E019: Leading Change (Lessons from Brexit)

now on to this episode.

Hello. This is James and Jane, and here we are again with another episode of The World of Work podcast. Well, you say it's another episode of The World of Work, what's coming up but, but actually it's a little bit different from usual episodes. All right. Hit me with it. So we think a little bit differently today, a little bit differently, a little bit differently. We have been having conversations listeners about the world and yeah, big, big, heavy conversations, not really, but I think we have been looking around and seeing that it's quite a unique period in history, in the certainly in the sense that there's lots going on

for those of you listening here in the UK, we're mid Brexit. I mean, well, we're mid something I'm still not sure exactly, Ian before the x or something like that. I think we're off the iron before the T based on, I mean, mind you, by the time you listen to this, it could have all changed, because last night before visit, yeah, so last night the government voted on asking for a extension. I don't really understand it short or long. But anyway, so we're at the business end of Brexit, and the US have, obviously, has obviously got sort of a polarizing thing going on around Democrats and Republicans and some of the stuff, particularly around things like the wall, yeah, we've just yesterday, had a terrible tragedy in New Zealand. That's true in Christ in Christchurch. So massive condolences to people out there. And also, there's just, there's just a lot of stuff going on right in the world. And there's, I guess, with our we're not, we're not politic political analysts, we're not anything like that. But I am interested in what maybe some of the theory and the academic research around organizations can tell us about some of the things that are going on in the world, what we can learn, what maybe

Politicians might have learned. Maybe they didn't, and maybe they could have done I don't know, but I think certainly we've had more and more conversations around division and organization in around change and managing it, decide what to do.

And so James has gone away and researched four different sort of models, stroke theories, stroke points of view, and we're gonna have a little bit of a conversation about how they might, uh, might be useful in organizations that are similarly experiencing periods of change, and whether they're relevant and whether they're helpful, because we thought that would be a really interesting conversation. So we don't know how this is gonna go right, because we do not have our new normal structure. We're just gonna go through each the four points. We've got a special structure it

is a special structure for a special episode. So James is going to take us through each the four and each time, he's going to explain a piece of research or a point of view, and we're going to have a little conversation about how we think it might relate to organizations in periods of change, how it might relate to Brexit or other changes going on in the world, and what that means really, and whether maybe it doesn't mean anything. I can't wait. James got really funny guys. James got really funny faces. And I can't tell if it's I can't wait. He's got a really funny face. That's what she just said. I know, but it's, it's because I don't know if you're looking at me like, I mean a funny expression. I is sorry. It's because I think James is slightly worried, because I've been on a lot of late political rants lately in my life, and to the point where I got told off by my other half last night

for just maybe needing to calm down a bit about it all. So I will do my best to stick my head in the organization development world before we get started. Yeah, couple of things. One As always, people can get in touch. Yeah, we would love to hear from you. Twitter has been going positively crazy lately, so it's really lovely. We've had lots of people engaged, letting us know they're listening to episodes, telling us about what they're doing. Shout out to

Marina in London, who I know has been listening and sent me, sent me on Twitter, which I shared with the podcast timeline, a great photo of a little huddle space. Oh, that was nice, wasn't it? Yeah, I thought it was quite cute, right? So she sent me a photo, or maybe us actually on, okay, and it was a photo of a little huddle space.

So clearly, clearly, we're not the only ones. No, um, so do send us your stuff on Twitter. You can also find us on our there's lots of information on our website, www dot the WoW podcast, org, where you can also sign up for our Wow mail. Wow mail, wow mail, which I've had to change the name of, oh no, no, we can still call it wow mail, but the census at the beginning kept going.

To everyone spam. So I've now, I've now addressed that. Hopefully it's not for spam mail, though we don't like that. Well, it was, it was spam, wow, mail, which I thought was weird. Spam mail. Yeah, so, so, yeah, you can sign up. There we were on LinkedIn, Insta, Facebook, come find us. Come talk to us. Come tell us what you think,

and don't send us your critiques of Brexit. That's my only request. This is absolutely what we're talking about here is how we can take lessons from academic theory and plate points of view and put them into action, potentially, if they're right for it, within organizations. Yeah, yeah. We're kind of like you never world inspired by some thinking of what's going on now, a little bit of a digest of Brexit and things like that and what it means for change in organizations. Brexit has inspired us to record this podcast, which I don't think anyone's ever said ever but okay, where are you gonna start? You're gonna kick Oh yeah, I'd love to kick us off. So what we're gonna do, as Jen said, is we're gonna go through four different sort of models and frameworks and have a little think about them, partly from a Brexit perspective, but also just partly from an organizational perspective, and see what we can learn and what some lessons are and similarities and differences and reflections, and, you know, just the usual type of seeing what happens chat that we do. So where am I going to start us off? Well,

