Person
1 episodes · 18 quoted claims
The authors surveyed 6,000 people in a dozen countries, made up of 1,000 executives and 5,000 non-executives, about their reaction to a hypothetical change.
“take 6,000 people in a dozen countries around the world, a thousand executives and 5,000 non executives.”
In the survey, about 45% of employees felt positive or very positive about an unspecified upcoming change, compared with 70% of executives.
“but about forty five of employees also feel positive or very positive.”
Survey respondents named curiosity as their most common emotion about an upcoming change.
“the number one emotion is curiosity, which is really encouraging.”
Anxiety was the second most common emotion respondents reported about an upcoming change.
“But the number two emotion is anxiety.”
Co-author Philip Jameson wrote the line that employees' emotions during change may not be a leader's fault but are their problem, and had proposed an alternative book title.
“was written by one of my co-authors, Phil Jameson, who had also pitched an alternative title for the book.”
Philip Jameson's rejected alternative title for the book was 'Shut Up and Change'.
“The alternative that he had pitched was shut up and change.”
Mike Norton of Harvard Business School documented the IKEA effect, in which people place disproportionate value on things they helped create.
“the IKEA effect, brilliantly described and documented by Mike Norton at Harvard Business School, basically says that people who have had a hand in creating something disproportionately value it.”
Norton demonstrated the IKEA effect experimentally by having participants assemble IKEA boxes and then state what they would pay for them.
“The way experimentally he demonstrated this was by having people build IKEA boxes.”
In Norton's experiment, people were willing to pay 63% more for boxes they assembled than for professionally assembled ones.
“That people were willing to pay 63 more for their own, I'm gonna assume, inferior boxes than they were for a professionally assembled one.”
Julia Dhar cites Ford as a successful example of a threat story, used after the auto bailouts following the global financial crisis.
“Ford did this really successfully after the auto bailouts, after the global financial crisis, and in rebuilding and turning around that organization”
Dhar cites John May's account of John Deere's shift from selling tractors and farm equipment to also selling software as a destiny story.
“John May, when he talked about the transformation of John Deere towards being not just a hard iron company that sold, you know, tractors and farming equipment”
John Deere moved to also sell software that helps farmers be more productive.
“but to one that also sold software that allowed farmers to be much more productive.”
The book describes three types of change stories: threat, fitness and destiny.
“We talk about three different types of story of mobilizing for change in an organization. Type number one threat.”
Dhar says fitness stories, about getting incrementally better at what an organization does best, describe most organizational change efforts.
“The second type is fitness, and this, by the way, is most of the change efforts in organizations.”
Dhar says Delta Air Lines, about 101 years old and employing around 100,000 people, instituted a practice called Velvet after coming out of bankruptcy.
“Delta Airlines is 101 years old this year. 100,000 people work there instituted a practice that exists to this day, which is called Velvet.”
Delta's Velvet program lets senior executives spend time with, recognize and listen to employees across roles.
“Velvet is effectively an opportunity for senior executives and leaders across the organization to spend time with, appreciate, recognize, but also to hear from and to speak with employees”
Dhar says Delta pairs Velvet with an incentive program that includes profit sharing.
“It gets matched in terms of the incentive program with profit sharing and other ways to directly appreciate people's efforts.”
Delta's long-standing theory of change, per Dhar, is that leaders caring for employees leads employees to care for customers, which in turn drives shareholder returns.
“if senior leadership take good care of employees, employees will take good care of customers”