Change Management

“Literally almost overnight, our revenue started to drop more than 70%.”

“And some we have to assume might not because the age and stage of the company has shifted and respectfully, we have to have a discussion to say perhaps this isn't the place for you anymore and respectfully move on from e...”

“And so change is about making sure that people have context, they understand the clear expectations. And as we hear a lot about these days is about clarity, clarity in an honest and respectful way.”

“Without involvement, there is no commitment.”

“Every step you take can be a change management opportunity if you choose to make it one.”

“Transformation though, is it's a large-scale refresh, right? It's really reimagining how your company and your business operates. It could mean a total reinvention of your business model, your operating model, your go-to...”

“It's not about the technicality of the change in the operating model. It's not about any of that. It's really about How do you win the organization's hearts?”

“We need to be user-friendly. The people team needs to be user-friendly in every organization... The market is moving faster. The trends are moving faster.”

“from the very first day of my career, one of the common threads that I would want to talk about really has been change and transformation.”

“The Four Stages of Change is really a concept that I created and implemented when making change at an organization.”

“Every time you come into an organization, you have to really take a step back and understand where has the organization been, what is it actually trying to change, what's the reason, what's the rationale, the business st...”

“Change management... if you start to skip or go too quickly through, you know, optimizing a process, you don't get that buy-in. You're going to get people who reject whatever, you know, process or project that is, and it...”

“Transformation, I found, happens one conversation at a time.”

“The first thing I tried to do was listen to all the concerns. Like, I knew the financial concern, but how do I understand the other pieces to the puzzle so that when I'm making that a set of decisions, I really would und...”

“People generally want to do the right thing, and if they're not doing it, it's probably because you haven't made it easy for them to do it.”

“What's much harder, the challenge was overcoming the cultural norms. This is the way we've done things. It's proven. We don't compromise in safety, et cetera.”

“It's not about compromising on safety or going against tradition. It's about solving the problem for what it is today, right?”

“culture change takes time. It takes real intention. It's not something that we can talk about, set goals on a paper.”

“don't assume that what worked everywhere else will automatically work for your organization... let it be tailored to your organization.”

“And how do you have people become more responsible in the way that they're thinking about company resources when you're private versus when you're public? So I think that was— and that's still a journey, right? Some peop...”

“I would say define what good enough is. Meaning, if you're going through transitions like that, whatever you're working on is going to have to be good enough at that time, but it's going to have to evolve. So I usually s...”

“I always say culture isn't something you support, it's the system everything runs on.”

“The greatest impact on our culture was a deterioration of trust in the organization, and this is understandable given we were coming off such a significant high point, only for our people to find themselves coming to wor...”

“The hardest thing in this job is getting out of bed... you know, it's always hard to figure out where to start.”

“I learned quite a bit about how to treat people well. How to manage uncertainty, and how to have important conversations that need to be had.”

“What I know is that people need different things during times of change, whether it be individual support, more information, training, a greater understanding of the why. And I often keep the ADKAR model of change in min...”

“You have to start by meeting the business where they're at.”

“you have to be able to look around the corners as a CHRO. And see what is coming, and then go back into your HR model and say, what are we prepared to take on and what aren't we prepared to take on?”

“What I quickly realized, it was about managing through this time of transition, which is change management, ensuring that we have the right change management program in place, the right leadership team in place, the righ...”

“HR plays a very pivotal role in making sure that happens. So what we've done so far is you need to take a look at structure, mindset, and then what types of tools that you have that you can do this.”

“If it isn't illegal, if it's not unethical, and if nobody's gonna get hurt, let's give it a shot.”

“For every organizational change and for every process change, you have to get every human interacting with that process to change their behavior. And as we know, changing human behavior is not an easy task. And so, I'm a...”

“rather than having corporate people fly in and do the training, we actually pulled a group of store managers, trained them how to train, and then had them train all their peers because people can receive it better from p...”

“Essentially, change is just as much about communication as it is about process and implementation.”

“Overall, it took us about a year to facilitate the change and lead the change based on all the feedback. But to make it successful, it was really necessary to solve all the problems together.”

“I needed to convey and to convince the business leaders I knew what they were doing and why, and to help support them. So the challenges were pretty obvious. Change.”

“The instant we turned from that cautious skepticism to excitement, we knew we'd won.”

“Change is constant, and I think we live in that type of world nowadays.”

“You would rather do it right than do it incorrectly and have grievances, and it just doesn't make everybody feel good.”

“I think adaptability is going to be maybe I don't want to say replace change management, but I think adaptability and being able to move forward and evolve, not only as an individual, but as a team, as a division, as an...”

“Unlike large organizations, there's no long pilot programs or longitudinal R&D work. Your entire leadership team and everybody around you has a single goal to maximize and scale.”

