E51 - The Change Questions Framework - Podcast with Dr. Lynn Kelly

But also the best way to form relationships is to show and not a fake question , but a real question . I want to know what you think . There's nothing more powerful than that For me asking somebody . I want to know what you think . I want to know what makes you tick . I mean , it's , it's , and I really do want to know that . So that's very , very powerful .

Today , my guest is Dr Lynn Kelly , a distinguished author and thought leader whose career has spanned the diverse worlds of transportation , manufacturing , healthcare , finance and education , from operational roles to strategic executive leadership positions in Fortune 200 companies .

Lynn has established expertise in areas such as continuous improvement , lean manufacturing , six in man . More Renowned for her insights in change management , lynn's ability to demystify complex concepts and provide actionable questions strategies well help any changemaker translate change vision into real value .

In this episode , lynn and I talk about Lynn's book Change Questions , explore the power of questions and dive deep into the details of questions , intentions and motives . I am grateful to have Lynn chatting with me today . Well , lynn , thank you very much for joining me in the Inner Game of Change podcast . I'm eternally grateful for your time .

That was my job , and then , about seven years later , I had my master's degree and I was the chief operating officer of the hospital . So it was a big transition .

And then what happened is , in the next year my mother died , my husband's mother died and my husband's brother died , and suddenly I got that realization that I had gone to work because I needed to provide stability for my family but family's the most important thing and now all I did was work yes , so it was a big wake-up call .

So my husband and I switched roles . Then I actually he went back to work and I went into a PhD program , but it gave me a lot of flexibility . So I got a PhD , became a stats professor and then was recruited to go to Textron .

And I was in Australia working for a bit at Wollongong where you are from , I know , or where we are right now and anyway worked all over the world and ended up working for the CEO of Textron Implementing Change , wide-scale change , 32 different countries in all different capacities and supply chain engineering , it manufacturing quality so a lot of challenges and a

lot of failures , because nobody wants to hear from this woman who's going to tell them what they're going to do differently .

So every time I failed implementing a change , I researched what I needed to do differently and that's how I developed this method or this approach that I call the change questions , and it's my approach to implement change , and I saw kind of the success and sustainment of those changes go from like 30% to over 90% .

My last position was before I left corporate America was I was recruited to go to Union Pacific Railroad and think about what lean manufacturing would look like on a railroad , with the operating department , which was 42,000 employees that pretty much hardly ever see a supervisor and are hardly ever under a roof .

So it was a really challenging environment and we were able to really do some great work there and I still always measure , because I'm a statistician what is the success ? How do we sustain ? And we counted 96% success rate and a strong correlation with operating results with all the stuff that we did .

So that really forms the basis of my career and pretty much my life .

And you know , I've learned over the years to be much more open to feedback and people telling me things , because often it's really good stuff , right , but it's the way

that it's . I've come to the conclusion that you can , especially with organizational change , you can have the best solution , the most perfect solution , and if you don't get the hearts and the minds of the people , it's going to fail .

And the way that I have found to engage people with in their hearts and minds is to approach it with a humble leadership type of capacity , but with asking questions and learning , because nobody knows their jobs better than the people that do them and nobody knows where they can improve but the people that do the work .

But if you ask a question , then people will reach inside their brains and consider things , think about that , they meld their minds with yours to engage in kind of a give and take thought process , and I just think the questioning is one of the most powerful tools that we have .

But also the best way to form relationships is to show and not a fake question , but a real I want to know what you think . There's nothing more powerful than that For me asking somebody , I want to know what you think , I want to know what makes you tick , and I really do want to know that . So that's very , very powerful .

Does that happen to you ?

How is that relevant and how is that critical in most situations ?

The thing that I have done differently with my approach is , rather than having kind of a set do this , do this , do this , or like a model or an eight-step framework , what I've done instead is , out of all of the lessons that I've learned , I've created 11 questions , and those 11 questions pretty much cover

everything that's out there that I could find that's meaningful about change , success factors and failure modes , and so what I think , the way I approach it is no two changes are the same .

