Knowledge’s Impact on an Organization’s Change Management with Luke Jamieson and Michael Mattson

Transcript

Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Connected Knowledge from Upland Software on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright. Today, we’re talking about change—big change, small change, and all the change in between. But here’s the thing, employees report the lowest willingness to accept enterprise change in years. What’s behind this so-called transformation deficit? Luke Jamieson, our own Solutions Consultant for Upland’s Contact Center Productivity Solutions, and Michael Mattson, veteran customer experience practitioner and thought leader, are here today to explain it and how knowledge management solutions might just get us out of that adaptation trough. Michael Mattson, Luke Jamieson, a pleasure as always. A pleasure to see you again, Luke, and, Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Mattson:
Thank you, Pete.

Luke Jamieson:
Good day, Pete. Good day, Michael.

Pete Wright:
Changing personnel. Changing work. These are an inevitable part of business. We know there are moving parts. We know that there’s confusion inherent in the process. Organizations are complex organisms. So, what’s going on with organizational change? When we look at the fact that organizations, it seems like this idea that employees are less willing to change or more frustrated with change can result in some real stagnation across the organization. So, what’s going on with this? Michael, you want to kick us off?

Michael Mattson:
Yeah. Organizational change, like you said, it’s inevitable. I think it’s less of employees are reluctant to change and more about how well change is managed by organizations. And a lot of that has to do with the vision around the future state of that organization and really outlining the steps that those employees can take, holding their hand along that journey, and making sure that they feel confident as they take that walk, that path, that new path, that unchartered path. It’s clarity of vision and then how that is relayed. So, definitely a huge pinnacle is communication, as is any kind relationship with any other human being. If you can’t communicate properly, if you can’t establish that common ground, then you’re not going to be walking in the same direction. You’re going to be fighting each other.

Luke Jamieson:
Well, I think about the old adage, which is you’ve probably heard it in management—change the people or change the people. And I actually think this is an attitudinal problem. I think that organizations are saying, “You either get rid of the people and get new people that are going to get on board or you make people change.” I don’t think either one of those is a simple or an easy answer. And so I think organizations need to have an introspective approach to this and look at themselves and say, “If we are to change people and how they do things, how do we help them do that? If we need to get rid of people in order to bring the right people in, then how do we frame that up in the right way?” And so I think it’s we need to do away with the change the people or change the people and have, how do we change ourselves to better enable our organization to manage through change?

Pete Wright:
I think you just ended your statement with a perfect segue question, so I’ll ask you both. How do you change the people to better manage the organization?

Luke Jamieson:
I like to think of it this way—that change requires two things. It requires motivation and ability. And as an organization, you need to find out what it is that’s motivating people and tap into that. That’s that personal connection. But then you also need to give people the ability, and that is where I think things like knowledge management play a huge, huge part.

Pete Wright:
Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about knowledge management. Michael, what’s your sense on, in your experience, managing through these customer experience changes on how knowledge management and a robust knowledge management system can help wedge us through the challenges of this adaptation trough?

Michael Mattson:
Yeah. Generally speaking, change is full of anxiety. It creates unsettled ground and I think that having a stable platform of information and communication is critical. Knowledge management is one aspect of that, and it has a lot of benefits in creating consistency within messaging. And really what you can do is leverage that to really embed the vision and all of the aspects of it in really actionable steps and really actionable information that align your employees through this common messaging, get everybody on the same page. And really there’s a reinforcement aspect of it too. There’s some governance of it. It allows you to be really, really consistent and consistency creates change. A culture is the culmination of individual actions, and to ensure that a culture can change, it means that every single action needs to be aligned with that future state vision, and clear and consistent communication is one way of achieving that. It’s a necessary way of achieving that.

