Lessons Learned in Change Management

[00:00:00] Awesome. Thanks so much everybody for tuning in today. Um, we’re the, yeah, we’re going to be talking to you about, um, change management. We, this is a topic that had come up a lot in our chat over the last little bit. And so I figured enough had been enough and I wanted to just get some people in a room and talk about some of the things that were going on.

And so what I want us to be is just like a moment to kind of share and help build some of the collective knowledge here because we’ve all gone through Change management in our own projects and organizations and, uh, been on both the giving and receiving end of it. So, um, I wanted to use this time to kind of just share some of the, the stories and also, um, yeah, just talk about things that we’ve learned throughout and help others, um, wherever they might be in, in their own processes or their, their own kind of change.

Um, and that’s kind of the beauty of, um. The community anyway. It’s just building up that collective knowledge. So, um, I’ve asked a couple people to bring stories. Um, and if you don’t have one, that’s [00:01:00] fine. If you think of one during the session, that’s, that’s cool too. Um, but what I want to do is just, uh, be able to kind of, you know, share some of these stories.

And then as questions come up, please feel free to either put them in the chat or shout them out. This is going to be very much just a discussion. Um, and, uh, We can share some of the things that we’ve learned along the way. Um, so the idea is that when we leave today, yeah, hopefully we’ll just have some more tools and ideas for approaching change in our in our own projects.

Um, one of the people had asked to bring a story just to get us started off was, uh, was Fred. So, uh, Fred, if you don’t mind, um, leading us off here and we’ll. We’ll kind of start with kick things off. And then, like I mentioned, yeah, questions in the chat questions, um, raise your hand even, and ask them out and we’ll, uh, we’ll have some fun.

Yeah, for sure. Thanks. First of all, thanks [00:02:00] for putting this together. I think it’s, uh, it’s, it’s not only cool. To see events like this, but it’s even cooler to see events like this and pretty much direct response to people, you know, having questions and things because it’s, uh, it really builds community. I think so.

And for inviting me to share a story. So my. My background is in instructional systems design, and I have actually have a doctorate in instructional systems design. So I’ve looked at all the theory and and models and part of instructional systems design as organizational development. And so a big part of that has changed management.

And so, although I don’t have a tremendous amount of experience with, like, formal. Change management as far as, like, being on a change team and that that kind of stuff where, uh, the learning organization is a real sort of thing that people strive for done a little bit of research in the area, like, Peter’s thing is learning organization, right?

The 5th discipline, uh, looking at, uh, you know, Cotter’s 8 step [00:03:00] model and, uh, Lewin’s model of, like, freeze on freeze, refreeze, and, um, those sort of models are really helpful. As objects to think about change with, right? It’s like, what are the processes that you might go through? And what are the things that you might do in that in that space and even with like implementation work.

So, like, uh, Everett Rogers has a lot of work on diffusion of innovations and adoption. And so this, this idea that you reach a critical mass. When a technology is being adopted, it like you have these like the innovators who will sort of latch on to anything and carry the flag for a while. But once those people start sort of, once you’ve saturated that market, there needs to be some reach beyond that.

And so it started, starts going to early adopters and then reaches a critical mass where sort of everybody knows what it is and they start thinking about it and then moves through and you. Move toward this this late adopter sort of stage. We’re like, everybody’s now using Microsoft teams or whatever in the organization.

And then there’s always those few people at the end or laggards who are just like, I’m not doing that. It’s not going to happen. [00:04:00] Uh, I come from higher education and there were, even though there is 1, you know, the whole school uses Google or Microsoft or whatever. There’s always like 3 faculty who are like, I don’t use that email.

I use my other email because I like it better. And, you know, how do you know about meetings? How can students schedule appointments with you? Well, they have to go through this Rube Goldberg machine of, like, figuring out how to connect my schedule and, you know, send an email by carrier pigeon and all that stuff.

So there’s, there’s model, there are models and theories behind it, but so that I’m not too long winded. I’ll just share very quickly. I’ve had a lot of different experiences over the years and the one that I thought would be most applicable here. Maybe, um, I work a lot with, with helping organizations retool with monday.

com and, and similar tools. And so I had a client who, um, produced the e learning. They would, they were a firm that created training for larger companies. And one of the clients that I had had used [00:05:00] Monday before, but it was one of those situations where it was implemented, um, You know, somebody came in and did it, but it wasn’t like necessarily mapped out.

And a lot of the challenges that I have, like, a lot of the Monday projects that I have aren’t really Monday projects, their business process projects. And so what you find is that you come in and people don’t have their statement, their standard operating procedures figured out, or haven’t mapped the workflow, or haven’t sort of thought through how.

That was the ideal processes. And so they, if you don’t sort of know where you’re at, then you can’t change that. Right? And then nothing’s going to work the way you want. So that particular client, it took me about a year, but I worked with them pretty in depth to retool their systems and, and, and, and ended up improving a lot of their performance and project delivery and reducing quality issues.

But it all sort of, it was just a lot of iterative cycles of what should that actually look like? And what does it look like right now? And how do we sort of merge the two so that we’re [00:06:00] closer to where we want? I think that process is probably as simple as it gets, but that’s probably the process that all of those change models and all of those other things are trying to get to.

