your competition. Absolutely.
Absolutely. I remember. I remember a conversation for many years ago regarding how you can trigger change and how you can trigger conversations about change and I was reminded recently of this because I am trying to find a solution to start talking about change without this conversation being a disruption in itself. Because the reaction is, you know, when people hear change and change management, they drive. Okay, so what's what's coming now that we need to be so intentional about it.
And the trick is to say, you know, it's, it's nothing. We don't know what's coming. I mean, to all intents and purposes look, look at COVID. Yeah, so we don't know what's coming and and book eyes is the reality here to stay. It's been here for a long time but I think we're just fully realizing what it means and how permanent it is. And there are people who naturally embrace change and there are industries who are naturally, you know, risk and change addicts.
And then there are very traditional approaches and very traditional industries and there's an amazing book. And I mentioned this when we talked, it's called the leopard. And, and he talks about how the city and a riskocracy had to change their whole social systems and social networking in order to keep their lifestyle after the the
resort, the Italian work for independence. And I oftentimes start my change management workshop saying that in order for things to stay the same, we need to change. And you see, you know, there's there's a moment though, you know, what, what have we just heard.
But then you start to talk about, hey, if we want to keep market share, yeah, or competitive advantage, we need to change how maybe we define our customers or how we define our processes or how we define, you know, the value that we deliver to each other and to customers. And I think that also ties into, you know, with sustainability. Sustainability is not keeping things the same. But sustainability is being able to adapt and being able to adapt proactively.
Just adapting reactively that that's also losing a little bit of value. Right. You're going to we're going to need these, you know, future sustainable leaders to be able to identify the changes that are happening in real time. And, and I feel like technology, not, you know, let's say, aside from COVID and everything like that technology is creating changes way faster than we could have expected and then it's just been majorly sped up with COVID.
We need people who can take raw data and really see what's happening. And I think that's going to be a key competency in future leaders as well. Not only taking the data, but what, what, what can we do with this data and how can we make our business more adaptable on a on a quicker scale. Data literacy is definitely a skill for the future. What what I've seen is that just being able to read data is not enough.
Data without context only gives you a snapshot and it doesn't give you, you know, a look into trends, or it doesn't give you anything qualitative. It gives you a lot of quantitative things. Regarding regarding technologies is definitely a critical tool, but it is a tool. And, and one of the questions, especially in technology adoption or in technology driven transformation is how do we relate to technology. Are we using it as an enabler and accelerator, or are we allowing it to be a trigger.
And, and that depend that that really drives what we want out of it. True, true. I'll give you an example we talked about marketing. Yeah, so how do you go about, you know, your CRM tool. Do you look at your, you know, strategy, do you look at your marketing strategy or your, you know, end to end sales process, and you choose a technology that best serves, you know, your strategy and your operations, or do you go for the latest and greatest.
And, you know, the technology lingo makes you believe that technology will solve your problem. It really helps you solve your problem because you might end up with this UFO CRM, and you still need to do your, your market segmentation and you still need to do you know your, your product strategy and you still need to do your, your, you know, go to
your marketing strategy. The CRM will not help you with that thinking, it will prompt your thinking by putting in front of you, you know, a lot of fields that you need to fill in with information. But it will not give you the answer it will give you a structure to make sense of your answers but it will not do the thinking for you. That's right. No, and actually, I think I've been dealing with a similar problem with, with actually the recruitment industry.
I mean, there are companies now that are launching that are AI kind of ATS systems, applicant tracking systems now. And I would be approaching clients because we do things, definitely we use modern recruitment methods.
The problem though is when I approach a client and they start to tell me, you know, we use this brand new AI system out, like, I'm sorry, are you saying you trust your AI more than you trust your gut feeling that has allowed us to survive for, you know, millions of years, you know,
so it's, you can't take the people out of the HR, you can't. I mean, AI will only be able to make judgment calls based on the data that you feed it, you know, but people are the best judge of people, and that will never change. That is, that is true. You know, the, the intelligent combination is business intelligence with artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence. I believe that's the intelligent mix of sustainability.
Yeah. Yeah, and you, I mean, you, you have people that specialize in certain things regardless. Whatever it might be, let's say it's sales. Let's say it's anything, but to really be good at sales, you can't be a program. Like, you know, you were telling me that you have to be able to adapt change, you have to be, you know, that's the true leadership skill is change above all else.
So if your client comes to you with something that wasn't programmed into your brain, let's say, how is an AI supposed to answer. So sales is just as much a human function within organizations as HR. You're dealing with people, you're dealing with emotions, you're dealing with people that are having a bad day, which is not a factor that you can predict or control. It's not a controlled environment.