Pete Wright:
I’m going to take what might end up being a sidebar, but I’m curious about this angle, because another thing that we know about culture is that it is ripe for shared incentive modeling. What is it about a particular organizational culture that drives people to come to work every day? And over the last, let’s say even 20 to 30 years, we’ve had a real roller coaster of what organizations believe drives employee incentive to come to work, to adapt to change as the market thrusts it upon them, and to stay at a job long term and continue delivering for the organization. And part of that rollercoaster, at the low point of the rollercoaster of change is we have employees who are going to stay because they love the work and they love the people. And at the high, much more expensive end, is we have employees who are going to stay because we pay them a lot of money and we do their dry cleaning and we watch their kids. It’s that extrinsic kind of “I am golden handcuffed to the organization because they’re motivating me with perks.” And I’m curious where a robust knowledge management system plays into correcting the benefits inflation curve that marks employees staying for the wrong or for misguided incentive purposes.

Luke Jamieson:
Sure. Look, I think, to build on what Michael said, culture, my definition of culture is it’s a set of behaviors repeated. In order to change those behaviors, you need some guidelines and you need those guide rails. Because, otherwise, if your behaviors are negative, you’ll have a negative culture. If you have these positive repeated behaviors, then you’ll have a positive culture. So, how do you drive that? And where knowledge management plays a part in creating a great culture is that it gives you not just the knowledge, but it also gives you those guide rails. It can help you with the tone and all the other bits and pieces that go along with delivering a message. And that then becomes snippets, smart snippets, little pieces of knowledge. We’re not asking you to change your entire self. Just change this one little thing and repeat that over and over again. A knowledge management system really helps with that when it’s broken and chunked and layered down into these little smart snippets.

Now, when we think about that from what motivates someone to come to work, and, yes, of course we’ve got the extrinsic, but also, and I talk about this a lot—we have an amazing thirst for knowledge as humans. We always want to learn and the way we learn, particularly now with if you don’t know something, what is one of the first things you do? You Google it. You go to YouTube. You find the quickest way to absorb that piece of information so you can apply it. Perfect use case for knowledge management. Where knowledge management plays that part is we are giving them the tool to quench that thirst for learning. And so that is a huge motivator, because once you absorb knowledge, once you have knowledge, you put a value on that knowledge. When you value that knowledge, you nurture that knowledge, and when you nurture that knowledge, you have a pride in it, and that pride feeds back into your organization, drives great customer outcomes, drives great business outcomes, and it becomes this amazing virtuous cycle.

Pete Wright:
It feels like what I’m hearing is that we’re talking about shining a light on these feelings of isolation, of silo, of frustration and replacing it with, look, we have a tool that will allow you to feel confident and be courageous in what you’re able to do with your job every day. Michael?

Michael Mattson:
Yeah. I think that there’s an operative word that you just brought up, Pete, was confidence. And I think when it comes to change, because of the anxiety ridden environment, employee confidence is at an all-time low. When everything’s changed, there’s no stability. And so, when you have something as a beacon of stability, then that can be very, very powerful in increasing the employee confidence. It can help you really hone in on the why and connect the employee to the purpose of what they’re doing, which again lends to removing that feeling of isolation. And also it’s just straight up about employee effort.

I mean, somebody who doesn’t have the tools and resources available to them, they’re going to be less satisfied. They’re going to feel like they’re not adequate to be in that role. They’re going to feel unfulfilled because they can’t do what they’re there to do. And that is typically take care of the customer, add value to the customer, and add value to the business. And if they can’t do it because they’re hogtied, then there’s big problems and you’re going to start to see a lot of employee churn because they don’t feel well-supported.

Luke Jamieson:
If we think about confidence and we think about change, there is a shared value in the equation. If change requires both motivation and ability, then confidence is a control possibility. So, it’s about delivering that ability.

Pete Wright:
Two things strike me—one which I think gets back to something, Michael, you were talking about earlier in our conversation, is that giving employees the confidence to support the customer, to know that they have agency in supporting the customer. By extension, it also means you have to know where you fit in the customer relationship. Whether you’re designing a chip or packaging products or putting bubble wrap in a box, you must know where you fit in the overall chain. And what I’m hearing is a greater investment in understanding how knowledge management supports those features, those functions can do a lot to help give light to the intrinsic motivation of why people show up every day and why they feel good and confident and courageous to do their jobs.

