Mastering the Art of Change Management

Announcer (00:06):
You are listening to the Aesthetically Speaking podcast presented by Nextech.

Robin Ntoh (00:15):
Welcome to the Aesthetically Speaking podcast. I'm Robin Ntoh your host today, and I am here with Riley Smith. And we're going to talk about a really great, but very interesting and often misunderstood subject change management. Riley, welcome to the show today.

Riley Smith (00:30):
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

Robin Ntoh (00:33):
Well, I'm sure that as you're looking forward to it, I'm looking forward to learning more about it. As you know, that is something that in the next tech organization today, we are thinking about this more holistically as we think about a growing organization. So today I thought it would be really fun to share this out with our listeners. We have a lot of listeners within the practice management space, especially as it relates to aesthetic type practices. And so I thought we would really start with who you are and tell us a little bit more about your experience within the change management space.

Riley Smith (01:06):
My background, prior to joining Propeller, I've been with the firm for over seven and a half years versus a change management consultant full time on the ground billing a hundred percent of the time to now kind of managing the capability for the enterprise. Prior to that, I was just in various learning and development roles, both in K through 12 and higher ed communications and marketing roles within the private sector as well. And as I was building my skills in those spaces, I had realized, Ooh, one thing that I really enjoy doing is helping people move through change. There must be a profession, and I literally had never heard of change management until I Googled is our profession that helps people move through change. And found change management realized I'd been doing change management for quite some time in various kind of communications and training roles. And so that's how I got into the profession formally. And then was just searching out, I wanted more reps in industry across industries and consulting as a great space to go and kind of test your skills and realize that all the skills that I built transitioned really well into consulting and supporting various functions, industries and business problems. So that's where I am today and a little bit of my background and how I got here.

Robin Ntoh (02:29):
Fascinating. I mean, I think just in the past few years I've heard the word change management and more conversation, especially when we think about a corporation or an industry or a growing business, it's rather large. But when you think about that smaller business, you may not hear that in the day-to-day conversation. I find this to be one of those subjects though that potentially could really be applicable and help with so many of the things that these practices go through, not just on a daily basis, but as they're continuing to lean in and many times it be a higher performing business. And with a higher performing business, you constantly are going through change and we may not have the time every day to think about it. So I think today would be really fascinating if we just think about some of those different things about change. And let's start with what do you define as change management? What is the most simplistic, the friendliest way for us to describe it to our listeners?

Riley Smith (03:34):
Yeah, it can both be individualistic. So for our parents out there, you manage your kids through change all the time. So you can have an individual lens or you can have kind of an organizational lens, but regardless of the size and scope of audience, it's just moving a group of folks, a group of people from a current state to some sort of desired future state. And whether you're a small company or a big company, we all have strategic initiatives that we're getting after in a given year. We all have blocks of work that we're trying to move or dominoes to knock down. And typically with those strategic initiatives, they involve some different way of doing things. So whether that's due to a technology, due to a process due to new roles and responsibilities. So people systems, if you're a larger company and you're acquiring a new company, all of these are change opportunities and they often require quintessential project management.

(04:34):
And so change management is really a close cousin to project management, right? A project kicks off, it has a defined schedule, it has a defined budget, it has a defined set of activities that are required to end the project. We all have been a part of that change management maps right alongside that project management timeline and says, great, let's identify the people who are required to significantly change the way they do things generally, some who are maybe tangentially required and some who maybe have to change, but just need to know about the change and be intellectual about the change. And that's where we get into a little bit more of the granularities and weeds of understanding your audience, understanding how the change that is being implemented is impacting them, and then creating materials, creating artifacts, creating communications, creating ways and of experiences for folks to be brought along in that change so that when you hit that end of that project, that the value of the project is fully realized. Because when you have bad change management, sometimes you have bad actors. We are people, we are immense and we don't naturally act like we are supposed to in a system all the time. And so change management helps bring those people along so that when you get to the end of the project that the full business value of that technology that you decided to purchase of all of these resources that you decided to put into this project to make sure it was successful ends up being realized and that you end up getting the value.