And being able to adapt based on the body language that you're reading, based on asking a question based on the body language to understand why someone displaying this body language is so much further beyond your standard AI or your programming. And a true leader from what I think we both agree on is the adaptability and the capability to change in instant moments as well as long term strategy.
That's very true and listening to you for some reason to unrelated stories or examples rent to my mind. One of them. And I think it's this ties back into people's need for something concrete. And the same thing that drives them towards talking about change in terms of methodologies and tools. Probably it's the same principle that drives them to survey and oftentimes over survey because that's data, you know, numbers and percentages.
And you know, liquor scales and you have, you know, fourth distribution, and you have NPS, boring, then what have you. But unless you get context for that through. And here's breaking news through conversations. That's that's a snapshot and it might be misleading. It might be misleading. So that that is one. And the second regarding body language and the ability to change is not just the ability to change.
To whatever is happening, but is also the ability to change in such a way that your self awareness of your mindset or of your mood that they does not impact other people. And I will give you an example and this is this is true story. There was a company going through massive transformation. And it was one of those cases when transformation initiative really meant downsizing. Yeah, so it was a fancy way, and not that much straightforward to say that people will be sent home.
One of the very, very senior leaders came to the office one day and literally walked, you know, through the open area without saying anything went into into went into his office and you know, shut the door and just said they're super quiet for the entire rest of the day, which was unusual. And people thought that there was something happening. And the rest of the day they were updating their CDs and another thing that is interesting.
Another concept regarding change management and being able to adapt to change. And the conversations that when all I was talking about was is basically if you have an employee a salesperson that's normally a top performer and they start to draw in their performance. Hi Manola, I'm Manola sorry. I was my left side to have a nervous breakdown, but I'm back.
So I was I was kind of freestyling for a second. And I was talking in terms of the conversations and getting back on to, you know, not always being a quantitative factor, whether you decide let's say, let's fire someone because they're a top salesperson and now the performance dropped. Okay, now they're not good anymore. You know, quantum in terms of, you know, quanta quantifying it. Yeah, okay, they're not justified anymore.
But if you sit down and you have a human interaction with them and say, hey, look, normally your sales are at peak, you're one of the top salespeople but lately the past two to three months. We've been seeing that you're not achieving any of your targets. Yeah, what's going on with you. Right. There's a human question that you can't get through numbers. So what's going on with you. It could be a personal problem.
There's a, there's a very famous short video of Simon Sinek. And he explains how this empathy sound like in an office. And it goes like, you haven't reached your sales target for the past three months, if this happens again in this quarter I don't know what kind of conversation we will have. So that's no empathy. Whereas empathy sounds like you've been, you've been quite behind on your targets for the past three months. What's going on. How can I help.
Right. And going back to what I was just saying before the technology hiccup I, I often say that I won't be impressed with technology until I can download ice cream so when that happens. It will be a good day for change management. But you know how a leader acts impacts the team. And I've seen so many examples recently, teams, literally grow into the energy of their leaders.
And if they're having a bad day and oh and the bad leaders behavior was prompted by a huge fight he had with with his mom that morning it had nothing to do with business related realities. Yeah, people completely misread it. Right. And I don't think that, okay, figures are accurate. I wouldn't say that figures are true because you make them true depending on why and how you interpret them.
They are accurate, but they don't give you the the entire picture. Another example from from a project and it was a technology implementation project. We put together KPIs. The sponsors and the steering committee they only said okay to quantity KPIs because that's concrete, you know, and come go live. We looked at the number of requests placed with a health center. And, you know, huge panic, we had 137 tickets. Okay, from a population of close to 3000 so that wasn't necessarily that bad.
But when we looked at the content of those tickets, there were literally two questions asked by 137. And one of them, you know, made us realize that there was a last minute week made by the vendor the solution vendor that did not reach the training people. And you know that the training materials were not updated. But we could have been, you know, panicked forever for having 137 tickets raised within the first week.
Yeah. I think in situations like that it can easily be embarrassing or you can easily mitigate that situation and this goes back to being adaptable to situations right. You see enough questions being raised and I think if you sometimes take ownership and that's take ownership like hey, yeah, we did miss this. And we will get back to you. We'll send you an email at the end of the training with the correct data. Then you've mitigated the problem accurately.