But I want to go back to the statistic that we opened with, and it was not me who made up transformation deficit. That’s a Harvard Business Review term. Gartner Research says employees willingness to support enterprise change dropped from 74% in 2016 to 43% in 2022. That feels like a non-trivial drop over a pretty short period of time in an era where change has been dramatic. This area has moved us through the pandemic. What do you think might be the relationship between employee perspectives on change and the era in which we are living?

Luke Jamieson:
Look, I love how publications brand these things. I’ve heard it called change fatigue as well.

Pete Wright:
Oh yeah. That’s a good one. That’s a delicious one too.

Luke Jamieson:
What we’re asking people to do is effectively create new habits. In that Harvard Business Review, they also say that there’s an average of 10 planned enterprise changes.

Pete Wright:
I don’t know what that means, Luke. Who’s counting this? Is there somebody standing at the door counting this one?

Luke Jamieson:
That’s a good question. Maybe. But let’s put that into perspective. Because to form a new habit, you may have heard of the 21/90 rule. So, it takes 21 days to form a habit, 90 days to make that permanent. It also takes us 30 days to 60 days to break a habit. So, let’s do the maths on that. If there is 10 new change initiatives happening in your organization every 12 months, at worst it’s 900 days worth of habitual change. That is 600 days worth of trying to break a habit and we’re cramming that into 365 days, 241 working days. So, is there any doubt as to why people are feeling change fatigue? So how do we do that? The reality is, it’s only going to get worse. As technology evolves, the timeframe between each evolutionary step, every time it halves in years. So, if we think about all of those big timeframes within our history like the industrial revolution, the information boom, the customer experience boom, the employee lifecycle, each time, at first it took 20 years, 10 years, five years. We’re in the world of AI and that is changing so rapidly right now.

Pete Wright:
It happened a year ago we got AI.

Luke Jamieson:
Exactly.

Pete Wright:
And I feel like now I’m expected to be an expert on it like I’ve had it all my life.

Luke Jamieson:
And this is how employees feel. So, how do approach that? And without sounding like a broken record, this is the sweet spot for knowledge management because it chunks and layers things and delivers it in small snippets. We’re asking you to just change little things, those little tiny pieces at once. We’re not asking you to totally revolutionize and change every aspect of your life. But the reality is, I would not be surprised, that was from 2022, there’s probably 20 change change initiatives happening in 2023 and 2024. So how do we approach that?

Pete Wright:
Yes. It’s dropped but still we have 8%? We’re all in the boat together. Don’t worry about it. I wonder if we could, can we case it out? Can you give me an example from your work? And, Michael, in your experience, give me an example of how you have seen knowledge management play a role in helping to adapt to change. I want to give listeners an idea of what it looks like and feels like to see change happen using these tools intelligently. Can you help with that?

Michael Mattson:
Yeah, certainly. I think that in a lot of organizations we run into this issue. I mean, you’re talking about that change fatigue. We’d always have this feeling of, well, it’s the new flavor of the week, new flavor of the month, and that really comes down to rapidly changing priorities or the perception of it from our frontline employees and a lack of consistency. And so the perception is that this is just a flavor of the month because it has this initial push upfront where it’s brand new change, it’s shiny, it’s well communicated maybe even at first, and then it falls off because now we think it’s stable, it’s solidified, habits have changed. And what we end up doing is we have a lot of initiatives that have really strong starts and then zero sustainability. Change management can be used, and has been used, in my organizations as ways of really creating that reliability, that stability, and demonstrating through action that, hey, this is not a change that’s just going to go away. This is something that as an organization we’re serious about. And so it really demonstrates through actions the priority, and then it puts the information to support it at the employee’s fingertips. And then it also removes middlemen barriers that could act as communication barriers. So, you’re not relying on your direct has to relate to their directs, has to relate to their directs. And if anybody who hears has ever played telephone, we know what that message is going to look like at the end.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, and it points out a lot of training development holes too. Did all the managers get the same training? Does everybody know the language that we’re using in the same vernacular? It can be very frustrating.