Robin Ntoh (06:11):
So let's eek this back one level and let's just help everybody understand, because everybody probably already has seen examples of where change management has not been incorporated. Because let's face it, most businesses don't have that change management officer within their business or employee, nor do they have the insights or wherewithal or even the basics to know that this is important, but they probably all recognize the symptoms of where change has impacted their business. So we see in many ways, so we see it in burnout, staff burnout quickly, they get frustrated. Another big one I think is chaos. So going back to your example, I love how you said that change management is much like project management. And now I think a lot of them can understand where project management is important. Think about training that they may go through when they're onboarding a new device or a new skincare line. Now this is something that aesthetic practices, they can understand that very easily because that's not uncommon. And so they'll go through the training, they'll go through, let's add all of those new inventory items to our system and let's put the pricing in place. Then there's some sort of training for the staff, and depending upon what their job is in their practice, what training they'll need will be relevant to their job. And so without that, then we have confusion. We have chaos. We have people that actually throw up their hands and say, I'm not doing this. It may even quit.

(07:49):
I should recall a story myself when I was taking a practice through implementing their EMR software. And it was funny, but at the time it wasn't funny. If you think back, it was like, wow, someone actually never came back from lunch because they said, I'm not doing this. I was like, wow, okay. So that was probably a good opportunity for the practice to step back and say, where did we fail in helping to bring our team along to prepare for this? So I think those symptoms, I think that they're probably something that people recognize and see.

Riley Smith (08:21):
A hundred percent. Yeah, I think you named a lot as you started going that burnout was number one for me. You might see employee engagement scores if you monitor those on an annual basis at the least, but maybe even more frequently, attrition, you called out workarounds. And so if you're implementing a new system and all of a sudden, Hey, why are you not in the system? Well, I'm doing it this other way. I'm doing it in the old Excel spreadsheet that worked for me. Tickets, number of support tickets depending on the industry. And we start to overburden our customer support team. There's one, and then the one, the chaos is fun. You can sense chaos, you can sense water cooler talk rumors, but the one that's harder to sense is kind of like the silent resistors. So the Oh yeah,

Robin Ntoh (09:15):
Passive aggressive.

Riley Smith (09:16):
They're not into the office as much I noticed.

Robin Ntoh (09:17):
Right?

Riley Smith (09:20):
Or oh, they missed a couple meetings. What's happening there? And some of those silent resistors can, you can drag that out longer, they're harder to pick up, and then all of a sudden it becomes a problem. And all of those lead to just not doing your job well, which shows up depending on the job in a variety of ways.

Robin Ntoh (09:42):
Well, and I go back, let's go to this simple one here. Adding a new skincare line to your practice. I practice may think, well, that's not really going to be chaos for my business. They're all excited about it, but in reality, I think that there are a few things that they could potentially incorporate that would make it even more successful. I also say, well, do you want to sell this skincare line to make the revenue that you think you can make from it because you believe in it? Whether it's the provider or an internal stakeholder that is saying, this is the skincare line for us, we should do this. So you've got your champion, but not everybody else may agree with them. So I think that these practices, even with something as simple as bringing on a skincare line, if they applied some of the principles that you're going to share with us today, I think that could potentially really gain their success in a much faster way. And also help with any of those other things that we discussed as far as those symptoms, chaos, burnout, et cetera.

Riley Smith (10:44):
Yeah, I like that you started with what is, we've all experienced a bad change. And you can define change management. We can walk through some of the principles and theories, but if folks who are still coming to grips with what this is, start there. Start with wherever you've experienced bad change. It can be work, it can be at life. And then you can also flip it on the other side and all those things that I just listed, you can do the opposite, right? I'm highly engaged, celebratory, really transparent communications, excitement for the go live data for the new thing that we're doing and understanding of why the business is making this decision and so that you can communicate it to your peers and that champion advocacy that you just called out. So for those of you who have experienced that, also think on the other side. And generally what that means is somebody managed to change well, to prevent that one, but then lead it to, in the other instances, led to that high engagement. And so that's a good way to think about change management too, is those two polar experiences.

Robin Ntoh (11:51):
So let's give some of our listeners some of those pearls are things that they could think about. We've talked about, one, a champion. Let's talk a little bit more about that champion and those stakeholders that really are going to be the ones that help support the change. What are some things within that and other things that you think would be good takeaways for our listeners? Remember, small business.

