Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign to another episode of our unlocking your people podcast series, today's episode is a little different.
We're doing a full just Ask Jess episode where I will be just answering questions and dealing with scenarios that come through. So my good friend, producer, director, and all round wizard Roz is going to operate as the questions guru today and she's going to pull questions from the bag of tricks that have come in and randomly ask me questions that I will respond to on the fly.
I reserve the right to come back to some of these later if I have thoughts after today.
And of course, you know, with all these things, depending on what it is, if it's, you know, really tangly, make sure you get proper support and, and legal advice on these things. I'm answering without full knowledge of the situation, so always worth flagging those pieces. All right, with that said, Roz, over to you.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Oh, this is exciting. Our first episode. Just Ask Jess.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: I know.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Wow. I didn't plan for this. It really is on the fly. I mean, people might think that, you know, this is not on the fly and that you might have advanced knowledge. This is not. This is pulling them right out of the mailbag as they come in. So, yeah, it's very exciting. But I.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: You can tell by how waffly some of my answers.
That's right.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Well, I'll, I'll, you know, I'll give.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Them a little once over to make sure it's not too spicy, but the first one is a little bit spicy. So. Are you ready?
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Okay, Today is first question. We just bought a smaller company and now it feels like there are two totally different cultures clashing. People from both sides are frustrated and it's getting a bit ugly. How do you even start to bring two groups like this together? It sounds like a blended family to me.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Oh, it's all things. Relationships are the same everywhere. Like if you go into business from this, like getting married. We had a whole conversation on a program was on the other day about like this person was considering bringing a partner in. I was like, it's the same as it like a famous person marriage, you need to prenup. Like you need to work through all the possible bad case scenarios before you start. Right? Yeah. And in this situation, it's actually not that different. So what I'd say is, unfortunately, given where we are, it's probably didn't happen. But if you're thinking about acquisition or merger, the cultural alignment piece needs to come as part of that preparation piece. And it's sometimes Missed. Right. So thinking about what is going to happen when we bring these two organizations together, what are the cultures having lived through it, I've lived through two organizations that had very different cultures coming together. And, and it can get very messy very quickly if people have different views about what good looks like. And that's what you're kind of talking about here, right? And then, and in, in Our World at E3, no corporate culture is right or wrong. Right. Like every people, it might not be right for you. That is different from being inherently right or wrong. But when you bring them together, you are trying to blend a family. So if this family had like no bedtimes and everybody could stay up and it was good they wanted, and this one is like you do your chores and you go to bed at 7:30, guess what? You're going to have some issues when you bring them together.
So you're really. So now it depends a little bit on how this works. And I don't know enough here about like that, what the new leadership structure is or who bought who or how that's all structured. And some of those things will play a part. But inherently, just from a, how do we get two groups of people on the same page?
You need to get them to define what good looks like together, right? So again, I don't know how many people we're talking about. I don't know how collectively you can do that.
You know, if you company of 10 and you bought a company of 6, you could put everybody in a room together. If you're a company of 500 and you bought a company of 100, you probably can't, but you can get your leadership teams together, right? So we need to redefine what the culture should be for this new joint entity. So if you didn't do a, if you did a takeover and the intent was for you to be them, to become you, then that's one thing. And a merger is something else. In terms of culture, even if you did a takeover, what I'd say sometimes I think gets missed is back integrating the good stuff from the company you have bought, right? Because nothing makes the people in the company you have bought feel worse than someone saying we've bought you and now you no longer exist and you're going to be just like us. Because they liked being who they were before, right? They liked being the conversation, the company they were. And you obviously like them because you bought them, right? So there were some things that they were doing that were probably better or just as good at what you were doing and they need to hold on to those things. And then we need to talk about what does the combined culture of those two organizations look like. And it's okay if it's skewed one way or the other, that's fine. But I would try and make it at least 9010, right? Like if you can't make 50 50, like at least 90 10, what are you bringing over from the acquire business? So they still feel that part of their identity is translated into the new world. That's the first thing.