Michael Mattson:
And even when messages are communicated, I’ve experienced this firsthand, I explain the why behind a change. I really go all out to make sure that every single one of my employees understands exactly what the change is, why we’re doing it, and how we’re going to do it. And then the next time that’s communicated, it’s just how we’re going to do it. It’s stripped of the context. It’s stripped of all of that other really valuable information that you need to actually create a purpose, a connection to that change and sustain it. And then you wonder why the frontline employees are not doing it. It’s because when it was communicated to them, it came off as we’re doing this because I told you so.

Pete Wright:
Oh man, you just defined the razor sharp line between purpose and process. If it comes to you as a purpose, you get it. You see the alignment. You’re on board. If it comes to you as a process, it’s just another checklist.

Michael Mattson:
Yep.

Pete Wright:
Luke, you’re shaking your head the whole time. I know you have a nightmare story.

Luke Jamieson:
Well, it’s not nightmare story. It’s actually a good story.

Pete Wright:
I’ll take those too.

Luke Jamieson:
I was studying in America and it was around this change management. And we were in an organization in Detroit that manufactured metal parts and they were parts ranging from car parts to bike parts and all these things. Over a series of 12 months, they introduced a whole heap of new KPIs and the production quality got worse and worse. And so as part of this scholarship, it was to go in and do some research and understand why that was. And a big part was that people didn’t understand why the KPIs had being introduced. What was it that they were doing? They were just punching out widgets. I don’t know. Have you guys seen Eight Mile?

Pete Wright:
Oh, yes.

Luke Jamieson:
There’s this scene where Eminem’s just pulling this lever, pressing these parts, and then throwing them onto a palette. It was the same sort of thing. So, this is the kind of environment we’ve walked into. Anyway, so when we met with management, we ended up going through what’s the meaning, what’s the purpose? And so we then took everybody from the factory floor and we went on an excursion and we went down to the local park and we were watching people ride, kids ride their bikes around the park, and they were all wondering why we’re here. Anyway, the management’s like, “This is the parts you’re making. You’re making the parts, the brakes for these bicycles, and if they fail, here’s the end result.” All of a sudden, manufacturing quality went through the roof because they understood just that small snippet that, “Hey, this has meaning. I actually need to do this better because, if I don’t, kids fall off and scrape their knees. Or worse.”

Pete Wright:
Right. Right. You’re right. That’s a great story. Unless it’s for the kid, then it might be a nightmare story. It’s a great story and, really, that’s the perfect insight around purpose. What does purpose mean? It means you understand your place in the value chain for your end customer and for the product that your organization delivers, whether it’s information or a piece of plastic and rubber. That’s fantastic. So, let’s talk then about some of the tools and implementation that helps actually get the job done. What are some of the tools and processes that help address these specific purpose guidance challenges?

Luke Jamieson:
Look, I think in this space there is two different types of knowledge. You’ve got this institutional knowledge, this tribal knowledge that people have taken on board and they’re comfortable with. And there is an element of trying to capture that so that people feel like they’re heard, they feel like they’re listened to, we are not losing that institutional knowledge and doing it in such a way that doesn’t feel like we’re threatening people, that we’re taking the one thing that gives you your job. I remember when I was a baker and pastry chef as an apprentice. And one of the places I started at the head baker would not teach me the secret to making this loaf of bread, to getting it really crusty because it was like, “This is my secret sauce. This is what I do.” Nobody’s learning from that. That doesn’t get transformed. He was keeping that to himself so that was his trademark or what made him valuable. There’s a big part about going into that change, it’s finding these sacred cows, finding this institutional knowledge, this tribal knowledge, and setting up a psychologically safe environment where people feel that it’s okay that they can share that and not lose that value. The real value is the sharing of that knowledge and the imparting of that knowledge to others. So that, again, is where bringing those people into a knowledge management project where you are trying to capture all of that and break that down and chunk and layer that down is really important. That’s one thing, Michael, I’m sure you’ve got some cracking examples from your time.