“What's really shifted over the past 10, 20 years is that change management is all very people-centric. So as opposed to being an event-centric or a decision from on high. It's really leveraging the power of the workforce...”

“You have to be very careful in how you approach change in an organization in general, but I think also for one, like Carnegie, who was very unique, special in many ways.”

“I think the reality of the situation, just based on my experience with any kind of change, whether it's been small or large, there is no perfection.”

“The old saying is if you're not changing, you're dying... So the first thing is just accepting that and getting really clear. I do want to shift us, and please, we need to shift to thinking about outcomes first.”

“People and companies that are winning in this world cannot understand everything coming at them, even though we try to. So we have to have the ability to be flexible, to learn, to be agile, and to, when new information c...”

“I think the biggest thing is that a lot of times there's a lot of emotion tied to these successions... I think that people feel uncertainty. And so I think one of the best ways you can handle it is to be incredibly respe...”

“I think the biggest thing for me is really embrace the disruption... But be part of the drive of what the next evolution of the people function is going to be.”

“Under the context of changing CEOs, I would say a couple things. I'd say, Be yourself and be authentic, but remember, if you're not willing to embrace the change, remember that someone is probably there who will.”

“I tell HR people, I tell leaders all the time that I'm about to give you this burden of knowledge. That now you have to tuck away.”

“from an HR perspective, we help the organization understand the transition the business is going through and how the organization needs to change. You can say we are the sense makers. During this period of ambiguity of b...”

“I think the transition of the company happened sort of exactly when it needed to. We were founded by just absolutely passionate, brilliant, founders, and at a certain point we needed a different level of expertise, frank...”

“as leaders in an organization, when you're going through change, you have to manage your own response to that change yourself before you can help anybody.”

“In today's environment, a talent strategy can be obsolete within a year.”

“Organizations can only transform as fast as the workforce is willing and ready.”

“The ability for an organization's people, culture, and systems to effectively adapt to change and get the hard things done in order to support a favorable outcome.”

“But when you admire the problem, you get stuck and then your competitors are there right at your doors and taking your market share from you. So, you know, the only way through is through. I really tackling the hard thin...”

“This might not be how you operate today. It might not even be how we're going to ask you to operate in 6 months, but we're going to give you visibility into the end state so that we can understand what are the transition...”

“I think that, that communication piece is so— you can't communicate too early. As soon as you know the communication, that the change is going to occur, talk about it, introduce it, socialize it, communicate early and of...”

“The last 5 years have been really complex. In terms of employee landscape. And I think having that ability to navigate across HR with ensuring individuals are treated with respect and empathy and going through business t...”

“having that ability to be fluid and having that ability to evolve is something that is going to be instrumental to the HR team to be able to relate and understand.”

“Biggest one we have right now is really our workflow refinement. It's looking at What people do, should we keep doing it that way? Making sure that like what they're spending their time on is helping us scale.”

“There is no change within organizations unless you bring your people along. And a lot of times there's so many unknowns, it's ambiguous, and what's in it for me.”

“Growth will expose whatever you're avoiding.”

“running the machine or running the people function is essentially an ecosystem comprised of a vast set of programs, processes, policies that all interrelate, um, in that we all need to run excellently in order to have su...”

“I would hope, if I think about HR, right, that 50% of the things that we do would've changed, right? Because in the moment that we're in, nothing should stay the same. We should be evolving constantly.”

“when it comes to integration, a plan is great and being able to kind of deploy plan B quickly is even better.”

“courage is not the absence of fear, is choosing to move forward despite the fear.”

“Define what you mean and don't assume because it's an obvious word like innovation or improvement that it means the same to all the constituents that you're managing.”

“I made a huge mistake where I kind of calculated incentives for the top 25 of the organization. And I wanted to send that to my supervisor for like 4-eye principal review, and I sent it to the wrong person.”

“I have to always be, you know, willing to maybe change things up or just to adapt.”

“My career journey could really be summed up in one word. And that's transformation.”

“I think the biggest challenge, not just for my team, but what we learned in the organization is change is hard, especially when folks are used to being scrappy. They're used to rolling up their sleeves. They're used to j...”

“Remember that your naysayers are a gift. That has been a big lesson for me. Listen to them, ask questions, allow them to enrich your decision-making and your approach.”

“Looking back, what I would recommend to those that have an interest in moving towards rolling objectives, I would say that process should include probably like a pilot or like a— pick a group or a team that's like, you k...”

“The biggest resistance we we've seen is around change management. And that's where I think, you know, it becomes obvious that the people teams at organizations should be front and center in helping run the change managem...”

“It wasn't the infrastructure, of course, it's human behavior. How do you get people to buy in and how do you get people to put in there all their professional knowledge and the process steps that go into their role every...”

“change is no longer a point in time, it's no longer episodic, it's happening all the time. So, learning about resilience and adaptability and some of those skills that were less, you know, teachable in a traditional sens...”