So , although a set methodology is helpful , if you follow every step , you may over process , you know , maybe over plan for your change or maybe there's a step missing in your under plan .

Instead , if you ask yourself or your people , your leadership or whoever is implementing the change , these questions or these types of questions , then you end up answering the ones that are applicable for you , and what I found is I can develop a customized approach for every change that I implement , or anybody implements .

Just by asking the questions and the ones that are appropriate , I answer , or the team answers , or leadership answers . So I find that it is a good way to , with such high failure rates of change , organizational change in general , it's a good way to really increase the probability that whatever you're putting the energy into to change will will .

Will engage the people , and some of those questions are actually asked to the people who are doing the work . So there's a whole of these 11 questions . You know some of them are for leadership , some are for the people doing work , some are for the team , some are for yourself , but eventually you end up knowing the best way to approach your change .

Some of them even have finished you know , completed a civic than them or whatever . It is Right . And so when a change practitioner nowadays this is the I'm talking here about how we need to evolve their change practice they expect that a cookie cutter approach is not going to work .

I need you to show me that you're looking at my organization as a unique organization and not just because you've done it in the past and it worked . And even if I am an organization within the same industry , I am still unique as an organization . So no two supermarket chains are the same . What would be your comment on this ?

You don't do too much , but just kind of like the Goldilocks and free bearers , it's just just amount of a planning and things that you want to put in place before you start the change . You get that just amount of preparation so that it will , it will go forward and prosper and continue to sustain .

I'm dealing with physicians , everybody's so well educated and and I felt this need to prove that I was at the level that I should be , and , and so I over compensated by pretending that I knew stuff and not asking and not if I didn't know how a process worked , you know , and I thought it needed to be improved , instead of saying show me what you do , I

would really love to learn that . And do you do this and how ? How could this be improved ? I would think that for myself , for to be viewed as a successful leader , I had to go in with a solution , and and that is one of the first mistakes that I had to correct that I am maybe some expectation .

Some people expect leaders to know it all , but I have found that when I look at leaders that I respect , they are the ones that show that they don't know it all , because nobody knows it all , and and then they're willing to to ask the questions .

So it does take curiosity , as you said , but I also think it takes a humbleness to know it all and then they're willing to to ask the questions . So it does take curiosity , as you said , but I also think it takes a humbleness and a and also a self self confidence that I don't have to appear like I know everything .

You know , tell me this , tell me this , and that can be raising the threat level to the other person . So the way I look at it is building a relationship important before asking questions or any any slight level of trust , at least knowing the purpose of the conversation , before I bombarded somebody with the questions .

And so I again I , when I was a text run I will never forget this there were a few folks that had come into the company from the outside and they were leading our department and they were they brand new came in about three of them at the top leadership roles of our actually our business unit and their deal was when you presented , it was all a gotcha ,

it's , you know , you just had to survive the questions that were out to get you ,

and that was the key to learn how to survive . But then also , what I found happening is that many people then started to imitate that , because that's what those three leaders had demonstrated was the skill that they wanted people to have , and and that they all shared that skill and they were successful .

And so I will never forget I had someone presenting to me and I just tried to gotcha question and this person just deflated in front of me and the person was so excited about this project that they had done .

And there was one area that I saw was not done to maybe the same standards , but the results were amazing and instead of focusing on like the positive stuff , I asked the gotcha question and when I saw he deflated and I saw that I really had ruined that opportunity and I said to myself then , no matter what a leader does with those types of questions , I will

never be a part of that , and whether that keeps me from being successful , so be it , but I'm not gonna do that , and so I do think you're right .

There are two types of questions the one that is just to show others how smart you are and to catch others out , and then the other one that you really wanna know , you really care about the person and you want to understand .

