Thriving in Change – with Luz Flores Lee

Introduction

Watch Luz Flores Lee’s webinar to discover ground-breaking techniques for effectively navigating change. Accessing the recorded online session will provide valuable knowledge and insights into innovative strategies for driving transformative change in your personal life and organisation.

The webinar will empower you with the necessary tools, knowledge, and confidence to navigate change proactively, enabling you to shape your future and move from merely surviving to mastering change.

Video

Watch the video, download the presentation or audio, or read the full transcript of the webinar below. Start improving your skills today.

About Luz Flores Lee

Luz Flores Lee is an experienced professional who works as a business consultant, professional coach, and adjunct professor in several graduate programs, including data analysis, statistics, and leadership. Her passions include coaching, social dancing, and exploring new destinations.

Throughout her career, Luz has trained and coached numerous individuals and teams and recognises that change is a consistent challenge for everyone. Utilising her expertise in leadership, process improvement, project management, and statistics, she provides her clients with guidance through a creative process infused with love, compassion, and a sense of enjoyment. As a result, her clients are thrilled with the outcomes they achieve.

Agile courses

Agile is a project management methodology that emphasises iterative, incremental development and continuous improvement. It’s based on the principles of transparency, inspection, and adaptation, which are also crucial elements of effective change management.

Agile principles and practices can be used to manage change effectively, such as breaking down change initiatives into smaller, manageable tasks, involving stakeholders in the change process, and continuously reviewing and adapting the change plan based on feedback and results.

Agile courses help individuals and organisations develop the skills and knowledge needed to manage change using Agile methodologies effectively. This could include courses on Agile project management.

Transcript

Here’s the full transcript of the video.

00:00:00 Sevcan Yasa: Hello, everyone, just to introduce myself, I’m Sevcan and I’m the Marketing Executive for Knowledge Train, Knowledge Train and agileKRC are in partnership which is the main reason why there are two logos.

00:00:13 Sevcan Yasa: We have Luz with us today. So, thank you so much for joining right to the end. We will have a Q&A session. So, if you do have any questions, please pop them down in the chat and we will go over them right at the end. So, Luz over to you.

00:00:29 Luz Flores Lee: Yes, thank you so much, Sevcan and thank you Knowledge Train for bringing me in to talk about this topic that I love so much, which is ‘Thriving and change’. And often we think about change as far as change control or change management, we’re not necessarily thinking about it on the change control side. We’re very much thinking about it and the change leadership and change management components. So how do we navigate all of the changes that we face on a regular basis in our lives and work. So, I’m just delighted to work with all of you today. I look forward to our active chats and conversation throughout the session.

00:01:04 Luz Flores Lee: So as an overview, our plan is to talk about two components. One is an introduction to change what is change, how do we define change. How do folks respond to change? What are some of the components and normal reactions that we see? And thanks for the introductions and the chat love, love, love, seeing all of that. Hi Cam, good to see you, I haven’t seen you in a while.

00:01:24 Luz Flores Lee: And then in Part 2 we’ll think about thriving – focus on thriving. What does thriving mean to you, and how do we get to that state where we’re actually thriving, and we’ll wrap up with any reflections and next steps. So, I’m looking forward to the conversation with everyone today.

00:01:40 Luz Flores Lee: My name is Luz Flores Lee, Flores means light in Spanish, and it sounds like your shoe is loose. And I’m a change leadership coach with loving all of you and I tend to work with new leaders as they transition into their role as a leader from an individual contributor. So that’s a huge change for most folks and helping them navigate that one.

00:02:00 Luz Flores Lee: Let’s introduce change. So, if we think about in the chat, what are some of the kinds of changes you’re experiencing now? I did a survey. I’ve done this presentation many times and one a few times. I’ve done a survey that included the types of changes that folks are going through.

00:02:15 Luz Flores Lee: So, if you think about what are some of the types of changes, you’re navigating right now? Are there financial challenges? New businesses or new role in the job, job loss or transition? What are some of the things that you’re navigating right now?

00:02:35 Luz Flores Lee: Yes, new system in the business – oh that’s a big one, right? It’s transitioning systems, those kinds of enterprise-wide transitions are huge, right? When you’re doing those in your office and work absolutely and working with the team right now that’s navigating that. And that’s not only a technical change, but it’s also a personal change in everyone’s role. Oh, she’s mentioning a new role, new job, new projects. More than one, more than one change, right. So that’s also what we see.

00:03:02 Luz Flores Lee: So, I had 36 folks responding to this survey, and you’ll notice if you add up the numbers, they’re way more than 36 here. And that’s another highlight that most people like Kim mentioned in the chat too many changes at once. Often, we’re facing more than one major change at the same time, and if you think about it. This is just a sample of 36 just in the chat we’re seeing at least a couple of folks who have more than one change happening at one time.

00:03:31 Luz Flores Lee: And so now you realise it’s unsteady, right? This is a transition that we must go through on top of surviving every day thriving on what we’re working on, right. So, it’s something that’s really easy to take us out of our game and what we want to be able to do is use these tools to help us get back in. So, there are 7 dynamics of change that folks go through, and they don’t have to go through all of them but many will go through more than one of these.