what I'm going to do deep breaths, is I'm going to start us off way back in the 1940s with our favorite person, Mr. KL. We love Mr. KL, Kurt. Lewin. Kurt. Lewin, oh, I'm gonna stop gushing about yay. We love Kurt. Lewin, um, anyway, we're gonna start with a tool, which is force field analysis. Now, why would we possibly be doing this? You might be wondering, well, that's a very good question. Hopefully I can explain it a little bit. But first, let's, let's talk about what force field analysis is so force field analysis is a tool that's used as a bit of an assessment framework when you're thinking about introducing change, right? So it's a way to analyze how a how sentiment exists in relation to a change. And essentially, all you do with force field analysis is you get a big piece of paper, you stick a line in the middle, you write what a potential change is that you looking to achieve in the middle of that. And then on one side, with some arrows pointing towards the line, you write some driving forces. So these are the factors that support the change, the types of things that that are, you know, trying to make sure that the change will happen, positive factors and inertia type factors that are supporting the change, and then on the other side, you draw some arrows that say resisting forces. So these are all the things that are holding back the change and pushing against the direction of change that's out there. Now, why are we talking about this? Well, we're talking about this because if you think about Brexit at the minute, and if you go a long way back in time to pre referendum stuff in the UK, and when a political decision was being made in relation to the change, what you'll find is that there were driving forces pushing for the UK leaving the European Union, which is basically the referendum question, and at the same time there were restraining forces pushing against that change, right? So it's possible to draw broadly speaking, of force field analysis, looking at driving forces supporting and, you know, moving towards the change, and restraining forces pushing against it. Now what Kurt Lewin says is several different things, he says, but you can, you can draw all those different forces, and you draw the forces on each side, you can apply scores to them, though I'm not sure that Lewin ever really intended scores to be drawn for it. But certainly something that people do now is they apply scores to each of the different forces that they have. So for example, for driving forces, you could have Force One, Force Two, force three, and those would have different strengths. So one could be only a small proponent of support for the change. So maybe a score of one another could have a really big score, so maybe a score of six. And in doing that way, doing that, way, doing that, you could assess for different scores that were supporting your changes and pushing them along, and the different forces that were resisting the changes and pushing back against them. So basically, you end up with a piece of paper with arrows pointing into the middle from both sides. And fundamentally, the length of those arrows, or the power of those arrows, is an indicator of the overall support for the change, I guess. And if you do put numbers in it, you can come up with a total score, if you wanted to. So you could have a total score for the driving forces and a total score for the restraining forces. And essentially, what the model says is that if, if a total force is pushing for a change and the total force is pushing against a change are fairly similar in strength, then it might be hard to deliver whatever that changes, or it might imply that that change is going to be difficult to deliver. The other thing that's worth pointing out is that within the model, what you might be able to do, or the way that organizations could use the model, is to say, Okay, well, force one feels like it's only got a strength of two at the minute. Maybe we can go back and and look at that force and spend a bit of time doing more on it and growing that and making it into a more powerful argument, or something like that. Or alternatively, you might look at a restraining force for whatever the changes that you want to introduce, and say, Okay, well, there's a big force pushing against the change. Hypothetically, in a business instance.

Potentially to do with our IT systems will make it very hard to implement that. And you might say, Okay, well, that's a serious restraining force. Why don't we try and tackle that in some way? So why don't we change our IT systems, or invest in them in such a way that it reduces that restraining force, and maybe if we tackle that a little bit, then the overall sort of momentum towards the change or acceptability of that change will be bigger, right? So force field analysis is really just almost a diagnostic tool you can use at the early stage of a change to assess whether or not it feels like it's going to be delivered in a successful manner, in a fairly quick and simple way. What I wanted to call out, though, and we're not going to look at Brexit specific related things in terms of forces, but I do have a list of some types of forces that exist, and when you look at force field analysis, that might just give you a flavor of the types of things that are there. So from I guess, a business or organizational perspective, there are internal forces and external forces. So some of the internal forces that could exist on either side, so they could be, you know, for change or against change, could include things like desire to increase profit, a need to reorganize, to increase efficiency, maybe natural aging and decline in a business. Or, you know, obsolescence of machinery, obsolescence of intellectual property, conflicts between departments, need for flexibility and structures, things like that. And then there are a series of external factors as well. So a whole load of them. This is just an example, but we've got things like

uncertain economic conditions, greater competition, input costs, legislation, taxation, political interests, ethics and social values, globalization, scarcity of resources, technology changing, like all your sort of pestle type stuffs in there as well. So anyway, the reason I wanted to bring that one up is I just thought it was interesting as a way to think about change and from a Brexit perspective, I guess, as I said earlier, if you go back to the beginning, at the very start of Brexit, it would have been possible to pull together a series of driving forces on one side of your force field analysis and a series of restraining forces on the other with a referendum question in the middle. And we probably would have seen that actually things feel from the strength of the forces there probably kind of finally balanced. And for me, that would be an indicator that it would be a complicated thing to try and achieve.

Over to you is that, is that a hospital pass? What do you think?

I think so interestingly, when you read the list out of some of the potential changes, there's one that you didn't mention. That, for me, probably explains why I think this is really relevant, both to Brexit, but also why I think it's really relevant to organizations, and it's, it's an internal one, and it's a general sense that the business could do better. Okay, now for me, I have worked in organizations where new CEOs have come in, and they have, they have used that, yeah, as a barometer. So they've asked people, you know, Is there potential? Is there potential to be doing more, which I think is a loaded question, right? Because, just because there's potential doing more doesn't mean that the change is going to deliver that. But for

Brexit, it feels incredibly accurate, yeah, I think there is a general sense in the country, and quite often in organizations, you could do better. And quite often that's enough okay to make to look at a change, if nothing else. Now my concern is that from what I've taken from the living model is and I have to be really careful, because I haven't. I've read, I've read a bit of it, but I've also read quite a lot of what people are doing with it now, yeah, I'm not 100% convinced I've understood the nuances of it. Sure, I am no no and I that's the point, isn't it? It's having a conversation. But let's, let's put a caveat on this. If the scoring is included in the Lewin model rather than someone adding it on, then I think it is horrible and reductive, because I think it's half the problem with Brexit and with organizations that people try and reduce a set of changes, because we're talking about set of changes, right? No organization has a single change because it has impact. And the same with Brexit, it's all systemic. So if you're going to create change to reduce the push scores and the pull scores to a number, yeah, and then make a decision on, even if it's hard, it's on one side or the other, I think is incredibly reductive. If the Lewin model, as I've understood it, is about using it to analyze what those pressures are, yeah, such that you can make an informed decision about if this is the right moment for change, versus trying to address some of those issues, and then move forward. Then I think it's brilliant and genius. And so it's a real, you know, it's like all of these tools, and one of the challenges Lewin. It was written at a time where psychology, and particularly Organizational Psychology, was not rigorous in the way it tested things. In fact, I suspect it sat in management science. And so it.

