Confidence Is Contagious, and So Is the Lack of It

Justin Lake: Welcome to the Frontline Innovators Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Lake, and super excited for another great episode today. Today's guest is an innovative change manager at a global healthcare technology company. She leads global transformation initiatives that bridge the gap between technology and people, ensuring digital solutions are not just implemented, but embraced. With over 20 years of experience in IT leadership and change management, she brings a practical, people-centered perspective on driving transformation that sticks. Please welcome to the show, Carly Greenwald. Hello, Carly. So excited to have you here today.

Carly Greenwald: Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I am too. I am too.

Justin Lake: This has been a long time coming. you know, many times with busy schedules. Sometimes the the gap between our prep and introductory call and the day we actually get to record. Sometimes there's a bit of a gap, and this is one of those scenarios. But I am super glad that we've finally been able to pull this together and I'm really looking forward to our chat today. So let me ask you the question that we start with.

Carly Greenwald: As a has been There's a bit of a delay. Yeah. Me too. Me too, I am too.

Justin Lake: All 2026 episodes of Frontline Innovators, what do you see as the biggest operational consequence when we don't have good adoption of technology on the frontlines?

Carly Greenwald: With me. Yeah, and what a great question to start with because it really gets to the heart of the of the matter, right? I think the biggest consequence is representation. Does that make sense? So yeah, so we have our front line.

Justin Lake: Talk me through it.

Carly Greenwald: And I think a lot of times because they're so good at what they do and so good at problem solving and firefighting and also not complaining, right? Because that's just not in their personality, in their nature as in that role. they lose we tend to forget how important they are to the business. I you know, I we forget because they're so good at making up for that.

Justin Lake: Well you know, th this has actually come up quite a bit lately. The this idea that a lot of people, particularly in field service operations, they their personality profile is such that they are great problem solvers. That's actually what makes them good at their job. The weird thing about that from a technology adoption standpoint is that that often means that they find their own workarounds even when we wish they hadn't, you know. And so it's it's almost like a

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Hundred percent. Hundred percent.

Justin Lake: contradiction to say, well, we love these people because they are great problem solvers, but then we put in a situation where we what we really want them to do is be compliant with with a particular workflow, with a particular process, right? And oftentimes they're they're under prepared to do it the right way, so they figure out their own way. And I think that's yeah.

Carly Greenwald: Right, right. Their own way. Yeah. Whatever is effective, right? Or we missed some big requirement of theirs, right? so the process that we're giving them just simply won't work in their daily, in their day to day responsibilities, you know? And usually it's like one of those things that's really obvious to them. But They're under their voice is under represented in the actual design of whatever it is we're trying to get them to do. So yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: So let's let's talk about that. How how can we make first of all, let's talk about what some of the potential solutions might be to to solve for that. What what would you advocate for to address that issue right out of the gate?

Carly Greenwald: so I know a lot of people talk about the concept of change agents, you know, like change representatives, that sort of thing. I think you can even be a little more it can be even simpler than that, where you can use different ways of pr of presenting a project or or preparing a project. and different methodologies where okay so maybe we're not going to call it change management, right? Because maybe that's not what we're gonna call it. But you're still doing all the same things where you're considering people's current point of view. You're considering their day-to-day life and challenges and and what they have to do. you're considering what the impact Of whatever change you're presenting is going to make on their day-to-day, but it's not just you considering it. You're actually asking from the very beginning, hey, what do you think of this? Right? or really more practically, the question usually is so this is where we're going, this is the direction we're we're headed. Can you help me make the map? Because I have a way to get there, but you probably have a different way. And there's probably very good reasons for the way that you would have, if that makes sense.

Justin Lake: It does make a lot of sense. And and to reinforce you know, what what you just said about there being good reasons for the way that they do things today, I think that's really important. A customer of mine at Skillful made a point to me a couple months back that has really sat with me, which is the idea that part that the biggest challenge with change is not necessarily showing them the new way, it's helping them unwind the old way, the muscle memory that they've had from doing it.

Carly Greenwald: Hundred percent.

Justin Lake: all of these times. And I've joked, I've already said this on the podcast a couple of times, but you know, just in my household, we had we bought a new garbage can and we put it in a different place in my kitchen. And you know, we've been living here for 25 years and you and and so that garbage can't been under the same sink door, you know, cabinet door for 25 years. And so we put this new garbage can in and you thought it was like the most disruptive thing in my household for, you know, 10 days. And so it really just reinforced

Carly Greenwald: The same spot. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Justin Lake: I I wanted the new garbage can, I chose it, I bought it, I decided where the new one went. And this wasn't an issue that I didn't even want to adopt this change. It was just that I was so set in my ways of doing things a different way that it took a little while to adopt. So I think that's a big part of it. Yeah.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Your brain is a muscle, right? So you have muscle memory in your brain too. Y I mean, neurologists would probably disagree, you know, but Yeah.