Michael Mattson:
The psychological safety is huge. It’s a huge aspect of it and I think that there has to be a different culture around sharing that knowledge. From my experience, a lot of people try to safeguard information as if it was their secret weapon to making sure that they couldn’t be touched. And I think that stems from a survival culture, a survival mindset. And if you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that means that, that employee doesn’t have their basic needs being satisfied. The organization’s not providing that, the culture has maybe some toxicity, and you try to hang onto all of these nuggets as if they were currency. I think that, that creates a really rough cycle for the organization and for employees and it disconnects our employees from the purpose and prevents us from establishing a culture that’s revolving around being engaged with the change and driving change and really being a part of it.
Have some skin in the game instead of you are just somebody that holds this information as if it were some kind of life vest. It’s now I can be a part of this change that’s going to help my customers or help my peers and I can be a part of that and I can really make a real difference in this world. Knowledge management tools do a great job at that, but it also comes down to the organization’s culture and the actions that management and really anybody within that culture, how they act towards each other and what is demonstrated as being valuable. And if value is placed on information as if you’re the subject matter expert and that’s the only thing you can hang your hat on, and that’s the only reason you exist in the organization, then that’s going to be a losing battle. It goes back to that institutional knowledge and how we safeguard that, how we collect that, how we socialize it, remove that, but also demonstrate employees values as humans and as key change agents. Instead of subject matter experts, change agents.

Pete Wright:
I adore that you brought up Maslow. It’s a real dog whistle for me because we forget. I think managers forget, I think organizational leaders forget that individuals, once they have their health and safety needs taken care of, we’re all working towards self-actualization and we’re spending 40, 50, 60 hours or more at work doing that very thing. And part of our agency is we made the choice to be here. Help us make the choice to stay. Help us make the choice to help others and solve problems. I love that. As we get to wrapping up here, this might be a question that’s too loaded for last question of the podcast, but I’m going to roll the dice, let’s see how it goes.

Luke Jamieson:
Bring it on.

Pete Wright:
As we get to wrapping up here, you’re listening to this and you’re saying to yourself, “oh my God, this seems like such a huge thing to tackle. How do I even know if I have a cultural challenge that knowledge management might be able to help me resolve?” What do you recommend when you’re looking at an organization that has never approached change from the perspective of KM about figuring out how to audit their own place, their own L&D, their own IT, to figure out what holes they need to patch, what systems they need to resurrect from the carcass of old systems? Gross metaphor. Michael?

Michael Mattson:
I think start with the end in mind. Look at the output of your processes, and you’re looking for all of these gaps. If you see disconnects, if you see inconsistency, high variability, those are probably indications that you have a need for consistency, and knowledge management tools are great at helping build in consistency. I would urge anybody addressing these problems to really identify the root cause. Don’t take it as this is the only solution. This is going to fix everything. That’s not true. That’s not the reality. Because every organization has their own challenges. They have their own needs and until you become more emotionally intelligent as an organization, and do that work to be self-reflective and really understand what you’re trying to accomplish, how you can really connect to other people.
But you have to identify, what are you actually dealing with? You have to understand the true issue. And I think a lot of organizations do a really good job at identifying symptoms. I think it’s because those are easy. Just do a simple five whys and figure out what the root cause of that issue is. And I would bet communication is going to come up as one of the major root causes in a lot of organizations, but you need to identify that and you need to make sure that you have a cross-functional team that made up of different stakeholders within the organization to be really contributing to that conversation. Because otherwise you’re going to be going in with blinders. You’re going to be going in trying to combat groupthink. You’re going to be running into issues with the boundaries of your silos. You’re really not going to get to the heart of it if you don’t do the work.