Well, it is a challenge, because there is this great concept that I actually think is incredibly powerful for organizations. And I think if you sat down in periods of turmoil, particularly, let's, let's, let's say the decline, the general sense of decline in productivity, right? If you sat down with your key staff and you looked at some of the change options that you had, and then you did this analysis, and you didn't reduce it to a score, but instead, you used it as a way to inform all the different factors and how meaningful they are, and what other ways you could solve some of them. And to get that, I think that's been incredibly powerful. And if I'm honest, if that is the model, I kind of wish it had been brought out. I kind of wish it had been there during Brexit, because I don't think we'd be where we are now. Because I think the reductive nature of identifying a change as a pro and con or a number, which is exactly what a referendum is right, completely means that we, we haven't analyzed those different forces and the different magnitude of them, because actually we, you know, and all the things he talks about, the general sense of malaise, or the external political factors, or social more social norms and stuff like that. They absolutely are relevant to organizations. And absolutely technological change would be the absolute obvious me. So if I were, I work with huge numbers of volunteers, and they are deeply uncomfortable with some technology and deeply comfortable with others, and a lot of that is down to their beliefs about what volunteering is. And so as they sense a change externally in the world, they push against it because they believe volunteering is different. Yeah, volunteering is humanist, yeah. You know, volunteering is not about bots. Volunteering is about Yeah, not processing about people. And so what's really interesting is, the more you see that shift in the world, the more you see a group of people push against it, yeah. And I get why, but I also get that if you unpick all of that, you can get to the bottom of what the issue is, and you can actually find different change, yeah, and you find different solutions. And so for me, at that point, it becomes incredibly powerful. So I would you, I would absolutely use this if my organization was facing a challenging period of change where we knew things couldn't stay as they are. So we do it. We're doing a project at the moment, and we talk about, is doing nothing an option? Yes, okay, and it's not right, it's not that is what's come out of it, yeah, but we needed to get there. It's a really good question, and then we needed to unpick. But why is there resistance? Yeah, because there is. So we're doing this piece of consultancy, and the phrase that's come out is yes, but so everyone has said, no, no, no, doing nothing's not an option. And then when we say, but can we do it? They go, yes, but yeah. And the butts are all different, yeah. And so one of the things that's made me literally in the last six minutes is work out that I need to go and do this with my team, that each one of those bugs, and we're not mapping it, we've got huge lists and huge pros. What we're not trying to do is understand the magnitude of these different issues and how else we might address them. So I love it if it's that, if there's a numeracy system attached, I hate it fine, and I think I hate a bit of it, but I think the fact that different forces have different strengths is important. But I echo your point about reducing it to just a number being unhelpful. So why don't we wrap up force field analysis to say it feels like a useful tool, and I love Kurt Lewin if we do a Holland, yeah, please. I don't think an episode is enough. I want to get into this. Starting to sound like fangirl, right? Our next series, our next entire podcast is going to be Kurt Lewin. I'm really confident that'd be a bit of a turn off. But anyway, let's move on Lewin podcast. So the next one, I'm excited. All right? So the next thing that I wanted to talk about was about the importance of United leadership, right? So, so this is really about how when change is delivered, it's it succeeds most often when there is unity amongst leadership, because the unity amongst leadership provides clear and consistent direction and messaging, and it's only through that unity that organizations or leadership teams tend to to pull the mass of labor and effort and sort of identity and drive and direction together behind them, right? So we just thought that clearly that's an important thing within change. And we just wanted to touch on that very briefly from

a Brexit perspective. And then, you know, take it back to organizations. So if we look at Brexit as a sort of unity versus disunity thing from a leadership perspective, several things pop up. I guess. The first thing is that this is the political arena, which obviously isn't our domain, but but in itself, political environments are almost by definition, in a multi party system, divided to some extent, right? And I think it's particularly pertinent to call out that in the British system, in the American system, we have a two party system, yeah. So and I and what I mean by that is it is designed to find the two strongest parties, because you have government and opposition, yeah. And I think the really important thing is that it is done under a political belief that if you put two opposing forces against each other, they will come up with better solutions, and they keep each other in check, yeah. And I think that's important, yeah, it is. It is. And actually, just as a term.