00:03:58 Luz Flores Lee: Look at the list are there any on this list that speak to you. How do you feel about them?

00:04:04 Luz Flores Lee: Any questions, feel free to post in the chat and you’ve seen this whether you’re leading the change like an enterprise-wide change like Natalie was mentioning, or if you’re just dealing with the change yourself.

00:04:18 Luz Flores Lee: Any of these speak to you? So, some folks are typing.

00:04:28 Luz Flores Lee: OK, sometimes angry first, we’ll get into those emotions for sure right. Like there’s a response and emotional response we have as human beings to any change, and we’ll go to that next Natalie. Thank you.

00:04:43 Luz Flores Lee: Yeah. So often, yeah resources sometimes folks that can mention, sometimes people will worry about having enough resources to handle the change and that’s often a challenge. If we don’t really think that through.

00:04:56 Luz Flores Lee: We could miss out on being able to enable the change that we need to have happen. Resentments. Yeah, so sometimes folks feel angry and resentful that we have to change the way things were working and you know what if there’s that saying if it’s not broken, don’t fix it kind of thing, right? But sometimes those changes have to happen and sometimes things are broken that we don’t know about it, and we need to be able to handle those. That kind of feeds to – if you take the pressure off, people will revert back to old behaviour.

00:05:28 Luz Flores Lee: Right? the fact that sometimes we have those habits that we want to go back to and if we don’t replace it with a new habit that actually works, it’s our tendency to go back.

00:05:41 Luz Flores Lee: Yeah, being a Change Manager, people will push back. Oh, for sure and we’ll talk about that, and we’ll talk about managing and driving complex and complex change. Excellent! Excellent!

00:05:53 Luz Flores Lee: So again, the other big piece about this is you’re not alone. Everyone has responses to change. They don’t all have the same responses to change, but we all have our response.

00:06:04 Luz Flores Lee: If you’re going along and things are going well for you, you may not always like it, but you have to be able to navigate it and being aware of the fact that everyone is going through some level of change. It’s really important to know.

00:06:20 Luz Flores Lee: So Natalie mentioned, you know the responses to change and there’s this tool and model called the Kubler Ross change curve for those who are familiar with the grief process, you may recognise components here and it’s based on a similar flow because one of the things you mentioned in the seven dynamics of change is that folks think about what they’re going to lose first and loss is a huge change and there’s grief and feelings associated with the loss right.

00:06:49 Luz Flores Lee: So often when we have a change, we don’t always know, but we are going through these transitions. I have a local supermarket that I go to on a regular basis and when I go to the market to buy things and they’ve moved the items around which they tend to do frequently, I don’t know why and it frustrates me often, right? I go through this cycle.

00:07:11 Luz Flores Lee: I could be shocked really did they moved this again? I can’t believe they’ve moved it. I get frustrated, I might even like to be low energy. Like one more thing I must deal with. But then I can get into experimentation where else can I go or decide to ask someone for help, good grief. If that’s even possible, right? Ask someone for help and then being able to integrate that change so I can move on to a tiny little change like the supermarket relocating things to a massive change like the system and enterprise software change we all go through this process.

00:07:48 Luz Flores Lee: How is it helpful to know that we have these different emotions one going through a change? How can we be responsive to the folks that we’re working with or even ourselves in knowing this?

00:08:06 Luz Flores Lee: See some folks are typing. So yeah, everyone goes through them, they may not always go through them in the same order. I know for major changes I can stay in depression and experiment for a really long time before I move on. I could bounce from shock to decision in the back again.

0:08:39 Luz Flores Lee: Yeah, so it’s like how we can understand them better and how do you influence it? Yes, absolutely.

00:08:46 Luz Flores Lee: And organizational change is actually absolutely driven by individuals. So actually, including people in the process is huge. My background is project management and one of the things that I realised was that if we don’t pay attention to the people’s side of change. If we don’t have the skills to manage the change, the communications and the coaching that needs to happen, it doesn’t matter how great our solution is. It doesn’t matter how technically competent we are. What matters is people’s perceptions of it, and we need to be able to navigate that, and there are some tools I’ll share about that for sure.

00:09:21 Luz Flores Lee: And Oluchi, you mentioned maintaining a calm disposition, right? So being aware of this response, I think Natalie mentioned earlier that sometimes folks have this negative response to us when we are change leaders.

00:09:35 Luz Flores Lee: We have to be able to stand the storm and know it’s not personal. It’s not about us, it’s about the change and that folks will have to go through this cycle.

00:09:44 Luz Flores Lee: The other part of this is sometimes we start off with shock and denial and we don’t have conversations about things and then we move into frustration or depression, experimentation, and we actually feel like we can make progress. So even though the feeling is negative, it’s actually moving us forward into the ability to decide and integrate this new solution.

00:10:04 Luz Flores Lee: So, allowing for that space for folks to have that transition time and energy. And often, as leaders we go through our own response. We do our work and we’re ready for the change because we’ve given ourselves time to navigate it.

