A 4-Step Playbook for Leading Your Team Through Change

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live To Build podcast. This is episode number 97 with Erica Anderson, the founding partner of Proteus, a consulting, coaching and training firm that she has been running for over 30 years. Proteus focuses on supporting leaders at all levels to become change capable, an underappreciated skill that will make their organizations much better at thriving through the trying times we're about to endure.

Sean Weisbrot: Erica is also one of the most popular leadership bloggers@forbes.com. She's the author of Be Bad First Leading, so People Will Follow, being Strategic, growing, great Employees, and her newest book Change from the inside out. Much of her recent work has focused on organizational visioning and strategy, executive coaching and management and leadership development.

Sean Weisbrot: She serves as consultant and advisor to the CEOs and top executives of a number of corporations, including NBC Universal, Conde Nast, National Geographic Partners, ge, Comcast Corporation, and Madison Square Garden. She also shares her insights on leadership and business by speaking to corporations, nonprofit groups, and national associations.

Sean Weisbrot: She's been quoted in a variety of national publications, including the Wall Street Journal, fortune, and the New York Times. In today's episode, Erica and I talk about what it means to be change capable, what she's doing to ensure that she is change capable so that she can help her clients be change capable.

Sean Weisbrot: How leaders can support their teams to also become change capable so that decision making can permeate the entire company's culture. What is it you do and how did you come to be doing it?

Erika Andersen: Well, I started my company Proteus in 1990, so 32 years ago. And the reason I started it was that I noticed that as everything started to. Speed up and flatten out that these skills that in the eighties were called soft skills, you know, leadership management, teaming communication became more and more important. And in fact, our original tagline for Proteus was Skills for Mastering the Future. And so I wanted to help people focus on that.

Erika Andersen: And then the other thing I wanted to do, the other reason I started my company is I wanted to be what has come to be called over the years, a business partner at the time, 30 plus years ago. Consultancies and especially training companies, were like widget sellers and I really wanted to collaborate. And in fact, our mission is and has always been that we help clients clarify and move toward their hopes for the future.

Erika Andersen: And that's true whether we're doing change work or vision and strategy or as you say, executive coaching or any number of things. We help leaders be ready for what's coming, be ready for the future, and to create the futures they want for themselves.

Sean Weisbrot: You talk about preparing people for their future. How do you prepare yourself to be capable of helping them prepare for the future?

Erika Andersen: Oh man, I love that question. So whenever we talk to leaders, we always almost always say that thing they tell you in airplanes, you know, put on your own mask before attempting to help others. And we try to apply that to ourselves. I mean, one of the important things about us Proteus as a company, and we take it very seriously, is practicing what we preach.

Erika Andersen: So for instance, if I'm talking to a leader about. Having a mindset that prepares you for change. It's important to me that I do that work myself, that I work on my own mindset about change, that I become, change capable myself. So we always, I personally, and we, my company, feel like the best way to help someone get better at something is to get better at it yourself. Does that make sense?

Sean Weisbrot: Sure. So what are some examples of things that you do in order to perpetuate that change within yourself?

Erika Andersen: Like for instance, if, if I'm saying to someone, okay. So the way to make ourselves more change capable, better at change. Is to be able to affect our own mindset about change. 'cause one of the things that we found out in our research about change is that most people, when a change comes at them, they see it negatively. They see it as dangerous. So our opening mindset about change is usually that the change is going to be difficult and costly and weird. And difficult means I don't know how to do it, and other people are gonna make it hard for me to do costly means.

Erika Andersen: Specifically, it's gonna take from me things that I value, so it might be time or money, but more likely to be identity or reputation or power or relationships. You know, that this change is gonna take this real stuff away from me. And weird just means, Ugh, that's strange. We don't do things like that around here.