Luke Jamieson:
I think take a walk. Let’s talk about contact centers. Take a walk through your contact center. I think it’s glaringly obvious in places. If you are seeing somebody who’s got folders stacked upon folders and notes and post-it notes left, right, and center, you’ve probably got a challenge. If you’re seeing someone constantly getting asked lots of questions, that same person, because they’ve got this tribal knowledge, you’ve probably got a challenge. Have a look at your team’s chats that are taking place. Do some analysis around that. And if there is crazy amounts of chat, and the same questions being asked, then you’ve got a problem. And these are some of those telltale signs that you can say knowledge management can help. Michael was right. It’s not the silver bullet, but it sure does help. Michael, I loved your analogy there before of the life vest and I haven’t been able to get that picture out of my head of all these people floating in the water with their life, their life preservers. I just imagine that if they realized, I’ve got this thing of Titanic floating around in my head right now and there’s Rose sitting on the door.

Michael Mattson:
Grim, man. Very grim.

Luke Jamieson:
Anyway.

Michael Mattson:
Jack, don’t let go.

Luke Jamieson:
But I’m thinking about, if everyone just combined their life preservers, their life vests together and stitched them together, they could create this boat that would house way more people. I think this is so much about going into the organization and this is an opportunity to showcase some of your employees’ knowledge and abilities and talent and really put them up on a pedestal in order to help them help others. So, how do we turn that life preserver into a boat? How do we take your amazing knowledge, your tribal knowledge, how do we take that and convert it into something that is really, really amazing? I’ll stop there, but I think that there’s really something in that. This needs to be seen as an opportunity to highlight people’s knowledge and showcase that, not to make them feel fearful that it needs to be absorbed by everybody else.

Michael Mattson:
And I do want to add to that. Going back to the employees, our people floating out there at the Titanic, the sinking Titanic. I think it goes to show how important employee experience is as a whole and how critical it is to really, like Luke said, go to where the work is being done. Get hands-on, go observe. And also go talk to those employees. Talk to them directly. Listen to them. Really truly understand what they’re going through. Those employees, they have ideas. They have a really great idea of what could really help them do their jobs. And then on the other side is you can’t ever forget to just listen to your customers too. Look through those voice of the customer channels and see what they’re saying. And if you are also seeing that, hey, I was told by one employee that this is the right process and then I got completely conflicting information from another employee, red flag right there, lack of consistency. Those can be strong indicators, and it’s about building that confidence with both our employees and our customers. And to do that, you have to be consistent.

Luke Jamieson:
It’s such a big thing about employee engagement that you want to have a sense of impact, and I think maybe to round out back to where we started, change the people or change the people, maybe the attitude of employees should be change the organization or change organization. And organizations need to allow that change to also come from the ground up. We need to listen and let that change happen within our organizations. I think that’s a good way to finish for me.

Pete Wright:
Well, it’s a perfect mic drop. Thanks so much both of you for hanging out and demonstrating what it takes to have some agency and change some organizations. I’ve got some links in the show notes we’re going to talk about. I’ve got links to some Panviva resources and some great links. So look at the links, check out the links. Swipe up in your show notes. It’s super, super easy and you can get a little bit more information about this concept. Is there anything else you want to send people to that might help them learn more specifically? What’s right off the dome right now where you want to send people to learn more? Anything?

Luke Jamieson:
We definitely had to put some of Michael’s socials in there because he’s got some great thought snippets.

Pete Wright:
Michael is an international man of mystery and he is only found in dark corners in IT conferences, black hat.

Luke Jamieson:
No comment.

Pete Wright:
Absolutely. We’ll put contact information for Michael as he drifts into the shadows once again. So, check the show notes for that. And you know what else? We’ve got this listener feedback form on our very own sites. Swipe up in the show notes again and tap if you have a question. Because we’ll send Michael and Luke these questions and have them answer them for us on the show later. We absolutely will. They’re nice people. They’ll answer your questions. We got them, they’re starting to stack up, and so I have a feeling we might have a listener question episode coming up sooner rather than later. Thank you all. We appreciate you downloading and listening to this show. Thank you for your time and attention. And as the Great Bard of Detroit says, “You only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo.” On behalf of Michael Mattson and Luke Jamieson, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you next time right here on Connected Knowledge.