Justin Lake: Right, right. No, I I I think it it's so let's talk about then if we can acknowledge that getting from the old way to the new way is is really the challenge and that unwinding the old way is is part of the the source of that resistance. What can we be doing then to pave a an easier, smoother path that eliminates some of the reluctance?

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Justin Lake: to go from where they used to be to where we need them to be.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah, I mean so No one wants their job to be harder, right? Even the most dedicated employee is at the end of the day, you know, they're working, most likely, because you're paying them to. And if you said, Hey, how about you pay me to do this work instead, they probably would not be interested in that.

Justin Lake: Think attendance would be low.

Carly Greenwald: Right? Like there wouldn't be a lot of people signing up for that assignment. so I think we really need to kind of start at that place of people are trying to do a good job, but they're also trying to go home at the end of the day, not frustrated, not, you know, feeling like they did a good day's work, but not that. everything was in the way of them doing that good day's work. And so especially customer facing positions, right? because who wants a frustrated employee in front of a customer? You know? and so I think it starts with understanding that mindset of like, hey, no matter what we're changing, Let's make sure our baseline is the people who are on the front line, who are doing the frontline work, meeting with customers, you know, at the end of the day, making us our money aren't frustrated.

Justin Lake: Carly, I I literally just talked to a global services leader just this week and he said something that like I I captured the quote that he said because it was just so simple but spot on. He said, Our customers don't care that we're implementing an implementing a new ERP. They they just want to get the same service today that they got yesterday from our team.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They don't. Well. Or better, right? Yeah.

Justin Lake: Yeah, or better, of course, right. And so, but they are putting their frontline customer facing teams in a position to deliver less because of the change that they have to absorb. And so I this goes back to the opening question about this is an example of the consequences. When when change isn't absorbed by the field.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm.

Justin Lake: This can have a customer experience impact. And customer experience impact typically lead to profitability and associate experience and all of those kinds of things. Right. So

Carly Greenwald: Hundred percent. Right. Absolutely. Return customer, you know, recommendations, all of those things. Yeah.

Justin Lake: So so let's go back. So, you know, you you said something great in in the prep call, it was about you know, that that these change initiatives are often they they're kind of top down. They start with a high level vision. And and you kind of challenged, you know, those scenarios to say, hey, has anybody actually asked the the people in the field who are going to use this thing like for any feedback? And and I'm curious about maybe there's a story that you can share with us about maybe when you saw a project that wasn't going the right way.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Justin Lake: And and you felt like you needed to pull that emergency brake and say, Hey everybody, let's let's pause for a second and rethink this.

Carly Greenwald: So I think I can't think of an example exactly like that, but a lot of times, right, strategy comes from a different place than what we are expected to do in our daily work. And more often than not, those two goals conflict, at least in the beginning. They're they will bump heads and they'll they'll bump into each other. So I think very much what a change manager is responsible for doing is making something that's been decided, right? You can like it, you can not like it, but like paying taxes, you're gonna have to do it and no one's asking.

Justin Lake: Happened.

Carly Greenwald: Right? So to say, like, okay, why aren't we asking people? okay, if you had a staff of maybe five people, sure. You could gather every single person in the room every time you were going to make a business decision and get all of their feedback and see how that's gonna happen. that's just not practical in in most business settings. And it also probably wouldn't be very productive because as humans, right, we're not really trying to change a whole lot if something feels like it's working, right? So the baseline is going to be, well, I don't want you to change anything about how I have to do my job because I have it figured out and it's working, and just leave me alone. So instead of that, I think after the decision is made, what I've found most effective is being very clear on what is going to change and being very honest about what new expectations are. Like don't sugarcoat it. No one has time for sugarcoating, right? No one at you are kind of selling a product that they already bought, but

Justin Lake: Well, you're the the people that you're trying to get to change. I I think w when we first talked about this previously, you had talked about the idea that, you know, the the economic buyers in the organization made the decision to buy this product, but now you have to sell it to the people who are actually gonna have to use it, right? So you're reselling something that's already been purchased.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're already selling something that's but it's been purchased. So it's even kind of like a harder sale because you're dropping something off at someone's doorstep that they didn't want to buy and you have to tell them why they can't return it. Right. And

Justin Lake: Right. Yeah. So how do you how do you overcome that that friction?