“Scrappy is sometimes your superpower, right?”

“As soon as this person came in, the team settled down, the friction between other teams almost evaporated, and just the contribution of this particular individual was just extraordinary for what the company needed at tha...”

“what I actually find is helpful is to normalize change... And I think setting that expectation, given the market we're in... is much more realistic than trying to say, oh, smoother seas are ahead.”

“Creativity loves constraints. So if you have a never-ending budget, you're not gonna think outside the box.”

“I'm not a big show and tell person. It's more about let me just show you what I'm about. I think this is an exception where really informing the team why you're doing the work that you're doing, connecting it back to the...”

“So at 23 years old, I had the opportunity to be a part of a company that was going through a complete and total transformation. So that was such a unique experience and scaling at the same time.”

“But it did teach me a lot about how culture requires the shift, not only necessarily at the grassroots, but the executive buy-in.”

“protecting culture doesn't mean avoiding hard conversations. It really means making them with integrity, transparency, and alignment.”

“you have to have a plan or roadmap... but you also have to be willing to pivot and be agile... if you know something's not working, You need to be willing to say that, fail fast, learn from that, move forward versus just...”

“it needs to be our job to say, okay, but remember that ripple is going to hit everybody emotionally as well.”

“Well, so like many companies, Virta transitioned to being fully remote in the context of the pandemic. So we had both this change to the way that we worked, and then we also had a reduction in force around the same time....”

“getting as far ahead as we can on knowledge of AI, what AI can do, and the opportunities, rather than getting paralyzed by the fear of what it might deliver societally, is going to be really important. So it's really try...”

“This wasn't about control. It was about creating a shared language that we could use to describe what we're all working toward.”

“we shifted what HR was from the rules enforcers to the people that were really a part of the team to just bring about health and wellness for the entire organization.”

“That change doesn't start with policy, it starts with posture.”

“I actually even don't like using the term change management because it implies that you can actually manage it in a way and it's really more— I look at it as change enablement.”

“We overcommunicate to a level that probably would be ad nauseam, but that is critically important. And then secondly, make sure that they are prepared. Train them first, train them heavily, and get them feeling really co...”

“people need to be treated fairly, not necessarily equally. We need to insert gray into HR”

“You've gotta tie your pitch to short-term outcomes. The days of saying we ought to do this, or it's the right thing to do, or in the long term we need to do this, is not recognizing the macro environment right now.”

“You have to be strategic about how you introduce change. I wouldn't even start with a formal policy. I'd create a guide. Which would evolve into a practice, and then over time become a company-backed benefit.”

“My advice is you can't go back in time. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, but you can make a case for whatever it is that you want to do in the future.”

“So a good change management process requires a communications campaign, plain and simple. It's gotta be steady, it's gotta be repetitive, but it, that's what you have to do in order to ensure it sinks in over time. There...”

“If you want the whole team to row with you, you have to create the psychological safety and honestly just the job security conditions where folks feel like not only are they going to learn some stuff, but that there's so...”

“A lot of people, even on the team, were like, there is no way we're We're going to be able to get this done in 3 months. And they did it.”

“The success comes down to 3 things. Listen, listen, listen. Listening helps you understand local challenges, build trust, and create buy-in.”

“The heart of change management is understanding what does it mean for the person who's impacted by that change? And that starts with empathy, right? Putting yourself in the shoes of that person and understanding people m...”

“Here's the thing, people are already talking about pay. It's a very different generation. There's a lot of different generations in the workforce today. In my time as a geriatric millennial, I can say that about myself....”

“My approach to change is really a fit for purpose, not necessarily a one-size-fits-all, you know, You know, a lot of times we can transact our approach to change. And really, I like to curate the approach, really like to...”

“We did a lot of explaining the whys, which I think for any unpopular decision is the foundation for getting people to come along with you and helping them really see what you're seeing and that, you know, it's not a smal...”

“Is this what I signed up for? I don't have this background or experience, so I have to actually figure this out or bring people around that help me figure this out.”

“My suggestion is always bring them in on the first, you know, the first phase. So, you know, if I'm looking for a new piece of TA tech or a new platform, I may narrow it down to my top 3. I'm going to bring in some of my...”

“It was more of, this is different, help me understand, what does this mean? Are we going to be graded on these core values? Is it going to be in performance management? Are we going to— do we have to have specific goals...”

“Strategy doesn't lead, people do. You can buy all the systems in the world, put all the roadmaps together, but trust, clarity, courage are the things that we need to move things forward.”

“So I used to say some of my clients may not be in the present of work. We would be skipping over quite a few steps to go right to the future of work. In some cases, it might make sense that we're going to leapfrog over a...”

“I often say we're just at the beginning of that journey. So I think a lot of organizations, if they don't see results in 6 months or 9 months or a year, they go like, are we on the right track?”