Yeah. I see a comment in just now so we have to be ready for change when changing is necessary or we shall always be ready for change as a process. I would say that we should always be ready for change. I would argue a little bit on change as a process and I will say why I believe change is something that we are built for. If we start, you know, with our very own biology and the cell regeneration processes if you want. So change is something extremely natural.
One thing that that is a challenge to change managers is the fact that people have this sense making reflex of thinking in in start date and end date, because that gives them comfort that gives them a way of pacing themselves. That gives them a sense of progress. Yeah. So, I would say that change is a reality. We manage it through processes and we manage it with tools, but change is the fluid constant reality of our personal lives of our businesses and of our lives.
And if nothing else go the proof that that change is ongoing, and there is no real, full proof accurate way of saying when something starts and something ends. Yeah, amazing lady she she delivers change management executive training at the university in the US. And she starts all her lectures saying that project management has a start date and an end date. Change management has a spark date, which is actually an end. I believe that and how things were done. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
So to to answer a little bit in a more structured process driven, given way. We should always be ready for change. And we should also be flexible about the processes methodologies and tools that we want to use to manage it because it depends on the industry. It depends on the maturity level of the business. It depends on personal appetite for change. It depends on the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
Yeah, process methodology tools conversation is secondary to what is our intention for change and what is our appetite for change. Well, I mean if you think about it like this as well I mean every business is this rule of thumb is if you're not growing you're falling behind. Right. So that's a general rule of thumb. I don't think it's always accurate.
However, if you are supposed to be continuously growing you're going to need more manpower you're going to need constantly be updating your technology that you're using. How many companies can any of us name from the top of our head that have updated their ERP systems and how much of a change process did that involve. Sometimes a lot of companies don't have the people that know how to use let's say SAP.
So they have to hire someone in specific departments, wherever they're weak to implement the data migration to the new ERP system. Someone with that transfer experience into the new system. So that alone is a situation of change but also hiring anyone, anyone whether they're a junior in the department or whether they're a manager, especially if they're a manager. It's going to take a level of adaptation. Your client base is going to grow. That's going to require an adaptation as well.
Anything you do really I mean life. How many conversations have anyone had throughout their life where let's say a friend stops talking to you when you're in high school. You start to get dramatic about it. And then you know what's the number one thing your parents tell you. Ah, make new friends. It's change. Change is normal. Yeah. Change is definitely normal. And, you know, looking looking back at what happens what what I think it's also important is to leave room for the unexpected.
So plan as much as you can. You know, expect the unexpected. But at the same time, do not get yourself into mind tracks. And the example that I that I give most often is, you know, in winter, how cars get out of the parking lot. The first car that has to go through, you know, version 10, 10 centimeter highs. No, you know, it's not that that okay.
The second one still can steer a little bit to the right to the left and change course but by the time you know the 10th is six car wants to leave, especially if the tracks have been frozen. It's quite difficult to change direction. So, don't, don't think in such a way that you become the 26 car. Yeah, and it's difficult to change direction. Yeah. I hope that that we we answered the question to some degree.
You, you mentioned, you know, companies, companies changing and companies changing technology and yes technologies is a is a big conversation but we talk about data literacy. And one of the questions that that I raise in in a, in a meeting recently at work is, you know, we talk about the future of work. And how can we make sure that we also talk about the future of people. Yeah, I think that's that's an equally critical conversation.
And it's not just about the technology and it's not just about the work spaces and it's not just about the ways of working, but it's about how we relate differently to one another. How we perceive ourselves and how we perceive others and how others perceive us. And this is probably, in my opinion, going to become one of the most important things and the good news, though, is that emotional intelligence can be developed. It's not like IQ. But it takes a conscious effort.
It takes it, you know, a daily. Okay, I said this to this person. They reacted this way and not blame someone for reacting. But instead ask, maybe if I said it this way, what was the problem for me? If so, how can I avoid that? You know, like, but it takes a sense of ownership and mistakes. It takes a sense of ownership and creating conflict sometimes. And we have a natural tendency to, you know, push the blame somewhere else.
Yeah, so funny that you mentioned this, a very, very enjoyable and inspiring recent conversation was about disagreement. And, and how oftentimes we put this equal sign between disagreement and conflict. And it's not the same.
And how do we go about expressing disagreement and what that space, you know, between not expressing it in the heat of the moment, but at the same time, not, not letting it faster either until become it becomes this additional entity into a relationship personal or professional equally. And for some reason, we lost the ability of having conversations covering different viewpoints in an inclusive and intentionally inclusive manner. And I'm not talking just about very sensitive topics.