Side topic, I listened to a great podcast, another one the other week, one of Adam Grant's podcast on the importance of rivalry and how rivalry helps both parties be better at certain points in time. So some interesting and then, you know, you can go to Margaret Heffernan, who would tell you that competition is absolutely killing us. So there's a huge This in itself, is a hugely divisive issue, right? So when we think about the divided political parties that we have, certainly in the UK in relation to Brexit, what we see, and I'm not going to go through all the parties, is we've got parties spread between their views on whether they want no Brexit, or whether they want like a middle Brexit, or whether they want a really hard Brexit. So the point is that the entire political landscape at a party level is divided, so that means it's disunited from a leadership perspective. The next thing is that if we drill into it another stage, if we look say at the governing majority that we have in our government at the minute, what we find is actually we've got division in there as well. So here we'll talk a little bit more about it, but we've got a conservative party that's divided internally. So it's got a wing of politicians who are pushing towards almost Brexit as a no Brexit any cost piece. Then we've got politicians as well who actually want to remain so within that party, there's a division, complicated to some extent, by support from a third, sorry, another political party in there as well. So the governing majority is disunited, which again, sends complex signals to the people that are being led in the change where the government's looking to put through. And then let's zoom in again. So we started with political parties overall, then we've gone to the governing majority. And now we'll drill in a little bit towards political leadership, sort of reflecting on, I guess, the UK cabinet, which is, you know, of a sort of secretaries of government in the UK, or, as I heard this morning, leaking like a leaky thing, leaking leaky thing. Okay, yes, I think it probably is leaking like a leaky thing, because, because there's no, there's no discipline within the group. Yeah, absolutely. And And what's interesting when we think about Brexit, a couple things stand out, right? So when, when we've got the actual cabinet, we've got a mixture of pro Brexit and pro remain individuals on there, which is important for sort of representative

inclusion within a leadership, but it means that leadership's, to some extent, disunited, and that complicates it. You get loud and differing voices within the cabinet as well. So Theresa, May is the prime minister and has been throughout this process, who's had a clear set of messages and directions, but around her, other strong political figures have been contradicting, proposing new directions, proposing alternatives. So we've had, we've had a whole series of people. I won't do names, because we don't, let's not, let's not do that role of honor. We don't need to do that. And then, then the last thing I was going to call out was that actually, you know, the Minister for exiting Europe or something, I think the official title for Brexit secretary is a Dixie, the Doxy. Where's the department for exiting the

dreadful name, duxy, all right, duck. So the Brexit secretary is an important role and and we've had multiple Brexit secretaries over the period of time that the government's been trying to do this. So what that means is that we've had an inconsistent set of leadership. And again, when you think about leading change within organization, if you have changing leaders within that role, if you have division of views, and if you have

variation in message, with inconsistent and contradictory messages coming from leadership, it's going to be very hard to deliver your leadership, deliver change what your leadership wants to deliver and just as and I guess that's really all I want to talk about in terms of unity, of leadership. Okay, okay, so I'm literally about to explode. Okay, so let's move on quickly before it's good explosion. Because, as it's always what happens, right? And I'm actually referenced this on LinkedIn, those of you who picked up on it last week, it's really frustrating when I come into an episode and I've got a really clear idea of what I think, and then James explains it, and I disagree with myself, and I feel so stupid. I referred to it as during so we did an episode we've recorded recently that's going to come out in series three, and I basically changed my mind halfway through, as I realized that I actually have even admitted I agree with them before. So I basically refer to myself as a plank, because I feel like a total plank in the middle of it, because I'm literally, we're both learning. And even worse, I then have to go and promote an episode where I sound like a plank.

So that was the huddle episode that came out, and I literally, I changed my mind halfway through about what I think. So if nothing I'm learning. But so for me, this is really important, this United leadership. There's three things I want to say about it. One is, I actually think the way you have to think about it is unity over process, okay? And I think that's the contrast with the EU. Is there is a clear process to disagree and agree, and therefore you can engage in it versus what.

We have. And if you link back to the force field stuff you were talking about, one of the things that I think would have really helped is if they had actually bothered to do the analysis, they would have understood which issues need picking off and dealing with, and therefore which ones to prioritize in the solution that they come up with, they don't. So they're all arguing about it, and there's division. And I think when you're talking about the dissenting voices in the leaky bucket and the leaking and the disagreement.