And it’s, that’s pretty universal. If you’re trying to lose weight or gain strength or learn a skill or do your house or sort of whatever sort of thing there is, it’s that whole, cool. Analysis part where it’s like, well, what’s the ideal look like? And where are we at now? So some practical things, um, that I’ve come away from that project with, uh, as far as like things that lessons learned that I carry now, um, because I spent so much time mapping processes and figuring out that a lot of the challenge was that the problem wasn’t defined.

So we couldn’t solve it. Um, and then looking at the way that the different, um, project workflows were in place, but not necessarily linked together. Um, because there were situations where, uh, she had consultants and that she’d go, okay, [00:07:00] where’s this project at? And I’m like, well, I handed it to the client.

Well, when was that? Like three weeks ago? Well, where is it now? I haven’t heard from him. Well, did you follow up? Like, not yet. So those handoffs and things like that are just mapping that process, being aware of it. So the lessons that I’ve carried from that are, um, like whenever I start with a new client, I always try to just really define the problem up front and make sure that I’ve got it analyzed and I know exactly what they’re trying to do.

And I don’t even touch Monday or whatever tool we’re doing. You know, even programming is a lot like this. I think you don’t open up DS code and start clacking away. You know, pretty much what you’re going for before you start doing that. And it’s, it’s planning and it’s the part that I’m, I don’t sort of naturally fall into, but I’ve forced myself to learn planning and it’s so helpful.

It’s like outlining a paper. Right. Um, so that’s huge. And then just making sure that I work with them, make them articulate the process that they want. Right. So if it’s like, we want this thing to happen. What does that look like? Who does it [00:08:00] go to next? Where does it pass to? You know, what happens after that?

Where do you get the inputs for this? And the goal really is to just make a map. So I don’t know if that’s I mean, that’s it’s a little bit off base, maybe from where we’re trying to go. But I can expand on that. But I don’t want to chew up too much time when I’m curious about. I’m gonna ask the first question.

Is, uh, like, okay, so you, you come into this space and then you’ve got to essentially start creating SOPs for these people because they have nothing in place. What, what kind of like, um, like, I guess, were there people that were kind of pushing back against these things and like, you know, because obviously they probably have their own personal SOPs essentially that they’re following, you know, that they, like, so how does that work?

Relationship work there. Like, how can you get them to get on board with these things? Yeah, that’s a really good point. I’m glad you brought it up. So in this case, I was working primarily with the owners. That was good because it was, she’s the primary stakeholder. She’s the person who had everything. One of the [00:09:00] challenges was all that stuff existed.

It was just inside of her head. And it wasn’t necessarily being practiced or carried out. So if you’ve got other people in this case, they were consultants. So they weren’t like, full time employees or anything. They were just contractors. And so their interest was to come in, deliver the project. as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But that was it. They weren’t sort of invested in the business and the success of the business beyond delivering a good product. So they also had a way that they like to do it and it was maybe their standard process and maybe it was well defined or maybe it wasn’t sort of depends on how long they’ve been contracting for.

But Those two things didn’t always match. So then you’re in a situation where the owner is saying, okay, this is the process. Now we’ve mapped it out. And this is what I want you to follow. And the contractor may or may not agree with that. And so then you get into policy things like, um, project based hours, right?

I’m going to give you X amount of hours for this project. I’m going to give you X amount of, um, you know, this is the, this is the [00:10:00] lockstep process that you’re going through here, the gates or the checkpoints. Uh, and if you don’t make that, uh, Then you can sort of stop the process early. And a lot of it’s about that checks and balances piece.

Um, so there is resistance. I think there’s always resistance. And it sort of goes back to that diffusion of innovations model where you’ve got a few people who are going to buy into it. You’ve got some authority sort of laying out what the process is going to be and some of it. Is dictating this is how it’s going to be and some of it is making sure that you’re open to suggestions and that you’re letting people sort of co author with you to and what the right balance is sort of this case by case thing and depends on, you know, what you can negotiate.

But I think that’s probably a good good way to approach it. I would, I would love to get a feel for, um, How this resonates with a few other folks on the call here. Like the at least some of the similar [00:11:00] challenges and approaches that you’ve seen or used in your own space. Um, or where are the differences?

If if that’s not the case for you,

completely unique experience that nobody else. Nobody’s come up against that. So, I mean, certainly run against situations where people have been resistant. To new ideas or to changes or to processes

we’ve got we’ve got a few cameras off So it could be that people are just um listening on the side of their desk and other things. That’s that’s all right Thank you much. I have a I have a like a question for you Fred is in those circumstances You talked about the woman who had everything in [00:12:00] her head and you needed to kind of like extract it from her How do you go about?

stating to that person that this is important and that they need to make the time to tell you the information. So, or like, so you can continue to teach people to fish because I run where they’re like chaotic and crazy. And they’re like, I don’t have a minute. Now you’re doing things I didn’t ask you to do.

Tell us like that. There’s a, there’s a lot of things coming to my head right now. One part of this is like, Part of this is like knowing. So one of the things I say a lot of times as project managers, we’re not holding the steering wheel. We’re in the passenger seat with the map and we’re telling you, hey, you need to take this left turn.

It’s coming up. It’s half a mile away. Go ahead and turn your blinker on. Make sure we’re going to turn. But if if they bypass the turn and they just go, that’s you’re not holding the steering wheel. So then your job becomes, okay, it looks [00:13:00] like we passed the turn that we really needed to take. The next best thing for us to do is to turn around here and go back and, you know, go this other route and but you still don’t have the steering wheel.