Riley Smith (12:15):
Particularly small, lean. Yeah.

Robin Ntoh (12:18):
Yep.

Riley Smith (12:18):
I love that. Call out. Yeah. I think for me, when I'm leading a change program and it's a smaller program, I want to have a really clear, we call it a from two, a really clear understanding of what the change is. So we do it this way today, we're now doing it this way. And that front two should include all of the potential changes at a high enterprise business level and then an understanding of your audience groups. Is this just impacting the finance team? Is this impacting just our sales team, so on and so forth. And so understand how those impacts impact different audiences. And then for me, what I like to have at a bare minimum, like bare bones, we don't have a lot of effort, time and effort to put into this is a really aligned key messaging architecture. We don't need Robin saying one thing and then me saying one thing and another person saying one thing.

(13:16):
It confuses folks. And as we talk about this change, our leaders should be saying the same thing over and over and over again. That clarity always brings a level of comfort. And when you lack clarity or you're starting to hear different messages, doubt creeps in and now you're getting questioning and now you're getting all of those things we talked about, right? I don't have a lot of trust in this program. I'm going to go do all this workaround. It doesn't seem like they've got all their i's dotted, t's crossed. And so what I always like to start with, even before we potentially announce the change is hey, we've got our from two aligned. We know why we're doing this. We know why the business reason for doing this, and here are the seven to 10 things we will always say. And of course as a project goes, you learn more, you can add to that lexicon, but effectively we're going to have our leaders hosting, sending out announcement emails, sending out frequent updates, putting FAQs on a SharePoint or some centralized knowledge management repository. We're going to be sending out hosting town halls, doing video call. All of these things are effective change management tools, but they all should stem from a key messaging lexicon if you will.

Robin Ntoh (14:31):
So let's talk about the from to. And a good example of that would most likely be I am my desire to grow my business and to grow my business effectively. I need a platform, a software platform that is going to allow me to be efficient to get the data that I need to understand my business. So my from state is I'm not getting that. My to state is what I expect to achieve with this change. Would that be a good way to think about that?

Riley Smith (15:09):
Yeah. Whether you were using a technology formally or you were doing it in some sort of manual process. And even to this day, after decades of digital transformations, we still run into clients who are doing something manual or doing something in the Microsoft Suite package. And so whether that's booking appointments, making a visit note, whether that's on paper or whether on some manual process online, if we're implementing a technology that makes that seamless more streamlined and allows you to gather that data and store that data in a sensible way, you're now asking somebody to do something that they were doing one way and now you need to log in, access some sort of module in the technology platform, click these buttons. And there's usually that's where job aids come into play, where there's some sort of training catalog of when you click this, you need to answer this data. And if you do, then a bunch of conditional if then statements, right? If you do this but not this, then that's where it gets complicated. That's why you build in training to help bring those people along. For folks who have been doing something historically a different way.

Robin Ntoh (16:17):
Do you think it's fair to say that the from also really is restating some of the pain?

Riley Smith (16:23):
Yeah.

Robin Ntoh (16:23):
And would you think that some of that pain should be potentially part of conversation that you have with your staff?

Riley Smith (16:31):
A hundred percent. Yeah. A lot of that from is in the example I just gave you is Hey, we're moving from logging something in Excel, right? And whether that Excel is stored in a common shareable spot, but hey, the problems with doing it that way are X, Y, Z, right? There might be some sort of knowledge management issue. We might not be as effective in following through and we have data to support that number of missed appointments and share, I have one person doing this, but when you're not here, another person's doing this. Are we using the same tools? Just that, just documenting some of those measurable reasons for why from isn't working, I think is what you're saying that I'm picking up.

Robin Ntoh (17:17):
Yeah, no, I think it helps the practices, not just conceptualize it, but truly almost write it down so that there's a true, let's go back and reference why we did this. What problems did we need to solve? And those problems can vary based upon your role in the business. A practice owner may say that they're looking for a growth opportunity and they need more efficiencies in their day-to-day operations, whereas the front desk person may say, well, I'm really more interested in being able to have more engagement and FaceTime with the patients that I'm not getting because my head's buried in a computer. And so their reason their from to is definitively different, but they all have a from to it sounds like.