If we go, and I know we're going to talk about this in a different episode, maybe about social change and stuff like that, but one of the things that's really interesting is you have to have the voices in the room, right? We all know that. Yeah, absolutely. But actually two things, one, one in Brexit, they had the voices from within their own party in the room, yeah, which are already conflicted because they already have interest. They didn't have voices. So I think one of the biggest argument was, if you're going to do a major change like this, why don't you get a cross party pretty quickly, pretty quickly sorted. The second thing is, if you do not have a process that will guide you through it, that is agreed and shared of how you're going to make these decisions, rather than you're just going to lock yourself in a room and or where did they go? They went to checkers ages ago, which is the, like, the Prime Minister's country home. Yeah, you know, it's like Key Largo for Trump, or whatever, Florida camp, David, that's it. That's the official one. Yeah. So, yeah, there's a really important thing where, if there is a process, and you trust in the process, you trust that the views of yourself and others are being processed in it, yes, and taken, and if they don't come out on top, that's okay, yeah. And so for me, there's a massive missing piece about this, or maybe a contempt complimentary piece around the force field analysis. You do the force field analysis, it helps you understand the issues that are bigger than others, so it gives you confidence in the choices you're going to make. Yeah. And then you define a really clear process, that as a group, you can communicate, and when you say, this is how we're going to allow dissent, this is allow, we're going to allow this group who have different opinions to forge a solution. Yeah? And we are going to do this, and then we're going to do this, and we're going to do this, and each of those actions will create an output, and those outputs will lead us to our decision, yeah. And what you do, and we do it in Sport all the time. So when you have a dispute in sport and you have two teams who disagree, there is a process. So we have, like, fourth official, we have playback, we have technology. I'm doing the match. I'm doing a TV drawing, which is, like in rugby, when they send it to the fourth official, is the fourth official? Yeah? And there's all these posts, and part of that, absolutely, is about better information and data. Yeah, a lot of it is about managing a process such that you feel your problem has been managed appropriately by the right people. Yeah, and you can buy into the process. You buy into the process. So I, if I trust that my governing organization in sport manages process effectively, there's confident, consistent noise that everyone else is happy with the way the process made. Then when I get a decision I am unhappy with the outcome, I make my peace with it, because there has been a credible process. And for me, a big part of what's happened over here in the UK, and I can't talk about America in this sense, but in the UK, is that we are looking around as a citizenship on both sides, on every side, and we're saying, Where is the process? What? What happens if this happens? Yeah. So one of the big concerns is, and I understand that people keep saying, well, it's negotiation, so you've got to play your cast and stuff, but the EU aren't doing it like that because they can't, because they have a process, yeah? And so actually, what happens if you don't have that process, or you don't disclose it is you look chaotic, yeah. And so when you think in organizational terms, the biggest sympathy, sympathy, the biggest symptom, no, I can't think of the word, but basically the exact the situation that it would happen in restructures, yeah. So where I've been in a restructure, and we have been absolutely clear and communicated the process and and had transparency, even though the decisions were universally disliked by a large number of the the organization. Yeah, they got it. They got what we're going to do. They knew to expect what to happen. And you come back to cottage chain press, which I know we're going to want to but that is really what we're talking about. Have expectations of what's going to happen when. And so one of the challenges if you don't have that, because you get leaky leadership. Yeah, right. They're playing by different rules for March on their own, and they're worrying about their team, and they're going back to their team and going, this is what you're going to say, and this is how many places, I mean, I've had it, I've literally said my team is going to be fine because I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to brief them. Yeah, no, that's just, that's, that's absolutely you think they're not going to tell someone. You think the whole organization isn't going to know when your entire team comes sailing through the assessment? Yeah. So for me, that's where the synergy between organizations in this Brexit piece comes. It's about looking at, how do you unite the leadership through a process? Yeah? And I think, I think that's absolutely, for me, critical, and I think that's where force field analysis really helps you, because you understand what the dissenting voices are, and you can put weight to them, yeah, you can say this is really what's driving people. Here's an important factor that we need to address on one time and at the moment, in Brexit and in organizations, you get three different people standing up, going, No, what's really driving them is immigration,

or what's really driving them is the fact that the organization is unprofitable, or that we're based in Milton Keynes, or whatever.

Is right. So for me, that's that's a massive learning, put a decent process in place and make it transparent and stick to it

united about the press, and then you can dissent in your opinion, right? Because you can hack, you can come out and say, we weren't agreed, yeah, but we decided to go with the majority. But this is the process we took, yeah? And that helps with communication, which is actually the next thing, right? So I realized I've just, like, totally ranted, I'm so it's been really interesting for me, because I didn't think that was the bit that I thought I cared about, and I really do, clearly do, yes, let's go and you led us on, well, to communication, which is actually the next thing that I want to talk about. Yeah, I did actually like that. That was very good. I know it wasn't intentional, so I completely forgot what next bit was. So we've talked about the importance of unity in leadership, and one of the things we said is that actually a process can help define how unity exists within leadership, and certainly how unity is presented to the teams and unity of message, which is okay. So the next thing that I wanted to talk about is

something that's in another episode that will come out, I believe, after this one around communication briefly. So we're not going to dwell on a topic, but it's just something I want to reflect on. This is we're going to talk about a model called Monroe's Motivated Sequence, which is, by the way, my favorite name of any model ever. It's good, isn't it? If only it was done by Victor Vroom, who's maybe my favorite named Person. Anyway, Monroe's Motivated Sequence is all about influential communications, and we know that when change is being led, that having influential communications with people is really an important thing to do. You need to get your message across. You need to take people with you. You create followership, you create a sense of urgency, you create a vision. You do all these types of things that help you leave the change that you want to lead. Now, what Monroe's Motivated Sequence does is it sets out five stages that can be used, a five stage approach, to help create influential communication. And what, what I want to do and just reflect on here is that actually, within, within at least Brexit in the UK, both sides of both sides of the opinion, if you will, are broadly using Monroe's Motivated Sequence as a way to to promote their arguments and promote their causes. So in some ways, this is an example of something that's being done well, for reason it gets us into a bit of trouble in the minute of the UK is that it because it is polarized. So we're pulling in two different directions. And when we say done, well, I want to just clarify. We're talking about done effectively for their cause, right? Absolutely. So we're not passing any judgment on either, because that would be crazy.

But, but genuinely, it's about where we are seeing something if being effective in what it's trying to Yeah,

totally, totally good point. We see the model being used. Yeah, let's go with that and adhere to so the model really quickly is, is saying that there are five stages you need to go through to create an influential communication and I'll run through those quickly. Then I'll do like a little mini snapshot from both sides of a UK campaign so you can see the type of thing that's happening. So step one of Monroe's Motivated Sequence is capture the attention of your audience. So do something attention grabbing. Step two, then is to create a burning platform by showing that the current state is unsatisfactory.