00:10:19 Luz Flores Lee: But then by the time we introduce it to our teams and our colleagues, we don’t expect them to have the same response. We expect them to be where we are, and we can’t they’re too early in the process. We need to give them space. As well to allow for it to integrate and to have feedback loops and communications to make it happen.

00:10:39 Luz Flores Lee: So, what are some other coping strategies I think of like, you know like Oluchi you mentioned, you know, maintaining a calm disposition and having the ability to think through, right and be patient with people. What are some of your other coping strategies and have a word map here of some of the comments that folks made it have done different surveys that I’ve done. You say positive using their time to speak with family or friends or colleagues speaking exercise right. Are there other tools that you use to cope with changes as they’re happening.

00:11:14 Luz Flores Lee: Yeah, give people times and a plan for that time. Yes, so some exercises or activities to keep it moving forward.

00:11:23 Luz Flores Lee: Often, we’ve done listening sessions where you are just let people vent or one on one for those who are really, really struggling with the change to get into the conversation about what is actually in the way.

00:11:33 Luz Flores Lee: And a lot of times it’s something either we’ve missed in our transition or concern that has nothing to do with the transition. You know one of the comments around 7 dynamics of change, and I think Kim mentioned it too. We can only handle so much change.

00:11:48 Luz Flores Lee: So, some people may respond to a change that we’re introducing, it has nothing to do with that. It’s just the fact that they’ve got like five other changes going on in their lives and this is one more thing they weren’t able to handle.

00:12:03 Luz Flores Lee: So, we do use these strategies to get us through the change and be able to really be mindful and present so that we can actually keep things moving forward and as leaders, change leaders, leaders of organisations, leaders of projects, we need to have that space to be able to cope with the changes so that we can present the best foot forward and be open to what others need to navigate the transition. Yes, positive consultation with people. Give them time. Yes, absolutely.

00:12:32 Luz Flores Lee: So, if you think about this model like the seven dynamics have changed the so the seven dynamics of change as well as the change the Kubler Ross change model, are there helpful components so far around change and we’re all on the same page about how much it takes. To handle the change, any thoughts?

00:13:05 Luz Flores Lee: So yeah, some ideas around like keeping the positive consultation with folks and just having this awareness can help you realise that if they’re being negative toward you, it’s not about you right and as a leader because we know this is the process that people have to follow and that they and we can identify where are they on the curve? What are the next steps and how do we get to them to that how do we coach them?

00:13:32 Luz Flores Lee: Yes. So how do you get them past for certain points we’ll talk about some of those components in order to really think through the next steps.

00:13:40 Luz Flores Lee: Yeah, that’s definitely a struggle and thinking about what the next phase is, you can ask questions to guide them to that as well. Yes, great points.

00:13:48 Luz Flores Lee: So how do we thrive? So, you know, regular one on one is absolutely so providing as much clarity as possible and really having those conversations around. What do they need and what, are the concerns, and we do have a tool that will help navigate that.

00:14:05 Luz Flores Lee: So now that we understand change, how do we thrive in it? What does thriving even mean? And one of the quotes that I love is ‘The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new’.

00:14:18 Luz Flores Lee: We have to focus our priorities and our vision around what is next, what is it that we want to accomplish instead of thinking about what we’ve lost and what we have to get over and again, this means you have to allow space for the grieving process for that transition to let go and move on into that integration so that you can move forward. So, giving yourselves the space and the tools to do that and allowing for the space for your team to do so.

00:14:44 Luz Flores Lee: So what does it mean to thrive? What do you think of when you think of thriving? Here are some responses that I’ve received in conversations and surveys. Are there others? Are there any here that align with what you’re thinking?

00:15:16 Luz Flores Lee: So, when you think of excelling, yes, absolutely. Excel is definitely one, right? You want to be able to do better, you want to be able to be excellent at the things that you are doing right.

00:15:28 Luz Flores Lee: We talked about peace, we talked about being calm and peaceful before having clarity, being able to flourish. Recover quickly, being able to transition, having some type of balance. All of these are definitions that folks have used about thriving.

00:15:45 Luz Flores Lee: And one thing you might notice around thrive. Is that yeah, flexibility for sure, right? Thriving are a bunch of skills. These are all skills you can build, you can develop, and you can learn in order to be more in that state of thriving. And so that’s really key is that thriving isn’t about what you have or where you are or your job title. There are lots of folks who have tons of money, and they are not thriving, they’re miserable.

00:16:19 Luz Flores Lee: So, it’s not so much only about the resources you have. It’s about the mindset you have and the skills that you develop in order. To be able to look at things differently and to really consider where you are, where you’d like to be.

00:16:35 Luz Flores Lee: And so that transition and that thought of thriving as a skill set. Now opens the door for us to be able to create more sustainable thriving in our lives and work.

00:16:49 Luz Flores Lee: How do we do that? How do we focus on the items that will create a space for us to thrive?

00:16:57 Luz Flores Lee: If anyone’s familiar with Franklin Covey, there are lots of tools around time management and prioritisation strategy and this is one of the concepts of Franklin Covey.