First of all , I can see that they're trying to trip me . And a second thing sometimes I see that they're not really interested in the answer anyway . They just asking it for their question sake , and this is why I really emphasize on the word be genuine about it .

I'm genuinely interested in the information so I can take that information , analyze it , and that information becomes insight for me and that insight will help me facilitate and build my change plans . Is that the approach ?

that I would do that I think , as people do often , when I first remembered learned that I need to start asking questions , I started asking like with my direct reports , I would often be very straightforward I think we need to do this or let's do this , or I kind of tell people which direction we're heading .

And again , I thought that was more a leadership thing . And then I started that when I first started practicing asking questions , I would know what I wanted them to get to . I would already had decided this is what I wanna do with this department .

So the questions that I asked them was about getting them to my decision rather than and people are smart , they know that and fortunately I had a good team and I had said to them look , I'm really working hard on not being so telling you what I want to have happened , but be more inclusive and understanding and asking for your feedback .

So they knew that I was working on it . And then they started saying to me ah , lynn , you're asking questions , but you're still doing the same thing . You're trying to get us to the answer you want us to have . So again

, I mean , for me it took a lot of practice .

It wasn't my natural , I was not naturally comfortable in asking questions , but once , what's so amazing about this whole thing and you've helped me see this , ali , I'm so grateful to you is how far I came , because I had completely forgotten some of those ways that I functioned before I got to the point which , for the last 20 years , I've been using these change

questions . And once I got to the point where it became natural , I forgot that I used to . I struggled and I had . It's a tough time initially .

So , giving people the time and not trying to answer the question for them , and giving them the time to process if they're that type of person , but then also somebody who's processing as they're talking , understanding that sometimes what they're saying because they're processing at the same time , may still be a hypothesis .

So you know , understanding how people we talked about the psychiatry or psychology of change and all of this blends together because the way people actually process ideas is different from person to person . And when we become really good at understanding how to ask questions , we also have to understand how they're perhaps processing their answers .

So it's not so simple . Wonderful it can be to get started . You know you don't want to make it sound daunting , but it's not . The more you start to ask questions , the more you learn . It's not so simple .

If they are senior stakeholders , the type of questions are actually different From if you're talking to the directly impacted person when it comes to process or whatever it is , because I often see that and I cringe , but then I might be wrong and most of the time I'm wrong , probably and is there a difference between a verbal session of asking questions than a

written approach ? Because sometimes I find people sending a list of questions to a stakeholder and say answer those questions .

Yes , but also we were taught by anthropologists to understand the qualitative aspect of data gathering , and the least rich way to gather feedback and data is to qualitative feedback and data is to do a written question , because you know a lot of most of the meaning of the people . The way that people answer questions is in the tone of voice .

You know that's what you can say . The same you can say the same sentence five different times with the different tone of voice could have five different meanings , like are you , are you late , are you late , are you late ? You can say it so many ways and it can have different meanings . So you know the best .

The best , yes , the fastest way to get answers to your questions , if they're qualitative , is through written , the writing , and often you know that's if you're miles apart or whatever , and you can't do zoom . That's most efficient , but it's also the least comprehensive or you lose the nuances and sometimes nuances are meaningful .

You know I'm not downgrading the written answers to questions because you know if you're , if you're doing a survey of a 10,000 people and you don't know any of them . You don't have a choice , yes , but there are . If you have the opportunity , you know .

And the next thing is observation , watching people in their environment and asking questions about what they're doing . And you know there's a whole level of richness to data and but the the richer the data , the smaller the sample size . So you , you give up . You give up things when you try to get for a true rich conversation .

So you know it's a balancing act . I actually like to balance what I'm gathering data quantitative liquid scale , like you know , one , two , three , four , five or multiple choice . I like to do a balance between that and some qualitative stuff .

There is a side effect for that , these , these unintended positive consequence , which is , whether we like to or not , we immediately build a level of relationship when we have a conversation with somebody , and that is an invaluable asset for you in the future , because the aim of questioning is not just to gather information , it's actually to build the relationships

with the stakeholders .