Stage three is to do to satisfy the need that you've created in your burning platform. Right? So you need to overcome the challenges that you've created and satisfy the audience and make them feel that you've got a solution that will fix the problem that you've created. Then once you've done that, you need to help your audience visualize the future that you've proposed, so they feel all wrapped up in the cotton wool of your solving of their problems that you've created after you've grabbed their attention. And then the last thing you need to do is you need to issue a call to action. So I'll run through those really quickly. Again, capture your audience's attention, tell them that there's something that that's a need, explain how you can fix that need and solve their problems. Help them visualize that future, then issue a call to action, right? So, so that's the sequence. Now, really quickly, let's look at how the different campaigns are doing that. Right? Do you want to do one campaign, and I'll do the others just so we make sure we treat them equally and

fairly? Okay, I don't mind doing leave. Oh, I don't mind doing go through life. Okay, I'll run through leave because it's on the left, which is where I'm sitting. So the attention grabbing piece, so leave campaign, if people remember, had for a while a big red bus that drove around with a sign on the side of it said that said three, 50 million GBP savings, something like that. So that's a really attention grabbing piece. So, so that's a that's grabbing attention per Monroe's Motivated Sequence. The next thing then, was to create a need, right? So, so what's the need that's being created in the messages that follows about attention grabbing? Well, this is a statement that says, effectively, we currently waste 350 mm.

Billion pounds a week that we could be using to fund the NHS and save lives in the UK. So that's a sound bite. Message that creates a burning platform shows that the current state is unsatisfactory. So having done that, the next stage of the process says that we need to satisfy that need. So how can we do that? Well, here's the message, we can stop this. We can gain our freedom and be rich and healthy if we stop spending that three 50 million on the EU and instead spend it on our NHS and fund and invest in our own lives. So that is a satisfaction of a need that's been discussed. The next stage is to help you visualize that future. Okay, so once we've done that, we will have a well funded health care system that's independent, that's wealthy, and can make sure that we have best in service health care. So that's visualizing the future. When you're there, you'll be able to walk straight into your local hospital or GP. Service will remain free, point of offering. It will remain high quality. It will get better, the queues will be smaller, there'll be more beds, whatever. That's visualizing the future. And then the next thing that you need to do is you need to issue a course action. So we've talked about this All right, so that's the future, isn't it? Warm and cuddly? You're all wrapped up there. Now, how are we going to make that happen? Well, I need your help. You need to go out and vote. We need to make sure that we have a high turnout on this election. You need to be there and stamp your box in the right place, right? So that is an example of Monroe's Motivated Sequence being used in a political framework, capturing attention, creating a need, satisfying the need, helping the audience to visualize the proposed future, and then issuing a call to action. So that's leave, and we just absolutely that's leave remain. Have used it as well, particularly, I think, around the people's vote, sure. So we're going to look at an example about that's happened post referendum, because it's exactly the same thing. So the attention grabbing, which I've heard to is throwing a dead cat on the table before. Yeah, that's charming, isn't it? What's your dead cat? Fact, that's what they used to say. So the attention grabbing piece is all the car companies are leaving the UK, and then the need creating a burning platform is Brexit is going ahead and will be economically ruined forever. No, you'll notice there's no drama in any of the language that either side use. Then you move on to this. How can we create a way to satisfy your need? We can stop this. We just need to cancel Brexit. Cancel article 50, whatever the phrase is, and then, exactly like James described with leave, they create a visual in your mind. So they create visualization, and they have your audience, their audience, think about what it might look like. So when we cancel Brexit, we'll be rich, will be peaceful, will still be connected to Europe and part of the biggest trading block in the world, or whatever they say. And then finally, they come on to action, which is a very clear and articulate call to action. Email your MP today about a second referendum. Make sure you tell them that you want it and they can make it a reality. And I think again, I'm gonna say we are not passing judgment on any of these statements.

But I do, I know well, well, because this is the thing. It feels like it's been made theatrical, and I am gonna get myself in a huge amount of trouble now by saying this all, all all comes down to the role of communications in organizations. It's a huge problem. So in terms of lessons for organizations, oh man. And this is my this is my bug bear. When communications is in the room, when you make major decisions, you should not be led by what they think is going to play out. So what's going to play well today? Jane, I mean, it's just astonishing. They shouldn't even be in the stuffing room. And, you know, ironically, I suspect I could trace this back to one particular political leader in the UK that has made this trend of communications being in charge of everything, whose name will remain nameless, but he was possibly, you know, in my heyday, and use anyway

it is. It's a genuine plea to leaders. A number of leaders that I work with and have worked with over many years, and I see see their head of communication, or the communication department, is their absolute lifeline for protecting them, and I understand that, but bad decisions are being made every day by choosing to use the tools that communications people know are effective and and to choose to use these tools like this kind of Motivated Sequence, without understanding the polarizing nature of them for every side, without understanding that you are having an uninformed debate to get change on both sides is unhealthy. Half of the reason the country is still divided is because they feel like those that wanted campaign for remain were telling them that the world was going to fall apart. And clearly it hasn't said they were lying and that, I mean, you mentioned the red but I can't even believe you did mention the red bus, because clearly.

Everyone's furious about that. Leave remain. Everyone. Everyone's like, either furious or happy, I don't know, but it's very divisive. It's very attention grabbing. It is. It was very attention grabbing. And I'm really worried that leaders don't understand the difference between communications tools that are effective in delivering a message and communication tools that are appropriate and proportional to what they are trying to achieve. And ultimately, if you are trying to achieve change in an organization or country, getting people to say yes or no to it is not your battle. Your battle is bringing them on your journey. So taking a snapshot in time, whether it's a referendum or whether it's a staff vote, or whether it's a team agreeing to something, is not the battle. Yeah. The battle is, do they genuinely believe it such that they will put their weight behind it so that it works? Yeah, and so, but this is absolutely, this is a plea for me, just be real. And I'm sorry, heads of comms, I know there's loads of brilliant, brilliant heads of communications that I work with, and I love you, and I think you're great, but it is a wider issue with society and the way that we manipulate Marketing and Communications at the moment to get people to do what we want. Yeah, and it's deeply unhealthy, and it's, I can't even I'm so mad anyway, yeah, so next week on Jane soapbox, we're going to be talking sorry. She just put her head inside her her her scarf to hide her face.