Erika Andersen: So what we've learned over the years is that people who are good at change, they're able to change the way they think about change. So that rather than seeing a change initially as difficult, costly, and weird, they immediately start thinking about how it could be. Easy versus difficult, or at least doable, how it could be more rewarding than costly. How it could be normal, how they could normalize it. So that's work that I've done myself, that I do myself on a daily basis. When a change comes at me and I, I hear myself in my head starting to think, oh, this is gonna be so hard. It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. How could I make it easier? How could it be doable?

Erika Andersen: What? Could it give me versus taking away, what are the benefits versus the costs? How can I normalize this? Who's somebody that I know that I respect that's doing it? So you actively shift your thinking about it. And as I've gotten better and better at doing that, it's obvious that, first of all, it's easier for me to teach other people how to do it.

Erika Andersen: But also then I have, and this is really critical, Sean, I have the moral authority of. This is something I'm doing. I'm not just telling you to do it. I'm not gonna do it myself, which is one of the reasons it's so important for leaders to model change because people can pick up on, if you're saying to do it and not doing it, then all your credibility goes away. So. That's one example.

Sean Weisbrot: I've taught myself how to change over my adulthood, and I think living in different countries has helped that tremendously. I had to learn it again as a company owner where I've had multiple companies, but this is the first that I've had employees. before it was always just me doing things by myself. It required a huge mindset change, having employees, but not just having employees, having managers and executives who know better than me who go, Hey, whoa, you're making the wrong decision here. Cool, your head, stop. Think about it.

Sean Weisbrot: I've had to learn it again as a podcast host because sometimes I might have a question I want to ask and you answer the question or or whoever the guest is. They answer the question and they keep going beyond the point where I would love to ask another question, and then I'm forced to let that question go and wait for another question to appear in my mind based on what they're saying. Otherwise, I have to go backwards from what they were saying. Then I feel like it ruins the flow of the conversation.

Erika Andersen: Yeah, you're saying something that I think is absolutely true, which is, you know, because we've, at Proteus, we've had a change practice for a long time, over a decade, and, you know, 20 change has sped up so much 20 years ago when there was. A reorg. It meant you pick the organization up, shake it around, set it back down again, and then that's it for the next couple years.

Erika Andersen: And now as you say, change, new changes, new challenges, changes are happening all the time, so it's not enough just to get good at a change. What we are really trying to help people do is what our term of art is change capable, because as you just pointed out, new changes are gonna come every day, and so you have to be good at. Going through change. You have to be good. You have to become fluent at change versus just, okay, I went through this change, now I'm done. That's just not how it works anymore.

Sean Weisbrot: Absolutely. I mean, I've been watching how artificial intelligence and automation and virtual reality and blockchain and all of this stuff has been appearing over the last few years. I mean, they appeared a long time ago. Some of them, you know, AI was first dealt with in the 60's or first started around in the sixties, but like, it didn't really kick off until about 15 years ago. But now it's becoming something that, like I, I may have mentioned to you off air in the nineties. If you didn't learn about computers, you'd lose your job to someone younger who was willing to, yes.

Sean Weisbrot: Now in the 2020s, but I think even more importantly, towards the end of this decade, possibly more important in the 2030s, if you don't know how to work with an AI to complete your job, you'll lose your job to someone who will.

Erika Andersen: I think that's right. And I think it's even worse than that or better than that, depending on your point of view. It's okay. So in the nineties, if you didn't know about computers. You were gonna lose your job. That's exactly right. My husband, that's when he went back to school and got his master's in information science and became a computer guy. Now he's a brewer, but became a computer guy. And, but the difference is now, it's not computers, it's filling in the blank. I mean, I, I feel like in the 2020s, if you're not willing to not just work with ai, but lots, it's just, if you are not good at change, if you are not fluent with whatever comes up. I think you're gonna have a hard time. I think that's the difference. It's just, it's not specific changes so much as change itself that the people who are gonna succeed are the people who see continual changes. Nonstop change in the way they operate and do business and live their lives as the norm.

