A Path to People-Centric Change Management and Alignment with Stuart Andrews

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group. And today, I'm joined from Sydney, Australia by Stuart Andrews. Stuart Andrews is a executive leadership coach and author of the Leadership Shift. So, excited to talk about what it is to be shifting leadership, particularly in more of a people- centric, heart- centric mode in today's workplaces and today's teams. Welcome, Stuart.

Stuart Andrews: Thanks, Dane. Excited to be here with you.

Dane Groeneveld: Awesome. Well, for our listeners, they get the benefit of two Australian accents today. But let's get them familiar with yours first. Can you tell us a little bit more about your genesis, how you got into the world of teams, of leadership, of projects, change management, all of this great stuff that you are doing?

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, awesome. Sounds good, Dane. Maybe we start, here we go, mate.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that.

Stuart Andrews: Look, yeah, I started off in computer science, and developing all sorts of code for health funds and health insurance. And then, moved into business analysis, project management, and transformational leadership roles to manage those large transformations for enterprise organizations. And throughout that process, I discovered a lot about myself, but also about what it means to be a high performing leader, what it means to coach individuals, and lead high performing teams. And, that caused me to set up my own coaching practice now. And I hope leaders really look at the factors that contribute to employee experiences, and how do you make sure that those employee experiences lead to high performing teams. So, working with those organizations that really want to move the needle.

Dane Groeneveld: Great. And for the benefit of our listeners, transformations that you touch on, can you put some context to the scale of those transformations, whether it's budget, or number of people working on it, or time to deliver that? That would be really helpful.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, so these are transformational initiatives that usually are grouped together to be the top five CEO initiatives that are going to make some substantial positive impact to, say, net promoter scores, right? And, at an enterprise level, organizations of the size of 10,000 FTE and above budgets, and with contract negotiations with third- party vendors to half a billion dollars worth of negotiations on the table. So, they're quite substantial budgets. And, the size of the team could be 100 plus, right?

Dane Groeneveld: That's huge.

Stuart Andrews: In terms of the number of distributed individuals working on these types of transformations what we like to represent as being horizontal across the organization. So, they touch every aspect of the organization, from sales all the way to backend support, operational staff, and customer care, finance, and what have you. So, there's not, I guess, a team inside the organization that hasn't been touched in some formal shape in these transformations.

Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome. So this is really the Superbowl of change management, in the sense that you get everyone's eyes on you, it impacts everyone in some way, shape, or form.

Stuart Andrews: Exactly. Dane, that's probably a good analogy. It doesn't get any bigger. It doesn't get any more complicated than that. And so, you do learn a lot in that process. You have to constantly be aware of what's... And constantly digging for the truth. And I think that's probably one of the greatest skills that I've developed as an individual, it's root cause analysis. It's really being able to find your way, navigate through an organization that size, and be able to summarize. And, you're talking about T1 consultancy type presentations back up to the CEO, articulating in one page what's going on at any given point in time, and where you are in that journey of that transformation.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. So, what's interesting about that as well, and you mentioned vendors there, is that, it's hard enough when you're trying to move one team from one part of the field to the next field. But when you've got multiple teams, and then you've got vendors, outside consultants, everything else going on, that digging for the truth concept's really critical, I would imagine. Because, everyone's got different languages, different experiences, different perspectives around their piece of the puzzle, and you're trying to bring it all together.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, exactly. And, as you said, the different perspectives, you see it quite a lot, where in organizations that large, you'll see the silos lead to misalignment and significant misalignment. When you unpack it, you'll see that KPIs are never aligned. So, what makes sense in a great KPI for sales could be completely contradictory for customer service.

Dane Groeneveld: Yep.

Stuart Andrews: And, when you're trying to leverage the help of your CFO, and looking at building on business cases that are actually going to make sense, it becomes very difficult to get people to sign up to the potential ROI, because you know that deep down, they're not buying in, they know that there's going to be some cannibalization in the revenues for example, because those KPIs are not aligned. That's just one simple example, but there's plenty of those that exist. And it's, how do you navigate that? But also, how do you bridge that alignment with the teams and bring, what I would call, sponsorship coalition, how do you get sponsors to come together and align on a collective goal?

Dane Groeneveld: So, sponsorship coalition, I've not heard that before. But that really captures my eye in here. How do you bring those people together? How do you even start by determining which members need to be on the coalition, who to bring into the room?