But you also mentioned something about the positive aspect , but there's also you got to be careful because there's the unintended bias of , if you connect with somebody face to face or you like the way that they dress or the way they look , you could you could give more weight to their answers than somebody that you took a dislike to or there .

So there's all all the nuances . Yes , there's positive and negative right .

Yes , yes , well you know what I used to do when I used to do surveys is I would if it involved things that would involve that where I needed opinions , which normally that's qualitative data in terms of background motivations all of that's , you know , would be qualitative I would try to get a group together or do a bunch of interviews or do a focus group and

then , depending on all those answers , I would try to do multiple choice questions based on those answers , but I'd always leave a place for another , and then they could fill in a line of a sentence , you know , and and that sometimes bridges the gap a little bit better to if you're , if you have to do , a group of people- Fantastic .

So so some of them are targeted to leadership , and the way that I have often dealt with leadership and the way that you ask leadership is I don't know if you're familiar with the catch ball approach , but no , okay . So , for instance , let me give you one of

the change questions . One of them is how can leadership visibly show support for the change initiative ?

So if I'm up with the change team and we're going to implement a big change across the organization that leadership the top leadership said they're in favor of , but maybe other leaders in the organization aren't then what I would end up doing is catch ball can either start with me and the team putting ideas together of how leadership could show that they are

visibly in favor of the change . And that comes from the whole research that shows that one of the top two reasons that change initiative fail is not it's not worded that leadership doesn't support it . It's worded that leadership does not show visible support of the change .

So , given that we've taken that research and turned it into a change question , then I would either go to leadership and start the catch ball by asking them the question hey , how do you think that you could visibly show support for this change ? And they might say things well , like I could ask for updates regularly .

Or I could walk the floor every day where the change has taken place and saying , hey , is it working ? Or I could actively try to remove barriers and roadblocks from having to be effective , and people could see me doing that .

I mean , they could have ideas and then , with the catch ball , what that means is they would throw the ball back to me with those ideas . I'd then take those with other leadership and other ideas and then I throw the back ball back to me . Maybe all the leaders who participated and said this was what we heard from all of you .

Do you all agree that you will sign up for this and have this whole catch ball conversation , that I don't go to leaders and say , hey , you need to do this to show support of the change ? I create a kind of a flow . I tend to take that approach with leadership I tend to .

If it's the employees where the change is going to take place , I will go to the workplace or the team and I will go , or someone on the team will go to the workplace and we'll ask , we'll talk about this potential new change and we'll say I want to get your ideas on it and show me how you do the work now and show me what would be done differently and

how do you think this would work and what would be the problems to be so with them . I'm more just really trying to dig into the whole context around where the actual work that is changing will take place . So it's two different types of things and of course I said there are 11 of them and they're all kind of for different types of purposes and groups .

And then the third thing that we didn't talk about , but it's a form , a different form of questioning , and it is before we introduce change globally , like a peanut butter spread to everybody .

I really like to ask a wide , a big scale change of where can we try this out and how can we get the bugs out before everybody goes through it and how can we think about this on a micro level , if possible , before the whole organization gets it ? And so that's like a smaller type of change . It's just let's try this in a place , can we do that ?

So those are the three . Take it . Those are the things that I found really helped with success .

There's a place where they can send me an email and then the book itself is available on Amazon in print , kindle and audio book .

It's been a pleasure having you at the Inner Game of Change podcast with me . I hope to get you back in the future and tackle another topic . Certainly , we're talking about a big topic when it comes to the art and the power of thinking . But until next time , stay well and stay safe . Thank you , thank you . Thank you , lynn .

Hi everyone , I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode . To know more about my guests and this podcast , check the InnerGameOfChangecomau website and , remember , subscribe . I can't wait to share with you my next podcast . Until then , stay well and stay safe .