Sean Weisbrot: Absolutely. And that's something that I've been trying to prepare myself for, over the last five to 10 years because I could see before any of this stuff happened that this was going to happen. Obviously I didn't have a clear sight of what technologies or things like that, but I could see remote work was coming. I could see that AI was coming and I just didn't know, there's a good chance that by 2040, if you don't own your own ai, you will be owned by an AI that Google, Facebook, apple, or Facebook, you know, one of these companies own like you basically have 20 years to make your money or, or you're gonna become like a slave to the ai, you know, the AI overloads.

Sean Weisbrot: So I was trying to think desperately, you know, in my early twenties, like how am I going to position myself to take advantage of this rather than be taken advantage of? And I think I figured it out, but. Like it was not easy. For sure. Yeah. So, yes. How do you help leaders actually position themselves to handle this change mindset?

Erika Andersen: So let me back up a couple steps and give you some of our thinking around change, which I think will be helpful to your listeners. So I, I told you before we started, I just. Came out a few months ago, this new book changed from Inside Out. And the reason I decided to write the book is, as I said, we've had a change practice for a long time and we really do a good job, I think, of integrating the human side and kind of the technical side of change. But I kept seeing people have a hard time with change and so I really wanted to answer two questions. That's why I started writing the book. And the first question I wanted to answer is, why is change so hard for us? Why is it so hard that sometimes people just completely turn away? I'm, I'm not gonna learn about ai, I'm not gonna, I'm, I'm just gonna create this little place for myself and go over there and do that. You know, so why is it so hard? So that's question one. Second question I wanted to answer was, what actually happens when we go through a change, when an individual human being, psychologically and emotionally goes through change? What, what happens? And I felt like I could answer those questions. I would be able to do exactly what you just said, help leaders and anybody really go through change. So here's what I came to about that first question. I looked at history and I realized as I thought about it, that if you think about a person's life a hundred or 200 or 500 years ago, that life was pretty much the same from beginning to end. Right. A person's life a couple hundred years ago, they probably grew up in the town where their parents grew up. They probably did the work that their parents did. They ate the food and went to the church and had the rituals that their parents did, and that was true for their whole lives. It's almost like a couple hundred years ago, people's lives were unimaginably stable. Right. Okay. So that's, think about for thousands of years, a human life is. You just do the same thing and then you die. Right? And when a change came, it was generally speaking, a disruption, a danger, or a, you know, a threat, a flood, a famine, a war, a plague, right? And so the best bet, almost with that exception, was to come back to that previously known as soon as possible, find food again. Have the flood waters recede. You know, come back to that previously known, not a new different known, but the previously known. So if you think about it, thousands of years, thousands of years, that's our wiring to think of change as a danger and a threat, and this deep homeostatic urge to come back to the previous known. Okay, so here we are in the 21st century. Where, you know, over the last a hundred years, change has spit up, spit up, spit up. Now we have more change happening in a day in our lives probably than our great grandparents did in their whole lives. You know, our wiring is not preparing us for this, so we have to rewire ourselves. That's when I turn to, well, what actually, what does that mean? How do we go through a change? And that's, I started to talk to you about this a minute ago. So what we found as we did this research is when a change comes at us, almost without exception, we wanna know three things. We wanna know, what does this mean for me? What am I personally going to have to do differently? That's thing one. Thing two is, why is this happening? We have this strong preference for the status quo. We need a pretty good reason to change. So why is this happening? And then the third thing we wanna know is what will it look like when it's changed? What's the post change future? Because we have this deep fear of the unknown, and we don't want it to be something we don't see clearly. So we start gathering this information. And then, as I said to you earlier, our initial mindset about change, even as we're gathering this information, it kind of. Come up against this negative bias, this mindset of this is going to be difficult and costly and weird. You know? So we're gathering this information, but we're not gathering it neutrally. We're like, what does this mean for me? Oh, that's gonna be hard and I don't know how to do it, and it's gonna take a lot of time, and nobody does it this way, you know? So then we further notice that when someone becomes open to a change, it's because their mindset starts to shift. And you've probably noticed this in yourself. You start to think, well, I. I could, you know, this is doable, this is easy. I guess I could do this. You start noticing, thinking about what it will give you versus what it will take away. That it's more rewarding and costly and it starts feeling normal, and that normalization happens when you look around and people that you. Think of as being like you do it, or people that you admire and wanna emulate, do it. So we noticed that as people's mindset shifted, it was fascinating because often the situation wasn't changing at all. It was just their mindset shifted. Then they started to be open to the change, willing to adopt new behaviors, and then the change could occur. So when we realized that, we came to call that the change arc, we thought, oh my gosh, if we can help people. Through that change arc. If we can help them recognize and move through that mindset shift more quickly, they will become more change capable. So that's what we focus on E even when we're doing big transformational changes in organizations with companies, helping them cascade their people as many people as possible through that mindset shift.