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, good point. And, it really comes down to stakeholder management, and takes years of experience to then walk into an organization and know who's who in there. And ultimately, it starts with trust, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: It will come down to trust building, it will come down to alignment of the different teams, to making sure that we're all working towards collective results, not individual results. And so, when you're setting these objectives for these transformational initiatives, you have to spend the time through alignment exercises with all the representatives. And, that alignment needs ultimately a level of trust, a high level of trust between the senior representatives, to then be able to openly engage in healthy debates, come to an agreement, to an aligned agreement. And not everyone's going to agree, but it's making sure that everyone's perspectives are heard. So that comes to the diversity piece, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And it also comes through into a consultative approach. It's not a command and control approach that's going to get this coalition to work in a high performing manner.

Dane Groeneveld: So, just staying with that, and alignment exercises I've learned a little bit about over the years, but they seem to be pretty powerful. You've done this both as a consultant, helping executive teams do it for themselves, as well as being in a large organization as one of the team. How would you share a real- life example of one of these alignment exercises when you get a few different stakeholders in the room? How do you roll that out? What's a good example of what that looks like?

Stuart Andrews: I would look at it from a two- pronged approach, in the sense that, there's, from my experience, a significant level of time and effort that's involved in building my own one- on- one relationship with the leaders. That's step number one. Step number two is about how do you set up the initial workshops and sessions with the right SMEs in the room to then help unpack what are the problems that they're actually facing? And I talk a lot about it now, which is about active listening. Right? And, it's through that active listening process that you're able to capture their burning issues.

Dane Groeneveld: Yep.

Stuart Andrews: And then, if you can try and map that to what the transformational goals and outcomes are going to be, you're going to get a much better engagement point, because you can then look at how do you incorporate that in the scope of the initiative? And if people feel that the transformation is going to address their problems, then they're going to buy into it. But if it's disregarded, and it's almost like, " Well, no, I'm not interested in this. It's not part of the scope." I've been in conversations where there's that initial shutoff point that says, " Sorry, that's not in scope, so we're not going to discuss it." Well, you're not going to get much buy- in that way. So, of course you do have to set the boundaries for the scope, but it doesn't mean that you're not going to listen, take the feedback, and then look at innovative ways of solving that problem.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And I think that's the important part in the second prong there of that alignment of these workshops, right? So, there has to be a way where people's burning issues are addressed. And so, a good example of that could be where you look at phasing, right? A lot of the time in enterprise, it's about a big bang approach, right? We've just got to get everything done. But then, there's maybe an alternative view which says, " Look, how do we break this down into smaller phases, into smaller chunks, where we can actually get some results on the board, build the trust, build the engagement, and build the momentum?"

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's really key, particularly myself having grown up smaller to medium- sized businesses. Big bang isn't available, because you've only got so many resources on the team. So, that phasing is important, so we don't spook the existing teams with too much change at once, that we show that there's actually some incremental value add, and bring people along on the journey.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So I like the way you laid that out. Interestingly enough, on alignment exercises, I was in the room doing one with Kurt Landon, who you and I both know from Enspira around restructures. So that was organizational restructure. And it was more philosophical alignment before the tough conversation started about, who's going to stay on the team and who are we going to have to let go? They put a statement up on the wall. And the statement was, " All people of valuable, but not all job positions are critical." And it said, " Agree? Stand on the right- hand side of the room. Disagree? Stand on the left- hand side of the room. Undetermined? Stand in the middle." So now, you get this group of leaders before they start a very emotionally charged conversation planning process, go to their various places. And you've got a lot of big hearts over on one side saying, " No, everyone's just as critical. They're all humans, blah, blah, blah." They've got a valid point. No one's right or wrong. And then, someone over on this group is saying, " No, only certain roles are critical and this is why." And then, people in the middle explain why they're there. But at least, it creates a bit of dialogue, a bit of common language for the leader or the facilitator to say, " Okay, well, can we all agree as we go into the next phase of this conversation that we're going to adopt this statement as we walk through different positions on the organization chart?" So, it can be pretty powerful.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah. Great illustrative point there about setting the mindset before you go about such a, yeah, difficult conversation.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's it. So, in your more recent post, Stuart, I saw you talk about three big factors here for leaders. One of them was bringing vision, the other one, empathy, and the third one, resilience. So, once you've got that sponsorship coalition, once you've done these alignment exercises, is that when the vision's really starting to come out? Or, where does that play in your experience?