I'm talking about every day stuff. I'm talking about saying, I have a different experience or I have a different opinion because or from where I stand this, this looks like this. And, you know, being being open to disagreement, I think it's, it's the highest expression of diversity and inclusion. That is diversity of thought and diversity of opinion, which is built on having as many and as diverse people around us possible and being intentional about having that. Right.
And that's a guarantee of sustainability. But like you said, I mean, I'm just going to circle back here but you know, the biggest part of being a sustainable leader is you I mean you hit the nail on the head when you said it's self awareness. But you can't be self aware if you're not honest with yourself and having that open conversation consistently with everyone else. Yeah, there is a word that almost got the status of taboo in the business world. And that's humble and humility.
There is this amazing quote and I was, I was trying to remember who said it but I will, I will try to remember it or find it that being humble is not about thinking less of yourself, but it's about thinking of yourself less. And that kind of, you know, stayed with me and I can go into, I can grow into my own space and respecting and acknowledging and appreciating the same thing for everyone around me.
And I remember I refreshed my memory with the attributes of sustainable leaders and humility was one of them. Humility is very important. And I've heard it a lot lately. Not lately. I mean, since I started my career. Actually, but you don't see it practiced as often as, you know, as we talk about it. It's, and that's the sad truth. Being humble is not what we're naturally inclined to do.
You know, because, you know, we were, we were for the right reasons. Oftentimes, yeah, we were pushed to compete, and we were pushed to prove ourselves and we were pushed to achieve things. We were pushed, you know, for deliverables and we were pushed for project management and we were pushed for KPIs. Right. A variety of perspectives and again for all the right reasons. Right. But at the same time, we do also have a natural tendency to seek qualitative KPIs in our life.
And that doesn't come from bank accounts. Right. Right. But, but you know, I think we need to, I mean, if I could change one thing about work environments, it would be maybe not change, but let's say motivate and, and, and, you know, get it the ball rolling with a little bit more. Focus is building in a culture of collaboration. Don't only incentivize for single-handed achievements, but also incentivize for supporting others, you know.
And I think that's just as if not more important than the single-handed achievement incentivization. Well, if we look at the title of place conversation, you know, sustainable leadership, I believe sustainability is also about how you go about defining your legacy. What's your legacy of a PNL spreadsheet or people that you inspired to grow other people with direct impact into your PNL spreadsheet. Right. Yeah.
And I believe that's true sustainability. And I believe that, you know, a statement of the highest value legacy that you could have. And that is leadership. And this is a message that's very important to me. That's leadership beyond hierarchy, beyond role, beyond status, beyond age, beyond seniority. Right. And that's, you know, how you touch people. Oftentimes, you know, leadership is associated with an executive corner office or, you know, senior or executive in your title.
Also, we all know what marketing executive really means when you start out your career. I honestly believe that leadership is not only about inspiring and motivating people to follow your ideas, but it's more importantly about inspiring and motivating others to follow their ideas. Right. And that's, that's to me is sustainability. And then, you know, change management is really a secondary conversation and. You know, people ask me what change management is.
I said, well, what do you need the definition for if you want a colorful, very nice, impactful, PowerPoint slide, Google it, and you can find, you know, a three word definition or a three paragraph definition. But for me is sense making. And my biggest biggest learning for change management goes back to my journalistic background. And that was a training in community if you want. And that was what I learned. And my truth is that I am just as good as I can make sense to other people.
And I honestly believe that storytelling was a sustainable leadership for change management for diversity and inclusion for all the big things of our lives. Storytelling is a critical sense making literacy. And I think I told you this and it sounds funny coming from a change manager. But my dream is that there will be people living in a world where conversations about sustainability and diversity and inclusion and change management will not happen because
there will be present and embedded in the very reality of the life and of the world. And there will not need to be addressed. That's true. Well, I mean, I think I'm so think I want to thank you for being on with us today. And I think we're running close to the end, but I just wanted to ask you if you want to leave us with words of wisdom from your experience. Anything that can just keep us going and doing our jobs the best that we can.
Well, first and foremost, thank you so very much for the invite and thank you all for joining in. I would just say that changes is not here to stay change has always been here and change has always been with us and in us. And there is a, there is a quote that I absolutely love that goes that if nothing ever changed, we wouldn't have butterflies. And, you know, don't forget that we are all our most senior stakeholders in any change. Thank you so much, Manola. Thank you.
Thank you. Have a great day and thank you for anyone watching and interested in sustainable leadership and especially change management. Have a great night. Thank you so much. Bye everyone.