So they, at some point, you know, at the end of the journey, they go, why did this take three extra hours? And they look at you as if it’s your responsibility, right? And what you say is all those times that I told you to take a left turn and you didn’t take a left turn. We had to compensate for that and move around.

So I think that’s the analogy that I typically use. And so that’s sort of keep that in mind. Um, part of it is they don’t know and maybe they’re busy. Maybe they don’t sort of have it all mapped out, but it takes time to match stuff out. A lot of times they think that it’s done and it’s not. They think people understand it.

Okay. But it’s not necessarily the case in this particular case with this particular, um, client. Um, we spent a lot of time. A lot of our meetings because she had so much on her plate because there was so much going on. A lot of our meetings were me just [00:14:00] sitting there sort of listening to her go through all the things that she had going and she’s messaging people.

It was very hard to sort of catch a minute. And so the best thing I could sort of hope to do was at the end of that say, okay, Okay. I either she said some things that I could put his action items and say, I’ll take care of these or she hadn’t. And I had some ideas and I said, well, I think this would be the best thing for me to work on.

Do you agree or not? And if not, what else would you like me to work on? But sometimes, I mean, I would meet for a whole hour and the best I could get was, you know, Me telling her, Hey, I think I should work on these two or three things and try to put those in place and get some feedback. It was a long process.

And thankfully, if you’re hourly, uh, you know, it works like that. If it’s project based, you have to sort of go a different approach, but I just tell people, I’m an expensive therapist or friend. And if you want to burn your hours up that way, we can, but I’m sort of obligated to tell you, this is how we need to work on this.

Right? And if you don’t take a left turn, I’m along for the ride. But, uh, I don’t know. Did that help [00:15:00] Robin? Hopefully that was not way off. No, that definitely helped. And I would like a new role title of a expensive therapist. Yeah, it was. I mean, you know, it’s sometimes it’s apt. And when you, um, yeah, I’ve, I’ve seen.

Yeah, exactly. Sarah, when, when sometimes it’s contradictory stuff, I’ve, I’ve seen people say, I’m going to do a, I want you to do a, and you work on a for a while. And then you go, and they go, well, actually, I want you to do be. Thank you. And then you go to be and then they’re like, why did you do B? And you’re like, because you told me to do B and we should do a I’m like, okay, well, we’ll do a right.

But then you’re vacillating back and forth for me as a consultant. It’s if I’m hourly, I’ll do that all day long. I’ll tell you we shouldn’t do it, but I will do that all day long for you. Because if that’s what you need, that’s what you need. If it’s project based, I have to nip it in the bud immediately because I’ve thrown away 150 hours worth of work on stock because clients have said.

Okay. You know what this thing and it’s nothing at all like that thing and you get halfway through the process and you’re like, [00:16:00] what, what’s going on? And I think the only thing you can do in those situations is say, you know, sometimes clients say, I want a fast car and they don’t know if it’s a Porsche or Lamborghini, they can’t tell until they’re looking at it going.

This is what I want, or that’s not. Um, but yeah, being hourly is the way. Yeah, some people have to talk the whole time. And, uh, and that’s how they process it. And then sometimes all you can do is let them go. And then at the end say, this is what I’m taking away from this. Correct me if I’m wrong. Like, these are the five things I’m going to be working on.

These are the three things you’re going to deliver to me. And then I’ll always try to sum it up in an email afterwards, too. I’ll say it. And then I’ll, or if I can’t say it, I’ll at least send an email, but I’ll send an email every time and say, okay, you’re going to be doing these. I’m going to be doing these.

And that way, 2 weeks from now, when they forgot, I can go, well, this is what we were working on. And I’ll even pull it up before our next meeting and say, last meeting, we were supposed to work on this. I reminded you Wednesday, you didn’t get it to me, but I got this, but I can’t do [00:17:00] this 1 because I’m waiting on this from you.

That kind of stuff. Yeah. Recordings are helpful. Especially that action items with. Yeah, that would definitely help out. I’m curious. Um, Robin, like, the question you brought up about. Um, that person who kind of had everything needed it written down, like, how does that relate to is that because, like, you had something that you’re dealing with right now?

Or how does that relate to, um, some of the challenges you’ve come up against when needing to try to manage change, um, throughout your project? Well, I think sometimes we live in, like, A chaotic project and we want to put together some processes or S. O. P. S. That would be helpful in case this happens in the future.

And so sometimes we don’t have a minute toe to gather those informations from that person. Guess it’s the best way. But I’m also confused on sort [00:18:00] of what change management is versus project management because I feel like anything can be a project. So, if you can clarify that, I think I would feel. I think that’s a fantastic question.

Yeah, I can take a stab at it, but I’ve also been talking a lot. So somebody else has a,

anybody else? Yeah, I can try to speak to that. Um, so like, if you look really definitionally, a project is, is your temporary endeavor that leads to a product or result, the one, if anybody’s done the PMP class, it’s like the first thing they tell you, change management is really the process of managing. The change so let’s say since we’re digital project managers, we’re talking about a new website So you’re now going to hand somebody a new website What does that have to like what happens when you do that?