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, I think a lot of the time you'll find that through so much noise, especially in enterprise, that the vision is lost. And then, when I talk about that, I talk from experience of seeing, you got organizations that could have over 200 initiatives that are in flight at any given point in time.

Dane Groeneveld: It's a lot.

Stuart Andrews: Where their budgets are$ 250 million worth of investment year- on- year. And so, in that process, as people going about their day jobs, and going through the motions, the vision starts to deteriorate. Or, the sense of purpose, or what are the key things that we are supposed to be working on to really make the impact and what the high level top targets are? And so, I see vision as being a constant manner of which the leadership team should be reiterating in day- to- day tasks, and also in their communication. So that's nice and clear for everyone to start recalibrating. Yeah?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: It's always important to just measure against... Because going to happen is that people will constantly say, " Oh, wouldn't it be nice if we do this?" Or, " Isn't this a great idea?" And, sure they are so many great ideas, but how does that translate back to the vision? Where we're trying to head? But also, the key objectives that we're actually trying to meet? And so, vision is critical in the sense of reiterating it on a daily basis in a weekly forum, whatever it may be, and then looking at how those initiatives are tracking to the vision.

Dane Groeneveld: Nice. And do you sense that the vision... What I'm hearing is the vision is always the organizational vision, as opposed to the vision for the project. Do they ever break it down to say, in the broader sense of vision rather than the corporate sense, " Here's what we hope success will look like and why it ties back into the vision." Have you seen much use of storytelling or scenario planning to help with that reinforcement?

Stuart Andrews: Yeah. More so in what we would see as being strategic pillars, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Right.

Stuart Andrews: So, not necessarily the vision, more on strategic pillars. So, you might say, " Well, look, one of our key strategic pillars is excellence in customer service." And so, then you'd look at the initiatives that are tracking, and then they would be... Say, in the beginning of an initiative that you'll have your project charter mate, and you'll see how that initiative is tracked and mapped to a strategic pillar like that.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: But, I think once that's done, what then happens is it's parked. And so, again, in that two to three year transformational initiative, it's very easy to get people coming, going, interacting with other initiatives, and complexities arising, and there's other transformations that are going on, and start butting heads, and what have you. And so, what's not done well in these types of situations is, " Hey, let's come back to basics. Let's look at where are we in this journey and let's recalibrate." And that's what I'm talking about here. Right? It's about that constant checkpoint, what I would call as an alternative, as a health check monitor, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: It's, " Are we all aligned? Where's our sense of purpose? Do we feel we've got a balanced team? Is there enough diversity? How do we handle debates at the moment when we've got disagreements? How's our velocity tracking?" Et cetera.

Dane Groeneveld: Nice. So, it's quite behavioral, but I would imagine, there's also some metrics there if you are in a live fire environment with customers, for example, on that excellence in customer. Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, exactly. And you want that data to talk all the time, right? You want to be using data as much as possible to provide the thought around what is it that we should be doing, right? Rather than, people's opinions. And that's what I always say, " Let the data talk to help enable the right decisions to be made."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, that's neat. So, you then move into empathy. And, I've certainly been a part of, even in not large transformations, I've been a part of a lot of change projects, where there's 37 initiatives on the board, and everyone's got a job at to do by list, it's all there. And there's not really a lot of empathy in the room. It's like, " Okay, is everyone signing up in blood to get this done?" So, how do you see empathy enter in and stay in this large change management environment?