And then there is the process side of things. Right? So how does stuff get done? Like, all these pieces are got to be fused together. You need to be clear on, are you fusing? Are you adopting? Like, what, what's going where? So working systematically through all of that and asking opinion is good. And at the end of the day, there's two other things I'd say so this is a massive fundamental change. And in terms of mergers and acquisitions, we generally can't tell people we're doing them right. So we generally can't prepare people for being acquired. Which means the day they found out they were being acquired, they. Their world stopped for a while. Right? And everything they understood as being certain and true has gone out the window. Now, even if you are the best organization ever with the best social media and everyone loves you, you're still telling them that what they were doesn't exist anymore and they become something else. That is a fundamental radical change for people's brains to get around. So that's not going to suddenly switch to something new overnight. You need to be planning a transition period for people. You need to be looking at the transition curve that people go through where they are on those curve and continue to coach people along the way. And it can help to opportunities to let go and say goodbye to things. Right? So it sounds daft, but like change is about letting go and adopting new. If anytime a human being lets go of something, there is a grief associated, right? There's a sadness associated with losing it. You can be super excited about the new thing and still be sad about the old thing. So think about getting married. For those of you that married, you were hopefully super excited about getting married. Hopefully you could still be sad about losing some of the aspects of single life, right? Like they're not mutually exclusive. So we can be excited about new culture and new business and still be sad about losing our own. What are you doing to allow people to say goodbye to the old organization, to celebrate what it was and to get excited about the new. So those. That's. I mean, that's a very short answer for a very complex topic. And I'd encourage whoever this is to reach out and get some proper acquisition integration support on this one, change management support, and legally make sure you're doing all of the pieces. Right. If all of that is done. And this is about teams clashing, create the space for them to come together, create quality conversations about what does the vision look like moving forwards. What is the combined culture together? How does this team work through issues and challenges? Where are they seeing bumps like put the elephant on the table because hiding it doesn't do anything good. Right. So have the. Create the mechanism to have the conversations where the team discuss with each other what is getting in the way and collectively resolve it. You are going to have to, as a leader, role model, how to do that for them, because they may not know.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: You know, it reminds me of actually Canada, as you're talking, and this idea of Mosaic versus melting pot. Right. Like assimilation, you know, we don't want to assimilate.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: We want to have people bring their cultures and feel like they're a part of this Mosaic.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: As opposed to.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: As you're talking, I'm reminded of that. Yeah.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Now, if you. In an organizational setting, slightly different from human identity culture, I think you can get closer to melting pot, but the melting pot isn't. You jump into hours.
Right. It's like, come over here and become us. And it's, no, no.
How do we take the best. Right. Like all. All good fusions come from the best of both worlds coming together. So, and. And the more people see you doing that and recognizing what they have bought and why they're.
The more they will buy into what you're, you know, what you're doing and what you're trying to accomplish, because they'll feel part of it. Permission and participation are two things that are really important for human beings in terms of like, reducing fear, threat response. Right. So if I'm. If I'm asked to participate, if I'm asked my point of view and my opinion, even if you don't do what I suggested, you're telling me I'm important. You're giving me an opportunity to shape my own future and my own destiny. You're making it obviously transparent how you're doing things, which gives me a sense of fairness and equity. Like, all of these things make me feel better about the process, even if, at the end of the day, it's not exactly what I wanted as an outcome.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Yeah. That makes total sense. Earlier when you were talking about mergers and acquisitions, I thought you said murders and acquisitions.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: Merger. Please don't do murder. Please don't say. I was listening to a podcast and this British woman, she was like, you should do murders and acquisitions. It's very good.
Yeah.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: I was like, ooh, it's getting really ugly over there. Murders and acquisitions.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Okay, moving along. You ready for the next one?
[00:09:16] Speaker A: Yes. Hopefully slightly less complicated. Okay.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: All right. Yeah, this one's a little bit quicker, actually. Definitely more straightforward.
I've been thinking about whether we should do 360s for our team, but I hear they can be a lot of work that actually kind of ties in a little bit. Are they worth it for a small group?
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Okay, so for those people who are like, what's a 360? 360s are a means of gathering feedback on somebody. We call them 360s because you ask the full circle of people around them. So you ask their leader, their peers, and the people that report to them. Right. So the full circle to provide feedback. We also talk about sometimes 180s, which is where just the leader and maybe peers do it or the direct reports do it. Right. So just to clarify, for those folks who are scratching their heads, 360s can be absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal tool, particularly for helping build self awareness for folks. Right. You're getting feedback from people on how you come across.
