What Toddlers Can Teach You About Corporate Change Management
Early in my career, someone asked a corporate executive I worked with how she manages to switch between getting her twin toddlers ready for school and then going straight to a 8am board meeting. She laughed and responded with “you know, dealing with toddlers and executives is not that different”. Everyone had a good laugh at the time.
More than a decade later, I find myself working from home with a toddler in the house and switching back and forth and back again between dealing with a toddler and being in high stress meetings leading an organization through change. I am amazed by how helpful interactions with my toddler have been in navigating corporate life, particularly leading through change.
Here are three change management tricks that parenting has taught me.
1. You can’t switch on the change
I recently received an email that went something like this-
"Dear Team,
We will be sunsetting tool x and replacing it with tool y. You will lose access to tool x on <date>."
This is like telling a toddler that they need to go to bed an entire hour early tomorrow because daylight savings time. It just doesn’t work. There is a very high probability any attempt at sudden change in bedtime will end in a toddler tantrum.
Lo and behold, once that email was sent, the corporate equivalent of a toddler tantrum ensued. One team was not bought into the idea of using tool y so they decided to use their own budget to keep using tool x on the side. Another team was upset that a feature (that no one ever used) in the original tool was missing from the new tool etc. etc. You get the idea.
A seasoned parent will tell you the best way to deal with daylight savings and toddlers is to start early. At least an entire week before daylight savings change is expected, start putting your toddler to bed 10 minutes earlier than the day before and repeat for 6 days. By the time daylight savings comes, you have set yourself up for a seamless transition that your toddler won’t even notice.
If you want to roll out a new tool, or process in an organization, the key is to start small. Very small. Let’s say you are going to be using a new reporting tool but all the current reports are in the old tool. Pick one report from one team and transition that to the new tool. Once folks have had some time to adjust to that, pick another report and so on. Pause and walk people through the new format, benefits it has and address their concerns. Win one person, one team over at a time and before you know it, you will have everyone’s reports moved over and everyone bought in to the new tool. It’s magic.
2. Show, Don’t Tell
Jenny Rosenstarch, author of “Dinner: A Love Story”, shares this tip on how to get a picky toddler to eat more variety-
"Never Answer a Kid When He or She Asks “What’s For Dinner?” Especially if it’s something new. Just repeat these words: “I don't know yet” Giving a kid some time to think about a dish that they potentially hate or that is just downright mysterious gives them a window to formulate an argument against the food — and also gives them time to convince you to make them something else. Repeat: I Don’t Know Yet."
I was skeptical of this advice at first. But, it works! When you put new food in front of a child that is hungry, there is a very good chance they will just eat it. Whereas the same child may revolt if they know you are making something new and strange ahead of time.
The same thing works in corporate management. If you know that there is a better way to do something, go ahead and do it and show how it would work. If you have a new idea for how to do quarterly planning or a new KPI that you think should be measured, go ahead and start measuring it. If you are right and others start to see the value in what you are doing, there is a very good chance they will come along and support you. Whereas if you try to meet with everyone ahead of time and get them to theoretically agree with your proposal, there is a good chance you will meet with a lot of objections and preference for the status-quo.
3. Systems are a lot easier to change than people
My toddler likes to sit on the counter with me every morning while I make breakfast. We had some items on the counter that were within his reach like the olive oil dispenser, and some spices. Day after day, I told him that he can sit on the counter but he can’t touch the oil dispenser. Of course, he nodded okay and then proceeded to touch the dispenser. One day, I had the genius idea that I would just move the items to the other side of the counter where he couldn’t see or touch them. Problem solved. He never asked for them or miss them or even notice they were gone. Why didn’t I just do this before?
In the corporate world, when we are trying to get someone to change their habits, we sometimes think that telling them and getting their agreement is enough. Often, it is not. We need to create systems that make it easy for people to do what we need them to do. A simple example, we needed our sales team to confirm and update customer addresses when customers had moved. Despite training and repeated reminders, the sales reps often forgot to do this. Solution? I added a pop-up to the CRM tool the sales team was using that pulled in the current address on file and asked to verify the address whenever the rep tweaked anything else on the customer record. The # of address updates went up 4x with this simple tweak. Introducing this step into their workflow was just what they needed to remember.
Toddlers have a way of laying bare the innate human desires and needs that are at the root of all human interactions. Adults use etiquette, niceties, logic and protocols learned over the years to cover up their needs and in the process overcomplicate the situation. I’ve found the daily reminder from my toddler to not lose sight of these basics immensely beneficial in my professional life. What has parenting taught you that has benefitted your professional life?
Toddler or adult- change is hard. Do you need help aligning your people, processes and technology? Reach out https://datasimple.co/#contact