There’s going to have to be change in their process Maybe you redid their [00:19:00] contact form And now leads are going to come in differently. Maybe you hooked into their crm with some new fields They’re now going to have this new information So like all of these are really good and awesome things You But they’re change so we have to think about how we Communicate the change how we get people ready for the change Um, I think fred did a really nice job earlier talking about people who maybe are a little resistant to that change what happens to them Um, i’m on a project right now that When I, I took over from another PM and had to co tell the client on like day one of me being project manager, that they made like a six or seven figure whoopsie daisies early in the project and that they were going to not only have their launch delayed, but they needed to come up with a lot more money to fix the problem.

And part of that comes from exactly what Fred was talking about, just on a larger scale. It was that they are [00:20:00] replacing like 20 year old software that people have, um, Frankensteined onto, um, because there was another vendor involved and they wanted to keep it like cone of silence, we were told we could only speak to a very teeny tiny group of stakeholders, and that group of stakeholders gave us information that we, that the team actioned against, I shouldn’t say we, I wasn’t even there, the team actioned against, and when we got to the user testing, We found out that what we had actioned against was actually wrong and now we have to go back and do all of this work right.

Which is where the six or seven figure whoopsie daisy came from. So, there were some very valid reasons why they didn’t want us to open the floodgates and do too much talking to users too fast. Because if the other vendor got angry and pulled the software out before we were ready to start cutting over, they weren’t going to be able to run their business.

So, like, in hindsight it all kind of makes sense, but had I been there [00:21:00] from the beginning we probably would have talked about some better ways to do it or I would have made them sign a risk register that says, I understand the risk of doing it this way. I know this might be a problem later because you’re not giving the right information.

My team the access that they need and I understand all of this and I’m cool with it Maybe not i’m cool with it But I understand all of this and i’m signing off on that This is how we’re going to do the project So now we’re towards the end of the project. Of course, the dpm has a template for that and it’s probably fantastic I haven’t seen it, but i’m sure it’s fantastic Now we’re coming towards the end of the project and we’re starting to think about launch Um, we had the client go through a a soft launch Um process.

So it was more like sustained usability testing as part of change management, which also gave them the ability to give feedback, which I think is a really important part of change. If you feel heard, you tend to accept change a little bit better than if it’s completely forced on you, um, Through [00:22:00] that process, we, we found in working with this client, their idea was to just hand these people the software and say, go, and we realized after doing that one time that that was an absolutely terrible idea and that they weren’t going.

Um, we have kind of dialed back into a much more formal soft launch pick off process. So we co hoarded the rest of the groups that had to do testing, and we have a whole kind of, I call it the friendly peer pressure, um, communication, uh, It’s literally an email chain and everybody who’s in the cohort is on it so they can see when each other’s asking questions, which means we can see who’s, who’s playing along and who’s not.

So it’s been a lot of moving parts and not only change on the software side, change in the project team, but now it’s going to be changed within my, you know, my client’s client’s company.

Oh, sorry. Fred asked a question in the situation when letting someone know there are [00:23:00] huge errors like that. Do you soften the situation and protect yourself so they don’t shoot the messenger? So funny, you should ask, um, Galen and I had a whole conversation about contract PMing this morning. And part of it is like, I am the contract PM and I am a hired gun and everybody, the client also in this situation does know that I’m a contractor.

Um, So part of it was because I was sort of this like neutral third party. I could come in and say, now that I, you know, I had been part of the project for a little bit as a consultant, then I went away and I came back when the outgoing project manager left. So when I came back, I could say, Hey, this is the situation I see us in.

We have to figure out how to get us out of this situation. And because I was a little bit neutral third party and a little bit removed, it wasn’t, it wasn’t like I had been the PM the whole time and had just through whatever, whatever reason allowed some of these bad decisions to kind of Um, and some of them [00:24:00] we didn’t know were bad decisions at the time.

I had been in an advisory role, um, for about six months before I took over the project. So some of the decisions that were made, I still stand by because they seemed fine at the time, but they also weren’t mine. So like, I don’t have final say, and now I do. So for me to say to the client, you know, this is what we did.

This is why we did it. Here’s where we are now. I see path A, B and C to getting us out of it and most of them going to take a really big pile of cash in order to do so. Um, one other question I was curious to know is like, um, Robin, do you feel like, like you got a good. Kind of discreet answer between like, what is, where does project management kind of end and where does change begin?

Yeah, I think, um, whereas I really appreciated your contributions. I think what’s helpful for me is like when I go on Google or something and I [00:25:00] put in change management, it’s like, Pro C and this incredible swath of things I don’t understand and certifications I need. And so Marissa, I thought that was really helpful when you dumbed it down to something as much as like, okay, you completed a website.

Now we need to understand like how it’s, How to continue to update and manage those things. Yeah, and it’s the same way that like project management is the process of managing projects and all the things that go into that and the way that we try to plan it. It’s like change management is the same sort of approach.

It’s like. We’ve got to make some change and the nature of projects being not operations, right? It is a sort of a unique circumstance. And so there’s a lot of project change management and project management anyway Um, so yeah, that was a really good way to explain it focused on working through Website management that kind of thing I’m curious if anybody here, um has worked with as a pm has [00:26:00] worked with like a change management team At the same time, specifically working on something, you know,

because I’m curious to see, like, there would probably be a lot of overlap in that situation, um, and I wonder, pardon me, wonders, like, if it would really even be possible in a way to not feel like you’re doing that and, like, stepping on other people’s toes. I actually, um, I did some time this year at one of the big four consultancies.