Sean Weisbrot: I think those are pretty good questions to ask. And so like what I do in this regard in terms of. Remaining, as you say, change capable is. Through travel, I've come to want to know more about the different countries that I go to and spend time in. And that's gotten me interested in understanding how their economy works, how the businesses within their economy work, how their politics works, how their language works, how their culture works. Why do they think this way? Why do they act this way? How is this different from other countries? Why is it different from other countries? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do they interact with their neighbors? Therefore, what are the geopolitics of the region and do they tie into other countries that I'm aware of and care about or not interested in? And then tying that into the global finance and global business that I also learn about through different startups and investors and what they're thinking about and what they're doing, as well as reading about technology news. Helps me form, I think a pretty wide image of what the future might look like for the entire species in general. How fast that change might come, how long I have to prepare for it, and how I can take that and use it to my advantage for myself and for my business.

Erika Andersen: Oh, that's wonderful. And as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, so that's, you know, as you can imagine when, when someone is in that. Anti-change mindset of this is gonna be difficult, costly, and weird. It's like their brains are calcified. They're stuck in that this is gonna be hard. And then everything that comes, oh, see, it's gonna be hard. It's gonna take a long time. I don't know how to do it. It's weird. In Spain, it's strange. In France, it's all, you know, you, you're stuck. And what we notice when that mindset starts to shift, the main thing that happens is what you described is people start getting curious. Which is such a powerful turbocharger for learning, right? So when you start thinking to yourself, well, maybe this way that this country works differently than the us, huh? Maybe it could be rewarding. Let me find out more and that, let me find out more. That's the essence of curiosity, right? So what we notice is that unfreezing of people's mindsets has mostly to do with curiosity. So I'd love your description of it, that's exactly what we've seen. People who are able to change are people who are willing to be curious in new circumstances.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, and I, I don't want anyone to think that, like, this is something, you know, I just started doing and like, you know, I just spend all day every day. But like, I've been working on this for like 15 years now, so it's something that kind of builds up over time and kind of snowballs because. Say, for example, I witnessed China go through a digital revolution by living there. I saw a WeChat form. I saw the r and b convert into a digital currency without them actually removing paper currency from their ci, from circulation. Yeah. I saw what a completely digital payment system could look like. I saw what high-speed rail could look like, and then I came back to America and went, but why? Right. But then yes, knowing America, you go, ah. I understand why it's never gonna happen in America. Maybe, but it'll be 20 years behind China. Why? Oh, because the government is different, because there's private enterprise. The government isn't taking advantage of these things, but in China, the government owns everything and so it can do whatever it wants. You know, China can say, oh, we want to do this and we're gonna do it, and everyone's like, okay, let's do it in America. Yeah. The president's like, I wanna do this, and then maybe 10 years later after a ton of infighting and lobbying, then maybe a part of it might get passed.

Sean Weisbrot: I just read something today about America putting billions of dollars into something to try to compete with China. And the reality is like, no, you just can't, like Congress trying to spend money to compete with China is, it's a joke. It's just, it's not covering any of the bases.