00:17:07 Luz Flores Lee: They have this idea of the whirlwind, the whirlwind is everything you do in a day, the stuff that happens, it’s the phone call you make the e-mail, you respond to the day-to-day activities, eating, sleeping things. You have to do it in order to get through a day. And does anyone have an example like if you could? Think of a day where you were so busy, but at the end of the day you thought, wow, I got nothing done.

00:17:33 Luz Flores Lee: Does anyone have any of those kinds of days?

00:17:39 Luz Flores Lee: If you do and most people do. Yeah, it happens often, right? A lot of days, and that means you were caught in the whirlwind.

00:17:49 Luz Flores Lee: Your day was just swooped up into the whirlwind of all the things you just have to do. However, that’s not a way to thrive right. If we’re caught in the whirlwind every night, we go and look at our day and say, what the heck did I get done and I didn’t move my goals forward.

00:18:05 Luz Flores Lee: Then we’re caught in the whirlwind and our goal is to lower that level, make space for two things. One is our goals and the other is for the interruptions. Because if our whirlwind is filling our calendar all the way to the brim, if it’s all the way at the top, if I have one incident, one major change, or sometimes it’s just going into the supermarket and they change the location of my milk, then I’m over and I’m done. Like I can have a mental breakdown because of the location of something. Because I am filling myself to the brim. And so, our goal is to navigate that whirlwind, drop it down enough so we have space for changes that happen that we can respond to instead of reacting to. And focusing on our goals that will continue to build our skill set so that we can continue to thrive.

00:18:59 Luz Flores Lee: So that’s where we want to focus, we want to make sure we make time for those goals, in order to be able to see the gains that we’re looking for.

00:19:10 Luz Flores Lee: Another piece of information that is super helpful in visualising the idea of these goals is the number of goals matters.

00:19:19 Luz Flores Lee: If you have two to three goals, your likelihood of success is at least 67% 2 out of 3 at best 100%. So, 2/3 to 100% of your goals will get accomplished. If you focus on 2-3, you add one more goal and your likelihood of success goes down to 50% at best.

00:19:42 Luz Flores Lee: You’ve dramatically shifted your ability to be successful because you’re spreading yourself too thin. And if you go above 10, you’re at 0. This is a classic case of if everything is important, nothing’s important.

00:19:57 Luz Flores Lee: And you need to be able to prioritise no more than two to three major initiatives, major goals and need your attention that need your time and focus in order to be able to achieve them with excellence.

00:20:10 Luz Flores Lee: And that’s also part of thriving, right? I don’t know how often you’ve had a project or an activity where you’ve completed it, but it wasn’t done so well and. You don’t feel good about it that’s not thriving, that’s getting by.

00:20:23 Luz Flores Lee: So, what are those things that matter most to you so that you can really focus on the ability to make those shifts and those meeting those goals so that you can get into a place of really feeling accomplished and thriving.

0:20:43 Luz Flores Lee: So how do we do that? How do we prioritise those items? And you know this quote here, right ‘There will always be more good ideas than there is a capacity to execute’ right now. This is not saying you can’t do it all you can totally do it all you. Just can’t do it all at once you need to be able to really focus in on those items that will do the most good for your goals and figure out how to pull other things off your plate.

00:21:11 Luz Flores Lee: Or get them done in spaces where you don’t need as much mental energy and attention. There are several matrices to help you prioritise Impact/Effort is one of my favourites when you think strategically. When I’m thinking of it as a leader who’s looking at the big picture of items, right. If I’m considering, how do I make sure that I move the needle I move myself closer to the goal the Impact/Effort matrix is one of my favourites.

00:21:38 Luz Flores Lee: So, with Impact/Effort, the X axis across this bottom, I don’t know if you can see my cursor moving but yes, so the increasing impact so low impact is on the left. High impact is on the right and then the Y axis is effort. How much effort am I putting into this? Lower effort is at the bottom. Higher effort is at the top.

00:22:00 Luz Flores Lee: So, if we think about where do we prioritise our efforts and our activities. Anything on the left side here. So, the low impact – high effort or the low impact – low effort, we don’t want to spend most of our time in.

00:22:15 Luz Flores Lee: Low impacts – High efforts are things that are like more bureaucratic or lots of paperwork, things that take a lot of time and energy to do, but they don’t necessarily help us very much.

00:22:28 Luz Flores Lee: Low impacts – Low effort are things that are super easy to achieve and can totally eat up our entire day.

00:22:34 Luz Flores Lee: These are the things like being on social media and all the likes and hahas and all the responses, the low impact – low effort. They don’t really move us a lot, but they can take up a lot of our time right. And so, we want to be able to think through how we might minimise some of that and achieve as much as we can, but really think about how much of my day do I want on low impact items are there very low impact items that are and low effort items that can maybe delegate to someone else on the team. Or there are lots of automation technologies now, that are very helpful that you can even implement.

00:23:15 Luz Flores Lee: So, we really want to minimise the left hand, so low impact – high effort, low impact – low effort. And focus more of our attention on the places where we get high impact.

00:23:27 Luz Flores Lee: I’ll start with quick wins, high impact – low effort on the right-hand bottom side and if you’re OK with colours, it’s the green want to spend our time in the green and the blue this right-hand side of the quadrants.