We actually, there, there was a department for, it was an offering for our clients to have change management folks running change management. A lot of it was about comms, um, you know, getting input, getting buy in. Um, and usually it was stitching the things together because, you know, when you do. Whatever a website redesign, you’re rolling out a new web app.

You’re doing something big, like a marketing campaign is usually one piece of the entire pie. Um, and so someone needs to, someone needs to kind of oversee how that whole pie rolls out in terms of change. Um, it was interesting to watch because it was kind of [00:27:00] that, Michael, it was kind of like, everyone’s like, what are you all doing here?

We’re just doing our thing. You’re hovering over us like this, you know, What was the movie I was just watching? The Creator, right? You’re just kind of hovering over this big spaceship, hovering over everything, and we’re not sure what you’re doing. Um, and, uh, but the value was there. The value was there in the sense that, like, someone needed to kind of stitch it all together, right?

Like, uh, and, and, and ensure that change was being prioritized, because a lot of the projects I’ve been on, It’s either been extra. No one’s thinking about change management. Um, so maybe it falls on you, which is often what happens or your project launches and then flops and fails because no one thought about that.

Um, neither are good. So anyways, um, it was interesting, but it was, it was, it was political.

Yeah, I had a similar experience with, um, with my, my boss when I was working at Aramark, uh, we were doing a, a CRM transition and I was [00:28:00] on, I was technically on the project as the communications lead and then we also had a change lead and. When we were looking at the project thing, my boss was starting to ask me questions.

Well, why is it like, why is change management saying like, this should be an email or this needs to be a meeting or this needs to be training? Like that’s her job. She’s like, well, then what’s your job? And I’m like, well, she’s going to tell me what she thinks it should be. And then I’m going to go do that thing.

So if she says it should be a series of emails, I’m going to go write the emails. If she says it should be, you know, a webinar, I’m going to go produce the webinars, the communications person. And that’s kind of where our jobs. That’s kind of where the line is going to be. And because she wasn’t in the meeting and, and to your point, like it was a little confusing.

It’s like, well, what if you don’t agree with her? I was like, well, I guess we’re all people, so we’re going to have a conversation about it. But they were, um, it was a lug, like Galen said, same thing. The value was there. It was a huge luxury. I learned. So much from her and from like that whole change [00:29:00] management group within the company Um, and it’s just not something that like we get in the digital agency space and i’m super grateful So as fred alluded to it was a certification I really really wanted to get and I think if I had stayed corporate I would have made them pay for it But that certification is like four grand and I really really want it But I really really don’t want to spend four grand on it.

Yeah, that’s fair um, I wanted to give an uh, bring up another another um, Kind of story that we could use, um, to lean on just to give a kind of some tangential experience with, uh, with change management. So, um, I had Sarah as well. If you’ve got a quick story, you could bring that just to kind of, like, give a different perspective on it.

And, um, If you’re willing to share that. I’m happy to. Uh, so the example I’d like to share is from an agency I worked at, uh, and most of you know, probably at this point that I’ve [00:30:00] primarily worked at very, like pretty small creative agencies, like 20 people or less. And I think the majority of them, it’s more around that, like five to 10 marks.

So like pretty small and this particular agency, we had gone through multiple waves of layoffs and. In part of those layoffs, we no longer had a creative team. It had shifted from doing like big creative projects and editorial with, you know, photo shoots that corresponded with all the content we were writing, uh, while the client’s needs shifted and they needed more of research and strategy rather than actual creative production.

So creative team is no longer there. And we were already at a point. Because there was like quick growth that got to that point, um, where the tools, the documentation for the tools we used was no longer like relevant. And it didn’t, it [00:31:00] wasn’t helpful to the current team that was there. Like part of those reductions, uh, operations was also a team of three at its biggest, and then it was two and then it was one and I was that one that was left and like, I didn’t have the time.

Like once we had reduced size, like sometimes you don’t businesses, like the needs change and even though a process or workflow might’ve worked when the team was a size of 20, when you’re just one person, you definitely, it’s like so much more important to work smarter, not harder. And one of the issues we ran into when those reductions happened.

The team didn’t really know how to use Asana, which was our main project management tool, and it was getting very muddy between what was happening in Slack, what the expectations were of using Asana. So it was, um, one of my like quarterly goals to [00:32:00] put together a training program. And that first step was like.

Well, let’s review what we actually have and like define what’s important to the team. So going back to what Fred said, like defining what the problem is to begin with before you start, like determining even what the next steps after that are so important because it can really change like dominoes. Like, if you don’t, if you’re not thinking of the same.

or a specific definition, then it really kind of your steps after that might not be as effective. So some of the challenges that I had with that, like morale was pretty low because layoffs were happening. Uh, limited attention spans. I mean, also coming out of just, uh, it was a fully remote team, but back then COVID still felt more fresh.

And like, people did not want to be sitting in meetings. They didn’t want to be, they definitely didn’t want to read. Like a 40 page Google doc of [00:33:00] this is how we use Asana. And this is how you’re supposed to use Slack. No one wants to do that. So I knew that whatever I had to come up with was it should be bite sized.

It should be relevant. And that anything that was like extraneous that maybe an operations team would find helpful. I had to read like level set with myself. Like, even though I want all those details. At the end of the day, I just need to create a training program and redefine how this agency uses the tools for them.