Erika Andersen: If America is gonna do anything, we're gonna have to figure out how to do it in a different way, in a way that works given our very dispersed, non-centralized, the,

Sean Weisbrot: The short of it is it's not gonna happen. And that's okay. America had its time. But anyways, this isn't about America. The more I learn, the more I'm able to connect the dots between different countries, different industries. So for example, I saw China doing this, and then a few years later I moved to Vietnam, which was still a completely cash society, but literally the country next to China. Mm. And so you could see. And so I stayed four years in Vietnam and by the end of it, I saw them getting into digital payments. Maybe Chinese companies were bringing the tech over, maybe Vietnamese companies saw China doing it and thought, Hey, maybe we should do this ourselves. I don't know exactly what happened there, but you start to see how things can happen in the future and then position yourself to take advantage of that.

Erika Andersen: Yeah, I think that's right. My son is involved in this startup company that's focusing on carbon sequestration. Paid for through blockchain. And it's so fascinating and I'm learning so much just by talking to him on the phone and I'm completely with you. We just, there are entirely different ways to do things that will break a lot of molds and we just have to be open to that.

Sean Weisbrot: So I'm gonna hit you with a question from left field here.

Erika Andersen: Great.

Sean Weisbrot: If the goal is to help be poor, prepare for change.

Erika Andersen: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: What makes you The right person to help them do that? When you're not a millennial, you're not a Gen Z person, you're not someone that may identify with leaders of my generation.

Erika Andersen: It's a great question and I wouldn't say I'm the person. I'd say I am a person and I feel like there's a combination of wisdom. I've had 40 or 50 years to think about things and see a lot of different situations, the wisdom of that plus. I think the things we're talking about are really timeless and ageless. I think it's irrelevant that I'm old in this regard because these things we're talking about are changing your mindset, changing your self-talk, changing the way you think, I think. Really timeless and ageless, so why not me?

Sean Weisbrot: Okay, fair enough. You help someone think about how they can change themselves, and mostly your clients are executives in companies. How can they then take what you've taught them? Teach it to their executive team so that the team can then have it trickle down to the rest of the company.

Erika Andersen: Love that question. So in this book that I'm talking about that I just wrote, I talk about why change is hard and then this change arc. And then I spend most of the book explaining our kind of five step change model that we use as a frame for helping organizations go through change. And it's. Very Swiss Army knife ish. You can use it to plan a family vacation. You can use it to plan an organizational transformation for a hundred thousand people. But in each of the chapters where I explain the steps, I talk about leaders. Individuals and the organization itself. So we really focus on that. It's like, again, put on your own mask before attempting to help others. But then the main thing, and I could talk about this for hours, but won't, the main thing is for leaders to recognize that an individual human being starts going through that change arc the moment they hear about a change. That's really important. 'cause lots of times what happens is leaders. They find out about a change. They think about it for weeks or months. They go through their own arc where they come to see it as doable, rewarding, normal, and then they turn to their folks and explain the change and expect their people to somehow magically be where they were, where they are now versus where they were three months ago. So we really help 'em understand, look, now they're starting. They're gonna ask all these questions. What does it mean to me? Why is it happening? What does it look like? They're gonna start out probably with this negative, restrictive mindset. It's your job. To support them through that. And we have these four, what we've come to call change levers. Like levers are force multipliers that we encourage leaders to apply when helping people through their change. A and the first one is to give understanding. So a lot of times, and I don't know if you've experienced this, being in a big organization, especially when there's a change, it's just, here's the change. Good luck, or here's the change I know you'll get with the program, versus giving people the contextual understanding they need and that they're asking for, what does this mean for me? Why is it happening? Well, it looks like it's done. How did we get here? Why is this better than the former? You know, all that contextual understanding. So we always encourage leaders to be as transparent as they possibly can and really help people understand how we came to this change and what we hope to gain from it, and why we're doing it differently now, all of that stuff. Don't assume that. They don't need to know. People wanna know. They need to know. So that's thing one. Thing two, the second change lever is. Clarify and reinforce priorities because lots of times when one thing is changing, people assume that everything is changing. So it's really helpful to them to hear what's not changing. So, you know, your salespeople, we're gonna have a new CRM. Your quotas are gonna say the same. Your clients are gonna say the same. Just how you get data and how you put in data and how you get data back. That's all that's gonna change. So these priorities are gonna stay exactly the same. This one priority will change. That's it. Super soothing and reassuring for people to know what's actually changing, staying the same. The third, lever is to give control, and this is really hard for leaders and it's really important when a big change is being made or even a medium sized change in an organization. It's important to give people as many choices about it as possible so they don't just feel victimized and at the effect of it, so. When is it gonna happen? How's it gonna happen? How are you gonna tell your people? How should we do it relative to this other thing we're doing? How does it line up with this third initiative that's happening? So the more choices, the more control you can give people in a change, the better and the better the change will go, because then they will have good input to improve how you do it. Right? And then the fourth lever is given support. In the early part of a change, the support that's most needed and that people most benefit from and get the least off is just listening. You know when people are at the beginning of hearing about a change and their thing is gonna be really hard and they don't know how to do it, and it's gonna take a lot of time, don't try and talk 'em out of it. Just listen. Oh yeah. It will take some time. Yeah, that's right. We haven't done it like this before. Yep. This is different from what we said last year. You just listen. Just take it in. And once you, once they really feel like you've heard them, then they'll be ready to hear about the more practical. Tangible support. Like, oh, and we have these new tools you can use, and there's a new process and here's your mentor and there's training. But if you try and throw that at 'em right away, they're like, dude, no, I hate this. Just let me talk for a while about how awful it is. Okay, great. I'm here for you. So those four levers, they're very practical and they're really helpful to leaders to know this is how you help people get on the other side of that change arc. So they're actually ready to do the new stuff that we need to do. Does that make sense?