Riley Smith (18:03):
Yeah. And even in this example, so the from is the pain and the to is usually some associated metric that resolves that pain. And so in an example of a technology platform, it's typically better collaboration, operational efficiencies, whether that's due to accuracy or timing, we can just do it quickly. We can report on it easier. We're not having to throw together multiple files and create a different, Hey, this is now 10% of your job is to take all these files together and report out on it and create a deck. Nope. The platform just has all the data and it turns out reports on its own. So yeah, generally that to is a resolution of the pain and some sort of, again, business metric.

Robin Ntoh (18:50):
For sure. And I'm also thinking that bringing the staff along within some of these conversation checks that box for the informed.

Riley Smith (18:58):
Yeah, there's many ways to do effective change management, and even in this conversation you're saying, Hey, if I have those conversations early on, which we would as consultants call discovery or interviews or focus groups, for us coming into a new business, we have to do that to understand just what's the feeling on the ground, if you will. You're doing that, you're bringing them along by listening, by hearing their pains. Now all of a sudden when the solution is presented, when leaders get out and say, Hey, we're going forward, people can already see themselves in the solution. If you don't do it that way though, that's okay. If leaders are making the call, they know the platform's the better solution. You can still not just move forward and implement it and say deal with it. You can still in that communication have a really robust front too, and messaging architecture that helps bring people along without all that upfront discovery.

Robin Ntoh (19:52):
The messaging architecture though, I think is key here as well because you can have the anecdotal conversations, you can have the water cooler talk, you can listen to your staff in a one-on-one meeting, but truly putting some architecture around this messaging you think is key. What's an example of where you've seen this be impactful or how you think this really does share itself and being successful?

Riley Smith (20:18):
Yeah, I'm leading or serving kind of as an engagement lead for a project. It's an implementation of a technology. It's four project managers, portfolio managers, project controllers, finance teams, and so we have leaders of projects, so we have a variety of personas and we are able to create one slide per persona and document everything that we were just talking about. What is this new tool for you? What are you going to have to do differently in existing processes that have been mapped and carried out and done for the past however long? Okay, what has changed in those processes? And so it helps when you have things really dialed in and documented. It can be a little hard when you're doing the from to and the from isn't even documented.

(21:10):
Consultants have to come in and from the outside learn, and it's obviously much easier when things are documented, but if they're not, it almost helps for us to document the from so that we can then say, these are the changes and now we know what training we've got to do, what communications, what's extra support that we need to provide. And so in this example, to get back to your question we had that was from to is documented. We knew where the pain was, not every from to is equal. And then created some of that messaging and some messaging is programmatic. This is the reason we're doing it regardless of who you are and what role you play in the company. But as you get into specific persona groups, we're able to then create messaging that supports some of those key changes and key processes that they now need to adhere to.

(22:05):
And so what that could look like is we are running a day in the life series currently where we have, we personalize it, right? We don't pick one individual, but we just say, Hey, a day in the life of Anthony who's a project controller, who's doing X, Y, Z at this company in the new tool, what will they do that they come in and they grab their coffee and we really make it feel like, oh, okay, I could see myself in that role where instead of doing it this way, now I'm logging into this portal and I'm checking how my budget is on this project, so on and so forth. And so we've been able to personalize some of our outreach to make a really feel like it's get a feeling for how they're going to operate in the new system.

Robin Ntoh (22:54):
Let's shift for a second and talk about the resistors. What are some tips and tricks for our listeners on what they can do to manage those areas?

Riley Smith (23:06):
Ideally, you proactively manage it, and it's all the stuff we've been talking about, you know your stakeholders, you know the change, you know the from to's, you know where the real pain is and you can go invest more time and space and energy into supporting those folks. You've built in enough of listening sessions or town halls for you to find those before they become a problem. For those that are more reactive when they become a problem and you didn't manage that ahead of time. I think this is where there's a science to change management. You can go get certified in it, you can follow a rule book, a playbook, there is research and a text, a complete set of tools at your disposal. There's a science there, but in these cases, it's more of an art. It's understanding people. And we all work with people day in and day out. We all understand where those folks are coming from.