They're usually anonymous, so you can get some real honest feedback. You got to be a little careful to read the reports before you give them to people, because sometimes people are brutally honest when they don't have to look at the person. It's like social media don't have to look at you and give you the feedback to your face. I'm sometimes a little more brutally honest than I would be otherwise. Yeah. So there are some. There are some nuggets with that. But that said, I do generally find that they are a very useful tool, often where the hiccup comes in.
So some people use them, for example, in the performance review process.
So I'm not. I'm doing a review for you and you report to me. I'm going to get feedback from a bunch of people to feed into your review, which is great from a principal's perspective because then it's more fair and transparent and we got less bias because it's a wider group of people and so on. What tends to happen, though, in organizations is you're likely to have a handful of people who know everybody or get asked for everybody. And so for Them they get a bit overloaded or overwhelmed with having to do that many feedback requests. Like if you've got a director of a large department or something like that, or a bigger team, they've got to do feedback for everybody. Like that's a lot of time.
So I'd say yes, I think you should do them in terms of then applic. As a general rule, things to consider and think about. Do you do them for everybody or are they specifically used in certain circumstances? So do you use them when somebody is identified as needing a development plan? Or when someone specifically asks for particular feedback? Or if you've got somebody who's perhaps underperforming on an improvement plan, like are they used in those particular circumstances or for somebody with high potential when we're considering a promotion, like those types of things, do you stagger them? So rather than tying them into a particular time of year or a review process, if you've got a smaller team, perhaps you stagger them throughout the year. So not everybody has to do them all at the same time.
Do you have shorter versions of them? Like some, some three sixes can be quite long, some can be shorter. Like do you need to. To do them? So I bring it right back to first principle, what are you doing it for and why? And then design the process that works. Right. If this is about building self awareness, is it self awareness for everybody? If this is about getting consistent feedback for a review process, Maybe it's a two question survey as opposed to a full 360. Like those types of things to consider. So very useful tool in a nutshell. Go back to what are you trying to accomplish by and therefore how could you change the way you roll it out to limit the amount of work that they can be.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Okay, fantastic, Fantastic.
I think we've got time for one more today. You ready? One more question.
What do you want here, Jess? Do you want meaty or do you want a little more straightforward? We have a few if you give you pick. Want me to pick? No, no, no requirements. Okay.
All right, let's go with this one.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: I think we've all been in this situation before, so when I read it, it makes me giggle a little.
I report to a boss who is constantly changing their mind.
One one day something's a huge priority, the next day it's forgotten. It's exhausting and confusing for the team. Any tips for dealing with a leader like this without making it worse?
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Yes. So the feet, the dealing upwards is always a little more tricky than sideways or downwards in an organization.
So first thing I'd say is hold on to good intent, right? So this leader did not get out of bed this morning and go, I'm gonna go to work and confuse all my people. So something is happening. Whether it's actually the organization's priorities are shifting because the strategy is changing, I don't know. There's some context questions I'd want to ask here to understand a bit more about what's going on. But nutshell, just remember that they're genuinely. I would, I'm, I would say 99. I'm sure they did not wake up this morning and think, yeah, go and confuse everybody.
But that doesn't mean it's not happening. So first question is, do you know why they're changing their mind? So is it changing their mind because you see things shifting in the organizational structure or strategy, or do you feel like it's a personal how they organize themselves thing that that would help kind of figure out what you want to do with it?
And depending on that answer, I might suggest a few different things. Gener clears a couple of things, I'd say. So one is around how you do clarification and recording.
So if you need to challenge upwards, which can be like. It's not like most of us want to walk into our boss's office and say, hey, boss, I find you really confusing now that you might, if you're really lucky, have that relationship with somebody. But I would say that's, you know, the smaller percentage of everybody. Well, most of us were like, I'm not going anywhere near that.