00:23:40 Luz Flores Lee: So quick wins are great for motivation, for, you know, feeling like you’re accomplished. An example of a high impact – low effort item could be we’ve got an e-mail chain or chat that’s going on and on and folks are confused and they’re arguing, let’s stop pause, let’s have a meeting quick 15 minutes. Let’s all talk it out and then be able to move on and prioritise. Another could be you notice that a friend or a colleague or someone that you care about is going through something or having an issue. You make a quick call check in 10-15 minutes of touching base high impact because you’re really being present and mindful, and those little things matter when someone checks in you see someone in the hallway.

00:24:31 Luz Flores Lee: If you’re still in the office, if not, you might want to just, you know, do something electronically and just have a quick check in. How’s it going? I care about you as a person, and I want to see you succeed. Those are huge impacts, but not a lot of effort. It’ll take a ton of time, but they will make a big impact.

00:24:50 Luz Flores Lee: And then lastly, high impact – high efforts, so these are the are the strategic projects, these are the items that don’t happen quickly, and they require a shift. Those high impact – high effort items or things like your New Year’s resolutions or the major goals that the company has identified as things that need to get done. And if you look at New Year’s resolutions within the first two weeks of January. Most have dropped their New Year’s resolutions; most people have dropped them. Why?

00:25:23 Luz Flores Lee: Well, because they’re high impact absolutely things that we all know we should. Do right like the lofty goals of eating right, exercising, sleeping well. All of it’s going to happen all at once it’s too much, too much to try and plan, and we don’t have a plan on how to actually make it happen something that’s sustainable. So, with our strategic project, we really need to think through how we are going to get that done. How are we going to implement that and integrate that into our normal schedule. Otherwise, it’s not going to happen because it takes that level of effort.

00:25:58 Luz Flores Lee: Another note is that the low impact – high effort items that we want to avoid, sometimes we can’t. I know that in many industries we’ve had compliance projects, they’re not an impact as far as they don’t necessarily help, they keep us from having some, you know liabilities, but they take a lot of effort.

00:26:18 Luz Flores Lee: Well, we may not be able to avoid them, but maybe we can turn them into a strategic project that could minimise its impact or streamline the process so that it doesn’t have as much effort associated with it.

00:26:35 Luz Flores Lee: So as leaders, as you know, initiating thinking about how do you structure your day? Like how have you spent your time? Now, and if I were to take your list and put it into the buckets, these full quadrants here. How much of your time are you spending in each of the quadrants?

00:26:56 Luz Flores Lee: How much of your day is spent on those high impact – high effort strategic projects to move them forward versus the other three. And this could be personal and professional. Yeah, not enough.

00:27:19 Luz Flores Lee: So that’s a big one, right? When you think about this and really want to move things forward? Yeah. The other swamp that whirl wind will take over they will take over. And so, we have to be very protective and creative around your time. And if you have management teams or other supports or key stakeholders finding ways to adjust your workload so that you have time to work on those on the personal side, finding ways to look at the way I’m spending my time.

00:27:50 Luz Flores Lee: So personally, on my personal side, I spend a lot of time on social media. I live away from my family, that’s the way I connect with my family, but if I spend all day on social media. Yeah, I’m connecting here or there, but am I really doing the things that matter to me and my family? No.

00:28:06 Luz Flores Lee: So, I put in timers on my social media accounts so they shut down once I hit a certain time limit or removing them from my phone or different things that you can do to make sure that you’re spending your time where you know it matters most.

00:28:23 Luz Flores Lee: And that doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time. Just need to have some time I don’t know if anyone has read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s a phenomenal book about how do you make sustainable change and building those habits. And one of the things he speaks to is the 1% rule. If you get 1% better every day, 1% better every week by the end of the year you have made a huge shift than if you did nothing.

00:28:53 Luz Flores Lee: So back to Luci’s comment about procrastinating and a high impact – high effort, you know, and end up doing it not last minute with my ADHD, I’m really good with procrastinating and not spending time, so I have to create milestones. I have to create incentives, so I’ll set up meetings with folks on a regular basis. So that I have accountability to make sure that things are done each week in order to avoid that procrastination tendency that I have. So, really thinking through how do I organise and protect my time so I can spend the time I need in order to make the moves and even if it’s just an hour a day, an hour a week, an hour a month it adds up. It adds up quicker than we would think because you start building momentum and success breeds success.

00:29:46 Luz Flores Lee: So, these are some of the things you can think about shifting and really prioritise it.

00:29:52 Luz Flores Lee: Because you know, a lot of times we think of this, you know scarcity mindset with time and you know we all have the same amount of time in the day often you see the most successful folks are very protective of how they spend their time. They do not, you know, waste time with things that don’t necessarily help them move forward.

00:30:12 Luz Flores Lee: They don’t spend time in relationships that don’t really matter to them. They are very quick to get through and delegate or not even address things that don’t matter.

00:30:24 Luz Flores Lee: So, they spend more of their time on the right-hand side, the high impact – low effort, the high impact – high effort. And that’s our goal is to shift as much of our energy on our daily activities into those two buckets.