Sean Weisbrot: I was gonna say, I think I subconsciously adopted that framework without knowing it. I'll give you an example of it right now, please. Yeah. We're in the process of raising our next round of fundraising, which will be multiple seven figures.

Erika Andersen: Awesome. Congratulations.

Sean Weisbrot: Thanks. And one of the things that we realized in probing our internal operations was that our product needs to have a little bit of work done on it. So, we decided to start talking to our product manager and kind of review how everything is working and we realized that. You know, our documentation was done last year and with, someone that's no longer with us, so we realized that it could be fixed and improved, and oh, by the way, we should probably just migrate it from our own internal wiki, Wikipedia like thing that we have to Confluence, which is run by Atlassian, which is part of the suite with Jira tickets that we use and with Bitbucket, which we use for code repository and all that. We realized if the quality assurance team and the development team and the product team are all using the same software to manage the documentation, then it would be a lot better. So we embarked on that and so I had to talk to the product manager and I had to talk to my COO and I had to talk to the QA manager, and I had to talk to the CTO because all of them are parties to the documentation. The product manager was the one who's gonna be doing a lot of the actual work, but before we can make moves to do that, you know, I had to get her on board with like, Hey, we're gonna be getting rid of this Wiki and getting to Confluence. And by the way, like, you know, you need to know, you know, does the COO have any input about how this should be displayed? Does the CTO have any input about where in the Confluence it should go? Does the QA manager have any input for how it should link back to the features and the test cases and all of that? And I said, look, I know you're busy. I know you have a lot going on. This is something that we have to do. How long do you think it'll take to get done? And, you know, there's multiple parts to it. And she's like, I think it'll probably take six weeks. And I said, okay, good. You've got five. Because we have to pay for the software in six weeks. So we're, we're paying for a product management software once a year, and it's gotta be paid in six. I said, great. You got five to make it happen.