“what has made us successful historically is not what's going to keep us successful and keep us growing and going forward. And so we really had to focus in on how is our business evolving and changing and how are we as an...”

“If we want to attract the next generation of talent, we have to do things differently... It's not going to work. So I think it's just to continue being open and being willing to change and shift and be adaptable.”

“It's important to know what season you're in and where the leaders you're around are at.”

“Massive change without that context can actually be dangerous.”

“It wasn't about the strategy. It was about what people thought about the outcome of the strategy.”

“But I do believe that your leadership has to believe in a tool or in a science or in any process that you're driving to change. The way that it worked for me is I was able to— and I'll say this as an organization... when...”

“Fear is what holds most companies back, wanting to just stand firm here and, well, the way it's always been, then I'm just going to be able to stay here. And that's not the case. That's not going to make you safe.”

“I always tell people, look, we're going through this kind of culture shift. So don't expect it to all be right the first time. Don't expect everything to be smooth and easy.”

“This was a marathon and not a sprint. It took over 4 years to get to this place.”

“I think I missed opportunities to build community, like within my HR team and with my colleagues who were also having those hard conversations. I kind of ignored the personal toll that those conversations can have on the...”

“Powder Mountain has pivoted from a public resort to a hybrid public-private resort. So as with any successful startup, you know, you kind of hire the best team, have great business model. And solid funding.”

“Don't get locked into the mindset that you have to do something a certain way. Just because that's how it was done before doesn't mean that's what's gonna work now.”

“I think always stay curious.”

“The question of how to build resiliency, I think, depends on the culture and the makeup of any given organization. It is one that is not easy to build, but I believe that when we can really learn from our mistakes and cr...”

“And if you can stay on top of the HR trends themselves and that way you can be— you have a sense of what's going on in the marketplace, either in general or specific to an industry or geography. You can really help make...”

“Without knowing the business, you really risk a mismanagement between your HR strategy, your talent needs, and your business enablement.”

“Stay agile, stay focused on improving and innovating, especially in total rewards. It's always changing. There's always new benefits.”

“The only thing which is constant is change. And therefore, of course, actually getting comfortable with change, learning, having a growth mindset, trying to do things differently.”

“I read the article and my initial reaction was no way. There's no way we're doing this.”

“this was literally like a humanitarian effort in terms of making sure that people were safe and that their families were safe and that they had a sense of security and stability.”

“sometimes you can't overcome, no matter your people, your platform, sometimes you can't overcome, you know, unfortunately operations just not going the direction you want, the revenue going where you want, and having to...”

“But in fact, that carrying the paper back and forth was actually an enormously important aspect of how this organization got stuff done. And that was like a switch that early in my career that kind of flipped for me to r...”

“It was a cross-functional business process redesign issue that was really related to the entire lead-to-cash business process.”

“A big thing for me is always be open to iteration, and I would say that was really helped us overcome any sort of short-term failure or short-term opportunities for improvement that we identified when we rolled this prog...”

“One of the key to success in everything that one can do, and it's dear to my heart, is make things as simple as possible.”

“I think perfection is the enemy of innovation. So many times, I feel like leaders feel like if it's not a perfect program, if it's not a perfect training event, then we shouldn't do it yet. I think we need to be willing...”

“In my mind, HR work should be strategic. Certainly there is the transactional aspect of HR's world, but when you're working with these CEOs, it's gotta be a strategic mindset that you bring.”

“Naveel, given your experience with organizational transformation, how do you see the role of HR evolving in the next 5 to 10 years, particularly in terms of strategic leadership?”

“Brad Marcus wrote a book that I've been reading and he's been talking about just like, we have to also make sure that if we are replacing jobs or tasks that people are doing with AI, what are we doing with those folks? L...”

“I can tell you what they shouldn't do, which is put their heads in the sand, right?”

“And I think as a CHRO, you have to be able to bring reality of, look, this is our reality and the world is a messy place and there's a lot of change going on and you'll, in the end, what you have to be able to do as CHRO...”

“If your stakeholders don't believe it's important, I don't care where you work, right? It's not happening.”

“People are scared of a blank piece of paper, but they're less scared of a draft. Draft something. You'll get feedback on a draft more than feedback on a blank process that's undefined.”

“The rules of yesterday just don't work anymore, and I don't mean any disrespect to World at Work or any of those great organizations that do a lot of great thought-provoking work. But I, I think that the way we've been c...”

“Everything does not have to be this huge, humongous milestone that it took 8 months to accomplish. Small wins count. And the second thing is just sell the mission, not just the job.”

“Herc Rentals was 2 years post-spinoff from a parent company and a brand new publicly traded company on its own... Herc was really in the very beginning of coming into its own, and I really had to meet the company where t...”

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, international experience for me has done a couple of things. Number one, it's really about understanding the differences of culture.”