Carly Greenwald: Yeah, and so you're very honest, right? it it first you develop you gotta work on developing the relationship with the per with the group of people. you reach out, you say, Okay, I typically like to collect a mix of of users, of employees who are going to be affected. I want some people who are very excited and engaged about any change because there are people like that. I want people who are kind of like, here we go again, right? And I also want a group, not a ton of people, but one or two people in that group who are negative about it. Because they a lot of times that And they all let me put it this way, they all have a valid perspective. And so then you put your suit of armor on and a smile on your face, and you go in and you start the pitch with this group of people and you listen. Because what builds trust and what builds relationship better than listening to people and you ask people, so what do you think? Tell me the truth, you know? And in that persp in that point, you know, like you don't record it, you don't write it down, you don't 'cause you'll remember it, I mean let's be honest.

Justin Lake: Yeah. You remember the big points that need to be remembered.

Carly Greenwald: Right? If someone's throwing arrows at you, you will remember that. You don't need to take a note. and you listen and you and that all of that information is really, really good stuff for okay, this is how I need to roll this out because this you know, XYZ thing, they're concerned. It's not gonna work at a s at a customer site because of connection issues or or whatever, you know, customers always complain about too much technology or, you know, it could be a million different things. So we have to give them the tools to answer those sorts of questions and feel confident and comfortable using whatever it is we're we're asking them to use now and changing to whatever we're asking them to change to. Where you know, so they can a and still do their job and not be embarrassed, right? When you're like standing you know, when you're in front of a customer and god, it doesn't work again. That kind of thing.

Justin Lake: It's been a long time since I've told this story, but I was doing a ride along with a delivery driver one time. A couple of things you've said today reminded me of this conversation. His name was Eric, and I will don't think I'll ever forget this guy. And he was telling me, first of all, it's it was something you said a while back. I'm going to come back to you, which he said, I just finally learned how to use the old version. And now you're telling me I've got to use a new version. So you mentioned that five or 10 minutes ago about like,

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Justin Lake: They just they got comfortable with this old thing. And it's not that the new thing's not better. I'm sure that it is, but I just got this other thing done. Yeah. But but the part that the the far more profound part of my conversation with Eric that night was when he said to me, they, and he pointed to the building where all of us knowledge workers work, you know, he said, they don't understand that when I'm out there, and he kind of pointed out to the open world.

Carly Greenwald: Just yeah. Right. But I just figured it out. Yeah. Mm.

Justin Lake: Where I have to go do deliveries. He said, I'm the one standing in front of the customer and I have to figure this out on the fly. And then he said, I feel like I'm standing on an island. And that was such an impactful statement to me that here, and this is a guy that did deliveries into grocery stores. So he was surrounded by people and by things and by infrastructure, but yet he has this technology change, which seems so simple to many of us, felt so isolating to him.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Justin Lake: That he would use these words to describe this to me, who at the time was a stranger. I'd known this guy for all of five minutes at this point when he was like opening up his heart to me. And it just was such a powerful thing. They do feel many times, and this is one of the areas where I think frontline workers are different, is that they are isolated. They are oftentimes doing their jobs by themselves. It is just them. It is.

Carly Greenwald: Ha ha ha ha. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They feel that way because it is reality. Yeah.

Justin Lake: And they're representing a big brand or a big company with maybe hundreds or thousands of people behind them, but it's just them and their customer standing in that situation. And you also used a word that I think is important, which is like the the embarrassment of just not feeling able to do what you need to do when you need to do it in front of the person that you need to be able to do it. And that is an embarrassing moment.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing. I think we can all relate to that, right? Like let's get down to the heart of the matter. When you don't know how to do something and you're in a position where you're supposed to look like an expert. I had this just happen just the two days ago. Something wasn't working you know, technology wise. I was doing a training and a live demo, which live demo, nothing ever works. Something's always gonna go wrong in a live demo. so if you want to practice not being embarrassed when something doesn't work, that's a good way to do it. but in a live demo, something's not working. And

Justin Lake: Sure. Yep.

Carly Greenwald: It was new to me too. The content was new to me. So it wasn't something like I had it built in where like, here's my workaround and I can fix this. Right? And Then you're in a position where you gotta tap dance a little bit. If you're gonna tap dance. And if you're not a good dancer, that's a problem. And that's not our frontline workers aren't there to tap dance. They're there to provide good service, fix a machine when it's broken, calm a customer down who's really mad because. This is the third time something didn't work, or the third time we're coming with a new software update, and you know, and they're already dealing with all of that. They're trying not to look dumb and like they know what they're doing. They're trying to reinstill confidence to a customer, and then we change the main screen. Of something and they don't know how to find what they need, you know, and then they're stuck. So that's a really that's a real impact, you know. Imagine on the other side, if you were a customer, you were at the grocery store and poor Eric is dropping off your potato chips, and he doesn't know how to close out your order. Because somebody moved the XYZ screen. So right? And he's stuck there making up of some sort of excuse for something he has no control over.