00:30:39 Luz Flores Lee: Doesn’t mean we can’t do everything else. We absolutely can, but maybe we don’t spend as much time doing everything else. And because they are less impact, we may not see as much of the loss. I know there were. Some reports that some folks were writing one of my colleagues and they just stopped writing the report like they stopped sending out these reports and realised no one was reading them.

00:31:07 Luz Flores Lee: So, they took a low impact item that was taking time off their schedule and realised, you know, it’s not something they needed to do and they had to find another way to provide update. So, they set up a 15-minute huddle every week.

00:31:20 Luz Flores Lee: So instead of spending hours doing a report, I could spend 15 minutes doing huddle, have some quick notes summarising things, and keeping it flowing.

00:31:29 Luz Flores Lee: So, thinking about creative ways, what is the objective of this right, the objective isn’t the report. The objective was to communicate where we in the project so, what else, what are there other ways that are more time efficient that will help us do that is so that we can act and get things done and spend time doing things we actually enjoy. No one wants to be stuck in a loop of things that don’t help. It’s very frustrating, it’s a drag, right? So, we want to make sure we can do the things that help.

00:32:03 Luz Flores Lee: So now that we’ve identified where we’re going to spend our time, we’re going to spend our time in the blue, the high impact – high effort items. Now we need to have a plan we need to actually create the space and time to be able to implement it and one of my favourite change models is managing complex change. There are many models out there, this is one of many that you can use several different resources out there this is one of my favourites because it’s more people focused. And I can use this as a diagnostic tool for my brain. I’m an engineer by training and my brain thinks in rows and columns. I like to think of diagnosing things, and so this visual really helps. So, let’s walk through it, this top row of this visual includes all of the elements to create a complex change you need 5 elements, and you need them pretty much in this order.

00:33:04 Luz Flores Lee: The first is the vision what is the vision we have to create? What is it that we’re creating here? Secondly, what skills do my team? What skills do I need in order to implement and sustain this change? Are there trainings that I need to have? Are there some other practise areas that I have what skills do I need? Incentives, why? Why am I doing this? What’s the point? And the sentence don’t always mean money. What is in it for me? What am I going to gain? What am I going to have as an improvement, why am I bothering?

00:33:43 Luz Flores Lee: Resources, what are the time, money, tools, equipment that are needed? We talked about missing resources in the earlier part of the conversation. Yeah, what are the resources that we need? How do we think through that and then how do we put all of them together into an action plan? If all five exist, we have changed, if all five are there in clear order, clear communication we have changed. We have the ability to affect change. If any one of them is missing, we have something else. So, for example, if we have missing incentives here in the middle, we have resistance.

00:34:24 Luz Flores Lee: Now a friend of mine likes to say all models are wrong. Some are more wrong than others, so this is not meant to be a be all end all complete model, but it’s a great place to start, right. I’m starting to see. Oh, I’m getting resistance. Maybe I need to understand what are the person’s motivations? What incentives are not in place for them to actually make this change or what are the incentives for them to not do it right, really being clear about what is actually in the way and what’s happening.

00:34:54 Luz Flores Lee: We see confusion, we’re missing a vision, we don’t have clarity about where we’re going and why we’re going there. What does it look like? feel like? How does it work? How is it sustained? And often we don’t really think that through. For making you know we talked earlier about the enterprise transition of a finance system. You know, what is the vision of what? We’ll be able to do with this new finance system that we couldn’t do with the old one. What are these reasons why we had to make this transition? And if we have that clear vision, we know what this is going to look like we know how our jobs are going to be different it’s easier to embrace change, any thoughts or questions on this model?

00:35:46 Luz Flores Lee: This is actually my favourite model. Yeah, I think so. I love it too, it’s my favourite, I literally had this on my wall in the office. I just go back to it every once in a while, it’s helpful for my personal work as well as professional work and in identifying with what’s in the way. What is the chat? What is it I’m framing this, yeah. So, I’m really thinking about what is happening here, right and again it depersonalises it. So, what incentives would you give if you’re not financial, absolutely so yeah. So, there are folks who are about money that could be easier ways to do the work. So, for example, if I’m working with a team, let’s say drivers, they may be able to get more if they’re paid by the drive if I had a system that’s more organised and more efficient maybe they are able to get more work done and get better pay I don’t know exactly. The other could be just quality of life.

00:36:48 Luz Flores Lee: Sometimes the incentive is, oh my goodness, you won’t spend as much frustrating time working on this component, you can really spend less of your time here and more of your time doing the things you love. You’d have to really get into like, what is the actual change that’s happening and what are some of the incentives. It’s really important too to really get into these incentives, because sometimes it’s a disincentive. For example, we could be implementing a system that’s going to be much more efficient for the organisation, but that means less overtime for my team.

00:37:21 Luz Flores Lee: So, what are they going to deal with, right? They’re going to fight it because if they’re used to overtime, that’s a financial loss that they’re going to take, right? So, how do we navigate through that? What are some of the ways that that’s going to be better for them? Are we shifting our bonus structure? Are we giving them more opportunities for improvement and upward mobility? Are there other benefits that they’re going to gain because they’re losing that? So really it is very unique to the situations where we have to ask questions and really think through like what’s in it for them. Why would they even embrace this change? And sometimes, you know, I’d worked with teams where, yes, they were making more money, but in a very high market, we weren’t laying anyone off.