Like, I can have my own resources for my own purposes, but the last thing I wanted to do is overwhelm them with information that they ultimately didn’t need to know and wouldn’t use. So After that, so that first step was like defining the problem, the problem. And like, what do we really need to do here?

The second step I took there was like, what’s available already? Cause I, you know, I’m a [00:34:00] department of one now. Is there anything Asana has or that some blog has put together where I can just send it to them? And like, maybe there is a resource out there and I, I knew it would probably be. cherry picking a little bit and putting something together.

Um, but ultimately. What I ended up doing after those first two steps, I put together what I called like a mini training program And since we were using asana, I just created a project in asana that I duplicated for each person and it had like They were meant to go through it from top down and each task essentially was like a five minute, just little blip.

So they didn’t have to sit and do it all at once. Like, here’s one aspect that you need to know. Here’s another aspect that you need to know. And it was little things like, the team didn’t know what, how to even use [00:35:00] Asana as a tool. So that’s where looking through those databases was important. Because there was like an excellent five minute.

Video that Asana had already made that explained everything like so it saved me time I just had them watch that first and then I kind of went into These are the expectations of how we’ll use like this is task commenting etiquette This is what you should do when you set up your profile this is like turn off notifications work from your inbox all these little nuances that If you’re new to Asana, you might not know that you can, like, you don’t need to get email notifications and link your slack and do all this, like, just work from your inbox, you need it, like, quadruple notifications for the same thing.

Um, but if you’re working with a team that’s not process oriented, they Might not know that they can turn those things off or that it’s even possible. Um, yeah, [00:36:00] so I put that together and then I had, before I like unleashed. Oh, Michael, go ahead. You got a question. Yeah. My question was just like, okay. So when it comes to you’re putting this train doc together and it’s got like the, you know, how to do this part in a sauna, you know, working on your inbox, like you mentioned.

How do you, like, you actually enforce that these people are doing these things? Because, I mean, obviously, you can give them the direction, and then they can choose to ignore it, and whatever. And it, like, it just creates a lot of issues, because then, not everybody’s working as efficiently as they can. So, where do you draw the line between, like, or find the balancing act between, like, policing people and making sure that they do it, but also giving them the control?

Freedom and not kind of ruining your relationship with them by always. Yeah, I see what you mean. Um, well up front, uh, when I, before everyone did these, like, went through the training program, top to bottom, I did, like, a 10 minute, it might have even been five. It was very short. Like, [00:37:00] look, this is what I did.

This is how you use it. Let me know if you have questions, but I set it up like, this is, To provide stability and to provide like ease in our day So I and that like you can call it like I was spinning it, but really I wasn’t spinning it That’s exactly what it was doing, but they needed to hear This is not just a stupid training that no one wants to do like look if you if we’re all aligned We’re a small team.

Now. We just went through a lot of changes if we’re all aligned and you just take like I think all in all on average for someone to get through that training. And again, they were bite sized pieces, not meant to do all at once, depending on how quickly your reading speed is like less than an hour. Like it was very short, but they also had that as a resource.

Um, so the way that I set that up, I was copied on all of the tasks. So I knew when things have gotten checked off and I just told everyone, like, as you go through it, check it off. If [00:38:00] something’s not clear, don’t check it off. Like. We can comment back and forth and it’s private. So it’s just coming to me, um, and or their manager.

And, um, since the team was so small and it was a really great team, like In that example, I didn’t have a ton of issues now I will say when the creative team was there that was where we had more of an issue with like Completing some of those like housekeeping things Um, so these were like strategy and researchers and I just working with them.

It was very more much more Um, like they love checklists at least in my experience, but the creative team it’s like I don’t want to look at a task I don’t want a reminder You This is annoying to me. So the makeup of the team at the time, at least. It made it a little bit more helpful. I didn’t feel like I had to chase people down.

They knew that, uh, it was something that they had to do that was on. Also, like, on their to do’s for the [00:39:00] quarter, like, I created the program and then they had to complete it, like, in the next month or so, um, I’m trying to think if there’s an example. Yeah, because I definitely I don’t like being that person that has to send a reminder, but like, that is part of the job sometimes.

Um, and I just try to be. As friendly as I can, and I think someone, maybe it was Fred in the comments, like, leaving that paper trail, being able to point, like, I tagged you in a comment 2 months ago. 1 week ago. Like, I’m just checking in and you haven’t responded. We need to make sure that this gets done. Um, that’s another, like, yeah, the paper trail comes in handy when you’re needing to enforce things.

If you’re dealing with rolling out change, because. If you just say that you told someone, but you can’t actually point to it, it does make it a little bit trickier. Um, yeah, just like, like leaving a paper trail. Hopefully that answered your [00:40:00] question. Yeah, yeah, totally. I like that. One of the things you mentioned, which I thought was really, kind of really stood out to me was that, you know, you leaned into a system that they were, they were already, they could already get behind because they were like check oriented people.

So you kind of built that way to make it easier for them. So I like that you kind of had that, that foresight. To to kind of put it together so that it wasn’t going to, you know, create a bigger barrier. It wasn’t going to be them having to change the way that they do things naturally. Like, they already kind of work in this way.

So leading into that and then using that almost as an advantage. Um, and then my question, my thought question here was going to be, um, so you mentioned it was a small team and it didn’t come up against too many issues. But did you ever get to a point where, like, once this had, you know, these new systems had been implemented.