Justin Lake: Right. It happens every day. Right. And this is where the workarounds kick in. Right. That this is where the problem solving, unfortunately, comes in because in this case, Eric may not know the right way, the best practice on how to do this. He's put on the spot. He's standing on an island in front of the customer. He's trying to do his best to to represent the company well in front of the customer. And so he does the best that he can do. And what we see happen in the real world, and I'd be curious to see if you

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Justin Lake: if you've experienced this too, is that's when the trickle effect starts to happen because he doesn't transact correctly in that moment. So maybe the customer was trying to return three cases and buy four of something else. And he does that transaction in the physical world. He gives the customer the new product and he takes back the old product or whatever the case may be, but then it's not transacted correctly in the system. And so what that creates then is this whole trickle down effect where, yeah.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. Right. Right. Right. this whole ripple effect of yeah.

Justin Lake: So do you see that in in your world? Have you seen examples of that happening?

Carly Greenwald: Of course, right? So you know, you change something in a service record where and it can be as simple as like a field is one place Monday and on Wednesday it's in a different place or you know it can be as simple as that. But if you're And I think we can relate to that. If you're trying to solve a really complicated problem, and then you're like, thank God I'm finally done. And then you go in and like, we just have one more thing to do, closing out your your service record, right? And you can't do that after all of this stuff that has been going on, where while and I think again this goes back to We have to understand from like a central organizational perspective that these frontline workers, while they're fixing machines, replacing parts, XYZ, right? they're also instilling confidence in us as a brand through their knowledge, through their expertise, through their efficiency. And every time they don't know how to do something, even if it's simple, it reflects back to, well, I don't know what they're doing over there, you know. But I didn't have and then and then people go down the road of, I'm gonna go tell the decision makers if it happens consistently, I'm gonna go tell the decision makers that they don't know what they're doing, you know.

Justin Lake: C Carly, I think what you

Carly Greenwald: And then you have real economic consequences to that.

Justin Lake: You are absolutely correct. And and you actually just connected something really interesting. And this has been coming up on a lot of episodes of the podcast. And but it but it's a little different than what you described. We've been talking a lot about the need or the importance for confidence at the front lines. Because what we recognize is that there's this whole technical element of doing the right thing. But then there's this also more abstract element, which is the confidence that comes with that. And so oftentimes we'll say confidence and competence. One is how to do it, and one is feeling comfortable that you know how to do it. And really being able to bring both of those things together. And so, you know, we talk about this a lot at Skillful because we advocate for giving users the ability to practice before they're they have to do this, you know, in production. And so we give them an environment to practice in a safe place.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: But you just brought up another element of that, which is really powerful, which is the confidence that then your customer has in your front line. It transfers or it doesn't transfer. Or and I guess it's you can say the opposite. The lack of confidence on your front line then transfers to lack of confidence for your customers. And now you have a significant economic consequence in your business because that is now renewals or more service requests and things like that.

Carly Greenwald: It transfers. Yeah. Absolutely. Right. Or it doesn't. Yes. Or it doesn't. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Right. Yes, because if that's repeated over and you know, like if that if that pattern is repeated, if a service agent is coming in or or you're talking to them on the even on the phone, right? And and repeatedly it seems like they're exhausted because they don't know what's going on. And I'm exaggerating a little bit because again, they're all professionals. They will not make a mistake more than once, right? They're just gonna work around it.

Justin Lake: Carly, did I lose you? looks like your connection may have hung up a little bit. Mm. Yeah.

Carly Greenwald: Huh.

Justin Lake: We're back.

Carly Greenwald: We're back.

Justin Lake: Everything okay?

Carly Greenwald: Everything's good now. We're back and up and running. I'm I'm not sure what happened, but yeah. I lost everything for a minute there.

Justin Lake: Okay, good. It it's not even Well, all of a sudden you just froze up. So so that's fine. We can we can pick back up where where we left off and we'll just edit that this'll just be a blip on on the recording. Yeah, but we'll just we'll just take that out. this is perfect. It's no big deal at all. I'm glad you made it back though. Are you on your phone connection now as a hot spot to be reconnected?

Carly Greenwald: You can just edit that out. The beauty of editing. I am not, no, I'm back on my I'm I'm back on my Wi Fi. It should be fine. yeah. Just yeah.

Justin Lake: Okay. Okay. Perfect. All right. So I'm just I'm actually just gonna say that we're just recovering because it'll probably be a little bit of an abrupt crossover. Okay, so we are back with Carly Greenwald. We had a little bit of a tech snafu on the recording, but we are back as if nothing happened. Let me let me bring this back around and to talk about a couple of different things that that we've discussed, you know, when we first got together and

Carly Greenwald: Perfect.