Stuart Andrews: Good question, Dane. I think, when there's too much happening and there's too much chaos, too much noise, empathy's probably one of the first things to deteriorate suddenly. Right? And, it stays in a deteriorated fashion. And what I mean by that is that, people no longer have the energy, the bandwidth, the mental capacity to empathize with anyone, because there's just so much being thrown at them. There's so much burnout. There's so much mental exhaustion, that I'm not able to have a coffee with a fellow colleague, and sit down, and check in on them, and see how they're going in their personal life, and what's happening at work, and what are the challenges that they're facing. None of that ends up happening, because everyone's just being pushed to the edge with so many things, right? And so, one of the key... While I talk about empathy as a critical point, it needs to be hand- in- hand with, how do you ensure that your team is not burnt out? And how do you ensure that we're not doing too much?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And that's a trap that many organizations fall into, because there's not enough, what I would, call pause and reflect. Yeah, we're constantly in a firefight or we're constantly churning through. And we're not sitting back on a regular basis to reflect on what's actually going on. Why is there so much chaos? Why is there so much noise?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And how do we reduce it in such a way where empathy starts to be practiced on a constant basis, because it's through empathy that we're able to build on that. And that's the next step that I talk about, which is about compassionate leadership. Right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: You want to be able to help people be motivated and inspired, but that only comes by starting with empathy, right? So then, that leads you into, well, if I'm an employee and my leader has just sat down with me and asked me some questions about my own life, and my work, and taken a real interest in me, then it's going to feed into a compassionate leadership style, which is going to get me more inspired and more motivated to do more and more work, right? More and more productivity.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, that's interesting. And the fact that you highlight burnouts, it's very timely. There's a lot of burnout right now in society at large. You see it in organizations, in the workplace, you see it out in society too. One of our guests the other day shared a Microsoft study from 2020 that showed that the number of minutes that people are in meetings has increased 252% through the pandemic. 151% more meetings. And obviously, the meetings are running longer, because people are on Zoom or whatever. And what was interesting about that, he was drawing a link between the amount of time that we're in these environments going through stuff rather than doing work, or checking in with each other. And the fact that, burnout's actually, in most cases, organizational, not individual. It's not Bob or Jenny down the hole of burnout, it's the whole team's burned out. So, that pause and reflect element that you touch on, you don't see a lot of that on project charters or in Gantt Charts. So, is that something that you get pretty intentional about on the projects that you are supporting customers with?

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot more so now with the coaching side of things, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And, it's just, this comes through experience, right? And that's the point. The point is that there are plenty of organizations, plenty of leaders out there that are really competent in their background in what they know. But, when it comes to how to bring people together to execute, that's where there's a massive gap, massive shortage in real experience on the ground to know that it's going to take X amount of time. People will plan it out and they'll say, " Oh, look, this is a transformation. We reckon we can get it done in six months." But without the insights and the experience, you won't know that this is actually a two- year program, not a six- month program.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And you'll put a budget towards it, and you'll say, "Oh, this is only going to cost us$ 10 million." When it's actually going to cost you 50. So, these are the things that I try and work with to try and help people understand the complexities of the environment. And then, how do you eliminate it, or how do you simplify it to a level where it's manageable, and you don't get the burnout that you rightly raised, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: Because, you've got to sustain that team for a long time, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And, there are many other factors that contribute to this burnout, right? On enterprise initiatives like this that go for two years, you could look at things like contradictory decision making, or the lack of decision making. You could see that initiatives that rise and they go on hold, and then they start again, and then they change. And, all of this behaviors can cause significant attrition and burnout.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, I bet. Yeah, because you've worked really hard for something, and all of a sudden your work stream gets put on hold, and there's no celebration, and they see the team down the road that's getting lots of applause, and balloons, and cake.

Stuart Andrews: Yes.

Dane Groeneveld: I can imagine that gets pretty tough from a fairness standpoint.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah. And that's a great one. I've seen many examples of that, Dane, where sales teams get rewarded highly, right? And, get all these perks, and trips, and all sorts of things, but the people that keep the lights on behind the scenes that are grinding through day in, day out, there's absolutely no recognition.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I used to say that... We were going through a high growth phase in one of the businesses I was leading at one time. And, the salespeople, they were the peacocks strutting around in the fancy suits, and getting recognition, attracts driving nice cars. And so, we brought the team together once for a bit of a team building day. And, I was like, " So, how do we create value in this company?" And everyone's putting their hands up, " Oh, we go out and we make sales." I'm like, " Great. So when you make that sale..." And this was a recruiting business, " If we fail to onboard the individual and pay them and invoice the customer, do we create value?" And everyone's sitting there scratching their heads and going, " No, you're right, we don't create any value unless we follow the sale through with the delivery. We actually provide the service."

Stuart Andrews: That's right.