Erika Andersen: Wow. That is a great example. Sean, as I'm listening to you, it's like, okay, so first you had to give her the understanding. Then you had to clarify, well, here's our priority, why we're doing it. How much control, what, how long will this take? How do you need to do it? Who do you need to talk to? Okay, I'm gonna support you. Gonna bring it in a little bit, but I'm gonna support you to make that happen. That's fantastic. What a great example.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, and it's not easy 'cause we're also in different time zones. Like I'm in America right now, she's in Europe and the rest of the team is in Asia. So we've got a. Talk between those different times that people are available and, but yeah, it's, but it's really important, like I said, because, you know, the QA team has to use this, so she has, you know, so she has the control of how does it get displayed as long as the CTO and the COO don't, don't care. And it works for the QA team because yeah, once we get this funding and we hire more people that'll work alongside her or under her. And under the QA manager and maybe more developers, they all need to be able to follow this information. So this has to be done now before we start hiring people. 'cause if we hire them and then we do it, it's gonna be a mess. We gotta do it now.

Erika Andersen: Yeah, absolutely. No, that's really good. And so much of, so much of what you're saying and I love that you're, I love how you're doing this. This is exactly what we encourage people to do in order to have a change. Really works. You have to get as many critical people on board as possible. Like in the, in our change model, the fourth step we call lead the transition. And it's once you've actually created the core change plan, then you have to think about who's going to be most affected by this change and what it's going to entail for them to go through the change. So let's make a plan so we have our change plan. These are the technical, practical things we're gonna have to do to make this. You know, to do, take this off our Wikipedia thing onto Confluence. So the people who are gonna be most affected by this, how do we help them through it? What information do we need to give to them? What priorities do we have to clarify? What support are they gonna need, what control do they need? So you almost, in a way, put them. What we call the transition plan, the people part of the plan, kind of you layer it on top of the practical plan so that they happen at the same time, which is what you're talking about, so that people aren't it. The worst thing is when the practical part of a change impacts people and they haven't been given any kind of a, they don't know what's happening and people almost always just. Seize up when you do that. So it's really critical to help them through that change as you're making the change. Right.

Sean Weisbrot: That's something I've had to learn as a CEO for sure, because my COO and I have been close friends for 22 years, but this is the first time that we're working together on something serious. I was used to making all of the decisions for the first year before he came on and. We had a point in the first year or so that he was working with me that I was not considering his work sometimes, and I would make a decision, yes, yes, yes. And come back and be like, whoa. What are you doing? Like, that just ruined a month of my work. Exactly, yes. So I had to learn like, oh, wow. Like, no, I need to, I need to stop making decisions and start talking to him and going, look, I, you know, I want to do this. What do you think?

Erika Andersen: Wow, that's such a great learning, Sean. And it's even more what you're saying is true, and it's even more important when you're. Changing because if it's steady, if you're just in a steady state, which almost nobody is anymore, and you do something, then maybe it'll mess somebody else up. But if you're trying to move at the same time then and you get out of sync, then it really screws things up. So it's even more important to stay in touch and be collaborative when you're trying to change quickly. And it's counterintuitive because when you're trying to change quickly, most of us. Impulse is just to go and just do it and not tell anybody. Right. So it's, it's critical to stay aligned as you're moving forward quickly.

Sean Weisbrot: That's just one person.

Erika Andersen: Yes.

Sean Weisbrot: Imagine if I were to do that with 10,000 employees.

Erika Andersen: Exactly.

Sean Weisbrot: You know, if I hadn't learned those things early on.

Erika Andersen: Oh, absolutely. And in fact, I remember, this was probably about 15 years ago, I was working with the CEO who had just been, their company had, it had been an acquisition, but they merged with another company and, and I said, well, so what are you doing to help people through this? And he goes. What do you mean? They're fine. They'll get with the program like, dude, I think you're absolutely wrong. And he was absolutely wrong, and it took him four years instead of one year to make the, you know, to have the financial results that they wanted. They lost a lot of their best people. It was really a goat rodeo. It was a shit show. And he could have made it not happen if he'd done these things, if he'd told people what was going on and clarified the priorities and given them some support, given them some control. But he just didn't. Get that that was necessary. You know,

Sean Weisbrot: That sounds like this guy who fired 900 employees over Zoom. I can't remember the name of the company. Oh my God,

Erika Andersen: yes, yes, yes. Oh, what was he thinking? How, who on what planet would that have been a good idea, you know?