Justin Lake: Where do you think the traditional change management process that, you know, may really focus on knowledge workers inside a large company like those that you've worked with might need to differ from how we think about that for the frontline teams?

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. So you said something you were talking to a a global service manager. And

Justin Lake: Mm-hmm.

Carly Greenwald: I can relate to to what he said. it's it's not real frequent that people on the frontline or customers or even people who are, you know, operating outside of your bubble and of organization, right? Really care about what you're doing. What they care about is

Justin Lake: Right.

Carly Greenwald: How's it gonna affect them? And you know, how they're just gonna continue to do their job. So nobody cares that you're, you know, but that you are upgrading to a new ERP, right? Nobody cares. They don't care. It's not It's not like they've been sitting around saying, Man, I wish this would happen. You know, in some cases maybe, but really.

Justin Lake: Meanwhile, the the project team has been immersed in this for twelve or eighteen or twenty four months. This has been their life.

Carly Greenwald: Yes. Yeah. It's been their life, right? And so they care, but they care because that's their assignment, that's their target. You know, if it was something else, they would care about that, right? So so I think w change professionals need to kind of accept that the understanding what's in it for me is very, very important. And you have to be honest about that. Like it can't be some, you know, marketing sales pitchy kind of thing. It has to be really like it has to be impactful to the work that the people who are affected actually do. And if it's not then you have to tell them that too. You have to say, look, this is strictly a financial decision and this is the way it's gonna be. And you just have to learn it and let's try and teach it to you as quickly as possible so you can get back to your day job. and we can move on with life. Right.

Justin Lake: I I think Carly, this is such an important point that I think so many teams miss. And it's about this transparency that you described, even when, like it's easy to be transparent when things are going to be objectively better. But in some cases, this change is actually going to be a little disruptive. And this change may actually be asking them to do some things that they didn't have to do before. And so from their perspective, from the user's perspective, it may not really be better.

Carly Greenwald: Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Not yeah.

Justin Lake: And and the point that you just made is that we have to be transparent even when that's the case, because otherwise we end up shooting ourselves in the foot.

Carly Greenwald: Exactly. Right? Like you Don't lie to people, you know. When I say I I said earlier about selling people on an idea that had already been purchased for them, right? What that doesn't include is sugarcoating it, trying to make it sound better than it is, you know, trying to make benefits

Justin Lake: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Carly Greenwald: appear that aren't there. That's not part of your sales pitch, right? Which may be different from a traditional sales pitch. Part of your sales pitch is like, look, yeah, this is gonna be annoying. we're gonna try and make it as not annoying as possible. You and I are gonna figure out together

Justin Lake: Yeah.

Carly Greenwald: How to make this work for your daily work. We're gonna figure out some workarounds that that can, you know, that can make the process flex a little bit so it works better for you. And then we're gonna go from there, right? That's the pitch. and trying to make it all fluffy and nice, and there's a time and place for that, sure. but also with the level and the amount of change that employees and people just as a person, as a human being, we're dealing with, I think the tolerance for that is getting less and less. and it also makes it very hard to build that trust and that relationship if that's kind of your starting point. I that's That's what I think we need to focus more on now is let's like lean into the fact that people are change fatigued. You know, because you can use that to your advantage. You can say, I I get it. This is the third time you've seen my face, and it's never good news. So what do you say?

Justin Lake: Yes.

Carly Greenwald: We work real hard and get ya outta here as fast as possible. Right? Like who doesn't love to hear that? You know? Like I s I think

Justin Lake: Yeah. I'd like to do some product research with you here on the fly and get get your feedback on something. So at Skillful, we we advocate during my day job, we advocate for an approach that, first of all, we believe that the preparation for go live for the end user perspective, not for the project team. Of course, the project team's been working on this for months. We

Carly Greenwald: Okay. All right.

Justin Lake: advocate for including the end user population very early, months ahead of when the actual go live will happen. And then in the many weeks that lead up to go live, we are not, we don't believe in just waiting until that last week before go live and and having them drink from a fire hose. So the approach that we take and we advocate for our customers is to go many weeks out and begin having them experience some of the change.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm.

Justin Lake: And this is all with a key word that I think is going to become the title of today's podcast is about confidence, right? Confidence on the front lines, giving them a chance to build confidence. And so the way that we do that is we advocate for having a video or kind of a narrated walkthrough to introduce them to some of these workflows, to give them a hands-on version of that war workflow, to then let them go into a practice environment where they can actually practice this, where they can build their confidence, and then to do a knowledge check.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin Lake: At the end, so that they can prove to themselves and prove to us that they actually know how to do that thing. What would you add or delete from that process? Like what as a change professional who's implemented these types of solutions before, what would you recommend that we change from that approach that we're advocating to our customers today?