I promise on the plus side, it wasn't around about Brexit. No, it wasn't we. I promised you not to do that exactly. Okay, so, so I guess for me, I think some of the messages here are that things like Monroe Motivated Sequence are powerful communication tools, amazing, like, in the sense they're effective, amazing. And I'd say that, you know, we will do stuff on storytelling. We've got stuff on communications coming out. We'll do stuff well. And we've done, yeah, we've done, we've done something coming out about landing a message, did we already go out a few weeks after this? Yeah, now those are influencing tools that help you tell stories. And I genuinely believe that this stuff is emotional and almost neurological and hormonal in terms of the effects that it has. But that doesn't mean that the thing that's being proposed or delivered through that means of communication is necessarily a good thing. So it's all about influencing it. Yeah. And I think, do you know what it comes back? We've we're about to record an episode around goal setting, yeah? And for me, it's the same thing. Just because, you know, a psychological construct works, doesn't give you free reign to use it without at least thinking about the unintended consequences. Yeah, so maybe, from an organizational perspective, what I'd say is tools like this will help you sell a shoddy outcome. They'll help you sell a sub optimal solution. You want everyone to agree to something, this is the way to do it, but, but no, if you do it, you are wholly responsible for making an informed decision, versus using the previous model that we talked about and thinking about, okay, how is it that we build a leadership that actually agree on what we're doing, such that it's a it's an informed conversation? Yeah, and for me, what I'd say is, do the hard yards, create a good solution, invest in that, and then worry less about selling it, right? So for me, it's about quality of product as opposed to sales of product. And that goes with ideas as well as solutions and strategies. So there you go. There's a far more restrained and far more sensible approach, yeah, but we agree, yeah. We were totally on the same page. Anyway, that was that was fun. I hope you guys enjoy learning about Monroe's Motivated Sequence. Yay. All right. So, so that communication piece, and again, we have some sort of Brexit references in there. The last thing that we're going to do to close this off is to touch back to Cotters eight step change process. Now, in our episode on organizational change at the beginning of series two, we did this in detail. So we're going to assume that people know roughly what, what's going on. It's not going to be a deep dive, but we're just going to reflect on on the model, through, to some extent, the lens of Brexit. So I'll run through the model really quickly, a brief introduction, a detail of eight steps, very quickly, then a little reflection of how we're doing from a Brexit perspective. So Carter's model has eight steps. It's a methodology that can be used to deliver change from an organizational perspective, predominantly so. The first thing you need to do to follow this model is to create a sense of urgency. The second is to build a guiding coalition. The third is to create an inspiring vision for the future. The fourth is to build an army of volunteers to help start the change. The fifth is to remove barriers that exist to your change. The sixth is to start to create short term wins in your march towards your destination. The seventh is to accelerate that change, taking on more ambitious goals and delivering more quickly towards your objective. And then the eighth and last thing to do is phrase this embed a new culture, which really means to make sure that that you adopt and sustain the new ways of working that you've used to help you get to where you're headed towards. So that's quarters eight steps in, in a reduced bite size version. So let's look at that in relation to what we're seeing from a Brexit perspective. So step one, create this.

Sense of urgency. Now this one, I think, is really interesting. So if we think about it from a Brexit perspective, our my view, is that we've, we have created a great sense of urgency, right? There is urgency out there, within the UK, as a result of the efforts to lead this change, unfortunately, triggering article 50 was the ultimate creation of urgency. It does, yeah, because it was like, we're on the clock. Yeah, it's totally triggered the countdown, and that's a really important thing. But I'd say also, rhetorically, a sense of urgency has been created, but it's been a conflicting set of urgencies. So so there's a sense of importance and urgency from both sides of the campaign now that, now that we're up and marching, but I agree that the setting the timeline was a real urgency. We did well at step one, yeah. Step two, build a guiding coalition. So this is about creating a stable, guiding leadership group that's representative and that will help create followership. Did you deliberately choose the word stable? Maybe, maybe I did interesting. Maybe that's the only political reference I'm making. Okay, so, so, so, in terms of where we are at the minute, from a Brexit perspective, it doesn't really feel like the leadership's all that stable in relation. No, if this was Donkey Kong or some other computer game our government would have would still be on, on stage, one screen. Yeah, right.