Sean Weisbrot: I don't know, but it was definitely a horrible decision and yeah. I just heard that Peloton might be purchased by Amazon or another company and the stock went down 24% because the CEO was like, you know what, I'm gonna quit and I'm gonna, you know, we're gonna fire 2,800 people in the process to stream. Basically. They wanna streamline, they want to cut costs, they wanna make themselves cheaper to run, get easier, easier for, you know, profitability. Although they were talking about also building their own factory, and I guess whoever would acquire them be like, you know what, yeah, you shouldn't build your own factory. That's what, so apparently the CEO just wasn't making many good decisions, but also they were getting a lot of really bad press on TV shows. Just like, yes, there was a TV show called Billions where one of the main characters was riding on a Peloton and apparently he had a heart attack while riding on the Peloton. So like in, just like unnecessary, you know, things and you know, it is just giving them bad press and so they basically are being screwed into a point where they have to sell themselves to survive.

Erika Andersen: Yeah, I mean, let that be a cautionary tale because so much change is happening all the time. This just reinforces my contention that we have to get good at change because the stakes are higher and higher. And if you as a leader are bad at helping your people, supporting your people through change, it's gonna be bad for you and the organization and. Probably the world. You know,

Sean Weisbrot: I think something that every CEO should probably learn, which I'm still learning, is whenever you wanna do something, just stop and think it through before you do it.

Erika Andersen: Exactly. And think about the implications. Think, okay, who is this going to affect? Who is going to be most affected by this? And how can I mitigate the negative impact of that effect? How can I make it a more positive, more forward-leaning outcome?

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. So is there anything we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to mention?

Erika Andersen: I guess the only thing is I always wanna want people to understand that we can rewire ourselves. I mean, this is a, it is a bit of a burning platform. We have to learn how to get good at change, but we can, it's all about, it really is all about mindset and how we think is in our control. So you can change your cell talk. You can learn to be, and, and it's funny, somebody said to me, I was doing a podcast a couple weeks ago, somebody said, are you saying people should be. Positive about change. And it's not that 'cause some change is bad, some change is unnecessary, some change is badly managed. It's just changeable. You wanna be able to, and you can rewire yourself to come at any change neutrally to be able to not automatically think, oh, this is gonna be terrible. But just to think. Hmm. I wonder what this is going to be and I wonder if it's something that I need to do. And if you can start neutrally with a change, then oh man, it's like Tai chi. It's like starting in a balanced way, you know? Then, then you can go through the changes that are gonna come and that you're gonna need to go through, and we can, that's the message. We can do this, we can rewire ourselves.

Sean Weisbrot: For sure. The way that I look at it is that life is difficult. It gets harder the older you get and all that matters is how you think about it and how you handle it.

Erika Andersen: Yes, yes. Absolutely. I especially like now that I'm o you know, pretty old, God, there are people my age who are just so negative and so like, oh, I'm in the twilight of my life. It's like, okay, sure. If you think that, then that is definitely gonna be the case. So it's always about our mindset and we have. We don't like to hear this because then it makes us feel like we have to do something about it. But we have pretty much complete control over our reaction to circumstances. We can decide how we want to think.

Sean Weisbrot: Oh yeah, definitely. I've learned that. I've somehow managed to talk myself out of reactions that I had learned. I. That was not good.

Erika Andersen: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Sean Weisbrot: It wasn't amazing, but when you recognize it, only then I think self-awareness, it's, it's just, if you're self-aware about it, then you're able to change it, but until, yeah, you recognize it, you can't.

Erika Andersen: That's exactly right. It's bringing it to your conscious awareness and realizing that it, that you then have a choice. Do I wanna react like this? Do I wanna think about this like this or not? And if not, how do I wanna think about it instead? That is incredibly powerful. When we take that power for ourselves, then we're in good shape.