Dane Groeneveld: And, I don't think many teams are very clear on the roles each function plays in creating the success, whether it's in a project, or day- to- day business, or in operations.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah. And, that's a perfect example because it comes back down to that individual team mentality, right? And I still see it in a lot of organizations, even medium- sized organizations, right? The siloed nature needs to be broken down.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And, you really need to change the mindset to say, " We're all in it together and we're all contributing together." So, until organizations realize that the individual KPIs are not working, and looking at objectives, and key results that go horizontally across the organization, that mentality won't change.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. You talked earlier, Stuart, about short summaries to present up to a CEO.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: But how do you disseminate that information across an organization when there's lots of teams or large teams? Are you using any particular tools, any tips and tricks there for providing some of the updates or the visibility into what's going on?

Stuart Andrews: And so, one of the great methodologies that I've used and extensively in the past is ADKAR through by Prosci, which is a change management methodology. And, I feel that, yeah, there are plenty out there. And I think, it's about how do you look at what's fit for purpose? That's ultimately the greatest challenge, but also the opportunity for any organization. You always have to look at fit for purpose.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: It's not necessarily sticking to certain templates and ways of disseminating. It's, " How do we work best with the current culture and the organization that I'm in?" Right? And so, you might have a PowerPoint template that disseminates a communication strategy, right, and talks about all the different touch points, and how our communication out to customers is going to change by the different teams. For example, we're transforming the way we receive inbound phone calls, and we're going to turn live chat, and we're going to start using AI more, and all of that stuff.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And then, you start looking at the implications in the organization, but also, what are those changes across our website to the collateral that we send out to our customers and what have you?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And so, a good communication plan in form of a PowerPoint might work well for one organization, but for another organization, you might take the contents of that and look at, " Well, they use SharePoint quite heavily. And maybe SharePoint is a better medium to disseminate that information, because they've got a really mature way of using it. It's broken up for the different teams, and different purposes." And so, it's about, again, fit for purpose. But yeah, if we pick come back, then definitely if an organization doesn't have a methodology, I would recommend them to start looking at ADKAR by Prosci.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay. Cool. No, that's a great tip. It was interesting, we had a guest on the other day, Lisa Fratzkie, and she'd done some time at Disney. And, talking about customer experience, they were doing a cast member reference guide, so that when you're out working in the theme park, if you need to know something, how to address a guest, or direct a guest towards something, that you had this guide. And she told a great story about how they turned that guide into a person. They turned it into a character. And there was these videos, and they made it more human to be interacting with. So, that was very fit for purpose for cast members walking around in the field, not necessarily sat behind a computer in a call center or whatever it is. So, I think you're right, that fit for purpose is a really good call to action too.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, absolutely.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool.

Stuart Andrews: We'll eventually get to robots that look like, yeah, humans. And then, that's where you go for information.

Dane Groeneveld: Sometimes I've got to say, I think, the robots can probably do a better job with getting certain pieces of information out to customers or team members. And, you touched on the word psychological safety earlier, that comes up a lot. We've seen some interesting case studies, no strong empirical data, but some interesting case studies that would suggest that certain team members, particularly those in lower hierarchy positions, find it easier to ask questions of or seek information from technology, whether that's a bot, or a library, SharePoint catalog, rather than going up to a boss or a senior team member and asking the question. And I think in lower psychological safety environments, that's probably true, because if I'm a junior member of the team, I don't want to walk up to you as my boss Stuart, say, " Hey Stuart, how do I learn more about this?" And you're like, " Dane, you're an idiot. We presented that this morning at the meeting. Where was your mind? Were you doing a Sudoku or something?"

Stuart Andrews: Yeah. Exactly. And, this psychological safety, and this high performing part of teams is... Sometimes I talk with leaders, and it's almost in the back of their minds, " Well, what about performance management?" And I think, in talking about all of this, there's a fine line between embedding these practices, embedding this mindset change of how to be more empathetic and compassionate in my leadership. But it doesn't mean that I don't hold people to account, right? It doesn't mean that I don't embed the performance management part of my role as a leader to ensure that people are delivering. Right? And it's, how do you balance the two? And, I just think that there's a lot of coaching that's required to get leaders to a point where they're able to embed servant leadership principles at the same time of holding people to account.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's tricky. I think it is. It's a tricky balance. And you have to be very intentional about it. With the book, so the Leadership Shift, what was it that brought you to the decision of putting the book together?

Stuart Andrews: I thought there were clear case studies and insights, I have through my experience, that I've put together. And I thought, " Well, what's the best way to share this with everyone around the globe that wants to learn a little bit more about how do I transform and how do I lead transformations in this new way of working?" I thought the book would be the best place to be able to put this collective information in and disseminate it out.