Carly Greenwald: So I I actually like that approach. I think it allows you to do Okay. When you're talking about frontline employees, right? There is a finite amount of time that you have to train, get them on board, you know, manage a change because it's non-billable. Right? It's non-billable. So the longer I that's what I think people mi a lot of times people aren't really.

Justin Lake: Yes.

Carly Greenwald: excited about that approach because they don't want to show people something that's not done, right? Or might not work a hundred percent correctly. So it goes back to that confidence word again, right? the people who are are implementing a ch the digital change or the whatever, you know, are implementing the change don't have the level of confidence yet in what they're

Justin Lake: Yes.

Carly Greenwald: producing their product,

Justin Lake: That is a really interesting point that I've never heard made before. And I agree with you a hundred percent.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. Right? Like they don't have the the confidence in what they're producing. So it you're adding kind of another le that's I think at the heart of the resistance to approach it that way. Everybody wants to put their testing at the end, everybody wants to put their training at the end. And On the flip side, you're not gonna get your hands on a frontline employee for a week's worth of training. Yeah.

Justin Lake: They're buying themselves time, but at the caught at the cost of the frontline getting an opportunity to have bite-sized chunks of of this change in the weeks in advance.

Carly Greenwald: At the clock. Yeah. And at the cost and at the cost of the business, right? because you're adding a huge amount of time where your frontline employees then can't bill hours. Instead of saying, Hey, can you watch this, you know, minute long video and tell me what you think?

Justin Lake: Yep. Yep.

Carly Greenwald: Right. I think that's more the way to approach it. I think there are some exciting things around how developers and and implementation teams are becoming more comfortable with an agile methodology instead of the you know, so you can take things incrementally in smaller chunks. and so They're getting more comfortable with the idea that, okay, so the whole thing isn't done, but this little bit is. So we can take that and we can show it to the people who are going to use it, and they can learn about it, but they can also give us feedback before we go six months down the road and say this doesn't. Like, you know, and then they tell us it doesn't work where we can actually make changes and it doesn't cost us a ton of money to do it. And, you know, they're bought in because it actually's gonna work for them.

Justin Lake: Yeah. It it's really interesting to hear you you talk about the project team's confidence. we we just at our company, we just had an all-hands meeting last week and we actually spent a lot of time talking about all of the different personas on a big technology implementation and a in a large organization like yours. And

Carly Greenwald: Mm. yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: We kind of went through each of the personas, the product owner and the project manager and the SME or the SMEs and all of the different responsibilities that they have. And what we were talking about was the same situation, but we were using a different word. I was leading this, so I I'm guilty. But I was talking about the pressure that those people feel, that they're already up to their earlobes just trying to implement the new ERP or implement the new field service management software or whatever technology it is that they're implementing. So they're already up to their earlobes.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. Right.

Justin Lake: And carving out time to think about and have empathy for the frontline team members might just be more than they have capacity to handle right now. And I think all of those things are true. But a perspective that we missed in that conversation that I think you just made me realize is that there's also a confidence element for them. That this we were we were studying a use case with a real world client who will rename, remain nameless, but

Carly Greenwald: Yeah.

Justin Lake: Their team is overwhelmed right now. And they are overwhelmed, not even being sure that they're going to be able to keep their project on time and capture all that they need to do for this fairly large transformation inside their organization. So what I described as stress, which again I stand by, but I also think that there was a lack of confidence in their ability to get their own job done. So now when you ask them to think out six months or maybe three quarters and say,

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm.

Justin Lake: Okay, we got to start talking about your end user adoption. They're like, yeah, we'll get to that sometime next year. You know, we'll we'll think about that later. And the the problem is that their lack of confidence in themselves at that point is now preventing them from thinking most strategically about their end users and the feeling that they're going to have because they do need some time to prepare for them. But what happens every single time we see this play out is that.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah, yeah.

Justin Lake: That end user adoption piece gets left until the very last moment, the eleventh hour, and then it gets dropped on them like a ton of bricks. And then we spend the next six months trying to recover from a haphazard implementation. Right. And that's, you know, first of all, that's what I spend my day job doing. This is what we're trying to mitigate. We're trying to mitigate this risk up front. But we can't just offer a platform to solve this problem unless we can fundamentally shift where we want to put this problem.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.

Justin Lake: Right. Like it's not going to go away. But if we deal with it six months in advance of go live rather than for the six months after go live, it will actually be easier if we can be a little bit proactive about it.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and I think so you had started with the the question of like what would I add to that model that you're talking about? And I think more and more user feedback and like real tangible feedback. I'm not talking about like send them another survey, right? But

Justin Lake: Yeah. Yeah.