00:38:07 Luz Flores Lee: We were keeping our team members; we had that commitment to maintaining the organisation and we needed to do that because if we didn’t, we would fail. And so really, being clear and transparent as much as you can again have to be conscious of the situation, you’re in and all the work that you’re doing, we’re really, really thinking through like, what is it in there for them? Why would they want to make this? Change and have team members who are boots on the ground and ask them what do you see as the benefits of this? And now that you understand the vision, what are some of the things you think? This would help us do and ask them often, we try to assume and think we know all the answers and we can’t, we can’t especially if we’re working in teams that have complex jobs and different skill sets. Having someone who is in the same role helps us navigate is really important. And now when I’ve worked in a manufacturing environment and healthcare environments, those when I saw resistance, I was so excited, and it sounds weird, but I was so excited because when someone was resistant, or they were frustrated there was something I was missing in my planning.

00:39:23 Luz Flores Lee: And there’s usually some person who is going to be the champion of that resistance, and if you can talk through the challenges with them, they can become your greatest supporters. They can become the folks who are helping you bring others on board once they’ve been heard because most times I would say, I wouldn’t say all the time, but most times folks come to work to do a good job. Most people are there to do the best job they can with it, there are some who come in and they’re not so motivated, right? But most folks so, if they are showing resistance or frustration or any of these feelings that’s not good for them. It’s not good for us, so ask for support and have that conversation.

00:40:10 Luz Flores Lee: And you will get so much more buy in. So, when I come with my next change, they know they can trust that I’m going to listen. They’re going to trust them I’m going to partner with them and implement that change and that we can do this together. It’s not me doing it to them anymore because there are teams that do that, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience when someone comes in and they tell everybody what to do, they change everything up and then they leave and it’s a mess.

00:40:37 Luz Flores Lee: And people have had enough of those experiences where they’re hesitant and you need to build up that trust. And sometimes it’s been us who’s done that I’ve done that and I’m like, oh that didn’t go well. I need to make some amends and fix that so that we can actually move into the place where we are creating the change together. And that’s where that leadership comes in like I am not making the change we are making the change I am not doing all the work; we are doing the work. And we can be ambassadors for navigating what’s next.

00:41:11 Luz Flores Lee: So, this next slide just gives us more detail for each step. What are the definitions? What are some of the questions we can ask in order to have clarity around each of those elements? And then some key questions so key questions, what additional information would be helpful? Again, all models of rock are more, more wrong than others. There are pieces that I might miss if I just focus on these questions. What else am I missing, and this could also be a question you ask of your team and other key stakeholders in the organisation.

00:41:42 Luz Flores Lee: And then lastly, what potential challenges or mitigations, what other factors could be influencing our ability to be successful and how can we minimise our impact in project management we have a tool called barrier modes and effects analysis we can have other tools to really think through like what are the risks to this project, what are the risks to this work? What are some of the outside forces seems like every day we get a new outside force, whether it’s the pandemic or it’s some other major shift in demographics or the AI components of things we’re constantly bombarded with new things. What else is coming down the pipeline that might affect our ability to be successful in this work?

00:42:25 Luz Flores Lee: Where does this project fit within the other projects in our organisation? How do we make sure we have the resources, time and attention to be successful here while we are doing the other items? And so really thinking through what some of those other potential challenges and mitigations are and using your normal project management skill sets, right, really thinking about resource allocation, etc.

00:42:50 Luz Flores Lee: So, this just walks us through like post details. So, question action changes things we can make this into a really nice conversation we’ve had over the last 45 minutes, a really neat tool of things we talked about some ideas, but action changes things. So, what’s one thing you’re going to put into practise based on our conversation today. What are you going to try and what are you going to look into? What are you going to do? To be a more effective change leader.

00:43:37 Luz Flores Lee: See, folks are typing, awesome. So just wait for those to pop up yeah, that’s really our goal is to actually do something different, have manageable and achievable goals. Yes, focus on high priority yeah so really think about doing things in smaller chunks and getting things done if I have a list of 20 items, I can’t do all 20 at once get something done. And then you’ll get the 20 things done overtime but if you try to focus on 20, you get nothing so, focus on two or three, absolutely.

00:44:29 Luz Flores Lee: And then, so awesome and then making sure to think about folks who are resistant to change and trying to act on it really understanding where are they, what is in the way, and instead of it being this person is being difficult the situation is difficult what is it we’re missing in this situation? And again, the model helps point us to start the conversation well, really, it’s a conversation a 2-way discussion and dialogue to make sure we get through that absolutely.

00:44:56 Luz Flores Lee: Yeah, using the projects. Yeah, help us point in the right direction, focus on high priority. Yes right. So, list out your items and make sure that items that have high priority – high impact have space. They don’t have to consume us because we have the whirlwind, we have to do things every day I have to respond to that e-mail, I have to pick up the phone and I have to go get the kids, I have to eat, you know, like there’s certain things you have to do they’re going to fill your time but make sure that the things that matter most you make time for them. Absolutely awesome, and then also I offer into doctor your coaching session if anyone wants to talk about this further.