So what can be helpful is the questions that you ask. So if the priority is shifting, you know, you don't need to say, well, why is it. You could say, okay, so can you, can you walk me through how this relates to the priority that you gave me yesterday of X, which is kind of flagging to that person, you gave me a priority yesterday without saying wtf, which is probably what you would like to say to that person. Because they're not doing on purpose free. They're not doing a purpose. So asking for clarity, asking clarifying questions, perfectly fine.
The other thing then is can you document and record? So if there's like a set of priorities that you've been given, can you create some kind of tracking mechanism or tracking document to say, like, these are the things that we've been asked to do. And then if you have the opportunity to bring it up in those conversations and say, okay, where does this new priority fit with some of these? So it's possible that that leader has forgotten the things they told you. It's possible that in their head, there's like, they're not thinking about the other things that they've delegated to you and the team. They're just thinking about the priority that's in front of them. So sometimes those visual cues can help the person go, oh, right now I'm looking at that list, actually. No, that still is the priority. And do this right. So some of those things help to kind of bring some stuff back front and center.
I mean, I'd always say if you're comfortable doing it and you're comfortable having the feedback conversation with the person, go ahead and do it. But I do recognize for most people, having feedback conversations with their bosses is not something they generally want to do or feel comfortable doing. And so the questions and the clarification and the recording can be helpful.
And then the last piece is really, I. I'm not entirely clear from the scenario. If it's boss, you, and then the team underneath you, or if it's boss and you and the team are people next to you, right? So if. If it's the boss, you, and then your direct reports reporting to you, then unfortunately, you're gonna have to be a bit of an umbrella leader, right? Like, your job is not to pass on the confusion. Your job is to try and continue to maintain priorities for your team and work on clarity with your leader. Right? Don't go team and be like, I don't know, boys, this is really confusing. Bob said to do this today. Whatever. Like, that's not obviously what we want to do. So we talk about umbrella leadership, right? You're not passing the rain on. You're going to hold the rain on you and still create the clarity underneath you. If you have peers who are in a similar category, I would talk to them. Do they have more insight than you do? Are there things that they've seen? Are they doing things that work? Do they have better clarity than you do in their. In their kind of sphere of influence, in the organization, whatever.
Can. Can a few of you get together and create some mechanisms that create some clarity and priorities for the team? So it depends a lot on kind of structure. And I am missing a big chunk of context here because I genuinely don't think people do this. This is. Something's going on to make this happen.
But asking good questions to get clarity, recording things is a decent place to start, would be my first suggestion.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I love that idea of, you know, always assuming that someone's intentions are good, right.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: 99 times out of 100, like, I literally have met maybe two people in the course of my career who enjoyed winding people up. Everybody else is just doing stuff that seems very sensible to them or dealing with the moment. Like you. I don't know what's going on for this person. Right. I don't know, maybe they're super stressed to the max. Maybe they're getting competing priorities from their boss and they're like, I don't know what to do with this. And so they're passing them on instead of being an umbrella. Like, I don't know from that scenario. Because context is everything.
But clarification, questions and recordings should help in any situation.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: Amazing. Amazing. All right, well, that's it. That's all we got for the mailbag for today. Did you want to wrap us up, take us out?
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Yes. So hopefully those were helpful even if you're not necessarily dealing with exactly those scenarios. Hopefully there were some nuggets and thinking about how those pieces apply.
At the end of the day, we say people are patient patterns, right? So the more that you understand the patterns of people's behavior, the more you can spot when someone's off pattern. If your boss is off pattern, what, you know, what causes that person to do what they're doing and why, and then the easier it is to work with them. So hopefully as we go through these scenarios, you'll see some of the threads in the, in the way that we think about people and the tools that we use and you can start to apply them in.
So that's it for today.
Again, if you've got scenarios you want for us to fire at me on the spot, send them all through to contact 3ca.
Don't forget to follow us on Spotify itunes and you can check out the previous episodes on our website, E3CA. And of course, if you're dealing with any of this and you're looking for the tools or techniques to help, you, then either check out our self serve toolkit or get in touch with us and we'll see how we can help. So next time around we're talking sales. We have lots of clients who have question marks and scratchy heads over the sales world.
Susan is an amazing CEO of an organization called the Wave Buyers Buy, who I had the pleasure of connecting with and it's given me lots to think about the sales space. So she's joining us for a conversation next time. So I hope to see you there.