I don't, I don't feel like any of the remaining steps are relevant currently, because I don't get a sense that this is what they're trying to achieve. And I don't, I think they probably are. But the point is, they haven't communicated that. They haven't communicated this is where we need to get to, and this is what we need to do to get there, yeah. And I don't. And Contra, controversially, actually, I think that is about leadership. I don't think that's about who doesn't matter what side you're on. I think again, if you set out a process and you show and you and so there's a you just ran through them, and number six is short term wins, yeah. And I actually think this is huge. I say to anyone going into a new job, do one thing, do it really well, yeah, and build a little bit of trust and a lot of room for maneuver. So if you do one thing really well, people give you space. They will give you space to get it right. You're right, yeah. And I, for me, it's interesting, because I've never thought of cottage model in this way. I would move short term wins right up that list. So he's got build an army of volunteers. Yeah, great. I would have short term win above that, yeah. And it could be that it goes but yeah. And I know I'm not picking fights about it, but I guess my point is that if you feel like you are edging forward, then you will give people more space and time to get things right. And I think as a leadership if you can build a guiding coalition and have some short term wins. Then, then, then almost the building and army of volunteers comes from that, yeah. And one of the challenges is that I think,

I think no one's and, you know, you rewind back to the beginning of this episode, and we talk about force field analysis, and if we had had clarity from the beginning about what the detail was, rather than a single reductive question. In the same way we talked about force field analysis in the single reductive school, I think it would be much easier for the leadership to do that, because they could build, they can build a vision around something they've got nothing to build around. And I think, I think for me, it kind of emphasizes why Cotters eight steps change process is so good. Yeah, I'm not saying it's the only answer, but what I am saying is that I can look at a number of other social change and political change models around the world. I can look at the Irish referendums that have happened. I can look at the EU and it's the way it's come together. I can even look at, you know, the way Putin does things in Russia, and I can see, I can see some of these steps, yeah, yeah. And, you know, the lesson is that that this is an effective way to deliver a change program and but, you know, from a Brexit perspective, it doesn't feel like we've done it. Now. There are conflicting visions that have been created. They've been conflicting armies of volunteers. We've not, as a unified leadership, been good at removing barriers to this obstacle in terms of creating short term wins. That's been very limited as well later down. So there's a lot of stuff that's that's really not really progressed. And I would argue that every time I've seen an organization fail at implementing change, and I think, you know, one of the classic examples, I would say, is the NHS tried to implement an IT solution. I know there was huge issues, and I know it's the wrong time to do it, but I would say they got as far as creating an inspiring vision. And they never really made their GP surgeries. The people that were going to have to champion it believe so they never got volunteers, yeah, and they never removed the technical barriers. And for me, you know, it's a very good, I would actually argue it's a really good diagnostic tool when you're looking back. Why hasn't it worked last time? Let's have a look. Let's try and avoid that next year. Yeah, so I like that, but I like cotton. Yeah, we like, we like, we like cotton. Yep, this was just an excuse to talk,

and that's two case, Curt and Cotter. Maybe we could have brought them together, Kurt, Cotter, we can come up with Kurt.

Daughter's name, first name, oh, you're saying like a smoosh, yeah, I didn't know that was the phrase. Is that a smoosh name? Well, Kim, yay. Like Kim. Kardashian, swoosh,

rectable, check. Portman, too. Yes, that's the correct. This is always what happens. I go low I go low brow, and then James corrects me with the actual dictionary definition that is correct. Two is just a funny name anyway, because it's three words that combine to one word. I guess that doesn't happen too much anyway, it's French, right? Yeah, next conversation that we'll be having is about combining words to make new words. No, we're never talking about political stuff again. That's what I've decided. That was a roller coaster, wasn't it? Sorry, I thought it was enjoyable, but it was definitely a bit of a roller coaster. That brings us to the end of the episode, though. So in terms of recap on what we've done, again, we were trying to use Brexit as a way to think about change and think about delivering change, and about how organizations can learn some lessons from some of the things that they can observe in the wider world, and take some of those lessons back into their worlds of work to help frame and deliver change in new ways. And we started by talking about understanding change at an early stage through using the force field analysis tool, which is one of Kurt Lewin's legacy tools that he's left us, which again, is a powerful way to assess the forces that support and the forces that restrain potential changes. So that feels pretty good. We then talked about the importance of unity in leadership, for consistent messaging and for helping to

create followership towards a direction. And in that, we talked about the importance of having process within leadership that creates a sense of transparency and trust within a population, and also on which can hang anchors of unity that bring leadership together into a united front and a consistent set of message delivery. Having talked about that, we then went on and touched on Monroe's Motivated Sequence talking about how to create influential communications and to reflect on the fact that both sides of the Brexit argument are creating motivated sequences of conversation to influence the population, and noting that this tool is powerful in organizations, but at the same time, you know, it's easy to polish something and sell it, but that doesn't mean that you've got a good thing that you want to sell. So just a word of caution. Of it sometimes it's worth investing in the underlying product as opposed to just selling it.

And I guess a call out to be aware as listeners in organizations that people may be doing this for you and trying to cover that. No, we've got a whole we've got a whole episode around being influenced, which is something we'll touch on. And then to kind of wrap up the episode, we looked at collars eight step change process, and tried to reflect on how successful those different stages have been, or how successfully those different stages have been implemented in relation to Brexit. And we noted that some of the things that were beginning were done well, like creating urgency, but from that stage onward, it's not felt like that process has been particularly well delivered in relation to Brexit. So that's awesome. That's my sum up of the episode. Yeah, I'm exhausted. It's a Friday, guys. It's a Friday. But I think these are conversations that are happening, right? People are watching looking around their world, and quite often, they talk about, how does this relate to me? Yeah, how does it? How could I use what I'm learning? So, yeah, don't forget, you can let us know what you think. Yeah, tweet us or not. Yeah, no, please don't tweet us about what you think about our Brexit views, because we haven't shared any. Don't we have Brexit at all? But, but absolutely, tweet us about some of the models and whether you think they relevant to your workplace. And if you've learned, if you've learned anything from the process, we are at the World podcast. We are on Insta, LinkedIn,