00:45:35 Luz Flores Lee: I love talking about this, I don’t know if you can tell this is like my jam, but would love to have any conversations that would be helpful for you on the work that we do here on change leadership.

00:45:48 Luz Flores Lee: Some final thoughts before we get to Q&A. Our goal is to move from survival mentality survival method into thriving. And what does that mean when you’re in survival mode, your brain and body and emotions are laser focused. It’s like lots of fear and anxiety you’re thinking about things that haven’t even happened or might not probably happen you’re in like high energy mode and your behaviours like problems done get done, get done. It’s like frenetic nature.

00:46:19 Luz Flores Lee: We do not want to be in survival mode leaders cannot survive long term and survival mode, we need to be thriving when you’re in a thriving mode there were several mentions in the comments about being calm that we have the ability to pause, to reflect, to consider broader perspectives. And while it looks like our energy might be high, it’s not fear and anxiety and energy spikes, it’s this continuous passion and energy and excitement all over getting things done in our day.

00:46:54 Luz Flores Lee: I woke up excited about what I get to do today instead of dreading, Sunday nights are actually cool so many people if you’re ever on social media, or even just general communications right Sunday nights is like a super anxiety anxious time for folks living in survival mode. Oh no, I have to go to work tomorrow, my weekend is over. Oh, no. If you’re in thrive mode Sunday nights is just another night, I get to do some great things tomorrow just like I get to do any day Mondays are so different and your behaviour, instead of being fast and problem solving, you move into innovation and collaboration and that is my hope for you is that you can structure your day.

00:47:33 Luz Flores Lee: You can create a space in your world to have more energy, passion and excitement every day and really be excited to do the things that you have to do. So, thank you so much for the for the time to present, thank you, Knowledge Train, and on this Sevcan you have some slides as well as you want to speak to. So, I will transition to you.

00:47:59 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you, Luz, that was a great presentation just before we headed over to the Q&A, I would briefly like to talk to you about our courses. So, the following are our courses, that we have the most appropriate for today’s webinar will be Change Management so that would be the APMG change management and other courses that could potentially be relevant are PRINCE2 and PRINCE2 Agile perhaps. We also do have introductory project management courses.

00:48:32 Sevcan Yasa: So that would be the beginners’ courses as well. So, if you are interested in any other courses, you can e-mail me or you can write your name here and I will e-mail you. I’m just going to quickly write my e-mail here.

00:48:52 Sevcan Yasa: If you are interested, you can always e-mail me if you have any other questions, you can also e-mail me as well.

00:48:59 Sevcan Yasa: Now, does anyone have any questions? Just wait for a few minutes if people have any questions, they can just drop them down in the group.

00:49:19 Sevcan Yasa: While we wait for people to think of questions, there’s a very short feedback form that I would like you guys to quickly fill out if that’s OK.

00:50:21 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you, Natalie, I’m glad you found it useful.

00:50:28 Sevcan Yasa: Does anyone have any questions?

00:50:45 Luz Flores Lee: Some folks are typing so. It’s my pleasure.

00:50:49 Luz Flores Lee: Thank you all very much for the feedback and hopefully you can use some of these tools. Like really think about integrating these into your daily work little by little, and you’re you will be amazed at how quickly you build momentum and shift.

00:51:06 Sevcan Yasa: Also, on a side note, yes has been recorded. Yes, I was just about to say that, Tony. So, this webinar is recorded and once it’s edited and uploaded on YouTube, I will make sure that everyone has access to it I will send everyone the links.

00:51:34 Sevcan Yasa: You will also have access to the PDF version of the slides.

00:51:42 Luz Flores Lee: Thanks, Kim. Thanks for joining, good to see you and it’s great to meet everyone else who joined your great questions and feedback and thoughts and spending time and being fully engaged to make this effort you know is a testament to your leadership with leaders continue to refine their skills and really care and you’re definitely showing that attention and your teammates are really lucky to have all of you.

00:52:25 Luz Flores Lee: OK. Any other questions?

00:52:33 Luz Flores Lee: Yes. Thanks Tony.

00:52:37 Luz Flores Lee: That’s what I’ve used for many, many years. It’s been a huge, huge shift in my mindset so I’m grateful to share with everyone hopefully it makes as much of an impact for you as it does for me? Thank you well.

00:53:08 Sevcan Yasa: Few people are typing, so let’s just wait for them to type and then I don’t think anyone would have any other questions.

00:53:24 Luz Flores Lee: It’s my pleasure, John pleasure.

00:54:02 Sevcan Yasa: I think we can slowly end the webinar, so thank you everyone for joining. I really appreciate it. I hope you all learned something.

00:54:13 Sevcan Yasa: We could get positive feedback, so I’m glad and thank you Luz so much for joining us today.

00:54:18 Luz Flores Lee: It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

00:54:20 Sevcan Yasa: Yeah. So, thank you, everyone. Thanks for joining.

00:54: 25 Luz Flores Lee: Take care.

00:54:26 Sevcan Yasa: Bye everyone.