Dane Groeneveld: And, for those listeners that haven't come across the book, how would you describe the key features, approaches that you share in that?

Stuart Andrews: I try to break it up into four sections, which is, asking the right questions. Are we solving the right problems? And how do we use our teams in a strategic manner? And then, how do we turn that vision that we want to achieve into a reality? And that's really how it's broken up. There are a variety of different topics in there. And really, for the reader, it's about thought- provoking, right? It's about, " How do I take this..." And it will trigger some form of, " Oh, I can relate to that." There's going to be a topic in there that I guarantee that they will go, " I relate to that." And, the idea here is that there's an experience, there's some theoretical concepts that I might share. Yeah, in some cases, you as a leader, you might know some, and some others you might not be cognizant of. But ultimately, it's about how do you go away and you go, " Okay, this is how I can apply this to my situation. This is what I could do differently. Oh, actually we don't do that in our environment. Let's try that." So, that's really the purpose.

Dane Groeneveld: And so, pretty hands- on practical. You mentioned case studies, so you can really get in there and see how it's played out for different projects, different teams.

Stuart Andrews: That's exactly right. There's a small little page or two in there every chapter that then will highlight, " Here's my story..." Which is, again, it will go, "Oh, I can relate to that." And so, you look back at the concepts and the information that's shared, and then you go, " Well, maybe this is the way we solve it in our organization."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Oh, that's neat. Thinking on servant leadership, and this concept of still holding people accountable while serving them, any tips or tricks that you are stumbling across or intentionally putting in position with folks that you work with? Because, it is tricky to get the balance of both? People often over index one way or the other.

Stuart Andrews: Good question. I'm trying to get leaders now to think of what's the starting position, right? The starting position is that people are in, what I will share is that, people are generally inherently good. Okay?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And so, you got to start from a position of, " Okay, this person is a good individual." Right? " They're not out here to sabotage my organization. They're not here to be a delinquent of some sort. But they're a good individual." So let's then move from that point and that mindset to then look at, " Well, why is this individual struggling to achieve the results that I'm after?" So, we then move into expectation setting, which is, " Am I able to confront that individual and have a healthy debate with them around why they're missing the mark?"

Dane Groeneveld: Uh- huh.

Stuart Andrews: And so, when I understand from them, again, if we look back at the beginning of the conversation, we talked about empathy and compassionate leadership. I'm now showing a genuine interest into lifting the performance of that individual. And so, we then set a plan, we look at the opportunities where that individual can grow. And if they fail to then meet this, then I'll have another conversation and say, " Look, well, hey, we've tried this. It's not working. So, what's going on here?" And then, you ultimately have to come to a decision to say, " Well, maybe this is not the right environment for you to flourish." Maybe there's a competency gap here that the individual is not willing to learn. Because, you'll be surprised there's many individuals who don't have the growth mindset mentality.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And so, if that doesn't work for them, or maybe they're just happy doing what they're doing, right? Pick a individual who's a very financially- oriented individual who will just create Excels after Excels, and they're very competent with that. But, in the world of AI now, the robot can actually do a better job, as you said, right? So, that individual needs to rethink and go, " Well, actually, how do I create value? And how do I then uplift my capability?" That requires a growth mindset. If that individual doesn't have that growth mindset and doesn't want to learn, well, maybe there's no longer an opportunity for them in the organization. And on the other hand, if the individual does show a growth mindset, they want to cross skill train, and do something different, then great. So then, how do we provide them with that learning pathway, and the experience that they can adapt, and grow in the organization? So, performance management takes a different approach in this regard. Does that help, Dane?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I like starting off with that sentiment, that everyone is inherently good. What's interesting for a lot of leaders, I saw a stat the other day that said 83% of people, which is a big number, don't like giving negative or constructive feedback, because they feel uncomfortable about hurting someone. So that means that most of the leaders in our teams find feedback difficult. So, that expectation setting, starting point is key. And then, I really like the way that you said, " Once we've talked about it in the sense of, 'Hey, I want to lift your performance. I want to help you.'" That if it's not working, you say, " What's going on?" There's a bit of curiosity that follows, which I think is really powerful.