(24:10):
And so if you have a silent resistor, go and understand what's in it for them to do this change. Why are they not interested in this change? Is there something professional that is disrupting them? Is there something personal that's disrupting? I've just got a lot going on in my life. Oh my gosh. So it's not even things that we're putting together, it's not even the business reason, everything is perfect, but this person's just in a moment and having enough empathy to meet folks where they're at and finding ways to make sure that they've felt heard and brought along in the process. I think just that little extra ounce of effort of realizing, and again, it could be a whole stakeholder group, and now this is a larger conversation now. Now I've got to go have a very focused town hall or listening session and really hear their thoughts and generally make them feel heard.

(25:02):
That's all great stuff. And sometimes it's individual and sometimes it's just go and sit down and have a one-on-one conversation can kind of get into the root of things. And usually out of those, I can't point you to a tool, I can't point you, well, go run this. It's like you're going to get it. You're going to have an understanding of where they're at and then what they need. And maybe that's all they needed was a one-on-one conversation. And so I think you got to know how to proactively manage it. You got to know how to reactively manage it. And I think anytime something comes up, just listening to understand is a great quote to just tattoo on your arm because if you come in hot or if you come in with energy that doesn't meet the moment, then I think you've maybe dug them into a deeper hole. I think when you listen to understand, you usually can come out of that with some sort of solution in mind.

Robin Ntoh (25:58):
No, I think this has been excellent today. I think it's a really good way for us to introduce the concept first and foremost. And firstly, it truly requires effort, not just throwing something at the wall and expecting that to stick. So I appreciate the time today. I appreciate so much where we can introduce this and what I had love to do is let's do a sequel to this later on and talk a little bit more about someone that we've seen taken through this change. Because I think there's so much more here that we can dig into. And I think that those tips that we've shared today are just a great start for our practices and look forward to seeing where we can learn more later. Listen Riley, this is great. Share with our audience where they can find out more about your organization.

Riley Smith (26:46):
If you just go to www.propeller.com propeller, like the airplane propeller. Yeah, that's where you'll learn a little bit more about what we do, what services we offer, the expertise we bring to the table, sign up for our newsletter to see all of the different insights that are coming out of our organization. We're obviously tracking to a lot of AI technology disruption and the processes and how it fits into your organization to really boost what folks are trying to do within their respective roles. So lots of conversation on that, and particularly in my space, lots of conversation on how you build this change capability for an enterprise type function. And so getting back to one of your earlier questions, a stat that I didn't share with y'all, both Gartner and Propeller has done research to document the volume of change, how much it's increased over time.

(27:40):
Gardner's stat was from 2016 to 2022, and the amount of change that organizations were experiencing was five x. And so the age old quote of change is constant, is maybe an old quote now it's change is constant and ever increasing. And so the volume of change, I like to think of a spigot dropping is constant. So what else is constant? A flow of water is very constant, and that's where we find ourselves in the change landscape we are in due to the amount of digital transformation, AI adoption, supply chain, macroeconomic, it's just always hitting us. And so having a really mature way to think about how we bring people through change is going to be a continued competency and capability for all folks to adhere to.

Robin Ntoh (28:33):
Well, I couldn't agree more with you, and I think that's where Nextech has also positioned our business is thinking about change. That's how we got to meet each other and thinking about where Nextech is investing in ensuring that our teams, our leaders, are understanding the impact that change can have, whether it's swift and positive or slow and painful. There's a lot that you can do better if you really just start embracing what it is and how to manage it better.

Riley Smith (29:03):
Perfect. Yes.

Robin Ntoh (29:05):
Thank you again.

Riley Smith (29:06):
Thank you, Robin.

Robin Ntoh (29:06):
This has been great, and I look forward to a sequel.

Riley Smith (29:09):
Sounds good.

Announcer (29:13):
Thanks for listening to Aesthetically Speaking, the podcast where Beauty Meets Business, presented by Nextech. Follow and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Links to the resources mentioned on this podcast or available in your show notes. For more information about Nextech visit nextech.com, or to learn more about TouchMD, go to touchmd.com. Aesthetically Speaking is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.