Now people are working on it. Um, like did people ever kind of like fall off of this system and revert back to the ways that they were doing things before, or did like things pile up in the backlog kind of thing? And how did you, um, [00:41:00] if so, I guess, how did you address that? Yeah. In this example, for the most part, I got really good feedback.

Like, Oh, I didn’t even. I never understood the difference between what you post in Asana and what is supposed to be talked about in Slack. Um, things seem to be, like, moving a little more quickly, uh, and I think I also set it up at the beginning. We don’t have a project coordinator anymore. And before like that project coordinator’s role was integral, especially when we had the creative team, because their responsibility was like, if something happened in Slack, make sure it gets an Asana and make sure their task is updated, even though they’re technically supposed to do it.

Like at the end of the day, we’ve got a coordinator. Well, don’t have a coordinator anymore. And if me as the project manager needs to know. How things are happening. I don’t have time to sift through all the comments and like, I can’t even see emails you might’ve sent that I’m not copying on. Um, [00:42:00] so yeah, in that example, we didn’t really have too much.

I didn’t notice any, like that peddling, if anything, there was a little bit in Slack, uh, because I think some people just don’t like tools and that’s okay. And it’s working in Slack. You can. It’s kind of like texting. It’s something that everyone’s used to. You just have somewhere to send messages. And, uh, uh, yeah, I guess I’ll stop.

There’s do you have any, like, follow up thoughts about that? Michael? No, no, no. Um, but I was wondering if, um, any, any other questions from the, the group. Um, One thing I’m curious is if anybody’s had any similar, um, situations, but Marissa, yeah. Yeah, I just had one more question for the group, um, and I think this is something that comes up a lot in my world, [00:43:00] and I’m assuming a lot of yours based on some of what other folks have shared, is around change fatigue.

So you have a project that is like a long slog priorities keep changing The client comes in every day with a new thing that oh, by the way, we need this thing. We need that thing Um, I don’t know if anybody else was part of a lot of the like great reshuffling after the pandemic and it was a lot of um, sarah you alluded to some layoffs, but then also You know people moving around A lot for a period.

So I don’t know if anybody else has had a lot of change fatigue or any kind of things that you do to help your teams with change fatigue or help yourself with change fatigue. That’s a good one.

Does anyone else have anything at the ready? I could probably answer this one. Just get my thoughts together. This is a good question. Are you [00:44:00] thinking short term or long term, Marissa? Both. I, I’m open to any of it. I, I have a team right now who’s dealing with it on both fronts. I mean, we’ve, in, like, in the higher ed, a lot of times there’s sort of short range emergencies sort of change.

That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s like an, an entire upheaval. And faculty in particular, I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with faculty, but they can be. Uniquely challenging, um, because it just is a glorified faculty babysitter. So, he talked like what you’re talking about. I’m chuckling because it’s exactly yeah, you can offer them a lot of money to do something simple.

And they’re like, wait a minute. I don’t trust this. You know, it’s just it’s weird, but, um. Like when they’ve had it like when the pandemic hit, they had to suddenly shift online. There were a lot of people who just were completely resistant to the idea. There’s this, you know, this sort of long standing thing where it’s like, well, my class can’t be taught online and [00:45:00] remotely, you know, even though, like, I would argue that you could just about teach anything remotely if you had the right expertise and resources and stuff.

But there’s that kind of resistance, right? And so in those situations where it’s just as upheaval, The best thing that I’ve found to do is to is to It’s to help people find what’s familiar in the new thing. And so it’s like you’re like, in that case, for example, you’re still teaching, you’re still doing all the same things you were doing in the classroom, but now you’re doing them online.

So, yeah, there’s a little bit of a translation, but you’re still like, you’re still Engaging in discussions. You’re still holding students accountable. You’re still training. You’re still doing all those things. And so just finding similarities in the situation that they can sort of relate to and hopefully, like, focus on that.

While it’s 1 of those, like, don’t look down, look at me sort of things. Like, I think that helps a lot in the short term in the long term. I mean, it just, it evolves into a conversation because there’s a lot of situations where. We’re changing technology. Well, we’re changing technology [00:46:00] again. We’re changing now in essence, and we’re changing and it’s at some point, there’s just this instability that nobody, nobody buys into new tools because they don’t rely on the fact that it probably won’t be there in six months.

Right? So why should I? Spend a lot of time and energy learning how to use it. And in those cases, it becomes more of a it’s a real challenge at that point, because it’s in the culture to change a lot. And you’re breaking trust, essentially, if you change a lot. And so you can sort of people typically settle into a foundation of, like, this is what I do agnostic of the tools or whatever keeps changing, but it’s been really hard to get them to go like, well, this is the new, uh, This is the new practice, right?

This is the new tool or the new thing we’re doing, because you’re just some new hotshot manager, or this is just some new hotshot thing. It’s going to last three months, and we’re going to be right back where we were. Only worse, because then I’m going to have wasted a lot of energy. So, in those cases, it has to really become more of a cultural conversation, but[00:47:00]

that’s my take anyway. That, uh, that answer your question, Marissa? Or was it a good, at least one approach? Oh, yeah, I didn’t have anything, like, I was just hoping to hear some other experiences. Sarah, you were starting on something, if I remember. I’m wondering what tips you had. Oh, yeah, I was typing it out, because some of the things Fred said, I’ll just I saw that.