Carly Greenwald: You have this really great opportunity. They're using this tool. They're your experts in this in this implementation. why not ask them? Well, okay, here it is. What what would you prefer to see? It could be, I wish the screen was black instead of purple. I wish that, you know, it could be that. But it also could be like.

Justin Lake: Sure. Yeah.

Carly Greenwald: Well, I don't understand why I have to do this extra step when I used to be able to do this and all the information was there, you know, because it could just be something the developer didn't understand and they had a preference that something needed to be on a different screen. you know, it it's and it usually is as simple as that. But if you can take the training opportunity

Justin Lake: Right.

Carly Greenwald: And turn it into a valuable, like use part of the time as a valuable feedback session. at the end of the day, you're just gonna get a better product. And when you're really released, ready for release, it's kind of like a non-event because everybody knows about it and they've already bought into it because it's theirs. It's their product.

Justin Lake: You know, and you know what's interesting about what you're suggesting? It would actually feed in to the the the that feedback loop would actually help increase the confidence of the project team. Because because now if they rolled out a half a dozen workflows, they weren't really sure, but they got super positive feedback on on those workflows, then they could deploy with confidence. On the flip side, if they got

Carly Greenwald: Hundred percent. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Justin Lake: bad feedback, feedback that made some recommendations on some changes and they were actually able to implement them before production release, they could now implement those changes with also with confidence. Instead of cringing and being uncertain about how they're going to be received, they would actually already know.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah, exactly. And they know in incremental steps. So it's like it's not just one big I've birthed this child and people look at it and they're like,

Justin Lake: Yes. Yes. Yeah, your baby's ugly. If we're gonna stick with this metaphor. No, I I I actually this is actually really, really amazing feedback. And I'm really glad that I've asked it. because this is actually like skillful is a simulation platform. So as our training approaches that we simulate these workflows in advance of going into production. So we could absolutely just add a feedback mechanism to that exercise. And you you're addressing, I I just can't believe the the

Carly Greenwald: Right. Right. Sure. You're gathering the data for them right there.

Justin Lake: the thread of confidence and how much that permeates through. I I had a podcast recently with Carrie Corbin, who I will definitely tag on this episode today because she and I talked a lot about confidence on on our episode of the podcast, but we kind of kept that confidence discussion in the realm of the frontline team members. And you just extended it to two other sides of that, both to the customer side.

Carly Greenwald: Right. And it's Асом. cool. Mm-hmm. Sure.

Justin Lake: their confidence in us as a company because of their interaction with our frontline. And then another place that you've brought it up is the confidence of of the project team. And I think I've probably downplayed that historically, not recognized that as something that's important.

Carly Greenwald: I mean, I think we probably don't because it's you don't think about the fact that there's a whole chain of events that are leading are leading to d to releasing a good product, right? And

Justin Lake: Yeah. Yes. And there's this big like there's a D Day thing out in the future, which is that we've got the show live date that we're pushing to and like everything converges on this date.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. So it's a pro and everything converges on that date, and that is kind of our traditional way of thinking about you know, a a project implementation or a product implementation, right? Is like this is the day, this is the day it all happens, and everything else is kind of happening in the background. And what if

Justin Lake: Yeah.

Carly Greenwald: We changed that paradigm a little bit to break it into smaller pieces. So okay, so you're not gonna get to have your big reveal, right? but you are going to be able to make changes that will benefit people quicker, cheaper, easier, you know

Justin Lake: Right.

Carly Greenwald: And with the right priority, because you're hearing from the people who are actually gonna benefit. I think the biggest challenge though, really, and why we don't think about it, is because when you're on that side of the equation, when you're on the project team side, that's hard. That's hard to ask people like, give it to me. Give me the give me the dirty, you know? because

Justin Lake: Right. It is It is

Carly Greenwald: You have to be ready then to hear it. And yeah.

Justin Lake: Right. Right. That it that is a that's an issue with asking for feedback because you might get some. Right. And y you might hear some things that you Yeah. Well but the problem is is that in the absence of that approach, all we're doing is we're kicking the can down the road. And and you you talked about this. I the big reveal. That's actually a problem. And I I know you're suggesting it too. Like the the the problem is that we're delaying that feedback until

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. You might get some and and it might not be Yeah. I don't know.

Justin Lake: Big reveal. And maybe we have this naive view that by the time we do the big reveal, we're gonna have sifted through all the stuff that's not gonna be received well and we're gonna have clean that up. But like, I think that's zero percent of the time that happens that way. most of the time things are surfaced. I mean, this is almost like a joke that we talk about with ERP and and other big system implementations, like.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. Issues. Mm-hmm. Mm. Right, right.