Stuart Andrews: You need to know. Exactly. And, look, sometimes it's about cultural fit. Sometimes it's about, they've lost the passion for that organization. The sense of purpose isn't aligned to what they see as being purposeful in their own individual lives. And that's okay, as there's something else out there. " Well, do you want to go and consider starting up your own business? Do you want to go and start..." And they might be more passionate about doing something else. There are a multitude of reasons. But, coming back to your point, that feedback is crucial. And I embed that in my offsite workshops and retreats for leaders. It's about the art of effective feedback. And there's a whole module on how do you give constructive feedback? How do you lift that performance? And it only comes through being able to deliver feedback. There's a way and there's a style to doing that. Okay? It's not just, " I'm going to sit down and give you feedback." And then, this old school mentality of performance reviews every six months, that's ridiculous. This stuff needs-

Dane Groeneveld: Needs to be more continuous.

Stuart Andrews: ... Oh,it's finished in my opinion.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: This doesn't work. In an agile world and constantly disruptive world that we are in. You can't sit back and wait for six months reviews. And then, someone sits down for two hours doing their own view of what their performance review looks like. Then you go and get your manager to do it. Then you set up another meeting. What is this? I mean, we don't have time for this. We want real- time feedback. We want to improve and grow. And, you want to know straight away. I want to know tomorrow if that individual's got a thought about leaving my organization and no longer interested in working on my initiatives.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Stuart Andrews: And organizations don't realize the cost, both from a financial cost, but also from a employee wellbeing, attrition, disengagement to fellow high performing individuals the longer you keep people that are poor performers.

Dane Groeneveld: The whole team carries the burden.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah. So, going back to AI and robots, I'm intrigued to see technology become a team member. Because if you think about it, there's enough video, phone, email, data, and systems that you would think at some stage, the AI overlay or whatever it is, can say, " Hey, I'm Stuart. I noticed Dane on your team's been dropping off. His response times on emails are longer. He hasn't put as many data points into the tool that we're using for project management." You would think that that can then nudge you and say, " Hey, Stuart, maybe go and have that feedback conversation with Dane now, rather at the end of the month." And if we're going to be really human, again, going back to servant leadership, your what's going on question's a great one, because it may not be that I'm not enjoying work. It might be that I'm going through a hardship at home. Or, I've had a health scare, and we need to give space to each other, like you said, on a pause and reflect, and help to carry at different times.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, that's a very good point, Dane. Absolutely. And it might be go off and you need to have some time off work, and come back refreshed or whatever it may be. Or, there's something really cool happening in the organization. There's a really good initiative to distract the individual, go and work on that for a couple of weeks. And then, come back. So yeah, it's multiple solutions.

Dane Groeneveld: Good Australian term, boomerang assignments. I think, we're going to see a lot more of those. "Hey, go and work over there and come back."

Stuart Andrews: Yeah. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Change is as good as a holiday for some people.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, that's neat. So, we've covered a lot of good ground. It's fascinating, Stuart, particularly for me as a small to medium business guy, getting that enterprise level multi- year transformation project insight. So, I really appreciate what you've shared here today. And there's a lot there. So we'll share a couple of those snippets with Alicia post the show. But, if you think about biggest takeaway or biggest hope for leaders who are thinking about getting the most out of their teams on meaningful projects, where do you think, or do you hope that leaders can really be focusing a lot of their time in the next three to five years to be building that muscle memory, that agility that you touched on?

Stuart Andrews: I think it's about one crucial component right now, and that is servant leadership. And within servant leadership, it's about listening more rather than telling, right? It's, how do leaders get better at listening to their high performing individuals who they've gone out, spent time to recruit, bring them into the organization, and get them to tell them what the ideas are, what the solutions to the real challenges that they're facing on the ground. And I think if leaders can do that better, they will achieve great results.

Dane Groeneveld: Really invite those high performers and maximize the collective IQ.

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a great call to action. Stuart, if any of the listeners want to connect with you and learn more about the book or the consulting coaching work that you do, how do they best find you?

Stuart Andrews: Yeah, easily stuartandrews. me. S- T- U- A- R- T. And likewise, they can find me on LinkedIn and follow my posts. And yeah, connect with me that way.

Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome. Well, thanks for making the time to connect. It's been a great conversation. I look forward to collaborating in the future.

Stuart Andrews: Likewise, Dane. Thank you very much.