I thought I saved you from typing. I was. I did not mean to run off. No, it’s okay. I’m so bad at typing when I’m hearing other people talk, so it takes me like 10 times as long. But, uh, Marissa, about your question, I feel like Like with change fatigue, that team I just talked about change fatigue was so real, uh, and the history with that company to pre COVID I did contract work with them and they were much larger, like that team had [00:48:00] grown and shrunk and grown and shrunk.

And then once COVID hit and the companies or the clients that we had were mostly in big tech and it was a small team, like. Paid for by two really big clients. So if their budgets get cut in half, then you’re going to probably have to say goodbye to half of your team. Like, and that was the reality of the situation.

It was like unfortunate, but even though the situation sucked, um, being able to like reframe. Why did this change happen? Like being realistic about it with them like before you start rolling something out like look we have this change just saying like yeah I know this is awful, and I know it’s gonna take some time, and I understand if it might be Take a little extra time for you to focus.

That’s totally valid. Like just being, I guess, bringing those human elements. [00:49:00] Like, yes, I recognize that this is not a great situation and that none of us want to be reworking how we deliver our projects or use tools. But at the end of the day, like, like in that example I gave, it did make their days easier.

Well, it lasted like, unfortunately, yes, I got laid off by the end of it. But, uh, in that meantime, like it helped it, um, feel less confusing and less scattered. So it’s like anything we could do to make it seem a little more stable was really helpful. Um, and knowing like as a project manager, having that ability to truly set the tone of the project internally and probably externally, depending on if you’ve got an account manager, not like.

If they know that I think everything’s stupid, they’re going to feel that way. And, uh, so putting my thoughts and feelings through a filter first before, and like, yes, that takes [00:50:00] energy and like very deliberate thought, but, um, At the end of the day, I think is very helpful, especially when you’re dealing with a team that’s like, tired and scared and like, they just want something stable.

That’s like, well, if I can kind of be that force, um, I tried, like, I did try my best at being that way. So. Hopefully that’s helpful.

I think the one thing I would emphasize from, uh, so what you were saying there, sir, is to it’s just like being okay with the fact that things at this point when people are been through change that things are just going to take longer as well, optimum change and also like learning the new processes and that’s going to obviously take time out of your day when you could when you would otherwise be, you know, like doing your normal, uh, Going about your normal processes and, and, and completing work.

So I think that, yeah, like understanding that also that when so many changes are [00:51:00] coming, that things are going to slow down and productivity might decrease and just kind of being okay with that until you can get to a point where you’re back. Um, and there’s less change. That’s always happening. Yeah, there’s ebbs and flows.

That’s a big, it’s seasonal, like so many other things. Yeah, but it can also be like, it can also really affect your, your mindset too, because I mean, especially as an individual, if you feel like you’re doing less work, it can be really like demotivating. Um, because you just, you don’t feel as accomplished, especially if you’re comparing it to like, Oh, you know, Yeah.

I did this many more. I was able to do more. I was able to make more progress toward goals or I was able to move the needle in a, in a greater way. Whereas now with all these changes and things that are supposed to be helping later, like you can get into that mindset of like, Oh, it’s, it’s doing more bad than it is good.

And so I think that, um, just like maybe setting expectations there, I think is important. So people understand that it’s okay to like slow down and that as, as people reorient and then, [00:52:00] uh, work toward. A better process moving forward process. That’s something interesting. It’s probably would be a good other conversation because people set their pace against what other people are doing, or at least what we perceive other people are doing.

So we know how fast to run or whatever. Right? And there are theories about. That as well, like, whether you think you’re treated fairly and those kind of things, too. But, but like, like, Jean was saying in the, in the ask me anything earlier, you know, if you set three items to do for the day and then forgive yourself, like, give yourself some space to like, let that be enough, right.

To set it down and say, I’ve done enough work today. I, I know I personally struggle with that. Um, so it might be really interesting to talk about Pace setting and how you like, how you sort of understand what Is a good pace and how to, you know, that kind of thing because I found myself and probably others have to like working twice as hard as you made to.

[00:53:00] Yeah, I, I was kind of in disbelief when she said she only has 3 things like, like, not only those 3, like, right. So 3 things. I thought that was pretty good. Yeah, it’s like writing an article or whatever. That’s a big, you know. Yeah, yeah, of course. Um, yeah, I recognize that we are at the end of the call here.

I just want to say thanks for everybody for joining in and, you know, like engaging in this. I thought this was really awesome to just kind of get to hear some stories about other other people and how they work, challenges that they’ve come up against. One, it’s validating to hear those challenges. And two, like, it’s just good to pull some of those ideas and processes back to our own work.

So hopefully there are a few takeaways here that we can bring into our own system. Orgs in our own processes. Um, yeah, next up. I’ll just say quick. Our next event here is going to be on actually May 23rd. We’re going to be doing a live forum. And for these, it’s just going to be bring, um, the top of mind challenges, whatever you’re up against at work.

Um, and we’re going to bring those [00:54:00] challenges to the floor and have a discussion amongst everyone similar to this in a way, but, um, a bit more open. So it’s not just change management, but, uh, looking forward to and hopefully a few of you can make it. Cool. Awesome. Right. Well, thanks again and have a sweet rest of the day.

Hope it all goes well for you and we’ll chat in Slack. Bye everyone. [00:55:00] [00:56:00] Thanks.