Justin Lake: We know it's never going to go the way that it's expected. So why wouldn't we begin to bias our approach to solicit feedback earlier so that we can increase the chances of our success when we reveal? The other thing, and I I you didn't say these words exactly, but I think this would be inferred from from what you're describing, is by introducing the ultimate users, learners in this stage to this change early and getting their feedback, we're actually easing. their adoption of change that, you know, because we're we're introducing them to this many weeks or months. And that is very consistent with our recommendation approach as well. So we're we're kind of killing like a lot of birds with one stone here is that we're soliciting some feedback. We're introducing the field to change plenty of time in advance. and we're easing them in building their confidence, right? Which is a key thing. And you know what? We're building the confidence of the project team too, because then when they does get to the big reveal, there's a greater chance for them to be successful.

Carly Greenwald: Right. Right. Yeah, and That's great. You know that you built something that people are gonna like because they told you.

Justin Lake: Right. You actually you have objective data to show that. Yeah. And and something you said before, and I've said this a bunch of times, a reversion of this, which is, you know, if you've got five or six people, or maybe even forty or fifty people that are going to be affected by change, then maybe these strategies are overkill. But the people that I talk to and the people that we work with are dealing with hundreds, thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people globally. And so these strategies

Carly Greenwald: Yeah.

Justin Lake: Even if they only were to have a ten or fifteen or twenty percent impact on outcomes, like that's massive in in organizations of this size and complexity. Right. Right.

Carly Greenwald: massive when you add it all up. Right. And yeah, and anytime so I I I th I agree with you about yes, let's let's get people involved who are going to be effective as as early as possible in some capacity. And I think the piece that people miss is if you can stretch out your timeline for those things, right? It's way less of a negative impact for people to be part of a positive change. Right. So they can spend five minutes every week for six months instead of in s and you probably get more out of it. And they get more out of it.

Justin Lake: Right. Right. Yes.

Carly Greenwald: than if you're like, well, I need your whole service, you know, your whole service team for five days I mean you'll get laughed out of the room, right? yeah.

Justin Lake: Ain't happening. It's not happening, right? And or if it is, like it's a it's a Yes, of course. Of course. Yeah. Carly, this has been this is really in fact my favorite part of the conversation is since we had our little tech snafu 15 minutes ago. this has been really great. So now, as I predicted would happen, we're now we're over our time. So I we need to wrap it up, but I want to ask you one last question.

Carly Greenwald: Right? Isn't that funny? Mm-hmm.

Justin Lake: I think you've already offered several of these pieces that I'm about to ask for. So feel free to repeat if you want to reinforce one. But what advice would you give to somebody else who's in the middle or about to embark on a major digital transformation initiative, particularly those that involve frontline team members? What's one piece of advice you would give them to stack the odds in their favor for success?

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. the one piece of adv be realistic.

Justin Lake: And you if you want offer two, that's okay too.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. I would say I think I can sum it all up into be realistic. Be realistic about what you expect from the people who you're asking to change. be realistic from the project team, be realistic from your management, from what you're asking for them, right? For them to sign off on. just be realistic. you I'm, you know, you may be very passionate about the topic. You know that this is really great for the business and and there's a way to approach change. but at the end of the day, not everyone is ex is excited about it as you are. So, you know.

Justin Lake: In fact, probably most people are not.

Carly Greenwald: Probably most people are not excited. Again, they're just trying to go to work and go home. So be realistic about who you're dealing with. and it will be a much more fulfilling.

Justin Lake: Well, I don't know if I can name every episode, you know, frontline success is all about confidence. But I think this is at least the second episode we've done this year where, you know, confidence has become kind of the the keystone of the the entire discussion and and you've helped me see some things a different way, which I really appreciate you giving me that perspective. That's gonna come up in a lot of my future conversations, I think, because

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. That's funny. I thank you. This is

Justin Lake: Both the customer side and the project team side, like everybody needs to be confident. That's really what it boils down to. And, you know, we focus a lot on the frontline team members because I do think that they are often victims of this change. but I think, you know, everybody's got a part to play in this. And we we are humans. This is something that may be a little bit different from us than the robots, that we do need to feel that feeling of confidence so that we can put our

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hundred percent. Mm-hmm.

Justin Lake: best version of ourself forward. And that applies to, you know, everybody throughout this chain. So thank you for, you know, widening my view on that topic a little bit. I appreciate that.

Carly Greenwald: Yeah. thank you. No, this was great. Thank you.

Justin Lake: Well, thank you for for joining today. We're gonna close it up there and look forward to staying in touch with you.

Carly Greenwald: Mm-hmm. All right, same. Thank you so much.